frustrated update

In addition to the cross member that I finally did have to move I'm now faced with more parts removal to access the part that I actually need to remove and replace.

The little bit of exhaust pipe that runs under the oil pan must also come out. I was fairly certain I'd be able to work around it, but such is not the case.

Did I mention my growing frustration with this repair? I'm certain I may have at some point.

I'm about to leave the house to visit a friend. I'm going to borrow two three inch socket extensions to add to my new six inch and hope that I actually get twelve inches that will allow me to remove three bolts out of eight that I need to pull to get the exhaust pipe out of the way.

Also, it's raining again, and I can see out the window the small pile of cat litter that is supposed to be soaking up the oil in the driveway. Did I mention having accidentally stepped in it earlier? The rain is turning it into an especially delightful and disgusting mud.

laid out flat

The front end of my poor car is off the ground yet again. The job is slightly harder than I'd hoped and involves moving a support arm that I'd hoped to be able to work around. The socket extension that I borrowed from Momma's boyfriend was already on its way to broken, and I finished breaking it before I finished needing it. Rather than finish the job yesterday I finished that part of my day with a trip to Sears. Momma's boyfriend and I now own our very own six inch, 3/8 inch socket extension.

I'm off work today and should have the entire day to finish fixing my car. Today it's raining just enough to keep the ground wet and keep me out from under the car.

That's only one thing that's messing with my head today. The frustration that completing this one simple car repair task has become is starting to get to me. My weekend that I could have worked on this car was spent driving to, attending and returning from a roller derby bout in Cincinnati. It was a trip we'd planned, and I don't at all regret going, but sitting here now, frustrated about my car, it just seems like time added to the time I've not fixed the car.

There are other issues dancing around inside my head, things I won't go into just now. And it isn't that these other things are so big or are new or . . . It's just a dogpile of irritation and frustration, and I'm not doing the greatest job of fixing any of my issues. I keep finding myself in the moment frustrated and exasperated and feeling somewhat helpless that this moment there is nothing I can do.

Dr. Seuss called it the waiting place. I'm sure it's come up here before.

Bleah! This isn't the post I wanted to write today, and I actually did have some things I was thinking. If the rain continues to keep me from lying on my back on the asphalt under a few hundred pounds of Honda then maybe I can get to it.

I've also agreed to write a bout recap from Cincinnati, so I need to get to that before the day is over. I've tended to have a bad habit of putting those off in the past, and I find my recaps are better the sooner following the bout I write them. And The Boy has just informed me that he's hungry. My answer of "good for you" won't really help him get anything to eat, so I suppose that's my cue.

oil slicks

So, did I tell you about my car? It's been leaking a god awful amount of oil for too long, and I finally had the time and weather to prop the bitch up and look underneath.

I really hoped it would be the gasket on the oil pan, and I did get a new gasket as well as plenty of new oil and a filter. It's a bit past oil change time, so we'll do them all together.

The car sits on jack stands in the back driveway, a drain pan beneath the dripping. We have a long and obnoxious oil slick running down the driveway because I never thought to kick a pan under the car when it was parked. I did think of it yesterday, but that's several days and most of a dollar short.

Whether or not the gasket is good is of no consequence at this point. I crawled under the car and soon realized the real problem. Somehow or other the oil pan is cracked. I hate even admitting it, but either Momma or I has had an accident that went unmentioned. It obviously didn't have to have been much, and I could guess it might have been something that didn't seem, at the time, to have been so bad.

It doesn't really matter how or by whom, so I won't dwell on it. I also won't dwell on ninety bucks for a new oil pan. I called a couple of places and checked a couple places online. In the end it's Eddie's up the road a bit. They've got a hill full of old cars to pick from and can find me a used one.

The boys and I, in Momma's car (thanks Momma!) took a drive north today. The place sort of sneaks up on you as things can do on this highway. The road runs over and around and through a series of ridges, so it's quite easy for something to be sitting out in the valley below you or hidden behind a wide curve.

I talked to the nice lady and confirmed my need for an oil pan with a cash deposit. Our recent rain is making their job harder as they drive the tractor to find the car from which to pull the part, so I'm expecting a call tomorrow that my oil pan is ready for me to come pick up. With any luck it will be early enough in the day that I can fix my car in time for work.

