deeplyshallow // time-traveling head-puncher

time-traveling head-puncher

I have to hit the road in ten minutes and I totally don’t want to go. This morning is exactly the morning I loved to work through when I was freelancing — cool air, pale gray dawn, the cat in the window, an owl hooting somewhere. My couch is particularly comfortable this morning. Everything through my window is damp and muted.

Every morning, when I leave for work, I struggle to satisfy a simple task, one that I used to solve so easily when I lived in Washington. All I want from my commute are two things: a really good cup of hot chocolate, and a really good chocolate-chip cookie to go along with it. In Washington I stopped at a little coffee stand each morning, where a cheery little girl smiled at me and made me a nice drink for the road and sometimes wrote little notes on the cup. This has proven to be impossible here, as the most convenient coffee shop — which is on the corner, just before I hit the freeway — basically makes hot chocolate milk, and lets their fresh-baked cookies sit in the display case for as long as ten days, until they’ve all sold. Starbucks isn’t a possibility; their hot chocolate is flavorless, like steaming water, and their chocolate chip cookies always have a strange berry undertaste. (Update, 8:35am: Fuck. The cookies were indeed too old to be any good. I bought one anyway, and then threw it out the window. [Cookies are totally biodegradable. Fact for the day.] And one of the dumbass hoes behind the counter at the already-shitty coffee shop consistently makes hot chocolates that taste like coffee. I am convinced now that it is not an accident. I thought maybe she was just unclean — that is, that she never cleaned the equipment between drinks, not that she was a cloven-hoofed animal or that she forgot to shower — but now she’s just an asshole.)

I have never liked Ray LaMontagne, either. (Yeah, I’m shifting gears hard in this post, sorry.) The guy has always bugged me, all earnest and scratchy and scruffy and indie. “Trouble” was one of the most annoying songs I’d ever heard. My sister burned his CD for me, hoping one day I’d come around. Weeks ago I filled my iPod with all of the shit I own but have never listened to — mostly weird shit Liz gave me that I don’t think even she listens to — so that I’d have something to occupy my brain with while I worked out at the gym. This playlist included LaMontagne (I even hate his name). At some point “All the Wild Horses” came on, and I recognized it from Rescue Me, Denis Leary’s TV show that always has such kickass music. I played it again. And again. And then I heard “Jolene” — not the Dolly Parton song — and I have played that one again and again. With the exception of “Trouble” it turns out I actually kind of like the album. Fucking hell.

Last night I bought a new wallet, a new belt, random things I needed, etc. I bought old-man socks. They are brown and though I did not know this when I bought them, they come up to my calves. I bought them because I bought some new shoes a few weeks back, and my typical white socks just feel blechh and look goofy with them. So today I am wearing old man socks under my pants. I wonder if it will make me feel any differently. Maybe I will say things like, “Oh, them kids today…” (Sometimes I do this already.) The socks feel surprisingly nice, though. Maybe they will sag all day and I will have to tug them up. But for now they’re all tight, like… well, tights. It’s weird that I like that feeling, isn’t it. I feel like a minstrel.

Three months from today is our wedding. After that, Fiji. I am brainstorming every day for ways to get upgraded to first class for the plane flight, which is going to be bone-numbingly long. I want to be devious about it, and not just get the complimentary honeymoon upgrade and cheap bottle of booze. I am a nice guy too often. I want to make them trip over themselves to give us the fat chairs and hot towels.

I am late, I have to go. It is so pleasantly dim here. I don’t want to leave. At work I arrive and settle into my chair and the worst point of my morning is when a certain coworker — I don’t know who it is — arrives after me and snaps all of the office lights on. I work in front of enormous windows, and the daylight is more than enough. The fluorescent buzz and glow saps my energy. Artificial light is bullshit. If I could go back in time, I would punch Thomas Edison in the head. He’s the reason I have to deal with fluorescent tubes and Ray LaMontagne. My life would be so much better if he’d been born stupid.