What a shitty day today! Even as I say that I know that it's not really true. I keep telling myself how lucky I am, I ate today, I have a roof over my head, my kids are healthy and doing well.
Still...it was a rough day, it's been a rough couple of months, lots of decisions to make about the cafe (more on that later), all the bullshit from the earlier post (probably more on that as well, remember A?), and I walked in today to find sewage backing up into the grease trap and floor drain in the dish room. It didn't make it onto the floor but the day was lost anyway, by opening time the restaurant and I both smelled of sewer.
I am so tired of having all the weight of this business on me, for a while it was exhilarating, all the responsibility being mine, now it it's just exhausting. I fantasize about running away and working in a Home Depot. Still, I know, things can always get worse. Kinda terrifying, really.

I want to be a caveman

I am really starting to hate Facebook. I like it for the ease with which I can communicate with family and friends, but I am starting to feel like the cons outweigh the pros. Everything tech is bringing me down lately, I see so many people come into the cafe and sit together, eat a meal, and almost never interact with each other, as soon as they've ordered they break out their devices and are scrolling and thumbing away. Sometimes, they barely look away from their screens to interact with their server. I can think of few clearer ways to let someone know that one feels that they are not important.
Yet, as I'm sitting there watching them, judging them, I have to wonder how it's different from a couple  taking out books and reading, or a child playing with Legos while his parents and siblings talk. But something tells me that it is different, and that it's not good.

Now, back to FB, I've posted about my FB-started relationship debacle of 2010, and my meet up with the woman from HS that I thought went well, but apparently didn't, but it just seems to keep getting weirder. A friend messaged me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I was in a relationship. This happens every now and then, and I always respond with a bit of a fib. "I'm not sure...I'm in a long distance thing that hasn't really gotten serious, but I kind of feel like she's just keeping me on the back burner," I'll write back. It's not an outright lie, I do still text, or message the friend from HS. I would very much like that to turn into more, but she's a long way away, and we've only seen each other twice in three years. And then there's Sam...yes, she still pops up from time to time to stir the ashes and stoke an ember.
So, my friend has a friend and believes that she and I would be a great match, that we are almost exactly the same, except that she has smaller feet and bigger hair (I fervently hope that there are a few more differences as well!) and that he'd arrange an "introduction" if I was interested. I answered with the standard above response and asked if it was someone local, as he used to live here. No, it was someone he worked with in his new town, which puts her even further away than the HS friend.

I really don't know why I don't just use names, any one of the people involved in this stupid post would be able to recognize themselves in it. 

What the hell, I thought, just because we chat back and forth a bit on FB doesn't mean that we have to ever move on to anything more. We may just swap book and movie suggestions and that's all, and there is nothing wrong with that, there doesn't have to be any more. So, we've exchanged an introductory FB message and I've looked around her page. She's very pretty, is smart, and seems cool. I think if we were in the same town, or even the same state, we'd have a shot. As it is, I don't know.

And then there are the other messages, not the "are you seeing anyone" variety, but their fishing cousin, the "I've always had a crush on you" message. I fucking hate those. Usually, the time stamp is early in the morning, so the writer is probably drunk, and now I have to figure out how to respond. The other night I got one from the wife a friend. I did not want to know that. I don't want that in the air next time we're all together, and it will be, and she couldn't just let it go at that, she had to follow up with the "I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable" message a couple of days later. Guess what, if you have to say that, then there's a pretty good goddamned chance that you made someone uncomfortable.

So, I'm sick of it. To be honest, I think I'll change my stock response to enquiries about my relationship status to "not interested, perfectly happy alone, and the longer I am alone the more convinced I am that I'd be a horrible partner...also the thought of meeting new people and having to go through all that small talk and getting to know them just depresses me. The thought of having to meet their friends and families at some point is even worse. Oh, I've also always had a psychological erectile dysfunction that, though it does go away after I've been with the same woman a few times, is not getting any better with age and makes the initial experiences depressing, confusing, and terrifying. Thank you for thinking of me, though."

