November 2011
51 posts
MY PSEUDO GIRLFRIEND AND ME
It’s almost official now so I can already talk publicly about it. After a couple years of not talking and some bad blood, I am reuniting with my pseudo girlfriend. Before our break-up, we were completely inseparable. This was despite her being very short, very Christian, very Republican and also heterosexual. But hey, we shared the same interest in books.
That meant that I took her...
Have you ever realized that you owe somebody so much for all that they’ve done for you that it’s impossible to come up with any worthy Christmas gifts, so you might as well give a sack of cash? Unless you can find that Prince life-sized cut-out circa “Purple Rain”.
These panic attacks seem to fit a pattern. They’re practically cycling like clockwork now. Each day, arriving at just about the exact time. Doesn’t matter what’s going on. Cool thing is that both my wristwatch and car clock run slow so the attacks help keep accurate time.
It’s totally fine making an ex-best friend wrap your Christmas gifts for you, right? Nobody has even come close in making the presents I buy look as good. So it is justified.
I wonder at what age I’ll become great at reading people. Or, at least halfway decent.
Today is my dad’s 70th birthday. He calls it his explosion day. There’s a party and everything. I’m stressing a lot about it. I can’t think of a single good idea for a present. He’s somewhat sick so anything I would’ve got him in the past is useless. The things he enjoyed before are no longer of interest. He’s different now and continues to get more...
PHONE CALL WITH MY #1 SENIOR HOMEBOUNDER
“How are famous people found?”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, how do famous people find one another? They’re always dating somehow.”
“Um…they have their people talk to the people of the celebrity of interest?”
“I want Jennifer Aniston’s number or address. I need to talk to her about something.”
“Well, I can find an...
I'M NOT RACIST, BUT...
…I kinda hate it when white people give me compliments. Nothing against white people. Some of my best friends are white. It’s just that when a white middle-aged man tells me he likes my style, it means nothing to me. It’s almost an insult. Sure, I guess it’s a nice gesture, but white people have less cachet than everyone else. This is just a true and unequivocal fact...
WHAT'S BETTER THAN PIZZA AND KARAOKE?
Absolutely nothing. Well, maybe if there was also candy. Even without candy, tonight will be tons of fun. First, there’s Pizzagiving 2.0 at the Loving Touch. This will be followed by karaoke at 3rd Street in Detroit. Amber even made a playlist of the best jams to get pumped with.
HELP
If anybody can hear me, please bring me candy. I’m Sunday librarianing and I’m badly in need. Sour Patch Extreme, please. It’s not like you have anything better to do today than brunch.
LIBRARY SEIZURES
As in people having seizures in the library, not library material being seized. Last night at one of my libraries, we were all kept late. I was working in the back so I had no idea what was happening up front. Apparently a homeless gentleman consumed a large amount of mouthwash and had a seizure. We all had to wait for the ambulance and then exit while bathed in flashing lights. This...
IN 3s
In the past two weeks, two of my homebounders have died. One I have visited every other week for the past five years. She would always call up my boss and tell what a great job I was doing. Her husband broke the news to me by calling me on my cell phone. I don’t even know how he would have gotten the number.
The second homebounder was a woman who had been a part of the program for...
NO NOVEMBER
Between Halloween and MLK Day, everything speeds up and gets stressful. There are hardly any full weeks of work because of holidays. While fun, it makes it difficult to be productive and to stay motivated. Then there’s all the social pressures of family and friends obligations. Everybody wants to have parties for something and everything, be it Halloween, Friendsgiving, Winter Solstice,...
I sent my therapist a link to David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon College commencement speech, “This is Water”. Mostly I did so because I wanted to talk about it with her at our next meeting. She wound up loving it so much that she went online and purchased everything she could of his. And she never even heard of him before. Then she tells me she passed the speech along to a...
“Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing...”
– Nicole Krauss - The History of Love
I just read this and I liked it. Holding hands is relatively new to me. Hugging, too. So much has changed recently.
ONCE A MONTH
Every four weeks I have to return to my psychiatrist to get my prescriptions refilled. This is more of a hastle than anything else. Really, I don’t have a need to see him. I just need to have him fill out the prescription form. He’s my drug dealer. We don’t actually talk for more than five minutes. I can tell he’s happy to see me because I’m easy for him. I sit...
