6 years sober and wha’do ya get?

everything…….

Today I am super grateful….

I am in a hotel room in L.A., the Marriott Norwalk.  I’m sick.  Super f ing sick.  I’ve been sleeping like 12 hours a day, then getting up and going to a training seminar, then talking with dealer principals about tires and forks and electirc motors and inventory control……..and a year ago I would have ended that sentance with "and a bunch of other stupid shit", but today…i kind of care.  A little.  I mean I spend 40 hours + a week talking about this stuff, and I care.  It’s important.  I would have to care just to do it, or hate it.  I don’t hate it.  I love it.  It  pays all my bills for the other stuff I love to do, and I get to do something I like.  Who would ever have thought forklift parts was where it’s at?

So, I’m sick and still working, and the time change is fine, cause I get up when I normally would, except here it’s 4 am, and I go to sleep early, like 8pm my time, cause i’m sick, although here it’s 5pm.  I go to sleep right after the news.   I can’t fly home.  So I work.  It’s not so bad actually.  I order the cheapest thing on the menu every night for dinner, and someone serves it to me in bed.  I dream a lot.  I’ve stopped smoking.  LA has been good to me so far.

I’ll be home Friday night….oh and today i’ve been sober for 6 years, which is longer than I actually drank for, which is weird

If you want to know more, here is an email I sent to a friend out of town:

The kitchen is coming along.  I got the hood up and most of the back splash.  I am waiting on some special order end pieces.  Then all I have left is two or three trim pieces and some wood filler and the house is done, inside.  I’ll have to wait till this spring to finish the back yard, but I added a chiminea to the back deck.  One of those chimney pots.  I put it on the corner of the deck and then put Greg’s old metal and tile coffee table out there too with a couple of chairs.  It’s kind of fantastic.  Unfortunately the deck is shedding all the paint they put down.  I’ll either coat just the floor in a deep brown exterior paint in the spring, or strip it entirely. The back yard is about 40% sand for some odd reason, and I’m out of fun money, so I’ll have to seed in the spring when I can afford some dirt.  The basement lies empty, waiting for the home theatre to be build.  I am still looking for the bolts to hold the top of the dinning room table to the legs.  I’ll give up this weekend and just start trying some randomly from the Depot.  I still  haven’t bought a new fridge, so we are relegated to eating frozen foods most nights. 

Sean canceled his World of Warcraft subscription.  He works from 5 till midnight Monday through Saturday and goes to school from 7 am till 3pm Monday through Friday.  Most Sundays all he does is homework.  He’s lost almost 30 lbs in the last 4 months.   Last Friday he threw a party at the house with all his new friends from work and school.  Two of the guys brought guitars.  The four girls that were supposed to come canceled.  Some guy lent me the 6th season of Smallville and we had a deep discussion on the validity of comic book movies and who we think got it right at 3 am in the garage/smoking lounge.  It seems water finds it’s own level.   

I guess my folks were out at Gilespie’s a few weeks ago and Dave went too.  Dave moved to East Lansing this week.  He’s moved in with Gabe, or Kurt, I’m not sure.  He’s only there for a month to do some doctor thing, but he’s been looking forward to it for quite some time. 

Palmer is back in town.  I offered him the basement, but $60 a week seemed like it was out of his price range.  It must suck to be poor.

Dirk, the crazy guy who lived with me at the house on Hawthorne, do you remember him?  He was sober when I first met him.  He started drinking and then there was that night I knocked him down the stairs….remember him….well he died.  He either smacked his head and never woke up or took some heroine and stopped breathing.  Either way, his funeral was hilarious.  It was in Rockford, mostly because his family lives there.  They are WASPs, although divorced and whorish and full of drugs themselves.  You have to imagine the scene.  There is cream colored plush carpet and the walls are white.  There are flowers in the corners bookended with old people furniture.  This beautiful coffin has dirk in it and he just doesn’t fit the scene.  Dirk was laid to rest with chipped black fingernail polish on still, with black eye make up, with the nose ring that looked like a horse shoe through the middle of his nose. He still had liberty spikes and rings all over his fingers.  Only his upper half was visible because one of the coffin lids was down.  There were packs of smokes and pints of Jim Beam in the open lid.  All of this framed his short sleeve Slayer T-shirt, which was what he would be buried in.   The steel reserve logo that someone had branded into his ass had barely healed.  Someone had a black and white photo that they pa

ssed around of just Dirk’s ass.  I hope that happens when I die too, someone just passes around pictures of my ass.  The left side of the room was a line of people dressed by Tim Burton, one guy had fresh bandages on his wrist, and for some reason I wanted to pummel him into nothingness.  The right side looked like a Matlock episode.  Everyone was smiling and laughing and telling stories.  It was hard to pick out, so I walked to another part of the room where there weren’t any people, but lightly drifting from the PA system was Gun’s and Roses “live and let die”.  I chuckled and left.  It’s been my favorite story for the last week.

that’s a lie, I actually bawled in the parking lot and thought about how lucky I am that I quit when I did…..then some country song came on the radio called "Everyone dies famous in a small town" and I laughed at how my life is like a series of 30 min shorts produced by someone with a keen eye for the ironic….

Roller derby is back in full swing.  We went to a match last month and there is another on the 13th.  This weekend is Polaski Days, so party on.  I dated a few crazy chicks including a Norwegian babe.  All were for nothing, although the Norwegian taught me a few things about cooking that are awesome.

Next week I’m off to LA for a week and two weeks after that it’s Texas for the tenth time.  Then in November I’m in Phoenix, Las Vegas and back to LA.  Should be fun.

 

I like the pictures, looks like you’re making real progress on the house.  Nice joints on the deck.  It looks fantastic.  It would have been more impressive if you had smaller biceps.  It just looks like cheating with those arms.  Is this going to be a house to sell or to live in? 

 

If you get a chance there is some fantastic TV on.  I know your busy.  “How I met your mother” is great.  “The big bang theory” on after is also great.  Hero’s is kick ass and Kevin Smith is writing Hero’s Origins out in 2008 which is a prequel.  It’s always sunny in Philadelphia is like if Seinfeld was written by the writers from Family guy.  The War on PBS sends me to sleep with tears in my eyes almost every night.  It’s totally worth it.  Super Bad is about the funniest thing ever, rent it when it comes out.  I would say you should DVR these shows and watch them, but I know that the technology hasn’t made it that far south yet.  When you get a chance, go out to the big city and pick up some cable or satellite.

 

This is the longest email I’ve ever written.