It feels like I'm cheating, but...

Another post over on that other blog...

http://threeheadedblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/the-man-got-you-down-well-fuck-the-man/

I figure, we're getting fucked anyways, so why not...

productivity burps

Judging by where I woke up Sunday morning, it didn't figure to be a productive day.

After a Friday evening, where I imbibed a tad too liberally, I woke up in full-hermit mode Saturday afternoon and shunned invitations to pick up beds and watch fireworks, in favor of trudging down Papineau to Ontario to find some kind of nourishment before visiting my girlfriend's cat, which I said I'd do last week.

I found a delicious Portuguese bakery and, with corned beef sandwich, cheesecake and Coca-Cola in tow, I marched toward my destination, to visit a cat that had been meowing at passerbys at her window since being left to herself Thursday evening. When I arrived, the grey-black enigma, which has so far treated me in a very hot-and-cold fashion, followed me around like my shadow as I dumped some kitty chow into her bowl and blew my allergies into a kleenex in the bathroom and then turned the lights on. I laid down and started into my sammy, sharing pieces of beef with the culinarily curious kitty. I opened a book, stared at the words for five minutes, before opting for some Planet Earth. After the Future disc, I went to Great Plains and, after that, the Pole to Pole one and then Caves. I could hear the fireworks, but I didn't want to think about them or anything. I wanted to marvel at the world's greatest and most inspiring creations, while simultaneously retreating from them inside a small, black apartment with a cat that just wanted to lay next to something. (It's debatable whether I did more for the cat than it did for me.)

Nine hours of Planet Earth later: I woke up crusty-eyed (no allergy pills) and hacking, nearly fully-clothed (always too hot to wear a t-shirt inside here in the summer) sometime around dawn, on an improvised duvet, not meant for sleeping on. I laid there, reluctantly coming to terms with the upcoming day, debating whether I should turn off the Planet Earth menu, which ended up playing on a 15-second loop for probably about three hours. (At one point, I had each of the 18 shots memorized in sequence. These are things I probably shouldn't be telling anyone.)

After a day where I literally laid on a couch with a cat, I couldn't fathom how I'd be able to muster the energy to do all the things I had to do - ie. haul a bed frame home at noon, fix my bike tire... and that's it. That's the state I was in.

When the menu had driven me to my breaking point, I got up, turned it off, gave the cat one last pet and one last treat, threw on my shirt and hoofed it home. From there, I received a call from the Fitz, asking when I'd be by to pick up the bed frame. I called my buddy Jones and he said he'd be there at noon. I started off. I got there. We taped up the bed. Jones arrived and we hauled it painstakingly from West of St. Laurent, down Sherbrooke, to my place East of Park Lafontaine, to the amusement of nearly everyone we passed. That's how I roll. Stubbornly.

I was tired, but I felt good, knocking something so important off my list of ever-expanding things to do. Hey, it only took me 8 months to acquire a bed!

We called up Heee-Ren and went up to a Vegan spot to eat some lunch. (Who does this Herbiberous think he is? Don't worry, it gets better.) On our way up there, I spy a garage sale of sorts and say, hey boys, we should go check out what they've got.

Good call.

Turns out these kids are selling a record player. "How much?"

"Oh everything's cheap. Five bucks?"

"It works?" I asked, shocked.

"Yeah, I think it just needs a new needle."

Sold. I look over and beside the turntable, they've got a stack of records. Sgt. Peppers, Dark Side of the Moon, James Bond themes....

"How much for the records?"

"Cheap. 50 cents each," the chick says.

I look at the boys and we start to laugh. Score.

We throw her $15 and now I own a record player with a burgeoning record collection.

(Aside: If you're keeping track at home, this now means that I'm a fixed-speed bike and smoking habit away from becoming a fully functioning Hipster. Actually, I also need an ironic moustache, since part of my hermitude on Saturday morning had me shaving off my faux-handlebar nose-neighbour in disgust. I'm clean-shaven for the first time since before St. Patricks day. A girl at work called me "little boy" today.)

