Display by Label: Ho_Hum

As it turns out, I have a fear of drawers. God. It's so humiliating. I never thought it would come to this. I really didn't. But I should explain, so you don't get the wrong idea. Let's see...how to...Ah! Okay: When Honey is standing next to an open door and her tail brushes against it and it moves ever so slightly, she jumps about three feet out of her skin and assumes a stance like she's bracing for impact of a nuclear explosion. Ears back, tail between her legs. She doesn't pee, but it's not from lack of want. To her, it must seem that the door has suddenly taken life and begun to move on it's own accord, confirming her deep suspicion that inanimate objects, like her rope-toy for instance, are actually malevolent, supernatural life forms, just waiting to pray upon her, which is why she must take them down. Closet door movement, or kitchen stove door movement, or sliding freezer drawer movement, these all scare the bejeezus out of her. And she's chock full of bejeezus, man.

So I want to make clear, first of all, that my fear of drawers is NOT this kind of fear. They don't cause me to jump in fright. And I lose very little in the way of bejeezus when I see them. However, like Honey's fear, the root cause of my drawer phobia may indeed have something to do with a general uneasiness when it comes to magic and all things supernatural. Because the thing I can't get over is this: once I put something in a drawer or a file cabinet, that item essentially disappears. Not just from sight. But from existence.

I learned from an article I read in the NY Times recently that I'm the type of person who likes to have every document and paper within easy reach, and I don't like using file folders because "out of sight" is indeed "out of mind." It's why everything I'm working on tends to be out in plain view, either on my desk or on the floor around me. This way I can always see it.

On some level, I guess I've always known this about myself—that I need to be able to see things in order to remember they are there. I suppose it's why I've always resisted filing things in any sort of traditional way. The problem has to do with finding the document, or paper, or whatever it is, ever again. I should say, though, that some things are fine to file. Bills, for instance. I don't want to be reminded that bills exist. So putting old bills in a file cabinet is a perfect solution for them. Moreover, figuring out what to call the folder is pretty easy: "Credit Cards, 2008," or "Utilities, 2007" or "Mayonnaise Expenditures, 2004-2006," (those were wild years.)

Once you've labeled the folders, then you just stick those suckers in the file cabinet in some random way and even though you have no idea exactly where in the drawer the folder is, you're fairly sure it's in there and all you've got to do is be able to read the tabs you've marked in order to find it again...IF you ever need to find it again, which hopefully you won't.

But what about the stuff that doesn't lend itself to easy categorization? Where should I put the great New York Traffic Ticket of 2009, for instance? In a folder called "Traffic Tickets," perhaps? But does it really need to have it's own folder? Maybe I should stick it in the car maintenance folder. The car loan folder? The insurance folder, since this is where it will have the biggest impact? I'm usually overwhelmed by the choices at this point and I just opt for someplace on my desk.

You see? It's the fear, baby. The fear of drawers. The fear of putting things away and never finding them again.

Several years ago, I started using a "box" system. It's similar to the system the professional organizer advocates in the article I link to above. Which makes me feel very smart for having come up with it on my own, and like maybe I could make a career out of this. Or maybe not. In any case, my box system has allowed me to have catch-all bins where I can toss things without committing myself too deeply to a specific category. I labeled the four original bins "Do," "Done," "Keep," and "Biz." And recently I added two others: "Receipts" and "Medical." In general, anything that isn't easily fileable will fall into one of these conceptual categories. And even if my brain switches on itself and decides that a different category makes better sense for a particular item after I've already put it in one of the other boxes, there's still only six boxes to choose from and I at least know it's in one of them.

You might say—and you might be right—that this really amounts to the same thing as tucking it inside a file folder and sticking it in a drawer. But I think the difference is that the boxes are right there in front of me at all times. I can SEE them. And the labels are there staring back at me. There's comfort in that. And I can easily take a box down and rifle through it during moments of sheer panic, which is nice. And then when I'm done, I can just throw everything back in it and pretend the whole episode never happened.