And that's the story up to this point. I do so hope that the repair doesn't bring to light any further destruction or needs. I want this (and the brake light) to be the last thing I have to fix for a while. I also put two tires on it this week, the day that I went for my oil change supplies, so for the moment, I'm about car repaired out.

looked at

I went to look at a house yesterday. I liked it, but the person with whom I've agreed to be a roommate has not yet seen it. I should think she'd like it, but I can't know that without her seeing it and agreeing.

The house is a good deal and in a location I love. I'll admit that it puts me in easy walking distance of two bars I tend to frequent occasionally, but it's even less of a walk to a playground and small park.

I know and am friends with the person renting the upstairs of this house, and that proximity to this person and people around her would be good for me.

The house itself is beautiful, over a hundred years old, full of wood and mantels and huge doors and a claw foot bathtub.

I'm pretty sure I could move in almost immediately. I met the owner yesterday, and he and I seemed to get along well enough, the forty year age difference not seeming to play any part at all. We ended up wasting the better part of an hour wandering through the house more times than we needed to, commenting on the beauty in the architectural features, admiring his work in hanging blinds and working around the more than a century gap between those windows and modern windows, and they don't make curtains that long anymore.

Not rushing into a deal of course sounds like a good idea, but I want to give the proper amount of credence it deserves, no more and no less. Because I really want this space, but I don't want to be an idiot about it. Am I overlooking cons in favor of the pros? Am I intentionally ignoring anything I know should be a deal breaker? I really don't think so.

So the problem is aligning potential landlord with potential roommate. I only know what she tells me, and I'm not sure how antsy she is to move compared with how antsy she claims. I know she just moved into a place and has no lease and wants to get back closer to town rather than being in some other county that I couldn't place though I am familiar with its existence.

And that's where I am as of right now. I can't stop thinking about this house, and I really want to move, like now. I feel sometimes as if I've put this off much too long, but I also fear the next big cut, the moving out, the total separation that comes with actually starting life not somewhat attached to this woman I've . . . actually, I don't know that this is the post for that conversation. Yes, there's still a weirdness attached to this whole thing. I guess it's just one of those situations where a good thing sort of feels like a bad thing in the here and now.

things I don't do

Nothing much happened this past week, or so it seems, but then quite a bit happened as well. Momma got a car, and I finally looked at a place to live other than the one I am now in. I didn't hang out outside the square very much other than the night I went to the bar that has all too often proved unsafe for me, and I didn't dance.

As we all should know by now, I don't dance. I accept that there is a point I could find at which I may feel okay about dancing, but as the social function it is on a packed dance floor with too loud music that I don't actually like is a recipe for too much for me.

Other people do not have any issue with dancing, and for them I can accept that it's none of the ways I think about it. It isn't an unpleasant place for them but is in fact an enjoyable portion of their evening out.

Too often though people don't get or just won't accept that I don't dance. They want me to, and they tell me all the good things that will come of dancing. I was even offered the chance to meet all of a particular friend's "gay boys" if I would just come with her. To make matters worse for me was that this group of people were at the farthest point in the dancing throng that one could get. I really wasn't wading through that to get to them.

I suppose I sort of do wonder if getting over it and dancing might not be good for me, but I also hate that I should have to. I don't get why anyone would act as though they need me to dance. I don't need their presence next to me to sit at the bar and drink beer and talk to people.

And sitting here thinking about it, what I most prefer is moving around, running into people I know, just hanging out. So, next time we hang out, remember that. I don't dance, but don't I don't care if you do. Go! Have fun.

Oh, and you aren't yet getting the story just now about this particular bar at which I seem never to have a good time. I've collected a couple of stories about this place from other people. Some are similar to mine while others are just messed up in relation to mine and those like it.

So, yeah, mysterious foreshadowing what?

motorcycles

First I should point out that I haven't ridden a lot of motorcycles over the course of my short life. I never had access to them in general. There was a family with whom my family were friends, and we visited them often over the years that we knew them. They had daughters the age of two of my older brothers and a son around the age of me and my next youngest brother. This kid did have a motorcycle or two, and a couple of times he actually took me riding.

Years later my next older brother bought a giant beast of a Honda Gold Wing, a bike I would never in my life imagine wanting to actually have. I have a whole other style when it comes to bikes, and it's a style that I never really allowed myself to think about till very recently.

