2005-04-10 - 10:42 p.m.
GOOD EVENIN', BITCHES
Yeah, that’s right, I said bitches! I just realized that I can fill this with swear words now since I’m not doing it for school anymore. Well, actually, I always could have used them if I really wanted to, but I would have felt a little funny about cussing up a storm in something that was being graded. Although now that I think about it, the only people who will read this are the same people who read it under those previous circumstances, so a sudden infusion of cursing might very well make all of us uncomfortable. I'm very sorry. Very sorry for the bitches.
So! Last time I updated my Lovely Purple Diary, I said I'd try to post here "every now and then". Which I guess translates into every six months. Boy, does time fly.
It seems like it was just yesterday that I was telling you about my wacky misadventures at jury duty. And here I sit today being forced to go AGAIN in the coming weeks for MORE duty! This is some crazy bullcrap, I'll tell you what. The rules say that you don't have to be called back for more jury duty for a full year after the last time you go, but I seem to get called again the very minute that time limit is up. This will be my third time in just a few years. My dad is plenty older than me and has lived here a lot longer, and he hasn't had to go three freakin' times. Why me? Perhaps the Jury Duty Selector Person is secretly in love with me or something. I'm pretty sure it's a dude, though.
So what else. Whaaaaat else. Well, I'm still married. For eight months now! In fact, as I start to write this here diary entry, it is our eight-month anniversary on the nose. By the time I actually finish this and post it, though, it could be closer to ten. But I'm getting used to the whole groovy wedded scene. Saying and hearing "my wife" is still pretty crazy. Anytime I hear Charity introduce herself as "missus", I giggle for a few minutes and end up wetting my pants.
But let me tell you what, friends and neighbors, marriage is not all peanut butter cups and peach flavored frozen yogurt. It’s not easy. There are issues. Oh, are there issues. TO WIT: my sweetums goes to bed WAY too early. I mean, like 10:00 at night. Right now you’re probably saying “What?! That's crazy!” I know! It's also very upsetting, for two specific reasons.
First of all, I like to go to sleep when she does, so we can lay there and talk and snuggle and fall asleep together. That's one of my most favorite things in the world to do. But I just cannot go to bed that early. I've tried. I can fall asleep, don't get me wrong. I just can't go to bed. Those are two different things. It's very easy to lay there and be lulled to sleep by the rhythm of her breathing, or by hearing her heart beating if I have my head on her chest or something. But I'll just wake up in an hour or so, more awake than ever.
Lemme tell you what, if I was the one who was going to bed too early, all I'd need to do is force myself to stay up late for one night. That's it. Because if I stay up late, I'm going to sleep late the next morning. And if I sleep late, I'm going to stay up later the next night. And, just like that, I have a new bedtime. It's very simple.
But Charity does not work that way. She may be defective. What she does is she always gets up at the same time every morning. She doesn't have to get up at a certain time, she just does. So if I can actually get her to stay up late on a given night, it just backfires on me the next night because she'll go to bed even earlier than normal on account of not getting enough sleep the night before. What a conundrum!
I haven't even told you the worst part of it, though. Her going to bed so early leaves me with nothing to do all evening. I'm left with only the TV and/or computer to fill my emotional needs. It's terrible. It's horrible. I did not get married so that I could spend my nights playing online Monopoly and watching reruns of Roseanne!
Other than that, though, things are pretty good. Nay, GREAT. I really like her. Every single day I find myself watching her do something, even little things like putting stuff in the dishwasher or just laying on the couch flipping around with the remote, and I'm completely mesmerized by it. It's like I cannot believe that this wonderful, incredible person actually agreed to spend her life with me. Why me? Believe me, I'm not that special.
And speaking of my unspecialness, I still don't have a job. Eight months now I've been mooching off my sugar mama. You might recall a previous diary entry in which I had to talk about my future plans, which involved getting married, having a few surgical procedures done on my knees and shoulder, and then getting a job. I'm 1 for 3 at the moment.
It turns out that Charity and I were both dropped from our parents' health insurance coverage once we graduated college. For some reason, my parents were under the impression that I'd be on there until I was 25. So as of right now, the only way I could get the work done on my knees and shoulder would be to have a job first. Or have my parents pay, but good luck with all THAT.
I had a job waiting for me at this radio station, but right before Charity and I got married the station got bought by new owners. And, damn all their souls straight to hell, the new owners instituted a hiring freeze that the station has yet to thaw out from.
I really should get a job somewhere, but there aren't really any other jobs around that I want. And the radio station keeps stringing me along every month by saying that the whole freeze business should be over soon. Plus, at this point I don't really even WANT a job. If I can somehow spin a career out of sleeping late and doing nothing all day except being with my lovely wife, I think that would be a pretty ideal scenario.
Just this week, though, the radio station in question posted a new job listing that's more or less in the department that I was going to work in. So either I could get this job, or if they promote somebody from within as they're apt to do, then that person's job would be open. We'll see what happens, I guess.
But not being able to have the surgeries done is becoming a pain (literally!) because, man, my shoulder has been hurting. About two weeks ago I was stretching my neck back and forth, seeing if it would crack, and I noticed that the back of my neck was really stiff for no reason at all. Then the next morning I had this awful pain from my neck to my shoulder. I figured I pulled a muscle or something and just ignored it, but it rapidly got worse.
I'd get these awful shooting, tearing pains all over that area. I'd have muscle spasms in my shoulder and arm. I'd also get a tingling in my fingers, and I know that's not from a pulled muscle. I've read about that kind of thing with wrestlers who have bad necks, where their hands tingle and go numb and stuff, but that's mainly from spinal problems in their cases. My problem was a pinched nerve in my shoulder, neck, or the area in-between. That's unrelated to the reason I need surgery, but it certainly didn't help.
As I'm typing this, the awful tearing pains have pretty much gone away, and I'm left with kind of a dull ache. The problem is that, since my shoulder is messed up anyway, I'm not sure if the pinched nerve issue has been resolved or not. It still hurts, but is that from the nerve, or just the fact that my shoulder is bad? I don't know. The weird part is that the muscles in my shoulder and upper arm are either extremely tight still, or they’re weak from hardly being used the past few weeks, and now I have trouble lifting my arm. It’s a strange feeling. It’s like one arm weighs 20 pounds more than the other one does.
Mainly I've been talking lots of Advil to stop the swelling, as well as putting heat and ice on the sore, painful, hurtful area. And Charity has been rubbing it a lot. I lay flat on my stomach and she really gets in there with her thumbs and digs right into the muscle, working and grunting and telling me how tight it is while I lay there and groan. Which is kind of funny, because usually she’s the one who lays on her stomach and groans while *I* work and grunt and tell her how tight it is. Good lord, that's terrible. I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me.
You know, reading this back, the whole entry seems a little depressing what with awful jury duty, my crumbling marriage, my unemployment, my lack of health care, and my poor physical condition. Rest assured that things are quite all right. Aside from the aforementioned shoulder problem, I'm doing just fine. Charity is doing great. Our dog is doing okay. We're all very happy. If you've taken the time to read all the way through this, I certainly hope you and all your loved ones are doing good, too. If you didn't read this, I hope you all get sick and die. And you'll never even know I feel that way! Sucker.
If jury duty leads to any amusing anecdotes, I'll surely return here so that I may share them with you. Until then, I bid you adieu.
BYE
