Last night I got a haircut. The guy who cuts my hair is fantastic, and frankly there is no getting around that. His skills as a stylist are keen, he gives a fabulous scalp massage when he washes of the hair, and he provides excellent banter about his nights cleaning offices after graduating from art school.
Upon arriving for my appointment last night, I remarked how unbelievable it is to me that the election is now less than a week away. He immediately informed me that everyone always wants to discuss current events with him, and while it was not his aim to discourage me from doing so, he is tired of always discussing current events.
He later said that he doesn’t really like holidays, because he just happens to prefer an ordinary day. I dislike holidays for much the same reason, though I never really phrased it as such. While I’ve had some decent hairdressers in the past, this is the first who has been capable of addressing both my follicles and my soul.
It is six in the morning and I am chilly again. I am waiting for the tea kettle to be ready so I can drink coffee. This is the nicest time of the day, you know.
Lately I have this feeling which I can really only describe as all dressed up and nowhere to go.
Just when I was about to give up on deriving joy from T9 altogether, it gives me tongued/vomited. Talk about a renewal of hope in America!
The impending winter has left me with an overwhelming urge to stockpile food and other sundries. Never one to resist urges, I have been hard at work doing just that. The locals are saying that the squirrels’ tails are very bushy this year, which portends a brutal winter. It’s Chicago, though, so I expect nothing short of a brutal winter.
Lately I have been developing another desire, and that is to start pickling and canning. I figure that these sorts of activities are something I can put off until I am in my forties and have the time. Today I was told I would be well served by another activity I thought would not be necessary until my forties: microdermabrasion. Alas, the allergic eruption of earlier in the month has left me with some unacceptably uneven skin tone. Microdermabrasion it shall be. As I get older, I become simultaneously more and less vain. Funny that.
I got a new tea kettle. It has the most amazingly pleasant whistle. My old tea kettle sounded so frantic, but this one is nice and peaceful. It has sort of a low hum. Come and have some tea, it says. Or coffee, if that’s your thing.
Right now everything is pleasant in life. I probably drink too much. Drinking too much in the fall is okay, as a body really needs to ramp up for drinking too much in the winter.
Yesterday I received a text message from oceans away and it made me quite sad. It was a the kind of text that makes for loneliness and memories of times past. Memories of times past are really suited to fall as well, especially when a person is drinking too much. Upon coming home, there was a postcard in the mailbox. Frequent moving has left me receiving very little mail, junk or otherwise. Any sort of correspondence is incredibly welcomed, even postcards from oceans away featuring keen remarks that are sometimes hard to face. You always mean well but sometimes your niceties highlight all my failures and misgivings, you know.
Yesterday while walking home from work, I picked up a handful of leaves and smelled them. They smelled just like leaves ought to smell on October 17th – slightly earthy and rotten and delightful. This morning while biking to the bakery, the wet leaves all over the street left me with quite a wet ass. A fender was purchased this afternoon and all will be right in the autumnal world once it is installed.
Observations:
I have never excelled at squeezing the tube from the bottom. I have tried and not improved.
There is a Star of David on my bathroom radiator. It is as yet unknown whether the other two radiators in the apartment are similarly adorned. They don’t have bathtubs next to them from which I spend considerable time staring, morosely.
Eating huge amounts of butter slathered corn bread in bed is satisfying.
The last couple of mornings have been of superior quality. Crisp but not too cold, damp but not too wet. Grey skies with greyer clouds, hugging the buildings to the north and south as the train rattles over its old, slow tracks. When I turn the corner onto the street that houses the bakery, I can see downtown. There are still so many cranes everywhere, doing what they do to facilitate tall buildings which will undoubtedly hold empty offices. We are on the brink of so many things. I guess you cannot help but feel the crackle. Autumn you are nice even if nothing is easier than it ever was.
Billy interrupted my prattle about McCain’s gimpy arms and geriatric robotic postures this afternoon to suggest I never would have voted for FDR. Look Billy, I wasn’t even alive then. And sexy was not only not so important in politics, but also sexy was totally different. Everyone did it through a hole in a sheet, even in the Bronx. (Your homeland.)
Oh universe, is this what you got for me? An allergic reaction to paint or parsnip? Please. Send me your redness, your burning, your itching, your pustules. Throw down this gauntlet on the day of the decade anniversary of the death of the father. Do you remember the days of the oft malfunctioning 1985 Volvo? Oh how I’d cry as I dialed the towing company yet again. Well, I’ll still cry, universe, but when it is done the tears will leave me feeling more alive. More visceral. Eating breathing oozing and crying, ha!
I dropped my phone in the toilet and that was pretty much the end of it. I will see what I can do to secure a new one free of charge.
