It’s nearly midnight. I’m tired and should be sleeping, something, as usual, I’m not doing enough of.

Instead I’m working on a few things, cleaning up loose ends from my day. I’m scheduling training for a group of users (when did I become training guy? I suck at training), answering email, closing out tracking tickets for stuff I did the last couple days.

I’m doing this instead of sleeping, instead of writing. Either of which I’d like to be doing, but both of which elude me this evening.

I’m tired, in a way that isn’t just hard work tired, not enough sleep tired. I’m tired deep in the core of me, my heart, soul, whatever you want to call it. I’m worn thin.

I had a line in the header for this blog recently, in the field they call ‘description’ but in which I usually have song lyrics. The line was from an STP song, Big Empty:

     To much walkin’, shoes worn thin
     To much trippin’ and my souls worn thin

It captures how I feel these days, like something’s been shaved away. A protective layer, a shell, gone.

Tired. The word does not do justice. Yet it’s the only word I can think of. Sometimes english is so poor in descriptive words.

Wow, I managed to get all the way through the weekend without a blog entry. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s, you know, a thing.

I also managed to put off paying bills for another weekend. I keep looking at the pile and thinking, didn’t I set you all free? Go! Go! Move on! Yet it never works.

I did manage to draw blood (my own), do a mountain of laundry (not all my own), watch a football game (my team won), drink too much tequila (though not very much too much), and watch a lot of Veronica Mars (it’s almost all gone).

I did not get any writing done (despite staring at the screen and trying about five times), but I also didn’t do any work-work, which is good with the week I had.

Two days isn’t enough to decompress. I need another two, or three. But that’s one week down, two to go. Unless I go violently mad in the meantime and start to dig my teeth into someone. Which, you know, doesn’t sound so bad. Actually the more i think it, the more I like it.

Meanwhile, think I’ll just go off and think the wrong thing about several tasty females from Veronica Mars. Mmmm, blue hair…

I think I’ve said this before but I seem to have hit one of those phases where I can’t seem to communicate. I stop sending email, I don’t call, I don’t always respond to IM. I’m suddenly not stunningly clever and seductive.

It’s funny, I crave contact when I get like this, but I seem unable to maintain a conversation and don’t reach out. It seems to be a periodic phase. Sometimes I stop blogging as well, but honestly sometimes these phases lead to more writing so I try not to fight it.

I just lose the ability to stay in contact from time to time.

Family are taking off on one of those quick weekends away with another school family (Who also have the dad-who-has-to-work issue) The kind you can do when you get things like MLK day off. Not like us workin’ stiffs. Which means I’m all by my lonesome this weekend. I’d like to picture the moms goin’ down to the strip club while the kids are sleeping, a kind of moms gone wild weekend, but I’m more thinking it’s going to be a fireside cocktails and ice cream weekend.

So my agenda:

In my imagination: Wine, women, song. Debauchery. The kind of weekend you half wish you could remember, and half wish you could forget. The sort of weekend when you wake up with a wedding ring you don’t remember getting, or half a set of handcuffs, or a tattoo on your face, or knife wounds across your abdomen, or in bed next to someone you’ve never seen before, who hopefully isn’t dead. The kind of weekend that leaves permanent scars and breaks hearts.

In my hopes: Maybe I’ll get some writing done. I’ll go the the gym and re-start my workout routine (I faltered over the holidays).

What it’ll really be like: Work (work-work. I have so damned much I need to finish). Blog work (Yeah, Hiromi, I’m gonna try and fix your little problem). Rent a couple movies, take down xmas lights, put up temporary fencing where the tree took my fence down. Do a lot of laundry. Clean my hot tub. Cooking for one. Porn. Try and find a book I actually feel like reading in my huge to-read shelf. I’ll stare at my computer for a while, trying to think of something to write, then blog something pointless instead and go watch Bones.

And you know, that doesn’t sound bad. Other than the take down xmas lights part, because I always say you only have to leave them up ’til june to call it up early.

The tree butchers are here dismembering my fallen tree.

A moment of silence. Plus chain-saws.

(I can’t help it, whenever I think of a chain-saw I hear Ash’s voice saying “Tool Shed“)

You know I’d gotten used to this monstrous fallen thing in my street. I kind of liked it. It gives my street corner a primeval forest forest look. If you, you know, squint n’ shit. Maybe it’s more Prime Evil.

But anyway, it has to go, not least because it’s on my fence, which will need to be re-built, and because it’s half on a city street. And while my city may be your perfect corrupt, up-scale suburb, I’ll run outta bribe money way too soon to get the city to ignore this for long.

Ok, now who’s goin’ into the wood chipper? I have a few candidates. It’s not the same without snow, though.

More tree removal pictures are over on flickr

Click the image to see the whole set on flickr. (I fuckin’ hate flickr.)

(and I blame Whirly for the title of this post)

I can’t seem to find a lot to say this morning, partly due to my being sick, partly due to the way-too-much-food hangover. I had a decent xmas day – lower than usual in-law tension, due to one old irritant having died and one being out of town this year, and due to my having done most of the cooking (which also meant the food was better than usual). I don’t think anyone wound up crying, which may mean my kids are growing up.

But here’s to Shay, who certainly knows how to put the box in your boxing day. That right there is the xmas spirit I’m talkin’ about.

Life’s trivial annoyances.

Yesterday, I got a shipment from Sephora.com – items selected from someone’s wishlist for xmas. Like, a hundred and fifty bucks worth of high-end beauty products.

So the box just reeks when I get it. Like a fucking french whorehouse. And I’m thinking, this can’t be good.

Turns out one of the products inside – a bottle of Jonathan Product shampoo, has burst during shipment, completely soaking everything inside, including all the fussy gift-wrapping, the paperwork, everything, with this stinking golden goo.

Fuck. So the labor-saving idea I had, to order it, turns into another xmas week mall trek to return this dripping slimy box.

Mmm. Dripping box. Wait, the clerks at Sephora are generally total babes, maybe this won’t suck.

And then there’s my TiVo. Which picked yesterday to die. And of course a TiVo is a commodity like a cell phone, you don’t repair it, you just buy a new one when it’s out of warranty. Which it is, of course. Nevermind the hours of teevee I had saved on it to be watched over my holiday break, movies and marathons of Nip/Tuck (which I admit I’m saving because it’s suckage seems to know no bounds this season; yet I can’t look away).

But it’s another of those fucking expenses I can’t really afford, yet have to pay.

I don’t even watch that much teevee. Why do I need two TiVos? Yet, of course, the few things I do watch are always on the same day, at the same time. And I never, ever watch teevee live anymore, once you get used to TiVo you can’t.

I’m thinking about bypassing the mall and just heading for the horizon when I leave work. Who’s with me?