False Alarm...

Whew!

Scared

I have a mouthgaurd that I wear at night to keep me from grinding my teeth. It's a relatively new thing, and I have mixed feelings about it. One the one hand, it's good not to grind my teeth anymore. On the other, it's kind of a pain in the ass. It's made of hard plastic, and needs to be softened in hot water before I put it in. Then it fits over my bottom teeth, where I'm definitely aware of its presence. I catch myself popping it on and off when I wake up sometimes, and once dream that I remember even involved wearing some sort of set of "false teeth" which I kept popping in and out, which I awoke to find was my mouthgaurd.

This is all neither here not there, however. The real problem is that I put it in last night, as I've finally gotten into the habit of doing each night before I got to bed, and then went to sleep early-- around 9. I awoke at 3:30 in the morning, and it's no where to be found. I've had a good 30 minute search of the bedsheets, the floor, the table near the bed. It's nowhere. There's also this strange constricted feeling in my chest-- like I swallowed something large that's stuck there.

This is not good.

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

Tickets have been purchased. Hiker's guide has been ordered (and, hopefully, will arrive in time). Boots will be purchased this weekend and be broken in. 280 miles of trail and only 6 days. We'll see how far I make it.

Miles And Miles of Mountains

I want someone to nap with.


That is all.

Fishburps

So I've been taking, when I can remember to, these Omega 3 Fatty Acid pills. Basically, they're fish oil capsules. They're supposed to be good for your skin, among other things, which I'm trying to take care of. Also, I'm tired of getting pimples at the age of 30 (nearly) and figure they might help. I don't really like putting harsh chemicals on my skin. The problem with these things is that they make you burp fish taste for several hours after you've taken them. This can be disconcerting when you haven't had any fish for a while, and have forgotten about the pills. It's also why, I am discovering today, it's a bad idea to take the pill in the morning.

Want to sleep

Man, this grey whether really has me wanting to stay inside and nap by the fire. That or go out and run, and it's too soon for that.

Still, the calendar gods must be appeased. Good thing I have someone meeting me to swim today. I guess I'll get through it then go home and take a nice long, hot shower and rub lime wedges all over myself (no kidding, I'm not just being kinky here, I've found it actually gets the chlorine smell out). People keep asking me, "why not lemons?"

Who wants to smell like lemon?

Heal Her Soul...

Carry her my sweet angel...

I shouldn't a' oughta put that CD in again.

It's been cloudy and rainy here in SD these past few days, which I've rather been enjoying, though it's keeping me off the bike. Rain here is a relative term. It's a constant yet very tentative spitting that more hangs in the air, than falls from the sky. I'm hoping for a repeat of last year's serious rain. I should be able to enjoy it more this year, not being in a wheelchair. Besides, it's either mudslides or wildfires, and I think the fires were worse.

Sleep on The Floor, Dream about Me

I slept for over 13 hours last night, from around 6PM until just before 8 in the morning. I guess I was pretty tired from swimming and yoga (yes, I've been doing yoga. I guess some prejudices can be changed). I took a long walk in the wimpy half-rain of San Diego this morning. You can walk in this stuff for hours and still never get wet. I think I'll take the rest of the day off.

There's so much that I should be doing around the house today, and none of it involves sitting on the couch and fucking around on the internet, and yet here I am. Another lovely Sunday. At some point, I will call to invite my friends to dinner, then go food shopping. I'm going to try to avoid taking another nap though I certainly do feel like it. Is this total physical breakdown again, or am I just getting old?

Park That Car, Drop That Phone

Why do I get myself into these things? It always seems so perfectly reasonable when I agree to it the night before, but at 6:30 in the morning, waking life is hell for me. I'm headed out my front gate with my bicycle to meet a friend for a morning ride. Oh, sure, at night, on the phone with my friend, agreeing to the ride, we're Mr. Big workout guy and we can get up and do anything and blah blah blah.... Once we actually get up in the morning though, we realize how old and out of shape we have allowed ourselves to become. My friend is an early waker, and I have always felt slightly resentful of those who can get up early on a regular basis and not feel like their world is coming to an end, but if it wasn't for having someone to meet, I know my ass would still be in bed. As the wind picks up and I pedal from my driveway to the foggy morning, I wonder if that would be a bad thing necessarily.

