Do You Miss My All Time Lows?
A week or so ago Sarah was gone to North Dakota for a week, which meant a 600% increase in bachelordom for me. I fully intended to spend the week in my underpants wearing a bacon hat, drinking beers nonstop and watching hours and hours of uninterrupted Bruce Lee movies. I considered myself a B Sandwich — you know, like a BLT, only without the lettuce or tomato. Meat is just a long term food storage mechanism. Just like beer. Beer is food. I am “eating” right now.
On mother’s day my mom’s husband and I were supposed to accompany her to Iowa to visit my mom’s own mother (who, conveniently enough, is also my grandmother), but John had a thing to suddenly do in Illinois, so my mom canceled and said that she wanted to spend the day not doing anything. Now, “not doing anything” sounded pretty sweet to me, so I certainly had no objections to my favorite mother enjoying her day by lounging around the pond in her backyard and throwing empty gin bottles at the ducks, but — oh yeah, my mom has a koi pond in her back yard, except that all her goldfish died over the winter and ducks have taken up residence in the meantime. Apparently ducks like to fuck in public.
My mother doesn’t actually throw gin bottles at the ducks. The only thing that has been thrown at those mallards are my terrible attempts at quackery. QUAAAAACK! QUACK! QUAAAA! The ducks don’t even look up from their naps. I suppose that I wouldn’t encourage me either.
In any case, late this morning I showed up at my mother’s house to take her out to “Mother’s Day Brunch.” I was up for any place, but since we didn’t have reservations, I thought that it might be fun to go to the Midtown Global Market and wander around looking for something that she might find palatable. As it turns out “A La Salsa” fit the bill. We had pupusas, then she had tacos and I had pollo chiltepin. I learned how to pronounce chiltepin, as well, which is good, because I want to eat those peppers every day. So good. My mom bought some soaps and junk. I bought some groceries from the tiny store there, including a mitt full of root beers. So Good.
After dropping my mom off at home I ran to Barnes and Noble, Michael’s, and the Wedge. I’m now a member of a co-op. The next thing that you know, I will be only eating organic free range lettuces, because higher order vegetables get sad when you eat them. Lisa called me later because it was time for round two of Mother’s Day. Lisa, Stan, Noah, and John were all over there watching the ducks enjoy a long post-coital nap. John and my mother had some gin that was splendiferous. So good with the cucumber flavors. Mmm. So good.
Sarah and I were supposed to go to see Andrew Bird that prior Friday. She even had tickets. Unbeknownst to me, it was even the sixth month anniversary of the first time I’d hung out with her outside of class. I count our mensiversary on the Thursday of the next week, when we went to Sawatdee and spent hours on her couch while I tried not to panic and just kiss her. Friday was also my last chance to finish a program for a class — the toughest one I had written yet, with threading, wild string manipulations, and other random crap that took every ounce of brain power I had just to stay on top of. The first three assignments in that class had been mere eight hour cakewalks, but this one, with only a couple of weeks notice, was a brain punishing set of puzzles wrapped in enigmas and hidden behind requirements that I couldn’t face until I had finished the Hitchcock paper.
Needless to say, eighteen hours of work wasn’t enough. I could have doubled my time. Honestly, it was the first time in a couple of years that I think a partner would have been a help beyond “hey, Jesse, did you write any code on that yet?”
I did my best to keep my brain from delaminating, but, you know how it goes when you brew and drink coffee all day after shorting yourself on sleep all week. Oh well, I had spent an hour or two that Tuesday playing Gran Turismo because my head was in all sorts of the wrong places, and I had also spent an hour or so having a free dinner at “Legends” as part of my SERC rewards, and yes, there are a million things that I feel guilty about. Shit. Maybe I should have put off working full time until after the semester collapsed. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to Lisa’s party, or done anything outside of class and work besides homework. I don’t know.
Saturday I went with Sarah and our friends Donald and Chandler to an opening at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Great fun was made of those folks who just show up to hit on girls or eat cheese, so in deference to my own lack of class I crammed free blue cheese and salty crackers into my mouth while drinking the bland Oregonian beer that they had on hand and hitting on Sarah. I’m classy.
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