A late birthday gift from Brutha Ray, shipped from the Magic Kingdom. Thank you my friend, You know the way to a pirate’s heart.

Strike your colors you brazen wench! No need to expose your superstructure!

(click the image for detail)

Just about the last time I had hair, and certainly the last time I had a mohawk.

Me. Summer 1997.

I like these so much it almost makes it seem worth growing hair again.

Can I erase my whiny, I’m-so-sick-and-sorry-for-myself entries from earlier this week?

Of course I can. It’s my blog. I’m god here. Same reason I can delete comments I don’t like. Freedom of speech? This ain’t your fuckin’ america, folks, there ain’t no constitution.

No fuckin’ rules.

And yet, I won’t delete ’em.

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I’m finally starting to feel human again (or subhuman, or inhuman, or super-human, or whatever normal would be), finally getting some work done. Now, my challenge is to resist the urge to act like I’m completely well and resume full-speed-ahead. That’s the mistake I usually make and the result tends to be a relapse, and a really bad respiratory infection that means ten days of horse pills.

So I have to ignore the voice that says back to the gym tomorrow unless I wake up no longer feeling like there’s a porcupine living in my sinuses.

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Now, I’m not gonna link to it because that just seems too fucking egotistical. But Buck, you literally made me cry, three times, while I was reading that birthday message. I kept trying to reply and it took me this long to be able to do it. Thank you. It takes a lot to get me to well up that way.

And thanks to the various people who sent me birthday gifts or thoughts or greetings or images. You people rule, every one. I’m not worthy.

It’s been about a year and a half, maybe even two years, since I’ve been really really sick. That’s kind of a record, as people with kids will know.

From the time your kid goes to pre-school until they get second grade or so, cold season starts with school and lets up somewhere late in spring, and you’re sick more than you’re well all that time.

If you’ve got two kids like I do, well spaced, about the time the first gets to the ‘not bringing home so many colds’ phase, the second one hits pre-school and it all starts up again. Not so bad if your kids are close together because you’ve still got your cold immunities built up, but with kids four years apart, they lapse.

But my youngest is in second grade, and I’m past the baby-cold phase by several years. And my no-major-cold record shows this. No flu, no major cold, no sinus infections. Even with my stress level up as high as it’s been the last year.

So I’m particularly cranky this week, with the cold that just won’t let up. I’m getting to the point where anger is replacing misery as I get just enough better to 1) have no excuse to stay outta work 2) start to see all the shit I need to get done and 3) still just feel like getting in bed for the day.

Plus, I hate fucking blogging about feeling bad. I hate self-pity. I’d far rather blog about Dean Gray Tuesday or favorite holiday music or about how much The Amazing Race sucks this season. I’d rather blog about how fucking brilliant GRRM is and how great his new book is (The one good thing about being sick – I can read all day).

But all I can think is, christ my sinuses hurt, I need to take a fistful of pills and go to sleep.

Thus – grumble, grumble, grumble. It’s about all I have to say for myself today.

I’m fourty-four years old today. And I’m trying to write something meaningful and staring at a mocking blank screen with nothing to say about my life to date.

I turned comments off on this. If I can actually finish something it’ll get replaced later.

Ignore me, ok? I hate bitching about being sick. And yet, I feel compelled to.

Nothing quite like using a nice holiday weekend to sleep off an annoying fucking cold. Just what I was wanting. Instead of having some sort of night out on the town with friends, or some sort of nekkid holiday revel to celebrate by birthday, I’ve been alternately sleeping, watching my football team get royally smacked, and trying to complete some basic domestic tasks like laundry before I have to go back to work.

I was gonna take tomorrow off for my birthday. I dunno what I was gonna do, maybe just take my motorcycle up a hill or maybe go sit in a cafe and write. But I was gonna do something just for me. Only now I don’t fucking feel like it. If I’m gonna be sick, I might as well be working.

Too late though, I already put in for an extra day off.

