Add to list: Composer

So I made up this song late last year called You're Driving Me Nuts. I composed it in the late morning hours of 2 December 2006. How do I remember with such startling accuracy the precise moment of its genesis, you ask? Well, it was the morning that I was running around the house desperately trying to get my things together for a week-long business trip up to freezing motherfucking ass Chicago. And while I am tearing around, lugging my broken suitcase from basement, finding matching socks, cramming 3 oz toiletries into clear bag for bloody security compliance, et cetera et al, my parents. Let's just stop right there for a second.

My parents. Let me just make a really long story really short and say that at this point, my parents had been living with me in the house for three months. Day and night. Sleeping in the next room. My father either rooted in front of the laptop or hovering 3 feet away from me AT ALL TIMES. My mother, either blessedly sleeping, running me down in the hallway with her wheelchair, or getting me to fetch her water or tissues. Three months. So I was already a little tense.

So I'm packing like a madman but at every step, with every pair of undies packed, with every precious minute ticking by, an interruption. Like my dad, with the always-classic, I'm looking for something that I left right in this exact spot in the study three years ago and now somebody's bloody moved it! Have you seen it? No. Keep packing. My mother's voice, warbling from her room. Eleanor, come here for a second. I go. She throws 25 lbs* of drapery at me to pack in suitcase to give to Claire. Throw them on the pile. Keep packing. Go to kitchen for Ziploc bags. Dad scares the hell out of me by popping out of the basement door and asks me to help him hold the ladder while he trims a tree in the front lawn. I bellow I DON'T HAVE TIME and he shoots me wounded, betrayed look and nicks off.

At this moment is when the song begins to form. I write in in my head for the rest of the day and perform it for Claire when I land at Midway. And here it goes:

Chorus:
You're driving me nuts!
You're driving me nuts!
You're driving me driving me driving me driving me driving me driving me nuts!
REPEAT

Verse 1:
It's easy, it's simple
It's elemental
You're making me crazy!
You're making me mental!
Because. . .

Repeat Chorus

And that was the end of it for a while. But lately I have been working on Verse 2. I premiered a version of it yesterday afternoon to Claire over the phone. She listened and delivered the verdict: too many syllables. So I retooled it and came up with this:

Verse 2:
O how I've tried
to make it plain
I'm going loopy!
Completely insane!
That. . .

Repeat Chorus

Please let me know how much you enjoy it. Detractors not welcome.

*not an exaggeration, I had to pay excess baggage at the airport.

I just don't know what to do with myself

Yikesy. The lovely Elbo added me as a link to her fabulous blog, Discombombulation Station. See? I'm right down under the blogs-she-reads-everyday header. On the left. Lower. Keep scrolling. Below the pics, keep going. Lower. Right below the recently-updated-weblogs area. There! See? PRIME REAL ESTATE!

The point is, this puts the heat on me to update this thing. Regularly. Which I think was ALL PART OF HER EVIL PLAN IN THE FIRST PLACE! And it's totally working. I mean, I can eaaaaasily let down my dearest friends and family members, but vaguely disappoint an anonymous blog surfer? UNACCEPTABLE!

I'm yelling a lot in this post. Clearly I have a lot of pent-up anger. CLEARLY.

On a complete-180-utterly-non-sequitur-non-sequitur, I'm leaving the office now to go to a funeral. For reals. R.I.P., Ralphie. He was a good man.

This blog is a no-gay zone.

Know how I know you're gay? I don't. Know how I know my sisters are gay? See below.

As you know by now, I blogged for the first time in 932 years the other day. Upon preparing myself for another post, I happened to notice that I received 4 comments on the original-932-year-etc one. And I thought, well how very neat. Until I read them. Witness the gayness for yourself with my bonus real-time reactions in italics!

4 Comments:
At 12:32 PM, M&P's Favorite*I immediately knew this was Claire said...
i, too, longed daily for a new entry to appear...months of waiting and unquenched thirst for minutiae. and now, at long last, rewarded with a scintillating expose on the harsh reality of donning natural fibers. poetry. sheer poetry. excuse me while i put on a anne murray record and weep into my brandy snifter. *pretty damn gay, but kind of sweet
At 12:30 PM, Anonymous said...
This was indeed worth waiting for. I can't wait for the next entry, due around July, *shurrup. in which you excoriate*I immediately knew this was Leah a Birkenstock for being clunky. You've been railing about raw silk smell since I dared wear it around you in about 1992.*That's fucking right, biz! Nasty shit! Get over it or get rid of it. Better still, give it to me! *Fast becoming her stock response in fervent attempts to usurp my wardrobe. Believe me, she is weeeeelcome to this sweater.
At 4:41 PM, M & P's Favorite said...
A) leah, don't even bother being "anonymous" b/c only you would reply to a blog using 'excoriate'*Totally nailed it, nice one.
B) if el does decide to blog about her birkenstocks, it will include descriptions of pong akin to a thousand raw silk sweaters left soaking in vinegar and recently unearthed from a sulfur pit *I can't argue with this, really. The first rule created by my freshman year roommate was that the Birks had to go immediately into the closet once they were off my feet.
At 8:30 AM, Prolix*Again, dead giveaway for Leah said...
Hmmm... thought I had to be anonymous if I didn't have a Google account. Evidently not. I revel in my new assumed identity! *aaaand, gay.

But, I hear you ask, who are these people, really? Well, my sister Claire:

Ha haha ha ha ha h ah ah ha ha h aha haaa I had to have a reason to post that picture again. This, as you will recall, this is actually the friend of an old workmate of mine. I just had to put this picture up again. It fills me with such delight. Evil, evil delight!

To play fair, here is one of my favourite pictures of Leah, juuuuust realising that the writing was done in chalk. Pesky, very transferable chalk. Bwah ha ha ha!

And, scene.

O Happy Day!!!!

Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, I'm posting!

I'm really just doing this for my sister Leah, who mentioned a few days ago that she STILL CHECKS MY SITE FOR UPDATES. This despite the fact that I have not updated since AUGUST OF 2006. Her loyalty and dedication to my blog brought a tiny tear to my eye. Just the tiniest of tinies.

So a new year. And, yet, the same old fucking problems. Case in point: the sweater I am wearing right now. It is a gold silk lovely from Banana Republic that I bought a couple of years ago. I love it. It looks really good. I can't bring myself to get rid of it. But. it. fucking. stinks. And I'm not talking the sickly-sweet-nasty-ass-raw-silk-smell that I do truly despise and almost gag when I get a whiff, I'm talking about. . . a more. . . . organic pong.

I noticed this problem around this time last year, when I was sitting in my MicroEcon class. Naturally, I spent the entire class shooting poison eyes at everyone around me. . . until I realised that I was the pong originator. Horrified, I banished the sweater to the laundry room, where it sat for most of 2006 until I decided what to do with it. Finally, off to Avondale Cleaners where I asked the guy to do anything and everything to get the pong out. He immediately replied that he could make no guarantees. I said, well just try. And he said, no promises. And I said, OKAY, just see what you can do. And he said, pick it up Thursday.

This was a few weeks ago. And I am wearing it today. And the guy was right: he could make no guarantees or promises. Because the funk is still there. I have been walking around with my arms stiff at my sides like an android all day. Now I know you think I am being ridiculous and thinking oh just get rid of it already but if you saw it. . . I just looked down and realised that there are drops of my Thai noodle I had for lunch all over it. I don't know how many people have seen (and smelt) me today.

It's fucking out of here.