Earlier tonight I was in the kitchen when I heard an ad for Sonic on the TV, shilling their 99 cent shakes.
I said, “I’ve had the 99 cent shakes: Dammit, I need a beer and I only have 99 cents!”
And then I laughed.
And laughed some more.
Then I snorted.
Then I started choking.
Then some more laughing, followed by intermittent giggling.
Hey, if you can’t get some entertainment out of the fact that you were a pathetically desperate drunk for a significant portion of your adult life, what’s the point in being a pathetically desperate drunk in the first place?
We had a cold front move in and bring some thunderstorms and hail along with it, but more importantly it brought about a 20 degree drop in temperature.
This is significant, as for the past few days it’s been roughly a thousand degrees outside.
While it served to make the heat that much more unbearable, I think that the high humidity was the only thing preventing people from spontaneously bursting into flame.
It had been my intention to post a picture last night, but the rate at which I was getting any work done on it can best be described as glacial, so it didn’t end up happening. There’s been no movement on that front tonight, either, so I have no idea if/when I’ll actually get around to finishing it.
Lately I’ve been finding that when I get home from work I’m exhausted, but when it comes time to actually go to bed, I can’t get to sleep, which only serves to add to the next day’s exhaustion. Fun stuff.
There hasn’t been much in the way of excitement in the days since I last made a proper post. I got a haircut on Saturday. That’s pretty much been the high point.
It was an expensive haircut, too, as I decided to try out an actual salon rather than the little mom and pop barbershop I usually go to. Beyond the price, there really wasn’t much difference, apart from the fact the Asian lady cutting my hair at the salon was a lot younger and hotter than the Asian lady who cuts my hair at the barbershop.
With the shorter hair I find myself once again on the fence about the whole dyeing thing.
I haven’t picked up any Just For Men, but I have some Nice –n- Easy dye that my mom gave me when I was home. That’s part of why I’m once again on the fence, as it may be Nice, but it’s not so Easy as the Just For Men.
And there is, as always, the ugly specter of the fact that I just don’t give a rat’s ass hovering over the whole business.
So I don’t know.
Tomorrow is my ex-wife’s birthday, which means that it was around thirteen years ago that I was forced to accept the fact that my marriage was over and that I had been replaced in my wife’s affections, after nearly eight years, by someone she’d known for less than a month and whose primary selling point was the fact that he was “a lot like me.”
Actual conversation between her and my friend Joel on that fateful night on which I left:
Joel: What’s so wonderful about this guy?
Lorie: He’s a lot like Jon.
Joel: Well, Jon is almost exactly like Jon.
It’s not my intention to dwell on those events. After all, it’s over with, and it was a long time ago (more on that in a bit). Even so, it’s just one of those things that I can’t help thinking about at this time of year, but I mention it primarily to, well, pad out this blog entry for one thing, but also to discuss the concept of “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”
In my case that phrase has an entirely different meaning, and could be more accurately expressed as “You don’t know what you were stuck with until you get away.”
Years spent in a downward spiral of loneliness, depression and alcoholism, I think, are actually preferable to still being married to her.
The other thing that I want to mention is that, as it relates to that aforementioned downward spiral, she gets altogether too much credit.
Sure, her leaving me for someone else, and particularly the manner and circumstances in which she did so, hurt. A lot. I did love her, after all.
The thing is, what really upset me was not losing her, but rather what I believed losing her meant for my future.
I was convinced that without her I would end up spending the rest of my life alone, without someone special (or even not-so special) to share it with.
I know, crazy, huh? What could have possibly given me that idea?
(Yeah, yeah, yeah; self-fulfilling prophecy and all that bullshit. Blow me.)
Anyway, the thing that’s really bothering me about it all is that the whole thing happened thirteen fucking years ago, and if we’d stayed together, next month we would have been married for seventeen years.
Granted, I got married young, but goddamn I’m old.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go yell at some kids to stay off my lawn…
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