lying through my teeth...

it's not really a lie. but it isn't the whole truth.

life is a rollercoaster, with its ups and downs; its highs and lows. the only sure thing is that the biggest highs are precedent to the massive lows.

not that lows are always bad. in fact, in a rollercoaster, the lows are the part that gives us the greatest exhiliration, ripping the screams from our mouths, tossing us into loopty loops and twists and turns that cause us to laugh out loud. the highs lure us into the complacency that make the lows twice as exciting. or twice as agonizing.

to say that my wife and i are perpetually happy isn't really a lie. but it isn't the whole truth.

sometimes our relationship is one of complacency. the day to day takes hold, the classes, the job, the doctor's appointments for the boys, homework and parent/teacher conferences. this is not unhappiness, it is mundanity. it is life.

to confuse my analogy a bit, i consider these the lows in the rollercoaster of our existence together; my wife and me.

these lows generally coincide with highs in another part of my life. in this case, the band, big dumb animal. in the somewhere near 8 original songs we have mastered and perfected. in the hours spent with s the drummer and s the guitarist in the garage drinking and playing through our setlist and laughing and the euphoria that follows a rollicking rock song performed to perfection when three distinct individuals read each other's signals exactly and the song thrums to its climax in such a way that makes the heart beat faster and the fist pump involuntarily, ending in a steady hum of that final guitar chord that wrapped everything up so magnificently.

even the momentary lows of a pourly-performed song are their own version of highs, punctuated with humorous and harmless ribbing: "i fucked that one up." "yes, yes you did. have another gin and tonic, lush."

and without instruments in our hands, these highs are continued in conversations only found amongst those select few who are truly kindred spirits that fate or god or the universe has inexorably pulled together to be present in each other's lives at this time.

and this is how guitarist s and i found ourselves having a drunken conversation at a cuban sandwich joint in downtown ybor city on a random tuesday night as we waited for it to be time to watch roger waters perform his legendary "wall" concert.

this is how s told me he had been talking to this old friend of his for some time, how he felt connected to her, and she to him, which was really saying something considering what they had both been through individually prior to the moment they began talking again. and he isn't just whistling dixie. i can't speak for her, but personally, i have watched s battle with himself over the loss of his wife to another man, the woman he expected to be with forever. the woman he would pine over (until this sainted friend reentered his life) and with whom he would share custody of his daughter, the apple of his perhaps tainted eye. i know how huge this confession is. i know how hard; how tentative and unsure and yet needing-to-be-there-so-badly it all is for guitarist s. i also know how much i have moved into his inner circle of closest friends as he shyly, watching closely for my reaction, admits they sleep together--

"till our phone batteries die."

in the back of my head, i hear the death knell. not of my dearest friend and kindred spirit, s. but of something that i selfishly think of as all mine, even though it involves two other individuals.

the woman who has made s believe in love again is some 3000 miles away, in arizona.

and i know that big dumb animal is terminal.

what i didn't know is that the doctors would give it such little time.

it's been months since we have met in my garage with drinks and a plan for wowing audiences. life for one or another always gets in the way. we were on the verge of playing our first gig of all originals complete the three of us on our own instruments in front of a real (and not culled from friends and acquaintances) audience.

but chances seem good that s will be in arizona, perhaps for good, the end of this month.

this low in big dumb animal's rollercoaster coincides with the high; the rekindled spark, i think is the popular phrase, between my wife and i.

when s breaks the news, i am all for it. through our many and varied (and often inebriated and uncensored) conversations, i know this is something he must do. and i want him to. and i am always a proponent of love.

i tell him, "dude, this is your fucking happiness. if you don't play this hand out, you will regret it the rest of your life."

it's not really a lie. but it isn't the whole truth.

because i am happy for him, and i really want him to go, and see where this fork of his road takes him. but in the same breath, this fork takes him away from me. and i wrestle between the selfish desire to have this friend who actually gets so many aspects of myself that no one else would, and whom i get in kind be truly happy, and the selfishness of having him here, and available, and in my garage helping me see through the boring patches of my own life with a placebo excitement that can be derived from a small group of like-minded individuals playing music together in a way that most bands only dream of.

i pass a couple days being sad to the point of tears on the inside, and smiling on the outside.

