Thanks to all of you wonderful souls, you know who you are, for your many comments and emails about The Mom. She’s fine, so to speak, and things are back to as normal as they’re likely to get.
For my logical, pragmatic, analytical mind, I’d planned out my eventual departure from this Life-in-the-States in steps. I’d sell the house, find a good home for Asshead, get my visa filed, and be off to live with my wife and kids… happily ever after.
Sure, I’d planned for the depression that wraps itself around my psyche, the aching in my middle that is a physical manifestation of being away from my other half, but I kept forgetting that Life itself changes along with us. Usually regardless of what we planned and almost always in direct proportion to the changes we had already prepared for.
Life has presented some real doozies lately and I find myself asking, as Wife is prone to do as well, “Am I done yet? Am I done with the Shit and on with the Good yet?”
Whining into the void does no good, and Wife and I whining to each other only solidifies that which we’ve known for a very long while, that we are always mirroring each other’s state of being. We’re both fond of reminding each other that this manner of sublime compatibility doesn’t help either of us sleep at night, alone, nor does it inspire us to eat or attempt to socialize with others.
I guess this is me admitting that I’m choosing to whine HERE. So there you go. Thanks for listening.
I always find it interesting how a change in venue can affect an overall attitude towards one’s life, or at least one’s present situation.
I’m living in Parker, Colorado now, in a spare room that The Montanan has graciously shared in his grand abode. He had the space, owed me some money for some stuff I gave him, and I needed a place to stay, contract-free and indefinitely, where Asshead could still be an Asshead and I could still drink and smoke too much and spend hours every night on the phone with my wife. It’s a pretty sweet deal.
My worldly possessions have been pared down to my clothing, my dog, and my truck, with assorted other items thrown in, like my coffee-making-fire-extinguishing-alien-mind-control-waves-blocking-combat helmet and my 5-foot-diameter Mexican Sombrero. I’m living pretty simply, as I always have, only with less shit to trip over when I’m drunkenly searching for my webcam at my wife’s requests.
The neighborhood is nice, for the absolute middle of Yuppieville, and no one has complained about my nocturnal urinations… yet.
I’ve also got the added bonus of driving a mere mile away to InternetStalkerly cruise El Puerco’s old house from his childhood. The current tenants were only mildly upset that I whipped out my pocketknife and appended a fresh item to the worn message on one of their many trees.
Sorry Dusty, but on that big pine out back, “D.S. (hearts) J.H.” is now followed by “and Big Black Cock Too!” I didn’t mean to let your secret out but, because of the impending court order and such, I didn’t figure I’d ever get that kind of opportunity again.
The short *cough-FUCKSTICKS-cough*, 38-mile, hour-long, commute to my office in Golden is what I’m choosing to blame on my truck, The Football Helmet, completely falling it’s ass apart. As an added bonus, The Montanan and I “bonded” roommatey-style while cleaning the leaked oil and transmission fluid from his pristine driveway too.
The Football Helmet’s loved me for a very long time and in deference to it’s emotions, I’m no longer mentioning its upcoming sale in it’s presence. Despite it’s knocking and rattling, it seems to enjoy the dirt-road-shortcut to the Interstate though as much as I enjoy the smell of horseshit and prairie grassland on our way to the fallacy known as “work.”
Work has firmly settled into the short-timer’s mindset, someone has stolen every last Nerf Dart that existed, and they fucking took my Nerf Basketball for good measure. My honesty and candidness about my departure has been rewarded with constant reminders that I’m needed in no more capacity than to teach somebody new everything I know about my PreciousBaby Software that, incidentally, is now responsible for just under half of our daily sales.
The most memorable bit that I can pull from recent weeks is a co-worker’s conversation in which I stopped staring at the ceiling long enough to interject, “Yeah, but I bet James Dean never drank his own spit either.” I don’t remember the exact context, if indeed that statement had any, which only serves to make it funnier in my mind.
Good Fucking Times.
Personal hygiene has never been very high on my list, as I’ve only too proudly written about before, but I’ve completely lost any motivation to even make the smallest of social gestures such as deoderant, minimum grooming, or laundering my clothing. I’m a fucking mess.
I spend my weeknights/weekend days on a tiny, 8 x 10 foot deck, with my hands-free jammed in my ear, a cold beer, a pack of smokes, and Asshead at my feet, whiling away the hours with my beautiful, amazing, wife who is going through her day 10,000 miles away. This is fucking hard.
It’s only made more heart-wrenching by my 4-year old, after being asked if he wanted to talk to me on the phone, saying contemplatively, “No.” When asked why he didn’t, he replied, “I don’t want to just talk to him on the phone, I want to talk to him here.” Uffda.
The visa application is almost complete and the bureaucratic bullshit that says, “If two people are in love, married, and want to spend the rest of their lives together they have to wait 3-6 months, spend thousands of dollars, and one of ’em has to be able to say ‘Drizabone’ in a perfect accent” is hopefully going to finish smoothly and quickly.
I find it hard to remain ever-optimistic but, now that I look at it, my Aussie accent is benchmarked by retarded sayings that I can bust out to many peals of laughter, both here and abroad. (Go on, say it, “Drizabone”)
My family, my friends, my co-workers, and my entire life here all seem to have gained an acceptance of my departure. The house sold, I’ve got a line on a home for Asshead through one of the “Libyans” (female hockey players that The Montanan and I both know, most of whom are oriented towards the same sex), and the visa looks good. Almost everything about where I’m at seems well and prepared for me to go, except for one thing…
I’m still here.
I’m still fucking here and I don’t know for how long.
I’m still here and a huge piece of my soul isn’t. The urge to shout and cry and kick something very hard is pretty much constant.
The Montanan hurling carelessly left dog turds at our neighbor doesn’t seem to help either.
Bless him though, he’s trying.