I haven't had a week off from work since late last November.
Lately, I've been short tempered and quickly irritable. I've had little patience for everybody including family and co-workers. I've been feeling spent and as if I've been running nowhere fast for too long.
Tuesday at work, I noticed that I may have lost a little of my edge.
Something happened that should not have happened had I been more alert and rested.
I'm in need of the kind of rest that's only acquired after a personal recess. A furlough from the daily grind. Not counting sick days, I am very fortunate to have acheived a professional position where I get more than 25 paid days of time off from work every year. Wifey thinks I'm crazy the way I spend them.
With The Crew already away, I've been coming home to a home in stasis. The way I see it, without anyone around, it's a shanty. When everyone's here it's a palace. Years ago, when Fio the dog ruled and Wifey would be away, my situation was different. His panting, his shadowing and the jingle from his collar were enough to legitimize our dwelling when I was alone. Without a bona fide pet in the house, the last two weeks have felt reclusive.
It's been like this the last few summers. I may have to relent and get a dog. Let me tell you that if I were a cad, I'd have no problem remedying this solitude. I'm confidant about that.
Exacerbating the reclusiveness this time, has been that the Tivo in the bedroom went south on Sunday evening. Essentially, there's no TV in the bedroom. Big freakin' drag. My --er, our-- bedroom also functions as a haven from everywhere, everyone and all everything. The TV is a big part of that Private Idaho.
Without it, it's down to the family room for me to enjoy the drone of the television as background, while I tend to other things like reading and phone calls since last Sunday. I can't even watch TV in the kitchen because it's fed off the receiver in the bedroom. This is so fucked. My necessary haven has been disturbed.
Begining at about 8 p.m. on Friday evening, and much to the consternation of some of my superiors at work, I'll be away for two weeks. It's office manager auto-reply time for my e-mail there. I, however, had to cash in on a sick day on Wednesday just to get my bearings straight.
I don't think I could have made it to Friday in good health had I not had a breather on Wednesday. For my psyche, it was very necessary. As it was on Wednesday, with a deadly steam-pipe explosion in the NYC underground infrastructure, it was obviously a good day to breathe deeply and exhale in suburbia while away from the beehive.
This morning, I woke up at the time that I should have been pulling away from the driveway. Having been awake between 3 and 4:30 a.m. last night is likely the blame for that.I'm way off kilter.
I need a rest. I need some personal vitamins.Tucson, Casa Grande, Gila Bend, Yuma, Calexico, Mexicali, Rosarito, San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Nogales and 116 degrees is what my soul is yearning for. CL, Julio, TP, JH and his wife, Alex and Gracie, David, uncles and cousins, and childhood friends is what my heart yearns for.
I need a taxi to take me away from this nudge.I will hail the 6:55 a.m. out of Newark on Saturday morning to get me to my other home. The home I left behind when I was a wide-eyed twenty-eight year old.
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ABC's World News With Charles Gibson led with the temps being hot out in the western United States on Wednesday. Las Vegas, Nevada’s high temperature on that day was 128 degrees. Yes, that's one-hundred and twenty-eight.
Friday morning yesterday, Wifey and The Savages left to a corner of that blast furnace: Tucson, AZ. It's that time of year again. Some food will spoil in the fridge, the bread basket becomes full of living green and I end up filling the kitchen's fridge with beer. The house becomes silent and I compensate with all the TV's and stereo system. The mail languishes in the mailbox until whenever it is that I may get home and the answering machine fills with messages not intended for me.
It's summer again. My summer.
A few weeks ago, realizing that she'll be gone for five weeks this summer, Wifey decided to have a going away bash at our home that took place this past Sunday. Six couples and all their Savages.
At the expense of his lovely wife and two beautiful little girls, I got back at a poker cheat by getting him so drunk that he puked like a teenager. Yet, he left the house saying he had had a great time. A bottle of Patron green, a bottle of Tres Generaciones and a bottle of Sauza Comemorativo consumed in shots between six adults, add some premium beers in-between and after five hours his meekly 150 pound frame proclaimed: I fold.
Privately, I was laughing at him. I’m still smirking about it today. It was definitely worth the hundred bucks of tequila to get back at him.
We decided on holding this thing on a Sunday because Monday is always the great equalizer. Everyone had to head back to the grind on Monday. Had it been a Saturday afternoon, who knows what the hell would have happened.
I don't know what to think about what Wifey mentioned the next morning. She said that one of the husbands, Mr. IBM, asked her if she and I are "solid". He added to her that if we weren't, that he would start crying right then and there.
