February 13, 2007

• A Blog About Yesterday

  Why I seldom blog about the "day to day": A Blog About Yesterday.

  A few comments I receive from time to time ask me to blog more about my "daily life". I don't use my blog as a journaling program, which was the original intention when blogs came into existence. WhenWordsCollide is an updates section for my ever expanding website, and I offer a lot of "reminiscences" and "memoirs" about a long and somewhat productive life, but I don't blog about the " day to day", as a rule. Back before I discovered blogs, I used to "journal" about the "day to day" on my first ElectricPoetry site. Here is an (edited) early "journal entry" from April 2000.

  APRIL 1, 2000
  DEAR DIARY,
  It's 10:00am. My room-mate is at work today so I have the place to myself.  I've got The Dixie Chick's Fly CD playing "Some Days You Gotta Dance", and I'm dancing around the room, fooling with Spike the cat. In the coumputer room, I'm doing my finances on Microsoft Money, I have the internet up and running, with my website editor showing onscreen along with the Money program. The CD ends then I access my MP3 of Faith Hill's "The Kiss" and realize that truly, as if I'm dreaming, I'm just simply in love. That's why I feel so good...As usual, this has turned into a hurricane torrent of words.
  Well, now I'm going to put the top down on the convertible, and take advantage of this wonderful day. On April Fools Day I feel the perfect fool, dear Diary. And I am loving it.

  ---

  Was I really ever that happy? The "love affair" lasted exactly three months, and the gal with whom I was "in love" borrowed over 5 thousand dollars from me. Of course she disappeared and I've never seen a penny of that money, but that's not what this entry is really about. What this entry is about is what happened yesterday, a "typical" day for the Mikester, and why I don't blog about the "day to day".

  ---

  "You know What I'll Do, Then?": A Blog About Yesterday"

  It was early morning at work, and after checking my blog for comments and answering email, and before taking my three block power walk around our business complex, I eavesdropped on an office conversation in the cubicle room.

  "How old do cats usually live" I casually interrupted our octenagerian CEO, Jack, who was discussing his daughter's return home with her four cats.

  "About 20 years." Jack replied. "Or thrity"

  "You have cats, don't you, MIke?" asked Valerie, who was sitting beside Jack, both enjoying their morning coffee. 

  "Two of them. They're both sisters, from the same litter. 17 years old now. I was just asking Joel yesterday about whether he has taken them in for their shots this year. They don't wear collars. They pretty much stay inside, and they're pretty clean. Joel's a terrible housekeeper, and I don't even pay much attention to the front part of the house anymore, but at least we don't have to worry about feral cats. Our "old girls" are nice to have around."

  "They should be around for a long while, then, if they're healthy and clean", Jack offered.

  Joel is my roommate. I call him "Cancerboy" because he's been suffering from the effects of his third round of chemotherapy following colon cancer which caused the removal of most of his large intestine a little over three years ago. I complain about his lethargy and procrastinating nature. I call him "Oscar" to my "Felix", referencing "The Odd Couple". I've given him a rather wide berth for most of the last three years, and because I was tired of cleaning up after him in the "common rooms" of our house, I moved into the back two bedrooms two years ago, fashioning the spare bedroom into my "media room" in which I spend most of my time, away from Joel, watching my bigscreen, working on the computer, or napping. Joel has the living room, the master bedroom (with the "new" bathroom, once it's finished, but that's another story) the dining room and the kitchen. I only use the refirigerator to store my cold drinks, but I eat out at restaurants, since I would have to clean the kitchen every time I needed to use it, and just don't want to bother anymore.

  We have lived together for almost 13 years now, a "temporary" arrangement which sort of got comfortable for both of us. For many years, I would complain about my roomie's laziness, and I would pick up after him. He's the type of guy who, like me, never married, and although I do participate in romantic encounters every now and then, and currently have a girlfriend, Joel is a pretty lonely guy when I stop to think about it, and compounded with this terrible disease, and the repercussions caused by the chemo, I don't feel I should really nag him as much as I used to.

