Bipolar Life in 2012

In typical fashion I’m a day late on reflection. Seems that all the year of 2012 blogs are already out and done.

I was at a show the other night, the Vilification Tennis group doing their F**K 2012 show. They are a wildly inappropriate insult comic group and always a blast to go see. You will think “Oh, you didn’t” at least once during the show, often while laughing. Here’s a video of them at the renaissance fest.

 I cannot repeat the Red Hook jokes, but they did help me personally to find some way through that shit that has been weighing on me for the past month.

Well, during the show, one of the activities was to ask the audience who had the shittiest year. They asked people to raise their hands to share. I thought over the past year.

I started off the year 4 months into unemployment that would last another 2 then got some sort of contract-work-employed for a couple months. I would have declared bankruptcy if I’d had the $1,500 for a lawyer. I was 3 months into pre-foreclosure on the house. I told my mother I'd had thoughts of suicide in two emails, and she never responded. I broke off contact with my family. I’ve hit my heaviest weight ever in the last week. Wife is now living in the uncertain contract position life where we never know when she will be paid and how long she has a job. Wife’s years of school loans are coming due at a rate of $900 a month to begin with. We enter 2013 with no savings, no safety net, and capped off the holidays by walking out on Christmas weekend with wife’s family after her grandmother said one too many criticisms of wife (a long list 33 years deep that includes how she was too big to ever get a husband, too dumb, useless and now added too loud, so thanks for that new complex). Also had a fun fight with her family members who were complaining about homeless people begging for money, when we were literally weeks from being among them when I finally landed my job.

Yet. I didn’t raise my hand.

And not because I was scared to speak in public. I don’t have that fear.

I didn’t raise my hand out of some sort of “could be worse” thing.

For every piece of crap part of my life over the past year, I also thought about the things that went right.

We sold the house before it was foreclosed, without owing money. I got hired by an awesome company and doing what I love – writing and creating. I am doing better without my family, and now know they can’t manipulate me through money, even when times are at their worst, and no longer accept money from them. I do pretty well feeling like shit about life on my own without their help, and Wife’s work is uncertain, but it’s a fuck of a lot better than working for Lisa Larson et al. at Hennepin Technical College. She gets paid closer to what she is worth, is respected for what she can do, and has gotten to know my colleagues better than me since she’s more of a people person than me. We get to go to work together every day and eat lunch together. We got on a debt reduction program. We quit smoking in August and it has stuck. Once I got my job, we have been able to start fully participating in life in the Twin Cities by having fantastic dinner experiences at The Melting Pot, the Lexington, Mort’s Deli, and more. We spent our anniversary in the St. Paul Hotel, where we got upgraded to the poshest room where presidents, dignitaries and celebrities stay. We’ve gone to Twins games, Paul F. Tompkins, Wits, Sleepwalk with Me with both Ira Glass and Mike Birbiglia at the screening, the It’s A Wonderful Life Radio Play, a Roast of Ebenezer Scrooge, the ballet, Art a Whirl, the Walker Art Museum, Northern Spark, the Aquatennial fireworks, Prairie Home Companion, Canterbury Downs horse races. Instead of not being able to go to things because we’re broke as shit, we can’t go cause we simply can’t find the time cause there’s too much we want to do. We’ve had trips to the North Shore, Duluth, and Red Wing. Wife’s best friend made it home safely from Afghanistan. Wife overcame fear of heights to go with me up Lutsen mountain in a gondola. For one month, we were both happily employed full time (more than we’ve ever been). We’ve been relatively healthy this year. I’m off all medications. Our cars have miraculously made it through another year.

2012 continued our bipolar life, which would have been a good alternate name for this blog. Highs, Lows, and few inbetweens.

BTW, the guy who won the shittiest year award: Got the Harley he’d saved up for years for, six months later, got hit by a drunk driver and spent three months in the hospital. Yeah, that would suck ass.

Tonight I saw Crazy

Tonight I saw crazy. Wife and I left work and on the way home, I convinced her we should just stop at the grocery store and get her a flu shot. I already had mine a month ago, but she was a walking target, and she's hard enough to take care of when she has a cold.

The ladies at the grocery store pharmacy thought it was funny that I was "making" her get one, as wife put it.

