Gnat People

There are these sorts of people who hang around like gnats. . . doing fly-by’s, buzzing you in your little self imposed ivory tower. . . you smack your hands together, trying to crush them but they somehow always escape, so you keep trying to smack them between your hands over and over, until you finally believe that killing them is impossible, and they just believe you are applauding them.

 

One Thing After Another

The bird, the partner, the dog, the Fed Ex lady, coffee…

Status quo.

My cockatiel, Bingo, lives in a huge “condo” cage with every toy and snack and luxury a bird could want. But she begins to shriek as soon as daylight hits the windows, her nocturnal sleeping clock disengaged by sunshine. My usual groggy reprimands, like, “Bingo, hush” and “Bingo, shut up!” and “Goddamn it, Bingo!” don’t help. But you know, i just always hope i won’t have to get up. She wants out of her cage so she can perch on my shoulder, leave lots of poopie on my shirt, bitch at me to scratch her head, then bitch that I’m not doing it right, then jump down and pull all the cigarette butts from the ashtray and drop them in the floor along with paper clips, my lighter, and that pill I’m supposed to take each morning. Then she must punch the edges of all paper products with her beak, and eat all the pencil lead, (if there’s any to be had), try to climb on my coffee cup for a drink, to which i say “It’s hot” and she tests the side of the cup with her tongue just to check my story…

So forgive me, if I’m not too keen on getting her out of the cage.

But the shrieking. Lord God in heaven.

The only thing I’ve found that cures it (aside from avian homicide, or the free-for-all i just described) is to take her from the cage and put her in a dark closet or the other bathroom. The darkness makes her think it’s time to go to sleep. And i have some peace so that i can go back to bed for a few more hours… I do that, and return to bed.

Just after slipping into dreamland, Giz, my mixed breed dog (the guess is half spaniel, half chihuahua) climbs up to the bed and starts to invade my personal space. Meaning, he walks up the length of my body and lies down on my chest. And whines. I ask if he has to go out- and i get that excited keening sound as he catapults himself off me, leaving another series of toenail scratches on my skin. I get up and go to the door, avoiding the dido movements all around me as he revs up for the trip outside. Another phobia, though, is of wet grass. So he goes to the edge of the walk, and squats about 3 inches away from the grass…on the concrete. I call to him sharply, and his flow stops as he darts back down the walk. “Oh no, you’re not coming inside until you go–” I have to drag him toward the grass, but he still won’t go.

So i go back inside and get my shoes and leash, and return, snapping the leash on his collar, and walking out into the wet grass, calling him. He finally goes, but not after a sniffing trek through the grass and back around to the pine bark–an acceptable compromise so that i can go back to bed finally. My partner is awake, and there begins some witty banter, at my expense, the details of which escape me. Finally, i just said “Stop aggravating me–i want to go to sleep.” We do. A few minutes later, Giz starts making that awful sucking, “sick” noise in his throat that always wakes me up; a precursor to some ugly warm mess on the rug that i have to clean up. I rushed over and called his name, as if to scold him for this thing he could not control. He darted out from under his little sleeping tent, and i had to coax him to me so that i could drag him into the bathroom…i had to drag him since he doesn’t like tile or linoleum floors. Another of the mysterious traumas he must have suffered before i adopted him from the Humane Society…. Now both children are in separate bathrooms. I set about cleaning up the mess. Done with the cleaning, my allergic rhinitis sneezing fit arrives on schedule. I have one or two every morning, but only after i am up and around, so now i’m looking for Puff’s Plus with aloe. I have to get up and go to the bathroom to blow. I grab a peanut butter bone for Giz to let him know he’s not really in trouble just because he made another bile stain on the carpet…he holds the bone in his mouth, stares at me uncertainly, moving toward the open door. I tell him it’s okay, he can go.

I know i won’t be going back to sleep now, so my first impulse is to make coffee, but both sides of the sink and both counters are full of dirty dishes. I unload the dishwasher, fill the carafe and then discover there aren’t enough fresh beans in the grinder. Well, i love fresh ground coffee beans…and besides, that’s the only way I’ll get coffee out of them, aside from eating them whole, which i prefer not to do. So i have to grind some. I hate the noise- and maybe my partner will too (since said partner is still asleep) So then I’m sitting down with my beloved coffee and checking my email when Fed Ex knocks- Giz goes crazy barking and whining as always. He is traumatized by knocks on the door, too…The package is for my partner who is still in bed. I toss it on her legs and go to my office, where i close the door and hope to get this written.

And how was YOUR morning?

