Swinging at things

like a bad ballplayer who never got the praise, "good eye!" when he let a ball go by.

I'm back in Minnesota, in the cities (or abouts) and in what some people call a "groove". It's strange, my grooves look vaguely like ruts.

I've just started temp work at a law office in the cities, helping out until they complete the laborious process of finding a new office manager. This means I'm in a job where I have a handful of experience, working eight hours a day, and handling extremely sensitive material. I'd never witnessed a will signing before as an official until last weekend. Weird experience.

The lights above the desk are NOT energy friendly, and they're hot as hell. 95% of all energy put into a normal incandescent bulb is wasted as heat, by the way. It's all beating down on my head, even though it's in the sixties outside.

I still work at a restaurant, which is...... well, it's actually fun as hell. I love the staff, and sometimes breaking up a 20 lb slab of home-ground sausage with your fingers feels satisfying. Sometimes you just get greasy, but whatever.

Still, I almost feel as if I'm flailing about in a dark cave while someone ahead of me has a flashlight, but their body is blocking most of the light. It's like those dreams where you're driving a car, only from the back seat, and you can't see over the seat in front of you and you know you're going to hit some helpless baby in the road, doing god knows what on the pavement in his spare time.

Things are bizarre. I help my parents almost daily with a workload that steadily seems to be way too large for a couple nearing their retirement. Five acres, 2-ton branches of oak, entire pine trees falling, and a god-awful amount of yard care is just the beginning. They've redone the bath, the kitchen, and are thinking of new appliances and cars. All this is going to add up to a set of things that need to be done that neither of them want to do, and you can guess how eager I am about it.

Every morning seems cold and foggy (thank you, Minnesota, for this wonderful tribute to feeling happy) except when it's cold and the sun streaks into my window to blind me awake. That's a fun feeling, waking up completely stark blind, afterimages filling your vision for half an hour while you shower and pretend like it wasn't freezing for the first five minutes.

I've been seeing some old friends lately, and it's all kind of surreal. I remember jokes they forgot about years ago, stories that we shared at the time that they think I'm making up. Only one of them, Drew, actually picked up on anything while we were visiting. He makes a great homebrew, by the way. Many different varieties. We've told him to start a business.

Top that off with incredibly warped family problems, a splash of girl trouble, and a not inconsiderable amount of debt accruing from student loans, and all my wonderful direction has been lost. Someone stepped on my sextant when I wasn't looking, and I'm hissy about it. I hope they get scurvy and lose their teeth, and have to walk around with Norm Coleman-ish smiles for the rest of their life, scaring little children with pearly white dentures.

A very good friend is starting a security company. I want to get in on the ground floor, and I have the opportunity, but it's not a joke. You need training, you need dedication, and you have to take it seriously. Because I'm so good at serious, right? If I help out and it becomes a career, what happens to my doctorate? What happens to these tiny plans I love to make? Who knows.

In the meantime, I'm applying for jobs like a down-and-out boxer trying to make a comeback. See my new resume muscles? Manly! I can't lose to these snot-nosed kids who have bigger degrees and more wins under their Gucci belts, I'm the champ. Check me out, I have real-life experience - I don't need to practice my stamina.

Remember my drunk roommate from the two blogs ago? His ghost is chasing me down. Recently I've had to cover for two people (on the same day, ironically) by bending the truth, and I don't like it. Enabling was something I was supposed to get RID of, not recognize more easily and then cave to.

Not to mention some of the weirdest dreams I've had to date have started cropping up. I had a dream that started like 2001: a Space Odyssey. Instead of the monolith towering over monkeys, it was my fridge, towering monolithian over my bed. Same creepy music, but it was my fridge. When I opened the fridge, lights spilled out around the edge in too many colors, a seizure-inducing display worthy of Stanley Kubrik. Just last night I had a dream where the frogs in my window well started to talk in normal tones of voice, explaining that they were tired of being exploited. One finally called a vote, and to my shock and terror, produced a sign reading "First National Union of Pissed Off Frogs". NUPOF. They then proceeded to picket my underground window, banging their little signs against it and shouting in tinny voices that hell no, mos-qui-to.

WHAT?

And nice guys still finish last. Doesn't that just suck. Someone I've been seeing a lot more often suddenly loves to turn that into a pun. Pun or not, it's still true.

I told myself two years ago that I wasn't going to stop swinging for the fences. It's hard not to want to swing at faces sometimes, but I promised myself the fence was the goal. That promise is one I intend to keep. Weird is not that unusual to me (still weird, mind you, just expected at this point) and I've got plenty more chances at bat before the game is over. I proved on that damn mountain that I could move anywhere, make friends, and be a success, and I'm going to beat this if I strike out 20 more times.

Time to nut up or shut up.