Well I got all the stuff broken down and ready to go... mostly. I need to empty some trash. Get a U Haul. I am nearly ready to go... There is still the part of moving and making sure people show up to help.
I signed for the new place today. Out from the rat race into the countryside. A whole new (old) life back near "home". Back to the giant rocks, large yards and Republicans! :) And a place to lend my heart.
One of the last things I said tonight here was that I was taking my wine glasses and I got this, "Oh no you can't" look along with her saying "no...sorry". I mean she doesn't even drink wine. Instead of really getting mad, I did a double take on the look. It was like she really didn't want to say what she was saying. She is keeping all the other stuff in the cabinet but for some reason I couldn't have my glasses either. They were a gift from... my sister in law? Wait a second... I asked why and got the "She doesn't want you to have them anymore." speech.
It is pointless to turn this into a fight. It is such a little thing like stemless wine glasses. I mean, is that what revenge is supposed to be? Are you even supposed to take out revenge on someone? And is that how "they" are going to reach out to me? By intentionally ripping me a new asshole over some old gift? I feel like smashing them and mailing them back in little pieces but I won't because I am bigger than that.
Early, early this morning... I got of the plane in Denver... road to the rental car place at 12:15 AM.
Walked into the door...
"FUCK!!"
No...seriously... Fuck...
My wallet was gone, as was my ID and everything. I had the rental bus take me back to the airline which of course, was closed. I walked in and found a lady who was locking up and explained my dilemma. She hesitated at first but I sold it and she made a call. See... I couldn't run back to the gate because I had no ID. So I was stuck waiting. A guy called back finding it. And brought it back to me.
Amazing... with all the troubles these airlines are having, at least Frontier still has a culture of customer service.
Well... Not "the" last night but the last night I could conceivably have out on the town here in Sactown. (Sacramento, Stephanie)
On 10/31 I officially move out of the house. It is kind of scary but it is a new beginning. Just picking up from a town that I have lived a significant portion of my life in. The last 9.5 years anyway. No more doing what I did... running down the street to a Midtown bar, close enough to walk if your tipsy, close enough to drive if you want to chance it and never more than 6 bucks in a cab away.
I out grew the life I had when I first got married down here. I had my infamous rock band thing. I was in a band for the first 2 years I lived down here. We were called Perception. I was the lead guitar and vocalist of the group. I had a killer drummer and a bass player who only wanted to riff off of one chord. We were a jam band. We sounded like a cross between The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Primus and the Red Hot Chili Peppers... At least that was what each member contributed. I rocked a few bars the two years we were together. We could really jam. The vocals were a challenge over the bass player. I felt like I screamed most of the time anyway. We did some cool covers of Come Together and Hey Joe plus some cool original tunes. Sometimes we sounded tight and others we sounded God Awful.
I came back tonight with Elijah. I had gone to set up the electricity and gas at the new place and try to pick whether I want to stick with DirecTV or switch the Comcast. I want to pick what the right thing is for the price. I really like direct TV. I came back thought with a text page. A page from a buddy who lives near where I am moving saying, "Dude... Sake Bomb's at the Stone Grill". I was like an hour late to the text page but I was like, "Ya... still there???" He was and I ran over and had a beer and some Crown on the rocks. It was just fun.. acting like a 30 something, yelling in a bar for an hour or so. Kind of gets it out of your system.
I am moving back "home". It is not..."home". I don't have a "home". My parents live a couple of miles away. I found a cool house with decent rent and really cool appliances, granite counter tops, gas fire place... the works... on about an acre of land. It is a bit big but it felt like a "home" when I walked it. When I stared off the deck to the ravine separating the houses across the way, I remembered when I was 15 climbing over that hill where the house is perched now, when there was nothing, I mean... Nothing there at all. In that ravine there was the remains of a cow. All was left were bones. Just a skeleton of a cow that hide died down in the ravine. I remember the image of how white the bones where. How the cow was picked clean of it's flesh and skin. No organs... nothing. Probably not dead too long either because there were hardly any flies... I remember rolling up on my bike about 15 feet away. No smell... just almost a cartoonish white of the bones like the cow was brushed clean with Rembrandts or something. And that is what I am calling home this time. A place where I was "picked clean" once before...
