Saturday, September 11, 2010

Laundry day

Oh boy, what an emotional day. E.T. is on TV and I'm crying as I watch it, remembering how I was the same age as Elliot when this movie came out. I'm such a crybaby nowadays, anything emotional will set me off.

Oh yeah, laundry... I went out into the hall, careful to wipe my eyes. Right as the door opened, a man and his little son, about 4 years old, stepped up to the elevator. Oh great, here I am all teary eyed and barefoot and now somebody else has to witness it...

So we all get into the elevator. The little boy immediately pipes up. "Where are you going? I'm going down. On the other side. Which side are you going on?" By sides, he means, either the lobby or the basement, as depending on which floor you stop, you wind up on opposite sides of the building. "We're going on THAT side. Where are you going?" I looked down at this little kid.

"I'm going to do laundry."

"Where is your laundry? Why don't you have a bag of laundry?"

"It's already down there. In the washer. I'm going down to dry it."

"How did you get that mustache??"

At this point the father chuckles, the door opens, and they walk out into the lobby. I laughed out loud.

"I grew it!" The doors shut and I could see the little kid looking at me wide eyed, at my mustache, I'm guessing.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Do it

Tonight I took a walk. It was my first walk in a few weeks. I've been feeling really down lately; not only depressed but physically ill. It's the enemy fucking with me because the time is getting close to go home where I'll be back in contact with my church. So, it makes sense that the full frontal assault should happen now.

Anyway, today I said fuck that, and felt a little better. Good enough to take one of what used to be my normal walks. So, I started off at about 6:30 with the idea in my mind to do another video blog. My camera kept running out of memory though, which was weird, because there is plenty of memory on my card... so after about three tries at this, I decided to say fuck it, I'm not supposed to do a video blog. So I kept walking.

I got downtown and a woman was walking in my direction. We made eye contact. My usual habit after making eye contact with a passing stranger is to immediately disconnect, but for some reason, I kept the contact until we were face to face, and of course, a conversation became obligatory.

The first thing she asked was 'Say man, you know where I can get some 4:20?' This is nothing new to me. I have 'the look', and people ask me this all the time, as was demonstrated tonight, and as I will now recount. She said 'You look like you might know where to get some'. Like I said. I told her, no, sorry, but I don't smoke weed. And from there, it became this long exchange of stories about our own personal histories of drug abuse, and how getting old is such a surprise.

After exchanging life stories, she asked me what I was going to do when I got home. I told her, 'I want to get into counseling so I can help other addicts like myself'. She smiled the biggest smile and said, 'Yeah man. That's great. Do it, man. Do it.' She walked closer to me and took my hand and stood there, looking me straight in the eye, holding my hand. 'Do it, man. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.' She let go of my hand and started to walk away, all the while looking at me as she departed, saying, 'Do it. Do it, man. Do it.'

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Cold, wet, and windy

Today is the first really cold day we've had this year in Ketchikan. First off, it's windy, and I do mean WINDY. The scarves on the T-stand outside kept blowing off, and I actually had to pull up the hood of my hoodie so that I wouldn't freeze to death while standing outside taking a smoke break.

And it's cold. Weatherbug says it was 51 degrees, but that's at the airport, across the ocean on the other island. Maybe it's 51 degrees there, but here on the Ketchikan island, it's downright cold. Cold, as in, I really do have to pull my hood up over my head (nevermind that it makes a mess of my hair), tuck in my shirt (to keep the wind from blowing up my tummy :::shiver:::), and pull the sleeves up over my hands so that the wind don't bite them off.

And WET. As we say here in Ketchikan, where they call rain 'liquid sunshine', and the average amount is about 12 feet a year, it's raining sideways. Or more accurately; imagine a 25 degree angle upward from the zero degree horizontal. The rain is following that line, blowing down from the upper right to the lower left. Almost sideways, anyway. Good enough for government work.

So... if there's two things mixed together that I absolutely can't stand, that is... two things mixed together that I HATE, other than peanut butter and mayonnaise, it's cold and wet, both occupying the same place at the same time. And the wind only makes it worse. Let me add that to the list... three things mixed together that I absolutely can't stand. Cold, wet, and WIND. Welcome, wind, to my hate list. Not that I didn't already hate you all by yourself, because you just love to blow my hair around so that it's a bona-fide workout before I go to bed just to get the tangles out, complete with sore shoulders and biceps in the morning. But now, wind, you get to have friends. Cold and wet, meet wind. Wind, meet cold and wet. Misery loves company, so they say.

Speaking of sayings... like my mom used to say, "It's colder than a witches tit in a brass bra outside." Please excuse the crude metaphor, simile, or idiom, whatever it is. But I always thought that was funny, so in order to make the horrible cold wet wind more bearable, I use that crude phrase to describe it because it makes me chuckle. Thanks mom. :)