Decembers to remember

12:30 am and here I am sitting outside the laundrymat typing away on the iPad again, if for no other reason than I have time to kill.  So, with a can of Pepsi beside me, and puffing on a cigarette, I guess I should come up with something clever to say.



Problem is, I have nothing clever to say.  Christmas is this week, I suppose I should be all full of holiday cheer, and while I am not all bah humbug about the holiday, I can't say that I am eager for it to get here either.  After all, it was on a Christmas morning many years ago that my family learned that my brother had hung himself sometime the night before.  Not that my brother and I were close, we really weren't, but every now and then I find myself doing the old "What if...." thing.  Maybe that makes me cold hearted, that I am not broken up every year around this time, but I am not.  More curious than upset, wondering where it all went so wrong between he and I.  Actually I know why it went so wrong, so maybe the question is more along the lines of what set that path of events in motion to begin with.

Likewise, December also marks the yearly anniversary of being laid off from the radio station.   Back then I looked forward to the holidays mainly because I knew that I would be off work and spending time with my family.  The station always ran the 36 Hours of Christmas, a marathon of nothing but Christmas music, which would air in lieu of our normal talk programming.  Throw in my accumulated vacation time and I knew that I would have a few days at home to spend with the family before returning to the daily grind.  But so much of that has changed, and not necessarily for the better.  My job now, while it does grant me vacation time, also requires more of my attention, especially this time of year when most of the other managers are off doing their own thing so it falls on my shoulders to be the Benito Mussolini of the outfit and make sure the trains all run on time.  Even going home isn't the same though, the big family gatherings that used to be the norm now don't happen, they are relics of a bygone era when my grandparents were still alive.  Now everyone just does their own thing, and while I don't begrudge them for doing so, there will always be a longing there for the way things used to be.  Sometimes Mr. President, it isn't hope and change, it is just change.

Look at that, I said I didn't have anything to say and yet here I am saying things again.

I have managed to kill 15 of the 20 minutes required for the wash cycle, I may make it home by 1:30 am if everything goes according to plan.  Really, what other plan would their be, there is only one other person washing clothes here, and the overnight cleaning guy, one of the reasons that I come here so late at night.  Just the three of us tonight, and the chattering on the TVs, which are both set to the same channel, with Cash Cab blaring from them.

Okay, the clothes have been transported from the washer to the dryer, we are halfway home at this point.  Another couple showed up, so we are up to 5 whole people here now.  Don't know why I said whole people there, it isn't like half a person would come in to do their laundry, though if such a person did come in, I imagine I would spend more time staring at them than actually typing this.  Not that this is the only thing I could be doing right now, I did bring my new book with me to read, in case I decided reading was a better way to spend my time then blogging.  I ordered it from Amazon the other day, I had bought a couple of Christmas presents with the gift cards I had saved up there, and in order to qualify for the free shipping at $35 I bought myself a book as well.  Not just any book mind you, I grabbed me another Christopher Hitchens offering, "Letters to a Young Contrarian", a book that I have been meaning to get for some time now.

It has been too long for me to not be reading something as well.  Probably one of the good things that was happening during the last few months of my relationship was that I was using the time that was being wasted on waiting around for things to get better by burying my head in books.  But that was over three months ago now, and maybe it is just me, but if I am not reading something then my brain feels, for lack of a better term, mushy.  Like I am not as sharp as I can be.  I am hoping that I can get back into more of a rhythm as it pertains to reading, but like my absence from blogging, I would say it is going to be more of a wait and see thing.  What I would like to do and what ends up actually happening are rarely the same thing.  Life gets in the way, motivation comes and goes, so I can offer few guarantees on the topic.

Good grief, now Judge Judy is on the TV here.  My clothes can't dry fast enough.  It is shows like this that remind me why I have no desire for cable television.  I would rather watch paint dry than be subjected to this.  If it weren't for my iPad, I might have to file a complaint with the United Nations as this would be torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Convention.

Well there goes one person, we are down to four here.  Perhaps I should suggest a game of euchre or something.  Nah, that would be far to social of me, I used up my good samaritanship earlier today when I gave away a free shopping cart at Bottom Dollar.  It was actually my first trip there, I wasn't sure what to expect, and for the most part I guess it was okay.  They do lots of things that other stores of the same ilk do to keep costs down, you bag your own groceries, either by bringing your own bags or by buying them at the checkout.  Another thing they do is the shopping cart rental, where you have to put a quarter in a slot to unlock the cart from the others in the cart bay, then when you return the cart and relock it to the others, you get your 25 cents back.  As I was checking out the cashier put my groceries in a loose cart that was sitting there, so after I finished bagging my groceries, rather than lock the cart up, I just gave it to someone coming into the store.  She was going to go digging through her purse to give am a quarter for the cart, but since I didn't pay for it, I didn't see the need to take money for it either.

Anyway, I think my laundry is done, time to wrap this up and get about the business of getting home.  Toodles!