Malcom Rodriguez

i think my boss might be visiting today

i need to clean
I was unexpectedly up til 530 saturday night in chicago over the weekend- i had been just planning on doing a day trip sunday but sometimes that is how plans go

i am still sore in my feet and legs and my finger isnt quite recovered.

JPH has a new couch. I do love couches.

we might be doing a condo now.

id still really like to make the house work.

i'll miss the gilded lily.

god it's a slog

i did laundry last night but now am behind on showering. Skipped the gym two days in a row. showering will help. cleaning will help.

went to uhaul yesterday to end my free month of storage that comes complimentary with renting a trailer- which I have now done three times recently- and start a new one. id asked someone on the phone or in person i dont remember if i could string them together and they told me i could not but what I could do was use one free month and then use a seperate free month on a different unit. but they told me yesterday in person i could not so I called the customer serivce phone number and arranged for it that way. uhaul is always a pain in the ass.

janky liquor store that doesnt have bathrooms i can use.

overeating at work. work is life.

probably need a vacation. need to be done moving. need to be out of this basement.

a shower will help. probably could spend less time eating at work. probably need to move my personal computer off my desk so i stop playing age of empires 2 at work all the time.

bex got the door hung yesterday- the contractor wanted 1k for that she did it for 450. She's been doing really well with youtube too.

my finger is still not 100 percent. its been 3 weeks.

going to the basball game sunday. going to take the train.

should probably get donuts for the sales meeting today.

admitted to myself and bex last night that ive been depressed for a week or so and settled on mcdonalds as a quick fix. stayed up late- maybe 1030 putzing on my phone- decided to skip the gym. finger still hurting- its 3 weeks today since i imjured it. putzing on my phone probably put undue pressure on it- i think i understand why people use those fancy doctor contraptions to splint their sprains.

i thought of the zen chinease farmer who was always meh about whatever happens, seemingly good or bad (there is a pattern it is always one good followed by one bad) when i was staring at the sweating walls of this s**t p*eling stucco coming off the basement brick walls- there has to be a reason i injured my finger- i remember driving up that day and was about ready to park where i normally park but then not doing that and then parking near Willon's car and then injuring my finger trying to stop my wind-flung door from fu***ng up his white camry.
"God blessed the boulevard of broken dreams that was paved with good intentions that burnt my toast"

nancy, the usual cashier at panera, always calls me kyle. she remembered my phone number today without any help. my mom stopped paying so now i am officially drinking unlimited sip club coffee on my own dime. I tried to correct her one time "it's just K" but that didnt seem to phase her so now just let her call me Kyle. It's cool to have a nickname. My mom set the name as "K" when she signed up using my phone number because she figured id use it more than her and didnt want trouble for me but reckoned it was plausible for her to have just used her inital should she be called out for

some guy was chattering with me
"Am i in your way boss" (folksy)
"Im just looking for the almomd milk" (casual)
"Thats the great question- is it really milk?" (mock intellectual)
"Thats why they make it all one word" (trying to keep up)
"Fancy sugar water- if they had coconut water id go for that but itd give me a heart attack- but i wouldnt need any sweeter" (back to business)
"Id go for that... *while choking on a sip of coffee* take it easy... *trying again* take it easy"
"You too 'oss"

then i walked back to my uzual spot but this.time the ole bird who always sits 10 feet kitty corner in the booth facimg out in a direction toward me on a line parralel to the direction my face would naturaly look if i were looking up at someone in my booth made direct eye contact with me and said good morning and i returned it. I set my coffee on the table to go to the restroom and felt filled with warm energy like i havent felt in a week.

-just went back for a coffee refill-
Saw some other dude there and made another crack about there not being almondmilk and he said yeah they might not have it out so after a pause i said well you gotta take the good with the bad and he didnt respond and just walked out of the door without further acknolwedgement

I just realized i havent been bothered by noises/music as much this morning. I think it must be something like what sean bean says in civilization 6: those who dont make time for recreation should soon make time for illness. And also the wise words of JPH "just chill."

its a thursday so all i really need to do is work on getting leads. got hray and called well back from vacation/michigan. Called well texted me yesterday to let me know he and his "lady" split so he might be off. chaz told me it is archaic to call your S.O. your lady- more than faintly patriarchical. i call bex the ole' bells and whistles

moving out of the gilded lily- i hope this bout of depression is just what the doctor would have ordered in a world where doctors make sense and know what theyre doing- the idea here being that i am gonna need to draw on reserves of power whenever the frantic realization that nothing is quite ready and there are 39 little things i have to get done to pull this move off- i will need to go go go regardless of finger injury. but damn when i am on i am on. they called this bipolar in college and tried to clip my wings. maybe not everyone- tone said i should use paragraph breaks. JPH told me he wanted to brag about me and I was making it difficult- i dont know if he knows that the title and ultimate or thereabouts poem is directed toward him. my mom just thought i was doing too much w**d- yeah that was a big part of it.