Believe me, it's so much simpler this way.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  Lifehack  Ho_Hum  Finances 

Hi. I am a brand.

On occasion, I write funny things.

Other times, I write things so I don't cry.

I will occasionally be honest.

I will occasionally lie.

And yet, I will never be insincere or falsely sentimental. (Though you may disagree.)

I will never write poetry, because I think poetry is a sham.

Mainly, though...I am just a brand.

Hello.

link to this | comments (12) | File:  Ho_Hum  Chewing  Blog 

It's not news to some of you that I have a little bit of a guilt complex. Okay, maybe it's not so little. Maybe it's more like a "compound." But I swear, it began as this cute little bungalow, which I built just for me and a few low-maintenance house plants. But I've since added a couple of rooms, a pool (jacuzzi) and a walk-in beer cooler. It's actually quite spacious now. I even have room for several guests, in case you're interested. I wish I could explain why I ever built it in the first place. I mean, I'm not Catholic. Or Jewish. So I can't blame religion, or overbearing mothers. I'm sure I could probably come up with some kind of answer after a few dozen hours of therapy. But who has time for that mess? There's no denying that it exists, though. You only have to look as far as last week's post to see it. Sometimes it ain't so purty, is it?

One of the side-effects of a guilt like mine is I'm terrible around cops. Actually, that's not true. I'm not that bad, really. At least I don't think I am. I can fake an expression of innocence, when needed. But what's funny about that—if funny is the word to describe it—is that (most of the time) I'm guilty of absolutely nothing. Nothing that I'm aware of, at least. But the weird thing about cops is, they always seem to know something about me I don't. And damnit-all if I don't believe them every time.

If I'm confronted by a cop (or even a mall security guard) my first instinct isn't to smile and say "hello." Instead, it's to avert my eyes and say, "Nothing, I know nothing." But I've found that unwarranted declarations of innocence tend to raise more suspicion than they quell. So instead, what I try to do is just breath deep, think innocent thoughts, and speak as little as possible.

This is harder than you think. Because as soon as you try to think innocent thoughts, the first thing that pops into your head is something like late-night bong hits in college. Or cowgirl porn. (Always with the cowgirl porn.) I have some mental tricks to get me past those thoughts and bring me right to the church pew on Sunday morning. That way, on the outside, I'm cool as a cucumber. I'm just itemizing in my mind all the ways I am completely, gloriously...innocent. Meanwhile, on the inside, I'm only one stray pornographic cucumber image away from completely crumbling.

It makes the heart race. It really does. You should try it.

Yesterday morning, Honey and I were the only ones at the dog park. Actually, more than that, we were the only ones in that entire section of the Reservation, of which the dog park is only a small portion. No parked cars. No people. And, for some inexplicable reason, I was already feeling guilty about this. (I don't know...I've mostly stopped asking myself "why" to these things. I just roll with it.)

The reason for the park's emptiness actually had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the fact that it was raining. And it wasn't just a drizzle, either. It was a full-on, unapologetic downpour.

I guess most people change up their routines for things like "inclement weather." I'm not one of those people, though. I am a slave to my routine. Lucky for my dog, it's a trait she and I have in common. But what I've learned over time is, it's something that might annoy you if you were married to me, especially if you were the type of person with a general disdain for routines and who, outside of your obligations to work, etc, basically went about your day doing whatever happened to strike your fancy, and eating whatever you happened to feel like at the moment you felt like it instead of, say, planning it ahead of time. You might also be the type of person who just put your shoes on, sometimes the left foot first and sometimes the right foot first, all chaotic-like. If you were that type of person, and you were married to me, you might be a little annoyed by my penchant for...routine. But I'm just speaking hypothetically. Because there's really no way I could know something like that.

Now that I think of it, the main reason I was already feeling guilty was that, on the way to the dog park, a cop in an SUV had put on his blue and reds behind me. I slowed down, preparing to confess everything—it was just a few times, maybe a dozen, okay? and I swear, it wasn't my bong, and I never sold any. And look, about the cowgirl porn, I like girls in shit-kickers and straw hats. There's nothing illegal about that, is there?—but he just passed by me on the left. A narrow escape.

