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Ring twice

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It’s kind of quaintly anachronstic to say that I’m sitting at home on Saturday morning waiting for the postman. It’s also kind of a pain in the ass because I have other things I’d rather be doing.

I’m waiting here because there’s something coming that I’ll have to sign for and it will be an even bigger pain in the ass if I miss delivery and have to go in and pick it up next week. Since I live and work thirty miles apart, and since the post office closes at 5:00, it’s not like I can just pop over on my lunch hour. I’m addition to waiting in the interminable line and interacting with the rude, surly postal workers, I’d also have to take time off from work.

All of which is indicative of why the postal service is in trouble now. The fact that it makes even its premium services like Express Mail so inconvenient through limited hours, etc. demonstrates why FedEx and UPS are winning that battle. At least they manage to keep some staff on hand so you can pick up a fucking envelope after work.

Yeah, I realize that postal rants are just too easy, but it’s been a while since I did one.

Monday reassessment

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So I guess there’s a bit of a premium for that convenience. I just went to FedEx and spent more to send something three-day than I would’ve spent at the post office for overnight service. Sigh…

Other Monday stuff:

  • You’ll no doubt be relieved to know that I’m more or less over the serious funk that you didn’t know I was in yesterday.
  • My extremely important vacation is now once again in the hands of the nice folks at Canadian immigration. Long story. Don’t ask.
  • On the plus side, my AppleTV has also recovered from the serious funk it was apparently in yesterday, and I finished a major administrative task at work today.

Time for some Hawaii Five-O…

Randomly Friday night

Since I no longer have the ABC Friday night lineup from 1972 to count on:

  • I seem to be accidentally stumbling on lots of Canadian films on Netflix of late. There may or may not be any significance to that. Probably not.
  • Speaking of Netflix, I cannot for the life of me determine what movie I’ve ever watched that would suggest that Ayn Rand: In Her Own Words should keep being my “top pick.”
  • Mr. Kellogg and I have, it seems, a radically different notion of what constitutes “one serving” of cereal.
  • Only one more (extremely long and stressful) week till vacation. And a visit from Duncan next week too!
  • Best of all, though: Tonight marks the end of that ten-day run of Erythromycin I’ve been taking for a little gum infection. If you’ve ever taken it, you’ll know why I’ll be very relieved not to be.
  • Maybe even better still: Low of 47F tonight and 41F tomorrow night. Be still my heart.

Good night, all.

October

October is traditionally a time of great reflection and new beginnings for me.

Earlier in life, it was the time that the new school year stopped seeming quite so new, when the weather got nice, and when it was time for the fair–which always made me feel like a kid again, long after I’d stopped really being one. It was when I moved to Charlotte in 1986 and San Francisco in 1992, and it was when I began my career as a librarian in 2009. It was in October that I first met the love of my life in 2001 (and October again nine years later when that relationship really began to break down in earnest). And October has always been my favorite time of year to travel.

Now I’m starting my forty-eighth October. The weather has been lovely and the school year is once again becoming less new. I stopped going to the fair after the last three or four times because it doesn’t make me feel like a kid anymore. I’m not moving this year, but I’m starting my third year in this new career and doing quite well with it. And I’m alone again, which may be best for everyone involved–but that doesn’t make it any easier.

As in so many Octobers past, I’m also about to be traveling and pondering the future on a far away highway. I’m probably expecting too much from a simple road trip, but this one is extremely important to me. I need some time to be alone outside my everyday environment. I need to remember that there’s a world outside my little protective cocoon of home, work, and the highway connecting the two. I need to think about what that world means to me, about what my place in it might be, and about how I might proceed in order to get rolling on the next phase of my life. I need to get back in touch with me as an individual (rather than “me as a son” or “me as an ex-husband”) and what is important to my own happiness. I need to stop thinking so much about where I’ve been and start thinking about where I’m going.

And I need something…anything…that makes me feel like a kid again.

October II

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I think what I was getting at is that I need to remember how to be a contented single person and to learn to like myself again. I used to do that really well. Without ignoring the fact that being married changed my outlook in many ways–most of them for the better–I need to remember that I did pretty fucking well on my own too. I was once happily, gloriously, and unapologetically single. In fact, I think that independence used to be one of the more appealing aspects of my personality, and ironically enough may have been what attracted Mark to me in the first place.

I need to get that independence and sense of individuality back and focus on what’s good about me rather than following the easy option of blaming all my problems on outside influences. Yes, a lot of sucky stuff has happened to me in the past year. Boo hoo. Whining about it will not change a bloody thing for me. Blaming my parents for getting old and sick and cranky and blaming my ex for not wanting our lives to continue according to plan does not one single thing to improve my life. It just allows me to make excuses for my own unhappiness and to harbor resentments against very good people who love me and have on the whole treated me very well even when behaving in ways I sometimes didn’t like.

As I was saying to a friend at dinner tonight, I really used to enjoy my own company. I don’t find myself very pleasant to be around anymore, and I imagine I’m not the only one. And I want that to change. I’m hoping spending some quality time with myself in a different environment will be sort of a reboot and that I may even learn how to have fun with myself again. I am someone who needs very much to enjoy my own company before I can even begin to think much about enjoying the company of others.

I hope It will work. I think it will. And even if not, I’ll get to shop at Loblaw’s a lot. That’s always fun, anyway…

We gather together…

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Only one more day till I shuffle off to Buffalo. Or maybe Pittsburgh, depending on how much sleep I get, how late I leave, and how much driving I feel like doing the first day. It just hits me that my Monday arrival in Canada coincides with Thanksgiving Day. I wonder if that means more traffic or less on the QEW. And how much of the country will be closed for the occasion?

 

Stupid bee

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We’ve already established that I was an indoorsy, bookish sort of child. I didn’t play outside any more than was absolutely required by my keepers. Thus I never had to deal much with bee stings and the like. In fact, tonight’s was maybe my second or third ever.

It happened as I was changing the lightbulb in the porch light. Just as I pulled off the cover, I felt the intense pain. It took a second to sink in and then I yelled “shit” really loudly so all the neighbors could hear. After that, I ran into the house and grabbed the iPad to Google what the fuck I was supposed to do–which provided surprisingly inaccurate results, several of which just led to the Target Pharmacy website.

Anyhow, I determined that there seemed to be no stinger to remove (which is good since I had no idea how the hell I was supposed to remove it) and I took an illicit Ibuprofen and a Benadryl. Eventually the spot cooled down, and the pain was gone after a few minutes. My left hand feels a little sensitive still, though.

The point behind all this is that the Internet has probably been the salvation of many a helpless, clueless geek such as myself in similarly ridiculous and basically nonthreatening situations. The other point is that I still hate the great outdoors and always will, and I’m increasingly anxious for the day that I will no longer have even so small a piece of it as a yard.