until my wife asks me about something seemingly innocuous. at ten thirty at night. as we lay in the dark bedroom, my fingers against the skin she feels is "too fat" but which my body only registers as electric and smooth and pleasurable and i laughingly say a sentence that is light and airy. that leads to a comment about s' impending move. that leads to a half-hour discussion of how happy i am for him and at the same time so unhappy for myselfish self.

it's not really a lie. but it isn't the whole truth.

and she laughs when i say that i would be lying through my teeth if i didn't say that it just plain sucks ass that he is moving, for me. but she also knows it's the truth when i say that i am happy as can be for s.

and in that simple unplanned spontaneous shared conversation when both of us should've by rights been sleeping, i worked out my issues with the demise of something that was beautiful and as ephemeral as the final big plummet/loopty loop/twisting spiral that precedes the braking, clicking entrance back into the terminal of the rollercoaster, followed by the laughing, adrenaline-fueled conversations of the individual experiences that brought the different riders to that spot at that moment.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

and o thou beloved non-existent readers, thou stalwart though silent few who continue supporting me even as i myself only pass by this rusty nail in the sandlot of the world wide web on occasions when i am seeking answers only i can give, should you seek to see big dumb animal at the height of their career, performing their greatest hits as if there were no tomorrow, ask me how, and i will point you in the right direction.

if i've said it once...

i have said it before, and i will say it again: i am one lucky motherfucker. i remind myself of that daily. that is not to say that i haven't had rough times in my life. times where i wanted to cash in whatever chips i had left and call it quits. times when i wondered where god was hiding that he could no longer see me and the mire of shit i was wading through. but i have always had the good fortune to come out the other side clean and smelling like roses, and beyond a little experience, unscathed.

i see others around me. some who are in something that for me counts as a real trial. my friend melly, same age as me, battling cancer, for example. family members who have battled cancer in the past. people i never got say proper goodbyes to, perhaps, and with whom i may never get the proper closure, until the day i tearfully remind my own loved ones that, regardless of what was going on at the time, i have always been one lucky motherfucker, and then transfer from this existence to the next, where i will meet them again, and say the things i should've always said, except that you think you have forever to convey those feelings that will hit you at midnight on some random thursday a good ten years after you have missed that opportunity.

and i consider myself doubly lucky that i have this awareness of my own luckiness. now, o my beloved non-existent readers, this is not me tooting my own horn. i didn't always feel this way. there was a time when the world was fucking falling apart if the girl i loved didn't love me back. where something as simple and insignificant as that would have me throwing in the towel. i hate to admit it openly, but yes, i have matured. i have realized just how fucking precious this gift we call life is, and just how much of it i have been blessed with.

and again, it may sound like it now, but i am not tooting my own horn. i am not full of myself. if you, the beloved non-existent reader, have been here more than twice you will know this is not my style. i am just a guy, trying to make it happen, trying to be happy, on this little blue marble in the big fucking universe that looms over us every night.

i am trying to remind us that those people who make us aware of just how lucky we are need to be reminded that we have noticed. that we are there for them. that when they wade through that swamp of shit we will be the ones putting out a hand to pull them free, clean and smelling like roses; so that they too may stand on the edge of some cesspool and drag the next lucky motherfucker free with a warm hand and a smile.

none of us are perfect. none of us are happy all the time. i am learning to forgive. i am learning to forget. but happy is the man who is surrounded by the kinds of people who stand ankle-deep in putrid waters (or better yet, come in to the armpits to walk a bit alongside) to cheer us on to whatever finish line awaits us. and i, for one, must say: happy is the man who knows just how fucking lucky he is; just how blessed; just how gifted and happy and cared for he has been his whole life, and how important it is, as one who is a lucky motherfucker, to pass that luck along. how important it is to be willing to wander the swamps lending hands.

i pray, o my beloveds, for i know you are still out there; still wander my way when you find a quiet moment; that you also will pass this along. that you will reach out to those around you who are in need; that you will thank your lucky stars, or god, or whatever power you submit to and in the same breath reach out to the others around that need that.

we are all in this together, and there is nothing more god-like and divine that realizing it, and sharing it.

darth sardonic

thoughts from the inner reaches of the dark corners of my so-called mind...