Strange, but I'm actually feeling like I'm in the mood for Christmas this year. Though I was a bit pissed to see the Christmas section take over Lawn & Garden at Hell-Mart before poor Halloween had even had its day, I now feel like I might enjoy this one. I wish I'd gotten started on shopping earlier, it's always my plan to get it done throughout the year, but it never, ever happens that way. I currently have one gift purchased, but I think most everyone is getting nice food baskets this year, so that kind of takes the stress out of it, just need to shop for the kids and a couple of things for my parents. 

I even threw some lights over a young tree next to my porch the other night...what's gotten into me?

You ever have this overwhelming feeling that you just want to go home, but have no idea where, or when that is, or if it's even anyplace you've ever been?

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Looks good!

Did I mention that I had thought that I was dying, or that I'd started taking acting lessons?
No?
Well, I'm not (at least not anytime soon, barring all kinds of foul acts and disasters) and yes, I am.
When I was in high school, a long, long time ago, I was in theater and did competitive speech, and according to some of the folks who judged such things back in Oklahoma in the 1980s, I was pretty good at it. Which actually might not be a shining indicator of theatrical prowess, but I did alright in that little pond, and during my last year of high school I toyed with the idea of going to OU as a theater major, or of hopping on a Greyhound and heading off to Hollywood.
Of course, I didn't...I went to a small two year college near where I grew up, studied police science, went into the army, and was sent to Germany. There, I got married, and my first child was born. After the army, I became a cop, and not long after that, the twins were born. Occasionally, I would think about joining a community theater, or of making my own independent movies, and I even wrote a screenplay. It sits in a manilla folder in a milk crate next to my desk, and every couple of years I thumb through it, and think that I should do something with it. But it's really not very good, and no, you can't read it.
Several years ago the bug got me pretty bad, I was reading everything about moviemaking that I could get my hands on, and I had the chance to be an extra in a movie that was shooting up in Albuquerque. If you watch "21 Grams" there is a scene in which Sean Penn and Naomi Watts are arguing outside of a bar when a police car drives by and they decide it would be best to move on. I drove that police car. I drove it around the block for a couple of hours while the scene was shot over and over again. Then I pulled the police car up to within five feet of Mr. Penn and Ms. Watts and turned the red and blue lights on and off as they shot close ups of them doing their dialog. Then the crew hauled everything across the street and we did the driving in circles shit again. We started shooting at 10 p.m. and when we finished, the sky was beginning to lighten. Then I bought a restaurant, and got sidetracked again.
A couple of years ago I started thinking about it again, that little bugging thought that I'd fucked up, and  done the wrong thing. Of course, I hadn't. I have my kids, and a decent living to show for my earlier decisions, but that little bug wouldn't stop, so I put myself into a database for extras and background actors, and got another background role (a cop again, I've been typecast!) in a movie called "Odd Thomas" which will probably go straight to video due to some problems with distribution financing. It's based on a Dean Koontz series and looks pretty good, though.

I had several more shots at background work soon after, but the jobs were all about three to four hours away and they only give you a day or two notice most of the time, so I had to turn them down, and I guess I got myself blackballed with that agency for that, because there hasn't been a peep since.
Jump to January of this year...I'm seated in a coffee shop, cursing the weather, convinced that the swelling I feel in my throat is a tumor, and thinking that if I only had a year, or a handful of years left, what would I have wanted to try. I would have wished that I'd at least tried to become an actor. When I was young, I imagined being the star. Now, I know that I'd be very lucky to be the character actor, "that guy who was in that thing," and I'm very okay with that. Just to be able to make a living as an actor would be such a privilege.
So, I upgraded to a paid membership with that one agency (that was supposed to result in more exposure to casting directors, and turned out to be a minor waste of money and hope), signed up with a couple of others, and took a weekend intensive acting workshop up in Albuquerque. The bug really took hold then...I've since taken a longer course in film and TV acting at the same acting school, and am currently taking two more classes, another film/TV class at different school, and voice and speech with a Tony-nominated actress.
I'm not sure what classes I'll be taking next, I was hoping to take improv classes with a troupe in Albuquerque, but my schedule conflicted too much to pull that off this time around, but I am going to Los Angeles in September to take an improv class at The Second City! Beyond that, I plan to keep training, put myself out there for anything that I feel I fit the part for, and I've got a thought lodged in my brain for a local actors' workshop.
That thing in my throat? I don't know what it is. I went to a throat specialist, he poked, scoped, said he saw and felt nothing, and ordered an MRI, which came up clear. It comes and goes, a tightness, and what feels to me like swelling, I'm slightly convinced that I've developed a flour allergy (fairly common in bakers), but I really don't know. Whatever it is, it reminds me that I need get out and do things, and to try to be a little bit nicer, so it's not such a bad thing to have.

