Caterwauling

Back on 9/11 (yes THAT day), my CEO called a moment of silence during a particularly terse meeting. (They were all terse, to be fair. Ask me why I refuse to speak in meetings. Go ahead, ask.)

I was so, so grateful for that moment. We needed it even without the terrorism. But it really did help bring us back to our right minds. 

Last week, I was tweeting with one of my famous friends that no one calls a moment of silence anymore, it seems. It’s like we go from tragedy to tragedy without a break. I don’t mean in my world — I mean in general. 

We cannot collect our collective shit before the next batch hits the solar-powered fan, you know?

I think about that crazy CEO. All but two people have run screaming from her clutches. Out of some 150. I wonder if she’s still masterful at administrating beatings and then being classy for outsiders to see. 

I wonder if she still pauses to let people regroup when crazy shit happens nationally but makes them endure excoriations with nary a break … Until she found someone else to pick on. 

Anyway. I’m heartsick today and thinking of her is only intensifying my headache. But I wonder if someone like me is being impressed with her good leadership moments and will take them with her wherever she goes … Just like I did. 

I get a lot wrong. But so did everyone else. And we all have a lot of screw-ups left in us. Let’s just hope we can live to lead another day … And in a better way. 

I will stop feeding the wildlife after people start controlling their unleashed, shit-filled, nonstop-barking beasts. 

After all, their sign is first …

I feel like I need to write that on a blackboard as many times as it will fit.

I know I need to be manager-ly or whatever it is. But I am really really emotional about something this afternoon, and I really really want to explore the epiphany that it’s bringing about.

But Buttercup will suck it up.

After all, I get to live and work another day. And that’s really what the bottom line is to every “cool story, bro” moment there is in life. Did you live? Can you pay your bills? Awesome. Now zip it.

Consider it zipped.

Confession: I feed the animals after dark. 

After last year’s events where Shady Melissa threatened me and stalked me and eventually reported me for feeding ducks, I’ve hidden in the house. 

But awhile ago I started feeding other ducks in our massive compound. And of course everywhere else I go. 

Recently there’s been a duck who could fly to the second floor. Trying to get our attention. He’d go to the apartment just below and wait. 

So I would sneak down and feed him when night fell. 

As it turns out, he is a she. And she was pregnant with 11 ducklings. 

Well naturally no one can control or leash their dogs here. So I quickly went from feeding 12 to 5. Mom has been in hysterics, texting me each day that she was down to 10, then 9, then 7. Now it’s four. 

So I’ve been leaving food under a tree for them every night around 11:15 pm. Every morning, they swim over to our side of the lake to eat. 

We also have two turtles who come to the buffet. (I put out a ton of food — three kinds.) and other birds. And lizards. 

It’s better than the Palm Beach Zoo. Although I suspect your bum after dinner at Chipotle is more entertaining than that tourist trap. 

Here are some of my friends … 

(Mr. Lizard, momma duck and the tortuga twins)

I am afraid momma duck may not come back now that her secret spot under the bushes has been discovered. 

Plus the awful dog owners congregate here. They smoke cigars and drink beer and gossip about us residents loudly. Terrorist plays his music on 11 in addition to building bombs. Dogs run around pooping with reckless abandon. They attack ducks while these illiterates proclaim their superiority like it’s the RNC in Cleveland. 

Anyway. I know these clowns would attack me since they are allowed to break the law and no one else is. So sometimes I have to take detours and try three or four times before the coast is clear. 

But it’s worth it when mom wakes up after a miserable night under Islamic Caitlyn Jenner and sees her menagerie. 

It’s Christmas morning every day till the lazy fucks wake up and walk their loudmouth mutts. 

But it’s ok. I am making the best of my time here. Finally. 

Sleep tight, duckies …

Rather than focusing on the positive, and instead focusing on the not-negative, has been a good thing for me. Finally, something I can commit to!

