::
2016 5 November :: 12.49am
:: Mood: whoa, dude...
:: Music: the wallflowers
since last we met
yo. i'm still here.
I suppose a lot has happened in 2016 up to this point, and I should probably catch you up.
I didn't wind up getting that house. I did wind up getting out of my parents' basement. I was very fortunate to find an awesome roommate on craigslist. She owns her own home, and I rent the back bedroom. The price is right. We have fun. We eat food and watch tv and shit. I got super lucky to find this place, and appreciate that I get to live here. I didn't realize how much it bothered me living at dad's until I got out and felt this immense weight lifted off of my chest. That's not to say it's always sunshine and rainbows and shit here... but it's a lot better. I'm much more relaxed. More comfortable being myself. It took a few months being here to allow myself to ease into it. It's a good fit, for right now. It won't be forever, but it's nice to not be in a hurry to go anywhere. And she's not in a hurry to get me out of here, which is also nice.
I'm still single. Cold and alone, forever probably maybe. I still vascillate rapidly between deeply longing to be in a relationship and realizing that bachelorhood and freedom is actually pretty fucking rad. I mostly just want something warm to cuddle with. Maybe I should get a dog. I did do the 20-10-5 thing.
*spends half an hour looking for it*
... and now I can't remember what I did with it. I may have thrown it out. the big takeaway I can recall from it is that I'm shallower than I'd like to believe. I wanted to think that a sense of humor or intellectual stimulation would be the most important - and they were important, they definitely made the list of 20 (it was actually really hard to think of 20 things without being redundant) - but if you boil it down ... i have to be attracted to the person physically. have to. don't much care if anyone else thinks they're hot, but I damn well better think so. Otherwise there's no point to the rest of it. I wanted to think that I'm above all that physical superficiality, but apparently i'm not.
i have a "new" (year-old) lunchbag. it is gigantic and awesome. kathy got it for me. after all that bitching i did about her, she buys the best gifts. and i am an asshole. but the zipper works great
I still don't eat very healthy or exercise much. however i recently quit smoking tobacco. it's only been 11 days, so it's still a little premature to call it quits for good, officially, but this is the longest stretch of time i've gone without nicotine in my bloodstream in 10 years. it's kind of a big deal.
also, i bought myself a drum set:
I've been banging on that thing quite a bit lately.
like - all the freaking time. which is awesome.
i also built a drum. it's purdy:
It's at dad's house. I gave it to him because i wasn't crazy about how it sounded, and he didn't have a wood snare. he likes it, so i'm glad it worked out and found a good home. i probably would've warmed up to it over time. it didn't sound bad ... just not how i expected/hoped.
prior to that, i built a bookshelf and a nightstand for my bedroom. they turned out well. oak plywood is fucking expensive as balls. but it looks nice, and is rock solid. glued and screwed together. sanded and polyurethaned. should last a good long while. not perfect, but suitable for my needs.
I did wind up getting that 'promotion' at work. so now i have my own office, a company phone, and a slight (very slight) pay increase. it's a lot more responsibility - i'm running quality control for our entire plant - but it's not terrible all the time. i show up, do stuff, go home, and at the end of the week they deposit money in my bank account. it's a thing.
the basement audio lab has been put on hiatus for the time being. the other guys got busy with life and work and stuff and were unable to commit the time and energy they felt was necessary to continue the project. i can respect that they didn't want to half-ass it. and if things slow down, we'll pick it back up again.
in the meantime, i'm starting on a new project with different people. we will see what happens, but at least i'm still playing. there wasn't even that much down time, and i didn't have to go out looking for something, it came to me. so hopefully that's an indication that i'm supposed to be doing it. we don't have anything online yet.
Here's where the basement audio lab left off, if you'd like to hear what things sounded like right before we hit pause:
Today marks one month since the accident. I am finally feeling relief after going to the chiropractor. I am still recovering though. Occasionally I have brain fog, or things get fuzzy and I have a hard time focusing. Everyday I am even more grateful that my baby was unharmed in the accident. Last week was the first time that she had even asked questions about the accident. I knew it was going to happen, and I didn't press her after the accident because I was waiting for her to be ready. After the accident she asked what happened one time. And it was literally the first thing out of her mouth after we stopped. From that point on, all she would say was "I hate that lady's car for hitting us. She's a bad driver. I hate her driving". I would always reassure her that the only thing that mattered was that we were okay. I have been trying hard to not harbor anger over the whole ordeal. I am pissed that she wrecked my car. I am pissed that I am still recovering. But the fact that even after all that, my child is okay, makes me not want to hang onto those feelings of anger or hatred. Reagan could have been killed, or severely injured. She could have had cuts ALL over her body from all the glass. She could have been covered in glass, but for some reason she wasn't.
