A Little Ranting

Ok, this is the post where I rant about things I hate.

1 Roadside shrines to an accident.

This is the thing. I am constantly driving by intersections and seeing little shrines of flowers, signs, crosses etc, presumably the spot of a fatal accident. It drives me bonkers. Sometimes I am tempted to tear or cut down all these shrines. The fact is we are all going to die. I mean I am sorry that someone has lost a loved one in an accident but the fact is when we get behind the wheel of a car, there is a risk. A risk that we or someone else in another car is not paying attention or a mechanical part will fail. There is a risk that when we eat or drink, we will choke or when we fly, the plane will crash or even just standing in our backyard that something from the sky will fall on our heads. There is a risk that we will die from something everyday. And let me clue you in, in case you haven't figured this out already, we are all going to die someway somehow. We will die in one of four basic ways. We will die from the wearing out of our bodies due to old age, prematurely from a disease or an act of violence or an act of nature but inevitably, we will all die. So why memorialize your loved ones death scene? It is maudlin. Remember the good memories and what they meant to you, not where they died.

2 Wannabe cyclists in spandex.

I see people cycling with all the spandex gear who are clearly not going to be pursuing Lance Armtstong's Tour-de-France record. If you don't have the kind of body that comes from the grueling training routine of a professional althlete, then don't wear spandex.
All I see is a usually middle aged overweight blob who doesn't see themselves in the mirror. You are kidding yourself into thinking that time is frozen and that you look as good as you did when you were young. Cycle all you want but have mercy on the rest of us who have to look at you in those ridiculous clothes. Please Stop!!!

3 Overly familiar and chatty co-workers.

I hate inappropriate workplace discussions especially with that odd person in the office. In my case, I work at an outsourced call center where there is way too much time on our hands and we have nothing else to do but talk. The odd person in my office is Alice. First Alice is grossly over weight and she wears very tight clothing that displays every kind of blobby digsuting fat. I have to force myself to not look at her before the look of revulsion crosses my face but to add to her appearance, is the problem that she has an annoying childlike personality. She constantly brings up conversational topics like bodywash, her problems with diabetes, all her personal problems with her in laws etc. She also has a habit of trying to work her way into the personal problems of others. Ugh, ok so maybe my rant in this case is about this person, so sue me.

4 Forgetting what else I want to rant about. More to come I am sure

My first early morning blog

I woke up at 3:30 am with a headache. Actually I woke up at 1:15 needing to pee and a headache. I had only gotten 5 hours of sleep last night and really hoped to get a good night's sleep tonight. No such luck. Finally got up at 3:30 am. I've been very depressed for the last week or so. My 97 Ford Aspire went kaput. According to my dad this is yet another of a long list of fuck ups with respect to cars and my nonmechanical nature.. You see I am a mechanic's dream. I am a car killer.

Although I took the car for an oil change a few weeks ago and the car was 9 years old with 150,000 miles on it, apparently as is always the case with my dad, I didn't keep a check on the coolant level and the head gasket blew spewing oil all thorugh the radiator and coolant system. According to me, it could have been an old head gasket that just failed. At any rate I am once again scrounging around for a cheap inexpensive car. Something I have done everytime I needed a car.

Now I am pretty good at this process. I will" hunt " till I see at least 3-4 cars that fit my budget( and fortunately, I have a brother in law who works for a car dealership he has helped a lot this time). Once in my life, I would like to go to a car lot and say I can afford this and that I would like to look at a red car with these amenities. As it is, I only care about two things when car buying, the price and how reliable the car model is.

(To any cars salepeople out there reading this let me give you a piece of advice when a middle aged guy comes on your lot and says I am looking for a car between the x and y price and this is at the the low end of the scale, Do not attempt the old chestnut of steering someone to a new car or higher priced car. Let me tell you there is nothing I enjoy more than being inadvertantly humiliated by a car salesman who thinks I am so stupid that I will buy that brand new model that's WAY out of my budget. When someone is telling you what they are looking for in price, show what you have if you have anything or tell them sorry nothing on the lot.)

Memories of Grandma

Her name is Ruby Irene Hart. She was one of the most fastidious people I have ever known. In all the time that I spent at her home, I never once saw a newspaper on the floor or a piece of mail on a table. As a kid I always knew that once I was finished playing with my toys, they were to be put away immediately. Grandma never had to yell. It was just understood that everything was always in its place.

With her hair and her clothes, every detail was just so. She had black hair and piercing green eyes and a slightly too large nose. She was not a raving beauty but attractive enough. She was not an extravagant person in appearance but always her clothes were neat and pressed. When she went mushroom hunting in the woods with my grandpa and me, she remarked that "someone should come out here and clear out all this brush." Everything in its place. Mess and disorder did not exist in her world.

When I think back on all the Christmas mornings and hot summer afternoons eating watermelon and the Easter sunday dinners, I don't remember her being much of a participant in the all too loud family conversations. Instead I remember her fussing with the food which was always spectacularly good and as any good country cook knows plentiful. She was always having a good time just watching her family.

And she was always busy. She knitted, crocheted, sewed and embroidered. She would sit and watch tv alongside Grandpa but always always had something to work on with her hands. Over the years, she made dresses for my cousins, pants and shirts for me and knitted afghans. When I was fifteen, my mom decided to redecorate my room in a bicentennial theme of red, white and blue. Grandma sewed a blue denim bedspread with red and white trim and two sets of curtains in white denim with red and blue trim to complement the bedspread. One year, she made all of her grandkids stuffed frogs from leftover fabric. Each kid had his or her frog made from something she had created for them. My grandfather kept complaining because everyone knew frogs were green. Guess what he got for his Christmas present that year. A green frog.
No one said she didn't have a sense of humor.