I had pretty much resumed my normal breathing rate by the time Honey had done her business at the park. She and I were playing catch in one of the fenced-in areas. Then I saw what seemed to be the same SUV that had passed me earlier driving by in the parking lot, and he slowed down as he passed my truck. Holy crap! He's running my plates!

The SUV drove off. But then another one drove by. And another. All with the blue and reds. The bastards were calling in reinforcements. They had me surrounded, by God!

The key here, was to remain calm. And rational. Like MacGyver. As you can surely tell, I'm good at this. I put Honey on her leash and we left the fenced area and went out to where my truck was parked. I could see two cop cars pulled up alongside each other further on down the road. Probably talking about me. For some reason, it seemed like getting in my truck and leaving right then might arouse more suspicion. So instead, after lurking around my truck for several seconds, and opening the door and pretending to take something out of my center console. I took Honey by the leash and lead her down the road. In the rain. Directly toward the cop cars. Right hand in my pocket. Hood up over my head. Proud of myself, because this was definitely less suspicious.

I had only walked a couple of steps before the cops dispersed and drove off in opposite directions. Then, there was nothing for a few minutes. Eerie silence. Just me, Honey, and the rain. We walked for several minutes like this, man and dog through puddles and drips. Then all at once, several SUVs roared past. Some had "K9 Unit" displayed on the outside. One clearly said "Bomb Disposal Unit." As each car drove by me, I would look directly at the person driving from under the hood of my coat, all nonchalant, you know. Like "What's up, brother?"

I had my canned response ready, too, just in case they stopped to ask me what I was doing here. I'd say: "Look I'm just a normal guy with a dog walking in the rain at the dog park." I realize now that this is probably the most suspicious thing I could possibly have said. I think if I had actually uttered these words, I would probably be scribbling this onto a roll of toilet paper at the Essex County Jail instead of onto my keyboard. But they seemed like good words at the time. They always do.

Luckily, speaking turned out to be unnecessary, and as I walked back down the road toward my truck, I saw that I was no longer alone—two other dog-park regulars had arrived and were walking toward me. Thank God! Witnesses! I couldn't remember their names. I only knew the two women by their two dogs' names: Milo and ... okay, strike that, I only knew them by one of their two dogs' names.

I waved to the owners of Milo and the other dog and they waved back and as we got within speaking distance one of them said, "What's going on up here?!"

"I don't know!" I said. "But it's really freaking me out. I'm getting a little paranoid." I decided not to mention the bong hits. Or the cowgirl porn.

"I'm sure they're obligated to tell us if there is some kind of danger, doncha think?" said one of Milo's owners.

And that's when it hit me: these two weren't concerned about the cops coming after them. They were concerned for their own safety. Because there might actually be some other dangerous person out here who these cops really were after, somebody who might be truly guilty of something other than smoking a few bowls in college and watching the occasional cowgirl porn flick. This must be what normal people feel like. I tried to think what a normal person might say and came up with: "Well...yeah! You'd think so, right?"

We shook our heads and talked some more about what it could be. We even tried to stop one of the cops and ask him, but he just drove on past. These guys weren't interested in talking. Eventually, Milo's owners went off in the direction I had come from and I walked with Honey back to my truck.

I never did find out what was going on so I can't report to ya'll with any certainty on what it was all about. I do know this, however: Nobody followed me out of the park or to my house. I'm quite sure of this because I checked my rear-view mirror repeatedly, and took a route that was out of my way and in the opposite direction from my house so I could double back on myself and check.

Rational, people. Like MacGyver.

link to this | comments (8) | File:  NJ  Ho_Hum  Honey 

"How come when you crack eggs, there's this nice little crack on the side of the shell and you can just separate that sucker all clean-like without getting bits of shell all in the scramble? But when I do it, the side of the egg just crumbles and smashes and falls apart in the pan?"

