shittycakes

$583 a week, respect from grown men that took months to earn, a great church with many rock-solid mentors, complete freedom

or

her, him, him, him, them, everyone, it, that, all that, everything.

fml.

I should go home

four years ago I broke my leg playing soccer.  some ethnic kid on the other team got confused and thought my leg was the ball, so he kicked it as hard as he could as we were sprinting at each other.  there was a loud pop and I ended up on the ground blah blah.

some days - normally when it's cold - my leg aches terribly.  the pain goes from the middle of my shin (I don't know if it's my right or left shin because I can't remember which direction is which) all the way up to one of my knees.  in the knee it's the worst.  throughout the day the pain will ebb and flow, sometimes a dull ache and others almost too painful to remain standing.  about fifteen minutes ago it was horrible.  I thought about picking someone out of my contacts to text and complain to.  I already told Gina earlier this morning... who else will give me their pity?

I imagined texting "I'm fucking in pain."

if I texted myself that, and the receiving self didn't know what was going on with the sending self, the former would have replied "having painful sex or you're in a lot of pain?"

then we would both think I was clever.

april 24th

I've had nothing to say this whole month.  there are a few possibilities as to why this is.

1. I have nothing to say.

it's pretty straightforward.  but this fact may in turn have some sub-causes:

a) after being in Seattle for almost four months, I've learned everything there is to learn about myself from being friendless in a new city, and hence I've said all there is to say.  I've got to the bottom of myself, I guess.  of course if I got to know people and started cultivating friendships, there is no limit as to how much I can develop and discover new things about me through others.

b) I've already thought every relevant thought I'll ever think.  I've been afraid of this since I was seventeen; with each passing day it becomes more plausible.  now I'm recycling old ideas, so of course I have nothing to blog about cuz it's already been blogged.

c) over the past few weeks I've been having multiple mini-strokes all over my brain, slowly losing function in chunks of my cerebrum, ever diminishing my mental capacity.  soon I'll be left with only a few thought processes mostly limited to evolutionarily archaic impulses, including, "I'm hungry," "I'm thirsty," "I'm tired," and "I'm horny."  based upon the past week, the multiple mini-stroke theory seems extremely likely.

d) cerebral osteoporosis.  now you might say, "But Brian!  that doesn't make sense!  the brain isn't a bone.  it can't get osteoporosis."  well you just need to quiet down.  you know how old ladies get osteoporosis and their bones decay faster than they're rebuilt?  then they get frail and hunch-backed and walk slowly with canes??  ya know???  ok well that's my brain.  no mental stimulation and I'm getting mentally hunch-backed.

as for the sub-sub-cause which is responsible for mental osteoporosis, I'm not certain.  maybe I'm not drinking enough milk and getting enough vitamin D (which aids in calcium absorption and is generated in the skin after ultraviolet exposure.  this further supports the fact that I should be in San Diego lying on the beach).

2. I'm busy... too busy to blog.  last night (technically this morning for you terrible people who change your concept of "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow" exactly as the clock strikes midnight) I clocked out at 12:18 AM, this morning clocked in at 7 AM, got home, showered, passed out for a couple hours, started cooking dinner... when is there time to blog, I ask you?  (one correct answer would be after dinner is done, while I'm waiting for it to cool down.)

3. just cuz.

I'm not sure what the actual cause of my blogging lapse may be, but you're welcome to speculate.  ok so I just tried to eat my Safeway brand fake mashed potatoes, like the ones you mix the packet into boiling milk and butter and water... and they were watery as shit (diarrhea I guess).  fuck you safeway.  if your magic mashed potato powder doesn't congeal properly then don't fuckin sell it in a box that says magic mashed potato powder shit or whatever it said.*  sell it in a box labeled "powdered white goop."

*I just checked.  actually it says "roasted garlic mashed potatoes."

I'm just looking for attention really

I have heart palpitations sometimes.  it's happened occasionally for the past several years or so.  I noticed it would happen more frequently when I was going to bed after a night of too much booze and too many cigarettes, or it would happen the next morning when I woke up hungover with my lungs tasting like tobacco each time I exhaled.   when it happens it makes me tense up and cough, sort of, just once.  and when it happens once it normally happens a couple more times in the next twenty minutes.  but normally after a few of those it's done and it doesn't happen again for quite some time.

a few weeks ago it started happening a little more than "normal," I guess I'll say.  so I gave up smoking.  (finally my new years' resolution came true!!!  I'll admit it was easier to stay resolute when I thought the next cig might make my heart pop.)  but my ticker is still acting up, and I'm a little worried.  maybe more than a little, to be honest.

on Saturday I think it was, I told Gina I was having a bad heart day.  I had some palpitations, some worse than normal and they went on for over twenty minutes, more like thirty or forty.  and my heart felt like it was beating hard, like every pump was more forceful than usual.  I was worried, so I decided to call the carpenters union trust fund (they pay for the health benefits that are supposed to kick in for me on May 1st) when they were open on monday.  I asked if I could see a doctor this month and they could pay the bill once I'm covered.  the man on the phone, quite the blathering idiot, eventually rudely explained, "Sir?  Sir.  Sir if you see a doctor before May 1st you will not be covered." 