The only reason that I can think of, that he thought to say what he did, may have been because he knew Wifey was leaving until mid-August and the house had been painted outside last week. Perhaps he learned that Wifey was away for four days the weekend before down in Normandy Beach with ME who's soon to sign on her divorce's dotted line. Mr.IBM puts two and two together and discerns that the house may be up for sale and Wifey’s recent trip and coming absence must be a ruse.
I said to Wifey that copious amounts of tequila can lead the uninitiated to have their Superego supplanted. Who knows, maybe he's having problems. If it had been a Saturday night, perhaps he would have had a different reason to cry.
Funny.
I imbibed as much as all the male adults and never made a fool of myself on Sunday. Still, although I did take Monday off from work, Wifey, The Savages and I were out the door at 9:30 a.m. and out to Island Beach State Park and to the obligatory meal (jumbo pizza) at The Sawmill Cafe on the Seaside Heights boardwalk afterwards. For some reason, somehow last summer, the beach never made the day. This summer, it's gotta all be crammed in before The Crew takes-off.
This year I'm getting left behind again but, the plan is for me to head out there to meet The Crew after three weeks. Last year was a little different.
Unbeknownst to The Savages, the day after I get to Tucson we'll be headed out to Disneyland. The idea was not to mention it because if anything got in the way of that trip, it would not be a good idea to let them down about it.
Everything, however, is set in place for that. All the reservations and tickets. We did the same thing for Disneyworld a couple of years back for the same reason. We woke them and told them that we're going to Disneyworld. It was on a cold assed Wednesday February northeastern morning. This time, we'll be waking The Savages and telling them we're going to Disneyland on a hot-assed Tucson Sunday morning in late July.
Regrettably, the Dodgers will be away and the Angels’ schedule does not appear to lend itself during our visit. Santa Monica Boulevard and its pier will be there, however. Malibu and Laguna Beach will be also. So will The La Brea Tar Pits. Heyell, there was a time when Wifey and I would go to LA on the weekends just for fun. So, LA is actually not so big of an attraction for us. Clubbing, Sunset Boulevard motels and time at Frederick’s were years ago.
Today everything for me is very different. Today we have Savages. Savages with needs to be soothed, much the same way long ago when I was a Savage myself.
I remember my summers growing up very fondly. I remember my bicycle with its banana seat and how it and I were inseparable for many summers. I remember all the hit tunes on the A.M. radio during those warm days. I remember the liberation from all the Sister Servants of The Blessed Sacrament and I remember how good that freedom felt every late May. I remember my summer paper route, washing cars around the neighborhood, weeding lawns and mowing them for a pittance of empowerment.
I remember watermelon tasting livlier then. I remember Jell-O and my mother's penchant to introduce the most awful of foods during the summer. Foods with names like liver, black-eyed beans and beef tongue. I remember all the swimming, the monsoons and the Fourth of Julys. I remember visiting relatives that I haven't seen since. I remember getting the Measles one summer together with my brothers and my cousins.
I remember no air-conditioning and many house fans. I remember no cable TV but, watching every episode of Gilligan's Island, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show on a 27 inch black-and-white floor model television during the day's warmest part and then emerging outdoors later to jubilate with the rest of the neighborhood boys.
I remember the influence of some of the older boys in the neighborhood. I remember inhaling my first puff off of a cigarette and quickly getting into a coughing jag and turning dizzy sick. I marveled how older boys, like my cousin Kala, always had some way they were able to get Playboy and Penthouse magazines and how he allowed us emerging pre-pubescents to gawk at all the pictures.
I remember playing 8-ball pool games for hours on end at the municipal rec-center and I remember the by-product of hanging around pool tables for too long. I remember that sometimes it led to fist fights. I wish that I didn't remember that. I was the oldest of five boys. My youngest brother was less than six years apart. Somehow, one of us would draw a scuffle.
When I think about my summers of long ago, I think about the movie "Stand By Me". All my summers were of discovery and all had a coming-of-age aspect to them.
Today, my summers are of a dad's. Not a boy's, but a man's. The kind who stay behind to pay the bills.
It ain't bad at all really. The soirée last Sunday over at the house spooked Wifey about something.
I'm convinced that Mr. IBM's comment rattled inside Wifey's head and it was a boon for me. From Sunday evening to Friday morning, before she trekked away and was to be apart for three weeks, Wifey made sure that we were solid.....again and again.
I gotta have Mr. IBM over more often.
p.s. That's Bruce and Kathy visiting from out of town having a great time in my back yard.
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