Caterwauling

No shocker that Thundercunt exploded around midnight and kept us up half the night. 

I think Thundercunt  works evenings somewhere because there’s usually a gap between crazy day noise and crazy midnight noise. I swear I’ve seen her at the Publix on Gateway. She rocks that green smock, if it’s her. I want to choke her with it. 

Big Giant Pussy gets a rude awakening every night. Last night as I was dropping off to sleep, I heard, “You are not a man. You are a fucking loser!”

I yelled through the vent, “You suck more, sweetheart.”

I invited mom to hang in my room since sleep wasn’t going to happen. As usual, we laughed our asses off and made it better. 

I think someone called security. Not like any of those kids can control those two. But eventually they shut the fuck up. Hooray. 

I don’t know if Fraggle made it to school on time. But I know she learned a whole bunch more variations on F-bombs. Her poor teacher. 

I thought about the nice homeless guy who sleeps on the brand-new cowhide benches outside of Rocco’s Tacos. And this helped me to not flip the fuck out because I do have a nice home filled with lots of joy. 

I’m going to be the bigger person and pray that Big Giant Pussy reclaims his balls from her purse and leaves her. It’s toxic for the world for these two idiots to be together. 

In the meantime, I’m avoiding that Publix unless they let me throw a brick at her face. 

Because I have a song for everything going on in my life.

Oh, and damn it.

A friend was supposed to come back to work today. Part of me was meh, because i like using speakerphone and dancing around at random times during the day. But then I thought, yay lunch buddy. You know, for the quarterly escapes. Alas, no lunching to be had because no buddy to be seen.

It’s all good. Given that eating popcorn resulted in blood loss.

Just another day in the paradise that is my life.

Every company and probably every person I know loves a good to-do list. We have daily meetings that offer a ceremonial reading of them.

I never mention the important things. I just talk about my tasks. The shit people care about if it isn’t done. The stuff that according to Quartz.com …

… isn’t important. People seldom write their biggest priorities on a to-do list. The very act of keeping a to-do list encourages you to fritter your attention away on inconsequential things. I would never include “Write a book” or “Spend time with the children” on my list.”

The article suggests we manage our attention, rather than manage our time. Otherwise, in life’s information buffet, we will choose to consume EVERYTHING instead of only what feeds our minds, souls and careers.

Read it. And, like me, probably weep: To Get the Most Out of Your Day, Manage Your Attention, Not Your Time

My new jam. Hat-tip to W.

“You’re not delivering a perfect body to the grave
Time is not there to be saved
Life is a holiday
A moment stolen from the black
Before the demons drag you back
You won’t get everything you wanted
But you will never be defeated.”

— Frank Turner, “Demons”

Especially relevant today.

I got to thinking about the baby shower I missed out on.

When I last met my fambly in Orlando in December, I worked the whole time.

Sure, I joined them for dinner twice, and spent a couple hours at the pool with them. But other than that, when they went to bed/awakened/came back from wherever, I was on my laptop working.

Maybe they just figured I’d be working the whole damn time up there anyway. Perhaps they didn’t want to inconvenience me by making me feel obligated to buy a plane ticket/hotel stay/gift just to attend a two-hour party in Pennsylvania.

I don’t know. I’ll never know. And what I do know is that they are too nice to say otherwise.

Maybe I should send them a thank-you card.

In shocking news, the little brats upstairs are killing each other and dragging furniture across the floor, and Thundercunt is hollering. 

I got to thinking Hitler would have thrown parties in the Jews’ honor if he met these jagoffs. Can’t wait till they all meet in hell. His true punishment will be having my neighbors in the concentric circle above him. 

Now to witness karma biting the ass of the realtor who lived here who duped me into taking this dump …

My BFF from up north texted me that her mom had a surprise baby shower today. 

I have the biggest pile of gifts here for her. I’ve been waiting for this day. And yet here I am. 

She said her mom sent me an invitation twice and it got sent back both times. 

I wanted to be there. I would have been there. It sure would have beaten sitting around here all day listening to Yo-Yo Morherfucker (i.e., Thundercunt) and Jesus Fucking Christ (i.e., Big Giant Pussy), christened accordingly after their favorite phrases, fighting for 16 solid hours till I had to leave. 

