I swam tonight after doing a bunch of stuff like heat leftovers for dinner that needed to be eaten, getting J a sweet iced tea at Dunkin’ Donuts, buying more Tate’s Bake Shop Cookies. It was a good swim, very refreshing. I am tired now, not overstimulated, which is always a possibility with an evening swim. I was thinking of all sorts of reasons for not going, but I went swimming. That is what counts. The usual sore places are sore.

I am watching a Fleischer Studios Superman cartoon. These are incredibly cool. Look for them on YouTube.

There was a Rogers & Hammerstein musical by the name Pipe Dream. It was based on the short novel Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck, a sequel to his novel Cannery Row. My mother liked Pipe Dream. There was a song with the lines, “whether you like it or whether you don’t, you’re stuck with the whole damn lot.”, that resonated with her. That made an impression on me too. I guess that is an example of stealth child rearing. An adult is raising a child simply by being an adult. The child assumes, rightly or wrongly, that the adult knows what they’re doing, whereas the kid doesn’t and is looking for tips about this whole Living Life thing.

J had to be at work at Five AM to unload a truck. That means I had to be up at Four AM to see her off. She will be off at 1:30. I may go back to bed and sleep til then. Why not?

There is a man named Tomasz Bykowski who walks around video recording other people walking around on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. People have done this in the past with movie cameras as far back as 1896, in London, Paris, and Manhattan.

What else can be said about people walking around? Plenty. But I’m too tired to say it right now. Except the streets of Manhattan are an endless spectacle and cause for puzzlement Why, for example, would someone park their Lamborghini on the street as if it was a Ford Festiva? Are they that rich or that stupid? Or both.

The weather change isn’t happening soon enough to my liking. It’s like waiting for a baby to be born.

One other thing, now that I’m rambling. We have an incredible number of things. Think about that. Why would you want more? I mean what are you expecting from possessing them?

Later, товарищи.

For about three hours this morning I did not look at my Smartphone. Now for two of those hours, I was sleeping, but for one hour, I consciously avoided referring to my phone. I turned it off, making an effort not to use it to see who won the ball game last night, whether that obscure politician, athlete, or celebrity was still living or not.

We live, as we well know, in an Information Age, kind of like Fred and Wilma Flintstone lived in the Stone Age. They lived in Hanna-Barbera’s made-up Stone Age in order that Welch’s and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company could sell us grape juice and Winston Cigarettes. (They were two of the original sponsors). Now, in the Information Age, in our use of the internet in our quest for information, we are creating information about ourselves that the creepy tech companies sell to businesses. Surveillance marketing is the name. We are the information in the Information Age.

Where is the ideology in this? I think people could be in completely opposite identity groups and be mutually offended by the intrusions of the techno/information industries. But no. We all let ourselves be dehumanized. We morph ourselves into consumers, trading our dignity for digital coupons and Facebook “likes”.

I feel for those who are lonely, whose chance to awaken beside a lover is ripped away, whose hope to sleep naked next to that other naked one is dashed, not by an indifferent world, but that other’s cudgel of fear.

When “I’m scared” wins over another chance to cum, just plain fuckin’ hurts. Like you never want to know how deep that dagger plunges.

The weapons of Love’s enemies are always concealed. Until they are brought out.

We went to an Italian place where I had an Italian sausage sub and a Pepsi, (no Coke products, no problem. Prefer Pepsi). J got manicotti. She informs me that the Ken Burns Country Music documentary is on PBS. Comrade Burns is not my cup of tea.

I’m still tired.

J

I elected to rest today. Saturday was a 🐻 bear as far activities went.

Saturday, driving down to Church for Confession, I noticed that the planned demolition of my old junior high school building was proceeding. Only when I think about it too much do I feel a sense of loss. It was at this school when I learned Kennedy (JFK) had been murdered 22 November, 1963. Here is where I got my nose broken in a school yard fight. Here is where we queued up one Sunday after Church to receive the Sabine oral polio vaccine. The building is now a pile of bricks. The memories can’t be torn down.

