Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about the hundredth entry!

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"If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? What would you expect to see, eat, smell, hear, and feel?"

Yo yo party people...I'm taking a break from judging the official March round of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  to take part in Brother Nature 's and ElaineElaine 's event, which has us blogging from some kind of fantasy boat excursion. It's exciting for me because I get to write without completely being judged or having to worry that I'm clashing interests with competitors...I just hope we don't end up stranded on a deserted isle  .

With that in mind, I'm sorry if this isn't quite as interesting or fantastical as you might maybe expect from me...but I'd rather be going home to Buffalo right now than sitting here in Cortland wondering where else I might want to be on some magic getaway vacation. Normally, being that it's Easter Week and the weather's finally started to break, I'd be thinking about a trip to my mom's and chillin' with my brother and his people, but there's been a medical emergency in the family that has effectively put the kibosh on festivities. Mom had to have her gall bladder removed and she'll be spending the rest of the week in the hospital, and I'm here powerless to do anything about it, which isn't a cool feeling. Things so far haven't gone as smoothly as expected, but I'm hoping this is the worst of things to come and she's well on her way to recovery. I can handle being alone for a holiday, but when you're three hours away from your family in a situation like this (without much you can do but wait for updates), it's hard. I don't think I would've been able to go home anyway this or next week, because as much as I tried not to schedule any appointments for anything, I wound up with both a doctor's visit and a meeting with social services regarding my own medical needs. Still, that doesn't make things any easier with my mom...she's had a rough 2015 so far, being socked with pneumonia after Christmas and now this. Hopefully she gets right soon and this will all be behind us; she's too young to be fallin' apart.

But anyway, let's play semi-pretend and see what I'd be doin' if everything were hunky-dory and I was able to get to the homeland, shall we? Can't talk about Buffalo without mentioning the food, so in addition to ma's home cookin' there'd definitely be some pizza and wings, and if I'm a good boy I might even get a trip to Mighty Taco   (I still have that gift card that Future Mrs. B gave me for Christmas that needs to turn into a beef, bean and cheese burrito, hot with sour cream and extra cheese, and a Nachos Deluxe with a Cherry Pepsi).

I'd also hang out at the Main Street Grille and maybe see a few friends from the days of way-back...if you get to Arcade, NY I definitely recommend having a meal there. They've got a really good fish fry, and the mashed potatoes are buttery excellence for real. Top notch. They have a Trivia Night during the week (we did pretty good the last time I was there for that), but I always seem to miss the nights when they have karaoke (which may or may not be a good thing, depending on which side of the mic you're on). But the coolest thing about Main Street is most everyone is friendly and welcoming, from the staff to the regulars to people like me (who just sits in the corner suckin' down Genny Cream Ale pints and speaks when spoken to, unless I hear something outrageous and feel the need to contribute my copper two cents). Maybe it's my age kickin' in, or it's the clientele, but I feel a lot more comfortable there than I did at bars I used to patronize often back in my "Today ends in Y, so where we goin'?" days.

I'd get the luxury also of sleepin' on ma's loveseat, which if you're a short mawfugga like me you know loveseats are great because you can sleep with your feet up and still feel cuddled by the back. I can fall asleep watching SportsCenter, and it's still on when I wake up. The coffee's already made, and that brings me to a curious sidebar...

I love coffee, but I hate making it. It seems like every friggin' coffeemaker is different, and there's no set hard and fast rule to making coffee, like use x-amount of water and x-scoops of grounds...and that's just the basic ones. My ex and I had this more advanced one with a timer and shit, so the coffee would be ready by the time we woke up, as long as she made it. Everything had to be just right though...the filter basket had to be aligned perfectly in its spot like all the planets on your luckiest of days, which meant on the few days that I had to set up the machine, coffee wound up all over the counter. If that ain't the precursor to a shitty day, being set back by the one thing in charge of getting you goin' for the day, I don't know what else is...like you're in the last throes of a stellar dream, and then you're snapped awake by liquid brown crap all over the place that you don't have time to clean up and rebrew if you also want to take a shower and manage some form of presentability for your workday. And brewing coffee at someone else's house is like trying to learn a new language overnight. Maybe you've mastered your own pot, and know that if you fill the water to a certain line and use a calculated formula of scoops you'll get a desirable outcome, but that method doesn't always translate to a newfangled device, and you either wind up with gritty mud or excess puddle runoff. A different coffeemaker is a crapshoot. Seriously, they should put a lever on those things like slot machines...yank it and you might get the pot of gold coffee, or you might get lemons and a thank-you-but-no-thanks.

Anyway, yeah...then I can go on the back deck, have a smoke, and enjoy the outside world from a semi-secluded spot. And I'm not astrologically inclined at all by any means, but I swear I've been able to see both the Big and Little Dippers from looking up at the sky at a certain point from the back deck at night in the fall and winter (and maybe in the spring too if I remember to look).