I can’t stop feeling sad. I wanted to be there. I was ready to be there. I’d give anything to be there. And I will always be there in any way I can. I’m just bummed that this world keeps turning and it’s like I’m not even a part of it anymore.  But I guess attending a shower won’t solve that. 

I thought briefly of when my friend Susan wanted me to be her kid’s godmother. I bought piles of gifts and sent them and was getting ready to go back home for the christening when I heard she picked someone else and had the christening early. 

I quit talking to her over that. Wouldn’t you?

Anyway this wasn’t even close. But this is my second “fambly” and it sucked missing out on such an important day. But I’m over the moon that she had a great day and sent photos like she has through every stage of her pregnancy. 

It’ll be ok. But I has a sad and I’m going to keep it for a little while longer. 

Psycho bitch upstairs has been hollering since 9 p.m.  It’s midnight and my buzz has worn off and my blood pressure is off the charts. 

On this somber day, intelligent people are reflecting and being grateful to be alive. Dis bitch be like, “Yo Yo Motherfucker” and Big Giant Pussy be all like, “Why you be like dis?” And then things and children go flying. 

Last week I was in a hotel. I’m trying to go back there in my head. But after being awakened by this ‘ho dropping glass shit on the bare floor over my bed the last two days, I don’t know how either of us is still alive right now. I really don’t. 

There was an amazing, amazing article in Washingtonian magazine, “9/10: The Day Before.” Read it. I can’t do it justice to describe it here.

I thought back to my 9/10. I probably have a diary entry about the day. But my journals are in storage. And frankly I don’t care if I ever read them again.

But I can say with near-certainty that I didn’t document the day. I had my three smoke breaks with my boys Doug and Andy at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Doug and I were still in that “getting to know you” phase and everything was fun and flirtation … that we were super-careful to keep away from the disapproving eyes of cranky supervisors.

I know I worked late, un-fucking up a grant proposal my little fuckup “wrote.” I got home around 11 p.m., knowing I had a 7:30 a.m. meeting with Ora Lee (her real name) and my CEO who loved to treat me like shit based on my skin color not matching hers.

Read: No real reason to wake up.

Dinner was at Fox’s Pizza Den that I could see from my bedroom window. I ate there a lot and it explains why I was morbidly obese at the time. I’m pretty sure I picked up some Moose Tracks ice cream from the CoGo’s downstairs. Planning for the weekend or, at least, for the next night of eating my feelings.

That was it. I ate that ice cream while I watched the wall-to-wall TV coverage the next night. And fought back the feeling that I was already dead. And wondered whether I were too dead to come back from it.

That’s my story. Not one worth telling in Washingtonian magazine. But probably one more people can identify with.

The thing about the 9/11 anniversary is that it’s a celebration, for the most part, of good triumphing over evil.

We lost too many lives. We lost way (and still too many) more of our military’s lives in the aftermath. We grieved and we feared and we prayed like we never prayed before.

And somehow, we got here.

Fourteen years ago, I was honestly wishing someone would drive a plane into the building I was in. Hated the job. The boss. The meeting I was in with community members I absolutely loathed.

But I loved my apartment on Mt. Washington and all the men in my life. I had great friends I could only see on the weekends (because, job). So, all hope wasn’t lost.

9/11 was probably the catalyst that sent me to D.C. like a young friend’s death catapulted my move to Florida.

Fourteen years later, I make twice as much money. I went from having never seen a beach, to living at one. I still work a lot of hours but I don’t have a tyrant throwing me shade at every available opportunity for being a different color than her. I still have plenty of gentlemen friends but they, like most of my BFFs, now live far, far away.

In any event, I generally feel like a fraud on 9/11 because of how badly I wanted off the earth’s axis when thousands of people were taken from us without that choice. But I think I’ve made the most of the extra time I’ve had. And while life isn’t what I thought it would be, it’s definitely mine to keep living the best way I can.

Tomorrow isn’t promised. But it’s implied. And that’s how we have to keep living, because not living that way made me feel like I was dying every day.