It’s no use setting my weekend alarm for 11am: I won’t get up. Or at the very least, I’ll wake up briefly with a strong desire to throw the phone across the room and hide under the covers like some kinda night creature. So I don’t set it and inevitably I sleep in until a few minutes before noon, noon being the cut off time where I hear my dad screaming at me, “Get up! Get a life!” Yeah, so many decades ago the memory is still with me.

(Yesterday, however, I jumped out of bed around 10am, ready to take on the weekened. I wish that happened more often)

I was thinking about all the things I’m thinking while I’m at the gym listening to whatever book on tape or NPR show thinking about it or something else and all those things. I try to practice mindful thinking, keeping my focus on whatever’s coming through the headphones, but inevitably my mind is lead elsewhere. When I was younger I learned that this is often a trait of genuis kids (which in some “modest” respects I was) and while I never considered myself to have ADHD–given my propensity for being able to force myself to focus on my teachers in order to get the A (and avoid the wrath of my parents)–I’ve always been prone to daydreaming–but always with the ability to pull myself back when that little bit of my brain said, “That’s important, pay attention, at least take notes, so you can figure it out later. It is a bit sad given that the few times my wife is focused on an NPR show when we’re going somewhere in the car I’m inevitably a superman flying over mountains twenty miles away thinking about space turtles while she’s saying something intelligent about the story at hand.

My bad. I was listening to a Judy Bloom book today, when I believe I read as a kid, something about a bratty fourth grader who resents his dumb little brother (something I could relate to at that age) and there was an entire chapter about the two of them and their mother going to get their feet measured to get new shoes. This is just one example of the myriad of things my mind goes to, that memory sitting at the now Cowboy store in Prineville, sitting down, taking off my shoes, enjoying the attention I got from whatever guy as he measured my feet and brought out a sparkly new pair of shoes. Unlike the book, I don’t rememeber a goddamn thing about my brother at those measurements, just my own endorphin rush as someone gave me their entire attention in a stituation that was entirely predictable. Find shoes you like. Sit down. Take off shoes. Get feet measured. Somebody else puts shoes on. Walk about for a few minutes. Mom pushes the toes down to make sure there’s anough room for a year of growth. An opportunity for perfectly predictable touch and attention. Nah, I wasn’t a higher functioning autistic type at all (lol).

I had a dream this morning that I was sitting on a lawn chair outside the house of an x-lover. I’ve never been to her house in real life, but for shits and giggles lets just say it’s her house. I was flipping through a notebook for awhile. Then there was a black and white cat. I said hi to the cat but didn’t pet it. That struck me as odd later in the dream. Then after a long, long time of waiting she got home along with her husband. He was black (not French, as goes the real tale) and very nice. We shook hands and I was careful in how I introduced myself and why I was there as I was getting a, “Be careful,” look from her. Funny, I don’t remember why I was there, but it was important. Anyway, somehow I walked away into this huge parking lot in front of their home. It was night. I heard a commotion and I looked over to see an old Jeep wrangler trying to run her and her husband over. Knowing they’d come for me next I climbed up on this roof, which was under another roof (don’t ask me to explain), and held on for dear life for the next dream cycle (about 90 minutes). Eventually I thought I should go down and took a peak. The Wrangler wasn’t there anymore but there were a bunch of people who’d parked their motorcycles chatting and having a huge party with loud music. Next thing I know she’s on the roof next to me, not struggling to hold on, in a bikini. I couldn’t help wondering how she wasn’t getting scratched up by the roof tiles as those had been killing me for the last sleep cycle.

I think a lot about how people navigate parking lots. Can’t be helped when the view from the treadmill is a parking lot. Most people are decent drivers, but every now and then you find that person that’s good at parking but not backing up, or visa versa. And everything in between. People come and go from the restaurants. Today, most of them being treated for mother’s day. Here I am running, full of soooooo much goddamn testosterone at this age, thinking wow, (warning: politically incorrect language coming up): MILF.

I am a terrible person. And I don’t care. Reason d’etre for this site to be completed at a future point in time.

I also think about all of the young stallions at the gym. It doesn’t bother me. Part of it is genetics: no matter how much I’d have worked out at that age I never would have looked that good. On the other hand, looking at what few pictures there are of me fiftee years ago, I was actually a pretty good looking guy. Too bad I rarely knew how to carry myself with any confidence. But then maybe I did. I just didn’t carry myself which much confidence where it mattered, except maybe in jobs interviews where I felt life and death were on the line (which in some respects it sometimes was).

…asm…