It's cold. It's early and it's cold and I'm glad I wore the long sleeve jersey today. The wind still cuts through it, and I'm practically falling asleep on the pedals, but I'll warm up. When it's over, I can stretch on the floor at home and feel better about myself for having gotten something done before even heading to work.

I'm Free Now...

This morning, a trusted friend of mine told me that he had achieved his lifelong goal of HAVING SEX WITH TWO WOMEN AT THE SAME TIME [sic]. This revelation dovetailed nicely into a thought processes aroused in me from an earlier conversation with another friend, concerning the lack of availability of any single woman with whom I might want to have sex.

While I had abandoned the idea to fate, dear readers, I think it is now time to bring back this once lost endeavor. I must focus all my energies on this idea (if not on any effort to actually make it happen). At least it will keep my mind occupied and keep my from further pining, but where does one begin?

You Know You Gotta Help Me Out

(Yea-eah)

I've been reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in The Time of Cholera. I figured it was about time, and I was ready.

I'm a little halfway through the book and, I have to say, I'm a little disappointed. Now, don't get my wrong here, it's a brilliant book and the writing (even translated into English which, I'm sure, detracts from it quite a bit) is superb. I think I just set my expectations way to high. I was expecting an epic tale of undying love, and not the story of a sad, deluded little man who clings to the idea of love, as if it were the thing itself. Still, let's not call the kettle black here (spare the pot and spoil the cutlery, I've always said...). I've been known to be a pit of a love-lorn pansy myself from time to time. This guy though, the difference is, this guy does it with style. He wants to believe in his love, and his view of the world through it so badly that he'll destroy his life to prove that it's right. That's fucking backbone. Stupid, but yeah, backbone. Most I've ever been able to manage is to hang around feeling mopey for a couple of years until I meet someone new, but over 50 years of pining for his unrequited love? Impressive in it's single-minded determination if nothing else.

As much as I say I'm disappointed in the story, I think it will be one of the few that sticks with me for the rest of my life (and not just because I remember it, I remember all of them). You would think, in the end, that the thing that would convince me to stop holding on so hard to they way I think love's "supposed" to be would be seeing how much happier I could be if I did not. It wasn't that though. It was a story about a man who held on so much harder, so much better than me. If I can't be the best, I might as well toss it in.

Frightmare

The basement is larger than I remembered, with cavernous closets and cold, stone floors. I walk into one of them-- larger than a bedroom-- to see if there's room for me to store my stuff. The light is dim, and it's spooky, but I tell myself not to be afraid. It's not like it's haunted. Then I remember: it is.

A young, blonde woman walks by me from out of nowhere. She turns and smiles. She'd be pretty, if I didn't know she was dead. Instinctively, from a rush of fear, I swipe my arm out at her to swat her away. My fingers are pointed towards her, and I hear and feel them sink into her dead face with a wet, sucking sound. There is a moment of panic (what if this is a real person I've just hurt?) and I'm about to check to see if she's okay, when she turns on me and I see the knife in her hand arcing towards me. I hear it enter my neck before I feel it, and I feel the impact more than any pain, and this wakes me up.

I'm on the couch at G's apartment, where I've fallen asleep after dinner (again). It's near 6 in the morning, and it's cold. My mouth feels like something's died in it. I wish they'd woken me up to go home this time. There's no going back to sleep now. I find my boots, and my laptop bag, cellphone, keys and wallet, and walk out into early morning darkness and La Jolla fog to find my car. I drive home with my knees, listening to bad AM radio and wishing I'd slept in my own comfy bed.

Sandman

I love eyeboogers.

To me, a healthy collection of eye gunk is the sign of a good night's sleep, and good dreams (a visit from the Sandman, perhaps?), and this morning's were particularly generous, even with little eyelash pieces stuck in the middle of them. I guess I'm particularly proud of "sleep" in my eyes (as my mom used to call it), because it's a sign that I actually slept through the night with my eyes closed. Many mornings I wake up dry eyed and uncomfortable from having slept with them open. The left eye hurts in particular. It hasn't been quite right since I poked it with that palm tree a few years ago.

