i wish this would be your color...

the day dawns cold and gray. the air is chilly with misty rain, but will later be muggy, despite the clouds and lack of sun.

i go on my run. for the third day in a row, as i pass the pond (the sign refers to it as a lake, but it is barely a pond, almost a swamp, actually), birds dive-bomb me, chirping angrily. they are getting more aggressive, and today i actually cover my head with one arm, just in case.

i need to change my route.

fucking birds and their over-developed sense of danger. any animal with half a brain would wait to see if i was even headed towards their nest, posing a real threat, before going on the defensive. winged motherfuckers.

i have a general underlying malaise. i am forcing myself to do the things i would normally, run, work out, do the bills, clean the house. i am missing my wife a little extra for some inexplicable reason, and everything seems to have an odd sad undertone.

then the kids come home from school, and it is off to grammy's. only when i call to tell her we are leaving the driveway she says she has to run into town fast and help a friend who is in a nursing home. no problem.

we can get lunch.

i attempt to fanagle the kids into wanting lunch where i want, someplace we can sit down and kill an hour or two. someplace where i can stick to my newer, healthier diet. i try to bribe them with mango lahsis or pancakes, but i should've known better:

"we want fwenss fwies!"

sighing heavily in exasperation (stephen king says writers tend to overuse adverbs: i know i do), i pull out of the driveway.

why is it i love the sad songs about breaking up? alkaline trio improves my mood some, by juxtaposing catchy tunes with depressing lyrics, and i buy a mocha at a local pull-up coffee hut where the baristas are all women and nearly always extremely scantily-clad (during the week, they have theme days: today's was "fantasy" (read: lingerie). my barista was wearing a brocade corset with matching panties, long, curly hair, a smile, and nothing else.), and head out for the evil golden arches, followed by my mom's unlocked but empty front door.

i hope this is good-bye, i hope this is good-bye.

if i ever make writing my full-time job, my kids simply won't allow it: no. 1 wants me to set up the game, that i told him i would do when i was done posting, and now runs in every five minutes to see if i am "done yet", to which i reply, "when i am done, you will be the first to know." which is actually a lie, because i will be first to know, and it is possible that one of my non-existants might log in before i make it into the living room to let my oldest know i will set his game up, and then he would fall a lame third. no. 2 says, "i wan' a sit on ya yap."

my mother's keyboard is so old that some of the letters are completely rubbed off. i never realized just how much i look down when i write until doing this post in the empty office, the kids enmeshed in star trek: first contact (which i would have thought would be too scary, but they love it. i tried to play them the wrath of khan the other day, and they were bored. no. 1 kept asking where the robots were. they didn't get interested in the movie until ricardo montalban blew up the genesis device and the whole fucking planet goes up in flames. should i be worried?), the air conditioner humming loudly throughout the house like a spirit caught between worlds.

tonight, it is out again with my oldest remaining buddy, s, for drinks and silliness and long talks about then and now and the upcoming, and flirting with brooke, our regular cocktail waitress. maybe today i will figure out if her breasts and blue eyes are really real. maybe not.

i guess i am horny. i'm too lazy to care, or even do anything about it. not that you wanted to know, but there you have it.

my kid just set the timer (the method we use for letting him know that it is time to put the video games away) on me. when it went off, he said, "ok, daddy, it's time to stop on the computer and get my games!"

i guess i am done.

darth sardonic