So, how's that for productive? We have a healthy lunch (for a change.) I had a vegan BLT, with the bacon substituted for bacon-smoked coconut chips. If you're through Montreal, check this place out - Aux Vivres. You eat these huge wraps and the food just floats inside you. You don't feel heavy at all.

With the boys heading off to baseball, I decide to try for a trifecta of sorts: let's get this damned bike fixed.

So I walk all the way from Mont Royal and St. Laurent to the Canadian Tire in Hochelaga. By this time, the chafe has set in. My inner thighs are like two slightly moist pieces of rubber rubbing against each other. My balls are sandpaper. I'm in pain. But I press on. I've been walking all day. I get to Canadian Tire finally at five after 5 p.m. and, somehow, on a Sunday, the store is closed. Shake of the head. Wag of the finger. Tears for the ballsack.

Oh well. I get home and have a rest and wait for Fitz to call, as he's got some more stuff for me. Eventually, he rings back at around 10 p.m. and I set out again and, after a glass of vino and a semi-goodbye, I'm back out the door with a electrical fan in my right hand, a plant in my left and a bookbag packed with various knick-knacks that I may never need.

I got home last night and dropped the new apartment accoutrement on the floor and I barely recognized my place. It reminded me of that skit in the Simpsons were Homer takes advantage of Flanders' financial troubles and buys all his furniture from him at a bargain-basement price and then he's sitting around outside, watching TV, drinking beers and BBQ-ing with Flanders' stuff. I'm living in the Casa del Fitzy, right now.

This whole episode taught me that life is all about balance. Well, balance for normal people. And for me too, in a way, in that I'll probably always wind up at some median level of ambition, energy, etc., but that I ride the peaks and valleys hard... and with a vengeance.

Sadly though, this story also illustrates that Montreal has lost another hero in the gradual, but seemingly endless exodus of great folks from the city. Fitzy and Tameens, I'll see you guys in July, but I've had a grand old time getting to know you guys over the last year or so. I'll tell you that in a much more intimate and slurred way this time next month.

good/bad

Unless you're Charlie Sheen, I've come to realize that life always seems to find a way to level you out. If you're feeling too great, something will knock you down a peg and vice versa. I come to look at this as a universal law.

Minor example:

A friend had asked me to check the Smith Westerns show with her last night, but I felt I really needed to get some things done after a hectic two weeks. I came home feeling particularly zombie-ish, after another 8 hours at the coal mine, knowing that there was work to do. For instance, there were two years of income taxes to be submitted, some medical forms for prescription rebates that needed to be sent, an apartment that required tidying for a pending dinner guest (ooh la la) job boards that had to be searched, a bunch of story ideas that were asking to be hashed out, an even bigger pile of stories that begged to be completed, a few travel plans for upcoming events that required some coordination, and a future that probably necessitated a second look, if not a complete overhaul.

So like I said, there was work to do.

I made some dinner quickly and then set to filling out the tax forms until I realized that I didn't have my 2010 info printed off and - more importantly - I didn't have the tax forms. They'll have to wait. I then got out my prescription receipts - for the old foe, rosacea - only to discover I'd completely filled out the form I had to send in six months ago and forgot to send it. Since then, I had collected an additional $32 receipt and - again, more importantly - changed addresses. I'll need to get a new form so... that one will have to wait.

I then went onto the job boards and found the same old, rehashed, phony recruiter, analyst, marketing specialists jobs posted at each site and gave up.

I did find this beauty though:

Uncle Sam wants you... and your clarinet

Since I was on the computer, I thought, why not jot down some of the story ideas that were popping around in my head. Easy enough. I opened an old Word document called 'story ideas' and then added a few to the ever-growing list. These things are like seeds buried in a pot in a dark, dry attic. After seeing all these ideas, I lost hope and lost any energy I had to flesh out some of the partially-watered plants.

So what was I left with? My dishes? Meh... Make future plans? I think about those enough, so because I hadn't slept well the night before and since wanted to tire myself out, I grabbed my hockey skates and stick and set outside for Parc Lafontaine.