"Because you're an idiot."

One of C's marketable business skills is boiling complicated things down to their simple essence.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Cath  Ho_Hum 

"David and I could wait for you in LA for a few days of quality time together before we all head off."

"Just to be clear, when C says 'quality time,' she means she will watch anime while I go to the beach to catch up on the latest bikini fashions."

"He sooo gets me."

link to this | comments (1) | File:  Ho_Hum  Cath 

In all the places C and I have lived before New Jersey, I've always been aware that our neighbors could potentially hear us. And I'm not just referring to during the, you know ... play times. I'm talking about during casual conversations. Fully clothed. Just talking about things like tea. Or grits. Or the Tao of JD in Scrubs.

In our DC apartment, the walls were actually quite good and thick. But I always knew that if I would call out to C from the bathroom asking "Honey, could you bring me a roll of toilet paper?" and she would call back from the living room saying "We're out!" and I would call back to her saying "Okay, well, could you bring me the Andy Warhol t-shirt, then?"—well, I could be fairly certain that all our neighbors had been privy to that exchange, and not just the neighbors who lived on our floor but those above and below us, as well. And if there were people in the hallway, we wouldn't even need to have been speaking loudly for them to catch it. People could pick up everything out there, because every little sound travelled through our door and echoed up and down the hallway, getting amplified as it went. This is why I would pray for empty hallways after any night of hard drinking or extra spicy Thai food.

After we moved out of that apartment and began our brief stint in Baltimore, I became acutely aware of just how thin our 1910-era brownstone walls were when I started hearing strange grunts and growls bellowing forth through my neighbor's wall each night. And he would shuffle up and down his upstairs hallway like he was dragging a dead carcass around with him. I'm still 99% sure he was not a werewolf. Though he did kill a cat once, so ... who knows.

Who, indeed? But when I say I was constantly aware that our neighbors could hear us in these places we used to live, your take-away might be that I was paranoid or that it bothered me in some way. But this wasn't the case at all. In fact, it made me feel closer to my neighbors, and I liked that. I appreciated the fact that they knew intimate things about me, some of which my best friends didn't even know. And when I'd run into them in the lobby and we'd shoot the shit about the weather or the sink hole in the front yard, I knew there was this unspoken dialogue going on between us and that their end of it went something like this: I am aware that sometimes you play "Whiskey River" on repeat one while soaking yourself in a tub full of mayonnaise. And while I don't understand it, I am okay with it. You are my neighbor and I accept you unconditionally. As long as you're not hurting anybody, we're good. You can't imagine how freeing it is for people who are otherwise strangers to you to know all your dirty little secrets and yet accept you so completely. The bond you feel with these people, it's unparalleled. And it's something I just don't feel with my current neighbors and our twenty-five feet of space between our houses.

But I should reiterate that even though all this intimacy didn't necessarily bother me, it was something I was always keenly aware of, and I operated under that awareness at all times. And so I would calculate what I should let them know about me and what I shouldn't. Like: is it wise for people to know I like a little Eminem now and again? Maybe not. Maybe it's better, therefore, not to belt out the lyrics to a song like "Criminal" while cleaning the apartment:


The assonance and consonance on his verses, man. Goose bumps. And it's also some fun shit to recite while vacuuming. Try it. You'll see. It's hard to resist. But as tempting as it always was to spout those lines out loudly in our apartment, I never did. And while I might dance and gesticulate with the recklessness and the fury—and I might even do it naked in nothing but a sock, all Flea-like—I would always make sure to keep vocal dynamics to nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

I think this has made me somewhat frustrated over the years—not being able to fully let go and just yell and scream every once in a while. When we lived in Dallas, I could at least get my loud voice out on my drives to and from work. Big D's roads and highways are just loaded with people yelling at the top of their lungs from the perceived sound-proof confines of their SUVs and sports cars. But when we moved to DC, I stopped driving and started walking most places. I became one of the many robots with white headphones in my ears, silent on the outside, but a whole world of noise going on inside. And even though in a city like DC, I needn't have been shy about singing out loud while I walked down K Street or 7th, the drugs I took weren't hard enough to make me feel comfortable with that sort of thing. So my big rock-star voice got relegated to the four walls of my brain studio.