"Thanks."  click.  well, more of a flop / clap sound of me closing my cell phone, but you get what I'm saying here.  anywayyysss...  that was yesterday.  today I was sitting in the apprenticeship training class getting certified for CPR and first aid allll damnnn dayyyy.  my heart was doing the beating-harder-than-normal thing the entire time. at one point they were showing and explaining how to use the automated external defibrillator and I was wondering if I should volunteer to have them put the thing on me so the class could see the thing in action.  

so when I got home I decided to look up short-term health insurance.  I even talked to Scot's dad, an insurance broker, to get some advice.  he said to look up blue cross or blue shield.  I ended up finding some decent policies on some online site that compares rates.  but I read the fine print and what do ya know?!  coverage won't start until May 1st anyway!  sick.

I'm in my room on my bed worrying about my corazon, feeling lightheaded and slightly dizzy.  I don't know what that's all about.  I'm just hoping I'll be fine and dandy until the first AND that my paperwork goes through on time so that I can see a doctor or a cardiologist that friday afternoon.

if I had to guess, I'd say the doctors will come up with mitral regurgitation.  a backflow of blood into my left atrium could account for the weird sudden pressure change in my chest that makes me tense up and for the feeling of a sudden change in pressure in what I assume has to be my aorta and the arteries branching off.  also the handful of times I've woken up at night gasping for breath might also be explained by a bad mitral valve in my heart.  it's something called paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnoea (I'll admit I had to look up the spelling on that one), where someone will wake up gasping for air.  the cause is a buildup of fluid (blood) in the lungs - actually not IN the lungs, but in all the blood vessels in the lungs - because of insufficient blood flow away from the lungs, back to the heart, and through its left chambers.

I'm somewhat of a hypochondriac, and I know it.  I learned a lot of this stuff from wikipedia, so what do I know?  I'm not a doctor yet.

fine, I'll post something

I was downtown today.  it's the best weather I've seen since I've been here.  (my weather widget says it's 68 degrees, and fifty has become warm to me.)  for the first time, I had to take my jacket off up here because I was too warm, and I walked around in a T-shirt.  it felt great.  the sky is uncharacteristically clear; I can see across the Puget Sound to the Olympic Mountains to the west and all the way to Mt. Rainier to the east.  I decided to take a bus up Pike St to wherever it would take me.  The number 10 brought me up Pike to Capitol Hill then north on 15th, I believe it was.  after a couple blocks everything became residential with the exception of a drug store, so I got off and went for a walk.

a quiet street invited me down, so I obliged.  every house was raised off the ground by a high foundation and had a porch, and every house had a different front fence.  some were high and obscured my view of the houses, but most were short and in some way see-through.  some chain-link, some picket, some hedge.  the sidewalk was old concrete, darkened by moisture and moss and years.  between the sidewalk and the street was a strip of soil and lawn and cherry trees beginning to blossom in wonderful pink and white.  this strip was broken regularly by more old concrete bridging the street to the driveways.

I felt that if I lived there I would never be in a hurry again.  that street kept things in perspective.  at that moment there was no need to walk any faster than necessary.  the only valid reason to walk was to keep from standing still, but if that's what I had wanted it would have been fine too.

I crossed a small intersection.  a guy about twenty with his lip pierced and hair dyed black, but not a douchebag, was sitting and smoking on a ledge in front of the house on the corner, his one leg resting on the other knee.  he was talking quietly with a girl sitting cross-legged at the very corner of the sidewalk.  I looked at her, then him, and I asked, "How's it going?"  he asked the same.  I kept walking.

next house down there was a generic-looking guy sitting on his porch playing an acoustic guitar.  he was in his thirties, and he wore some cheap, nondescript sunglasses.  he was playing something cool that made me wish I could do the same.  a few more houses down there was another guy doing the same in his front, behind a taller fence so I couldn't see.  

even when I got back towards Pike and started passing more businesses, just seeing the type of people on the street made me realize that I should live on Capitol Hill.  it's the more artsy part of Seattle.  like Hillcrest is to San Diego.  and yes, it is also the gay part of town, but I've heard that it's much less gay now than it used to be.  now only about half the bars here are gay bars.

I'm in Tully's (coffee shop) using the free Wi-Fi.  I have this tendency to get sick of things or situations for no real reason, which is what's currently happening.  I want to close up my MacBook and take the number 10 back to downtown and then the 125 back home to West Seattle and sit in my room.  and I'm sick of this post and don't want to click "publish" because I just keep talking without saying anything.