false alarm

Reports of my demise have been in error, premature, even. You see, I have a farewell entry, an last-entry-ever (at least for this life as I know it), an entry scheduled for the future and, like tomorrow, it is always a day away. The thing is, for better or worse, if I don't remember to change the future date on the entry, it accidentally gets posted before I am soup. It is my final entry, after all, the entry that says farewell because the body breaths no more, the fingers type no more, the blah blah blahs no more.

I don't know exactly when that will happen, the end of the babble, but there's always hope that it will be next year, as opposed to this year, since next year, as you may have heard somewhere, is always a year away (get it?). Yeah, so I'll die tomorrow, I don't have time to die today. It's a philosophy, or something like that.

So, just in case you happened to spy those last words that slipped out here on to the internet in the past hour (and just imagine if I didn't have this sudden impulse to come here to write after being away for days and days, aye?), with much fanfare and celebration, I apologize for any stress, concern, or sorrow you may have felt.

I am not gone, only forgotten.

If you wonder why, here is a sampling of the wonders you've missed., a typical summary of food intake, for instance.. Carrots and a small low-carb tortilla smeared with fat-free cream cheese and a ribbon of grape jelly was a midnight snack after a dinner of a few slices of almost fat free ham and turkey and cheese on, you guessed it, a low-carb tortilla. A 100 calorie chocolate protein shake washed it all down. A yogurt and a shake was lunch, so today was a reduced calorie day after yesterday's all-I-could-eat pig out at the taste of Sanford food festival. That was fun.

The real, remember?

The daily blog, filed with all the daily trivia, from food to poop, from work to play, from highs to lows, and all that's in between. The daily details that make a life lived. As I said on the right, that daily chronological blog is elsewhere now. Here, at least for the last seven or five entries, entries appear rather haphazardly, randomly, and abstractly at times, as this blog was put to bed some three years ago when the daily life took a dramatic turn in another direction, a spiral downward that did not need recording, actually. Woe seldom does. It's much better now, but at the time....

Lonely days of abandonment and emptiness instead of support and repayment for betrayals and usury, the story of a life is still the same (old story). Several months went by and nobody mentioned that they noticed, but then, yet another phoenix of sorts rose, several, actually, in case it matters, and the daily life continued to be recorded for posterity. Feel free to applaud. Or just send money if that's easier.

Outrageous, no doubt.

There is a reason for everything, after all.

Someday... somehow... somewhere...

This will too.

Narf :)

how quickly we fade

or age, as it is life that is fading... life, stamina, strength, resiliency, and will, at least, fade faster with each passing day... when i was in my teens i would write of how i read of people twice that age feeling like they were running uphill even on a flat surface and people three times that age accepting the inevitable sedentary life of middle age and beyond... i wondered why they did that and whether i would when i got there... and each year i wonder more why i am trudging uphill and laughing at the memories of relatively insatiable and endless energy youth... it's like gravity is getting stronger... perhaps it's the mayan calendar thing... oh sure, make jokes (but that's my way, the mttm, remember?... got to give myself the time to process and heal and then i will suddenly soar again... shhhh, am i telling secrets?)...

and the staring dog who just went out two hours ago, or less, is staring me down as if he's never been outside in his life... how quickly we lose the focus of regaining the concentration that creates the will to continue up the hill...

i just can't give myself (especially the physical, which is too easily injuried by distraction when attemting to push it past limits and i desperatly need to push past current limits because current limits are pathetic - yeah, pathetic, dangit) a few hours of undivided attention here... wah wah wah, i did mention i am pathetic, right?... but seriously consuela, i must do this survive... no, you take me out now...

he's like the maid on family guy, sheesh :}

in the middle of life

the roller coaster of life is spectacular when we allow the highs to take off without limits but the flip side of letting go allows the lows to come crashing down beyong the emotional pain thresholds most humans want to deal with, so most people hold back and learn how to appear to control their emotions through physical, emotional, and chemical distraction and therein pretend they are in control... but it's all a lie...

