Sitting on this stinky ass couch...

So I've been trying to find a way to get back into writing. During any given day my mind will come up with an idea and I think briefly about writing it down but then something sticky will be on the counter and by the time I'm done wiping the sticky stuff off (and emptying and reloading the dishwasher and washing out the coffee pot and putting the 5 Matchbox cars back in the living room from where they had mysteriously found their way to the boxes of raisins in the cupboard) I will have completely forgotten the idea. The ones I do remember tend to be one off statements, more suitable for Facebook. For example, I was very prepared to tell you about my recent bout of memory loss. Or really, more to the point that I have recently been forgetting to flush the toilet. It's not exactly Alzheimer's but I feel like a real asshole if this forgetfulness occurs in a public toilet. I have no idea where I was prepared to go with that. I was also going to tell you about my landlord (who lives next door) and his penchant for playing the bongos. I could go a bit further with a post on bongos since I have a great distaste for them (I personally think they should be banned outside of remote islands where stoned students tend to go “find themselves”) but I think now you all get the gist so fuck that one too.

I was once told that great letter writing begins with describing your surroundings, no matter how mundane. I actually told this to my best friend, Beth, and we now tend to begin all cards and correspondence with, “Here I am, sitting on this stinky ass couch drinking a cold glass of $5 red...” I guess after all this time, it's the only way to start...

So here I am, sitting on this stinky ass couch, drinking a cold glass of $5 red. To be fair, I washed the all coverings of this couch a couple months ago and with it, 2 years of baby spit up and other assorts. My kid is 2 now so we don't tend to worry about spit up anymore. However, now that he is two and the couch has been unprotected from his hands since I last washed these coverings, I can not promise that I am not sitting in 3 layers of chicken nugget grease, grape juice drips and the occasional raisin that has more than one time been confused for a wayward piece of actual shit. Also to be fair, I think the wine was $6.99. I found it by the bananas at the grocery store. The bottle of wine that is. It was an odd place to find a display of wine, right there by the bananas. Like if one went specifically into Ralph's to get a banana and then thought, “I could really go for some cheap wine but the wine aisle is like, 10 aisles away and I can't really be bothered but oh joy! There's some right here! Hurray!” To be even more fair than I have this entire paragraph, there are some serious marketing geniuses at Ralph's as I honestly had no intention of buying a bottle of wine that day but I was buying bananas.

Also right now, Andy is swearing at his vaping apparatus. Spell check doesn't recognize the word 'vaping' but I'm sure it will be added to Merriam Webster by next year. Since I live in California, I have no idea how big something is in other parts of the world. Is vaping popular where you are? It is here. Andy has quit smoking completely and now is a vapper. Ha! A vapper – like Darth Vapper. He started vaping back in February and has convinced a good populace at our local to give it a go. I have a couple vaping thingies that Andy has supplied to me in hopes that I will have as much success breaking away from Marlboro as he has. Alas, the will power is not strong in this one (I'm totally trying to do a 'Star Wars' tie-in there) and I've only managed to marginally cut down. Because I'm always convinced I will one day wake up and be magically cured of the demon tobacco, I have quit buying whole cartons of cigarettes. Obviously this means that I've been getting more exercise as I walk to the shop every other day instead of once a week.

While I'm sitting on this somewhat stinky ass couch, drinking my $6.99 bottle of wine and Andy swears at his vaping apparatus, the Roku box is telling me that it's 7:50 PM PST. ← That was the segue in telling you that we don't have cable. Have I told you that already? That we don't have cable, or a satellite dish or whatever? Because we don't, we have internet television using the Roku. I honestly thought I would hate it, and in many ways I do still hate it (seriously CBS, I hate you and you're unwillingness to contribute content to Hulu)(so stop making your programs so damn addictive so I will stop caring), but in other ways it's been pretty good. I have made it my personal mission to re-watch every single Amazing Race season starting from Season 1 (thanks to Hulu). I tried to make it my personal mission to end world hunger but the US Post Office kept sending back all those shepherd pies I had made for Ethiopia so I thought 'the Amazing Race' was the next best thing. At present, I'm on Season 12, which is pretty good (or pathetic depending on your viewpoint) considering it's only July. I have had more than one (very non sexual) dreams about Phil Keoghan. The last one was where I was at a party and he was going to give me my Travelocity prize but my cousin went and got him stoned so he forgot. I try to not to bore anyone but Andy with my dreams (you're welcome Andy) but I wanted to clarify how non-sexual my Phil Keoghan dreams are.

Lastly, while I'm sitting on this somewhat stinky ass couch, drinking my $6.99 bottle of wine, Andy quietly vaping his apparatus that he has since fixed, and the Roku box is telling me that it's 8:20 PM PST and therefore I should be watching another episode of 'the Amazing Race' lest I get behind, I remind myself that I am now 39. ← That's my segue in telling you that I had a birthday. It was a shit birthday really so I won't bother going into it. I did get a gnome duck which I called Durome (Duck-Gnome)(I just realized that there is no 'R' in either 'duck' or 'gnome' so it's a stupid ass name but I thought it was hilarious when I named him that so fuck it) which I decided to wear on my head. It's not still on my head, in fact, I have no idea where it's wandered off to (something tells me to check by the raisins) but I did have it on my head for the last couple hours of my 'special day' (a day that my kid punched me in the face because he wasn't allowed to take his battery operated firetruck into the bath). So there's that then.