  So, upon "moving out" of the common rooms, I have left him up to his devices. He gets lots of mail he seldom opens. When I get "junk mail" I deposit it in the trasch can outside the house. It never gets a chance to pile up. I won't toss away another's mail, however. It's unethical and also against the law. So I sit Joel's mail on the "Leaning Tower of Mail" on his coffee table, which is filled with unopened magazines, credit card offers, and reports about his inheritance. He belongs to two or three book clubs, and he doesn't answer his mail, so books come which he didn't stop from being delivered as well. All this piles up over time. I used to clean up the mess every now and then, but after three years or not doing so, the living room and dining room area looks like the dead letter room at the post office.

  When returning from work and doffing his clothes, they lie where they drop, until he washes them on weekends, a weekend long chore becuase he tends to wash only two or three pairs of pants or shirts at a time. He says this is how you wash clothes. He thinks that my way of doing the wash is wrong. I have lots of clothes, an apartment building sized washer and dryer, and I like to wash clothes once a month, with very large loads. I'd probably wash more often, but my washer and dryer are in Joel's kitchen, and I really don't like to be in that room.

  Between the mail and the clothes, there are the dertitus and packaging for anything he buys. He just leaves things lying around, with no regard to where things are "supposed to go", because he never has a "place" for anything. Since I'm not "policing" the common areas anymore, they are beginning to look more and more like Joel's bedroom, a place in which I don't even like to step foot.

  After work yesterday, I stopped by a mobile home park in the area, which might just be where I purchase my first "home", a double wide trailer, as soon as I can afford a down payment. I drove into the park, serene and peaceful, with nobody in sight, and parked next to the office, where I had been told two years ago I couldn't buy a home until I turned 55. Well, in a few months I'll be 54, so I thought I'd try again.

  I approached "John" the manager of the facility. "Hi, John. I was here a few years ago inquiring about occupancy. Do you have many units for sale?"

  "There are peaks and  valleys, but we usually have a half a dozen homes up for sale at any given time. There are about 25 available right now."

  "Hey, great. I'd really like to get away from my current place. I rent a house, and the rent just went up $200.00."

  Skip could hardly contain his look of shock."Boy, that's a lot."

  "Yes, it is. All the better that I should be looking for a new home."

  "Are you married?"

  "No, single. I live with a male roommate right now and I really would like to get out on my own as soon as I can. A nice little double wide would fit me nicely."

  We chatted for a few minutes and I asked John if I could begin procedures to see if I was qualified to buy one of the units. I told him I'd be 54 on May 1st."

  "Can't move in until you're 55." he said.

  "Well, I know this is a senior park. But I'll BE 55 in a little over a year."

  "Can't help you until you turn 55."

  "Okay, then, see you in a little over a year."

  Disappointed, I drove to my next stop, the management office for our housing project. On Saturday, the owner had told Joel his handyman, who has been constructing our 2nd bathroom for most of the past four months, lost his copy of the key to our unit. The handy man said he would "find" the key, but two days later nobody has given us any news about this at all, and pragmatist that I am, I think we should have the locks changed, since I can't afford rent insurance now that the rent is being raised 200 bucks, in case one of the neigborhood kids who's been climbing on my car lately happens to find the key and gets into our house when  both Joel and I are at work.

  I gave this news to the management agency. (speaking to the owner himself is useless. "Don't worry" is all he ever says. We weren't to "worry" about the construction of the bathroom (which we don't really need) either, and that has caused nothing but worry since they started the project.) The agent listened to my sob story, and then I drove home, with the patter of raindrops on the windshield.

