Caterwauling

“To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.” — Allen Ginsberg

I was talking to an old friend over some wine last night. We never really gossip but we were conjuring up a memory of some guy who used to work for our friend Bernie. 

A worker overheard us. Stopped everything she was doing, flounced over to us and declared she is Bernie’s BIGGEST fan and she will NOT have us disrespecting him. 

I had been chanting Bernie’s name in a cheer. How’s that disrespectful?

We both had puzzled looks on our faces. She kept going, “I tell everyone I am voting for him. I don’t care who wants to know.”

I said, “Not your Bernie.” And went back to my booze. My friend engaged her in political talk since he saw Bernie in person and had stories to thrill her with. 

And while a part of me wanted to do what I did at the Hillary for America event and tell people to just vote Democratic, because we have a chance to not vote in bums, I didn’t. 

Normally I’d be happy to see someone keeping Cruzio out of office. But man, it’s feeling very Washingtonian in Florida these days. I miss it most days but other days, let me drink in peace, ok?

I did not post this online. But I might as well have. 

  
Other than my super-early-start Mondays, I start at a more reasonable time than I ever did. If not for “the 8:30” I would start later. 

And while I hang till the work is done without complaint, if I can boogie by 6, I run like my life depends on it. 

I notice some folks like to catch up late in the day. I never minded because that’s my functional time too. But it’s not optimally functional when I’m scrambling to finish or have plans (or both).

So, this wasn’t my post. But it could have been. 

Happy hour ends at 7, which I never knew since I never got there that early! Or at all, let’s face it …  

But half-price wine tastes twice as good!

You might as well watch a “Real Housewives” marathon instead is trying to work because your computer freezes every time you touch it. Gotta love when you can’t reply to an email because your screen has been white for 10 minutes after trying to open said email. 

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to fund a brokerage account. 

Now, I have accounts everywhere. TD. Option Monster. Scottrade. Options House. Trading Block. 

There isn’t a platform I haven’t tried. But I never put a dime to work. 

Until yesterday. 

I signed up for a Robinhood account the day they started taking sign ups. Months later, they let me in. 

I’ve been hesitant because they don’t allow you to trade options and it’s not like I have a lot of cash to invest. 

But the siren song of “commission free” captured my interest. (Harkening back to Zecco’s era.) And I bought five shares of an ETF with my measly $200. 

I got lucky and bought during yesterday morning’s dip, long before yesterday’s late-afternoon surge. 

And even though China was down overnight and oil is also down, U.S. stocks went up. I don’t get it but it’s nice seeing an extra dollar in my tiny account. 

What I love about the app is you can see your real-time gains and losses. Which, it’s hard NOT to log in and look constantly. 

It’s also hard to not be able to back up the truck and buy more. Seriously, Robinhood. Give a girl an options chain, OK?

Why have I waited so long to do this? Because, work. The same excuse I use for everything. This time because I have to turn over all my trades to Legal. There ain’t no privacy here, yo. 

I don’t argue with the booklet of rules. I just don’t want to get tossed if I somehow accidentally don’t comply with them. Because, I have enough stress in my life, thanks. 

But this is cool. And the dollar I’ve made so far is more than that shitpile of a 401(k) plan has given me in the past six months. 

To be continued, I hope!

I’ve been contemplating the “Yelp thing,” as I call it. The one where the now-ex-employee posted the open letter to the CEO about being too broke to eat. 

I did that with this very blog a hundred years ago. Anonymously (or so I thought) but I didn’t post any identifying information. Everyone had a nickname. Everyone has their story that I tried to spin humorously. The ridiculousness of the serious stuff, I thought, provided humor enough. 

If I could go back in time, I would want to NOT have this blog just to have been able to not have it on my conscience. 

I would also like to go back in time to another job that I quit in a hurry. Even though it was right for me. I could and should have handled it better. 

You can burn all the bridges that you know you’ll never have to cross again. But you do end up having to swim under them. It would be nice to have the option to stay dry. 

In any event, I sympathize with the Yelp-er because I remember not making enough to afford my half of the rent, food and student loans. I remember making insane commutes (plural, to myriad jobs) because living close by would have cost a fortune (although what I spent on gas …). I remember pitching my case that I worked hard and was good and deserved an investment in me. 

It might not have come out that eloquently. And I learned not to ask even when I knew I earned it. I just bided my time till promotions and, eventually, more lucrative opportunities arose. 

I hope the Yelp-er comes to my own realizations sooner rather than later. I don’t know how hard/much she worked. And at $8.15 an hour, she out-earned me for the bulk of my career. 

But yeah if she was great and still starving, that hunger can go one of a few ways. Like not giving a shit. Or using the meager food allowance for booze. Or moving up/out. 

I’m sorry that places fire people rather than saving them. Especially when what really needs to be fixed is what ends up deciding your fate not just for that patch of your career, but how deep the scars will run when it’s long since been left behind you. 