 

Petting the Hounds of Hell

from my memoir, “The Misadventures of No One Famous”

There was that short period in my life in 1998, when I actually believed all would be well. I had a great job that I loved, it paid well, and it seemed it was only a matter of time before I got back on my financial feet. I began to feel good about myself again. Deeply spiritual. Like I had just returned from a sabbatical in an ashram with the Dalai Lama, and was blessed and sanctified by my victory over previous hardships.

Then my paycheck bounced. Then another, and another, and the NSF charges began to pile up since I wrote checks for bills on that amount I expected to be there. I confronted my boss with the admonition that I would need to be compensated immediately or I could not continue to work. The conversation deteriorated from there, turned into an altercation, and a refusal to pay, and I threatened to leave and take the extra computer with me as collateral until he paid me. That’s when he called the police.

The officers arrived, a report was filed, and I was escorted to my car– without a paycheck, and without the computer. I entertained the idea of sugar in his gas tank, or a well-placed banana peel, but thought myself above that sort of pettiness. I was out of sugar and bananas.

Many weeks later, my ex-boss finally sent a check, painfully short of what was actually owed, and wrote a little legal statement on the back stating that endorsement of that check meant that it was payment in full. By that time, my financial status was so bad, I didn’t have a choice. I had to take what he offered, even though he owed me over a thousand dollars. So I signed my name to the back of the check, all the while sending really nasty black energy in his direction.

Jobless and in financial hot-water, I took my disabled self to the first job I could find. Delivering pizza. Problem was, the original job description was that I would deliver only. It developed into being on my feet 8-10 hours, carrying large trays of very heavy dough, enormous cans of sauce, mopping, sweeping… all the sorts of things “normal” people can do.

I told the manager on duty that I couldn’t do those things, wasn’t supposed to do them, but got no sympathy. That conversation ended in sophomoric chastisement in front of several customers. I knew it was only a matter of time before my back gave out. And when that actually happened, I headed for the door with a slipping disc, bent over like a great-grandmother with osteoporosis.

I was practically bedridden for the next two weeks, as the bills continued to pile up. My water was turned off, my electricity was about to be, and I knew I had to find other work, regardless of how long I could keep it.

I started a job at Blockbuster, but soon discovered that 4 to 8 hours on my feet was just as bad as short hours lifting things. I started missing work, and finally went down with another slipped disc and had to turn in my notice. I also had to turn in my notice to the landlord since I was two months behind and saw no end in sight.

A Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and the guest room of an old friend were all that saved me from living in my van. I moved almost all my things to storage in January, ’99, while applying for increases in my VA disability and compensation from Social Security.

I still owed the landlord for that month’s rent, and wasn’t able to sell that furniture to pay him–which is still in the living room of my ex-house. And Tyler (my ex–the one who ripped my heart to shreds) is moving into that house since they raised the rent where she was…odd…like some sort of personal insult…

So this morning, after a long night of anxiety dreams, I pulled myself out of bed and started a strong pot of coffee… Checked the mail…My thoughts kept wandering back and forth between these things:

• what’s the going price for cocaine?
• how many people do I have to kill to join a gang?
• how exactly does one contact the devil in order to sell one’s soul?
  
• Does he carry a “sell” phone?
• what should be said in my suicide note?

This delightful frame of mind is brought to you by the Sherwood Municipal Court, Hot Check Division: “We’re just doing our jobs.” These fine people now hold a warrant for my arrest. Talk about adding insult to injury, salt to a wound…

Funny, they managed to put out a warrant for me, but that check from my ex Boss-From-Hell never was covered, even though I filed an affidavit on him. I continue to feel he’s responsible for much of this Misfortune Circus that is my life. If he hadn’t written me those hot paychecks and thrown me into financial devastation, which meant I had to leave the job– well, none of this would have happened.

And if I had never joined the Army, none of the past eleven years of crap would have happened, and I would be able to find other work, no matter how physical it was. But my choices are limited.

So there was every possibility I’d end up getting arrested and going to jail–all because I couldn’t whip out my checkbook and pay for this fine.

I kept trying to see the point of it– the larger spiritual picture…I just continued to feel like the Biblical figure, JOB. Funny, that name looks an awful lot like something I wish I had. They should have added an “e” to the end of it. Hey, I even have boils again. Didn’t “JOBe” have to deal with that, too? (I would ask the POWERS THAT BE please not to kill my family). That story strikes me as bogus anyway. A Loving God? God kills a man’s family in order to test HIS faith….mmm. I must remember to ask Reverend Sid to explain that one.

So what have I learned?

I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to save the unused canned biscuits for later baking. They come out flat and firm like hardtack. (I only opened them because all I had was a can of 10, and I was hungry. I couldn’t very well eat 10 Texas-sized biscuits, even if I am hungry most of the time lately).

So I’ve learned that now, God. I understand. Now, call off your Hounds.