stephen king once said "everyone is the hero of their own story." (i'm paraphrasing of course.) what he meant that everyone thinks what they do is right and justified.

perhaps it's because i am a bucket of contradictions. maybe it's because i think too deeply about miniscule things. maybe it is because i have finally become aware of myself and all my foibles and yes, even all my strengths, and maybe it's because i never take myself too seriously, but i am a strange position of being keenly aware of all the stupid shit i do on a daily basis. but, being happy with myself for the most part, i find myself not feeling like i need to make any kind of excuses either.

it also puts me in the unique position to be aware of the duplicity of nearly everyone around me. don't worry, i very seldom will call anyone on it. unless i don't like them and they are attacking me or a friend of mine. in which case it will be the first thing i point out.

i posted a quote from mike ness (of social distortion) about punk rock music being dangerous back in the day recently as one of my status posts on facebook. one friend commented in a friendly-ribbing kinda way. another friend climbed onto her soapbox, and proceeded, in her own mind no doubt, to put us all in our place. i told the first friend, who was using my status as an opportunity to tease me (which i love) not to mind her, that she was a pretentious twat. my friend, yes. but still a pretentious twat.

i'm not gonna make excuses for her failings.

i didn't do it to her, i just explained to him to not worry about her. he's able to laugh at himself enough to not have taken her seriously in the first case.

the interceptor is back in the shop. it's been several months, and this is an easy and inexpensive fix, and if i had wanted to leave my car running 24/7 i wouldn't have had to fix it right away. but i worry about emissions and running out of gas, heh heh.

anyhow, my neighbor used this as an opportunity to ask me (rather roughly, i might add) when i was gonna come to my senses and ditch the dream of the interceptor for a reliable car.

this always puts me in a fighting mood, but i reigned it in for the sake of our very strong friendship, and simply said "never." with my trademark laconic smirk.

cause here's the thing that i know, but let him realize for himself: one of his vehicles, a newer suv, is in the shop about once every three to four months for what he ended up terming "routine maintenance." his car payment on this car alone is more every month than the most expensive thing i have had done on the interceptor. and his other car has a payment as well. his other car was in the shop for a week. it coincided with his wife being deployed, so he had two vehicles sitting in his driveway. if my wife was in the area, instead of in alabama with her car, this would have been a minor hiccup in my day.

he went on to say he just hates old cars. i replied that the 03 saturn we owned was in the shop easily as many times as the lincoln, and for longer stretches, and for double and triple what it has cost each time i have taken the lincoln in.

"yeah," he replied, "but you brought that car from the frozen north, and that was hard on it."

"nope, we got that car in seattle."

"oh."

another thing i didn't mention is the only newer cars we could afford to buy would be no more reliable, and spend more time in the shop, and cost considerably more to fix, than the interceptor. and i wouldn't like the car at all, and a little thing i know about myself since i am so keenly self-aware: if i don't like something i am forced to use, i have a tendency to be extra hard on it; to treat it with contempt and displeasure. which means it would be more likely to break down than normal.

like i said, my friend and neighbor came around to realizing on his own that for all his fillibustering and gasbagging, he couldn't really point fingers at me and my situation. and despite knowing all my friends flaws (or perhaps because i work so hard never to bring them to harsh light), i have so many people who will dive in to help me out on the rare occasion when i find my life turned topsy-turvy by a situation such as this.

darth sardonic

...with fingers crossed for everything you do

i had been bugging dr d for weeks. ever since i noticed the twin "vw" (as in volkswagen) buttons he had on his corkboard in his office.

"you've got two, n my corkboard in x-ray is barren."

incessantly, almost on a daily basis. man, dr d was a laid-back guy who managed to put up with a lot of shit from me.

time passed. i bugged him occasionally about the buttons, but it never really was a big deal.

eventually, i forgot about it.

then i was having one of those days. the days when it's the little things that kill. when the morning starts off with something stupid and annoying, and then moronic coworkers exacerbate the situation, and then you get a short lunch because someone else was lazy, and an unusual amount of extra patients come in and you are the one expected to get them all situated. the kind of day where i joke about ropes or razor blades. the kind of day where my eyes sag.