After the shot, we had to linger around the store for 10 minutes to make sure wife didn't have a crazy reaction to the shot. Unfortunately, they told her the side effects that could happen, so for the next ten minutes, wife kept telling me her lips were tingling and that she was feeling weak.

We got some coffee creamer, energy drinks, and much needed toilet paper as we are down to our last rolls. We were discussing whether we should get buns or not when it happened.

This 40 something blonde woman with a cart and 12 pack of soda comes up into the bread area. "Hey, excuse me!"

She's talking to another woman that's near us.

"Excuse me, but you have no right to hit my car like that."

Obviously, shit was going to go down. I didn't get a look at the other woman. The 40 something blonde was well dressed with a long black coat and looked "Businessy." That's the only term I can think of to describe her. She was talking on about the parking lot.

Wife and I, being highly non-confrontational creatures except with each other and our families, scooted down the way a bit and out of ear shot. I had my back to them. Wife kept watching them over my shoulder. Not long after, the blonde woman came by again, her wheeled cart bumped my hand cart. She was looking at my wife.

"Nutcase."

She was looking for some sort of comraderie with the wife. But she wasn't getting it. Wife and I moved on. Wife had forgotten about any tingling lips and faintness she had been experiencing.

As with everything that isn't fiction, there were two things that stuck with me.

One, the woman had taken the time between whatever had happened in the parking lot and then to get a cart, grab a 12 pack of soda, and then track the other woman down in the bakery. WHO DOES THAT!?

Two, the best she could come up with during all that time was "You have no right to hit my car."

Me to wife while driving home: "I mean, really, what do you say to that?"

I told wife this is why I want her with me when I leave the house, because things like this are too much for one person to absorb without help.

Wife: "You mean this happens all the time?"

Me: "No, but it happens enough."

Off my meds. Feeling OK.

Part of being on antidepressants is the kooky thing where when you have been taking them long enough, you think you don’t need them. You feel fine. Which is what you took them for in the first place.

I don’t always feel that way, but I am a guy, so sometimes I just plain forget to take them. I put the pills by the sink in the bathroom, in the kitchen, or anywhere else I am sure to be in the mornings, but invariably, they become part of the background decoration of that area of the apartment and I just look right through them and don’t remember to take them. Then the next day, I’ll be freaking out about something, or feeling panicked or shitty, and then it occurs to me that I forgot my pills.

I had that happen again three weeks ago, however, I didn’t notice missing my pill for four days. And by then, it wasn’t because I was panicking. I just noticed I didn’t remember taking a pill for several days.

I had started to take the pills back in Fargo, when I was trying to help fiancé find work in the area while keeping going at a job I no longer found challenging or fulfilling. I had started to skid down the sadness road. I thought about death a lot, not like suicide, but  just a sort of thinking about death a lot way. It’s just easier to think about death than a job you don’t like, a family that doesn’t support you or your fiancé, a job market that is insane, and a world that thinks so little of everything you do.

Yeah, so I got some pills. They helped. I didn’t think about death quite so much. But things were still shitty beyond reckoning. By this point, we’d moved to the cities, wife had a job but not me, I had cut off my family because they didn’t support my wife and any attempts to explain my feelings about the situation were met with a general statement about how it was all in my head. To be frank, I haven’t tried speaking to them since March and life has gotten a lot easier without them. They’ve tried to get in touch 3 times since then by email. The last one had the sentiment “We miss you and will welcome you back whenever you are ready” which is nice, but again asks me to accept all blame and that I’m nuts and that they did nothing wrong. Also, wife sent a lengthy response in May or June about what they could do to make things right, but they haven’t taken us up on it.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I accidentally quit taking my pills, and by the time I noticed, I also noticed that I was OK.

Part of this, I think, is the general state of life affairs right now. I’ve got a job I love, I get to work with Wife and have lunch with her, I don’t have to deal with my family, and wife is out of her own hell hole of a job at Hennepin Technical College. Things are going well.

They could always be better. Wife is now applying to job after job and going through the same mindfuck I was going through in my job hunt: mostly that you can take two hours out of your day to go visit with an interviewer, send a thank you, send a follow up a week later, and still never get the common courtesy of a thank you for applying call or even a note to say they went with someone else. I go balls out and want to send a snide letter, but wife still thinks it may be possible to be hired after three weeks of hearing nothing and doesn’t want to send anything even slightly aggressive. I talk a big game, though. A few weeks ago, against my better judgement and at wife’s request, I reached out to the mnartists.org editor to see if she was interested in another piece from me. Though she can’t explain what she wants, and the pieces she publishes are far less professional than she seems to think they are when my own pieces weren’t meeting some professional standard she said she had, she seemed to think that it was me who couldn’t meet her expectations. Rather than get snipy, I just let it go and wrote a piece for the blog that I still haven’t had time to retool for pitching to other publications.