Have you seen this? I love this movie, absolutely love it.

Well, today is eleven weeks. I'd like to say that I feel much better and that my head is clear and I'm getting sooooo much more done, but none of that is true. Okay, I have gotten a few things done...I read a good book (Bossypants, by Tina Fey) and have managed to paint my dining room and most of my living room. Oh, and I planted basil and it hasn't died yet.
That's about it.

Checking in...

I have been sober for over eight weeks. I don’t remember a conscious decision to stop drinking, though I’d been thinking about it for a long time. It just happened.

I’d been feeling like shit for a while, had gained a lot of weight, and was having some problems with my health, but kept telling myself that I just needed to slow down, not stop. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I think you’ve gathered that alcohol is a large part of the culture at the café, it’s not a good thing, but that’s the way it’s been for a long time. I’ve made half-hearted attempts to change that, but never had much follow through, being as bad as, or worse than, everyone else.

Then, one Wednesday, I didn’t drink. That turned into a couple of days, I made it through the anger and agitation which had attended the first few days of sobriety each time I had tried in the past few years, and I just kept going. I knew that if I had a drink, it would turn into two, then three, then a six pack and a couple of shots, so I held off. I haven’t avoided being around alcohol, I will still go next door to the bar with the crew from time to time and have a limeade while they have a beer or shot, and I still go to the pseudo-Irish pub in town to see my friends, I just drink tea. There was a period, about a month in, where I was pissed off about the whole thing, wanted to drink, was tired about the “still on the wagon?” question, or worse, the “why?” but I got through it and around week six my mood improved and I started hitting the gym with a bit of regularity.

I had beer in the fridge for about the first month, then I poured them out. There is still a bottle of nice bourbon and a good bottle of wine in the cabinet, but I feel no desire to drink them. I think that if I got rid of those I would get mad again, better to just leave them where they are, let myself think that I might be able to enjoy them some day.

This morning I was at work, we were getting ready to open, when a friend of mine came in with news that the guy who worked the produce department at the market I frequent had died of a heart attack. I barely knew Terry, I know that he was from New Jersey, that he smoked a lot, and that he could be counted on to round up some extra mushrooms or lettuce for the cafe if I hadn't ordered properly. He and the elderly cashier, Harold, would often trade good natured verbal jabs about who worked harder. His mother has cancer. He was around fifty. That's it, that's all I know.
I'm always taken aback at how unreal it is to get news like that, how I had just seen him a day or two before, or how she had posted on Facebook this morning, or how I didn't even know he was sick. I was thinking on this, how fast life can be lost, when I read the news of the school shooting at Sandy Hook. I am so sick and hurt right now, I cannot believe how man can be so evil, so cruel. I also cannot believe how many people posted on Facebook things along the line of, "So thankful that God was there to protect and comfort the survivors" or "Now is not the time to be talking about gun control."
Well, where was god while all the children and adults who didn't survive were being murdered? When is a good time to talk about gun control? An acquaintance posted a charming (sarcasm) little tale about how she grew up around guns and how it was disrespectful to be talking about changing gun laws as these victims hadn't even been buried yet. I wrote a comment stating that neither had the victims of the Oregon mall shooting on Tuesday, and the seven year old boy accidentally killed in front of a gun store last week likely hadn't been either. Should we wait until we had a fucking week without a gun-related tragedy to have this debate, or should we just squeeze it in between mass shootings. I argued that it was disrespectful to the victims to NOT be having a debate over gun laws right now, that perhaps if we had had this debate after Columbine, or Aurora, or any other number of mass shootings in this country, we might have avoided the one today. Then I deleted all I had written and logged out.
Later, I logged in again and read several posts along the same lines and wrote that I was deactivating my account as I was going to snap if I read one more post praising a Stone Age desert god that doesn't even bother to protect the most vulnerable of society's members or the need to maintain an 18th Century view on firearm ownership. I then deleted that one as well and logged back out.
I really do believe that social media has been at great force over the last few years, it has given so many people a voice who had never had one before, I just don't want to listen to those voices any longer.

