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Carpet sleeper

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If you have to spend a Thursday afternoon babysitting carpet cleaners, it definitely helps if “The Big Sleep” is the afternoon movie on TCM.

It’s been contractors all week for me as I’ve been getting assorted repairs, cleanups, and other quick fixes in place in a desperate effort to make the house more appealing to potential buyers. It strikes me as kind of sad that–like many people, I’m guessing–we never did some of these little things to make the house nicer until it was time to sell. So other people get to enjoy our investment.

But the way the real estate market is now, I might end up “enjoying” them for years to come anyway.

Since I no longer update with any frequency, here are a few catch up items:

  • Work is good. I just got approval to burn off some one-time funds on a project that’s very near to my heart. I also just returned from a relatively informative conference in Charleston. And I’ll probably be at the big ALA shindig in New Orleans next month if anyone wants to hang out.
  • We’re supposed to be getting another offer on the Pittsburgh house today.
  • A short vacation in Atlanta for me in a couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to a few days of random exploration and not thinking about houses or other stressful things. I may actually even get some research done. I’ve been into that again lately, particularly now that I’m finding a lot of libraries (mine included) are starting to put city directories online via the Internet Archive.
  • A good friend who’s now stranded in Mississippi will be moving back this way in another few weeks–right when I’m in Atlanta, as it turns out–and I may be having lunch with a longtime online acquaintance and his betrothed this weekend. Maybe the new German place…

Under contract

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I’m not sure how this happened but all this week’s work on the house in Winston-Salem seems to have resulted in a sale. But it’s the house in Pittsburgh that sold. Go figure. (Yes, I know that one had nothing to do with the other, but when you’re ending chapters of your life on a more or less weekly basis, it helps to have a sense of humor about it.)

Respectfully…Back off!

It disturbs me a bit that several friends and coworkers have suggested that I should get “paired off” again soon. I know they mean well, but really, ummm, no.

Seriously. NO.

I think anyone who’s known me a long time realizes that being a solo act is my natural state. This is not to say that friendship or sex is out, although the latter isn’t really seeming very appealing right now (and no one’s offering anyway). But romance or–Great Pumpkin forbid–a long-term relationship pretty much are out. Understand that Mark is a very special person and, I made a very special exception for him because it was what I wanted. The fact that he was so different inspired me to “break the rules”, which is why I was so quick to go completely exclusive, why I considered cohabiting for the first time ever, and why it hurt so incredibly much when it ended. I was not looking for a relationship in 2001 and I’m not looking for one now.  I met a very specific person and that led to a very specific type of relationship that’s not likely to be replicated.

It’s not like going out and buying a new puppy when your dog dies. I don’t  particularly want to “date” now. In fact, I never liked “dating” very much–I was more into “random fucking”–but the act of courtship and even the effort required to engage in it both seem about as appealing to me as an all-day MRI (and no one’s offering anyway).

Please don’t suggest that I sample the local “gay nightlife”. It consists of exactly one disco that doubles as a drag show venue a couple of nights a week. In short, it’s every Southern ghetto queer bar I ever hated in my twenties and thirties all wrapped up in a package that fills me with nothing but fatigue and a sense of impending doom now that I’m in my forties. Having spent a supremely miserable couple of hours in a smaller version of the same bar one Saturday night about six months ago, I can tell you that this scene appeals to me only slightly more than that vacation in Libya I’ve been dreaming of for so long.

I know your heart is in the right place, but please just be my friend and feed me unhealthy food or take me to a movie. Buy me a cute, young rentboy if you must. But please don’t tell me how you’d like to fix me up with your gay brother/cousin/friend with whom I probably have nothing in common and to whom I’m probably not even remotely attracted. And if you assume for some reason that I’m a “bear” or that I’m into that whole scene, please understand when I start growling at you. I’ve met a lot of new people in the past few years and I realize I’ve not made clear to many of you my whole philosophy on sexual orientation so I understand your confusion and I will try not to be my (naturally) crabby self. But I may fail once in a while.