Ran into a friend on the street yesterday. Was just in awe of how nice she was as she introduced me to a friend. She said she knew about me long before she met me. She paid me one compliment after the next. I said to the friend, “Isn’t she nice? That’s who I want to be when I grow up.”

Then she proceeded to tell me all these good things about the new person I was meeting. He was like uuh, I’m not that great. I said well now you know *I’m* not THAT great, either!

We all laughed. It was a very nice moment.

I meant what I said. That’s how and who I want to be. I want to always be the person who lifts people up rather than hurts them or drags them further down. And I want to only be surrounded by those types.

Rather than complaining, I’m making an honest attempt to just be grateful. Sure there are putzes in this world. But there are people like my friend, too.

There are people on the roads or in buildings you frequent who are a cherry tomato or 10 shy of a salad. But, you know. In the grand scheme of things, you really only have to eat a couple bites and leave the rest for someone else.

Then there’s the eternal internal battle to either be like everyone else, or be the opposite of everyone else. I think over the last year I’ve looked at how happy certain people were, and aspired (or the opposite, I guess, of that word) to be like them. But that doesn’t really agree with me fully.

I mean yes it’s good to relax and disconnect. I learned that and appreciate it now that I’ve experienced it. But you can’t be in “off” mode more than “on.” I can’t, anyway. It leads to nothing but crippling anxiety for me.

Yet I get it. I get it big-time.

A friend was typing recently that she wonders what people say about her when she’s not around. For me, I’m pretty sure people laugh at all my problems. Or at me. Which is why they are no longer going to be on display — here or anywhere else.

But as for that friend, I think of her often and very fondly. Which I let her know.

As I said, it’s not hard to make someone’s day. Especially when it’s the truth. And I think if we all spent a lot more time making people’s lives better rather than taking every opportunity to do the opposite, we wouldn’t have bloodshed and protests and hate and “presidential” (used loosely) candidates calling for RBG’s resignation because she dared say his candidacy is a farce.

I often say “ain’t that America,” as a hat-tip to my beloved John Cougar Mellencamp. But that ain’t an America I want to be in. So, I’ll do what I can to make my little corner better. I implore everyone reading this to do the same.

One of my religious friends who keeps having major tragedies happen often writes, “God is great. Every day.”

I find her to be the inspiring one. Not necessarily God. Although I think that’s the point. He inspires us through others who can and do walk in His footsteps.

In any event, I have a list of complaints a mile long today, dealing with the inept landlord at work. (Like I don’t get enough of THAT at home.)

I also have a list of dreams a mile long of things I want to achieve when the office isn’t hotter than Satan’s asshole.

But the whole “every day” thing struck me. It’s not just a Monday to dread, nor a day that puts a foot up the weekend’s ass all Red Foreman-style.

(It’s an asshole-themed day, for the observant among yinz.)

Look. I ate my veggies today. Did a good deed. Did my job. (Am still doing it.) Didn’t react with anything other than grace, no matter what got under my skin last night and today. (And believe me, there’s a whole layer waiting for me to acknowledge it, whether with wine or words.)

I’m choosing to kick ass. Preferably someone else’s. But a metaphorical one will do for now.

The Bible says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” That probably explains my acid reflux.

Of course, I quit taking folic acid in my daily B12 and that seemed to fix the problem.

I was in a foul mood yesterday. I know I took it out on mom. I get that way sometimes. Like, don’t make me breakfast and decorate my house and basically breathe in my general vicinity. Go fix you and let me worry about me for a while.

And then she gets super-sick yesterday, like she does pretty much every day, and I feel like an ass. Because my priorities are so screwed-up.

Right now, I’m so enraged over the apartment situation. I mean, a door is open — no lease no commitment, no nothing — and you’re supposed to walk through open doors.

Instead I’m voluntarily backing myself into a corner and paying more for the joy of leasing from assholes and living below a terrorist.