  I have a few hours alone at home until Joel comes home. I use this time to watch DVDs in my media room. Usually when Joel comes home, he cranks the sound on my original bigscreen TV in the living room, which I let him use, to bombastic levels. I think he's going deaf, but I don't like even my own TV, with it's surround sound , to be TOO loud, and I've always hated competing soundtracks. For a couple of hours I have the time to myself. When he comes home and turns on the TV, I usually switch to the computer, or else I go in the living room and turn the sound down.

  Yesterday, upon returning home, I was doing some cleaning in my bedroom, and I noticed one of my VHS tape boxes was empty. I used to record a lot of porn tapes from rentals when I was a VHS "taper", pre computers, and I have quite a few porn tapes which Joel can "borrow". The "rule" is that he borrows three or four tapes, rewinds them, and returns them. I haven't even looked at one of these tapes in a long time. But now I started to notice that most of the boxes which used to contain the tapes were EMPTY.

  For probably six months or so, Joel has been borrowing my tapes and then when he finshes watching them he just "drops" them on the floor in his room. I braved the archeological dig that doubles as Joel's bedroom, and "unearthed" a goodly number of tapes, which I took into my media room to unwind, and then placed back in their boxes on the shelf in my bedroom. All thoughts of relaxing and watching "Hollywoodland" my latest rental, faded, as I began to "investigate" parts of the living room and dining room to see if he'd dropped any more of my tapes in any of the voluminous piles of discarded detritus that makes up his life.

  One of our cats, the aforementioned "Spike" from the 2000 journal entry, came rushing through the kitchen from the dining room. I ventured into the backmost corner of the house, where the water main had broken last winter, causing water to seep almost an inch into the carpet. The area had since been cleaned and shampooed, but it's now over a year later.

  I was more than somewhat disgusted to find over 15 little "piles" of catpoop in the dining room, under the table which was brimming with old mail, yesterdays' news (and last year's news in some instances), a 2004 calendar, and remnants of Joel's Christmas presents which he opened and then left sitting.

  I spent the better part of the next two hours cleaning up this incredible mess. A  lot of the poop was dry, meaning it had been sitting for months, or, daresay I even think about it,  most of the last year. When Joel came home, I waited for him to settle in, turn on the TV, and relax. Then I told him about the cat poop. "Guess what I found in the dining room?"

  "What" He hadn't a clue. This wasn't a good sign.

  I recounted how Spike must have been using the diining room as her litter box for quite a while. "I didn't notice" Joel matter of factly announced.

  "Well, I just cleaned it all up. I really wish you'd curb your cats, buddy."

  "You know What I'll Do, Then?" he asked rhetorically. "I'll have to watch out for that."

  I know what you'll do, Joel. You'll do nothing, as usual. I know the cancer is a terrible disease. I know you're having problems with your skin because of the latest treatments. I know it's hard, but it's hard to live like this. I didn't speak this out loud. I only thought about it.

  "You know what I'll have to do" he kept muttering. "I'll have to watch Spike. She's a little devil."

  Yes, he'll watch her. But he won't see what she's doing. I take it back, what I told my boss Jack about how "clean" these cats are. As I was cleaning up her poop, I felt as if I were really cleaning up Joel's poop. Disgusting, smelly, dirty, possbily disease ridden poop.

  What'll you do, Joel.

  Nothing.

  I sighed a big sigh, lowered the sound on the television,  returned to my media room, closed the door, and popped "Hollywoodland" into the DVD player.

  I didn't get a thank you. I didn't hear Joel scold the cat. (I almost killed her when I found what she'd done)

  The "day to day" is not interesting over here. It's sometimes downright disgusting. And that's why I seldom blog about the "day to day"

  Tomorrow's Valentine's Day. But all I can think about is that I hope the key is either found, of the management company changes our locks. I wonder what I'll find when I get home this afternoon!

  

  ---

  A lot of bloggers "protect" their entries if they don't want a family member or friend to know that they have written something about them. Joel has a computer, but he doesn't use it. In fact, he's never used it. So he won't read this. But perhaps maybe he should!

  • 10:39 am
  • 51 Comments