by three in the afternoon, i feel the unshed tears of aggravation and frustration fighting their burning way to the surface, and i go to hide out in the x-ray exposure room. this room was perfect for this purpose, as it had a regular door instead of the revolving door most x-ray rooms have. so i can shut the door, lock it, turn off the light, and anyone that might need me would have to knock so as not to unexpectedly expose x-ray film to light and render any films i might've taken useless and subsequently face my justified wrath. and after the knock, i can say "gimme five minutes" and make sure i have washed the tears away and look normal when i come back out.

i shut the door slowly. flick the lightswitch down. sit in the beat up discarded computer chair that serves as my office chair (this little five by eight room being the closest i have ever come to my own office in my entire air force career, and i get to share it with two developing machines, a counter where i keep extra films and cleaning supplies, and a sink).

i cry. i let all the frustration out in little streams down my cheeks. i hang my head and see teardops falling, glinting red in the subdued exposure room lights.

i do what needs to be done, and decide i better clean up before someone realizes i have been in here with the door shut for awhile.

as i rinse my face in the sink, i look up. on the bottom of my corkboard, oddly-colored in the red lights, a single "vw" pin is tacked into place.

i cry more, but not from frustration this time.

the other day, when i hit the cat, as i was still feeling wracked with grief and guilt, i got a text from j, my buddy from autocad classes:

what kind of coffee u want? at panera

it seems that invariably when i feel lowest, some show of support and love appears unexpected.

truly, i am one of the luckiest motherfuckers ever to tread.

darth sardonic

best wishes have been made...

my wife turned--err, well, that is to say, her birthday was saturday.

we have many, and i mean several, friends born in the month of november, and my wife decided to throw a big shindiggity to honor them all.

which means we had people come in from all over. my wife's good friend from portland, m. (designated m-p from now on), our friend from sg and port st lucie, m (m-psl), another friend of ours from sg and indiana (m-i) (if you're not confused now, you should be), our buddy q from orlando, and another friend, s, from tampa. (the house was full, and my wife asked me how it is that i always end up being the only guy surrounded by hot chicks. i replied it was a real talent, lol.)

jello shots and fingerfood were made. daiquiris were blended (m-p only drinks strawberry daiquiris). m-i maintained a chat and cam on her laptop while we all dashed about getting ready.

the cove was full. food abounded. drinks were consumed.

me n my guitarist (who plays a little of everything) jammed. (our drummer showed up late, and so we weren't able to all jam together.) s, m-psl, and m-i chatted (and quite possibly flashed body parts) on cam.

we ended up climbing up on top of the rv that b had parked in the driveway to house a few of the visitors. yours truly managed to do it with his drink still in his hand. we sat up there, laughed, posed for pics, convinced others to join us, and in general had fun, until q thought it would be funny to start rocking the rv. that part of the party ended pretty quickly thereafter.

one of our female neighbors gave my wife a lap dance (i forgot to ask if my wife liked it), and her hubby and j flashed the goat to the entire outside. (i, fortunately, was in the man room twanging my bass.)

my guitarist called anyone who wouldn't join him for jello shots "pussies" and kept dragging us back for more. i've only a hazy and dimly lit recollection of just how much whiskey and vodka mixed with ground horse's hooves i consumed.

we danced, we laughed. some drama ensued, but was kept to a minimum.

q kept trying to convince me to do a boxer run. which we used to do in washington, when i had a fenced-in back yard. running around with only cotton between me and my bits and all and sundry didn't really appeal to me, plus the cops do patrol, and know we are the party cove, so they are always checking us. i really don't need to be arrested for indecent exposure.

as the hours began to be wee, one by one we stumbled or crawled off to our respective beds. m-psl went to sleep on the couch with her glasses still on. s n q wandered off towards the camper with their bodies in contact of some sort the whole way. (the next day, the rv rocking would be blamed on the wind, but we know better, don't we, o beloved non-existant readers? heh heh.) m-i and i stayed up just a bit longer, talking.

the next morning the kids would wake me much too early, and my headache would only dissipate when i had eaten two bowls of cereal and a large glass of water and a cup or two of coffee.

a good time was had by all.

