100418 i am so tired. let’s think about that. i would like to just give up right now b ecause i have exactly not one thing to say. but the rules are the rules, man. it’s five o clock and someone’s got to do it. put ketchup on the lamb, if you know what i mean. roll over and eat. oh it is pure nonsense. i literally can’t think of anything. tired. sagging. belly like a syrup filled balloon mouth hanging open getting old is (as my dad so often pointed out) a bitch he is a duplicitous one, that dad of mine. always came across as so optimitsitc, patient, accepting, good humored, but there was a big old seed of cynicism hiding in those layers of husk after all. it didn’t come out until he was in his seventies. then he started drinking and swearing quite a bit. when the world is running down... spent however much i spent on that cd HOW DO THEY GET YOUR DEBIT CARD NUMBERS? this isn’t working at all. there’s no stories. no brilliance. no epiphanies. no dream logice twisted phrases. no magic mini-revelations. it’s just plain and simple not working right now. blame it on the pot age weather pee sheer exhaustion it works in the summer when you can wake up whenever you want. when 7:30 seems like a reasonably early time, and no one else is up, and the alarm doesn’t rip you from sleep as mcbeth was from his mother’s womb untimely. wait, that was macbeth, right? Kinda like getting the presidents on mt rushmore mixed up. you don’t want to admit you got your shakespeare mixed up in *this* family. creak, creak. millie’s up and so another shit day begins. lastd night i told megan i really like my job, and i meant it. image: talking in Zoom with Jodi about the NHS stuff. We’re moments away from signing off, or “hanging up” or whatever the fuck you’d call it. She distratedly (I say distractedly as a form of intellectualized hyper-self-conscious ego defense, because to allow the slightest intimation that i might even be capabnle of imagining that it may have been a focused, intentional, direct act for my specific benefit is to set myself up for being laughed out of the cafeteria, down the hall, through the locker room, and out into the parking lot behind the school where you’re scheduled to fight the phantom of your own fat insecurities, only you’re a coward so you refuse to show up, hiding behind some weeds and a dumpster instead, until summer comes and it’s warm enough to run home without your underwear) whips out this perniciously pink cylinder of some kind of lip balm or god help me *gloss,* and applies it to her generous lips. So then for the last few moments, as we’re small talking (I volunteer just a *little* too much financial-personal information, but I then laugh hard enough to make sure it’s clear that I’m basically ok and hearty, a regular american, not seeking pity, oh god, did i come across as seeking pity? do i still reflexively do that, and did i get so good at it that the whole thing is wrapped in this mylar sheath of resilience and optimism, shucky darn, you know me, i’ll be all right?) our way towards the unavoidable awkwardness of the moment someone finds their way first to the “END MEETING” buttong, I’m lost in her lips. They’re so shiny. She half smiles like a friendly muppet as I volunteer that I’m not—or should I say, as I “Share” that I’m not—she is a counselor, after all—exactly rolling in dough over here. You know, cuz it’s just me and I have four kids and— yep, just little old me. but it’s not until an hour or so after that meeting, that normal meeting that she probably doesn’t think about nearly as hard as i am right now, that the image of those lips comes back to me, and somehow the whole bobbing moving picture of them, shining out hungrily from my screen, looking good enough to eat me up, just seems so amiably absurd, so lovely, so childlike, so unevenly applied and silently extravagant, that i just can’t help being in love with her, with the rest of the evening, with the hot blustery wind of this last-gasp autumn day, and i smile to myself and i don’t need to prove anything or do anything about it escept do my job and i’m already behind on grading again and i have to get some grading done today and there will be emails from clueless kids who don’t know a a gerund from the square root of 2 over x equals fuck all but it just washes over me in an instant: a big little quiet wave of being alive, and being connected, and being afraid but basically, for now, pretty much OK, and safe, and lucky, and tired, and getting older every second, and it just comes up out of me and i’m like, i really like my job, and i get up off the bed and go in the living room and say it out loud to megan, and sit down on the “couch” next to her, and say, that’s a good thing. SO many people say they hate their jobs. And I’m like yeah. I’m kind of lucky. And I am.