Then I watch shows like New Girl, a show I like, but last episode the main character is trying to get a job, is sitting in a waiting room with 5 other applicants, which NEVER happens and if it did you should run away since they don’t know how to stagger schedules so people aren’t waiting for hours. She breaks down and cries during her interview, freaking out the interviewer. Later in the episode, she goes back and interviews again. We are meant to believe that this attitude got her the job. BULLSHIT. There were five other perfectly reasonable people in that waiting room who probably didn’t break down and cry during their interview, and you’re telling me she got it over them? I hate America. Still like that show though.

Another thing along those lines is movies about mental illness. Everyone gets cured through sheer force of will. How fucking American, right? If “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” has it right, all we need to get through crippling depression is to spend a week in a ward, and all our problems will be magically solved.

So anyway, I have been off my meds for three weeks now, and I’m doing OK. It’s weird to get emotional over things now. Songs can get me misty if they hit me at the right time. I wept through the last half hour of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which is a really awesomely good movie, but probably not worthy of a good cry. This is painting me as a crying conundrum, but it really isn’t that often, and it’s during genuinely emotional things and not over seeing something like a puppy in a teacup. I’m enjoying these new emotions and the catharsis they bring rather than not feeling or bottling to boil over later.

Not sure if I will continue to try life without meds, or if I will go back on them. Wife is in my corner either way, so that’s nice. 

Wife's Exit Interview Questionnaire

Length of Service:     13 months      

Reason for leaving:   There are so many, it’s hard to narrow down to just a couple. Here are a few. 1. Jean Kreutter, the disabilities services director, disclosed my disability to people without my permission, which after consulting with LDA Minnesota I was advised that that “I would suggest you find out who you can speak to in HR regarding a complaint in which your supervisor is violating your confidentiality and, in a back-handed manner, discriminating based on your disability.” But considering that my concerns were never given credence when I raised them (which I will get to shortly), I figured continuing to raise concerns would be another dead end, so it is better to leave Hennepin Technical College than continue to be discriminated against. I made this clear in a recent letter to my newest supervisor. I’d bet nothing changed. 2. Despite having been promised the opportunity to teach and advance my career while at HTC, it became clear that Lisa Larson would never allow that to happen, she actively discouraged me from pursuing advancement and wrote a ridiculous review of me not meeting expectations in work ethic or teamwork when in fact I have been working overtime for free, I have increased the Writing Center’s visit rate by more than 800 percent and have a 96 percent return visit rate from students – despite this success I was often berated and treated like dirt. Lisa Larson even said “well anyone can do your job.” When I was able to win a free ticket to a $450 educational event in my field, Lisa said I would have to take vacation time to go to it and did not support it. I ended up working longer hours and going to the event on my own time, then bringing that knowledge back to HTC as a free benefit to students. Lisa actually said I should look for conferences that focus on paragraph development and sentence structure, which is not something that exists, and would be like asking a math instructor to go to a workshop on how to add and subtract, it’s counterproductive. 3. On another note, when I raised safety concerns after specific threats from a specific student, Lisa Larson did nothing to help the issue. I filed a report through the code of student conduct in early July, and the matter was still unresolved by the time I left in October. In mid-September, my husband bought me mace to carry with me, and tweeted about it, and this was the FIRST time that campus security had been notified about my safety issue. So to put it in as few words as possible, I am leaving HTC because of discrimination, safety concerns, and I was discouraged from advancing my career in any way.

1.                  What did you like most about working for Hennepin Technical College?     I love working with students. I have been teaching in higher ed for about 10 years and thought I would make a career of it, but HTC has convinced me that I should put my three bachelors and two masters degrees to better use outside of academia. Students were my life, and when the opportunity to teach a class along with running the writing center were taken away from me, I knew it was time to end my career in academia. So in a way, HTC killed any remaining enjoyment I got from being an educator and forced me to start fresh in a new career.  Thanks!

