Monthly Archives: June 2010

So, get this- the ever lingeringly, tantalizingly, just out of reachingly song that I’ve been scraping my mind about and making myself psycho about for the last week bobbed back to the surface on Saturday, grinning up at me.

Only this time I recognized it and having recognized it, shuddered.

Sadly and amazingly, the song that’s been tormenting me for the last week or so, the tune thats played it’s self out over and over again in my mind with maddeningly almost clarity is/was- get this- Missundaztood by Pink.

I kid you not.

When I heard it I was, like, whoops.

How’d that happen? Here I’d thought I’m, like, Mr. Really Cool Rock Guy- I don’t listen to that shit.

I found it while scrolling through my iPod. I’d like to say I heard on a radio station or in a bar or blaring from the speakers of a daytripper’s car cruising by, but I can’t. It was on one of my playlists.

Dammit.

So. I ran upstairs and put on my panties and squealed like a little girl, and then I listened to it and it wasn’t nearly as good as my fragmented memory and I kept cutting it with REAL rock-and-roll so’s not to become a total pussy.

But, yeah. Missundaztood. Pink.

Jesus.

What’s happening to me?

She is cute, though.

Okay, let me try this again.

I realize now that I sounded pretty whiney in my last post about going on vacation and that maybe I hadn’t made myself and my thoughts clear.

If I see one more Waaah e-mail I’m gonna do what Dooce does, or used to do, and print it out and run it over with MR.GREENE.

I mean it.

Deep breath.

Ok. I’m lucky. I’ll be the first to admit it. Miss Carol and me aren’t rich, but we’re not poor either. We work hard and try and save and sometimes we can afford a vacation.

This is one of those years. We haven’t done a trip like this in seven years. We’ve been making payments for the last eight months leading up to vacation time. It’s not taken lightly.

But.

Unfortunately for Miss Carol, who loves travel, I’m really happy in our little life here at home. Sure, I bitch and moan about stuff, but overall?, I’m lucky to be living the life I live and I know it and I don’t mind just stayin’ put. I’m perfectly happy to watch Anthony Bourdain visit places I’ll never visit and eat foods I’ll never eat.

Hey. Living vicariously ain’t  but so bad.

And as vacation looms over me, it’s dark wings gently enveloping, I can’t help but already yearn for the things I’ll miss while we’re gone- ya know- like the twice daily walks with Cutter and Tug yanking me every which-a-way, and the endless work in the endlessly stifling heat, and maybe even, the Tourons.

So, ok, maybe I’m a retard.

But I’m a really happy and happy-to-stay-at-home retard and really, that was the only point I was trying to make.

OK?

Don’t make me run over your e-mail, bitches.

Miss Carol’s talked me into another vacation.

We’re gonna be going to the BVI’s and bareboat charter a big ‘ole catamaran and sail around and tan and drink and try not to be touron turds.

I’m sure it’ll be fun. I’m pretty sure I need a vacation. I’m sure it’s gonna be lots of stuff.

But.

I’m also sure I don’t want to go.

There. I said it.

I don’t want to go. It’s not the trip. It’s not the friends we’re goin’ with. It’s not like I won’t love the sun and the bikini’s.

It’s me.

I hate leaving.

I’m convinced each time we fly out that this time will be the last. That there ain’t no way I’m coming back. That the dog’sll just sit and wait, staring out the window and endlessly wonder where we went and why we didn’t come back.

So.

In the lead up, not that it helps, while I walk ’em I talk to ’em and tell ’em we’ll be back, that it’s just a week and don’t worry and then I’ll kiss Cutter and Tug goodbye and gaze up at our house wistfully and wonder why I have to leave.

And then I’ll head out.

It’s the first day of summer and just like last year and the year before we went from winter right into summer. From chilly and damp to hot and humid.

Way hot.

And workin’ outside in it is a lot like havin’ a hammer beatin’ down on you shattering your thoughts into splintering shards that scatter every which away.