But most importantly, I'm home. There's a comfort in that that I can't really describe. It's weird, but a good weird. Can't wait to be back. If you read this ma (y'all know she does from time to time, and fills in gaps for me occasionally afterwards via Facebook messages), get well soon so we can get together again...even if it's just to take care of you while watching old shows on TV while you sit and crochet. It's all good.

" You are trapped and have to live in your favorite TV comedy show. Which one do you choose to live in? I know, I'm hopeless!"

C'mon Princess Megan Rose GOT Fox , you're not hopeless! You're normal...a lot of people get sucked in to their favorite shows and often wonder how they'd fit in if they were given the opportunity to chop it up with fictional characters! It's completely ok...even if people like me who don't watch a shit-ton of television might mock you for falling in love with a scripted person who might turn on you and break your heart by Season 3, Episode 6.

I'll admit I've been watching a few new shows lately, but only as I'm going to sleep. I won't allow myself to spend the waking, mostly-functional hours on that when I can be reading or learning something I may not have known (thank you, internet). The drawback to watching shows on Hulu in my situation is that when I wake up I don't always remember the outcome, because taking certain meds to induce sleep can make you do funny things (but that's a story for another time, and if you're familiar with me y'all already knew that).

So rather than talk about any new television series that I might be a fan of, I'll go to my old stand-by: Arrested Development  .

I've written about this show so many times that I don't even know what to add about it anymore. I'm seriously considering reupping my long-lapsed Netflix account just so I can watch the last season again once I get my tax return and get my laptop fixed, because Hulu if I recall doesn't have much in the way of AD and I only have seasons 2 & 3 on DVD (which are impossible to watch without a tv and/or a working laptop).

But if I were in the show? Wow...I don't know. Great writing, great cast...it'd be a humbling experience at first, until I earned some respect with a breakout kind of role. Creeper Fantasy Alert!!: Maybe I'd be one of Maeby's teachers, that she has a crush on and winds up in some weird inappropriate mutual-admiration thing, but has to meet her mom (Lindsay) and that develops into a real thing that drives a wedge between her and Tobias...until I hang out with Michael, who unknowingly talks shit about his twin sister (again, Lindsay, played by the absolutely gorgeous Portia de Rossi), and GOB somehow cockblocks me from his own sister, so I try to hook up with Michael's girlfriend/Mr. F (the British "Mentally Retarded Female") played by the even more beautiful Charlize Theron, and then it becomes a messy situation where I get awkwardly mangled in an accident involving Buster and his hook-for-a-hand trying to save him maybe from Lucille, or a loose seal. Maybe a 3-5 episode arc at best.

And this sounds entirely like the literary genre I have pretty much the least respect for: Fan Fiction. I don't like it at all. It grosses me out. I get creative writing, I understand the purposes, but gawd...it's like seeing someone else's fuck stains and then trying to sleep on the same bed. I'd rather pay homage in my own way, or make inside jokes referencing different situations, than trying to write myself into someone else's concrete slabs of ideas. Get me in on the ground floor, because the elevator is too shaky and it might not land where you want it to if that's the route you want me to go.

"Happy April Fools Day! Happy National Poetry Month! In honor of April Fools Day and National Poetry Month write an April Fools poem or song. Have fun and be creative."

Word. Look, my days of bein' a gangster, a prankster, and the king of the ave   are pretty much over...I'm not a kid anymore; I can't blame shit on youthful exuberance so easily without the punishment fitting the crime, and me pulling anything off now for enjoyment purposes would definitely attract the attention of law enforcement personnel. That's something I don't need in my life going forward. And it's a shitty line to balance, because I love prankin' and bein' funny, but I'm also the biggest baby and if you pull a gag on me like I can pull one, Imma bitch like you ain't never heard crybaby angst before. Fool me? Better get your vocabulary ready to add some new terms to it.

I used to look forward to April Fools Day. Then I dated a girl when I was 16- Catholic school cheerleader, of all types- and we had a mutual losing of the virginities a few days prior to 4/1. She kept the condom wrapper as, I dunno, a token remembrance of the event, I guess. She called me after school, and presented this whole story about how her mom found the wrapper and it was terrible and the world was ending and blah blah blah, and I didn't know what to do. I tried to be reassuring in our teenage love, vowing to get through this, hiding the fact that I might never be able to face her cool-ass parents again, and then APRIL FOOLS!! So fuck that...and she was like "I was gonna tell you I was pregnant, but that wouldn't have worked" or something along those lines. That shook me from pranksterism for awhile.

