Let me make sure I've got this straight. I'm stupid, and I'm a liar, and I'm crazy, and I'm a drunk. But I'm a stupid lying crazy drunk with a truck, so that makes me useful?

Well, as sweet as that is, I'm afraid that I have to decline.

I wish I could make myself believe that this was simply being used as a convenient excuse to see me for some other, nicer, reason, but I can't. And I don't.

Reconciliation is what's needed. Rebuilding is what's needed, if it's even possible, for I may have been irrevocably destroyed. We may have been irrevocably destroyed. Even if it's somehow possible to fix things between us, nothing is going to happen without major changes. Changes that I can't make on my own.

And attempting to take further advantage of my feelings does not count as a major change. And neither does name-dropping another guy eight sentences into a conversation. It's just the same old crap. Problem is, I'm no longer the same person, and I won't put up with it anymore.

Especially not when I'd fully expect to be tossed aside as soon as my services were no longer needed.

Act like a certain kind of person often enough and, eventually, I'm going to believe you're that kind of person. And then, eventually, I'm going to treat you like that kind of person.

I'm so very sorry that it's turned out this way, but I didn't get here on my own. I was pushed and dragged. And I was kicking and screaming all the way here. Remember? I certainly do.

Sure, I worked hard, and sure, I put up with a lot of shit, but it was worth it. Or it was going to be worth it. My payday was going to be huge. I was, in fact, going to be set for life.

Didn't work out that way.

Oh well, right?

Sometimes I manage to find that attitude inside me. That oh well attitude that the world expects me to be displaying by now. Sometimes I throw in an at least I tried but not too often because it's usually followed by but I obviously didn't try hard enough

And that sucks, because I really don't know if I was capable of trying any harder.

---

Yeah, so I've pretty much shut down my life. Work and home are pretty safe, for now. Stupid Jack's on Sundays, stupid Bearno's or Korner Pub on others days - they feel fairly safe, for now. Eventually, that safety could be revealed as an illusion, and then I'll retract even more.

It's not the same as it was before. Now, there's too much overlap causing too much paranoia and fear. Places and people and circumstances, huge chunks of my life, are off-limits to me. Not quite six months may as well be not quite six seconds or not quite six centuries. There'll never be enough time for this to become a part of my past. It's a part of who I am, and so I carry it through time with me.

I've made progress, that's for sure. But there'll never be enough. I cling to this slippery slope. Resting is hard enough, climbing is almost impossible, but I do make progress sometimes. Every now and then, I lose purchase and begin to slide back down. So far, I've been lucky. I've managed to catch myself and halt my descent. But my luck won't last forever. Only this slope lasts forever.

This is my life now. Clinging for life, when it would be so easy to let go, and so exhilarating to slide back down.

I remember what I said, the words that I chose, when I finally said what I'd waited so long to say.

There have been no lies, before or since, but truer words than those seven have never been spoken.

So there.

So I've been driving my Intrepid to work all week. Partly because it's got an automatic transmission, and therefore it's easier to drive in traffic, but mostly because my truck was almost out of gas and I was too lazy to put gas in it.

Well, this morning I saw that my Intepid was almost out of gas, so I decided to go ahead and drive the truck to work. Imagine my surprise when I got in the truck and saw that it had a full tank of gas.

That was really nice of the gas fairy to fill my truck up for me when I wasn't looking.

Anyway, gas is killing me with the new job. Not only is gas at least 50% more expensive that it was when I worked downtown, my commute is at least three times as long. On a full tank of gas, I can make it to work and back four times. I'm spending around $250 for gas every month. I used to spend around $50.

I need to find a car that gets better mileage. One that I can pay cash for. I haven't had to make a car payment since 2001, and I don't have any desire to make any more.

Back in my day, we didn't have all your fancy multi-color radars and tornado sirens and SMS alerts. You know what we had? Flying debris, that's what we had. And actual tornadoes. Flying debris and tornadoes, those were our warnings. That's all we had, and we were damn glad to have them. You kids today with your fancy technologies, get off my lawn.

Anyway.

The meteorologists have gone insane this Spring. I suppose this is somewhat understandable, because the weather has also gone insane. And usually I tolerate crazy people. Some of my best friends are, after all, crazy. But the meteorologists, in their never-ending quest to get ratings help save lives, are in danger of hurting a lot more people than they help.

For at least two storm systems in a row now, they've hyped the potential for dangerous storms to the point of saturation. Yesterday, it was like they were pretty much guaranteeing a long series of violent tornadoes, baseball-sized hail, incredible straight-line winds, and resulting death from one or more of the above. There was non-stop coverage on every television and radio. We were all going to die, and the only chance we had to stay alive was to stay tuned to their coverage.

They built things up so much that anything short of Armageddon would be a letdown, and so a letdown was what we got.

For at least the last two storm systems, they've gone a step further. They've issued actual tornado warnings when all they've really done is decided that a tornado is more likely than it had been a few minutes ago. This is not the same as the Doppler-indicated tornadoes that they used to issue warnings about. Nope, this is nothing more than half assed guesstimation.

A storm 50 miles to the west looks scary. It looks like there could be a tornado there at some point. So they go ahead and issue a tornado warning, not just for that area (which would be bad enough) but they also issue one for areas up to 60 miles away. It's like, maybe a tornado will form there, and then that tornado might last long enough and travel straight enough to endanger people 60 miles to the East, so they issue a warning for the people 60 miles to the East.