I never really have been lost as a person. When I moved to that area, 21 years ago, I moved thinking there was a new world. I had come from an area that was over populated. San Francisco-suburb. Full of diversity and people. People everywhere. Houses built 10 feet apart. You could put your ear against my bedroom wall and hear my Nicaraguan neighbors fighting out loud at night. It used to scare me when I was 5 or 6 when I new what was going on. But I moved out of there when I was 14. I never got to come of age in my birth home. Just lived until the most awkward time of my life... 14. Right in the middle of 8th grade.
I went from a city of 100,000 to a city of barely 200. No cement for my Santa Cruz Skateboard, stage V independent trucks or Slimeball wheels. No hills. No curbs... dirt, rocks and more dirt and rocks. Hot, Hot, Hot summers and moderately chilly mornings. Rattlesnakes... I went from being a punk hanging out at the 7/11 who ollied his skateboard over bikes for quarters to shooting a bow and arrow and wrapping my life around my music because I was so fucking bored in Calaveras County.
I went to school where I was hated within 45 minutes of being in the new school. I stumbled over someone's foot walking across the gym in 2nd period PE because I had tweaked and had my knee drained a week earlier from a skateboarding accident. Having enemies off the bat, and then when they heard I was from San Francisco... wow... that did me in at 14. It seemed every week I was in a fight. Everyday I was punching and fighting back. This happened all the way through until late in my junior year when they just gave up picking on me... and just ignored me. I had my plan though. I had developed a talent. I plotted my way through school, checking off required classes with A's and B's so I could get into that 4 year school on my smarts and talent alone. So when I did walk out of high school, I could do so with my nose in the air and my fist raised high, and a big "fuck you" smirk on my face when I signed my name to a $10K annual music scholarship to UOP.
I was humbled a bit. Someone stopped me long enough to tell me to see the forest for the trees. To go at this world kindly and forget what the past told me to think. For some reason... it may have taken me 14-15 years to get it right. Perhaps it is right now... Who knows? But then I think of Dave Matthews when he sang...
Eat drink and be merry... for tomorrow we're dying
So... what's next? No idea. I moved to where I felt I would be most comfortable and not where I felt I would like it the most. I will be 45 minutes from Elijah and know that everyday I put my head on the pillow, unless of course... he is with me. He is always with me. I cherish the times I am with him each time we are together. I like showing him the areas I would throw rocks around my parents house or where I would explore or where I would climb next. I think about him every moment these days, even while I work. I don't do my job for myself. I do it for him and him first. People can say what they want about Elijah and my relationship with him. But really, they just don't know like I do. They don't see me with him. They don't see him running with me. They don't see me wrestling with him. Or consoling him when he is hurt... getting him a cookie when he is being good and watching Elmo curled up next to the TV with him. Somedays, people might think he is what broke me and his mother up. I like to think now that he is what makes me who I am everyday. Who I aspire to be and who I want to be there for his every need.
It's a new chapter... A new story and a new adventure and a chance to dream again...
One is for envy and one just for spite The cuts in my heart, they show me your eyes Don't make it better by twisting knife, Turns all by itself, on to someone else
Your self-liberation, we'll leave this behind, Beyond slings and arrows that rain on our minds You'll make it better shaking it off It never mattered anyway...
If we don't make it alive, it's a hell of a good day to die All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long And it's ashes to ashes again, should we even try to pretend? All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long
The banner you're waving is burning and red It's blocking the sun light that shines overhead You against the world, diamonds and pearls, Voices inside you churn, watch the city burn
Your own liberation will leave them behind All the slings and arrows that rain on your mind, Don't make it better break it 'cause It never mattered anyway...
If we don't make it alive, it's a hell of a good day to die All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long And it's ashes to ashes again, should we even try to pretend? All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long
I won't calm down...
The banner you're waving is burning and red, You against the world, diamonds and pearls... It never mattered, mattered, Mattered anyway!
If we don't make it alive, well it's a hell of a good day to die All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long And it's ashes to ashes again, should we even try to pretend? All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long,
All our light that shines strong only lasts for so long!
Uggh... So I got Elijah tonight. And he needed new shoes. An Apple Computer needed a new charger and gosh darn it, Elijah needed some trains for his Thomas the Train set.
