the ignorant warmth

getting outta here for a couple of days.

stay classy while I’m gone.

i’m having a somewhat normal friday night. then all of a sudden, someone will say something that triggers the reality. or the reality just pushes itself into the forefront of my brain. fuck this friday night. the reality. i can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

I just told an old high school friend via facebook to “calm the fuck down”. 

I normally don’t respond to crazy tea-party emails or screams of socialism or cries of Obama is un-American. But someone commented on his status update with dangerous hate speech. And that pisses me off. And I’m already having a pretty shitty day, so.

As for the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, my (very quick and possibly incorrect) research shows President Reagan didn’t attend twice. George H.W. Bush NEVER went once. Clinton went all 8 years. George W. Bush didn’t go in 2001 or 2002.

Obama will be at the Lincoln National Cemetery outside Chicago on Memorial Day. So it’s not like he’s “skipping” Memorial Day. He’s marking the occasion and pausing to remember our fallen soldiers at another national military cemetery.

So like I said before, calm the fuck down.

That’s all I got.

and then I get a phone call from somebody at a company that has a job opening I applied to and they want to have a phone interview RIGHT NOW. I can’t focus on anything other than the wife, yet here I am trying to sell myself and describe a moment that I am most proud of, professionally. 

I guess I passed, though. Because I have an in-person interview next Friday. Should be interesting. I gotta get it, man. We’re gonna need the insurance.

Dammit.

It’s amazing how one can go from perfectly healthy to perfectly sick. One week ago, she was perfectly healthy. Now she is not. Well, she seems healthy. She’s not ill. She has no symptoms of anything. But the doctors said she’s sick. So she’s sick.

It surprised the fuck out of us. Never were we expecting that there would be anything that could stop us from carrying out our plans and living the future we had envisioned. But maybe we spent too much time planning instead of doing. Now it might be too late to have the future we wanted. 

Everything that we saw when when we closed our eyes at night will probably not happen in the way we imagined. And that’s a big fucking shock. I mean, it’s not like we knew something was wrong and were expecting to hear bad news. No. This was the doctor calling us into an office and saying the “C” word. Repeatedly. Making sure we understood. 

Then we went to a different doctor. He said the “C” word again, but somehow made it worse. Because he added a different word that I hadn’t already googled or webMD’ed. Maybe doctors are supposed to be all matter-of-fact and worse-case-scenario. I don’t know. I don’t spend a lot of time with them. But he didn’t sugarcoat anything. According to him, we need to act fast. Very fast.

You know what really fucking sucks? She’s 26. This isn’t supposed to happen to 26 year olds. You know who was in the oncologist’s waiting room with us? Old ladies. My wife is twentyfuckingsix. I don’t understand why this is happening to her, and if you know my wife, you know that her entire existence is dedicated to children. She teaches, she babysits, she nannys. She has a natural gift. This isn’t fair. It really isn’t. I think they got it wrong. Maybe they switched her slides with an old lady’s and they’re looking at the wrong ones. 

I should be the one who gets sick. I’m the one who is unhealthy. I’m the one who smoked like a chimney for 11 years. I’m the one who eats fried food and drinks. I do the bad things. She doesn’t. 

I just want to fix it. But I can’t. I don’t know what to do. And it’s killing me.

In a few hours, we’ll (hopefully) know what EXACTLY is going on and the best course of action. We are scared. Very scared. But trying to stay as positive as we can.

If you say prayers, include us in them. If you talk to the universe, mention us. If you speak to something on a higher spiritual plane, let them know that we could use a little good fortune. Or just send good vibes our way. Every little bit helps, right? Thanks.

Have you ever seen a grown man scream like a little girl and run away from something with high-knees and flailing arms, dropping his iPod in the lake before hiding behind a tree? 

No?

Then you’ve never seen me being attacked by a goose.

but ever since the finale aired, it’s almost like I’VE been in an alt universe/flash-sideways.

The events of the past couple of days seem too farfetched to be real. 

And then I intentionally ran over a guy in a wheelchair.

Okay, that was a joke.

If I end up in a church with all my closest friends, though, I’ma freak out.

So last night I wrote that little post on my iPhone. I hit the publish button and went to bed. I totally forgot that the the Tumblr app automatically sends my posts to Twitter unless I go into the advanced settings and turn it off. My intention was to vent here on Tumblr - a place where I don’t really know most of you in real life - without having to deal with talking to people I actually know. It was nice having this little tumblr sanctuary where I could swear and post stupid memes. But my secret hideaway has been compromised. I’ve had to fend off texts and emails asking “what’s wrong” all morning long, without actually answering them. One day I’ll get the hang of this internet thingy.

some days i get a little depressed about where i am professionally. or where I’m not professionally. what happened? where am i going to be in 10 years? 20 years? retirement? will i be able to send my kids to college? will i even be able to afford to have kids? i fucked up somewhere along the line. i need a real job, and i need one now.

a while back, i quit an okay job that i had for 8 years in order to take one that i thought would be better for me, career-wise. i was very wrong, and was out of that job a year later. i regret making that move. i fucked up. big time. 

i must’ve missed something somewhere. i studied the wrong thing in college or i got complacent in my work ethic or i took for granted the bi-weekly paycheck or maybe i just don’t have the talent and skills to be successful. i can’t figure it out. but something needs to change, because this freelance thing was not supposed to be a long-term deal. it has become a long-term deal.

i need a job. i need to do actual work. i need to feel like somebody, some company, needs services that only i can perform. what happened to me? what did i miss?

maybe i’m applying to the wrong jobs. maybe i need to accept the fact that i missed something somewhere and start applying for low-wage, thoughtless, uncreative-type work. and accept it. be happy with it.

nah, fuck it. i know what i’m capable of, and someday soon some business or company or startup or agency will know, too. and they’ll be glad they hired me.

According to star count, I was funnier on Favrd. I’m not very funny on Favstar.

Favrd was an exclusive club. Favstar is a really big airport Applebee’s.

Favrd had leather chairs and cigars and cognac and a crackling fire and ascots and monocles and secret password orgy sessions.

Favstar has dirt bikes and jean shorts and stadium seating and blockbuster movie nights and big-ass, gas-fueled bon fires and moderately-priced beer and a DJ.

But even so, the same people who were leaderboarders on Favrd are leaderboarders on Favstar.

Know why? Because funny is funny.

Honesty, I really don’t give a fuck if @sween gets 1834497502395 stars and @[someonewith100followers] gets 2. 

Funny is funny. 

I check favstar for the funny. When I see a funny, I star. Sometimes I star twitter royalty. Sometimes I star twitter peasants. Sometimes I star really dirty and vulgar jokes. Sometimes I star jokes that are intelligent and well-thought-out. 

Because funny is funny. And I like funny.