I am not sure what’s going on with Dad today, but he’s been sleeping a lot and when he walks, he is more stumbly than usual.
I’m not even sure it’s the drinking. I mean yeah, he’s drinking, but his usual pattern with drinking is that if he finishes, okay, but if not, he goes and takes a nap and then when he gets up, whatever he didn’t finish he dumps down the drain and starts over, which often there’s at least half his glass left. (It’s one of those short glasses… six ounces?) Bourbon and Coke is nasty anyway. Bourbon and Coke is like fifty times as nasty if you let the Coke go flat. End of. But unfortunately, his not finishing drinks makes it more difficult to assess how much booze has gone down his gullet, and I haven’t yet seen how much bourbon he typically adds to these drinks in the first place. I will say he’s acting like he’s gotten more alcohol than usual into himself.
I hope that’s what it is, anyway, because if it’s not then something else has come up and maybe we start in with the hospital festivities again. It would sure explain his nasty mood of two days ago and his nasty reaction to breakfast yesterday because he has a nasty streak already, but it’s much worse when he feels like shit.
For my part, I didn’t sleep well last night and I felt like shit this morning. My fasting sugar was at least better than it was yesterday, though it was still too high, but I actually whole-ass sat here today and wrote out a goodbye letter to my daughter in case something comes up in the future and I croak in my sleep. I cannot shake the idea that I have a heart problem. I’m afraid to inquire about it in the event they tell me Medicaid doesn’t cover whatever test they’d have to run. (For instance, I need a genetic test if they suspect short QT syndrome.) I have also been battling feeling suicidal off and on for two and a half fucking years and I’m at the point that I’d rather just leave it up to fate than keep worrying about it. So whatever happens, at least I have something for her now and I don’t have to panic about being kept alive. It doesn’t matter anymore. If I can get a will written, it will matter less than zero. Looking forward to that, if it happens.
It was a decent goodbye letter, though. I have it in an envelope now in case it’s needed. I need to organize my important paperwork anyway.
Speaking of paperwork. Did you know I have the same file box I got in 1999 when I left Mike? True fucking story. I have used it ALL these years. I’m actually pondering turning it into a product manual file and then getting a fireproof file bag for my important shit. I can’t do it now, but it’s on the mental wish list. As in mind, not as in crazy. It’s not a crazy idea at all. We have no smoke alarms here and I’m mildly suspicious that Dad sometimes smokes in bed. God and Sonny fucking Jesus. (He definitely smokes while he’s taking a crap, so this would not be wholly out of character for him.) I would panic more, but the back door is literally outside my room. If I can’t escape with my life, it was time that life was over. Fuck it.
Have not yet organized the paperwork I mentioned two paragraphs ago, but I did find [dun-dun-DUUUNNNNN] my old journal from that year! I might have mentioned here that I wanted to transcribe it here? Well, I started that process today. I will tell you what, you might think I’m a bad writer now but I was fucking HORRID back then. Who the fuck did I think I was writing for anyway, a fucking agent? Maybe looking for a TV or movie option? Yeah… no. Not even a fucking soap opera.
So I’ll come right out and say it: that shit’s edited for dramatic bullshit. I didn’t want to edit anything at first, but after actually reading it I have now been set on the strait and narrow, THANK YOU JEEBUS. And I am not just irate at my bullshit a quarter century ago. I’m irate that all the bullshit took up extra space that I could have used to cram in more actual information.
Oh well. I like some of what’s there, and I did clear up some things I’d long forgotten but wondered about. And if you are curious about it, O Mysterious Readers Out Dere, just look at the archives widget in the sidebar (or bottom bar, if you are on your phone… scroll down). You should see a 1999 section. There you go. There’s even a smidgen of 1998.
I’m also considering, at some point, transcribing some letters I had sent to Dawn during my marriage and that she later returned to me in a big fat packet. There was some eye-opening shit there, too. If I still have them. We’ll see. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. I could be dead tomorrow, the way things are going.
I have to think about what I want to happen to my digital shit when I croak. (Always when, never if… none of us live forever.) Right now I’m leaning toward “let Thea take care of it.” I don’t know how that will actually turn out, and this is one more reason to get everything sorted so she isn’t left with a nightmare job cleaning up my clutter. I was OK with letting Matt clean up my physical mess at the red house because Matt is an asshole and it’s his fault I left and God fucking knows I cleaned up after him eleventy billion times and it was always unpleasant. Oh my god, he had to do something besides look at a screen and wank. Fuck him. But I don’t want to do that sort of thing to my daughter. Bad enough her dad made her do some of his work in that regard before.
In the spirit of using up the carbs which I devoutly hope I can somehow avoid replacing (or at least learn to avoid eating… like the everfucking plague), I’m making spaghetti tonight, and I’ll eat mine in front of my laptop because I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I found the DVD section at the Jeff Davis Parish library in Jennings. I’ve already checked out… geez. How many? Four? We’re on five and six now? So that’s been fun. I watched E.T. last night for the first time in PROBABLY DECADES WOW, and was startled to realize that, unusually for films involving aliens vs scientists, these scientists were actually really nice people and the reason they acted all scary was because they had to move fast to prevent potential alien pathogens being spread around — or our germs going to E.T. any more than they had, for that matter. They don’t spell it out as much in the story, but if you consider the precautions they’re taking, that’s exactly what it is. And someone consulted with medical people to do the scientist dialogue. No albumin in E.T.’s body? Cooooool. I feel like he actually played dead to throw the scientists off his trail and await his people’s return, but that’s just me. An alien who could levitate five fucking bicycles at once could probably pull off something like that and make it convincing. (I do think he actually was sick. But I suspect the “death” was an act, is what I’m saying.)
Enjoyed the hell out of it though. I feel like it still holds up and frankly, some of the fucking kids these days could stand to watch it and be traumatized a little because they need to see kids being normal kids. Don’t we all.
Oh, and… if you see it again? Look at big brother’s friends when they’re trying to get E.T. to his ship. Look at the one in the trucker cap. Look familiar? I swear to fucking fuck, Stranger Things based THEIR trucker-cap character on him. Love it.
It’ll be the new Dune tonight — part one, not part two. Not sure the latter’s out on DVD yet. What I’ve seen of the first one, I’ve really liked. The David Lynch version was fucking lame. I put it on par with Kubrick’s The Shining which, by the way, is not a fucking compliment. Quit trying to be fucking artsy and just tell the fucking story. Thank you.
(I am not against artsy films. But if you’re gonna do artsy, do YOUR artsy. Don’t fucking vandalize other people’s stories. P.S. Stephen King still hates the Kubrick film. He just can’t say so anymore in public.)
The other notable one I’ve seen recently has been Coming 2 America — if you have not seen it but want to? DOOOOO EET. It’s FUN. SO many love letters to the fans. I was sad that Madge Sinclair couldn’t be in it, but they found pretty much everybody else. They even managed to make this film before Louie Anderson passed away, so he’s in it too. Is it a work of great cinematic genius? Hell no. This is strictly visual junk food. You will love it anyway.
Unless you’re lame too. I dunno.