for the few who let the roller coaster roll where it will go, the survival rate is not so great... many hit lows and skip way off the tracks and end up dead... and then there's me... i just feel it all at once all the time and in the midst of bliss can feel the tears... awareness is a bitch, ya know?...

giving stuff, buying stuff for people into stuff is a rush, a thrill, an addiction... it gives me a sense of worth and a rush of joy... the only rub is when the gifts given are not appreciated openly because guilt or something keeps someone from being honest about how much they appreciate it, or something like that... but i love to give so i buy and give even when it's not so wise (like when i am not working)...

so i don't want to think about how much money i spent even as i enjoyed spending it and i know must set some more limits, even during this gift-giving season (but i don't and never have and why start now?... cuz work gets harder to find as the years pass and the rent still needs to be paid and i gave away all my retirement savings and nobody is going to take care of me when i get feeble... why am i answering the question, anyway?... cuz i look at life from both sides now and all the time, remember?)...

yeah, logic, sensibleness, responsibility, and the reality of life, aging, and living a long time... where's the fun in that? (snark)...

ah, perhaps i will find more will power tomorrow...

coulda been you

from the land of couldabeen :)

missing links

as i drop them into entries
as the days slide passed us now
i wonder how many will never find your eyes
(not to mention your heart and mind)

and rather than believe
they have been a waste of time, somehow,
i shall believe they will be shared someday
(that some day we will find the time for rhyme)

and so i leave them here to be found
cuz that is what makes my world go round

(and then i thought out loud) . . . hmmmm, there is a rhyming pattern in there, however complex or meandering, that inspires my smile as much as the message within the words that form the rhyming pattern if you know what i mean... almost a month and almost as many entries (and links to other entries) as days gone by and what might have been is wistful and whatever will be will be as it's always been (meta-time-ically speaking)...

(and then i shared the day) . . . another long work day without taking a break cuz it was almost time for normal people to go home when i looked at the clock and home just in time to make a sandwich and catch the ncaa women's tournament with jackson and nod off in the chair and wake to find myself here with an entry box waiting for words... so here are the words and now, where is bed? :)

KIT! :)

and so it goes and yes i said it right there at the top in the title it coulda been you this entry was too but instead, it was to someone else who wasn't here either so in the end it was to me and so it goes and so it goes and i am... the only one who knows :)

if you ask why i am smiling, you most likely do not know me well enough to understand my answer and so it may sound absurd, but if you do not understand my silence, you will not understand..... my words . . . my words . . . my words :)

before i check you

i check myself...

that is, that is... what i mean to say is, as if that is not clear or something, is that in this particular sharing made up of putting words on this screen via the cyberspace highway or whatever we might call it now or then or someday, i start writing before looking anywhere else, usually... so if there are comments or reactions of any sort anywhere, like in comments (oh... doh?) or email or even on my phone (still 407-325-1482, in case you wondered how real (e)thereal still was, i mean, just look around, as in scroll just a bit, aye?), i do not know that (about the comments, reactions, etc that might be there, kapish?) until after i start writing a while, at least... see, cuz the writing started out for me and remains, first and foremost, for me... sanity and comfort and clarity and release and work and play and sing and dance and giggle and cry and scream and sigh and whatever else, the inside comes out before the outside comes in (in the place where i feel most like me)... any other way seems to be following and i am not in this world to follow, nor to lead, actually, which is probably why i am alone (amongst the many other logical reasons, aye?)... ya falla?...

