"Sleepless In The Shed.........With Seattle's Weather Though......................."

Good Afternoon;

So tracking backwards...woke up to rain, went to sleep to rain, woke up to rain, and it looks like a trend for the next day or so also. Having been so dry and so hot the wood and assorted fibers making up the roof of the shed have contracted, thereby creating new temporary leak spots until the materials swell up and close off the access points. A couple of these are old friends and I can pinpoint and anticipate their locations, and deal with them in whatever manner is suitable. The others seem to wait until I fall asleep and intermittently and irregularly drip on any exposed skin, OR the water droplets hit the shelving somewhere above me causing them to splatter into many smaller droplets which spray on me at random, sort of like a 'daisy cutter' bomb, or a 'jumping jack' landmine anti-personnel devices....or a MIRV!........LOL!

Anyway, to recap the weekend. I spent Friday night on Monkee's couch and could not get to sleep, (even after I turned off the laptop and the cable TV), as it was so hot and stuffy in the house. I had the fan blowing on me but all it really did was dry out my eyes and my sinuses.

I fell asleep after dozing in and out for hours about 7:00 am. and got up at 10:00 am. She came downstairs shortly afterwards and we talked for a bit and I e-mailed Jenn askimng if I could come over and shower, and if she was doing any laundry. She said to come over after 11:30 am. and by the time Monkee and I said our goodbyes and did the ..."Oh yeah and one more thing....." bit.....a half dozen times....lol!, it was 12:30 pm. by the time I left. I got to Jenn's about 1:30 pm. and she asked me if I minded watching the kids for a bit while she ran to Target, met her friend Shannon for lunch and then went to the Giant. She told me I could do a whole load of my laundry on her card, (the complex'es washers and dryers use a reloadable debit card instead of coins), and eat lunch as a bribe...lol. She eventually got home around 8:00 pm., just a wee bit later than I expected..LOL!! I had played with, read to, fed, washed, and put the kids in pajamas and to bed by then, and had showered and did my laundry too. We talked for a while and I caught the 11:30 pm. bus back to the shed, and got the bedding set up and lay down to read, and again dead tired and near exhaustion could not get to sleep. I must have fell asleep about 4:00 am., because the downpour and thunder woke me up at 4:30 am. I dozed in and out for few hours and woke up and took my meds at 7:30 am. and the rain was still coming down in buckets. I fell asleep until 9:00 am....still pouring. I read and dozed and just lay there until 2:30 pm. when the rain finally took a break. The combination of weather and depression and the exacerbation of my back pain from the rain and Monkee's couch and being stuck in the shed with no reason to get up and no place to go, and the fact that even if I did I would have gotten soaked juts getting to the bus stop all sort of fueled the 'Who cares, why bothers, WTFs' that seemed to enshroud me. I finally forced myself to get up and out and I stopped at the Giant to washup and use the bathroom and get something to eat and make a cup of instant coffee, (the hot water in from the sink faucet is back up to HOT!, not quite where it was,but..it'll do), and caught the bus to the train to the train to Mt. Washington and walked over to the Starbucks. From the time I got out of the shed until almost 7:00 pm. I probably did not exchange more than 2 dozen words with anyone, and what we did say were the normal formalities involved in an order/purchase/transaction at the register.

Drew, a college student and employee at Whole Foods next door came up to me in the coffee shop and mentioned that he saw the Fox 45 story and we got to talking about Fells Point where we have both worked, and memories of some of the places down there and how much it has changed and lost it's avant garde/bohemian flavor and surrendered to 'gentrification' and 'yuppie-ism'. After that, silence again reigned supreme. Which did nothing for my sense of isolation and loneliness.

I caught the early bus back to the Plaza Station this time instead of sitting out back on the patio and caught the 9:50 pm. bus back up to Pikesville, and stopped in the gas station to use the bathroom. Daniel said he saw the story when Fox45 aired it again on the Friday morning early newscast, and we laughed about that. I was in the shed again by 10:15 pm., after stopping by the 'Dunkin Dumpster' for a couple bagels and donuts.

AGAIN!! I could not get to sleep, (and I drank De-Caf!! at the coffee shop!), and ended up finishing my last book from the library, re-watching Danny Kaye in "The Court Jester"...(The vessel with the pestle and the flagon with the dragon and the chalice from the palace!!!.....one of the funniest bits in one of the funniest movies he ever made....and OMG!!! the "Murder She Wrote" old lady, Angela Lansbury, was incredibly hot when she was younger!!!......LOL!!, sorry I forgot the PC police don't like that.....LOL!!!!!!!), and then the DVD from the Jimmy Buffett "Live In Hawaai" set, and then listening to both CDs form the set....and then I was left alone with the voices in my head. Not really what I needed! I don't know when I at last passed out, but at 5:45 I had an urgent summons to get up and I put on my ratty old sneakers and grab the umbrella and swim over to the gas station and use the restroom....just in time. I moved some drip catching/diverting paraphenalia around when I got back to the shed, and changed my socks and tee shirt and lay down and read a while from a John D. MacDonald 'Travis McGee' novel ,('The Dreadful Lemon Sky'), that I have not read for a while and that I had forgotten was in the shed. Read until 7:00 am. when I took my meds and tried to go back to sleep. Dozed in and out and on and off again, not restful, no REM sleep in days, and the only dreams I have are either shattered, beyond attainment anymore, or nightmares, flashbacks or hallucinations.

Oh well......., I got up and went to the Giant, washed up and shaved, and spent the last $3.45 on the Foodstamps card....no I aplogize, there so $0.01 left on it, on a sale package of discounted deli and bag of chips. This is my last 'store bought' meal until the 2nd of October. Actually it is a 'Combo Meal' because I am using the bagels from the 'Dunkin Dumpster' for the bread of my sandwich.....lol!

I'm out of here as soon as I get some more reading material and maybe some music and DVDs. I'm heading over to the coffee shop most likely after that. I have to get out of here before I go off...there are 3 loud, annoying, mannerless, gay, black, 'Manwichers' in here crowding over everyone else's shouldrs and swinging their arms and doing the '2 snaps up' thing all over the place while watching their 'buddies' on Facebook and YouTube. The rudeness and cursing, (and hypocrissy as they also are watching some 'hellfire and damnation' charismatic preacher and "gettin' mah praise on...snap, snap, snap", while having hissy fits and "no she dih-int"-ing over somebody's comment/outfit/pose). It's a library!!!, there are little kids right next to you!!!

Mow I gotta go..the 'ex' is here for the card she never picked up weeks ago...that now has no money on it!!!

Later...........Dave