I'm now going to make a connection that may seem a bit of a stretch, but in my mind it's sort of part of something similar. Do I start now with the disclaimer? I'm not into the gay fetishism of bikes and leather and the sort of things that go with that, but my interest in motorcycles is something that I feel I closeted like my being gay. It's something that I knew was there, but for whatever reasons I never allowed myself to consider.

It's always been there. I've always had to notice bikes wherever they are in relation to me. Even when they aren't the style or type that I would prefer I look and watch as long as I can see them. Even when it's a huge cruiser holding a pair of retirees who opted for the training wheels package I stop and look.

And now they're everywhere, now that I've allowed myself to accept that, somewhere deep inside me, there's a kid who never got a motorcycle but always wanted one. It reminds me of coming out, when I finally admitted and accepted that I like boys and not girls, boys were everywhere. It doesn't hurt that spring is trying to peep its first blossoms of warmth into the blue east Tennessee skies, because this town is a bike town, and they are everywhere.

If you want to see the sort of bike that forms a bulge in my pants then click HERE. It's an old Triumph and is so beautiful. I want one.

So, with some patience and hopefully some common sense, I'm going to get some more important things out of the way, things like finding a place to live and getting back to paying off the school loans, but there's a bug that's bitten me and an itch I'm going to have to scratch. I'm sticking some money in tiny increments somewhere no one but me will find it. I'm going to start looking for something probably oldish and beat up a little bit. I'm going to figure this thing out and make it happen.

new phone

At some point in the past I'm sure I bitched about my phone. It was dying a slow death. Now it lies forlorn and abandoned. I got a new phone.

I love texting, not in the way that a teenage girl does, but in the way that I hate making phone calls but often want to let people have access to a particular thought process that involves them.

This is technically the third phone I've had, though the first was technically a work phone. After some people misused their phones they were quickly taken away. My next phone was a few years later, and as of mother's day that phone will be four years old.

All of this to say that I'm on my third phone, though considering the work phone wasn't my primary phone, it could also be seen as only my second.

I took care of the Razr for the years I've had it. I never really used it that much in the beginning, but lately it's seen more and more use. It really has been time to replace it, so I finally did.

I think I got a decent deal, and considering the phones AT&T had to offer, it was the exact one I wanted. Sure there are fancier phones, but this one is a pretty green and has a qwerty keyboard, and the camera seems to take good pictures, and the actual phone works better than the old phone, or at least I think it does. Maybe I'm still high from new/pretty/fancy phone vapors.

So while the Blackberrys are neat and cool looking, and the iPhone is like, an iPhone duh, I like my Samsung. As mentioned it's pretty, and I actually enjoy getting to type out my little messages. I'm anal retentive about not using u when I mean you, and the t9 shit isn't going to do it for me. It's too much. I don't like it.

But my new phone? I love it, though not quite as much as a baby loves it when you push their knees toward their chest and help them get that fart out.

upgrade

My phone is a piece of shit. Actually, my phone is just getting old, though it seems there was a time when nearly four years wasn't such a long time to have a phone.

But it does feel to me as if I'm carrying around a piece of shit phone because of the issues it has developed fairly recently.

Roughly twice a day I have to turn the phone off, open the back and move the sim card around a tiny little bit. I realized within the past week that I have to use it on speaker phone to actually hear all of the conversation I'm attempting to have when attempting to have a conversation. There is a piece in the hinge that gets loose and can actually fall out sometimes. When closed the two halves are a bit wobbly. The back, beneath which is the battery and sim card, fits but could easily be pulled of if it were to snag on something.

So, very soon, I'm going to the dreaded mall to the AT&T store. I thought about ordering a phone online, but Momma suggested checking out the different phones to make sure I like the one I've planned on ordering. That makes sense, and I can probably also get the phone then and there and not have to wait.

Now I just need a pair of children to finish brushing their teeth. I can hear them playing in the bathroom, so I'm guessing I need to stomp back there and yell and waggle my finger at them.

Party on, Garth.

planetary alignment time

At some point in the past I'm sure that I mentioned Bob Brezny's horoscope, and I'm sure at the same time I included my own disclaimer. I do not believe in astrology any more than I believe in myths and/or superstition and/or interstellar entities.

I don't have any issues with Bob Brezny's Free Will Astrology though, and I rather enjoy it each week in my local alternative newsweekly. He doesn't quite give it the usual approach where random alignments of certain planets or certain alignments of random planets and stars approaching their zeniths in particular juxtaposition with other heavenly bodies dictates who and what and where in regards to the choices you are bound to either make by making or make by not deciding otherwise.