2.                  What did you like least about working for Hennepin Technical College?     Lisa Larson, Jean Kreutter, being told I don’t matter, being told I am worthless                                              

3.                  Did your supervisor explain your job duties and responsibilities? Yes          No x   

Comments       This is a tricky one. When I started, I asked countless times in person and in email to have a list of job responsibilities and duties, but was never provided with one. So I went with what I was told, but that would change depending on the mood of my supervisor. In addition, my supervisor changed three times during the year I was at HTC, so the new supervisor would often contradict the old supervisor’s instructions and promises, and get mad at me for continuing to work under the existing guidelines. Lisa Larson’s catch phrase is “This is the first I heard of it.” She used that no matter what issue was presented to her. This sort of thing happened on a near weekly basis.                                                                     

4.         Did you understand what was expected of you on the job?  Yes            No x                     

Comments       For some reason, I figured it was my job to make the writing center successful. I did that by raising student visits by more than 800 percent the first year. This September, we were up 300 percent over last September. I also had a 96 percent return visit rate from students, so I believe that indicates they found my services helpful. Many even drove down from the Brooklyn Park campus to get help at my center rather than any other service providers. I worked with other service providers on campus, and reached out to teachers. I even sent hand written thank you letters to each teacher who had a student visit the center. Despite all this success, I still got a negative review from Lisa Larson and was constantly told I wasn’t doing anything right. I think that’s just nuts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

5.            How would you describe your work load and duty assignments?

Fairly assigned  x  Unfairly assigned             

Comments       Another tricky one. I felt the work load was sufficient for the center. I think that changed in the past couple months as the writing center operations were given over to the LRC (a less successful service) so I think the workload as it was shifting was ridiculously easy. As someone with more degrees and experience than many instructors at HTC, I felt unchallenged. I doubt Lisa Larson understood what a wealth of experience and education she had in me, as she often seemed to think I just had a high school education, at least that’s how she talked to me. When they removed all autonomy from me, and it became clear that my success over the past year would be absorbed and attributed to Jean to make her failing LRC look better, I knew it was time to go.                                                                                              

6.         Did you ever suggest changes to your supervisor regarding your work?  Yes x        No      

Comments       Invariably, when I offered my opinion or input on a work issue, I was shot down and told I was wrong. I learned if I wanted anything done, I just had to do it, watch it succeed, and then accept the punishment for being successful.  In fact, the whole decision and organization to move the writing center under the LRC umbrella was made without once consulting a single CLA in the writing or math centers (outside of the brief consultation with the facilitator, but I think my feedback to her held up the forward movement of the consolidation, and led to further shutting the CLAs out of the process)                          

7.            Did your supervisor explain to you why the change could or could not be considered?

Yes      No x   

Comments       I don’t think knee jerk reactions of the sort offered by Lisa Larson come with sufficient explanation. For instance, she said I could no longer lock my door to insure my safety from a specific student threat when I was alone in the center. Her reasoning was that other people on campus work with students in offices by themselves, but this didn’t take into account the specific threat to me. I also work with students every day, and in 10 years had never raised such a concern. Lisa Larson said I needed to work through the Code of Student Conduct on this issue, but again, doing that led to months of no action or movement to keep me safe. Lisa never even notified security about the issue.                                                      

8.            How would you rate the evaluation process at Hennepin Technical College?

Good               Poor     x                      Fair                  Unfair  x         

Comments       My review last month from Lisa was completely ridiculous. I have invited her to come and actually watch me do what I do with students, but she has never once taken me or the previous math CLA up on that offer. Her review was based entirely on her personal interactions with me, which are skewed as she does not listen to any input and assumes the worst of me.  My numbers speak for the success of my methods, yet even 800 percent growth doesn’t merit more than “meets expectations.” I wonder what would exceed them.              

9.            What could we (Human Resources) have done differently to better serve you?

Comments       More leadership training for administration on how to listen and not automatically shoot down ideas, how to treat people with dignity. That’d be a good start.        

10.        What can Hennepin Technical College change to better serve its employees (overall)?

Comments       Listen to them. Treat them like human beings with dignity                          

11.       Would you recommend the college as place to work?  Yes               No      x         

12.       What other comments or suggestions do you have about your work experience here?        

I write all this fully knowing that none of it will mean anything. After a year, I’ve seen all but one other CLA leave under similar circumstances, but nothing was ever done to correct the issues those people raised. Instead, the narrative is created that those people were bad workers and difficult to work with, thereby negating any need to reflect on HTCs role in the process.

