SGFE--All the World's a Stage

Boy am I tired. But the show must go on. Not used to working, I guess. The Arizona heat don’t help.

I have been away from here for abt 13 years, except for “vacations,” and it seems like I see more and more wierdos. The guy across from me on the train is wearing a rosary around his neck. Are those things necklaces? On the way here, I seen this 55 or so year old sun-scorched woman wearing a pink tube top on a bmx bike. I can really people watch on the train. Arizona around here is such a mix of glitz and crap. We really want to show the world that we’ve got sth, but it’s all facade. The buildings are mostly throw-away. Having said that, there is plenty of southwestern culture that needs no spaghetti. I saw another girl who was dressed in a long dress that was some sort of flower print on a black background, the upper part of the dress ending in an orangeish tube top. It was too nice looking a dress for the out of place frisbee she was carrying, but it didn't bother me. I sometimes wear cowboy boots with shorts. It's a fashion statement. The leg of a cowboy boot is decorative and therefore should be seen. I don't need earrings and studs and tatoos--if I feel I need to stand out, I just wear my standard jeans shorts and don the boots. One woman spotted it at a movie theater--I was seeing Monsters vs. Aliens w/ r. "Gross," she said.

I can’t decide on a voice, and you are not helping. I guess if I had sth good to write, I wouldn’t need gimmicks like abbreviations and contractions and ain’ts and she-don’ts, etc. My grandma, from Mississippi, talks like that, and she don’t even know she’s doing it.

The new job is ok. It’s only part-time, and I’m trying to get into public school sub teaching too. My step-father thinks I ought to be looking into other work too. So, yesterday, as HE was leaving to substitute teach, he asked me if I was done job searching for the day. I didn’t plan on searching that day, I said. I can’t really write what I feel about that. Not true. If I said, “screw him,” it wouldn’t really capture how I feel. I guess I WANT to say the worst that I could say, but it ain’t always true. I’m watching A Love Song for Bobby Long, and in that movie, people say things the way they want to say them. I guess I can’t do that, tho it’s soitenly a goal to shoot for.

Those two ¶s are all abt me finding my voice, I now see.

I finished A Love Song. I still don’t talk like Dr. House and say whatever the fuck is on my mind (laugh, as if one movie would change me). Shame. This morning, Chas (step-dad) was bringing in a computer which had been in the shop for repair. “Did they fix it,” I axed. “That’s why I was bringing it in,” he said. “Duh,” he implied, “you’re stupid, and I have other issues, some of which center around you.”

I’m supposed to be writing abt Ricky and what those wonderful days of the month with him were like. I’d better get started on ‘em. We—Steve, me and r stayed up every night until 2 am. R and I were sleeping on the fold-out couch. I would wake up first, feeling proud to be the “early bird,” at abt 10:30 am. You may think it’s criminal keeping a kid up that late, and I would not disagree. I tried to put him to bed earlier a couple of nights and he just lay there for 1 ½ hrs., requesting endless drinks, snacks and trips to the bathroom. So from then on he would stay up w/ us watching Adult Swim, me trying to edit content by changing the channel or asking him a question or commenting on sth he was doing at the controversial moments to distract him.

It was hard getting Rick to eat American food. I had this wild idea that Apple Jacks would be a no brainer for a kid’s breakfast. Wrong. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese? Try again. Coke and endless ice-cream from the well-stocked freezer? Sure!

After breakfast, it was time to go swimming, the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Swim in the direct heat of the day in Tempe, Arizona, in the hottest part of the day, 115 degrees? Not. But what are you going to do if you have no real reason not to say no? I kept it to a 20 minute minimum, though. When we started swimming, he couldn’t. While here, people kept supplying him w/ pool toys, all of which helped him. When he had a squirt gun in his hand, he would swim to me, first 10 feet, then the breadth of the pool. He would not let go of the gun, tho, and he would not swim to me w/o it. Eventually he could swim like a frog the length of the pool. When I told my step-dad abt it, he didn’t think it was much of an achievement, but I thought it was great. We often swam in the eves, too.

I prayed in that water too. I don't know why it is that when I get in water I start praying.

Aftns we would do whatever our hands or butts found to do. The first day we went to the local park and he ran around through the sprinklers—first time in his life. We watched a ton of Spongebob and Yo Gabba Gabba! We also went to Del Taco. R liked to sit on the rides even though I didn't have a quarter to operate them.

I’m not sure there is anything else to describe abt the month. Maybe I’ll think abt sth else for the next entry.