I went to Mass. Was glad I did. I prayed a Rosary this afternoon. I took a nap. I started an Audre Lorde novel Zami. Decided I wasn’t in the mood for lesbian identity fiction.

But I need to blog. I need to put out that I’m lonely, here first, then to J. I need to turn off the political brain, the ideological brain, the brain of rules and ligatures.

Fuck the calories, I’m getting a Coke tonight.

I wondered again if J was a little. Then, while making the bed, I saw, in the bathroom we don’t use because of her junk, a cap, from a bubble bath bottle she saved, fashioned to be the head of Tigger. Nothing odd in that behaviour.
So she is on the way home. She will be tired. Too tired for sex. Or maybe she has a kidney stone. Maybe I will just chicken out again in asking for my needs to be met.
Self-pity is never beautiful or cool.

I took my shower, put on a clean tee-shirt and my jammies bottoms. I took some Aleve. I ache. Going to sleep. Nite Everybody

I got up. I cranked up the pressure cooker, cooked the black beans, then the collards. I was surprised at how easy it is to fix collards in the pressure cooker. The rinsing, slicing and chopping take the most time. I froze roughly half of the cooked collards. I did a variant of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (Knopf, 2014) braised collard recipe. I had some herb and garlic infused olive oil that I used to braise the cooked collards in. When they were ready, I served them with hearts of palm. The flavors complement each other quite well.

Laundry was the major housework today in addition to the food preparation and cooking. All done until I take the sweaty clothes off, that I’m wearing now.

As the title says I went to Confession, acknowledging about nine months of bad behavior. A Priest friend of my sister says hearing confessions is like being beaten to death with a feather, meaning tht most of the transgressions confessed aren’t about horrendous deeds committed,just a slow accumulation of actions that pull us further away from God. But the slow alienation hurts us.

Dinner, with Cuban roast pork was satisfying. I used a different mojo criollojo than usual going with one used by the South Florida Cuban restaurant, La Lechenera. I prefer it over the Goya bottled brand, now that I have used it.

It is almost Eight PM. I am tired. I have to fix Waldorf chicken salad for J’s lunch tomorrow. Let me get the chicken breasts in the oven.

Here it is 6:06 AM. I’ve made my coffee, have black beans in the pressure cooker. Popeye the Sailor is on, in one of the Technicolor longer cartoons from the Thirties. It is an Arabian Nights story, the Fleischer Studios version of Ali Baba And The 40 Thieves. Now we have a Fleischer Studios version of Superman from 1941. Kinda cool. I have never seen this before. Seems to be the typical mad scientist story. It is a beautifully drawn cartoon, in the Fleischer Studios tradition.

J works her other job today, I’m having the collards, hearts of palm black bean dinner with Cuban roast pork. I could surprise her with tres leches cake for dessert. That would constitute serious spoiling. Better to wait till I get my Social Security money in eleven days.

Time to pack her lunch.

It was a good day. The usual activities figured into the mix, AA, swimming, laundry. J wanted to go out to eat so we went to a seafood joint, Awful Arthur’s. It is an ok place, locally owned. The food is good, not great, but good. I had the fish sandwich, J had scallops.

I put off swimming til around 630. My goal was to swim a mile 5 times this week. I swam 5 days on a row.

When I got home J wanted me to watch I Love Lucy with her, I did, through three or four episodes. I was aching so I got up, to apply pain patches, btush my teeth, floss, and use my fluoride rinse. By then I was wide awake. It is still early.

Now I am watching Bendita Tentacion, where Mexican women show sex toys and trashy lingerie. It is a surprisingly fun show. I suspect it is particularly interesting if one understands Spanish. Mexican women don’t seem to have many hang-ups about their weight, but I may simply be inferring that from the size of their models.

They have the usual sex toys on display, dildoes, harnesses, vibrators. Nothing is shown that has not been shown North of The Border.

I’m tired. Going back to bed.