The Monday Warm-up

Now that my son's hockey season is over, that the other's musical, "Suessical," is through, that St. Patrick's Day is finished, that I am back from Chicago, and the AWP in Boston, that I have clean jeans and underwear and socks for the week, a ski trip planned for tomorrow, four new debit cards to register and be asked afterwards if I'd like to take a few minutes to do a follow-up survey, to then get the auto-pays switched from the old debit cards to the new debit cards, be asked again if I'd mind taking a few minutes to take a follow-up survey ...

Now that the puppy has been spayed and must be kept calm, no need to walk her, in fact don't walk her, keep her calm, the vet said, here are some pills to keep her calm, pills that won't otherwise hurt her while her stapled up incision heals and she stumbles around in slightly less of a stooper with each passing day since she's getting used to the pills—Puppy's Little Helper, Valley of the Dogs—but mostly sleeps like Keith Richards splayed out face down on the bed in the hotel room, in that photo Annie Leibowitz took way back ...

Now that I've got the fan on for background noise so I can't hear my ear that keeps ringing and has been for two weeks, the ear that is on the same side that my wife (who might have been a good opera singer had she applied herself) sits in the car on long trips, that my son who inherited her vocal chords sits fighting with his brother on long trips, the son who talks as though he has buds in his ears with Metallica playing so fucking loud he can't hear himself and thus imagines he needs to talk Really Loud, at the dinner table for instance, where he sits on the side of my ringing ear, except he doesn't have buds in his ears, he can hear fine, we know it! the doctor tells us every year and I joke that ha ha ha so you can hear me when I say do this, do that, will you please Be Quiet!! Yes, he can hear just fine. It is I, his fifty-something-year-old father who has the chronic ringing in his ear, who remembers his own dad warning him that if I didn't quit listening to Emerson Lake & Palmer at two o'clock on the dial on the stereo he wouldn't be able to hear himself piss by the time he was twenty-five—and yet, here I am, nearly thirty years later, and I can still hear myself piss, even with the fan on! You'd think I'd feel pretty good about that, beating the odds for so long. Be a good American and focus on the positive. Be glad you don't have money in the bank in Cyprus. That you aren't a woman who loves shoes living in North Korea. Rejoice! You're in your fifties, man, and you can still hear yourself piss! 

With the fan on, the ringing muted, Janacek playing like at the start of Murakami's 1Q84 now that my children are off to school and my wife is off to work and the puppy is out cold on pills after her surgery last Thursday ... what is stopping me from Radically Wasting Time?

Writing. Sitting down. Doing it.

Right after another cup of coffee ...