Insane

Freeway scene, 12:08am

I went to my dad's former house to hang a light fixture and it took me TWO HOURS, WTF.  I'm a god damn electrical engineer, it shouldn't take me two hours to hang a god damn light fixture.  Okay, so I hadn't done that in awhile, and there's a sequence, including adjusting the chain and cord length BEFORE wire-nutting the connection, and there was a piece of hardware that I didn't know I was putting in upside down (the instructions made no mention) such that when everything was cinched up tight, the circuit breaker would blow every time I switched it on, and at the end there I was starting to run out of daylight but whatever.  Not even the chandelier that was there originally, and that I took down and put up in my own house because my grandmother bought it in Florence in 1962 and I've loved it since I was a little kid, not even that mostly cut glass thing that weighs a ton took me TWO HOURS, WTF.  Insane.

On the way home I stopped off to see my dad and he's doing all right but his body is failing him and that makes me sad.  Makes him anxious.  Legs don't hold him up very well anymore, he thinks it's because of bone growth in his neck pinching the main nerve, plus he's starting to experience dark headachey semi-blackouts.  But he appreciates a good long life and seems philosphical about the experience.  So he's spending his days digitizing the fifteen thousand slides he's taken since about 1950 and quite naturally prioritized the trips he took with his girlfriend in the 1980s and 90s to Europe or Panama or wherever, pictures which NO ONE IN THE WORLD WILL EVER CARE ABOUT.  Insane.

Then, still on the way home, I stopped off to see my mom and she's doing all right, takes care of herself, stays busy.  She wanted some consultation on how to use Yahoo mail.  Don't laugh, when she was your age telephones had rotary dials.  Now she very earnestly takes notes and asks smart questions and as far as I can tell never has to ask how to do something twice.  I can't think of anything in this paragraph that causes me to say "insane".

Later, still on the way home and nearing eleven pee em, I thought it would be fun to go into Davis for a bite and a drink, see what a college town is like on a Saturday night ...  And I remembered when I used to hang out there, shortly after I moved to Sacramento ...  Somehow I wound up dating a Davis student and the memories are very bittersweet, which is sort of not good, I wish they were just sweet, but they're not, they are bittersweet, no question.  She was unique.  They all are.  Great body, creative temperament, shy like me.  ANYway, that was twenty six and a half years ago, and that train of thought convinced me to just pull into the Taco Bell in Dixon, where the gal at the drive-thru speaker box could not understand me when I said I wanted number eight and I very seriously considered saying numero ocho but didn't want to come off as a smart-ass, but she got it the third time and then never did catch what I wanted to drink.  Brisk.  Brisk.  Brisk, I said.  Even at the window she looked confused.  Iced tea, I said, and she got that.  Then she asked if I wanted souse.  Souse.  Hot souse?  Sauce, said I?  Yes, please, hottest you got.  So she gave me Hot but not Fire, which is the hottest they got.  Insane.

Further on, the electric sign on 50 said CHAIN CONTROL AT SUMMIT.  This means snow on the highway.  It's the twenty fucking third of May, folks.  California's mountains are supposed to be gearing up for the forest fire season, not adding more frozen water storage.  Insane.

Now it is after one in the morning and I am listening to Soma and really wanting to dance with you but I will take that rain check and go to bed and read myself to sleep with a history book and spend much of tomorrow alone at the shop cutting and shaping the sheathing for my BRC domicile as prep for showing other people how a few weeks hence.  This is going to be a good year.  There is a lot of creative energy already, and it will only build over the next three months.  Insane!