Dont' read this unless you have absolutely nothing else to do with your life.

I haven’t written anything so far in August. This is shameful. I’m like Ernest Borgnine says in the film Marty, “What I been doin’ with myself?” I want to give excuses but I don’t have any. Like you drive off a cliff and smash your body up, people will understand why you haven’t been keeping up on the letter-writing. You were a little tied up. It’s understandable.
So this is me just getting back into the swing of things. I’m writing to say I haven’t been writing. Hopefully, you figured out that you needed to stop reading this post within the first few words.

What's the term for sleepless?

2:15 a.m. Tuesday morning. Can’t knock out yet. Trying to lasso the stampede of buffaloes in my head enough to sleep. I know a lot of parents who take their kids on car rides in order to put them down. This would actually work for me except for the fact that I would be behind the wheel and probably barreling down the freeway doing eighty when I finally accomplished the task.
For some reason, I can’t think of the term for sleeplessness.

Garage Sale Day

Let me give you an idea: when you’re starting to fantasize about your house burning down, it’s time to have a garage sale. We did that today and there are no words to describe it. I’m making a commitment now that I will never buy something other than a house or a car for the rest of my life. I want to buy space. Not “things” but the “absence of things.”

It was going to my head today. People were trying to negotiate lower prices with me and I always automatically went with the first price they quoted.

“How much is this?”

“I don’t know. Ten dollars.”

“How ‘bout five?”

“Sure.”

It was beautiful to me. Because in my head, when they asked me the question the first time I had to fight the impulse to say, “Just take it! It’s free! Don’t you get it! It’s junk!!! I don’t want it!!! If you ask me, I’ll pay you to take it away."

I clearly recognize that this would affect sales numbers at the end of the day. But I can’t bring myself to care.

I discovered this whole garage-saling world out there today. They’re amazing how they’ll rifle through these piles of clothes and books and examine these products that look they’ve been parked in someone’s garage since the first world war.

It gives me stress to own this stuff but to actually get a chance to see people who go out and pay to take it off your hands just stuns me.

The one depressing thing I found was that we pulled out a certain amount from the garage, sold $300 worth of stuff and then, somehow, when we put things back in the garage we had more than what we started with in the first place. This is a cruel joke.

Boredom Marathon/ Jury Duty

For the first time in my life, I've joined the ultra-responsible in their proverbial "civic responsibility." I'm waiting for jury selection. They haven't called my name yet and I've been waiting here for six hours!!!!!!!!!

Get a grip. Get a grip.

This is mindless.

We're all waiting in a large room for hours upon hours with very few of us actually wanting to talk to the other person. In the entire one hundred person room, I hear like four people whispering to each other under their breath. The rest of us are staring at books wishing we were somewhere else. I think I found purgatory. I'm trying to keep myself from looking at my watch every sixty seconds but it's torture. It's like time is playing a trick on me.

This is painstaking!

I wonder if any one has ever committed a crime after going stark raving mad while waiting for jury selection. All they would have to do is just transfer me from the sixth floor to the fourth floor where the inmates are being held. They're probably at least talking about something. I want to inform people behind me that there is really no reason to whisper. But I'm a hypocrite. I would whisper too.

Ah ha! Just got a text from my friend Pete. I will investigate.

Apologies

So I found out yesterday that my job is safe. For now, I guess I would say. From what I’ve been hearing things are bad all over the state. Money’s drying up everywhere. Nobody’s wanting to lend to us any more and Californians have resoundingly voted “no” on raising their own taxes. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “This is the problem with socialism. Sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.”

But it feels good to be safe for now. Thank you Lord. Our cups constantly run over.

I want to sincerely apologize for the “jumping out of a one-story window” crack from my previous entry. It was a pathetic attempt to be funny, but it was wrong. I thought about it later when I found out a former student of mine ended his life this week.

It floored me to find this out. This student was one of the brightest, most determined young men I’ve ever come across. He had joined the Marine Corps and he showed so much promise. His mother worked at the school and I would constantly tell her what an incredible kid she had raised.

I just feel a deep sadness. It's hard to put this into words.

Losing My Job

Trusting God was a lot easier when I was just talking about it. I recently found out that I am not going to have a teaching job after June which is not nearly as depressing as the idea that I won’t have a paycheck either. And my house has only one floor. Throwing myself out of the window would only just land me safely on the lawn. Way too anticlimactic.

Awkward Moments

I’m awake. And it’s almost 11:32 p.m. I’ve been up since five this morning. Somewhere my body skipped over getting tired and now bedtime is a little confusing.

We saw Kuya Rozel off tonight. I know I’m gonna’ miss him. He left us with an oil-tanker-sized Tequila bottle because it was weighing down his luggage to the point that they wouldn’t let him take it on the plane. I got to hold the bottle which ever so slightly eased the pain of seeing him off. Although this latest visit of his has definitely made me realize that we both drink too much. Our stomachs are starting to get that early pregnancy look to them. The dream of always being able to describe my ideal pizza as standing on the crust like the edge of a pool and diving into cheese that I’m able to swim across is beginning to darken.

Yesterday, at church, the service was drawing to an end and people were standing up to share about awkward moments that they’d had with church and other issues they’d been going through. Everything was so quiet around us and as one woman was speaking in a very low tone, Kuya Rozel’s phone started blaring a hard rock Filipino song over its MP3 player. He kept trying to turn it off but the buttons he was frantically pushing were just making it blast louder prompting Kuya to whisper a very loud and audible “Shit!” across the room. Instant classic.

We'll miss ya man. Love ya. Godspeed.