#323

Awww, you know how I feel about numbers like 323! Numbers like 323 are absolutely fucking perfect, that's how I feel. I mean, the sheer beauty of it. Three hundred is so great, I mean, what a number, what an icon, and then, the fabled, nearly sinister quality of the number 23, which is great number, a prime number, a quality I find so lovable--and smashed together, a pair of threes just flanking the number two! SO PERFECT DEATH TAKE ME NOW

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Taking a moment here to presumably welcome a very special reader! You don't know them, dear reader. Only I get the personalized satisfaction of knowing when a certain pair of eyeballs joins your ranks however briefly before wandering away again; disgusted, disappointed, and determined to no longer know me. Depressing! Or, conversely, they may be diverted: delirious, even deranged--nay, distended with delight.

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Typing at you once again from my parent's dining room table--the table I have sat at since I was old enough to sit up unsupported and not decorate myself with mashed vegetables. Thinking about childhood a lot lately, even more than followed the uptick brought on by bussing the preschoolers, which, as you may know or inductively parse, means that I am thinking about childhood basically every spare minute of every single day. It's these developmental psychology courses I mentioned; they just bring the memories, and it falls to me to riffle through them. Plus we go over the data and I get to be like, yeah. Yeah, man. I see that shit every single day. Plus, I remember. I am reminded. 

Dudes, this one time, a kid pushed me down a broad stone slide at a musical daycare I attended when I was extremely tiny. I smashed my fingernail tip-first onto the smooth stone so bad I could see triangular fragments of nail stuck to my bloody finger where they'd run away from the main nail body. Who knows why, but my instinct was to run screaming to the water cooler, instead of for a teacher. I remember the way that old-school bad boy with the giant glass bottle glurpled when you'd filled enough little paper cones with water. Perhaps it was the comfort of this wonderful sound that I was seeking, in my pain-maddened terror frenzy.

Oh! The reason I am here an not at my house watching a movie is that an ice storm knocked out our power and the power company which enjoys state monopoly can't promise to do anything about it before Sunday. Fucking Sunday! Guess what: the house has gotten cold. It is dark in there. We can't open our refrigerator. I'm not sure, but I think we might not be supposed to be using our water. These conditions are so far from optimal and yet of course so totally mundane that it frustrates me to even feel frustrated by them. 

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You know, I forgot to mention this massive, like, this epic book haul I scored off a dead librarian. It's almost as macabre as it sounds, and yet, not really: a fellow bus driver was substiting for my usual bus monitor a couple months back, and we got to talking about stuff, and a certain minor predilection of mine for books and book sundries came up. Well, it just so happens that her old school librarian, whom she had remained very close to, was in hospice care, and many of the librarian's worldly possessions, including many boxes of her books, were in her care and taking up most of the space in her and her husband's storage unit. Well, would I be interested in going through the books and seeing what I could do to ameliorate the situation? Oh, perhaps I could be persuaded to ransack your shit like an unbridled Visigoth.

So yeah, she was hella pregnant and only going to get pregnanter, plus she was in school, so she'd let me know when I could swing by the unit. I waited for months, no hurry, no problems--she would occasionally get in touch to assure me I was not forgotten, and I would assure back that all was calm and bright in my domains and that I had no problem waiting on her pleasure. Finally the time came, and on a misty, rainy morning after the bus but before class her husband and I were dick deep in that storage unit, the librarian was a week dead, and my coworker was sitting in the car, two days away from the doctors inducing labor. I made sure she got the cream of the children's books for her own kids, including some cool middle grade novels about dragons for her oldest boy, but I absconded with such a pile, such a full two bigass boxes worth of stuff--it was a bloodbath. So many books, they're all over the floor of the bookroom right now and the way things are, who knows when I'll have the chance to do my best to find shelf space for them. We may be looking at a return of the piles, which I had managed to reduce to a single pile of oversized. I even got some Hercule Poirot DVD's, for the little gray cells.

Truly I think it's too many books to list; it would be cumbersome even for this storied text field, already groaning under the weight of the booklists I have subjected my readers to for god knows what purpose. I might do a selection at some point, but obviously not right now because I am not with my books. Though I'm heading back as soon as I finish this, it is important that my laptop energy be conserved when at home for the purposes of schoolwork. What a drear. Next time though, maybe, dear readers.

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This post is scribed in memory of a dead librarian whose name I choose not to share, with special thanks to my coworker whose name I will also not share. This blog has no real names, of course, and rarely goes further than an oblique reference.

Ok keep your dicks up everybody peace out

--JL 

#322

Dang! I really do be busy, quite. Turns out working about half as much and taking five courses adds up to more work than just working. Well, fine. That's fine. I'm procrastinating right now, by writing this, but that's fine. Tomorrow will a good day to do three assignments; today is not. That's just how it is sometimes, and I need to learn to be okay with that. Burning out is a grave risk when you want to achieve near-perfection, and I must allow myself the space to not do that. Back in high school, achieving perfection in the areas I wanted to achieve perfection was a breeze, because I let the rest of it all happen however it was going to happen without giving it a second thought or instant of stress. Failing the same algebra course two years in a row? Ask me if I give a flying fuck! I'll laugh right in your face. No, no fucks buzzing around my airspace. That second year, I had an A+ in both accelerated English and AP European History. Achieved a C in chemistry, mostly by showing up and cracking jokes all hour. I also got an A in Twentieth Century Literature. Don't remember what else I took, besides Concert Band, where I did fine but never brilliantly. Maybe another English elective. Took all the English they let me get away with back then. When it came time at the end of that year to talk to my counselor about graduating next year, she let me know that strictly speaking, I had not accumulated enough math credits to leave school on time. 

"I see you haven't signed up for any math next year, which makes sense, since you haven't met the requirements for any of the classes. What you might not know is, you can't graduate like that. Not in this state. Look here, though. You've already exceeded your English graduation requirements. In fact, you've taken and passed more English classes at a high level of performance than anyone else in your class, and you're maintaining that trend for next year. Nobody else taking AP English and Humanities and an English elective on top. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna make a deal. You're going to take this class called Geometry X. It is remedial. You take this class and pass it--just one semester--and do well with the rest of your planned courses senior year, and we'll let you walk. Fail this class, we'll have to have a different discussion. Do we understand each other?"

And thus, I fell at her feet, praising her benevolence, her wisdom, her power and acumen. The one and only administrator in my entire middle and high school career that acted like a human being. And indeed, though my overall GPA was really nothing to write home about, the English department awarded me an Outstanding Student of English award, which was worth more to me than the actual diploma. Also at this point I'm bragging about nothing,but my SAT scores would have been in the 98th percentile nationwide if my math hadn't been down at the 70th. Everything else, the bar was tickling that sweet 100. 

As you may know, dear reader, I soon proceeded to drop out of college and drink myself almost to death/madness over the course of the subsequent four years instead. I mean, I accumulated some credits at the community college I attend now, but my performance was awful, even worse than high school, as I would usually stop turning up mid-semester or even before.

Now I am giving all my classes the same focused I effort I once gave a chosen few. I will pull this academic situation out of the ashes, so help me, but I must also continue to take care of me in the ways I need taking care of--and hammering some bullshit into this blog every now and again should be part of that. Even moreso, actual projects, which I should really get to instead of any more of this nonsense.

So PEACE THE FUCK OUT, READER! THIS WAS HELLA POINTLESS! YAAAAAAAA


--JL