its good to go off the rails a little- like when youre rounding a corner at great sp*ed and you wanna give the audience the impression that things are highly urgent but dialed in enough that things are still under control- just enough for a gasp or a little breath holding

the plan is working. all i have to do is keep going. thats it but it also feels like juggling 20 boucy balls. all of this whole life is certainly taking some kind of attention but if you let things slide nothing bad is gonna happen as long as you can get them going again.

we used to chase a bouncy ball- one of the 75 centers that youd get from carmike cinema- now AMC where chaz worked a stint but decided he didnt like cleanimg urnials and stuck-on nacho cheese... and as usual he let the grandeur of title amd responsiblilty distract from the evercleartome employee/capital relationship- at our catholic homeschool group that met at st michaels south sioux- youd know it was south sioux by the michael as st mike's was sioux city north side- neoliberalism vs traditional conservative values. you can probably guess where you wouldnt feel weird taking communion on the tongue.
we'd have a potluck once a month up on the stage which doubled as a cafeteria- fun because youd jump down from the stage onto the gym floor and the game with the bouncy ball was simple- bounce the ball and then the group would run after it and someone else would get to bounce the ball.
one time we played basketball and Connor Okeefe was all up in my business when i was trying to throw the ball inbound so i chucked it at his stomach- my thought was it would go back out ofbpunds and then i could do it again with him having learned- he ended up keeling over in pain and it actually just ruined the game.
one time he and i were also agressively squaring up at lewis and clark scout camp, circlimg each other with menacing starea until an adult intervened. I remember flatfootedly telling some adult that he was "gonna attack me" and i felt embarasaed for the juvenile choice of words- this isnt some medival battle ground.
I was actually just admiring a scar i got from that scout camp on my left ring finger, the same finger injured today. i have a centimeter long, 1 mm wide and slightly raised white line on the exterior dorsal side just past the most proximal knuckle to the main body of the hand that i got from fu***ng around with my knife.
I loved that knife and was playing with it all the time- my maternal grandfather gave it too me because he'd gotten in essentially free because it had a 100 percent rebate on it at menards- he always took great advantage of their rebate program. I had figured out how to flick it open throwing my wrist a certain way so i walked all around camp showing it to everyone sorta inkling it was a switch blade and acting coy whenever someone asked if it was.
there was limestone from the cliffs of the missouri river on which the camp sat and scouts took to carving them. i was carving "ducky" and getting a lot of solid attention from it til i eventually accidentally lopped its head off.
I got the injury from taking the knife and stabbing it into the ground over and over until it slipped from my hand and i cut myself. I took immediate action to conceal the wound so i wouldnt get my toten' chip taken or get a corner cut off.

work meeting yesterday i accidentally pressed the spacebar so it gave a celebration reation in the teams meeting at an innappropriate time, then did it agaim, then i gave a thumbs up reaction to give the suggestion that i had meant to do that the first time. The current topic did mind of pertain to me. The accountant was tellimg everone what not to do when submitting the monthly reports which was exactly what she had just directly called me out on in an email the day priror.Not my first gaffe during a teams meeting- once when i was napping in my hidey hole i realized we had a not-normally-scheduled teams meeting so i jumped on camera off but then my phone got confused and my camera came on and i saw myself that everyone could see in a room on a bed with my arm resting over my forehead like ive been in bed all morning (this was at noon) so i quickly turned the camera off and went back to my offuce and got presentable and commented on something at the tail end of the meeting. but maybe this.just drew more attention.

I gotta get to work because i keep getting messages on teams about updating staffing needs and oyr budget spreadsheet.

learned a quote from gk chesterson during the easter vigil homily " an adventure is an imconvienence rightly named and an incomvienence is an adventure wrongly named"
gonna use that to supplement "it's all part of the fun" ive been chanting as a mantra to help bex and myself get through this move

vigil had 5 readings plus the epistle and gospel- bex's younger sister made a game of sneaking me bex and the niece tic tacs during mass. my game was jimmying my legs and singing when i could. the older gal in front of us thanked me for reminding her of her late dead husband of 3.5 years who "also had a big voice"
The people behind us were stodgy as hell- i got no sense at all from them that this was a celebration- more like the part of the funeral where you lower the body in the ground. I had to basically demand one of the gals shake my hand and the other i was able to get a fist bump out of- the dude
bex says women who wear veils are usually holier than thou types- and two of them sittimg behind us seemed to fit that


we were down in st chalres to visit bex's brother with her parents and little sister amd neice- at pizza sunday lunch i declared that i need ripping open parmesan packets and horking them back whole hog to be my new thing- bex's brother said i have an unhealthy relationship with attention-seeking and my insistance that what i was doing was a subversive political act to fight world hunger and the dignity complex was spurrious.
bex's dad told me they use tree wood for the cellulose anti-caking agent in the parmesan packets which i felt makes them more healthy- i usually need more fiber
although i was ch--ch--ch-chunking all day sunday from having eaten the peanuts with the shell in saturday in the car on the way back from showing bex the new house which she thankfully didnt hate- actually she said she likes it- i had left the peanuts in the car from when we took L/N/A to food place texas witj the free peanuts- used to be youd scoop em nowadays they are in prepackaged baggies- part of the fun- free fiber