Slight Reboot for Less Bitchin'

You may have noticed a few changes in the ol blog lately. Guess word of my blog had spread a bit to people I was not comfortable having know of it, namely wife’s employer. So after some panicked deleting and whatnot, I calmed the hell down and managed to save most of it. However, I lost most of the summer’s updates, but as they were mostly about how wife’s job took a turn for crazyville, an office she shares with mice, lice and a couple bats (really, REALLY), it was hard not to let my anger about the whole situation bleed into every piece of the writing here.

The place is horrible, and worth all the anger, particularly the many ways they circumvent things like employment laws and health codes. She had a day-long meeting of the kind they do to pretend that they listen and respond to concerns, but really don’t. However, after 30 minutes of people complaining that they don’t have access to filtered water or a fridge, wife stands up and says “Filtered water would be nice, but I would really appreciate not having to work with five mice and two bats. My students have now named them. If one of them falls out of the ceiling on me, I'm gone. No notice, I'm gone. I guess it's hard to for me to care about filtered water because of that.”  That kind of shut up all the other complaints for seeming frivolous by comparison.

But, I didn’t start this whole endeavor to become a repository for gripes about my wife’s work, and I think she feels bad when it takes over my blog. So, in a way, this is a good little partial reboot.

Time to take a breath and note the things that are going right:

I’m married to the woman of my dreams.

Phone calls from creditors has gone from 12 a day to 0.

Last week, we got to do a day trip to Red Wing. This weekend, we will be going to Prairie Home Companion for the first time. Next weekend, we will go to Duluth and the North Shore for a mini vacation.

I have a great job, and it’s only a matter of time before wife does too.

I get to be creative and write for a living.

I’ve got an amazing group of coworkers.

I get to carpool with wife nearly every day.

We have enough money to cover food, gas, bills, and rent.

I can do cute jigs for the wife, and make up new lyrics for songs on the fly as I serenade her.

Octoberfest season

Things like this Cowboy Pumpkin Duck in a Hula Skirt exist.

Email I sent to wife yesterday

OK, what the shit.

The doctor says I have the beginning of a sinus and ear infection. I have her send the prescription to Walgreens. 

I get to walgreens, and they haven't finished it yet. then they want to charge me 88 dollars. I flash my insurance card. He says the computers are down and they could do this thing where they charge me 88 and then I would come back..

"Can you send it over to Target?"

He does. I go over to Target, where they just got the call and it will be 15 minutes. I sit on the bench, trying to remain conscious and upright. I haven't eaten since breakfast, I haven't had anything to drink since 10. It's now almost 4. My head is killing me.

I get the pills for 10 dollars. Then start heading home. 

About halfway home, I notice my wedding ring is not on me. 

It should be. 

I empty all my pockets while at a stoplight. Nothing. 

Fuck fuck fuck. 

I turn the car around and head back to Target. 

I park, walk in in a relatively straight line, wondering how long I can remain on my feet. So dizzy. 

I get to the bench I was sitting on. There's someone there. Nothing under her. I am sweating. 

I decide to get in line again to file a lost and found report. I get in line. Look down. And there is the ring. 

Thank jebus. 

I pick it up, slip it on, and head home. 

Good Problems

What a Friday.

I’m finishing week four of a 1-2 week job, inputting data, quality assurance stuff. Rather dull, but I’m still glad for the work. The supervisor asks me to come in on Tuesday, which will be my last day.

I’ve got a part-time job for 20 an hour writing for a legal company, but that won’t start for a couple weeks. But hey, even part time there will pay better than a week at Sears. Glad I didn't take that job.

Last week, I got tired of waiting for this creative talent staffing company to find me something, so I sent a somewhat snarky note. The last email I had gotten from them said they were working hard to find the best opportunity for me. I emailed back “You don’t need to work too hard, I’ll be happy with the second best opportunity.” For some reason, that got them looking for me after 4 months of not hearing from them, resulting in that part time gig.

Then Friday. I got a call from them to meet with a company on Monday that is looking for a temp to hire writing position for 22 an hour. Then I got a call from the other staffing place asking if I want to start Wednesday on a 1-2 month temp job for a legal office doing a lot of typing and Word stuff for 14.50 an hour. I said I could give them a firm answer on Monday, but the time commitment might be an issue. She seemed OK with that.