Meanwhile, 60 miles to the East, absolutely nothing is happening. The tornado sirens go off, people start to freak out, but then (as was the case for the last two storms here) absolutely nothing continues to happen. Maybe it gets a little windy. Maybe is starts raining. But no tornadoes.

Eventually people are going to stop freaking out when the tornado sirens go off. They'll know that, odds are, those sirens mean nothing. This is the danger that our meteorologists are putting us in. Those warnings are supposed to be, duh, warnings. They're supposed to mean that a tornado is coming, not that maybe a tornado is coming so be extra careful and stay tuned.

The meteorologists are becoming boys who cry wolf. And it's going to be a damn shame, when they have a real warning to give, and nobody believes them anymore.

Why not just go ahead and issue a worldwide tornado warning right now? Throw in warnings for blizzards, earthquakes, and alien invasions while you're at it.

I know there's a fine line, between providing as much warning as possible, and jumping the gun. Lives are at stake, after all. Ratings, too. I hope the former aren't being risked to boost the latter.

Okay, so you're working at White Castle and a customer (my lovely self) comes in and orders, and I quote, "Five cheeseburgers without pickles, please."

You take my money and I wait. After a while, I get my food and drive home.

First of all, your life sucks.

Second of all, my polite request for "without pickles" was not code for "Please sneak a pickle into one of the cheeseburgers so that I might be lulled into a false sense of security by four pickleless cheeseburgers and therefore bite into the aforementioned pickle when I'm least expecting it."

Thank you for your time, and for your consideration of this matter.

Five or six or a million times a day, I'll have a thought. Then, five or six or a million times a day, I'll remember. The memories vary, as do the thoughts, but all of each kind are rooted together. One encourages, and then the other discourages. One laughs, and then the other cries. One seeks, and then the other hides. One loves, and then the other hates.

My thoughts, my memories, they balance each other almost perfectly these days. No extremity of mood is allowed to last. Intense explosions of emotion are over as soon as they're noticed. Afterimages fade, cycles repeat, days and weeks and months pass.

Holding my interest might be impossible.

This is my problem, and nobody else's.

I knew this would change me.

I haven't had any this Spring. None at all. Weird. Every year for at least the last 10 years, I've gotten allergy attacks in the Spring and Fall. Every year, in fact, they've been worse than the year before. But this year, so far, nary a sniffle.

They said on the news the other day that the pollen in this area was as bad as it's ever been. So I thought, "Cool. I guess it's not pollen that I'm allergic to."

This morning ConspiracyDude said* that mold is also really bad this Spring. That makes sense, because of all the rain we've had. But I'm still not having any symptoms. So I guess I'm not allergic to mold either.

Whatever it is that's been affecting me in the Spring, I hope it's taking this season off. It's already halfway through May. Much too late for Spring allergies.

Maybe this Fall will be okay, too. I hope so. The last couple of Falls have been really bad. I've blown my nose so often that I've had nosebleeds.

* - No word on whether it's the Illumati or aliens that have been manipulating the mold levels.

Remember when being in the military could be seen as an indication of something good? Maturity, perhaps, or maybe even honesty?

Me, too, but I just found out that the kid who slammed into my Monte Carlo (a soldier in the Army) lied his ass off to his insurance about what happened. He told them that he wasn't speeding, and that he didn't run a red light. He said that I had ran the red light in front of him.

Such bullshit.

That kid was so damn apologetic and respectful after he hit me, and now he's gone and pulled this crap. So his insurance isn't going to pay for any of the damage to my car. My dad's car.

If this kid is any indication of what military people are like these days, then I'm really glad my own military days are long behind me.

I was trying to find something. A web page I ran across once, several years ago. It was a page about flow. I haven't been able to find that old web page, but I did find an old blog entry of mine that I must have written with that page in mind.

It doesn't make a difference, though, even though every spare instance of logical thought screams at you that it should make a huge difference, it simply doesn't. Not in the long run, anyway. You know what you know, and you feel what you feel, and the sad truth is that the two are not always complimentary.

You find yourself forced to choose between the truth and the fantasy, but it's not such a daunting task, because there is no choice. The heart wins, every time without fail or even much hesitation, the heart wins.

The thing that I can't seem to get to stick in my head is that there's nothing I can do.

I didn't do enough before. No matter how hard that is for me to accept. Even though I did so much, more than I'd have thought possible and more than most people would have done, I simply didn't do enough to be good enough.

During, I did too much. I was honest and forthcoming. Too much of each, because I was also hurting. In shock by the suddenness and the brutality of what was happening. I should have taken the time to let things digest. But, I didn't. I screwed up and I let my emotions take over. Oops, right?

And after? After, I don't know what's been going on. I've either been doing too much or too little or the exact right amount, but it doesn't matter, because it's been out of my hands, and it's still out of my hands, and I wish I could accept that fact instead of forgetting it every 10 seconds. Instead of always trying to do something, anything at all, to fix this.

Anyway, I used to always tell her to stop worrying, that I'd be okay, because I'd always been okay, in the past. I'd always bounced back, in the past.

Lately, I've been facing the very real possibility that I won't bounce back this time. That this just might be it for me. These are not particularly fun thoughts to be having, but I'm nothing if not honest with myself. Besides, I'm not sure I want to bounce back. I definitely don't want to forget, and I'm more than a little concerned that the former may lead to the latter.

I guess I'm a little bored today. I feel writey, but not very flowy.

I'm making up words, you see. That's almost never a good sign.