Since I can enable anyone, I’m perhaps enabling myself by saying at least I won’t be getting daily shitty texts from the Cunt Du Jour (which is how I listed her in my address book).

Now she’s saying she will never raise the rent again. The bitch of the day before her said the same. So there’s that.

But at least I have some “security” (ha ha) for now. Stability is probably a better word.

I have a list on my laptop that I made at New Year’s. My bukkit list for 2016-ish. (Am a procrastinator, after all.) Time to pick something else off the list to achieve.

I used to tell you to expect big things from me. Now I don’t know what to say. Maybe just don’t expect a lot of whining and complaining.

I have a shirt that has another bible quote on it, “Hope is the anchor of my soul.” If you see me in person, you may notice that I wear a lot of anchors via jewelry and T-shirts.

I don’t know what it is inside me that keeps me smiling sometimes. But if you see me wearing an anchor, you know those little touchstones might have something to do with it.

No, not that kind of nine months. Although mom did say it’s too bad I didn’t have kids since I love Kadie and most animals so much. 

(Hard to meet people in my life situation. Hard to meet people without wives or mental issues, or with good jobs, too. But I digress.)

Speaking of dicks, I’ve decided not to put my fights with the landlord, neighbors or myself in this space anymore. No need to let people into that part of my life. 

But I will say I am re-signing the lease under duress — through March 30 for $75 more a month. I negotiated it down from $100. Fucker needs to quit impregnating all his “business” partners. His babies need Gucci shoes, apparently. 

They tell me how I’m a favorite/beloved tenant. Funny way of showing it. 

This gives me nine months to get my shit together. To either give up on, or make it work in, South Florida. To either get promoted or get religion or get laid something else to get happy about. 

Tick tock …

The world needs a moment of silence, a time-out and/or a good spanking right now.

Stop the damn violence already.

Stop it with the police murdering law-abiding citizens.

Stop it with vigilantes taking white cops’ lives on purpose.

Stop it with the posting photos of your guns on social media and vowing to use them.

Stop it with letting terrorists and bad cops have access to those guns.

Stop it with giving people like me more punishment for only counting to three at a stop sign instead of five more punishment than those who take lives in cold blood.

Stop it with thinking things will organically get better. They haven’t, they aren’t and they won’t.

Say a prayer if you must. But if you think the same smiles of fortune from God that bless rich TV preachers will somehow keep bad people from killing good ones, well. Say one on my behalf too.

Love may very well be the answer. But how do you use it if you’ve never known it?

Everybody knows me at my local Starbucks. The morning crew, especially: the two Joshes, Shawn (female, since I don’t know any males who are that sweet or sane), Mary, Linda and the guy who won’t ever wear a name tag.

Shawn always greets me first. By name. Every time.

I never use anyone’s names. Chalk that up to working at Kaufmann’s through college and being required to call customers by name. It freaked most of them out.

[And I might or might not have borrowed Melissa’s name tag when we weren’t on the same shift, to conceal my own identity from time to time.]

Today Shawn called out “Hi Goddess!” even though she was on another register and Mary was helping me today.

And I said, “Hi Shawn!” back — but I totally stumbled saying her name.

Could be because that name is associated with people on par with Donald Trump’s heroes. (Saddam Hussein being the latest he’s lauding.) But it’s more that I don’t WANT people to know how much attention I pay.

It’s a theme through my life. I don’t want them to know what’s in my head. I don’t miss a trick. I really don’t. And if I do, I’m not telling. 🙂

I just wonder why, at age 42 now, I still can’t admit that I know exactly who you are and what’s going on and make you feel special, rather than just trying to fade into the crowd.

It also sort of bums me out that I can be treated like a rock star at Starbucks, but not by my shithead landlord and whichever bitch is sucking him off today, or anywhere else for that matter where I do think I outshine most.

But that’s an issue for another day, I suppose.

Anyway, I need to get better about showing how fabulous I am, rather than praying nobody calls on me during meetings or in line at my favorite coffee joint.