A little help from my friends

 

Only hope can keep me together
Love can mend your life
But love can break your heart

I’ll send an SOS to the world

—the Police/Message in a bottle

I search myself
I want you to find me
I forget myself
I want you to remind me
–Divinyls/I Touch Myself
Love.
Wow.
What can I possibly say about love that hasn’t already been said a bajillion times by far more compelling writers?
Not a damn thing.
Luckily, it’s an inexhaustible topic.
It’s an inexhaustible resource, too. At least I hope it is.
But I don’t really want to talk about love exactly.
Here’s the thing. Most of us are surrounded by people who love us and who we love. It is pretty fucking fantastic, right? We are surrounded by people who would love nothing more than to show us how much they love us by supporting us and helping us when we are in trouble.
If they knew.
That’s the sticky part, isn’t it? We all know people who need help all the time. Who are constantly asking for favors. Who can never do anything on their own. And we do not want to be those people.
So what happens?
We don’t ever ask.
We don’t want to be one of “those people.”
(Unless you’re reading this and suspect you might be one of the people in the preceding paragraph, that is. In that case–cut it out. Try some independence. You might like it.)
(Do you suppose “those people” know they are “those people?”
I always wonder about that.)
For most of us, it’s hard to ask for help. Pride? Independence? Not wanting to be a bother? Embarrassment? All of the above? There have been many times in my life where I really needed help and have not been willing to ask. It made things harder than they needed to be for me. Situations spun out of control that maybe didn’t need to.
Sometimes I’ve been lucky enough to have people who care about me intervene without my asking. In one case, not to be overly dramatic, with possibly life saving results.
Other times, I’ve been…um…oh let’s not be diplomatic…I’ve been an idiot and turned down help. Or just not listened to advice offered. Good advice, too.
Ideally, in my mind, people would magically just know what I need and give it to me without asking. Because if they ask, I will say I don’t need a thing. Yeah, I’m perverse that way. I also realize that it’s just not going to work out for me most of the time.
So, what’s the solution?
I don’t know. Like I just said, sometimes I’m an idiot.
The solution is to not be an idiot, because expecting people to read your mind and come to your rescue like magic is just not realistic.
Hey, what sort of advice do you expect from me? I’m in IT support, not psychology. I don’t even play a psychologist on TV. I played a cowboy once in a musical, but that’s not a psychologist either.
Yes, a singing cowboy.
I really wanted to play a sweet young thing, but one of the cowboys moved away, so they recast me as a cowboy because I already knew all the lines. I had to take off my pants onstage and prance around in long johns. In the sixth grade, it was moderately traumatic for a shy girl to prance around being a male cowboy in long johns.
I’m pretty much over it now.
Oh we just got in from Abilene and we’re mean
We’re the roughest toughest men these folks ever seen
Oh we smoke and fight and sing the whole night through
And when we talk the atmosphere turns blue.
–The Saga Of Dead Dog Gulch
Maybe I’m not as over it as I think I am….
Someone help me.
Please.

Sometimes things are just a little too surreal around me when they are combined

 

At the gym,  there’s always a lot going on. People walking and driving by in front of the gym, people working out, several TVs on, and like most folks doing cardio I listen to music. Set iTunes to shuffle and go.

This afternoon I was trying not to sing along to iTunes on the elliptical. (Trying not to sing in public takes up a lot of my mental energy)

On the TV in front of me, they were interviewing the sister of one of the fine upstanding young men who killed someone for no reason in Oklahoma. She was saying that she didn’t understand why her little brother was in jail for Murder 1 because he didn’t do the shooting.

Behind me, a personal trainer and his client were laughing hysterically about something. Not even noticing what the woman on TV was saying.

The words to the song I was listening to  went like this:

Chi è che sa di che siamo capaci tutti, vanificato il limite oramai?

(Who knows what we are all capable of now that the limits have all been nullified?)*

 

So I stopped.

 

Fuck.

Who does know?

Pretty much anything, it seems.

 

 

 

* C.S.I/Memorie Di Una Testa Tagliata.

 

Vacation reading update, because I know you’ve all been fretting about it.

 

If you want to double check what my reading list included, it’s over here.

I am feeling like a bit of a failure, because I only finished about half of the books on my list. I got half way through 2 others, and also re-read a few Austens.

Yes, I know it’s a very long list for a week. Yes, I know some people do other things when they are on vacation. I won’t criticize how you spend your time, if you don’t criticize how I spend mine. I probably think that you spend too much time doing shit like building housing for the poor and hiking, and not enough time listening to children on the teeter totter and drinking IPA.

I also eat a lot of potato chips, so it’s not like my activities aren’t varied.

Don’t be a hater.

Right. Reading list.

The hits?

Smoking Ears and Screaming Teeth, The Wasp Factory, Bossypants, Odd Thomas and Johannes Cabal the Necromancer. (Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Mansfield Park were all as wonderful as they are every time I read them, as was A Prayer For Owen Meany.)

The misses?

Nothing was horrible. I enjoyed Bag of Bones, but it wasn’t scary. When I read Stephen King, I would like to be scared. You knew there were ghosts, you knew who the ghosts were, and even the hero of the story was not afraid of them. The Silver Linings Playbook was also fine. Not great. Fine. I still can’t get into Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. It may be time to give up on that one.

 

The one big failure of our vacation this year was not with reading or beer drinking. We did great on both of those. Our one big failure was with spirits.

We did not have one cocktail or shot of anything during the entire week.

I KNOW. It’s HORRIBLE.
I promise to do better on that next year.

We made up for it on the evening we returned.

Sorry, Stuff. We weren’t very helpful on the unpacking, but we did enjoy your deck immensely. And the sipping whiskey.

 

Uh.

Oh.

Just one more thing: it’s Wild Turkey American Honey. Get some and drink a fifth of it. Even if you don’t like Wild Turkey.

I hear it’s also delicious with pineapple soda.

You’ll feel great.

 

I am going, I am going
Any which way the wind may be blowing
I am going, I am going
Where streams of whiskey are flowing

–The Pogues/Streams of Whiskey

 

 

 

 

 

 

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