10pm on a Monday night. Trying to decide whether or not to iron tomorrow’s monkey-suit tonight or wake up early and get it done. Since I have to split around 5:30am to make my short flight, I don’t think I want to wake up early. But, I really don’t feel like ironing right now. If I was in Taiwan, I’d have already sent tomorrow’s shirt and pants to be pressed, and some unseen laborer would’ve hung them nicely in my closet. Where are my unseen laborers? Owell. The nice thing about tomorrow is that I’m really only going to press flesh; I’m not even presenting. I’m there for “face time,” and to answer any questions that might come up. To me my motivation is more like a free lunch and a day away from the office… nearly as noble, right?
I’m sitting here looking at my desk before me, and I’m disgusted by how messy and cluttered it is. Here’s just a rundown of what I can see: a bottle, one-fourth full, of generic tropical-flavored Tums antacids; a Diet Coke; electric nosehair trimmers; a ziplock bag full of Garbage Pail Kids; stacks and stacks of CDs; a plush monkey; spindles and spindles of blank media; a wedding-cake groom figurine; a vintage cassette walkman; two cans of Play-Doh; a wireless universal garage door keypad; piles of mail; fingernail clippers; pipes and pipe tobacco; an empty prescription bottle of allergy medicine; one plastic troll with bright blue hair; one plastic troll with bright red hair; an incense burner shaped like a wizard; an empty glass on a coaster; loose batteries; a faucet attachment for a sink; and it goes on and on. I gotta get less pack-ratty.
I don’t really have time to be writing right now, on top of having nothing to say – I should be sleeping. Instead, I’m sitting here listening to the Arcade Fire and staring at my Word doc. I think I’m going to take some vacation soon. Not that I’ve been taxing myself at work lately or anything, I just started thinking. We’re not going anywhere for Christmas this year, so the five or six days I usually reserve for that are just going to go unused if I don’t do something with them. I was thinking, since Sharaun’s off for a while now – that we could maybe take a trip or something. Maybe run away and hide out somewhere for a while, just us. I used the word “thinking” a lot in this paragraph.
Midnight and my fingers don’t seem to be writing anymore. They keep asking my brain for more words, but he mutters back something about being sleepy and kinda hot. Sharaun’s been asleep on the couch for hours, so I’ll now go through my light-turning-out, door-closing, wife-waking routine. Today on the phone I laughed at a joke I wasn’t really listening to, just because the teller of the joke was laughing, and then realized that can be dangerous. What the heck, or who the heck, am I laughing at? What am I associating myself with, what did I just find funny? Better not to laugh when you’re not paying attention, this today I learned.
Hey Kirby corporation, you send one damn vacuum representative to our house each week; we still haven’t bought your $2000 vacuum, despite your kind offer for a “payment plan.” The day I take out a line of credit to pay for a damn vacuum is the day my identity has been stolen. Your van-ferried teenage salespeople in loose-fitting khaki’s and reeking of Hilfiger cologne can’t market for crap, the 2hr training session they went to only makes them come off like pre-pubescent used-car salesmen. Stop coming to my house, we know our vacuum sucks. It’s made of plastic and came from Wal Mart, yours is all metal and can tow a boat or suck up piles of my dead skin – I don’t care. My wife hates you and so do I.
It’s gone! He already took down the site, just as I was getting to like it. Owell. Loaded the Arcade Fire and Grand National to my MP3 thumbdrive and I’m ready for the flight tomorrow. Not related to anything, I found this in my old journal and loved it so much:
Dave out.
Also written on this day...
- partial recall - 2023
- it keeps going - 2019
- alternating apexes - 2010
- a floor is meant to be walked on - 2009
- x-rated - 2005
Check yourself — that second plastic troll ain´t a redhead!
You shouldn´t say m_______ f_______