lol, hope you woke with a peaceful smile too :)

listening to this
(in the place where i feel most like me)

no harmony for me

the eharmony report based on the 29 points of my profile is on yet another bloh... oh, did i mean blog?... or perhaps blah? lol lam... anyway, that may be autobiographical and may be something else cuz i have no intention of adding anything to it at the moment except the rest of the eharmony profile if i find time for copying and pasting... i know it belongs in the intros in the bios, but i don't have patience to format a page and configure an ftp program (or download one, for that matter), so it is where it is... meanwhile, they sent me two dozen emails already and there are twenty or so "matches" that i cannot contact after tonight, but without a face or detailed information (twenty words is not enough), there's not going to be any initial contact on my part... so it is a come on, worthless for me... but it was interesting to take their psycho-quiz and see the results... and someday, when my princess, comes, she'll wanna know (and this one time, at band camp... :)

in the slightly more tangible world, i slept inconsistently this weekend cuz happiness is an insatiable attention sponge who is constantly begging and waking from a nap at 11pmish to walk him wakes me up and then i'm up the rest of the night... his schedule is so not nocturnal (whereas mine, well, you know) and trying to stay home and rest was not too effective, so while it was a long happiness filled weekend but i could use a day off :)

hope you had fun too :)

woke, slept, woke

relaxing day, walked and ran with happiness, ate baked clams, nodded off during really bad sci-fi movies, babbled, and filled out 93% of an eharmony profile cuz it's free this weekend... meanwhile, they only found seven "matches" for me in the entire world and only one lives within 100 miles... they won't allow a free trial to see photos, so it's pretty much a waste of time as i am not approaching anyone on a dating site without seeing their face... if someone contacts me, i'll respond, but i'm not re-locating or looking for a long distance relationship so, it was something to do... i did get an interesting report from all the profile information that i'll put up somewhere for you to read... somewhere like here...

later :)

aging graciously

not quite gracefully as i stumble a lot because i have broken my stride many times in this life and let the excess fat form and let the muscles lose form and even filled out the wrong form (figuratively) but somewhere inside remains the right formula for forming the format of formidible human form (must have done something right in my formative years) so i might put off the formaldehyde a few more years...

so at just after midnight i sit here cooling down after returning from the gym, another run to nowhere that may or may not extend this life experience, but definitely provides more energy and positivity... the body thoughts blog should provide more detail, but i am hopefully at the start of yet another climb back into the best shape this body can be in at this point in the physical life span...

may you be enjoying (and optimizing) your journey through this life as well :)

been so long

since an all-nighter was so refreshing... from the depths of the buried treasures (and the sadness that they were buried so long and still remain mostly buried, but at least remembered to the euphoria of remembering) to the pleasures of the momentary experiences of letting music envelope me almost as it once did (shhh, we do not need to notice the almost at the moment :)

the past six or seven thereal entries (and dozens of others, some linked, some not) tell a story of a life, a week, an eternity... and while you had to be here to begin to understand, perhaps you will care to want to know one day and in that wanting, the story of a life continues...

till tomorrow :)

yeah, really

omigosh... not the sudden blurted out omigosh as one syllable, but the oh-my-gosh of wonderfully wonder-fulled wondrous memory re-incarnating feeling so purely sweetly beautiful that there are no words... of course music bring me here again... tonight, the music of jay & the americans and many other related songs found on youtube... righteous brothers, moody blues, association, elvis, four seasons, lettermen, and so many others... so i've got hundreds of vids to download queued up when i finally stop listening as the library grows... oh yeah, really, all i can do is smile :)

music (and lyrics) makes thereal the best place to be :)

this is home

other places i communicate with others are fine for their purpose and appreciated for the time and energy others share there, but this is home, the door is open, and anyone watching or sharing without harming is welcome, even if nobody takes the time to stop by...

and the truth is (yeah, feeling the emo for the moment), it is sometimes disappointing when no one cares to stop by, but the door remains open and this remains my home... when i am silent everywhere else, i am still here (the long and winding road)...

hopefully my friends will know that when i appear to disappear...

home from work early, nap, out to game night at the history center, fun, snacks, and home again...