So after so long, I now have a part time gig, a temp gig, and a potential temp-to-hire gig all happening at the same damn time.

To top it off, I got home and in the mail was a late, but very very appreciated wedding gift that brought tears to wife's eyes and warmed my lumpy black heart and made me wish I could give the sender a big hug of thanks. 

I then started to update Wife on the phone calls I'd gotten since we last talked at noon.

Wife: Your life is ridiculous.

Me: You’re telling me.

Wife: I forbid you to keep talking about your latest phone call. It makes my brain hurt.

Me: gwaaahahahuuuu. Me brain hurt. Good problems.

Minnesotans can be pretty pompous sometimes

Having lived in ND for the past 7 years, moving back to Minnesota has been a nice relief. No offense, Fargo, but damn you can be cold. However, I feel OK saying that, as I have lived the life of a North Dakotan. What I don’t abide by is others looking down on North Dakota who haven’t walked that road.

Case in point, the rest of this blog.

I previously discussed our issues upon moving to MN with getting set for allergy shots for the wife. She’s been doing them for two years now. And as our prescription had been running out, she decided to see an allergist in the cities rather than have to make the trek to Fargo every now and then to check in.

You see, in North Dakota, you can have someone give you your weekly allergy shot at your leisure. No need to go in to the hospital every week to wait in one of those lovely hospital lines, taking time from work. I had to go through some training to give her the weekly shot, but it wasn’t incredibly hard. Two years later, she has seen some improvement.

You wouldn’t know it by speaking to the allergy specialists in the Twin Cities. Everyone who wife told our story would raise their eyebrows as soon as she said I was giving her shots. “Really?”

“Even cardiologists and anesthesiologists aren’t allowed to give allergy shots to their spouses,” one said.

They disparaged me giving the shot. They further talked trash about the method used in North Dakota of mixing the various allergens together into one syringe. “That dilutes it.”

This was the comment here and there throughout the two hours we spent there today as wife went through allergy tests. They put about 16 dots of junk on her back, and gave her about 18 shots of other junk to see what she would react to.

Turns out she only reacted to one thing, dog, and not too much to that. The other 18 or so allergens she reacted to two years ago were now nothing. She was good to go. No more shots.

I raised my hands in triumph. The doctor asked if she had taken any antihistimines in the last 48 hours, just in case. Nope. I so wanted to say “Guess our hillbilly North Dakotan ways done cured her skin itches.” But I’m not one to be a dick out loud, like they were.

To the woman I was a complete ass to at the gas station

I feel I should explain my comment, but to do so, we have to rewind the clock.

I started the day driving the wife to work, a drive where we saw two people spin out, one car accident, and a lot of congestion during the 20 minute commute that was 50 minutes today.

The next thing of note. I went to Michael's to return a Christmas gift we received last week, since Christmas was postponed with wife's family due to the wedding. I brought the gift and receipt to the counter, mentioning that it was a gift and that I planned to get some picture frames with the return.  The guy said since it was bought more than 90 days ago, I couldn't return it. Never mind that it was a gift, that we didn't get it until recently, and so on. He said they've gotten in trouble for returning such things, even unopened with the original receipt. He said I couldn't even return it without a receipt for whatever it was selling for today. I left with the unwanted gift, and no picture frames.

Next I went to Target to get a refill on Wife's epi-pen, the emergency shot I am to give her if she ever has a horrible reaction to her allergy shots. It had two refills left, but the last time we did so was in Moorhead, since they last a year. Turns out Target doesn't carry generic epi-pens, so it was a no go. I did get two nice picture frames though.

Then I went to WalGreens to do a refill at a place we haven't filled from before.

I was having a day. Lots of crap going on, including thinking a lot about my family and how I'm going to be taking a break from them for a while for reasons I don't want to write about.

Then, I walked into the gas station to get some cigs. I walked in after you. You were a 65-year-old short woman with tinted glasses, brandishing a cellphone above your head and making a beeline for the counter, where the clerk was helping a customer.

"I've been trapped in your carwash for 15 minutes, honking. I can't get my car out. I have 911 on the phone."

The clerk chuckled a bit, I don't know why, perhaps because the way you held your phone up above your head as proof, perhaps because working at a gas station is a suckfest of drudgery, and this was something that hadn't happened before. Granted, it was insensitive. You snapped:

"It's not funny!"