darth sardonic

I know I'm not the one you thought you knew back in high school

i have decided that i am the kind of person that moves on when i move on. or kinda. that is to say, when i move away from an area (and i have done a fair bit of that in the course of my adult life) one can bank on the fact that there are friends i am going to completely lose contact with. cause i'm lazy. cause i sorta live in the moment a bit. cause i'm an ass. who knows? i sure don't.

now, that doesn't mean that i wasn't good friends with these people. that i didn't feel close to them. that we didn't share some great times. quite the contrary.

so as you can imagine, o my beloved non-existant readers, my droogs and only friends, my wonderful ptitsas n malchikiwiks, when i have time to think, or when something sparks a memory, i pause to wonder, "whatever happened to so-and-so? what have they been up to?"

this also causes me to wonder, almost immediately thereafter, if that person might also, on occasion, wonder what the fuck ever became of me, and what have i been up to. i usually laugh to myself, and think, what kinda fucked-up shenanigans could i have possibly pulled to leave any kind of imprint on that person's memory?

well, in recent times, due mostly to me joining facebook at dj kirby's request so that i might better pimp out The Unfinished Work (coming soon to a website near you!), i have had a chance to find out.

several people from my school have found me. this is kind of interesting, because sometimes i think, oh my god, no way! followed by, i was a complete dick to them, why on earth would they want to add me on their facebook? (and of course i accepted, for no other reason than that i could send them a message apologizing for being a dickhead!) and sometimes i think, i am going to have to get out the yearbook to figure out who this person is.

here and there i get invites from people who know me from somewhere else (my neighbor recently said, "you got facebook? i'll send ya an invite.") (i have several friends who are also my friends on suicidegirls.) and it is always an interesting sort of experiment to see all these different people from different stages of my life at one place. how many different darth's are there really, that each and every one of these friends probably knows some different aspect of myself. some who have found me lately are, no doubt, disappointed with some of the life choices i have made. well, i am sorry bout that, but the fact of the matter is, i am happy, so sod you.

in the course of the last 13 years (cause it has been that long since we have spoken), i have one friend from my single days at travis afb, jdot rdot, that i have wondered about from time to time.

in those days, i knew a girl who was going to school for audio/visual stuff, and as part of her curriculum, had a half-hour block available to her on the local cable access channel, and access as well to a cornucopia of av equipment.

she and i and another friend, s.b., (who really ought to find me or me him on facebook too, shit) who was a spazz and sarcastic and silly like myself, all wanted to begin a sketch comedy show similar to kids in the hall. we were going to call it "the ward" (a funny play on words, we all met in a single adult "ward," or congregation, at church, but the implication by the title being "psych ward") and we all agreed that we wanted jdot rdot as the straight man in our show.

because jdot rdot was possibly the biggest wiseaker of us all. but his humor was so droll, he could drop the funniest lines without cracking a smile or even blinking an eye.

about two weeks ago, i found myself wondering, out of the blue, wonder whatever became of jdot rdot? and wonder if he ever thinks of me sometimes? c'mon, how dumb is that, it's not like he didn't have a ton of other friends.

a week ago, i get an email, "jdot rdot has requested your friendship..." no way. no fucking way! and there it is, the invite, with a little tagline, in true jdot rdot fashion: "are you THE Darth Sardonic, and not just a cheap Chinese-made knock-off?"

i quickly add him, email him that i am in fact a cheap chinese-made knock-off, and we swap phone numbers for a call that ends up lasting about an hour and easily cliff notes 13 years and sets the stage for an ongoing friendship that is new and living and vibrant, and not enmired completely in the past.

early in the course of that phone call, jdot rdot says to me, "man. i have been trying to find you for a long time."

guess that answers that question.

darth sardonic

no rest for the wicked...

right back in the saddle today with no. 2's therapy early in the am, and school, and i restart hauling pizzas like the ferryman on styx tonight. i am paying for my tatt, i am paying for my tatt, i am going to my happy pla... dammit, i am paying for my tatt.