Which’ll hopefully explain this post-

Firstly. The song is gone. It tucked it’s tail and crawled up somewhere in the dark and dead recesses of my brain, gave me the finger, and just disappeared.

I think I’ll miss it, for what it’s worth.

Secondly. We watched The Hurt Locker on Saturday. Miss Carol and me are really bad about keeping current with movies and even when we get them it takes weeks for us to watch ’em. But watch them we do.

And honestly? The Hurt Locker pissed me off. It made me wonder why the FUCK we’re over there throwing our kids up against the stone wall that is Iraq and, dare I say it?, the muslim religion? Whether you are for or against the “war”, get it and watch it. It made my poor heat splattered brain think.

Thirdly. Miss Carol and me spent the weekend up on the beach letting the heat hammer pound us into sunburnt, toasty, mind dead muffins.

So maybe that’s where the song went.

And maybe that’s what ticked me off about the movie.

And maybe that’s what made this post so disjointed- just little bits and pieces of nothing.

Maybe it’s the heat.

Or maybe it’s me.

Boy howdy, life is good.

Real good.

I’ve wanted one of these babies ever since I saw them at a boat show, like, four years ago.

It’s the new Hobie Adventure Island trimaran. It’s lightweight. It’s way cool and way expensive which is why I wouldn’t buy one. Four grand for a toy was not passing Miss Carol’s fun test.

So I started saving, putting away a little money here and little money there, thinking that if I bought one from saved funds it’d be different from just going out and buying one.

I was close three times. The first time I had $3500 saved and Miss Carol wanted the hot tub. Then I had $2500 and we needed it for bills. Then I had about $800 and had just about given up for this year when I did some work for an older, retired couple and noticed they had one under their house.

I asked them how they liked it and they told me they’d sell it to me for $1500. I asked if they’d accept $1100 and I’d do their work for free and they said yes and now I got me one.

Hobie calls it a sailing kayak but I call it a ton of fun and I think I’m gonna call her Skeeter.

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas to me.

(And no, I STILL have not figured out what the song is running through my brain- it’s making me mental)

Ever had a song running through your head, chewing at you, and you can’t think of the title or even the artist so you’re stuck with the endless loop of it trippin’ around in your head?

That’s where I’m at.

I’ve got this song coursing through me. I can hear it crystal clear in my head and I want to download it and listen to it ’til the end of time but I can’t ’cause it’s right there, just beyond my grasping memory.

I know it’s a chick singing and I know it’s a pop tune and I know I want it desperately enough to try and hum it to Miss Carol while I was making dinner tonight in the hopes she’d recognize the song and save me.

Instead, she punched me and told me to stop making the funny noises.

Fuck.

The title, Continental Drift, confused me for most of the book. Here I’m thinkin’ continental drift in geologic terms like, well, you know, tectonic plates and continents drifting, um, apart? Or whatever?

So.

I’m reading Russell Banks book, waiting and watching for the continent drifting thingy and wondering why the whole book’s about a guy moving his family to Florida and a Haitian chick trying to get to America and I’m wondering why I’d want to read about continents drifting anyway.

But it’s good so I kept going.

Come to find out, in the postscript at the end, Russ was talking about the demographic drift of people from their homes to someplace different in the hopes of a different, and hopefully better, life.

And all the sudden it became clear.

I’m a turd and probably shouldn’t read anything more challenging than Reader’s Digest. And maybe keep to the short stories.

Anyway.

Continental Drift is about the convergent stories of Bob Dubois and Vanise Dorsinville and their separate journeys to Florida. His from Catamount, New Hampshire fleeing boredom and predictability and middle age, and hers from Allanche, Haiti fleeing certain arrest after she and her family eat a ham her nephew has stolen from a hurricane wrecked truck.

It’s an alarmingly parallel story of similar hopes and dreams played out over the cultural differences that separate them.

But more importantly it’s a story about what happens when their sadly ordinary lives collide.

‘Nuff said.