I am writing this because that terrible thief, Alzheimers has stolen her away from us. She is now in a nursing home. She sleeps long hours and when she is awake, she is not aware of her surroundings. When she recoginizes us, she holds out her arthritic hands to be held like a small child. Sometimes she doesn't recognize us and wants to go home but she has no idea of where home is anymore. It is an awful truth but it is only a matter of time until she leaves us for good.
The truth is it is only a matter of time for all of us until something takes us away from family dinners and hot summer afternoons eating watermelon and running and playing with children.

What I should be doing

Last week I had a terrible bought of insomnia. It started last Monday. I had my usual therapy appointment and I was just filled with unexplained anger all day long. When it came time for bed, I tossed and turned all night, finally falling asleep for approximately three hours before having to get up for work. I could not figure out what was going on. It continued every night last week. If I was lucky, I would fall asleep at 2:30 but I would always wake up long before I had to. I tried exercise, pills, counting, anything I could think of but absolutely nothing would work. Things were piling up on me. I needed to get things done but all I could was try to get through the most essential functions of my day and try to relax and get what little sleep I could get.

Finally, I decided last Saturday as I was driving to work that I would get in a good walk when I got home, do some yoga and if I was still having insomnia that I should at least try to be productive and do some writing, I went to bed at 11:30. I was totally exhausted but I still could not fall completely asleep. So after 2 hours of tossing and turning, I got up and went to the computer. I opened a story I had started several months ago and typed out a few sentences. Instantly, my tension melted away and I was ready for bed. It is amazing to me how all this went on completely subconsciously. I can only take this for a sign.

Huh?

I'm having a lot of angst right now. I have switched my hours from 2nd shift to first shift and my sleeping has improved but the fact is I am still stuck in neutral. I really want to get my job with the fortune 500 IT distributor in Chicago back but it is in all likelihood gone,gone,gone. I could send a resume when the time is right but I think that is going backward. I keep asking myself what I really want to do when I grow up. I have no clue. Still.

I am begining to suspect that my being a writer fantasy is just that. I suspect that I create the fantasy because the reality of being an average gay joe in an average midwestern city is just a little too diffcult to face.

I have been reading a lot of other blogs and when I figure out how to set up links, I'll post them but I don't think I am destined to be a blog star as I am not all that witty or trendy and really don't keep up on that kind of stuff.

In fact, when I read my friend Brad's blog, The Bradlands.com, it makes me think of one my first experiences in a gay bar. I had just come out and was sneaking into The Bar as it was known then with my friend Dean as I was under age. I was talking to an aquaintance, Richard one of the nelliest people I have ever met. He was standing there in the all time classic stereotype pose of hand-on-hip and saying "that guy with the red izod really pees." First I was confused because I didn't have a clue what an izod shirt was and second because when I looked around the bar everyone was standing around talking and drinking. I mean no one was peeing ! Finally after several attempts to point out the hot guy in the red shirt, he exclaimed "what kind of faggot are you? That you don't know what an Izod shirt is ". Later on, I bought a book, The Queen's English, an explanation of the slang term gays used back in the bad old days when gay bars were pretty much underground. It really pees means it is really piss elegant as in really hot. That experience pretty much sums up my relationship to the gay bar community. I have nver been really been interested in fashion or club music or whatever most guys talk about in bars.

A Simple Twist of Fate

I had my first twist of fate a few months before I graduated high school in 1979. It was on a Sunday in late February or early March. There had been a big snow a few days earlier and mounds of old snow and ice were piled up near the alleyways. I was walking to the corner confectionary to get dog food for Sam, my peekapoo dachsund crossbeed. Someone's trash had been ripped apart and was perched on a mound of snow. I looked down and saw a picture of a nude man. I was incredibly excited and nervous. I mean here was a picture out of my innnermost fantasies.

Up until now, I had been creating little porn visons about the boys in high school in my mind and now here was something real that reflected my fantasies. Anyway, I hurriedly rushed to the store and got the dog food .When I came back to the alleyway with the trash, I looked around and grabbed the magazine, stashed it between me and the 5 lb bag of dog food and rushed home. Fortunately, my parents were out of the house and I ran upstairs to my room. My heart was racing. Here was a magazine about all my inner fantasies. I turned page after glorious page. Nude men in various poses just like the poses the women were in my uncle's Playboy's but they were men and there were articles. The words gay and homosexual kept popping up. It was then that I understood what I was. Until then, I had locked my fantasies away and did not have a name for them and now I knew. Later I was to learn how powerful a word could be.

So Far

Ok, I have decided to try this blogging thing. Who am I? I am a middle aged gay man in a midsized midwestern city who is trying to find purpose and direction in life hence the title of the Bemused Blogger as in how the @#!# did I get here and how do I get out and where to next?
Right now I am struggling to pay off debt and find a career goal/direction in life. My little inner voice keeps saying to write. I usually rollover and go back to sleep but eventually I have to get up and gosh darn it that little bugger is right back saying write! write! The thing is I grew up in the blue collar working class community of Granite City IL where mostly people followed in Dad's footsteps ( and Mom's if she worked which most didn't where I grew up but mine did. More on that later.) Forunately for me, my parents had the wisdsm to move into the neighborhood where the town professional types lived. Consequently, I attended a "good" elementary school where some bright eyed teacher decided I was college material without any input from me or my parents. The next thing I know I have gone througth 17 years of a mostly happy and uneventfull childhood until I graduated high school. Then it was off to the University of Illinois -UC and it is there that things really get interesting.
Anyway, I have decided to blog to develop my creative writing skills and to mull over the thoughts, ideas and feelings I have about my life, past and present. Although I expect there to be a lot of angst ridden kvetching, I hope you will bear with me. I think the ride and the destination will be enjoyable.