lady macleod has passed me another award, blogging that hits the mark. thank you so much. i really can't get past all this attention you non-existant readers are lauding me. i would try and say i am not loving it, but we all know that would be bollocks, so again, thank you. as to five bloggers i feel should receive this award in return, i would have to go most definitely with snuffleupagus, i am quite amazed how she can hit the issues extremely hard, and still geek out about a hot new teacher. so cool. i think jenny deserves this one as well, while not everything she writes about is necessarily globally impacting, she really helps when it comes to issues related to those with "disabilities." likewise, dj kirby and blogging about her son. prada pixie regularly leaves posts that i feel hit the spot on a wide range of issues, from surviving cancer to love, and death. and mother hoodlum, i think, deserves this one as well, as she posts about being a single mom and radio shack goddess in such a passionate and humorous way.

a new pic for me (from our trip to long beach) since the other was several years old, and i think i need to remove a few people from my pals list who haven't posted in a very long time.

i have at least one new non-existant reader that has come over here from sg, and i wanted to give a nod to my faithful non-existant readers who don't necessarily blog, or appear in my pals list, i know you are out there, and i appreciate that you read.

if you haven't already, don't let this post make you forget to read about the silliness from vegas, yesterday's post.

darth sardonic

Wanted to scream for them but had to stand in silence

my kids are currently watching the mst3k version of godzilla vs. megalon. they love it! which is great, cause as a kid i watched the rubbery dinosaur and his HO-scale-japan-destroying counterparts faithfully. when i got older, i watched mst3k faithfully, and would laugh extra-hard when they made fun of a movie i had seen on saturday's sci-fi theater. and when i stumbled out of bed this morning, my kids actually stopped the video games to ask me for the "mosser/wobot" movie.

friday night me, s, and t went to the l&m tavern. it is actually called the firehouse now (it burned down some years ago, and they rebuilt), but it will always be the l&m to us. my cold was still in play, though getting better, and we ordered up dinner and gin n tonics and laughed and did the kind of bantering that high-school mates with over 20 years of history behind us do.

brooke's eyes are real. they are ridiculously blue. and i have never wanted to just stare intently into her baby b's to figure it out, but while she was taking t's order, i managed to sherlock holmes, and there are no contacts.

as for her boobs, the jury is still out. t "brushed" them with his chest when they were trying to get past each other in a tight space between tables, and informed us they were "pretty firm". they are, also, (not that i really noticed, mind you, but i have been told...) err, umm, rather large for her frame. must do more research...

{we interrupt this program so that no. 2 can spend five minutes pleading and wheedling at no. 1 to get his binkie, when i know damn good and well that no. 2's binkie is probably in his bedroom. but no. 2 would rather spend all this time saying, "plaese (yes, the misspelling is intentional, that is how he says it, a cross between "please" and "place"), plaaaeeeese, plaaaaeeeeeeese, PLAAAAAEEEEEEEEESE." over and over like some fucking whiney-voiced oliver twist crack-addict begging his pimp not to hit him again. it goes without saying that when no. 2 does this, it drives me beyond crazy.

i tell him to go find his own. it is in his bedroom, right where he left it. he continues with the pleeding plaeses until i see red, jump up, pull him by his arm into the bedroom, stern voice on full alert the entire time, and find his binkie for him while he cries like i am hitting him in the head repeatedly with a baseball bat.

when he does this plaese wheedle thing, i am unable to concentrate. since this is a rather largish post covering several days of happenings, drastic measures were called for.

that is all. now back to your regularly-scheduled program.}

as the night wore on, karaoke ensued, and s, t, and i were forced to nearly shout to be heard, and this, combined with the already sandpapery condition caused me to sound like the love child of harvey fierstein and gilbert godfried as it goes through puberty.

saturday, i needed to clean. and clean. and clean. then shower. and nap. then people showed up for my little do. i received presents of tangueray (my friends know me oh, so well, o my beloved bemused non-existant readers), and happily drank and talked and basically had a rather toned-down little fiestita. i did not run around the back yard in my boxers. just wasn't the right mood. (and my new non-existant readers, which is damn near all of you, will have absolutely no idea what i am talking about. suffice to say, the right group of people + the right atmosphere x a drink or two = darth suggesting a boxer run, which is usually seconded by one or two of my more exhibitionistic friends, resulting in a few of my tipsy friends running around the backyard in their respective underwear.)

