Day 168

Day 168, self quarantine:

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Pssstt God...are you awake?  I think you missed.

Please try again.

Oh man, day one of vacation feels fabulous.  

I’m gonna ignore that it started with a huge blow up with Gary.

We were watching television last night when a Joe Biden commercial came on.

“Please let him win...please let him win...please let him win,” I said.

Gary made what I call his supreme pickle face.

“Why do you keep saying that?  Stop it!  There’s no way Trump is going to be re-elected!”

I stared at him.  Is he not watching the same news I am?

“I wish I could be so sure.  He’s doing his best to sabotage the election and he’s got plenty of help.”

“Bullshit!  Everyone knows who he is.  No way is he winning.  Stop saying it!”

He was so vehement I decided it was pointless to tell him about memes being passed around by people I know IN PHILADELPHIA, a liberal eastern city, defending voting for Trump because he won’t take their guns or defund the police.

The stupid runs deep.

Forty years of defunding public education is now painfully apparent.

But years of living with Gary has taught me to always ask myself, “Does the end justify the means?”

Most of the time when he yells I ignore him.

We’re both on the same side. Why fight?  Gary is a truly good person.  He’s fiercely loyal and he never lies.  He’s also extremely spiritual.

Me, not so much.

So I will let him continue to have faith in mankind, and believe that most humans are inherently good and will ultimately do the right thing.

Yeah, I don’t believe that, either.

But it’s why our relationship works, even though it shouldn’t.

Anyway, since our local news isn’t doing the job, that’s going to fall to us.

Okay, let me share this.

“Speaking with my friend, an anesthesiologist at a major hospital in #NYC today he said “You know, the CDC, the FDA, they were the gold standard in the WORLD. Every country turned to us for public health facts. We had the data. We had the science. Trump has wrecked all of it.”

Truth.

The virus isn’t gone.  This is the calm before the storm.

It’s why when my daughter texts me how much she misses me and I want to fall on my knees weeping and tell her I’ll buy her a round trip ticket to visit from Seattle, I don’t say a word.

It’s why I won’t go back to my physical office, even if it means retirement earlier than I planned.

It’s not safe.

Please believe me.

Okay, switching gears completely, I gotta tell you about the birds.

Gary took some amazing pics but because this is our crazy disorganized house, we can’t find the cable to attach it the computer so we can “dump” them, but no worries, I ordered one from both Amazon and B&H Photo so he’ll be back in business by Monday and I will be able to post them.

Out of nowhere, we got a gang of young cardinals, a “radiance,” as they’re called, and one little female is super noisy and yaps non-stop.

We named her Julie.

After noticing Lou and Georgette haven’t been around for a few days and have been replaced by this band of juvenile delinquents, I looked it up.

Yep!  How cool is this. Parents, who by the way are monogamous and stay mated for life, force their babies out of the nest to fly so they gang up with babies from other families and hang out together until they’re grown up and married.

Their parents tell them where to go.

“Hey, hang out at Casa Slick, they’ve got three feeders and all kinds of food and a totally disinterested dog who never barks at us.”

This egg to married bird all takes place within a few weeks.

Kinda the way my entire life feels up until quarantine.

Like I’ve mentioned before, we’re in this weird holding pattern of one continuous day which is both dragging on forever AND racing by.

Oy.  It’s all so insane.  My mind can’t wrap around any of it.

But one thing is for certain.  It’s coming to a head soon.

Let’s hope Gary is right and I’m wrong.

Hey, it happens sometime!

Not often but occasionally.

I’ll meditate on it.

Happy Saturday!

Just another day at the office

Waiting to prep a client for deposition via Zoom in my daughter’s former bedroom 😂😂😂

Day 167

Day 167, self quarantine:

Friday, August 28, 2020

Hallelujah, vacation getaway day!

I don’t know why I’m so excited to stay home for ten days, it’s not like I haven’t been here every day since March.

But I am excited.

It’ll be fun to just hang with Gary and listen to the birds.

So how disgusting was that sleazy, classless display at the White House last night?

2000 chairs close together in the audience and no one wearing masks.

Welp, at least it was on brand.

The hideous, profusely sweating cousinfucker sitting there stroking a young beautiful woman, clueless Champagne Popsicle Barbie in a Fredericks of Hollywood evening gown telling us what a great guy “unfiltered” dad is, and the gaslighting pig himself, in bright orange clown makeup, his yak wig flipping in the wind,(oh why oh why didn’t it blow off) “profoundly “ accepting the nomination sounding like he swallowed a handful of xanax with a swig of moonshine, all at our nation’s capital, making a mockery of our democracy.

America is on fire and in tatters and somehow this is Joe Biden’s fault.

