My brain. Or: The hundred things you end up doing, while taking care of two simple tasks.....

So, my brain. 

 

Can’t wait for what comes next, can you?  I know!!!!

It IS exciting.

 

While working from home today, I had a very short list of things I wanted to accomplish ‘round here, whilst working. 

Lunch hour stuff…  each of which, as written, should take 10 minutes or less…..

Simple, direct, real, touchable, chores.  Like…two of them……

but... my brain.....

The personal grooming chore resulted in:

• The emptying and re-organizing my medicine cabinet, and to a lesser extent, my linen closet. 
• Throwing out expired… everything. 
• And aprox. 4 plastic electric toothbrush head covers. 
• And a big handful of ancient hotel toiletries.
• Throwing all towels in laundry.
• Cleaning my bathroom
• A shopping list for razor blades and toothbrush heads and toilet bowl cleaner and dryer sheets and……
• As of yet no personal grooming. (amended: i'm clean, shorn, and shiny now!)

 

Clean linens for my daughter’s bed before she arrives for the weekend resulted in:

• finding many drawing utensils. Thankfully not with my bare feet.  Someone has some work to do when she’s here this weekend…..
• Started to get an idea to re-organize her entire room.  Made myself stop.
• Two loads of laundry I hadn’t thought to include today,  WHICH in turn resulted in:
• Me cleaning off my dryer, putting everything that’s accumulated there (it’s right inside my back door) in trash or correct location
• Cleaning off kitchen table and throwing table cloth in wash. 
• Organizing / recycling everything on the table that had collected there over the last couple of weeks
• Happy discovery of a dryer full of clean and dry clothes 
• Which now will be added to what has to be folded and put away…
• Actually putting clean linens on my daughter’s bed. (Score!)

Used to catch grief, both as a child AND an adult, on the regular, for it taking “too long” for me to complete chores.  Not for NOT doing them.  For NOT doing them fast enough.  

More often than not... not an issue. 

But on occasion…

Obviously I was just screwing around or not working fast enough because it was something I didn’t want to do.  OBVIOUSLY… 

   

Maybe not…..

Anyone else?    Anyone else  find they circle waaaaaayyyyy ‘round to take care of a couple things, and end up taking care of like… nine OTHER things, but in an asymmetrical, seemingly (to the untrained eye) random manner?   

How’s that working out? Everyone a fan?

 

I let the critter out today.   I could have put the effort in to tamp down the focus issues. 

But goddamn, I was getting a lot done, so I abdicated control, at least enough.   Fly, be free!!!!

 Not like I was NOT also work-working my butt off...... 

I'm thankful that, when realizing what was going on, I was able to CHOOSE, today.   

Even if I still need to shave my head and take a shower.  (amended:  see above. I'm not an animal...)

In my now ridiculously clean bathroom, with it's very organized medicine cabinet, and freshly laundered bath towels….

 

I'm thankful that, as an adult, I recognize these issues exist in myself, and that I mostly know when it's happening, so I can adjust accordingly. 

If I want....

 

Odd and entertaining stories, Prima Facie.

 

 Might swerve y'all at the end a bit, today.    Have we met?   

Just sayin' - stick around 'til the credits.

following tale is best understood, if you know ahead of time that I, nor my girlfriend, have ever been to the town described below.....

Wandered into a shoe store with my girlfriend, this past weekend, whilst walking the main drag of a small, sleepy beach town up the coast.  it was the kind of shoe store you'd expect to find on the main drag of a sleepy beach community, mixed in with multiple bike shops and oh-so-rugged outfitters.. 

After way too many minutes of awkward, at best, customer service, ending with me assuring her I could put my old shoe back on all by myself, my salesperson met me at the counter to ring me up. 

"Phone#?"

I gave it to her, without thinking about why she was asking.  habit, at this point.

"There's no rewards account under that number."

Oh.  THAT's why she was asking.  mighta mentioned that first.....

"Maybe they're attached to your wife's phone#?"

the fuck?!?

"Uh, I'm not married."

"Oh, I didn't mean to assume and...." random blustering...

"don't worry about it."  (Fuck, I want to get outta here....)

"It's just that I know I've seen your friend(nods toward my girlfriend) in here a few times before, so I figured.."

What, now she's just blatantly lying, and poorly?  for no reason?!?! what the hell?

"we don't have rewards.  what's my total?"

a minute later, I'm outside on the sidewalk, and am sharing conversation with my girlfriend, who stubbornly refuses to change her story about never having shopped in the shoe store in the town she's never been to.

I figure I can use some variation of "Were you off sneak-shoe shopping up north again?!?" about....3-4 times before it's not funny anymore.  

But I'm gonna have to really nail it, each time.

………………………………

Received a text last night, from a local # I did not recognize.   Someone had just heard the great news, and apparently this person just KNOWS my partner and I are going to be great parents!!!!

okay.....

Texted back:  Who are you trying to reach?

Which to.. fuck, a LOT of people, would be a red flag, ESPECIALLY if you were expecting "Thank you, we're so excited!!!!" or whatever...   

nope. 

She promptly told me, and then mentioned something about when I was young, I think, and then texted me a series of pictures of what I can only assume were of "me" as a baby.  boom boom boom, one after another after another...

I appear to have been a happy little girl. 

After several texts in, like... 8 seconds, I texted her back that I was not that individual, and that I would delete the text and the photos.

only response?

"good to know."

My girlfriend reminded me that we agreed on no babies, and I was indeed pregnant... she's outta here...

 

…………

Awhile back, I was pumping gas, when an older guy called out to me.  He looked like he just got off the golf course, and that he likely played several times a week.  He was standing by the next gas pump down from mine.

"What's the zip code, here?"

"Here? in __________?" I answer, stupidly, caught off guard by the random opening.

"Yes, of course here!" he said, irritated by my response.

"But, sir, you need to give the machine YOUR zip code..."

He looked at me like I was simple.  bless my little heart....

"I'm not stupid. I live here in ___________!!!"

I was the fucking idiot, but HE couldn't remember his own zip code. 

And couldn't be bothered to look at his license or anything he might have in his glove box....

and assumed some rando at the gas station would know it.  

but I'm the goddam simpleton in the tale he tells....

…………………….

I shared these odd and entertaining little stories, today, instead of writing about the election, and all the ridiculous bullshit that lead up to it, and continues to come after.  

I might rant write about it specifically, sometime soon.  When I've greater confidence it will come out coherently. 

 

I share these odd and entertaining little stories because they illustrate a partial answer to "How can so many seemingly normal people still support him / buy into all this ridiculous shit?" 

 

This is how.

 

and... scene.