The clerk got the attention of another store worker. She came over to help. You repeated your story, still holding your cellphone like it had AIDS, or you were trying to get reception. I wondered what was going on with the 911 operator on the other end while you waved the cellphone around.

"I have 911 on the phone right now!"

The second clerk chuckled at this.

"It's not funny."

Instantly, I thought how we are all tied together. Me with my shitty day. You with your shitty 15 minutes stuck in a car wash. The clerks with their shitty day trying to keep the floors clean despite the new dirty snow tracked in each second. All our lives suck today, and we all need a bit of respite from an uncaring universe to remember that none of it matters, and the most you can hope for is a Vonnegut-like post-modern perspective that the only point is to find some humor in the craziness.

"Yes it is." I said to you.

I got my cigs and left.

Honeymoon in New York, Part One

The Honeymoon started off on a good note. After a morning trying to drag my new wife out of bed before the noon checkout at the St. Paul hotel, we got the hotel to airport service. Wife was happy to be in a cadillac for this first foot of the journey. I was happy she was happy, because she does not fly well.

We got to the airport, and sat around for an hour until the flight boarded. Me playing with my new ring, the first piece of jewelry I’ve owned, and still feeling weird. 

The flight was uneventful. I tend to go to the bathroom right before boarding so I don’t have to figure out how to get to the aisle and down the way to the bathroom on the plane, then try to figure out how to go in a room that is smaller than me. Wife is a different breed, and is guaranteed to get up at some point during the flight, even if it’s only 2 hours. Different strokes for different folks.

We got to LaGuardia, and made our way to the transportation counter. Our travel agent had secured something called a “supershuttle” for us. We did not know what this was, but it was paid for. I gave my voucher to the guy, and he put in our name. After waiting for 20 minutes, the shuttle arrived. A blue van that has three rows of seats for passengers. A group of French people were already inside, which left us the far back seat to ourselves. The driver then took off, and stopped at another gate to pick up four more people, their stroller, and about 6 bags of luggage to cram in the back. He asked wife and I to separate so the four people could have the back seat. “No” said wife, flatly and with finality. The group of four broke up into different seats, and we all wedged in. I put my shoulder bag on the floor to make more room.

Then began the death ride to Manhatten. Us with broken seatbelts and holding on to each other for perhaps the last time. Seatbelts would have been useless anyway with all the luggage directly behind our heads ready to lunge forward and end us quickly in the event of a crash. I’ve seen videos of Calcutta drivers, and they have nothing on New York. Holy shitstorm!

So after two stops, and an hour after getting on, we arrived at the Wellington to check in for 6 nights. This is where the fun really began. 

You should know this about Wife. She spent two years in Boston, which taught her polite midwestern self that she had to become a bitch to get things taken care of. I never got that, and am rather accepting of getting screwed by companies. This is why it’s nice to have her on my side, because we were told upon arriving at the Wellington that a large group of people had missed their flight that day and were staying another night, and therefore there was no room for us. The wellington is a large hotel, by the way, so there was no way that every room was taken by this group, just a lucky few picked, including us. Instead, we would be getting a room for the first night at the Blakely, just across the street and down the road. It's the thin brown building with the blue banner.

Wife: And what will I be getting in compensation for this?

Clerk: The Blakely is a four star hotel.

Wife: But it isn’t this hotel. And we have to lug our shit over there and back?

Clerk: It’s a very nice hotel with a free breakfast.

Wife: And will you be upgrading our room? (She asks questions, but they come out as statements. It’s amazing.)

Clerk: Yes. We’ll be upgrading you to a King.

Me: So if there is a lag between check out there and check in here, what do we do?

Clerk: We should have a room available for you by then. As long as you don’t come back at 7 a.m. or something.

Me: That’s good.

At this point, I realized I had left my shoulder bag on the Supershuttle. It had our laptop, our itinerary, my keys, my cell phone, and several books, including “Catching Fire” book two of the Hunger Games. SonofabitchwhatarewegoingtodoI’mfreakingout! At this point, I stopped being happy-go-lucky and bat shit insane. To my wife’s credit, she took control and said we would get it back. I couldn’t stop the visions of people finding the bag and keeping it.