😂😂😂😂😂😂

These people are the worst possible scumbags, and they’re laughing uproariously at the lower class, uneducated folks who support them while not giving a damn if they starve or contract Covid-19 and die.

That’s my takeaway from the final night of the Republican National Convention.

Ew, especially FruityG and the hot babe.

If I had to see it, so do you. 😂

Sigh...

I just want our former lives back, pre 11/8/16.

Sigh...

Okay, enough.

Vacation starts at 4:30 today with pizza for dinner and we’re gonna watch the David Crosby documentary, Remember My Name, tonight.

After that, no specific plan.

I’m gonna try and have nice thoughts.

Ooh one more thing!  Eric made Mashable this morning!

https://mashable.com/article/best-memes-2020-republican-national-convention/

Enjoy your Friday!

Day 166

Day 166, self quarantine:

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Vacation is feeling real now.  

Two more days.  Yesssss.

This week I managed to get all three things done that I’ve been putting off and dreading doing at work for the last six months, finally running out of lame excuses for my boss.  

I literally sat in Julie’s room with three candy bars as rewards for each task completed.

Woot!  I finished a sixteen page boring as fuck Motion!  

Candy for me!

Yessss, I called Ms. X and even though I held the phone away from my ear and made hideous faces while she spoke, I meticulously documented everything she said in her file, and even wished her a blessed day back.

More candy for me!

The third candy bar I ate because the first two were so good.

Then I did task three! 

Someone actually answered the phone in the Prothonotary’s office in bumfuck Pike County, Pennsylvania where nothing is online and told me how to take a default judgment.

Yeah, you know I was putting that one off.

I love the writing aspect of my job but the boring procedural stuff sucks the life out of me.  I had a twelve year terrible job history after leaving my job of many years in 2005 because I can’t stay focused when I’m not doing something I enjoy.

I caught an interview with singer songwriter Phoebe Bridgers on World Cafe while I was working the other day. She talked about being diagnosed with ADHD in high school and her struggle with doing anything that wasn’t a “preferred task.”

Preferred task?  She made it sound like a thing. 

I immediately googled it.

“Children and adults with ADHD have difficulty shifting attention from one thing to another,” says ADHD expert Russell Barkley, Ph.D. “If they’re doing something they enjoy or find psychologically rewarding, they’ll tend to persist in this behavior after others would normally move on to other things. The brains of people with ADHD are drawn to activities that give instant feedback. There’s nothing inherently harmful about hyperfocus. In fact, it can be an asset. Some people with ADD or ADHD, for example, are able to channel their focus on something productive, such as a school- or work-related activity. Others allow themselves to hyperfocus on something as a reward for completing a dull but important task.  Many scientists, writers, and artists with ADHD have had very successful careers, in large part because of their ability to focus on what they’re doing for hours on end.”

So now of course I think I have ADHD.

Gimme drugs.

Anyway, I probably scared my boss I’m leaving since I completed all three things he’s been bugging me about since March.😜

You might think I slept well last night with a clear conscience since I’m getting all this nagging work done but nope, I have plenty of other stuff to worry about.

I mean, dudes, Donald has gone full psycho and he’s got the nuclear codes.  

Did you see that fortress he built around the White House this week?

Guys, I hate to tell you this, but he thinks he’s staying.

Have I mentioned how much I loathe him and his hideous racist uneducated cult?

Ugh, okay, I’m changing the subject to what I had for dinner last night.

Gary made roasted tomato sauce and served it over pasta with fresh ricotta, mushrooms and spinach.

It really doesn’t get any better than that.

Oh cool, I can plan next week’s vacation meals. 

That’s a good place for my brain to go, too.

Everything is going to be fine.

Right?

Right.

Okay, then.  I’m off to slay some more dragons today.  

You should slay some, too.

I’m tired, too

“ I'm tired of all this, Boris. I don't want to be spy no more. Let's face it, darling, we suck. We can never catch Moose and Squirrel.”

Day 164

Day 165, self quarantine:

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Woo, it’s only Wednesday?

Not that I’m in a hurry to start vacation or anything.

Much.

I need a break from my thoughts.

Quarantine is fine as long as you don’t let your mind go to all the sad and scary places.

The middle of the night is tough for me.  I can’t sleep more than 4-5 hours at a time, so 4:00 a.m. is usually filled with misery and  fear and I pretty much always get out of bed to shake it all off.

I know better than this.

As long as you have your health, everything will pass.

But okay, right now I wish I could freeze time.

The days are racing by.  

It’s almost eight months since I’ve seen my daughter.

I forget the entrance keypad code to my office.