they want to do all original stuff, so gigging is a possibility in the as yet very distant future. it takes a long time to produce enough original material to fill 4 sets. but the upshot is, i get to make up all my parts from scratch. which is awesome.
honestly it just feels good to play again. especially with solid musicians who have been doing it for awhile.
so it's a total bummer that i can't play right now because of my knee. the recovery is going to be long. but hopefully the payoff is worth it. 30 years ago they would have handed me a cane and said, "enjoy this for the rest of your life," so i guess i shouldn't complain.
in other news, it was exactly one year ago from this very moment that i took my last drink of alcohol. i'm celebrating tomorrow, from the couch. i'll be going to the speaker at calvary tomorrow night, but i think i might wait until home group on tuesday to get my chip. i don't know, we'll see.
on the one hand, it's hard to believe it's been a year already. on the other, it feels like a year is a long fucking time, and a lot has certainly changed - mostly for the better. i guess the pit i was in wasn't exactly difficult to improve upon. geographically, however, tahoe is far superior to grand rapids. the city is convenient. i still really miss the mountains, though. they spoke to my soul in a way that i never would have imagined, and now that they're gone, i can sense that something is missing.
oh well. god has a plan, and it's probably smart of him to not let me in on all the details, lest i get ahead of myself and spoil it for everyone. i'm good at that. so, i just ask him to keep feeding it to me in chunks small enough that i'm not as likely to choke on them.
going in for knee surgery on wednesday. i'm intermittently anxious about it. i know that a lot of it is out of my hands. i just need to make sure that i'm doing what needs to be done on my end of the bargain, and let the rest of the chips fall where they may. because it doesn't do anybody any good to freak out about things that i have no control over anyway. just do the best i can with the things that are in my control, which are relatively few.
also, i've started getting into fancy sodas now. i realize it's kind of bullshit for me to pick up a new enthusiasm every time i turn around, but it's something i enjoy doing. i like finding things to be enthusiastic about. it's a lot healthier than moping. and sure, i can see how in a way it seems dangerously close to being a craft beer enthusiast. but that was something i always liked doing. it was the least 'alcoholic' drinking i ever did. drinking just to get drunk, you look for anything that gets the job done. sampling things to find flavors you like is a very different undertaking. it was fun looking for different beers and wines to try. why not sodas? i used to look at the labels to find the highest alcohol content. now i look at them to make sure there isn't any. it doesn't seem to me to be any sort of 'trigger' (i despise that term, but it has its uses). but this disease is subtle and cunning, so i guess i'll just be watchful. as long as i'm honest about it, and there doesn't seem to be a problem, then there probably isn't one.
so i got one of these at the orlando airport:
i'm really trying to find something like it that i can get around here, because i thought it was super tasty. the molasses comes on strong, so i wasn't a fan at first, but the malt aftertaste was awesome.
also, there's this high-schooly thing going around the internets where you spell your name with band names. i'm putting it here, because i don't like putting stupid crap on my facebook. so, thank you woohu, for being my perennial repository for stupid crap.
Cake
Head East
Radiohead
Incubus
Spoon
Toad the Wet Sprocket
Old Crow Medicine Show
Pink Floyd
Heart
Elbow
Rush
OK, so, today was alright. Which is fantastic because the past week has been very depressing.
I genuinely smiled/laughed at a couple things today. I didn't have the overwhelming feeling of awful gross all day, which again, was pretty sweet.
Tomorrow my dad is having surgery on his neck in GR.
Apparently he has some sort of hereditary spinal degeneration something-or-other that my grandma also had.
So I can look forward to that coming down the pipeline eventually.
The surgeons with be removing a vertebrae from my fathers neck and fusing the remaining vertebrae together. Its a three hour surgery that requires an overnight stay.
I'm nervous because in my eyes, my big, heroic, invincible father will be going under the knife.
I'm going to be thirty in a couple years, my dads heath is staring to deteriorate and how the fuck did we get here.
Its really alright. I just am jolted sometimes when time slaps me in the face.
So I'm going to the hospital to be there for my dad. I'm also going to be there for my mom, who needs emotional support since it will be in the same hospital my grandpa lost his battle to cancer just over a year ago.
I've been pretty shut-in the past couple of months and spending the next couple days with my emotional, concerned and neurotic mother is not something I am particularly looking forward to.
But.it.must.be.done.
I just hope the surgery is 100% successful and that my mother and I can play cool.
