at off-peak times
I have been typing in my diary for fun and for self-documentation (I am like a technical writer, presenting a detailed and tedious user’s manual about myself, a product that is constantly in beta). But also lately I never press “publish” because why, but then again also why not.
WHAT I DID ON THE DAY OFF THAT I TOOK FOR NO REASON
- Went to the gym. Saw some of my usual pre-dawn regulars, including the guy with double knee braces who is always doing what looks to me like a really ill-advised leg workout; angry elliptical woman (it’s okay, let it out girl); and elderly Korean lady who wears a cat-ears headband.
- Decided I wanted chocolate cake, so I made a chocolate cake.
- Washed all the towels. Well, not the clean ones, that would be weird.
- Watched the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, which I had not seen before. I know opinion is divided but I think everyone did a pretty good job. Some class- and manners- and romance-related things are still very contemporary and relevant but if you want an example of something that is completely not, I will point you to, “Let us take a turn about the room.” Can you imagine being in a room with maybe 3 other people and asking one of them to…walk around the room with you? It’s so fucking weird I almost want to do it now.
- Also President Snow is in it! I know Donald Sutherland has had a long and varied career but he’s kind of just President Snow to me now. Nobody tell him.
- Took a nap and dreamed about making out with Marc Rebillet (yes he was wearing a robe). Before we started messing around I showed him some drawings/cartoons of a sexy butternut squash wearing a hat and a dress; her name was “Tooncy.” This is fantastic, said Marc. Why have we never seen this character before? Oh I write about her all the time, I said. This is just the first time I have drawn her. WHAT?
- Woke up and wrote the above the fuck down, because it is an A+ nap dream.
- Picked up more antibiotics at the vet for poor broken-dick Rocko.
- Finished a book (The Lightness by Emily Temple). Started a new book (Tender Is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica.)
- I also listened to a lot of music while reading and want to recommend NewDad, Piroshka, the Bach B-minor Mass, and Dzihan & Kamien.
WHAT I DID ON DIFFERENT DAYS OFF I TOOK FOR A REAL REASON
Had the recommended old-person screening colonoscopy and for half of one day I was on the depressing “clear liquid” diet and the other half I spent in the bathroom, as per protocol. Working from home means I could have remained a worker bee, at least during the Sprite and chicken broth portion of the day, but I did not want to be a worker bee. I wanted to be a television bee.
And the next day I went to the hospital for the good drugged-out nap* and the souvenir photos of my colon. One of the few things I really like about lying on a gurney is when nurses use your body as a place to put their equipment or wrappers. Yes I am a table, please cover me in your trash. I am not being sarcastic, it is nice to be useful at a time when you are otherwise completely not.
*I want a lot, I said to the doctor. Like: don’t Michael Jackson me but I don’t want to remember this either. Weirdly, I never ever worry about being overdosed anesthesia-wise, but if I take some cold medicine or a painkiller and half a baby-strength sleeping pill at the same time I have a panic attack that I’ll die in my sleep like a moron.
MISCELLANEOUS
For about a decade I was not able to take off my wedding ring. It was not an emergency (you: goddamn Mimi, I should hope you didn’t have a 10-year emergency). No pain and my finger was not swollen or anything, I had just been wearing it continuously for almost 30 years and fingers change, man. I had tried all the tricks and no dice, and like I said it mostly did not bother me except it PHILOSOPHICALLY bothered me. I don’t need to get it off but I SHOULD BE ABLE to get it off. Anyway I finally went to a jewelry store and they used a can opener-type thing to twist it off, and resized it and polished it up.
Also, I have not been drinking alcohol lately and I do not want to talk about that because (a) there’s no reason, I just haven’t and (b) people who make grand announcements about things they do or do not ingest are the worst people in the world. I have been getting high though! Including, occasionally, Too High! I have these gummies and I cut them in half with scissors because a full one is too much, and either I cut it unevenly or the weed was mixed unevenly throughout the gummy flesh. (I am sure this is done in a lab with gleaming industrial instruments but I like to picture an indifferent cafeteria lady mixing the weed gummy ingredients like she’s making a meatloaf and being like “eh, that’s good enough.”) Regardless of how it happened the half-gummy also turned out to be too much but I was able to tell myself not to be so high. This is a very useful skill I have always had. The time I used it to most advantage was when talking to the police, after dropping acid and wandering around some fields with friends (the main extracurricular at my college). We saw a school bus in the distance, parked right in the middle of a vast nowhere, and went to investigate since it seemed important. You understand.
After getting the door open and exploring the bus for a while, some state police showed up and wanted to know the deal, oh and they also wanted to know why I was carrying a tire iron, and I wisely deployed my “don’t be high right now” skill and did NOT explain that I had been using it to make beautiful homemade industrial music on the walk to this field, tire iron on sidewalk is the most amazing sound, and would they like to hear? Instead I said that the tire iron had been found on the bus and must belong to the bus (although in my heart I felt a small gasp from the tire iron as I betrayed it, saying that I did not know him, saying that we did not belong together for eternity).
—mimi smartypants came late. To the Supper. Because she had something else to do.