i have been away (worklife)

not out of town, just caught up in the hyper-busy work that multiple investigations creates... my job is primarily twofold... daily performance improvement monitoring, data collection, processing, and analysis that becomes weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports... and daily incident and seclusion/restraint reviews to ensure policies are being followed to reduce risk as much as possible... there is not enough time for one person to do it all without working at it more than eight hours a day at least five days a week and that means no days off... each monday there is three days to caught up on... a holiday, a vacation day, a sick day, creates more days to catch up on and there is no one else to do my job when i am not there...

and then there are the things that go wrong that need investigating, extra time and energy to interview, to review video, to meet with external investigators and regulatory agency surveyors to find out what went wrong, if anything we did was wrong, then take action to correct it and ensure it does not happen again... a single investigation can take two days or more, easily, two days or more in which none of the regular work can be done, so two or more days that have to be made up with extra hours... the past two weeks i had seven investigations to juggle and somehow get done along with the daily work... and two of the past three weekends i also was on call, so had extra work on four out of six of the past saturdays and sundays...

and as if that is not enough, a fourth aspect of my job takes even more time... whatever a surveyor arrives, it is my responsibility to provide them with everything they need and that usually means giving them the majority of my time on days they are there and then the majority of the day after they leave producing a report on their findings and an action plan to fix anything they found wrong... since march 1st i've had three full days of surveyors in two separate visits, meaning five days of work for surveys... it is march 21st and so far, there have been 15 working days in the month... four of the six weekend days have been work days as well, so only two weekend days allowed for any catch up... five days of surveys and ten days of investigations and that leaves most of fifteen days of normal work that would require 9-10 hour work days not done...

not enough of a challenge, it only gets more challenging... surveyors are expected for seven of the remaining eight work days of this month... somehow, the full month of daily work must get done as well...

and more... i took two of the fifteen workings days off just to recover and work from home because i can get moe done at home... catch up?... simply does not happen... so i throw skip some reports and throw reports together based skimming data and intuitive analysis, not scientific method simply because there is no time to perform the tasks required for scientific method...

and more... we do not factor in any of the routine filing and physical organizational work required to maintain some semblance of funtional order to the massive volumes of documents that pass through my hands every day... a full 40 hour week of creating file folders and reviewing and filing paper would catch that proces up, if there was only time... this is the real of work life for the moment...

and to survive, if find mental escape in games i enjoy, sometimes with friends, sometimes by myself... and also in audio-visual stimuli, stories brief as songs and long as movies and multi-part tv series... and in writing, though the past two weeks there's been much less time for writing because i needed to escape into external distractions to relieve the internal pressure in the brain... too much thinking, too much stress, doing hundreds of hours of work in a quarter of the time requires intensity that hurts the brain and to heal, escape into other thought processes works for me... a strategy game based on numbers... and sci-fi tv shows that let me leave the normalcy of human life as it is today to imagine a different world, way, and perspective...

i miss you when i am gone, even if you rarely acknowledge you are here... i miss the illusion of sharing, caring, and not being alone... but healing is a solitary process, so i have been away... i am not quite back... i have much more catching up to do at work, much more pressure to put on this brain, and therefore more escape time away from daily babbling as well... but there must be time for babbling... and then, there is the profound desire to continue the sharing in the myriad of other blogs underway... forty four blogs at blogspot alone and then, another half dozen reconnecting me with toronto (have i mentioned the connection has returned as strong as it ever was?... some would call me insane, but then, i am when compared to what humans call normal... it is the right thing to do right now)... all i need is about twice as much time as i get in each day...

and then, as if all that was not enough, there is the long term sleep deprivation taking it's toll in the erosion of this body and brain cells... here i am gathering my wits to explain to myself and to you where i have been and what my mind and body must fit into this life (and we have not included any social life, which does happen too) so i can make some sense of it and perhaps find more efficient use of the time...