Sometimes you see something and you think of those who would enjoy it and immediately want to share it with them. So, Maria and John...

and...

Hi, Folks...

To answer your question, John, I am doing pretty well, thank you. I've got a fairly severe case of end-of-summer burnout, but that should pass. Labor Day is upon us, we'll get our asses kicked for the next three and a half days, and then things should be a little more manageable. We've been working seriously short-handed for about a month now and we're all ready to blow. Well, I know I am.
Being short has actually been a bit of a blessing the last two weeks, instead of scheduling extra days for coverage, and working 70 hour weeks myself, I've just closed the past couple of Tuesdays and Wednesdays...and it has been glorious. I've been able to mow my yard, to my neighbors' delight, I've cleaned my room (though I'm really not sure how it got messy) and I've been up to the big city to visit the kids and spoil them with Indian food and trips to Hastings.
My love life is still non-existent, but I'm pretty sure that in at least a couple alternate universes I'm having one hell of a smoking hot affair with one of my waitresses (you've seen a picture of her, John). She is waaaaaayyyyyy too young and pretty for an old fat man like me, but as we used to say back in Oklahoma, she makes my chiggers itch. In at least one alternate reality, America is being ran by jack-booted thugs (okay, that's not much of a stretch) and she and I go on a multi-state crime spree to help raise money for the resistance. I die in a hail of gunfire buying time for her to escape an ambush, and she later becomes the leader of those fighting alongside the kangaroo people to overthrow our corporate overlords.
Yes, I know that's Tank Girl, I never said I was original.
Maria, I promise you a rant soon...I probably could have written it today, but I already vocalized it on one of my poor vendors...I'm not sure of the actual count, but I think I said "fuck" seven times in five seconds.

Paper Man...great movie.

The blank page, or screen, truly is one daunting son of a bitch. I've been sitting here for quite a while now trying to think of what to write and nothing really comes to mind. Things continue as before...work, home, work, home, work, and so on with no real distractions, the days and weeks and months just sliding by until I look back and see all that has happened around me while I've been been working, or sleeping, or drunk.

Well, this is in danger of slipping into a rant, and that's not what I want to do. Been doing too much of that lately, but it has helped me to see that maybe I don't need to stay in this little mountain town for the next five years (that's when the cafe is paid off), maybe I can do two more and then sell, make enough to move and start again somewhere else. Then again, I should probably just push through and get the damned thing done. I've already got two could-have-been-retired dates behind me, and another coming up. I think I'll stick this one out and see what happens.

I know that I need to find something outside of work that inspires me, because work no longer does, the restaurant is like an infant that will never learn to wipe its own ass, or an extremely high maintenance spouse, and I'm just fucking tired of it all...the constant repairs, scheduling headaches, financial juggling, employees who don't give a shit, and don't even get me started on the customers. There I go on the rant again.

On the upside, I am sitting in bed typing this stone sober. No, I haven't quit, but this is the first night in quite a while that I'll be falling asleep as opposed to passing out, and that's a start.

Hi, I'm Eric...

I never really understood addiction. Even as a smoker, I felt like I could quit any time, I had done it, several times. I just couldn’t understand how someone could be powerless against a chemical, how they just couldn’t say I’m not going to do that anymore. Until recently.

As a kid, I hardly drank alcohol, I really only remember a couple of times in high school and a handful more times in college. It just wasn’t a priority, and it was always just for “special occasions.” In the army, I drank more, but still pretty much kept it to weekends. After I married, it was even more rare that I would have a drink. I don’t think that it was a conscious thing, it just wasn’t something that I did.

After Y left the kids and I, I still didn’t drink much. I was just too busy. When Z and I started dating, and later married, drinking became more common, socially and at home, but it still seemed under control. We’d go out for a few beers on payday, and on the weekends we’d share a six pack.

When she left, I didn’t even touch a drink for a month, I just didn’t want to get drunk and all that that might bring. It was probably almost a year before I really started drinking a lot, that summer was…stupid. I spent lots of nights sleeping at the café because I was too drunk to drive home. Sometimes, I drove anyway.

