Chapter 20: You've got to hold onto me

I've got your letter, you've got my song...

Being it was Friday night and I wasn't inquired about Risk, I took it on myself to leave the house for a little while. It was a calm, rain-chilled night and I needed to soothe myself with a gin & tonic. I have booze at home, but I didn't want to a) use any of it before tomorrow (more on that later) or b) stay in and feel like the biggest loser in the world. So I went to a bar by myself for no reason, which also seems suspiciously like a "biggest loser in the world" move. Or maybe, just maybe, a "biggest cool guy in the world" move. Maybe. But probably not.

I needed to unwind because it's been a tough week and in particular a tough way to end it. As these jobs always seem to, the job we'd been doing went awry sometime after the first day. Brandon (the competent guy I work with, not my brother,) was out sick on Thursday with allergies and we got way behind, and even if we hadn't things would still have been fucked since Jump Street.

"Do it once, do it right," is the company's slogan, and it's one I happen to find it hard to live up to. Although it sounds great on a t-shirt or a lawn sign, it's a promise that, with our meagrest abilities, we sometimes fall short on. But nobody would be impressed if the slogan read "We try our best most of the time." When I observed our customer's reaction to the work we've been doing - specifically relating to some admittedly shoddy spackling we had to do - a different slogan popped into my head, the serenity prayer. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to distinguish between them." Like I said, it was a rough day.

It wasn't going too badly. We had taken it on ourselves to show up early because of how behind we were. We started at 7 and were due to go until one hour late at 6. So that would be an 11 hour day. As it was, at 6, as we were trying to hurry up and go, the man of the house comes home and starts kvetching about the lousy spackle and how unsmooth and unsightly it was. I kinda wanted to explode, because his house was loaded with rotten wood and the best we could do was disguise that on a small scale, not repair the whole damn garage door. Notice the word "Painters" on our t-shirts and lawn sign, as opposed to "Carpenters." Shit, dude. I was just simmering. This caused a delay that left me hot under the collar and kept me from getting home until after 7, so for those keeping score I was on the job for 12 hours and for hardly any value. The job still ain't done. Still not sure whether I have to go do the job on Sunday but I'm hoping the rain gets super-harsh this weekend.

So I got a ride home with Kerissa and she advised me not to stress about it. I joked that I could only be polite and professional for about 11 hours straight and after that I just become bitchy and sarcastic and swear a lot. Hey, at least I'm honest.

But anyway, I oughtn't be stressed, all I've been doing is my job - painting whatever needs to be painted. Everyone seems to be okay with the job I've done on that, except for one window which I did a shitty job prepping yesterday because, well, fuck, I can't win 'em all. The lady of the house said she appreciated our work ethic and was very nice to us in spite of their dissatisfaction with our inability to completely repait their garage door. I'm not sure what annoys me more - that they expected is of us, or that they were misled into believing we could handle it. Certain aspects of the managerial style - although I like her very much as a person - are specious at best. Underestimating times and overestimating capabilities. But me, I'll just keep fuckin' painting.

I felt a little better after getting to dad's and then immediately going home with a little take-out pizza. When you're hungry, everything sucks worse, I've been saying this for a long while.

All week long, my "stay positive" thought has been anticipation of the weekend. I try to ignore the possibility that it might only last one day and just think of Saturday night. I've been trying to put together my one annual semi-kinda-near-birthday drinking-gathering thing with whomever I can round up. This is when Facebook comes in handy, although it does hurt when someone you haven't seen in a long while gives you the "Not attending." I'm trying not to take it personally, but it's upsetting because in a lot of these cases, I'm not going to get very many chances to see the people over the summer or anything, much as we'd like to think otherwise. So I end up taking it personally, because somehow along the way I got this complex about shit like that, people leavin' me. Maybe it's because so many friendships have ended abruptly I'm always paranoid what to people really think. I think I went over this several weeks ago after some particular Risk drama. I'm a pretty fucked up damaged individual.

What I need is to stop injecting all the drama into stuff. Sometimes plans conflict. I've been there. I can deal. (Can't I?)

I don't even know quite how many people will be there, but I'd estimate maybe a dozen people or so will float through at some point. There's a large chance it'll just be a bunch of dudes sitting around drinking and playing Street Fighter (I told a few people we'd play when I got the game several months ago, and tomorrow's as good an opportunity as any.)

I keep having these increasingly hyperactive dreams and then waking up every few hours. I'm in kinda rough shape a lot of the time. Paint splotches everywhere.

I'll just need a little while to relax and unwind. I don't think I'm in much shape to work five days in a row, let alone six.

But give me a bit to regenerate and I'll be back at it.

This is gonna be some fuckin' summer. Most of the time, I'd prefer soulcrushing boredom to this. But here I am, anyway. I guess it's all I can do to make the best of it and go along.

I'm stalling on ending this entry. I just want to end on a positive note and let everything be okay. It seems a little forced, which hurts that a little, but I'm trying. I'm trying, and ain't that all anyone asks?

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto