HH: Prop me up

It's quarter after 9 AM on a Sunday morning. The dog is curled up on the couch and the wife is curled up in bed and I am just plain curled up. I don't know what that's supposed to mean but I don't mean it to sound good.

It's been a while since my last post and the world has changed, or is poised to change, and not for the better. It's funny because if things had broken the other way I wouldn't say the world was changing, I would say the status quo is set to continue and things will simply not get better, and instead people voted to make them actively worse. I fuckin' hate so many of the people on this planet. It's enough to make a guy pull out his old "misanthrope" friendship bracelet from his 20's. I know it's down in my basement somewhere, but it's not likely to fit over my hand onto my wrist anymore (ironically, it got even shorter after being given because I snapped it the first time I put it on, and we just re-tied it instead of redoing it with a longer band.)

I guess the last time I posted was before Halloween, which was nice in its way -- we had Hank in his taco outfit and we sat on the porch so that we wouldn't be disturbed from our couch by the kiddoes (and so Mel could see everyone) but very few actually came by, and Hank did not like the kid who had a full on knight costume.

The rest of the time has been overshadowed by dull and depressing world events I shan't recount here. We've been doing housework and holiday stuff, had Papa H over last week to help with the lights and whatnot but the yard is still in need of teardown. The following week was the tree decorating at Mel's parents and it was nice as usual, we had Hank there and he was calm and well-behaved but maybe it also stressed him out because he had an upset tummy the whole next day, but that may also have been the plain timbits we had given him a few days before. Unclear. We gave him some pumpkin and he was all right.

The day after that, Mel was intent on doing this home craft of a wreath made of a wire coat hanger and these old blue Christmas balls we don't want to use again on the tree because they're too dark to be seen. Our first attempt was a mess, the balls kept coming off their tops, so we ended up gluing all of the tops on. Then the hanger we had chosen I guess was unusually thick because it wouldn't bend back into place, so we gave up, took a week, and Mel came back to it yesterday with some success. It was nice and offered us a feeling of accomplishment, as did finally going for her blood work the day before.

Also yesterday -- and I'm aware I'm jumping around a lot -- we took Hank to Ren's to see Santa, and he was so good. We lucked out because we came during a non-busy time and he got lots of attention. All the helpers liked him so much, but who wouldn't??

I'm feeling my own little crisis of creativity, less interested in all my usual stuff lately, but feeling the pressure from my lack of available time. The thing is, the stuff that I know will get me attention (and much-needed serotonin) are things that I'm losing steam on, and the things I think would be good for my soul are harder, require more focus than I can provide, and have little in the way of tangible rewards.

I yearn for the days when I would spend my Sundays at the mall drinking coffee and writing, but uh, I guess that's what I do now anyway, at home.

My latest musical fixation is the Hold Steady. I don't even know why but after listening to Teeth Dreams a few times I thought, why didn't I ever check out all the stuff they put out before Stay Positive? It's supposedly critically acclaimed and all that, right? So last week, I was at home for "personal reasons" relating to Mel's wellbeing, and I decided I would put it on and I absorbed the first few albums and then I just kept playing them over and over again. You know, I miss that, feeling like there was music to discover. I've sat so long with the same pat hand of music that *getting into something* feels so novel. Because really, aside from one listen to Boys and Girls in America that had left me cold (a position I have well reversed) and from which I only remembered "Chill Out Tent," I hadn't ever experienced any of it. Now I lie up at night thinking about Holly and Charlemagne and all that.

Can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?

I think it's brilliant, not just great music but a whole evocative world, the great American novel as discography. Damn, damn, damn good stuff. But great music first and foremost.

Mel went into the office on Thursday, so I rode with her in the car. It was ,as usual, something of a fiasco getting ready and putting Hank away and everything, and as we were preparing to pull out she asked me what was going on on the back window (a pile of leaves that looked like bird poop) and as I turned my head to look I splattered coffee on my nice tan pants, so I had to go change and delay us even further. Mel said it was a shame too because the pants were nice. They got clean though.

We pulled out of the driveway at 7:55 and despite traffic managed to get me to Oakville station for 8:30 and I got the train that would have been  the 8:13 from Burlington, so that was actually pretty good timing since I was mentally prepared to get the 9:00. That's about the most interesting thing that happened all week.

We need a new mattress, I need to vacuum, we need to put the patio table away, we need to clear the garage, I need to put my mom's shed together (??) we need to live, we need a life, we need to survive.

Keep on rockin'

Scotto