Currently Idle

Strange Neighbors

What do you make of this — since I’ve started to get up at 5am to have a few hours of peace & quiet before the morning chaos, I’ve noticed the same thing happening every day right around 6:30am.  A car drives up, pulls into my neighbor’s driveway, immediately backs out of the driveway, and drives back in the direction it just came from.

What is that?  Newspaper?  Stalker?  If it is newspaper, I must say, they get much better service than we do.  Our carrier barely gets it in the proximity of our front yard.  Honestly, I’d be more inclined to return the SASE he sends me every Xmas season for “gratitude” if he got the damn thing ON or NEAR our porch.

I like to think it’s a stalker.  Former lover of the wife of the house, just letting her know he’s still out there, and can flash his headlights into her bedroom window any damn time that he wants.

Probably, though, it’s just the New York Times.  I hate the f’ing New York Times, like I hate all things that make me want something I didn’t want five minutes ago.

Anniversary

Well I’ll be. I could have sworn we began this blog after the New Year’s bash of last year, but no, our first post was November 20, 2005. Hell, I’m still writing 1998 on checks. My sense of minute (mine-oot) time is actually quite uncanny (quick, ask me what time it is!), but anything past a day and I’m lost.

Anyway, I was hoping to find some more recent action here. But no, June seems to be the last posting. It’s kind of liberating, though, to be here alone, and I wonder if anyone still checks in here. I’ll just sit a spell and whistle…then write something really profane, when I’m sure no one’s looking.

Hey, That really IS the first rule of Currently Idle!

Oh, and when the people around here tell you not to bring up any posts at the dinner table, THEY REALLY MEAN IT.

Mea culpa, compadres. I couldn’t help meself.

Glad none of us were packing our sig sauer for pizza night.

I Am Thou 2

Xingu thinks perhaps I’ve undersold the concept of my computer game here. What you have to imagine is that your sim world suffers when you close down to go to work or the bathroom or to sleep or something. You get back and open the laptop, they all cry out “Why hast thou forsaken us???” and you notice that everything’s all fucked up. “No no no, that’s not right! That asshole wasn’t supposed to be re-elected! Hey — Rivvy’s book was supposed to be published MONTHS ago! And where are those random bags of cash I planted in the backyard of everyone worthy? GEESH!”

You know, just like life.

Cheese Bag

The scrawny lil’ toughie at what passes for our local mini-mart asked me if I wanted a bag for my cheese. I said, Oh no, that’s alright. I use too much packaging as it is. She says, it’s a really small bag. Thanks, I say, but I’m just starting to feel like my whole life is just bags and wrappers and containers and trash and, you know, extra, unnecessary stuff. And she goes, Gee, is that a metaphor for something, do you think?

I walked out of the store thinking, Did she just call me fat?

I Am Thou

My brother and nephew love these civilization computer games, where you basically get to rule over nations and history. I keep wanting to make a God sim, which I’m sure is out there. But the cool thing would be, when you sit down and open up your laptop to start playing, a multitude of tinny midi voices would cry out, “Why hast Thou forsaken us?!”

Don’t ask my why, but that cracks me up every time.

Where I’m Loved

Sometimes when I’m not feeling so good about myself, I go to my eBay feedback page, and read what’s written there. It’s really comforting to know that, even if I feel like a total loser and fraud and lazy rotten mommy, someone out there thinks I’m “reliable and honest!!” “a great eBayer!!!” and even — yes, it’s true — “A++++++!!!!”

And there I have a 99% approval rating.

Mr. F

Come on, Mr. Fidget, reveal thyself.

IM Confessions

Sometimes I say “brb” when I just don’t have anything to say, and I just sit there and knit, or doze a little, or just look at the screen and do nothing.

Also, sometimes I say “LOL,” except I’m not really laughing out loud, but just sort of laughing quietly inside to myself. But it seems a little insulting to say, “SOLQITM.”

I was in the NPR studios once when a famous comedian was phoning in a commentary he’d written, and it was really awful, actually painful to listen to, but the producer would occasionally say, “Oh, this is great, we’re just dying in here, everyone is totally cracking up.” And it was dead silent in the booth.

Haunts me still.