I never took my spring/summer clothes out of storage this year and have been wearing the same pajamas for six months.

I haven’t worn a bra, real shoes, or a watch since March.

Actually, that’s pretty cool.  I want that to last forever.

Haha welp, I just realized I can make that happen.

I’m afraid of November.

We are literally a little over two months away from the possible end of democracy.

I don’t want to get into it, but many laws were broken at the RNC last night, and I guess the rule of law is dead.

Watching Escort Barbie give that ridiculous speech while dressed as a Nazi and her ridiculous racist dementia ridden husband watching her with a smug dirty expression, sitting the way he does like he’s perched on the toilet taking a shit... I just can’t.

Okay, I’ll stop.  

I’m having a hard time being present today.

Luckily or unluckily, I have a ton of work to finish before I break for ten days so I’m not going to have time to worry or think about anything else.

After that, yeah, I better throw myself into the upstairs remodeling project fast or I’m going to be doing tele-health with a psychiatrist.

Yesterday Gary climbed on the roof again to clean the gutters like he’s been doing for over forty years.

I can’t even tell you the terror I felt.

And the thoughts going through my head.

George Martin said it best.

“Getting older isn’t for sissies.”

Okay, clearly I need to just breathe.

Peace out, brave people.

Day 164

Day 164, self quarantine:

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

So in quarantine land, it’s the little things.

Like something unexpected that arrives in the mail.

Like a signed, personally inscribed advance copy of your good friend’s new book!

Happy pub day Ellen Meister!  Ellen’s latest novel, Love Sold Separately, is available today here, there and everywhere:

https://ellenmeister.com/

Can I just say that this book arrived in a bright turquoise padded envelope that matched the book cover?

Again, it’s the little things.

Ellen is my fabulous friend of almost twenty years and a brilliant writer.

We met in NYC in 2002 when a bunch of us belonged to an online writing group, part of Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, and those of us on the east coast decided to take our friendship to the real world.

Ha, back in 2002 that seemed so edgy and brave.

I mean, we couldn’t even really exchange pics online yet.  We had to use scanners, and most people didn’t own one.

So yeah, a bunch of us finally met in person for dinner after yapping online for a couple of years...was the first time at Bubby’s in NY?...and we’ve been friends ever since.

Some of us are famous now.

For a lot in our group, just getting a short story published was exciting enough, but a few of us were sitting on novels.  

All we needed were agents and a little luck.

Ellen had a novel, I had one, too, but as soon as she told me the premise of hers that night at dinner, I knew, 100%, that Ellen’s book would not only be published, it would be a hit.

The premise and title were, George Clooney was coming to the Applewood PTA.

It took a little more time than I thought, and her publisher’s legal department made her change the title because George, but yep, the book was a smash and the start of a very successful career.

And if you’re a Dorothy Parker fan, Ellen is your gal.

Love Sold Separately is a departure for Ellen because it’s a whodunnit and I gotta tell you, she totally fooled me, I did not guess correctly “who did it.”

But man, what a fun break from reality the book was.  I took it to the beach with me on my birthday last week and between the sun and the surf and this book, it was just about perfect.

I had Gary take a pic of me reading, but first he took a pic of my thighs with the book in between and then I held the book up and he cut off Ellen’s name. 

Oy.  Maybe I’ll post one in comments for laughs.  

Anyway, in this apocalyptic era of Donald and a deadly virus, Love Sold Separately is the perfect anecdote.

It’s smart, funny, and entertaining.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“Dana Barry has nothing against rules. She just thinks they’re meant to be bent, squashed, and thumped into amusing shapes. So it’s no wonder when the struggling twenty-something actress is fired from her day job in retail. And now her life is a mess … that is, until she hears the Shopping Channel is auditioning. Relying on her nuclear eye for detail, knack for knowing what makes people tick, and sheer bravado, she lands the host job. Before you can say office politics, Dana is caught in the biggest drama of her life. The star host—a diva who terrorized the entire staff—is found dead. But Dana knows the prime suspect is innocent. The heat is on, and Dana thinks she’s ready for it … until she tangles with the tall, dark and smoldering detective in charge. It’s more fuel than she needs right now, as she’s trying to launch her Shopping Channel career. But Dana’s never been afraid to take chances … even when a single spark could ignite everything.”

So here’s something Ellen doesn’t know - one of my friends who sometimes comments on these posts is in fact a shopping channel host. I’m not going to out her unless she wants to out herself, but I will make sure she gets a copy of this book. I think she’s going to adore it.

Anyway, as a writer, I can tell you from first hand experience, nothing is more exciting than publication day. It’s kind of like having a baby. You create this thing and nurture it for months and months and then it’s born and you’re so damn excited and happy and at the same time you want to throw up because what if it’s not perfect and what if everyone hates it, and oh my god, why would anyone voluntarily go through this agony?