But here's the crux of this thing: since moving to the Jersey burbs and having—for the first time—a detached house AND—for the second time—a truck, all this quiet voice crap has gone out the proverbial window. During the many hours I've spent painting our walls, I've assisted dozens of artists, from Jeff Tweedy to Tom Waits to Dave Matthews. And yes, Eminem. And my truck might as well have a "Recording" light on it. God, I've laid down some tracks in there, brother.

But the other day, something made me take pause. I was outside waiting on Honey to finish up a poop and I heard quite clearly the sound of a baby crying from our neighbor's house. Now, if I had been right up on my neighbor's property line that would have been one thing. But I was about as far away from his house as I could get.

Wow, I thought. That baby's pretty loud. I wonder ...

Then, the other day I was walking down the street with Honey and I could hear a voice from inside a house calling out to somebody else to pick up the goddamned phone.

Hmmm...

That's when it dawned on me: a detached house does not a sound-proof oasis make. If somebody's walking by our house, they can probably hear me. Perhaps I need to rethink things.

Perhaps, indeed. I guess what really bothers me isn't the singing. What I'm really beginning to question is the wisdom of naming our dog Honey. Because C and I have taught her certain things—certain commands. And sometimes I will toss one of those suckers at her just all spontaneous-like. And sometimes the voice I'll use to do it will be quite loud. And maybe—to the outside listener—it would sound a little odd, these commands I'm making. Maybe odd isn't the right word. Maybe kinky is a better word. Like when I say "Honey! Go to your bed! Now! Oh, that's a good girl. She's my good girl. My Honey-Bunny." Or when I'm teaching her the concepts of "take" and "give" and I say something like, "Honey, take the bone! Yes! Good girl. Now give it to Daddy! Come on, Honey. That's it! Give it to Daddy! There you go! Yes!"

Yeah, I'm thinking "Honey" might have been an unfortunate name for our dog.

And maybe this is why I keep getting winks and knowing glances from that lady who does her morning walks down our street.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Ho_Hum  House  Honey 

I've got a Tumblr blog and a few new content feeds, which I wanted to tell you about.

But first, if you've been reading this blog for a while, I have to take a moment to ask: Are you okay?

Would you like some aspirin? A drink?

A few Xanax?

Jesus.

Some of this shit has been pretty depressing lately. Maybe you should try reading something more uplifting, like the ASPCA Web site.

Or maybe not. Maybe you like it this way. In which case, I applaud you. For knowing what you like. Bravo. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Now, about the feeds: Many of you arrive here via RSS feed these days. So I finally came to the conclusion that instead of bringing any and all content streams here to this blog, it made much more sense to keep nicolasix separate, and direct its content—and all other content streams—into one separate RSS feed. So, for those who like the feed option, you can continue to only read the nicoalsix feed if you like, or you can also subscribe separately to other content (like my Twitter feed, for instance, or the new Tumblr feed — they're all listed up top when you click the RSS icon.) Or, and this is the main point of this post, if you're a glutton for punishment, you can simply subscribe to the master feed, where any content I ever create, now or in the future, even if I write it from some other planet, will be aggregated and served up via RSS. Even if nicolasix dies, whatever other content I may have will magically appear there. You won't ever have to subscribe to another feed from me. Ever! How great is that? Thank you, Yahoo Pipes, for making my Web 2.0 self-publishing pipe dreams a reality.

Okay, that's out of the way, now a note about the Tumblr blog, Looky, Looky!. Tumblr has let me get back to blog basics. I can just post random things here with no regard to theme or context. I find this lack of forethought freeing. According to some, it's what blogging is all about. I don't know if I believe that, but if it's true, I guess that makes my Tumblr blog a real blog's blog. I don't know what that means, but it sounds good, doesn't it? (See, it's working!)