That's not to say I don't enjoy a good "haha gotchya" scenario, because I do under the right circumstances. I just don't have a poem at the ready for it...I know in reference to said St. Mary's Cheerleader I once wrote a 16-year-old paeon in name only titled something like "How Many Times Have I Told You You're Wrong", but I'm sure that's not the exact title and I was just starting out writing poems in my bedroom, plus I'm too lazy to dig it out of the archival tub it's buried in. We broke up at my junior prom because she was having serious heart surgery soon/dating a dickwad classmate behind my back while I was attending parties solo with "loose women", for lack of a better term, and it got back to her. I'll save "The Plunger" story for another time, as it's not appropriate right now. That's neither here nor there. The point is 4/1 can suck for a lot of people if you don't play it right, and it's a tricky line between what's good for you and what's acceptable for others. Don't play the cards you don't have if others aren't in on the deal.

I don't know what else to say about this song that I haven't already said. It's my go-to 4/1 jam. I didn't care back when this song came out that Rufus Wainwright was gay; I cared that this song made me smile when it came on during my workday in a place where employees curated the in-house music via Napster, or that I could come home and watch this video on MTV2 and enjoy it for the fuck of it, with no pretenses perpetrated by established or casual media. You can just like a song because it's a cool song with a fun video that makes you think a little. It doesn't make me gay, just like eating fruit doesn't make me a farmer or liking jerks makes me a jerk-off.

"Oh, what a shame that your pockets did bleed on St. Valentine's
And you sat in a chair thinking "Boy, I'm such a prince!"
Well, life's a train that goes from February on
Day by day but it's making a stop on April first."
Lyrics.  

Straight up...I hate this Indiana bullshit. "Let's conveniently legislate all the homos outta here, so our businesses can remain religious-right friendly." Fuuuuuck that. I'm not religious, but Jesus didn't die just so certain believers could hate on dudes who intimately love dudes and chicks who love chicks. The son of God wasn't exclusionary. He chilled with prostitutes and the sickest of the sick. And now the middle-American teetotalors want to co-opt Him by saying fags and dykes aren't welcome in certain businesses? Rarely do I get accusational, but you hypocritical shitbags are completely trying to undo your freedoms while attempting to exact your religious control.

So, my doctor suggested I start keeping a journal (that was a few weeks ago). I didn't have the frame of mind to tell him that I keep a blog or run a blogging competition, as the appointment was at 8:30am and I'm never coherent that early anymore. I mentioned it to my therapist, and he couldn't remember if it was the first time I'd told him that I blogged or not (I might talk a lot of shit about him, but I can't remember either if I told him, but I thought I did). The "fine line" is my question. While writing is pretty much the one thing I have left that makes me unequivocally happy, I don't get insanely personal while doing it. Sure, I divulge personal information, but not to the level of feelings that a therapist requires...I'm pretty sure y'all wouldn't think I was on antidepressants unless I told you. And maybe I've ranted about some things, but how do I know the difference between "that's just Norb and how he is" and "Norb's slowly becoming batshit psycho"? I'm definitely a lot more withdrawn than I was five or ten years ago, and even then I was verging on "hermit" status. I care about things even less now, and I have less to care about...but I still feel like I'm a caring person for the most part (as long as it doesn't piss me off first, whatever "it" is). I guess the existential question I'm asking is, "Do I bother to share this with my doctor and therapist?", knowing it doesn't provide much insight? I mean, for all I know, you fine people reading this might think I'm pleasant and/or joyful and/or well in place, but there's a shift once I hit "Save Entry" that isn't seen. And thuthishly, I don't know how else to write...this is one hundred percent all me, and I'm accustomed to it. Were I to physically write this, it'd be terrible because I'd get bored and my hand would cramp hard and my handwriting isn't as neat as it was before I was diagnosed with the institutionalized crazies. I have a couple of notebooks I could consider "journals" that reside in my collection of poetry, but I haven't looked at them in years and the thought of doing so scares the everlovin' outta me because I know how I was back then. I don't know. Like I said, I wasn't in a place upstairs to ask my doctor when he suggested it. I see him again next week, and I'll be able to clarify hopefully. I just hate that he keeps referring to me as a "young guy"...we're about the same age, and for fuck's sake I don't feel very young anymore.

I have actually written some quote-unquote poetry recently (just to recalibrate my sanity) that I'm sorta pleased with...maybe if I can clear a little room in my port (I'm nuzzlin' up against the edges of limitry) I'll update. It's not as depressing as I thought it was (but that's just my sensors...you might feel differently). I keep meaning to read Charlie ~ 's "Invalid Item" , because I'm sure it's crazy good and well beyond my best stuff. Then again, what do I know?

Yeah, it's the 100th entry in "Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am" . Sweet. Not any further along than the last incarnations. Guess I better keep workin' on that.

Welp, I guess I'm done now with the whole "holdin' my tongue" thing...at least for another day or so. Peace, all that it's supposed to be, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!