I know why.

Real writers do it because they have to.  They have something to say, and hopefully there are people who want to read it.

I stopped submitting to agents for the most part because I can’t follow rules but I never stopped writing.

It’s my voice, it’s how I speak.

You know who has a fabulous voice?

Ellen.

You’re gonna love this book.

And all of her others!

I’m not encouraging this and you can go other routes via Ellen’s website linked above, but if Amazon is your jam, here’s the link:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Sold-Separately-Ellen-Meister/dp/0778309312

Okay!  I’m off to start day 2 of oycation staycation getaway week which means I get to call clients.

Yay.

All things considered, I’d rather be on the beach reading Love Sold Separately.

Rock on!

Day 163

Day 163, self quarantine:

Monday, August 24, 2020

Yay, getaway week for staycation!

After I get through this week, I don’t have to be in Julie’s bedroom for ten whole days.

Honestly, when this is all over, I’m going to have to remove every reminder of my remote law office life from there or I’m going to be stressed every time I walk upstairs.  I may have to redecorate Julie’s room altogether.

Haha, as if Gary will let me touch the shrine.

He won’t even let me throw out/sell/ give away the kids’ toys.

Oh yes, every single ninja turtle, every obtainable Power Ranger, every freaking superhero, their cars, laboratories and weapons, every Super soaker, every nerf gun...are still here at Casa Slick.

I say “obtainable” power rangers because at the height of their popularity, Gary had to enter a lottery at the Toys R Us and then show up there at midnight the night after Thanksgiving to fetch them so that Julie and Eric would have a perfect Christmas.

I feel like I talked about this before...

Oh well, after 163 days, there’s bound to be some reruns.

Anyway, yeah, I could probably make several thousand dollars on eBay with the Slick toy collection but Gary is convinced Julie and Eric are going to want them some day.

They’re in their thirties.  When will this be?

No clue.

Again, our kids are gonna hate us when we die if I can’t get Gary to Marie Kondo sooner rather than later.

Sigh... I really am gonna try again next week on staycation.

I’m getting rid of all my stuff except for jeans, black leggings and a few favorite tees/sweaters.

What’s the point?  I never have to get dressed up again. 

I’ve been wearing black t-shirts with jeans since I’m 16. It’s the outfit I am comfortable in, though in recent years black leggings are everything.

So yeah, goodbye about ten tons of clothing, boots and shoes.

Hey, no joke, I have at least ten all leather Coach handbags.  Maybe more. Where should I sell them with the least hassle and highest return?  

All the rest I am donating.

Yep, I’m doing it next week.  I already started bagging stuff yesterday. So hopefully Gary will follow suit.

He will.

Just not as quickly or efficiently as me, but I can help make things disappear when he’s not looking.

I mean, how many tie dye Bradford White Hot Water

Heater t-shirts does a man need?

Speaking of Gary, he has a new hobby.  He’s obsessed and I think it’s awesome.

The birds, Jake, flowers and yours truly are his subjects and I gotta tell you, the dude is really enjoying retirement more and more with each passing day.

Imagine how happy he’s going to be when we can actually leave the house for real.

Whenever that will be.

Eric is working on me to move to Nashville.

I texted back, “Hey, you’re preaching to the choir.  I’d move next door to you tomorrow.  Call your father.”

Eric replied, “I will!”

I probably also mentioned this before, but ever since Gary saw Easy Rider in a movie theater when he was sixteen, he’s been traumatized by the south and told me he could never live there.

I’m not even lying, he gets nuts even talking about it.

But, Gary has a long history of telling me NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT, and then turning around and telling the opposite thing to the kids.

I say we wait until November 3, 2020 before making any decisions regarding residence because, you know, we all may wanna leave the country.

If we can.

Oy.

So I think that’s it for today, I’m feeling a little scatterbrained because I have a big work project and I need to focus and so far I’m not feeling it.

Meh, I will go make some more coffee and give it my best.

If worst comes to worst, I will have a couple cookies for energy.

Oh, I got the Trader JoeJoes.

They’re NoNos but I will eat them anyway.

I mean, they’re not terrible, but I don’t recommend them, especially if you’re an Oreo fan.

They’re kinda soggy and the “cream” filling has a weird mouth feel.  I had to double check the label to make sure there was no gelatin.

Ugh, no gelatin but there was palm oil.

Why why why.

I think when I retire, I’m gonna start a food blog.  I have ideas.

I can’t wait.

Okay, that’s enough out of me.

Go forth and conquer.