Monday

I know it’s Tuesday, but this was the first chance I had to continue a week of daily blogging. I just felt that I wanted to document a week for myself. You know, one of those self-examination things.

It was a long day. The first time in a long time I’ve had to work non-stop, 11 am to 10 pm. It was a test of stamina and endurance. I don’t think I’ve ever spent that long popping in and out of freezers before. I had this image of my looking like “Lucy Ricardo” when she looked herself in that freezer on “I Love Lucy”.

Basically, I think, I’ll just be working on days the store gets a truck, Monday Wednesday and Friday. Monday is a two-truck day, regular frozen foods and ice cream. I hate ice cream now. Those cases are heavy and sometimes sticky. It’s not pretty when an anal retentive gets a fifty pound cardboard box of Moose Tracks stuck to his shirt.

Like working newsstand at Barnes & Noble, stocking frozen foods fits into my sense of order and organization. I found the most frustration with bags of broccoli florets. I can’t get them to lay pretty. I’ll figure it out.

And I am slowly getting the three aisles of freezers to look nice. I don’t have the time to just pull it all out and arrange it neatly, but since as I get stock I have to rotate it I am slowly getting it all “anal retentified”.

Now if I can just get my body used to the physical labor. The mountain air, and the recent rains are playing havoc with my joints and rotator cuff. I was pleased that when I got home last night at thawed out I hadn’t added any new cuts or scraps. That’s a good sign.

Of course, there are some bruises on my fingers, wrists, forearms and neck, but they weren’t my fault. Some ten year old kid thought it was funny to race away from his mother and kick the freezer doors closed on me. He’d slam the door on whatever body part I had stuck in there and race back to his Mom laughing like a maniac. Unfortunately, she thought it was funny, too.

She didn’t think it was funny though when the little a-hole pulled the full shopping cart over on himself. The kid wasn’t hurt, darn it. All I could think while the kid squalled and his mother blamed her undisciplined child's behavior on the store was “Karma, kid, karma.”

While the job is physical, it’s not mentally taxing. I’m still trying to figure out where specifics go, but that will come in time. It’s not like the newsstand where things were laid out in a logical order. I’ve learned the categories, but why aren’t all the different types of peas in on place, and all the Banquet Chicken dinners in one place instead of sprinkled through out? It drives me crazy, but I’ll live.

Everyday I always run into people I know or from my past. It’s kind of like having your life pass before your eyes but getting paid for it and confoundedly dull. It’s one of two grocery stores in the county, so I’m not surprising that eventually I’ll run across just about everyone.

Most of the people I don’t recognize until they tell me their names. Most don’t bother identifying themselves, assuming I remember them. Frankly, if I don’t recognize you either time is your enemy or I forgot who you were for a reason.

So far, I haven’t run across anyone who made my skin crawl. I’m kind of looking forward to running across them. I am anxious to see how I handle it. I’m ready for that band aid to get ripped off. Perhaps that means I’m getting better.

What does surprise me are the number of people I recognize and snub me. I really doesn’t bother me, but I do wonder about the snub. I have heard pretty much all about my life, behind me back, none of it correct.

Are people foolish enough to think I can’t hear them when they are less then five feet away? Sure I have my head stuck in a freezer, but there ain’t nothing wrong with my hearing. Most of these people who feel the need to tell their companions about me, I swear I’ve never met.

They always seem to substantiate their “facts” with “so and so told me". I usually am glad my heads in the freezer so they can’t see me laughing about the fact that I have no idea who “So and So” is either. Today alone I have been abandoned by my wife to raise my three kids, just gotten out of prison, once made a porno film now available on line and retired from the government.

I guess I should be flattered, but it makes me feel like Paris Hilton. I’m the Paris Hilton of Redneckia. It would be more flattering if I were thought of more like Ricky Martin. At least I’d been doing something brave and not just stupid.

People say not to worry about it. They’re just jealous. I could take it to mean jealousy if they were getting their gossip even remotely correct. Let’s just face it, there ain’t a lot about my life to be jealous of. I just find it ridiculously petty, and I get angry with myself for letting it bother me.

Face it; it’s the part of Southern charm that I find evil. Everyone is so sweet and kind to your face. I have learned, the hard way, the kinder and more friendly they are the better you are to stay as far off their path as possible.

I have come to terms with the fact that they think it’s unkind to be honest to your face if they don’t have something nice to say. What I see when they do a complete 180 when you turn around is shameful cruelty.

I try to convince myself that I don’t pay for their sins. However, I have learned that in small towns in the South, you may not pay for someone else’s sins, but you do pay a price for what others assume. Unfortunately that price is usually pretty high.

