I am wearing pants.

(More items too short
for a page of their own)

They're short-staffed at Vector, so there've been overtime shifts, and today is another one-day weekend. I ain't wild about it.

Because of the overtime, I had to cancel one of my twice-monthly family breakfasts a few weeks ago, but later I let everyone know that yesterday's breakfast was still on.

Here's the tail end of an otherwise ordinary text conversation with my mom from Friday night, confirming that breakfast would be at the normal time and place on Saturday...

Mom: I am SO glad you condescended to meet tomorrow.

Me: What a strange way to phrase it. I am also glad you are willing to stoop so low as to see me.

Mom: Gotcha!

This is my mom's sense of humor. Or she simply doesn't understand the concept of work for a living, since the only job she's ever had was working part-time after class at her high school in the 1940s. 

But our breakfast this morning was peaceful, almost the way ordinary families might have breakfast.

Had a work-related dream that woke me quite disturbed and saddened, but it makes no sense.

I was working at a desktop computer, and the boss came 'round and said basically "Aha!" when she saw that instead of working I'd been browsing the internet. She nudged me out of the way, sat down in my chair, grabbed my mouse, and began opening each tab, jotting down the list of sites I had open — Doctor Who and news sites (but no porn).

I didn't recognize the setting or any of the people, but I'm pretty sure the dream took place at my new job, because I like the job and was saddened knowing I was about to be fired.

The human psyche is so poorly wired that I woke up sad and ashamed of myself for doing something I never do. I might, in a dull moment at work, click a news site and glance at headlines for a few minutes, but I never go full-on net-surfing when I'm supposed to be on the job. Jeez, even when I worked remotely from home I never did that, and it would be impossible anyway at the new job, where everyone can see everyone else's screens. 

Dreams are dumb.

Living in Madison, my wife and I used to go to University of Wisconsin women's hockey games quite regularly, and we loved it.

Big time women's hockey is thrilling, with more elegance and fewer fights than big time men's hockey, so I'm tickled pink that the Professional Women's Hockey League now exists. They're streaming games live on their YouTube channel, which, since I abhor YouTube, I watch instead on Invidious.

The first PWHL game I watched (listened to, mostly) had a female-voiced play-by-play, something I'd never heard before, which sounds and seems instantly welcoming. And as yet, there are no commercials — just hockey, with silence between periods.

The league seems to leave recent games online for free streaming afterward, too, and since you're unlikely to catch PWHL scores on the news, the old games are just as exciting as the new games.

A random thought about growing old: In younger years, masturbation was fueled by fantasies of sexy time with some specific woman that I had or imagined a relationship with.

Alone in my mid-60s, sex with a genuine woman no longer seems plausible, and any fictional scenario with any woman might as well be sex with Mrs Santa. It just ain't happening. So I masturbate only to memories, or watch porn of other people having sex, and experience it like watching a movie.

This is a bit sad when I stop and think about it, so like most sad things, I don't often stop and think about it.

Much as I still don't hate the job, it's eaten into my time, my life, even my days off. To keep myself going, I've accidentally made up and started singing a song on the bus, riding to work and coming home. At first I sang it only in my head, but lately I've heard myself sing it softly as the bus bumps along. A couple of mornings ago, a man even older than me switched seats to be farther away.

Can't transcribe a tune, so you'll have to imagine a melody of your own, but the lyrics go like this:

I am wearing pants
wearing pants
wearing pants
I am wearing pants today

I even brushed my teeth
brushed my teeth
brushed my teeth
I even brushed my teeth today

I will take your call
take your call
take your call
I will take your call today

I am wearing pants
wearing pants
wearing pants
I am wearing pants today...

The song was inspired, of course, by my many months without wearing pants, before returning to the wonderful world of employment — and, tragically, pants and brushing my teeth.

So now the bus keeps rolling, and I keep singing, until it's time to ding the bell and step off. Is it time yet?

1/20/2024   

itsdougholland.com
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