So I walked with the boy through the mall with the first stop being Apple. And you wouldn't know we were in a pre-Obama "Oh God!! He's gonna be President" recession which is the real reason why people are losing jobs and tightening their belts...
Digressing...
Anyhow... there is only one Apple Store in this town. And you have to go there when shit breaks on your Apple Computer. So Elijah and I are standing there waiting to be helped on. And that is the biggest problem at the Apple Store. There is no freaking rules. No order... it's a bunch of people playing with computers and iPods and a bunch of "techs" or customer service people standing around with their thumbs up their ass. There is no register... no line... no place to really get help unless you annoy the shit out of someone having a conversation.
So I finally got the "how can I help you?" from a dude that was the spitting image of a homeless Jesus.
"Um yeah... I need a power chord for a Mac Book... a 13 inch G4... an old one with the different thing on the end now than you have on these power chords?"
"Oh..." the guy says, "65 Watts?"
"Yeah".
So the guy goes in back where they keep everything and brings back which I later found out at home was the wrong one (but that is another story and not really my problem now is it? j/k)
So the guy gets this little wireless scanner out after complaining there is no one ringing people up. Like you could fucking tell, without a register or anything that resembles a line and y'all wear the same freaking shirts.
So... the guy swipes my bank card.
Declined...
"What?" "Run it again?"
"I can't", he says..."Store policy..."
I say... "The thing is broken... It's broken, has to be."
"do you have another card..."
Fine.... I reach into my George Castanza wallet and get another card.
Declined...
WTF? I paid the bill this is bullshit.
I tell the guy his reader is broken and he denies it. And then he argues...
Whatever...
At this time, I put Elijah down and hope he starts climbing on the iMacs and shit. I just sit there staring at my wallet, daring to hand him the Best Buy rewards card to see if that works. C'mon Elijah... break something, I thought.
So he decides to try the "wired" register and we head over and guess what, low and behold... it fucking works the first time. Amazing.
Steve Jobs, you suck... Fix your shit before you unleash it on the public would you please???
We left the store and got Elijah some cool shoes at Stride Rite and I got him some trains. Kay Bee Toys has Thomas the Train at 50% off right now... Awesome!!!
Seems an old lady finally got busted for keeping a kid's ball. When I grew up near Frisco (as in San Francisco, Stephanie) we would sometimes intentionally hit or throw a ball into an old lady's yard only to stir up the hornets' nest that lived in the house.
I lived in a court and we had a few choices. There was the Japanese lady's house on one side of the street, the crazy one with the handicapped parking place in front of her house so no one would park there and then the one in the middle of the block who was real nice until I gave her the finger out of fun.
How many balls we lost or how many times we got yelled at in the street playing baseball or football, trashing bushes, grass... flowerbeds... breaking slats off of fences recovering our balls. And we'd have them taken, like that was gonna stop us. I think one time we actually mimed baseball without a ball we could get yelled at.
If I were this kid, I would not have had the old lady arrested. I would have done the flaming dog poop bag or the rotten fruit in the mail box trick.
Fred Goldman is probably saying, "About time that son of a bitch got what he deserved!!"
So it sounds like OJ is going away and possibly for a long time for scaring some baseball card collectors (scary as they are) with guns, violence, intimidation and kidnap.
Is that all it took?
I mean... killing (allegedly) your ex wife and boyfriend innocent by-stander friend wasn't enough.
OJ Simpson is the single reason I do not believe in the death penalty. It's that the law can be fought with talent and money and be skewed into something like we all saw 13 years ago. If you have money you can possibly buy everything. I don't blame him for using his money to get out of it... We all would do the same thing if we had done something that heinous. But I also think of racial injustice, poverty and mental issues as more of a reason we convict people versus their actual guilt. I would hate to know a truly innocent person, wrongly framed and convicted and condemned while the truly guilty one kept on going.
Maybe the truth will finally set OJ free, if he is gone in jail for life. Maybe he'll come forward and tell us all what he actually did and just be done with it. He got 13 more years of freedom... that's what all those millions got him.
I have had to travel all week and I have been so sick. Came on Tuesday. Tuesday night was hell as my nose ran all night long. Never fell asleep until 4 AM and I had to get up at 6 AM. Ran a fever all day yesterday.