5 guys also has free peanuts. parmesan packets are everywhere. saw one kid at the mall back in my tradehome days chewing on some flavored coffee creamer packet- that was pretty baller

Weekend was tiring- church on friday church on saturday we even toured a different church for fun

bex was complaining it was too much church but she missed the good friday service .

we stayed at the drury inn- i tried to play my youtube video blankets for the house on their business use computers but every time i would revisit to see if they were still playing the 4 hour video they were back to start mode

I am feeling a nap comimg on but also like a bunch of stuff yet to do- not quite done figuring out all the house stuff- still have to drop off the earnest money too i totally forgot about that

not quite firing on all cylinders mentally. Glasses slipping off my face- frustrating- same sort of sensation as not having a shoe tied snug

feeling sluggish but also annoyed with how stupid everyone else seems to be- funny because when i am feeling perky everyone around me seems smarter too

need to stretch and sleep and nap and clean my car and floss god i hate it when people keep clearimg their throat over and over i gotta sit in the massage chair and god id love to punch the stl manager in his dumb face but i wont even say a cross word to him if my discipline stays true

I need to breathe i think a nap is needed yeah for sure

we are under contract again for spaulding, which means i need to arrange insepctions today and clal amgela to arrange for bex and i to look at it together on saturday

today is good friday- my persistent joke which I am sure is gonna lamd at some point is "let's make this good friday a great friday". we are gonna meet in stl tonight- bex's parents are coming down and we are all visiting bex's brother who's been down there two years doing catholic missionary work at a secular college. he's getting married in july- he and his fiance had asked the family group chat what we thought of july tenth as a date and i said "i give it a 7/10" bex was the only one who caught that one.

my mom told me last night she is done paying for the unlimited sip club at panera which means im gonna have to start forking over the 15 bux a month or 120 a year to keep enjoying this routine. I probably will do a month or two l a la carte and then reevaluate. our closing date for purchase is the 22nd- earth day and our sell close date is April 30th. obviously im gonna need a whole new routine once we are all reunited- bex me simba and the dogs

i went to the gym this morning despite planning not to when i went to sleep. my finger is still sore so i just did the treadmill pool and sauna. yesterday i went to the gym just to take a dip amd shower- not in that order.
problem is i tried using one of the sales demo duffel bags for the first time at the gym instead of the brooks duffel bag id gotten from tradehome september 2021 at the conference where i learned the "cha -ching" sound that i later pestered julie with when she came down to do a gregcation.
this new duffel bag is bigger and while that sounds nice, my silly goose of a self was able to shove my shoes, swim trunks, and towel all in there whereas with the brooks duffel bag it was smaller which meant i just schelpped everything unzipped and coming out the top, which made for an easy prompt for me when i got to my car to hang my towel up so it could dry out. So this morning my towel was soggy, and my shoes were damp- which made everything smell.
I'm already a guy who wears the same clothes every day and lives in a dank flooded basement so i really dont need any more funky smells in my life at this time.

A Gregcation is me getting one of my siblings to come down to stay with me and Bex while they work for me. Mary, stephen, and Julie have all participated- all at tradehome. None so far at Leafguard, but I also just got the manager job which I assumed December 22nd.

i always get coffee with cinnamon, half and half, and almond milk. almond milk for variety without terribly evil calories, half and half because it is skim or.2% but fortified- cinnamon because it is bougie- i dont use the honey or sugar in the raw except for special occaisions or any of the fake stuff ever.

I have this other coffee concept i invented called the 'fortified americano'- my friend JPH has a nespresso- a keurig for la ti dahs- (the latte-dah is another pending coffee concept) and part of the SOP for using it is flushing it with water after it expresses you "esspresso". JPH had been using a dedicated cup to collect the flushed water to dump in the sink but i reasoned this was wasteful and also i like to be diffident so i used my same espresso cup collect that water becauae the recipie for an americano is espresso plus water- boom- fortified americano.
i was inspired to use the word fortified from "glorified rice", a thanksgiving/church casserole side that is rice turned into kind of a pudding and kind of a minnesota salad- that is too say, a desert. what, to me, is remarkable about the dish is that typically when people say something is a "glorified" something they are speaking sarcastically but here we have something genuine.
sincerity the novel concept