We lugged our shit over to the Blakely. Wife said she had two issues, One, I had forgotten my bag, and two, that we were told to check in by the Wellington. The clerk said something vague about having someone look into the bag and started to check us in. Wife left to go 411 the supershuttle herself. I told the clerk that the bag was more important than checking in right now, and she sort of goofed on her priority. She was unfazed. As I checked in, Wife stood outside calling Supershuttle. They were less than helpful. They had no record of us being on the shuttle, even though they had put my name in the computer at the airport. I took our bags up to floor 13 (a hotel with a floor 13!) and brought them into the room, a smoking room, and smelling deeply of it.

I went back down to the street, where Wife was spewing venom into the phone, telling them that yes, we were indeed on a supershuttle, it had stopped at the Millenium hotel, then a second stop for the French people, then at the Wellington, even though we were no longer at the Wellington and I had forgotten my bag because of how tightly crammed in we were on the shuttle and it was likely under the second row of seats where I had left it when we crawled out, thankful to be alive. Wife was given a different number to call, and in any event, they wouldn’t be able to figure out who drove us until tomorrow morning.

Wife then did the best thing possible, she called our travel agent and left a message. We spent the night in our smokey room of this four star hotel. The extra star I guess means you get a sink and a coffee maker. Other than that, it was a pretty gross room and we dreamed of bedbugs.

The next morning, Wife got back on the case, this time with a travel agent fighting on our side. In a few hours, they located the driver, but it would cost $50 for us to get the bag back. RANSOM! We sucked it up and paid for it.

At noon, after the free breakfast, and a horrible first day behind us, we walked over to the Wellington with our bags, where Wife tried once again to check in. Our room wasn’t ready.

Wife: Not ready? We were told it would be ready as long is we didn’t come by 7.

New clerk: That’s ridiculous.

Wife: I have to say that this has been a pretty aweful experience so far for our honeymoon.

Clerk: You can leave your bags with the bellpeople and come back at 4.

Defeated, roomless, and crabby, we decided to leave our bags and try to make the best of the day. Wife had left her walking shoes at the wedding, and only had some uncomfortable boots to wear. But, our day started to turn around. On Friday, the day before the wedding, she had gotten a call from the Late Show with David Letterman and we got seats for Monday’s show. The theater was only 3 blocks away, so we walked over to The Hello Deli, she got a picture with Rupert, and we shared a delicious sandwich. 

Biff, from the Late Show, walked in and talked to Rupert a bit. I pointed him out to Wife.  At 2, we lined up as asked outside the theater, got our tickets, and then went to a bar for an hour to wait to go back to the theater. Celebrity sighting: In the line with us was Tony nominated actress Margo Martindale, you may not know the name, but you will recognize her. She was a few people up, but I knew it was her and stared a lot. She seemed pleasant.

Watching Letterman was an experience, especially I think on this day. He started late, and had to restart segments several times due to technical issues and other things. That morning, many of them had attended the funeral of their long-time make up person, who died from a long fight with cancer. Letterman had to restart his tribute to her three times before he could get it right. It was touching. Then Mitt Romney showed up to do the Top Ten List, which explained the security guys in the balcony watching the crowd like hawks. Then Tom Cruise came out, and it was sort of awkward, but fun.

We had a great time, then back to the hotel. We got our room keys, our bags, and trundled up to the fourth floor in the back building. Down the narrow hall to our room, where the keys didn’t work. Last straw for Wife.

Wife: If I go down, I’m going to be bitchy.

Me: Go for it.

She came back with vouchers for four free breakfasts and two working keys. I love her.

The room was adequate. Nothing special that you would expect, and lacking a coffee maker as we have grown accustomed to in the midwest. All in all, it was Meh, but liveable after having me search for bedbugs.

Wife: So the clerk from last night was there.

Me: Oh?

Wife: She said that she wouldn’t have ever said we could check in at 7 a.m.

Me: That’s not what we said she said.

Wife: She said that she said we wouldn’t be able to check in before 7 p.m.

Me: That makes even less sense. She said we, alone, couldn’t check in until 7 p.m. when anyone else can check in at 4 p.m.?

Wife: Yes.

Me: That’s fucking nuts.

Wife: I know.

Me: So, we’re checked in now. I’ve got my bag back. Why don’t we start this whole honeymoon over?

Wife: Agreed.

Next time, Part two, where things start to go right.