My grandfather would have been 90 today. 

I hear of people staying home with the sniffles or a tummy ache.  But I somehow have to lug my heavy heart around like it’s a normal day. 

Of course, even “normal” days aren’t, well, normal. 

But. You know. Everyone else keep taking care of yourselves while I, 10 years later, am still sucking it up and trying not to fall apart. 

Time to not have everyone else’s days off on my calendar and none of my own. 

It was a snow moon last night. As usual, my phone fails to capture its magnificence. But here was my rooftop view, with the ocean serving as a hidden horizon.

My good friend just lost her mom. My soul is aching and all I want to do is curl up under my desk with the lost pumpkin seeds and dried-up kale chips and just cry for the next eight hours.

Which, you know. Like usual.

A slow hurt.. and it breaks us..
And so down,
Down, down and so plain
So down
When you play some more it seems so
And my friends are past this game
Of breakdowns
And our friends that are lost at sea..
Throw down
And I’ll break the wasted space

— Glen Hansard, “The Moon”

It was much the same situation. No healthcare … then a terrible diagnosis … then a bureaucratic boondoggle that prevented her last days from being productive (or at least pain-controlled) … then, today.

In other words, something I face each and every day. That I’ve endured with countless relatives who came before us too.

And fuck everyone who comes up with their shitty “in a better place” refrain and “the pain ended.”

No, the pain DOESN’T end.

The pain lives as long as we do. Maybe even longer, since I am convinced it attaches itself to the walls and floors and ceilings. It stays with articles of clothing and jewelry.

Once I bought a ring from a lady who looked down on her luck. Gave her a $20 for a sterling band with a big sparkly red Austrian crystal heart.

I swear, I never had a good day as long as I owned it.

I didn’t even have to wear it — it sat in my desk drawer and work was an absolute nightmare that year. The day I threw out the ring, and all the sadness it seemed to carry, things improved.

So, yeah. I take with me this woman I never met, but whom I seemed to know like my own mom.

I take her yearning for travel and her longing for the love of her life who preceded her to the other side.

I think of her frame wasting away and I think of how many millions of times I have begged, prayed and pleaded with the universe to help me make my body smaller.

Her illness/descent reminds me of everyone I was ever related to who was sick for a long time, but the moment they sought treatment, things came to an abrupt end.

So is there relief in that? Maybe. To the extent that your life was “only” uprooted for X number of days/weeks/months while they were hanging on. But then to go back to a world that COMPLETELY CHANGED … how do you do that?

There’s a line in the movie “Anywhere But Here” where Natalie Portman’s character says of her mom Susan Sarandon that the world will be flat without her. I say that to my mom all the time. But I’ve since revised it to tease her about the dent in my couch where she sits when she has her dizzy spells.

Now I say the world won’t be flat. It will always have her little dent in it. And in that, I think we both find some humor if not comfort. But I know it won’t be enough when the day comes that it’s all I have left.

I’m sorry, to my beautiful friend, that your world caved in today.

There’s a Hillary event on Grampy’s birthday this week. I think he would love it if I went. Voting together was our thing. 

It’s been 10 years that he’s been gone and I still can’t believe it. 

Took mom to his favorite restaurant yesterday. Unfortunately the closest one is in Port St. Lucie and it sucks every year that we go. 

Of course, the last time I made plans on a weeknight, I lost more than $70 because of the usual. 

Got to thinking about all the times mom and Grampy would drive two hours each way to meet me in Breezewood, Pa., for lunch every now and then. At that same restaurant. 

It was always so good, the visit and the food. I loved seeing them without me having to drive all the way to Pittsburgh from Alexandria or Rockville for a too-short weekend. 

Mom reminded me how Grampy used to sneak away to smoke and watch the cows. I usually stayed with mom. 

Even though I was a smoker, I knew it triggered her allergies so I didn’t do it. And I lectured him about it. 

What I wouldn’t give to have 10 minutes back, to spend with him over a smoke and a Starbucks out in the fields …

Found a new mechanic. He’s honest. Like brutally honest. Like, telling me about the $800 repair I need and saying the car isn’t even worth that much so let’s hold off as long as we can. 

See, I knew hitting resistance at my usual place meant to find somewhere better. He’s funny. And sarcastic. And from Pennsylvania and then Virginia.  It’s just like meeting myself. 

The place is in my current town that I’m so eager to leave. I can’t believe I finally found a redeeming quality for it. 

I might have found a redeeming quality for my apartment too. Some guy came out screaming at the door upstairs. He said the asshole in there is an “amateur” and he makes too goddamn much noise. 

Try living under him and THEN let’s talk about who could possibly have it worse. 

But I’ll tell ya. Punk ass didn’t open his door but I slept the last two nights with minimal interruptions. 

I have a copy of “Go the Fuck to Sleep” for that twit. I’m going to hang onto it for a little while longer. But I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who wants him to go quietly fly a kite.