fatigue... survival... and all i can hope is you do not feel too slighted by the limited time i can share with you here and in other places... i wish we could share more... i crave more personal and more intimate sharing... i must find ways to work fewer hours, as impossible as that sounds... i must find a way to take at least a week off giving ass little of the nine days in a row to work... i must find a way to fit in more regular exercise and more sleep (softball at 8:30 tomorrow, less than four hours away, and then a game at 11am and another game at 4:30pm and i am on call so i may have to run into work between games or after the last game, maybe a late night at work to start another long work week)... i must find a way to make time to find intimacy and fall in love again... if i do not do these things, i will risk burn out, illness, death, and definitely not be fully satisfied with life, even as i enjoy it immensely from moment to moment...

so there is a summary of life as i know it in e-the-real today...

how's yours? :)

to all ships at sea

and anyone keeping in touch or interested in what's going on in the daily wanderings i loosely call my life... i might have been done by now, but instead, i've dragged my feet for weeks and today included and watched most of the superbowl and so, there's still more packing to do... all night, perhaps, with a deadline of 7am so i can shower and get to work to do orientation training... i should be home by 10am, which will give me an hour or so before the maintenance inspection and another hour or so before the movers get here... it's so exciting to be wondering if i am going to get it all done on time...

the oven is going through it's clean cycle... hopefully it does not set off the seriously sensitive smoke alarm in the middle of the night... i need two large burner trays to replace those cuz i only have small ones, which means i must have used the big new ones somewhere along the way... or gave them away... so a trip out to the store is going to be part of the morning trip to work... by then i should have everything done... and get wrinkly hands, since i must have given away my gloves too...

am i getting tired?... yup... am i getting lonely again?... yup... do i wish someone was here to help, or at least to keep me company?... yup... am i going back to packing and cleaning now?... yup...

lol lam narf :)

continue continue

no, i did not order little ceasar's pizza, just emphasizing what i must do through the night until i am done... breaking for a moment to eat cuz amidst the backing i decided i would cook spaghetti with shrimp and onions in an enhanced sun dried tomato and roasted red pepper alfredo sauce (less than ten minutes prep and the time to boil spaghetti for cooking time... the shrimp were frozen cooked 100-150, two bags {two pounds} and for the sauce i started with two jars of classico alfredo sauce, one sun dried tomato and one roastted red pepper, added a couple of squirts of tarter sauce, a few tablespoons of ken's valdelia onion salad dressing, a quarter cup of sabrett's onion topping {usually used on hot dogs} and microwaved covered for 2 minutes, stirring, two more minutes, stirring, two more minutes, then add some grated parm-ramono-asiago cheese and let six until the spaghetti was cooked... really yummy sauce that could have only been better if i took the time to reduce it for thickness... i could have added cream cheese though, hmmm, next time :)

i love it when a meal is delicious and it takes longer to eat it to cook it... best of all, just one pot, one collander, a fork, a large spoon, and two microwavable bowls to wash (used a hard cardboard dixie paper plate as a cover)... of course the purist understands the limitations of frozen and pre-prepared sauces and additions, but still, flavor was YAY :)

no extra salt or butter/fat spread and no bread even, though i'll defrost the frozen garlic-cheese breadsticks for next time since i cooked enough for the next two days so with the leftovers already in the fridge, i am done cooking until monday in the new apartment so i can scrub the kitchen and oven and be done...

ate while typing this entry and now, back to packing :)

signed, sealed, delivered, i'm theirs

yes, while i do have 30 days to change my mind, i signed the lease for the new place and gave them all the money to get the keys and take possession of the apartment and i am 98% thrilled and happy...

five things i did not know cuz i was not able to see the apartment are... the microwave is too small, the layout of the apartment gives a smaller feel than other layouts, the patio seems slightly smaller, the air-conditioning units for several apartments are right outside the living room windows (and we're on the first floor), and i think the bedrooms are more directly off the living spaces (less privacy) than the other apartments... not deal breakers, but different than the other places we liked...

a few things we did know that are not ideal, but acceptible, are... the screened patio does not exit to the outside, the kitchen has a single sink, the carpet is more outdoorsy than indoorsy, the bathroom lights don't turn on (a sign of poor maintenance inspections?)