Now initially when I moved into this apartment, I was giddy in anticipation of a winter spent on the park's two rinks, as I would only be five minutes away. But with an upswing in general activity (and my hockey homey, Freduardo, also becoming increasingly busy and leaving me with no one to head out there with) I've only found the time to get out maybe a half dozen times. Due to this, every hockey outing has left me doubled over on the ice, sucking wind through burning lungs after only 15 minutes, while dudes twice my age skate circles around me. It hasn't been very enjoyable.

But last night, I walked over slowly, taking in the blue-nearly-black sky and the stars shining. It's sad how little I look up at the sky here in Montreal. The snow was hard from weeks of melting and freezing and melting again and dogs ran on top of it and then fell into it, as their owners stood laughing, smoking and chatting. It felt like I was seeing the park for the first time almost.

I put on my skates standing up and then joined a game. The first time the puck was passed to me, I gave it away immediately, because it had been a few weeks since I'd played. This went on for a while until finally I started to catch up mentally and then I started threading some passes and deking some guys and I got so into the game that I forgot to be tired and forgot to be winded and I forgot my job and my worries and I just played.

We went from four-on-four, to three-on-three, to two-on-two and eventually, taber-knackered (as the Lazer would say) we decided to leave. I was sweating buckets and was completely bagged, but I felt like I'd just had a full-body and mind massage. I felt the cold air on my throbbing face and it was like awaking completely into the moment. I wondered why I hadn't done this every night.

To tie this back to my original point, I got home, threw my skates and sticks on the floor and started at the dishes. Right away though, I felt that something was up. As I dipped my hands into the dishwater, I noticed that I couldn't see them if I kept my gaze at the tap. This temporary blind spot is the first warning I get of an oncoming migraine headache.

I hadn't had one in about a year and four months and I was surprised that my body would choose now of all times to give me one, but when I look back at my history, it makes sense. Whenever I'm stressed out and then I go and have a euphoric workout, my body completely de-stresses and that changes something about my blood pressure or blood flow or something, and that leaves me prone to these headaches.

Seeing as I had a really bad one about three years ago, where I lost feeling slowly from my left foot to leg to chest to arms to hands to face to tongue and had trouble forming a simple sentence, I took care to notice if any of those symptoms were reoccurring. My left foot felt a little funny, but I figured it was just from the hockey. I took a shower and that's when my auras (think of a blind spot that takes a weird shape and becomes like a greyish, twitching and pulsing puddle or blotch over your line of sight) went into full-blown mode. It was like I had the Northern Lights going off between my eyes and the world and I had to try to look through them. It's typically this part of the migraine experience that scares me most because I don't know what causes this to happen and the experience is completely debilitating since I really can't see. These auras were probably the worst I've ever had and so I made my way to bed and turned off the lights and tried to sleep before the pain hit. Didn't happen, when the auras started to subside 20 to 30 minutes later, the stabbing feeling had kicked in right behind my right eye, which is where it always happens. Last night, it was worse than most. It felt like someone was coring into my brain and then injecting something into it that was expanding that core. It felt awful and then I started getting nauseous. I started to recite easy to remember quotes or lyrics to make sure I wasn't having any of the speech difficulties. I was sweating and rolling around in bed and I couldn't take my mind off of the pain. I then decided to get an old movie - Donnie Brasco - that I can nearly remember word for word, and I put it on while turning my laptop screen off, so I would just listen to the movie.

I think I probably fell asleep at 3 a.m.

Anyhow, that's a long-winded way of saying that life always finds a way to sprinkle some bad into the good or give you some good when you're feasting on bad. This might be the only thing I am sure of in life. That's almost how I would define life. ie. When I start to get back into some kind of fiscal comfort and I start planning a short trip or a small purchase I need, a long-lost bill always arrives in the mail. "That's life," I think to myself.

Also, I probably wrote this whole thing because I might have felt guilty for missing work today seeing as I wasn't 'sick' in the traditional sense. I mean, I didn't get any sleep and my head still hurts, but I probably could have gone in if I needed to. Yet, I was sort of suffering from a 'migraine hangover,' where I wasn't really thinking clearly most of the day, evidenced by my foray out for some groceries, where I tried speaking to a grocery clerk in French and I found myself stuttering on a word for a good three seconds.