Okay. That is all. Thanks for reading. I'm happy you're here. And if you still want that drink and Xanax, let me know.

link to this | comments (6) | File:  Web_2_0  Publishing  Ho_Hum  Blog 

One way to relax after a Sunday afternoon herding leaves is to have a couple of beers and sit on the couch with your hand under your belt and watch some football and feel good and fine and strong—and downright brawny, damnit, like the guy on the paper towel rolls—for having worked hard and for having cuts on your hands and dirt under your nails and an easy sort of pain in your muscles. Another way is to swallow two indomethacin and four tylenol and lay flat on your back feeling anything but easy, anything but strong, and cursing your tendency to overdo it and waiting for your kidneys to give out from all the pills. Yesterday, I chose the latter option. I still got in that football thing, though, watching the Giants come back against the Eagles as I faded in and out of consciousness. But it weren't fun. And I didn't feel strong ... or anything resembling "brawny."

The AS has been flaring for the last week, I think due to the weird weather, and I haven't been listening to him. Instead, I've been swallowing extra pills and deliberately taunting him with all sorts of names. And I could feel his temper getting hot, but I kept at it. And yesterday, just as I was wrapping up for the evening he hauled back and punished me something good for not taking him seriously, the bastard.

I had started out the afternoon with some roof climbing and gutter cleaning, then moved on to some pruning. Then I blew out the beds and raked the grass in the back yard, rounding the leaves into piles and then transferring them to front curb in batches using a big rubber trash can. And all the while I grunted and strutted and did a great deal of chest thumping and I think while I was on the roof I may have even let out a Tarzan-like howl. And all was good; or rather, okay. I was just teetering on the edge of something, but it was mild and I laughed at it and I said, Is that all you have for me, pussy!

And then I decided to play a game of tug-o-war with Honey. And holy crap she's gotten strong, and so as I bent over and pulled at the deflated soccer ball and started to lift her up off the ground, doing that dance that we do. And she did one of her crazy, possessed head-jerking-side-to-side things, which caused my body to twist in a direction it wasn't prepared to go, and I heard it quietly object with a little "whoopsie-daisy" (I hate when my body sounds like Hugh Grant in Knotting Hill) and then—then, I believed. And I stopped, because I knew I had about ten minutes to get someplace warm where I could collapse.

The rest of the night was all about holding on to countertops and railings to stay upright and cat stretches on my hands and knees in the hot, hot shower. And curses in my sleep every time I had to roll over. And this morning I walked Honey at the pace of an 85-year-old man and I squatted to pick things up by holding desperately on to my knees and I implored God, Please, please, God...let me get back up. Don't let my neighbors find me lying in the street. God understands that when he hears from me, most likely my back is shattered. And I think now he just laughs at me for being his rainy-day friend.

And I've been down this road before. And I've bored you with the details of the aftermath. And I kind of hate having you see me like this. So I'll stop now. Otherwise, I'll be tempted to go on with the whine. And besides, I think it's time for another hot shower.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Weekend  Oogah  Lawn  Ho_Hum  AS 

"They say it's going to be Cutler's year this year."

"Really? Why is this year his year?"

...

...

...

"I think it's something about 2008 being an even year ... and, you know, if you take the eight and subtract the two you get six. Which, of course, is his number."

I always forget that C usually needs to know why. And that's something I don't usually bother to explore.

Still, if you ask me questions, I'll give you answers.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  Broncos  Football  Ho_Hum 

And God said, "Yea, do not be proud or boastful about your good and plenty space. For verily I say unto thee, no matter how much of it you have, there will never be enough room in your bathroom to put all your bathroom shit. And so you will need to find other, less convenient places to put some things. And yea, there will be times when you will have to run through your house wet and naked in order to find them. But do not be angry or gnash your teeth. For this is the way of things. And it is good. Because I have made it so."

link to this | comments (5) | File:  Ho_Hum