If nothing else, I'll end up with a nice collection of stories and characters for "Odd Rocks Across the River". I'm hoping Ryan Murphy will read it and decide to use it for the premise of the TV show he's developing for Kristin Chenoweth. Wouldn't it be great for my future wife to play all three of the female characters? A restraining order is kind of like an engagement, isn't it?

However, I don't want any one to think that all of the people in this area or patrons of the store are mean an nasty. The overwhelming majority are sweet, endearing and adorable. There are just of few pustules that stand out, loud mouths who think that every one agrees with them.

I had a wonderful conversation with a couple about my age concerning the fact that we never dreamed we'd live to be in our fifties. I don't think I knew them, but I look forward to seeing them again. And there have been a small handful of people who remembered me from a play I had been in years ago. That is always a jump start to the heart.

Regardless it was Monday all day long. I was deliciously worm out by the time I got home. The dog was wet. Dad was in bed. Mom was still hoping Bristol Palin would get voted off "Dancing With the Stars"

...and the chicken dances on...

The Power of My Own Stupidity

A character in my novel says, “I enjoy the power of my own stupidity” in a chapter that I posted not long ago. Ironically that little quote has been bouncing around in my head non-stop lately.

I’ve started working again. Just a part time, minimum wage job stocking frozen food at a grocery store. It’s a fine job with nice people.

I feared working in public. I still battle being past the walls of my room, but the actor in me kicked in. As soon as I clock in this character I’ve created, known as me, kicks in.

The other day, as I was stocking ice cream a woman came to me and asked where all the “Nippelodian” flavor was. I smiled and told her I was unfamiliar with it but “Let’s look.”

Quickly she grabbed a carton and said, “Here it is. Right in front of you” with obvious disdain. She held it up to my face, pointed to the word “Neapolitan” on the carton and sounded it out phonetically for me as she pointed with her finger, “Nip-pul-oh-de-ann”. Finishing her lesson with “Can’t you read?”

I apologized and told her I had always called it Neapolitan.

She shook her head in disgust and said, “It’s French, you can’t talk the letters the way we do.” With that she tossed it in her cart smashing two loaves of bread to oblivion and was on her way. Probably to complain to someone about all the smashed bread on the shelves.

I just laughed to myself and continued to fill up the case with Blue Bunny. Not more than a half hour later a man came up and asked where all the “Nippelodian” ice cream was. Obviously, I’ve been wrong…about a lot of things.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’ve been having so much trouble shaking this depression. Oh, I’m functioning blindly and faking being normal real well.

That’s part of it. Trying to prove to the world that everything is fine, when you know that what few strings are left of the fabric in your mind are worn, frayed and snapped.

It’s so exhausting. I don’t want to function. I just want to lay flat out in a road somewhere and just let my mind and body throb.

The mental pain is hard enough. The constant ache of desperation takes its toll on me. The consistent clawing at my psyche to rid all the ache gives me headaches, robs my sleep and then plasters the scarring with guilt and shame.

The physical pain is even worse, especially in the last week since I’ve forced myself to become physical again by taking this much needed job. People don’t realize how physically painful severe depression is. Of course, most people aren’t even aware of others in depression, not a true malignant depression.

It is as though your body is trying to reject your mind. Every muscle of my being is sore and tender from the fight. My skin is covered in scratch marks from itching the rashes that come and go, mostly at night making what little sleep I get a nightmare.

I’m fighting, one foot in front of the other, and I am so tired of it all. I see pity or misunderstood disdain all around me. I am constantly battling tears; anger and the need to just pull inside my head, protecting myself from the hurt, the hurt I cannot control.

But I am getting better. I swear to God with every scratch of my fingernails, I am getting better. I am able to concentrate more, on other things beside the overwhelming desire to just stop and not move on. I am demanding that I concentrate on anything but the black vacuum sucking the life out of me.

I write a lot, obsessing about the novel. I know it’s not good, but I have to get it out. I keep fighting going back and starting from the beginning again. I’ve moved on to the second book of the trilogy, incorporating bits and pieces of what little of my mind is left into the main character.

The struggle to put into coherent words somehow gives me strength to deal with it. I avoid drugs, except aspirin and Tylenol PM. I can’t afford the medical/psychiatric attention I probably need anyone, so this is what I am doing.

But I continue. I have to. That’s have the battle isn’t it? It has to be. I pray minute by minute that I am doing the best that I can. That how I deal with this is intelligent and the right thing to do.

Then like Kellen in my novel maybe I am just holding on to the power of my own stupidity. But them, that power is really the only true defense any one has.