Now, I’ve quit a dozen times. The longest time was six weeks, the shortest a couple of days. The thing is, I don’t even want to quit. I like beer, I like to take a shot of tequila, I like to hang out with my friends at the bar. If I could just do that, have a drink or two and then stop, that would be fine, I wouldn’t even think about quitting. The problem is that when I start, I don’t stop until late in the night. On my worse days I start before noon, grabbing a beer from the walk-in at work, and will then drink all day long, and be pretty much sober the whole time. On the way home, I’ll stop and get a six pack to drink while watching TV or a movie. When that six pack is done, I’ll wish that I had gotten a twelve pack.

It’s easier to stop completely than it is to slow down, or to stop once I’ve started.

I quit smoking again a few years ago, but I still smoke one every once in a while, sometimes they taste and feel really good, and sometimes they don’t, but I never really feel like going to buy a pack and starting up again, so I don't beat myself up over it. I sure wish I could do that with alcohol.

I never really considered myself an alcoholic, I always preferred drunkard, until Sam pointed out that only alcoholics keep track of how many days they’ve gone without a drink.

So, Eric, what's been going on? Well...a whole bunch, and not much at all. My kids are all moved out (at least for the time being), with both of the girls attending UNM, and my son living nearby with his girlfriend. He still works at the cafe, so we see each other regularly, and I try to get up to Albuquerque to see the girls at least once a month.
So, I find myself living alone for the very first time in my life. The dirty dishes are my dirty dishes, the laundry piled up is mine, the reason there is no food in the fridge is because I ate it...and I kind of like it.
Work is still the same, a hectic summer, trying to get caught up on back taxes from the previous winter, only to be sliding behind again already. Ah, the life of the small business owner in a tourist town!
I met a woman, actually we'd known each other in high school. She messaged me out of the blue on FB one day in March, and after that we messaged, texted, or emailed back-and-forth nearly every day until July when we finally met and spent a day together. At one point during our correspondence, while we were talking about relationships, she wrote that she believed that she felt that she would KNOW when she met the right man. Apparently, I am not him.
Up until our meeting we had really connected, there was a solid feeling of friendship and the beginning of something more, I think, and I really wanted it to...be. Since then, we talked on the phone a few times, we always laughed a lot, but then we just sort of drifted.
So, still no prospects in that department, but that's alright...you get right down to it I'm a 44 year old, out of shape, twice divorced, struggling business owner, whose credit rating is in the toilet from putting his business's and his kid's needs ahead of the need to pay his bills on time. Oh, and I've got a bit of a drinking problem. Not exactly the types of things nice ladies are looking for. No one that I would be interested in being with is going to look at the above description and say, "Wow, this one's really fucked up, I can have a great time fixing him!"
Am I beating myself up? No, it's an honest assessment, and I'm okay with it, because, on the other hand, I've somehow managed to raise three very good young adults, in spite of their mother leaving when they were young and their step-mother doing the same later, and in spite of some serious miss-steps in my parenting techniques. I also think that I'm a pretty nice guy.
I'm not going to go on patting myself on the back...I just don't want to give an inaccurate sense of how I feel about myself. Could I be better? Of course. I could also be a hell of a lot worse.
I'm thinking that I'll examine a few of these sentences in a bit more depth in some future posts, and I don't think it will be too long of a wait, if you're interested, because I'd forgotten how therapeutic writing can be, how it can help one see things from a new perspective.
I hope everyone is well, I'm slowly getting caught up on your blogs.

Wow, I’ve got some catching up to do…well, with Maria and John anyway. Everyone else that I came to look forward to reading over the years has either stopped, or considerably slowed their writing, but you two continue to pump out the posts.

I’ve scrolled back and think I know where to pick everyone up again; now that we are entering one of the slowest times of the year at work, I hope to be able to get some reading done again, blogs and books. I’ve got a whole stack of books I’ve been buying and setting aside for just this time of the year.

Hopefully, I’ll also get some writing done. Lots of things have happened, though they really don’t seem that interesting in hindsight…really just more of the same that I’ve commented on over the last few years, but there are some cool things in the works for next year. I’ll try to get some thoughts on “paper” soon.

Winter's Bone

Another great one.

Get Low

This is a fantastic movie...absolutely beautiful.