Having said all of that he has once again presented a list of options that seem to hone in on something awfully close to something akin to what I'm sort of letting my mind dance along the periphery of.

I'll give you that the preceding several paragraphs are as hard to read as they are hard to make sense of, but give me my verbosity and I'll give you the following snippet from my most recent Free Will Astrology horoscope. In it I as a Virgo am asked:

Would you rather have love:
1. knock the wind out of one of your illusions, thereby exposing the truth about what you really want;
2. not exactly kick you in the butt, but more like pinch and spank you there, inspiring you to revise your ideas about what it means to be close to someone;
3. spin you around in dizzying yet oddly pleasurable circles, shaking up your notions about how to keep intimacy both interestingly unpredictable and soothingly stable.

And it is timely because I am at and have been at a place where ideas of love weigh heavy on my mind.I'm ruling out number two on the grounds that pinching and spanking aren't really the sort of things I'm into. You're quite welcome to enjoy yourself as you see fit, but I don't have to want to do it.

Numbers one and three however both contain at least some amount of making me think. But I'd have to be able to give you some idea of what I even think about love in the first place.

1. I honestly couldn't tell you what I want right now. What I want right now can so easily change depending on when exactly right now is and where I am given when right now is. Sometimes I'm content to be alone, to have and do and be what I want. Sometimes I just want a strong pair of arms around me. Sometimes I want a partner in crime, a yen to my yank.

For me this also brings up questions of type. I'm learning that, while I have some amount of a type of guy that I think is hot, I'm in no way bound or hindered by this, and I'd barely even call it a preference. I think I'm good at letting each guy have as much chance as he deserves based more on how I feel upon meeting them versus how they appear physically.

Basically I feel that I have at least a tenable grasp on the ideas of expectations and desires and wish fulfillment.

3. I can't help but feel most people sort of want to be spun around and dizzied by love. I do want something not entirely predictable and yet soothing in the knowledge that I'm with someone willing to work through shit and be understanding. I like the idea of waking up with someone familiar yet who makes you shiver a bit in a good way when you see him.

That seems sadly naive and juvenile, that expectation or even just desire for some Disneyfied existence, as if I'm waiting for a charming prince, though I have to admit part of me dearly wants a charming prince as much as I want to be the charming prince.

Oh the travails of being a modern gay boy in the big (smallish) city.

deuces? we hope not

Within minutes I may well find myself wiping someone's butt. I've been happy the past couple of years not having to wipe a butt that was not attached to me, and I suppose, considering the child in question, that having to wipe a butt won't really be a big deal.

Today started, for me, about eight this morning. I loathe such early mornings as a general rule, but one does what one must.

I got a text yesterday from a very good friend who needed to accompany her mother to the doctor, and she also needed a babysitter for a few hours. I of course was more than happy to help out as I love this family and am always willing to help.

So, for the first half of my day, there are three little boys running around my house instead of the usual two. That's one extra pair of hands hauling out toys after having not picked up the last batch of toys they pulled out.

And, as it turns out, I've currently dodged the butt wiping bullet. Apparently it was a numero uno rather than a deuce. I'm honestly happy to put that one off for a bit, though I'd wager a little something that it's going to happen before the day is too old.

clearly cold yet sunny as all heck

Today is beautifully sunny if quite cold. I should be making plans, should be getting out of the house.

I'm feeling lazy though, as usual, and I just don't know that I feel like doing much. I do actually kind of feel like doing something, but what that is I can't quite pinpoint.

I shouldn't point out, because you don't really want to know, that the hemorrhoid isn't helping me want to do anything. I'm sure the sitting at the computer that I'm so good at isn't helping either, but that's what I'm going to do right now. Plus if I stop sitting here then I can't finish this post.

And the sad part about the post is that I honestly have nothing to say. I have no valuable insight into anything right now. I have no deep thoughts to offer, no pertinent or key facts about the matter.

I do have an overwhelming desire to lay back down and go to sleep. I was in bed by three-ish last night (this morning) only to wake around the nine o'clock hour in order to get Momma to work. I still haven't told you about her new job, and I'm certain I will.