Honestly the thing that pisses me off most about being sick is that I wanna go work out. Which means I’m getting back to gym-rat mentality. I wanna get in there and work ’til I sweat, work ’til it burns. And I can’t, not when I’m dizzy and coughing and sneezing.

Grumble. Grumble. Grumble.

Justifiable Homicide.

The brutal killing – sometimes after appropriate torture – of people who richly deserve it.

Case in point: customer service reps who fuck something up, then want to argue about it instead of saying I’m sorry sir, I’ll get it fixed.

The word service is, theoretically, in there for a reason. You’d think. Evidently not.

I actually told a woman who works for Wells Fargo “Your email management skills are not my problem.” But you know, in my head her hot red blood was dripping down my arm as I held her tender white throat in one hand, and drew a straight razor slowly across her neck, carving her a second smile.

So what I said? Pretty nice, all things considered.

Pardon me, I need to look for someone to hurt…

I’m having one of those weeks.

I know I talk about running away to that mythical tropical isle, (or that mythical sailboat so I can visit all the tropical isles) all the time. That’s sort of always running in the back of my head, 24×7. And you know, it could happen, I could just snap one day and off I go.

But I’m having one of those weeks where it doesn’t have to be coconuts and tropical breezes. I’m having one of those weeks where just no fresh problems and no backlog of work and no fucking drama would be – you know, swell. Where just having a couple days all to myself sounds like the next best thing to paradise.

I don’t have time for details today. So let’s just summarize:

Kids school. Headmaster drama. [shudders]

Work. Review time. Too much to do, no idea where to put my attention. Stress and panic all around me. Impossible schedules.

Money. God, life was so much simpler way back when we were all rich for those couple years around the dotcom boom. I keep thinking, one more pay cycle and I’ll have this wild animal under control, and then it breaks free again.

Home. I went on a clean-and-throw-away tear last weekend, and I got halfway and ran out of weekend, which means my house is all garbage bags full of un-sorted kids clothes and the kids rooms are both full of bins of unsorted toys. When it’s done we’ll have a radically much clearer house but meantime it’s a fucking mine field and I don’t have time to touch it; this means everyone’s stressed (is it only me that gets a charge from the chaos?)

Add that to the ever-present list of things to do (bills, laundry, general house maintenance, cooking, cleaning, workouts), and the list of things I wanna do (write, play, teevee, movies, resident evil, read), and I’ve got at least two point five days of stuff for every 24 hours hours of day.

Maybe if I just give up sleeping?

Want.

You know I’m all about want don’t you?

Archie McPhee has a whole pirate collection.

And I want it all.

You know, my birthday is the end of the month. And a guy just can’t have too many pirate accessories…

Archive McPhee needs a wishlist, like Amazon has.

Thx to Greggg for making me want this shit. And incidentally for doing a graphics tuneup on my blog. You rock, brutha-man.

(oh and by the way, I already have the pirate devil duckie. I don’t know why, but devil duckies seem to find me)

I can’t seem to find any time or inspiration to write anything. So a few quick updates.

• Go celebrate halloween – pagan or otherwise, candy or black midnight rites, carnal or child-like. But have yourself some horrific fun. For myself. I’m planning to hand out candy to cute teenage girls and try to scare them a little.

• I managed to hurt myself at the gym friday, tearing or spraining or straining something in my left bicep, to the point where I could not stretch out my left arm friday. Not that I mind; I’m better now and it didn’t stop me from maintaining my workout, though curls are out for another day or two.

• My kids are dressed for halloween as an egyptian high priestess, and as medusa. I have cool kids.

• I just got Resident Evil 4. I’ll come up for air in a week, meanwhile, I need a Green Herb or a First Aid Spray.

• I got my nipples pierced saturday. And boy is this feeling distracting, I keep wanting to play with them.

• I’ve now seen Sahara four times. Wow, do my kids like this movie.

I’ll try to expand on some of this later, but for now, dammit, I have work to do.