The other update

So there was one other update I didn’t make the other day and I’m torn about how explicitly I want to discuss it.

Like the breakup, this issue is personal and involves someone else. This time it’s a health issue involving a very close family member that will probably have a major impact on my life over the next few years. It’s very sad and it’s causing me a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty for me right now. Although I had some idea it might be on the horizon, the fact that it came to then forefront when it did (approximately one month after the big split) was especially unfortunate and has made it all that much harder to deal with.

Frankly, I’m a  little bit overloaded with change right now. In the past year, I’ve started a new career (good), put two houses on the market (neutral but emotionally taxing), initiated a divorce (bad), and come to the realization that the rest of my life is going to look radically different than I’d planned twelve months back. And now, just when I need to start looking ahead with a positive attitude to determine what the rest of my life should look like, I’ve hit one more roadblock that’s making it really hard to focus on a happy future. I’ll be able to eventually, of course. It would have been easier if I’d had time to get over one big heartbreak before the next one hit, but that’s not how life works. All in all, though, I’m coping. I’m dealing with things much better than I was a few weeks ago. I’m trying to find small things that will keep me happy for now (a road trip here, a 42-inch TV there, etc.) while I try to find a  way to process the future. I’m not particularly mopey (at least not publicly) and I’m still maintaining my sense of humor. I like to think I’m also maintaining some sense of perspective; these things haven’t been easy on Mark or on the rest of my family either.

If I keep my mind off it all, I do pretty damned well. And yes, I realize that there’s a very precarious balance between “not dwelling on it” (which is good) and avoidance (which is bad). I’m not sure how well I’m maintaining that balance.

Anyway, I don’t plan to whine regularly in this space. But a little disclosure seemed to be in order, if for no other reason than to get this noted in the “public” record of my life. I’ve been publishing for fifteen years and it seems somehow wrong for there to be no mention of my current state of mind, even a somewhat vague one. I’ve been writing lots more on the subject(s) but practicing some judicious self-censorship; maybe I’ll retroactively publish those entries someday. I also wanted to make it clear that all my current anxiety doesn’t stem from the breakup. Obviously some of it does, but not all of it. Probably not even most of it at this point, but my anxiety priorities shift from day to day. I’m efficiently flexible that way.

A side benefit to those readers and friends who miss the bad attitude for which this site was once known is that my reaction to life has started involving less sadness and crying and much more anger and impatience. I’m hoping bemusement will become a big factor again soon, too. This bodes well for some good old-fashioned rants. I’ve been working on one about the rapture for  a couple of days. Stay tuned…

Innards

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How on earth do people who are skittish about opening up their computers and playing around with the innards survive nowadays?

And yes, I fully understand how ironic this sounds coming from someone who couldn’t change the oil in his car if his life depended on it. I do at least know how to fix a garbage disposal, though…

With a 42-inch plasma urinal…

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For some reason, the term “mancave” has really annoyed me since I first heard it. It grates in a similar fashion to all those other “man” phrases, like “manbag”, “manpurse”, and especially “manpussy” (I read a little too much bad erotic fiction porn, OK?). You hear “mancave” an awful lot on HGTV, as you might imagine. Last night, I got a really big chuckle when a wife accidentally referred to her husband’s proposed “mancave” as his “men’s room” instead.

I think that was funnier in real life (and when I told it to my student workers) than it reads here. I’m sorry…

If only…

If only the food inside were as majestic as the sign outside, I’d be eating there this weekend. Trust me when I say it’s not. But there’s much more food to be had in Atlanta.

Despite a death in the family, a radiator leak (or something) on the way to the funeral home, and three delays, I’m finally leaving on a much-needed vacation tomorrow afternoon. Research will be done, pictures will be taken, friends will be visited, Krystals will be eaten, and at the end of it all, I will (I hope) be a slightly more tolerable person.

And I will try not to think about the repair bill for my own car as I drive Mom’s Hyundai around town.