It is gorgeous outside this morning, but chilly. I am somewhat detached from it; I am somewhat sleepy, somewhat groggy, and in addition to needing a shower, I have a lot of stuff to do around the house today -- the least of which would be vacuuming, re-cleaning the kitchen (again) and cleaning the cat box/cat room -- especially if some friends may be coming up tomorrow. I am not, of course, sure yet who that may entail, but I'd like to keep the house from looking terrible if at all possible.
Boredom and disillusionment comes with being tired; yes, there are many things I could be doing right now, but I'm in that mindset where I could just as easily go back downstairs, pull the blanket over my head, and sleep away the day. I'm not overwhelmed -- far from it, in fact -- I'm just...ugh. I'm in another one of my moods where the world sucks and I just want to be left alone. I'm not going to go back to bed, mind you, but I'm saying I could if I wanted to. No, I've got the aforementioned chores to do, and I have a stack of new papers and rewrites I could grade through if I wanted to spend time doing something productive. It's just a general "eh" mindset I'm in right now. The laze. Apathy. Sick of daily life. That sort of stuff. Nothing major, really. Normal Brandon stuff.
It's hard to focus on writing, here or anywhere else. This semester, as it ends, is really starting to drag on and on, and even though it's been, quite possibly, the easiest semester of my graduate school career, I again realize just how long it's been. I took my comps a month ago, and it seems like it was years ago. I've been with Daisy almost eleven months (counting the time we weren't "officially" together yet, eye roll), and it seems like I've been with her my entire life. The passage of time affects me greatly; it makes things hard to focus on, makes life really strange for me at times. The cats are six years old. I've been living out here for seven years, almost eight. I've been living alone in this house for almost two years. I can't remember what the house's setup was when I wasn't living alone, because it's been so long. It's hard for me to fathom that there was once a time when I didn't own my Monte Carlo yet, or a time when I didn't have to pay all the bills and rent by myself -- stuff like that. I remember when I had to borrow my ex's car to go shopping if I wanted to, and times when I never went shopping or anywhere else in the middle of the night. Everything has changed so much, and in about two weeks' time, it's going to change a whole lot more. Will I wake up in the mornings after graduation and still feel this sort of malaise, this sort of blah-ness at life? There's a lot of food for thought there. I mean, I've always taken things as they come; as much as I can be uptight about things out of my control, just as often I am laid-back and relaxed, just living day-to-day. I've seen friends, close ones, come and go. I've seen friends die, for fuck's sake. Bills come in and go out every month. Money changes hands. Sometimes it snows in May. Things happen, though I so rarely keep track of a lot of it -- it's all in my peripherals.
I'm hoping that tomorrow's adventures in yard-sale-ing will help snap me out of this funk I'm in. I don't need anything, per se, but there's always a certain joy in the thrill of the hunt. I've not gone to a yard sale in two years; honestly, I should hold one myself at some point this summer to get rid of all of the stuff around the house I don't need and don't want to take with me wherever I go next. It would be a noble venture to try, at least. Maybe I'll see if Daisy can come down for a few days and help me do that at some point. I'm sure I have a few friends who would love to come up and help and/or purchase stuff. Hell, I'd give some shit to those friends if they'd take it away; after all, I gave Jay my bike last semester. That was an $80 bike; I just never used it anymore after I bought the car.
I thought about going to see Iron Man 3 this afternoon on opening day. I thought about it long and hard before I decided that I'd rather just not do it today. If at all. I've not seen a movie in a theater since Green Lantern. It's not fun to go see one alone. And I should be saving my cash anyhow for the yard sales tomorrow. Part of this is lethargy and laziness, yes, but a larger part of it is that I don't like to be that guy going to a theater alone to see a movie alone, without someone next to me to whisper all of the comic-book references to. It's no fun. I'd end up falling asleep.
I set up my poor-man's-home-theater system yesterday, consisting of my reworked Dell laptop and a speaker system for it on my nightstand in the bedroom. I haven't used it yet; the laptop is closed (and it's so big that there's barely any room left on the nightstand for my alarm clock and the speaker configuration). I had to use a speaker system because the on-board sound for the laptop is blown; it does not work at all. I can plug in the speakers, however, and get perfect sound. Luckily, I have a few spare sets of speakers around the house -- two sets of which I've found at, surprise, garage sales around town. And the post comes full-circle.
So much of the stuff in this house has been found at, and purchased from, yard/garage sales. I was trying to, a few days ago, take stock of all of the stuff I had around the house that either came from a garage sale I've gone to, or from one my ex's mother went to:
- My desk, chair, and the spare chair/desk in the spare room
- Bookshelves/racks/storage stands (at least three)
- A great deal of my clothing; my favorite pair of sandals, several pairs of shorts/pants, many dressier shirts, and several pairs of my pajama pants were all garage sale finds for anywhere from a dime to a dollar apiece
- My ten-pound, steel-toed Caterpillar boots ($12, talked down from $20, bought them still in the box with tags on them)
- A PlayStation 1 and several games
- At least ten XBOX games
- A clock radio (now the primary clock in my home office/man cave here)
- My TV antenna
- Many DVDs and CDs I own
- Many books I own, including novels, poetry collections, and cookbooks
- The cats' food dish/self-waterer assembly
- Lots of dishes/glassware/kitchen utensils (most of which are boxed up now)
- Several pots and pans
- Most of the wall art I have in the house
- A spice rack
- At least two of my lamps and fans
- The wire-rack caddy on my bathroom counter
- Two file cabinets
- Assorted small electronics/cables/cell phone chargers
- A really nice wireless router for $2, brand new and in the box (which I've not yet used, even after purchasing it probably three years ago, because I really have no use for it right now)
- At least two of the satchels/messenger bags I've used for school, including the one I currently use
Etc. There's a lot else I'm sure I'm missing, as well, including a fair amount of stuff in the garage and storage downstairs. My ex used to find a ton of jewelry, purses, and shoes as well. This is why I love that sort of thing -- you never know what you'll find, and most of what you do find you don't really need, but it's good to have around the house. It's about excitement, the call, the thrill. I've never spent less than $40 or so on one of the city-wide garage sale days, and always came home with a full backseat or trunk. It's like the poor-man's mini-Christmas.
Also: the church sales are the best. The indoor church sales are amazing.
Still, I am disconnected from a lot of things going on in the outside world; as I slowly emerge from my graduate school insular bubble, I'm finding myself disillusioned and lost in a lot of the outside world; this is part of why I mostly keep to myself and stay quietly at home -- tomorrow's big event invitation where I've tried to gather my friends for a fun day together is an extreme rarity for me; never have I had more than two or three of my friends at my home at once before, and even that is rare. That may not end up changing if nobody comes up tomorrow, but still. There's never been a desire or reason for it. I'm a pretty solitary person. Give me my cats and Daisy, and that's all I need or want out of social interaction for the most part, as you know -- with the once-or-twice-weekly long conversation I have with the overnight cashier at Walmart, who knows me well at this point, of course.
I'll actually probably see said cashier tonight, to be honest with you -- I need to get more cat litter and cigarettes, and should get some cash back for the aforementioned garage sales.
As for the rest of the day, I should probably start doing something productive; Daisy is asleep (or she should be, by this point, since she has to work tonight) and it's so nice that I opened the windows to let the house breathe a bit. Maybe, later this evening, I'll take a nap. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll order a pizza and drink some beer. The weekend is just beginning.
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