I remembered this morning, as I recalled the bizarre dreams of alien babies and super powers that accompanied my "sleep", that when I was 2 or 3, I used to wake in the night with my eyes sealed shut from too much gunk. I don't know if this was something that happened once or twice because I was sick, or if it was a regular childhood occurrence, but I do have a vivid visual memory of my mother rushing to my bedside with a warm, damp face cloth to dab on my eyes while I called out afraid in the dark (and how, exactly, pray tell, do I have a visual memory of this?). Maybe that's how I learned to sleep with them open. Well, I should unlearn it. I'm sure, if they stick together again, I can manage to stumble blind to the bathroom and rinse my eyes out myself.

MSG

Ugh.

Someone has slipped a roofie into my Miso soup, and that roofie is called MSG. So few places use the stuff anymore, I'd forgotten how adversely I react to it. I'm sitting in my cubicle, barely able to keep my head up. I can't think straight enough to get any work done. I can barely even write this. It's taken me several minutes, and lots of editing, just to get this far.

I remember now, when I was a child, and MSG use was more common, particularly in Chinese food. Every time I'd go out for Chinese with my family, I'd fall asleep at the table in the restaurant. I'm trying to combat the drowsiness with caffeine (though I can never seem to get through more than half a can of sticky-sweet soda, before I feel forced to dump the rest out) and up-beat music, but thus far I have been unsuccessful.

I may actually have to go home early. Hopefully someone else will drive.

Daylight

They shouldn't let me anywhere near the internet at night, after I've had a few drinks.

Really, honestly, ignore all that. I'm quite happy, I'm just a bit on edge at the moment after finally finding the woman with whom I want to get married and have lots of sex and babies, but not actually being able to date her. It's a little frustrating.

Apart from that, everything's quite sorted, and I'm having a grand old time. Even dinner last night was lovely.

Maybe it was the music, it is still a brutal song, you know, if your sensitve to that sort of thing (which, surprise surprise, I am).

Can't count to

All the Lover's I've burned through

God, music is so fucking great.

Yesterday, when J* came over for dinner, she brought me CD's (thank you J*), but asked that I not put on Sun Kil Moon. She'd been listening to it in the car, and it was a little sad. This, of course, is a sentiment I can understand. So, this evening, on the way to a dinner party, I've got it on in the car to have a listen myself. I haven't made it past track two, which currently loops on my stereo in the living room.

So why do I still burn for you?

Fuck. Here I am, and I'm supposed to walk into this dinner party, soy ice cream and limoncello in hand, and have a nice time, and make pretty with the friends, and smile and have a great time, and not, at any point, ball my fucking eyes out.

I can't say.

This is music that makes me want to drive around all night on repeat, then come to rest in an abandoned parking lot by the beach with my forehead on the steering wheel, my hands clutching it on either side. This is rip your heart out, speak of sorrow, howl your loneliness to the moon, stand outside your ex's door, walk into the ocean fully clothed, stalk the streets 'till your legs won't move music. So, I'll just go have a nice dinner then and not pretend that I'm aching, ACHING to get back out in the car and listen to it for just one more minute and I actually do this. I actually make an excuse to go out to the car, where I sit, just between the fish course and desert, and listen to the singer locked in his passion while I wonder, am I damned to wail my love for you into the night alone?

I'm a love junkie (have you been reading this? Are you paying attention?). I'm an addict for the highs and, inevitably, for the lows, because over time, you associate them with the highs and, come to recognize that they're tied inexorably together. It's not love of misery, for misery's sake, damn your pop psychology. It's about not wanting to let go of the belief that you will gladly suffer forever for want of her love, because, without that belief, there is no love worth suffering for. Yes, you can continue to tell yourself, time and time again that this one is not the right one, this one is not that perfect love, which you'll finally find and never have to feel this way again. You can drop it, over time, and move on and find the next, but if you keep doing this, sooner or later, you're going to have to stop deluding yourself and give up and tell yourself it's just not out there.

So this is why I drove home feeling a hot knot rising in my chest trying to work it's way out, and this is why I'm here on my floor with my computer tonight, when I should be sleeping, contemplating how much liquor I've got in the cabinet, and just how drunk am I comfortable getting at home alone? There's part of me that wants, for the countless, countless time, to drive around and find her, and find some sort of closure, but that's not what this is about. This is about another woman, someone I have only started to ache for (and, oh, it will get so much worse), and the familiar desire for closure with something past is just that-- passed. You can't go through something quite like that, whatever that may have been, without feeling like you need to give it some significance, but then you find someone else to love, or you find someone to hurt over, and it's gone.