the big YAYs! for me are the rest of the apartment, first floor with a nature walk right off the breezeway, bigger kitchen, bathroom, closets... separate switches for the bathroom lights and the dang annoying loud vent fan (can you tell that was a deal breaker?), flourescent kitchen lighting instead of track lighting (to be able to see in the kitchen, sweet), and everything else...

hopefully jackson will like it when she sees it too (she's not moving in until May, so we can think about changing in the next 30 days)... and now it's time to take this packing gig seriously and then the cleaning deal and then, moving on monday... nobody right here to share the fun and excitement (and chores), but still, the excitement is bubbling over now that i actually signed and have the keys so bouncy bouncy off to pack and clean :)

for show (and tell)

not just the show, though that is certainly a bit of the story, as is individuality, but the story of this life that most of what is done by people is done for show… even here in e-the-real, I write real thoughts about real life for show in the hope somebody will care to know what is going on in my life, moment to moment… day after day… week after week… year after year (I know, months too)… cuz I want to care and be cared about moment to moment, etc…

the most real show is showing each other we care about each other… and I’ll be here, or somewhere, when you finally show :)

this is my house

online, i mean... thought i have many other web addresses where i write a little less and a lot more... and while i wander all over the web (used to be much more than these days, but even now i find time to wander and suddenly in the past week spend hour at facebook finding lots of people i know and knew), this is my house (from the elton john chilling barren house to the warmth, security, and love of the csn&y our house, it's all here and more)... though i would love to share it again someday, loving the solitude too...

i still appreciate the occasional visit :)

phew, that was close

the babble almost came and took over e-the-real and thereal could have slipped into and become and gone the way of RealTime and behind the candoor and so many other noble attempts to share in a more normal and therein acceptable and therein theoretically more successful (at least potentially based on the laws of probability and such) in the goal of sharing, which babbling tends to undermine...

i know, here i am again just two minutes later (less, actually, shhhhh) babbling, but catching it none the less and heading off into the other babble places after stopping by here briefly to warn you about the previous few entries where babble almost too over...

must have been a really good new year, aye? :)

hope yours was/is great too :)

new year, happy

ah, the dog is missed, happy dog, that is... the only one who ever offered me truly unconditional love, as primitive as it might have been... perhaps that's the secret of actualizing unconditional love, letting it come from the primitive instinctive depths of the brain...

home after the party where we chatted, watched some football, chatted some more, and ate like pigs... i picked up a ton of food and there wee lots of leftovers... i sad no to a half dozen other parties, much wilder, much bigger parties, but it was good to hang peacefully at jackson's cuz i'd have tried to stay home if and take care of me if she didn't invite me over... i might as well face it, i don't give myself nearly enough me time... even when it seem to, i'm mostly distracting myself and not really taking care of me... but hey, that's just the early morning hours of a new year after a party talking, right?...

so maybe this will be the year i finally return to the place i belong, inside and out, and find the one and start living that happily ever after togetherness that i've been dreaming about beneath the seriously irreverent self-mocking carefree demeanor... or something like that...

happy new year :)

too much sleep is not enough

twelve hours sleep... and i wake blurry as can be, puffy eyes, out of focus, full of mucous, gonna drink caffiene (hot tea) as soon as i get to work for the first time in months... i woke several times during the night cuz i seldom sleep more than four hours without waking cuz i sleep in four hour cycles and i rise back to the semi-conscious level of sleep every four hours... always been that way... if i wake during a rem phase, i am a blurry zombie even if i slept twelve hours (oh, that's what happened, aye?)... thing is, by this evening i'll be waking and tonight i'll be up all night cuz i got twelve hours sleep... the strange rem sleep cycle of this brain-body baffles scientists, but it works for me...

it just doesn't for for this life where work is expected five days a week and there are only twenty four hours in a day... yes, i said what i said and i meant what i said, an elephant's faithful, or forgetful, or something like that...

oh well, off to work i go, hi ho...