God Bless Catastrophe

This is not about the gaming party. This is about this morning. This is not a happy post.

6:15AM. Howard Stern is barking at me to wake up. Ever since 99.1 was taken off the air I am no longer privy to waking up to the Junkies in the morning. I’m now forced to wake up to Howard Stern. Lucky me, it’s one of the only other stations that comes in on my crappy clock radio. He’s better than waking up to some pop station and getting a top 40 song stuck in my head for the remainder of the day. He’s better, but not by much.

This morning however, Howard was a little different. Instead of porn-stars or b-list celebrities avoiding questions about whom they’ve slept with, Howard had this woman on the phone. This woman, she thought Robert Redford, Robert Urich, and Ronald McDonald were trying to kill her. She said they were plotting her demise, some political game that involved Redford running for president. They wanted her out of the way, they wanted her silenced. Rubbed out. Especially McDonald.

They must have had her on the phone for 30 minutes, because every time I hit snooze, there she was again ten minutes later. They had her husband on. They even got Redford to call in. These days this is real celebrity. This is how I woke up.

I pulled myself out of bed, flinging my legs over the edge of my mattress. This is the point of no return, the defining line between staying home, and going to work, fighting the ongoing war between having money and having happiness. Today happiness lost. During the week it usually does.

I get in the shower.
More hair down the drain.

I brush my teeth.
Not as white as they used to be.

I wash my face.
The cheeks are coming back. I need to stick a little closer to my diet.

I put on deodorant, cologne and think about shaving. I think about it, then I don’t.

Boxers. Wife-beater. Socks. Pants. Belt. Shirt. Tie, and shoes.

Shoes. I need new laces and I forgot again. They’re ragged. The black fabric that covers the inner lining of the lace has come loose and I now have a white lace in sections. It just doesn’t look right and every morning it bugs me. And every evening when I get home -- when I can actually go out and buy new laces -- like an idiot, I forget.

8:00AM. Headed out the door. Jacket. Gotta take the trash out. Putting the pizza boxes inside the empty beer case boxes, I stack them in my arms and close and lock the door behind me. It’s about half way down the stairs when I realize that inside one of the pizza boxes -- inside one of the beer case boxes -- there is a garlic butter container and it has leaked all over the front of my pants and jacket.

F*CK!

I walk the leaking mess to the dumpster trying carefully not to get any more on me, holding the boxes at arms length and down wind.

Running back into the apartment I throw my jacket on the chair, I’ll deal with it when I get home. Since there is no time to change I do my best to scrub the grease out of my pants. I find a new jacket and run out the door.

8:15AM. On the road and listening to some Alkaline Trio, thinking about that woman I woke up with. That crazy one. I was thinking about how when you have schizophrenia you create your own reality. You live in a place all by yourself and you totally believe every ounce of it is really happening. It must be like living in a perpetual dream, never waking up, every turn yields another never-ending corridor. It must be nice to be crazy.

And suddenly it hits me like the proverbial ton of bricks. This is me. I live in my own little world, the one I believe is so real because I can touch and feel it. Because I can see and hear it. This is my dream world that I’m never waking up from. My everyday waking nightmare. My everlasting Monday morning.

God bless catastrophe, it’s the little things that go wrong that break us out of our normal routines. This is the kind of morning you pray the person in the car in front of you buries their foot in the brake pedal at the exact moment you’re trying to find the piece of your Slimfast bar that has fallen into your lap. I guess I better be careful what I wish for. At least I have someone who loves me even if I only get to see her at the gym, and for a half hour 4 nights a week.

9:00AM. At work, going through the motions, saying my good mornings. At my desk, the florescent light behind me erratically flickering. The stack of work thickening. Everyone wants to know how my weekend went and all I can think about is this morning. All I can think about is that crazy, perfect woman on the radio. The one who thought Robert Redford, Robert Urich, and Ronald McDonald were trying to kill her. That blessed, lucky woman.

It’s still better than having a Creed song stuck in my head all day.

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I’ll post pictures and write about the gaming party later, I had to get this off of my chest.