And that's the start of my day in blog post form. It all equals a big fat nothing going on, but that's okay. I think maybe I'll just get back on Facebook and stalk the cute boy I just became Fb friends with.

on not bothering

Lately, almost like a form of depression, I've been in a slump of just not bothering. The house is a mess and the recyclables pile grows ever larger. I know I need to cook or fix lunch, and I do make sure the boys are fed healthy food, but I do it in a way that requires the absolute least bit of bothering on my part.

My showering habits are also included in the not bothering. I generally sleep on the sofa and end up just dumping my pockets and yanking the belt before I tumble under my quilt still mostly fully clothed. I awake the next day in dirty clothes only to switch out shirts at work time.

I got off work a little before ten Saturday night and had the whole evening free. I did take a shower then but am now, Monday afternoon, still wearing the then clean clothes I put on to go out. Of course those then clean clothes are a pair of jeans and a Lucero tshirt, so I'm basically wearing my daily uniform, and I'll probably just continue wearing the same thing to work when I leave in the next twenty minutes.

It is a slump, and it is probably more depression than merely like, but I really am not mentally in such a bad place. I'm thinking more and more as I ponder this new not bothering that it's likely a combination of timing and placement. I am not where I need to be and don't feel currently able to move to where I need to be. It's a lose lose situation where I'm subconciously not moving anywhere at all, even if it's just so simple as bothering to do small things because I'm not able to do the big thing.

No, it isn't healthy, and no, it isn't making me happy. I don't like the slump, but unslumping oneself, as we may have covered (and Dr. Seuss certainly told us) is never easy or fun.

I'm not generally given to self loathing, though its minor cousin low self esteem is certainly playing a part. It really just adds to the swirling ingredients that are making it so much easier to not bother.

And I grow weary of this. I need to bother. Hell, I even want to bother. I want to find joy in cooking again. I want to realize how easy cleaning these multitude if tiny messes truly is. I like being clean even, though honestly, the winter weather and my dry skin generally gang up on me this time of year and make showering both unpleasant and hard to want to deal with, but still, while I'm not currently exactly dirty, I will be soon enough, and I will need to want to bother.

But then I settle back into the waiting place, and bothering becomes such a bother. I couldn't tell you what I'm waiting for, but it certainly feels like waiting, as if some sudden something will finally happen and life will once more turn rosy and/or peachy.

Maybe if I just wait long enough . . .

not really worse

I should really go to bed earlier pretty much every night. I'm yawning and sleepy and want to lay back down for just a little bit, but I know better. I know there's no just a little bit, that I'll sleep for another two hours and wake annoyed and disgruntled.

There is way too much shit in my head lately, and by lately I mean as usual. There is too much that I just don't want to think about, too much that I feel I can't control.

There are things I know I should be doing differently, but I don't change anything. There are things I know I should do that I'm not doing, but I don't do anything differently.

At some point everything seems to piss me off. And at some point everyone that I know seems to get tired of me and then disappear.

Only half of what I've said is true, and the other half I've probably blown out of proportion. But it all comes back to the same kind of thing and me wanting to go back to bed. I know the just a little bit will turn into a couple of hours, but right now I just want to be asleep.

still full

Tonight's supper was sort of a curry. I say sort of because it was more just me throwing some things into a pot with some coconut milk and green curry paste. I suppose that makes it enough of a curry, but . . .

We had some bell peppers and cilantro and a couple of other things I could have used for something, and Momma, needing to get ready for derby practice, suggested a stir fry.

I didn't actually feel like cooking at the time. I've got some weirdness from last night on my mind, and that's been pushing other stuff to the back of my mind. As it turns out, cooking was a great way to think about something else for a bit.

The grocery store had one last remaining package of pork loins that had been marked down to about half price to which I added a couple of banana peppers, sugar snap peas and some young white potatoes. I don't know how authentic potatoes in curry are, but the place Momma now works does it, and they should know. And remind me to tell you about Momma's new job soon. I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but now isn't the time for that.

Finally, from the store was the can of coconut milk. We already had the curry paste because we are such wonderful cooks and keep such a well stocked pantry. Actually that last part is only slightly true, but we do have lots of stuff, though that really only makes us so cool. The rest is just us.

I enjoyed it, peppers, pork, potatoes and the beans, simple enough to throw together and tasty enough that Big Brother and I both had seconds. The Boy? Yeah, he ate leftover frozen pizza and a burrito, also leftover. That's how he rolls. Momma, soon after she returns from practice, will likely enjoy her share.