Flotsam: July 2008 Archives

I know, I know, it's been ages, and I usually post every other dayish. I just have nothing new to add. To wit:

1. Nothing new on the boys front. As in, no boys.
2. Still biking my ass off.
3. It's kinda hot out.
4. I'm tired.
5. Clients drive me crazy.
6. Waiting to be paid like Godot.
7. It's hot out.
8. I know, I already said that. See what I mean? Nothing much doing.

I'll take a camera out one day this week, so at least I'll have something visual to add, even if there are still no new words.

I'm thinking, just thinking. And it doesn't seem to be happening much in words. More in pedal strokes.

Heh. When the going gets tough, the tough put on their sexiest $15 Target sundress, hop on the cycle, have a 40-minute ferocious yelling brawl with a vicious bastard of a headwind, arrive five minutes early for brunch all lathered up and invigorated, and buy a very large new dildo (on sale!).

Then they (or I) go flirt shamelessly for hours with the very prettiest redhead they can find (looking at him for that long made me high), pet the cute doggie, and ride home laughing maniacally. Bwahahaha.

But now I have to work.

Beautiful sunset on the way home tonight (unfortunately I had no camera), but it didn't make much of a dent in the sense that this has been what Boywich would call a craptacular week. Lowlights include being shaken awake every morning by Richter-scale vibrations from the pile-drivers operating a mere 10 ft. or so below my windows. Not to mention having yet another tube blow its bitty little cork just as I was pumping the last tire preparatory to leaving on a ride.

So my ride ended up being to the bike shop, to buy more tubes (and complain about them having weak-ass valve stem connections). And to top that off, my favorite redheads were not even there, nor was the nice girl I usually talk to, nor was her cute puppy. Drat.

Ugh. I am exhausted, sick at heart, sleep-deprived (construction starts early, and I keep having to work all night because I can't focus all day with that horrible, horrible noise and the whole building shuddering to bits around my ears), and generally demoralized.

I couldn't even get it up to think that the friend of a friend's invitation to go for a bike ride (he just bought a new bike) might have an ulterior motive in it, even though I had at one time found him to be very cute. It all seemed very likely that a bike ride is just a bike ride, and even if it's not, he's probably not a good person to date, being, by all accounts, something of a solitary reclusive type. Interesting, but maybe best appreciated from a safe distance.

Which I am beginning to think is true of all men.

Lately I feel sort of like these guys - giant robots duelling at a mermaid festival. Displaced. Out-of-sorts. Out of context, too.

There's a massive and incredibly, horribly noisy (our whole building shakes) construction project happening right outside my window now, and for the foreseeable future. They'll be done some day, you say? Clearly you have never lived next to a NYC construction project before. I, unfortunately, have.

My last apartment was completely unliveable for two and a half of the five years that I lived there. So much so that in the end, I gave up and moved in with Boywich.

I really love my current apartment, and I do not want to give it up, but already I am doing that PTSD thing where I cringe and creep around, ducking and freezing in place like a wild animal waiting for the Big Scary Noise to start. Already I am not at peace here even at night when it's quiet.

It's not a good situation for a sensitive creature like me.

And I am not sure what to do about it. I am shopping around for an alternate work space - a wireless cafe would be ideal, but that gets expensive because you have to keep buying things, and I just can't drink that much coffee. I have an aversion to public libraries, and while there are parks, they're not much of a long-term solution because of a) weather issues, and b) the wireless thing.

Yesterday I bicycled long and hard with my laptop on my back (in addition to the 15 lbs. or so of locks and tools that I usually carry), and ended up with a very sore and numb shoulder/arm, and cranky knees.

I am actually considering whether it would be possible to rent a workspace. It would kill a couple of birds - I have also been wishing for some company during the day, and to share space with another couple of freelancers might be cool. But there really isn't air in my budget for such niceties, so we will see.