I were feeling extra stupid yestermorning, so I what-the-helled and gave myself a day off from writing.
Eating sardines at noon and bumbling around, I accidentally dropped a magazine to the floor, where it hit a precariously extended extension cord, which unplugged the lamp with enough extra oomph to yank it from atop the stack of milk crates and bring it crashing to the floor, where it met a tower of unopened tuna cans that broke the bulb and cracked the ceramic, leaving two large pieces broken but still attached, and two small pieces broken off. Even with a new bulb, the lamp no longer lights.
If I were sentimental and had superglue and electrician’s tape, maybe it could be fixed, but I’m not and I don’t. Now it’s 10:00 at night and I’m writing this under only the two light bulbs poking out of the ceiling.Those bulbs shed barely enough light to keep me literate after dark, and me being old and increasingly blind, I need more light than they’re tossing.Also, the house wiring is from the ’40s and one of the ceiling sockets make its bulb frequently flicker, so I prefer to live by the lamp that’s now dead, not the bulbs over my head.Which means I need a new lamp, or some superglue and electrician’s tape and more patience than I have. ♦ ♦ ♦ My cat is smarter than me. As an experiment, I gave her a frickin’ mountain of cat treats, and she went wild and ate lots of them, but after eating 1/3 of the mountain, she stopped.I’d piled them in her cat bed, and soon she curled up and slept atop the leftover treats, probably dreaming of treats, but she’d eaten enough. Even after she’d napped, the pile remained, dwindling by a few bites at a time. All the treats weren’t eaten until the next morning.Me, if I buy a tube of Pringles (“about six servings,” says the nutrition label) it means I’m about to eat a tube of Pringles. If they’re two tubes for $4 and I buy four tubes for $8, well, I’m about to eat four tubes of Pringles.
♦ ♦ ♦ If it sounded cocky and confident when I asked the impossible and ended up quitting at Haugen & Dahl, it’s more like stupid and stubborn.Having to have a job is ingrained in me. Knowing I won’t be employed at the end of the month has been giving me almost daily headaches, sometimes a fever, and it’s led to some serious binge overeating.♦ ♦ ♦ Eating too much has been the baseline fact of my life, probably more than even my beard or solitude. Whenever life eats at me, I eat back. Often I eat preemptively, to keep life from eating at me.I’d been restraining myself for most of 2023, and I’m down thirty pounds from last winter. Put a little pressure on me, though, and it manifests in a whole lot of pastries.Not even good pastries, either. I’ve been eating the overpriced, manufactured, wrapped-in-plastic pastries sold at convenience stores. Damned disappointing, every time. They’re puffed up to look big, but they’re mostly made of air and high-fructose corn syrup, in that order.If I’m gonna binge on baked goods, and apparently I am, it ought to be real pastries from a decent bakery, but I’m cheap and lazy, and the convenience store is on my way to work every morning, and also on my way home every evening.♦ ♦ ♦ Yesterafternoon, though, I gathered all my gumption and bused to the Goodwill to buy a used lamp priced like new. There’s a doughnut shop only a few bus stops from the thrift store, so I bought a dozen this and a dozen that, and I’m sure they guy at the counter knew they were all for me. Froze most of ’em, and the rest, I’m eating as I type this with sticky fingers.
♦ ♦ ♦
Sometimes I wonder what damaged me along the way, what left me alone and eating pastries for most of my life. Whatever it was, if I know or even have a theory I ain’t saying it out loud.And anyway, whatever childhood trauma there was or might’ve been, it was over long ago. All is forgiven, and hell, I’m not sure I’d even want it wiped away. It made me who I am, and I like who I am.Absolutely I’m fucked up, but I like who I am a lot better than whoever you are.And man, these bear claws are terrific.
6/25/2023
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