I don’t want to ruin it for you.

Run to the store and get and forget that I’m too stupid to understand the title.

Coming next- The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson.

I wrote about these two little girls sailing around the world alone and unassisted a while back and then added them to my blogroll if, and just in case, anybody was interested in following their journey.

I didn’t want to bore my one reader with my thoughts or commentary on parents pushing their kids into hugely dangerous adventures for the sake of, well, I’m not sure what so I left it at that.

Anyway.

Jessica’s home safe after ten months at sea.

Abby isn’t.

Her parents and shore crew reported today that, after fighting 60 knot winds, countless knockdowns, and 25 to 30 foot seas, her manual EPIRB was activated.

That means she wants and needs to be rescued.

Unfortunately she’s a little girl in the middle of the Indian Ocean somewhere between Africa and Australia on a sinking or sunk boat.

Australia Search and Rescue are trying to divert ships in the area, but they’re at least 40 hours away. They’re also trying to re-direct a Quantas flight over her location so that maybe they can at least pick her up on marine radio.

Her mom says on her blog that her sailboat is built to Category 0 standards with 5 different air-tight compartments, and she has a ditch bag and life raft and what-the-fuck-ever that all means.

She’s a scared little girl in the middle of a maelstrom wanting home.

Come on home Abby.

Please.

UPDATE part 2– Ya know, just in case you haven’t already seen it or heard it or whatever. Abby was contacted by a flyover and says she is fine even though she’s been rolled and dismasted.  A French fishing vessel is headed her way and should reach her in the next 12 to 24 hours.

Maybe there are gods.

It’s a funny thing, my life.

I work all by myself, I’m a one man company. Which is fine but it means it’s generally pretty quiet unless I’m talking to myself.

In the past I’d listen to Howard in the truck and Miss Carol bought me a portable Sirius radio so’s I could listen to him all the time but satellite doesn’t work inside houses.

So I listened to the local rock and country stations till I couldn’t stand the playlist any longer. It’s a long day and working and listening to the same old same old got, well, really old.

Then I switched to talk radio and spent the day getting pissed off and ranting and raving at things that I’ll never change or spend the energy to try and change. Did I mention I’m mostly lazy?

After that I mostly wallowed in silence. And then, I had a customer remind me about books on CD.

And the stars and heavens opened up and a blue sky rained down on me and sunlight warmed my fevered brow.

Anyway.

So now that’s what I do, what I listen to while I work alone. And I just finished listening to Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam whom I’m guessin’ is a big wig in rocket and space circles? Or was?

Anyway.

I don’t know who he is and, frankly, don’t really care, and his audiobook is hokey and maybe just a touch too much of a fondly remembered  remembrance of his childhood building rockets in West Virginia.

Doesn’t matter.

It was cool and it gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, if you keep your dreams lubed and moist and work hard that maybe, just maybe, they’ll take off.

Hope.

You know how sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you’ll end up decades and centuries later with friends?

I mean, real friends.

Friends like that maybe you ignore or don’t see or don’t seek out for months and months and take for granted and tell yourself you really gotta call and get together with, but you don’t, and then all the sudden, for one reason or another, it suddenly comes together and schedules mesh and you have dinner with them and BOOM! you’re right back to it with them. The time apart drizzles away and it’s like you saw them Tuesday.

That happened to Miss Carol and me the other day.

Friends we hadn’t seen in awhile invited us over, again, for dinner. And this time,  it all worked out and all came together, and what’s cool is that with friends like these there aren’t any uncomfortable silences, no strained conversation waiting for the alcohol, the social lubricant, to kick in.

You just take up where you left off, ‘ya know?

Surprisingly, seemingly, one of the places we’d left off was Christmas. Like two years ago. But our friends, our buds, had carried the gift they’d bought us through the years, carrying it in the trunks of their cars, moving it around and wrestling it from the jaws of their dogs so that, one day, they could give it to us.

Miss Carol and me, we’re really lucky.