Too Swamped to Post Again

... Busy flying out for last minute interview.

Theraputic Coffee

The lady is in Minneapolis because I was supposed to play poker last night. I use the word poker loosely; We also play baseball, screw your neighbor, and have even played war for money. I also use the word money loosely. Last time I ended the night up over twenty dollars which, considering we play for nickels and dimes, means I had a stellar night. It's hard to get my six music industry guy friends on the same to organize a game, so when I had four on board I wrote the date in my calendar. Mere hours before I was to steal their money with my mad skills, I received three cancellations.

The lady sits in her room whenever I host poker night and is generally a good sport about not disrupting the guy talk with frequent visits. Needless to say it's boring for her so I always let her know as soon as we've settled on a date. This way she can make plans of her own. Hence the trip to Minny. Sometimes we all need time alone. While chilling with my lady has all the appropriate ingredients to provide a pleasant evening, the scarce "me" time is always a welcome occurrence. With no poker, I was going to get all the "me" time I needed.

For numerous reasons these last few weeks have been a mentally dizzying affair and the anxious, agitated state my brain resides reeks of nervous break down. It's brought on from too much and (strangely) too little going on. The list is long: Wedding plans, honeymoon plans, too much to do at work, no word on Seattle, family deaths, and now a financial blunder of sorts: Due to the poor responses for our wedding (Over forty percent of those invited have sent regrets) we are faced with coming in shy of our contractually defined food and beverage minimum to the tune of over two grand. While we were going to spend this money either way, this two grand is now just going to be handed over to the hotel in return for nothing. This hurts my frugal planning heart. My response to pressure varies. I'll rise to the occasion normally but this weekend I crumbled under the weight of it all. Crumbled as in sat in front of the TV, ate too much, and moped around sans lady. Needing a pick me up, I went to breakfast.

One of my greatest pleasures is this first meal of the day. The delicious food is partly the reason but it's also because breakfast is usually a mellow, un-rushed occurrence where I can regroup and unwind. For this reason even having breakfast alone is a pleasure. Parking at the counter, reading, and sipping coffee for an hour or two settles my soul. The dish washing station was directly in front of me. When my waitress would clean a few plates, the German gentleman next to me would exclaim "Herr Kaffee!" and answer any English to German translations asked of him. A chatty, coffee guzzling lady was to my left. Without my book, I would have suffered accounts of her grandchildren and perhaps worse.

I loose track of how much coffee I've consumed when the refills / top offs occur constantly. Even so, I'm positive I was working on a fifth cup when I gazed into the rising steam for what seemed like minutes. An answer to my anxious melancholy rose with the steam from the coffee and I broke this beverage stare down with a vision of the lady's smiling face.

Death Had a Busy Summer

I'm so swamped I'm mentally tired. Few loose ends remain with the wedding but there are those few. The honeymoon is slightly planned; Loose clippings are strewn about our living room begging to be scoured and edited down to a casual itinerary. 4th quarter releases have kept the large format printers at work buzzing, my interns busy, and my blogging hat ignored. I've applied for the job four weeks ago now, with only one response from HR and no interviews scheduled. Add to the mix a dead aunt and cousin, and it's not hard to imagine my clouded psyche.

My younger cousin Elizabeth lost her battle with health issues derived from years of anorexia and heroin abuse. She was an energetic, always polite girl who possessed stunning beauty even if she never thought so. Anorexia brought on by body-image induced teenage confusion provided me with an awkward moment where I introduced myself as if a stranger. I knew she was coming to lunch. In fact she was the reason for the lunch. But as I said hello to the various relatives numbering in the double digits, I saved her for last, extended my hand and said "Hi, I'm Tom." Eventually she rebounded, filled out, but still looked to the magazine covers for who she should be and what she should look like. This led to breast implants at eighteen, submissions to Playboy, and five year heroin habit that riddled her with health problems such as seizures, the likes of such ultimately ended her time on Earth.

Sue never forgot to tell me about the time I came to her house, was asked how dinner was, and responded "This beef tastes like rubber." I'm sure it did, she wasn't known for her cooking. Her husband Ken is a despicable sort that never missed an opportunity to belittle even a budding teenage psyche. It's unfortunately a popular club, but I belong to (along with many of my relatives) the "I Don't Really Care for Ken Club." He's a self made millionaire from peddling copy machines coupled with a victorious lawsuit against Xerox that netted him some ungodly amount of dough. His offspring was not invited to the wedding as they are a cackling, self-absorbed duo. Heather, the oldest, shares a profession with yours truly. On the rare occasion she visits you'll be subjected to hour long stories about her trials as a design genius and yet not once has she even acknowledged we share a similar traits. Somehow, amidst all this ugly, Sue was a good egg. Maybe not a bright, shiny light of good egg, but certainly one of the good ones.

Sue had smoked almost her entire life. Watching her mom and dad perish from cigarette induced cancer wasn't enough incentive to quit. For two years now she has been bed ridden and required to sit up in bed so her lungs wouldn't fill with liquid. I haven't spoken to her in quite a while, and it was no surprise to receive a regret to our wedding invite. I sent seventy-five dollars of white daisies and yellow roses to her memorial and can't shake the image of her face or the fact that I never said goodbye.

I've had second thoughts about moving away. While I haven't been offered the job, I still consider it wise to mentally prepare and accept such a huge change as a possibility. If I move away it might not be forever but what's going to bring me back? The need to be around my loved ones, or my attendance at their funeral?