a&m showed up for a little while, though m looked completely strung-out. he reacted badly to the anaesthesia, resulting in vomiting, followed by reacting badly to the morphine, resulting in vomiting, and then reacted badly to the percocet, resulting in, yep, you guessed it, vomiting. as a result, he was taking tylenol and toughing through the pain, and gimping around pretty poorly. i will mention here, though, that m is a crazy fucking rugby player who took a knee to the eye and wanted them to send him back in with his eyebrow hanging open like a side of beef at the slaughterhouse.

a good time was had by all.

the next morning, i awoke with no voice. one nostril was completely plugged, not with boogers, but with swollen nasal tissue, and my throat was paved in freshly-laid hot tar and gravel. my cold in its death throes, putting up one last-ditch attempt at making me miserable.

and it worked.

i tidied from the party (my friends are not the kind to make a large mess and not help clean), and rested. the kids thought that daddy sans voice = not having to listen, until no. 1 was trying to outtalk me as i was softly lecturing him, and pissed me off, and i stripped my throat out outyelling him, causing him to cry, and resulting in both of them being a little easier to be around for the day, though i did have to repeat the "yelling-till-i-spit-up-blood" manoeuvre on no. 2 a little later on, resulting in him crying, followed by better behavior.

today, the majority of the cold is gone. i still have lingering snot and junk in my throat, and i sound a bit like dirty harry.

so you have to ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk, huh? do ya?

darth sardonic

p.s. sparx, i am so pleased to be linked at all that you could link me under "boring twat what whines too much about his life despite how good he's got it" and it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever. dj kirby, i left a comment, but don't know if you have seen it, "some people are just small, hard peas" is a line from a codiene song, pea, and i guess you could use it as long as you gave proper credit, though i am not sure how that would work, copyright laws-wise.

did i remember to keep your beer as full as mine?

i am 36 years old today.

i should point out that i don't feel, look, or, for that matter, act like a 36-year-old. well, that is, if there is even a way that a 36-year-old should look and act.

i'm a bit pensive today, though i think it has little to do with my birthday, it is just something i do every so often.

i am happy. right here, right now. with things just the way they are. that is not to say that i don't have some regrets, and that there aren't things i might like to change about our current situation, but overall i am extremely pleased with my life.

actually, i think it is better than i could've hoped when i was, say, 16. or even 26.

on a different subject, i have some great friends. i have, during this time my wife has been gone, tended to keep strictly to myself. i don't want to be the kind of fella that calls everyone hoping someone will keep him entertained. i don't feel that it is anybody else's job. i don't mind being by myself, and i enjoy my own company, particularly when i am feeling down. no one else should have to put up with me when i am being whiney and mopey. at least that is my attitude.

well, despite all that, i get regular calls from a few of my friends. checking up on me. seeing if i need anything. only just now, one of our friends called and sang me happy birthday, and although she was sick, said she wanted to try and make me dinner this week. she's already planning on coming to my birthday shindig this saturday, but on top of that wants to make me dinner. my buddy s instists he is paying for our regular friday night's food and drinks, even though he, too is coming to the party on saturday. my other friends, a&m, will also be at the party, despite the fact that m is having hernia surgery tomorrow.

this group of people, along with a few others, have made regular contact and made sure i am alright, physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

the joke about "friends will help you move, good friends will help you move a body"? i think i could easily call s, e, a&m, m&g, and probably my mom, and by christ, they would turn covering up a homicide into a big party, complete with h'ors deouvres and entertainment. not saying that i will kill anyone, but they would help me if i needed it.

i have to say, i am a little overwhelmed suddenly to become aware that finally, after having discarded numerous "friends" over time, i am surrounded by people who care about me easily as much as i care about them, and show it openly.

everyone in the world should be as lucky and as happy as me.

a few notes: yes, a winged unicorn. so that i might fly around, and could stab people who ask too many questions. hahahahaha. mainly, i was coming up with stuff that seemed as unlikely as me getting a weekend to myself.

"off" was my nice way of saying that my sister-in-law is "not right in the head" or "slow" or "not all there."

the father's day bbq wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be, and it was nice, considering how i have been feeling about my own kids lately, to see them calmly sitting and watching a movie whilst their cousins tore around the house getting into everything they could reach and nearly ending up in the er numerous times. by comparison, my kids are sweet, cherubic angels, and i just needed reminding.

darth sardonic