When I'm in pain, I feel like I can't get a grip on my life and the few things I can control I desperately cling to and force into storylines.
When I'm clear, I feel like I'm all hands and I don't know how to just live. I went out tonight and felt so sober and awkward, I didn't know how to just be. Nervous, out of balance, I wanted to scream. I could have gone home, but I stayed out. Mu usual signals to go home, like I get tired or start to feel the booze or people I'm talking to leave, just didn't exist. So hour after hour it was like I was waiting for the fun or the human connection or the sign that the world is beautiful. Instead, I finally spoke to the guy who had been sitting next to me and he was a magnified version of everything that was disgusting myself about my own awkward. He'd brought with him a sketch book, half a dozen artist pencils, pencil sharpener, and eraser but spent hours on the outline of a single cartoon-like character's head an 11-year-old could have drawn. His t-shirt tucked into his jeans belted high above the waist and the way his fat collected above his belt, in the seat of his pants, and in his face all added to the 11-year-old affect. I wasn't in much of a mood to give him a chance to redeem himself, but when the bartender said something about his drink also not containing alcohol, I asked why not.
"I just don't have much of a taste for it."
I asked why come to a bar then (he hadn't spoken a word to another human being since I'd sat down hours earlier).
"For the conversation. You don't get the social element at Hardees or McDonalds."
At this point he physically shifted forward waaay into my bubble. In as few sentences as possible I closed up my bag and escaped.

So is that me? Not even to middle school in my ability to interact with other people? And at the same time, I keep questioning what I'm doing with myself, letting my brain rot away, doing my sad bits of male scouting at a bar?

It's 2 AM, I'm still not tired. I'm going to go read. Like, a novel. I'm PMSed and on too many medications that make me want to climb walls and throw up angry things. Where's my fucking dog?

Mouse Hunt

I killed a mouse Thursday. Snap trap and plum. Only I didn’t kill the mouse, it somehow set of the snap trap and escaped with the plum. I should have known then it had an accomplice.


I killed a mouse last night, this time for real. I moved the snap trap and used smaller bait: just enough muenster cheese to cover the bait part of the trap. It seems to have worked, because the mouse was very dead in the morning.

I would and could have set down glue traps, covered traps, other things that require less contact with the mouse, but these are actually less humane and less effective. As for a live trap, I live in the city. I’m not driving over an hour so some urban-adapted little shitter can go get eaten by his more wilderness-prone cousins.

So ding, dong the mouse was dead and I went about cleaning up the disgusting poop it managed to leave under my kitchen sink and behind my kitchen cabinets.

All mopped, every surface disinfected, so what the fuck still smells like mouse shit?

I’m not happy I now recognize the smell of mouse shit. I have nose that rivals most of the animal kingdom, a trait that’s been entertaining in my antiques/vintage acquisition. I already think cling wrap has a smell and my ice maker has a smell, so adding “mouse poop” to the olfactory equation has me homicidal and I already killed the mouse.

Or so I thought.

No mouse is an island.

A smaller, completely black mouse darted across the kitchen tonight. Darted across my freshly mopped floors. I yelled and I banged on things and I told it I was buying a shot gun. It seemed lost. It went for the washing machine and tried to come back out again with no real direction. Maybe I killed off the mouse responsible for acquiring food and making poop, and now this mouse is looking for answers. If I could show this mouse the door and no other mice or bugs or vermin ever crept across my threshold again, I would show this mouse my mercy. Otherwise, I want to blow it to hell.

I fear my kitchen floor boards don’t make it all the way to the walls and there’s a zoo living in what I judge to be my downstairs neighbor’s heating duct, creeping up into my kitchen at night to feed and poop.

My dog is useless.

Does Illinois require a license to buy a flame-thrower?