Day 2: Addiction and recovery

FRIDAY
8 August 2008

Darrell’s house is three levels and there are 17 steps between each level. 17 DAMN STEPS, PEOPLE. For non-math wizards, that’s 34 steps one way from the lowest level to the top level. As if my quads hadn’t suffered enough. Late last night, I decided to boil away my pains from the day (see Day 1, Paragraph 5, re: the hill). In the master bathroom, he has a Jacuzzi tub which has room for about four people… three if they’re big muscly gym rats, six if they’re twinks… but I digress. The Jacuzzi is on the lower level. As it’s filling I decide I want some tunes, and my portable iPod speaker-thingie is in the foyer on the middle floor. So I go up and get it, then back down to the tub. I thought my iPod was across the hall in the guest bedroom where I’m staying. Nope. It’s up on the TOP level in Darrell’s office, where I had been using it as an external drive for my blog stuff. Crap. Up both flights, back down. OK, now I’m set. But I haven’t transferred the playlist I want to play to this iPod yet, and the playlist is on my laptop. Middle floor. Son-of-a-B. I climb. I fire up my computer and my iTunes, but the frackin’ USB cable I need is still upstairs in the office. Oh, HELL no! My legs are screaming: “Hate you SO hard right now!” Up to the top, then back to my laptop in the middle, then back to the tub. Finally. Ahhhh. Bubblicious.

But did I turn off my computer? I know it was sitting on a leather chair in the living room on the middle level, and the last thing I want is for my relic of a laptop to overheat, burn the chair I can’t afford to replace, then start the next California wildfire. Yeah, because that happens all the time. But my OCD nags at me. DAMMIT! I get out of the tub to check. Of course I had turned it off. Back down to the Jacuzzi, at which point I finally relax. You’d think for all the money the original builders spent on the house, they could have coughed up the extra chedda and put in an cockamamie elevator. Am I right?

As for today… Do you know how they say love comes to you when you finally surrender, and stop looking for it? Well, I did not find my next great romance in the past 24 hours, but I do believe this idea of surrendering and allowing things to come to you at the right time applies to many, if not all, things. For me this morning, it was about coffee filters.

I found Darrell’s coffee maker, and thankfully had brought some coffee in my carry-on. However, I could not find the filters to save my life. This is a big house, but the kitchen is only about 14′ x 14′. I wore a groove into the floor circling the room looking in every nook and cranny for the farkuckt coffee filters. I found plenty of things people only use once a year: the good china, a crock pot, the Yellow Pages, a stray can of French’s french fried onions, Murphy’s Oil Soap… but coffee filters? No. I’m a decaf kinda guy, so my caffeine addiction isn’t that bad, but I was concerned about the epic levels of frenzy I was beginning to experience. For a point of reference, think Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment when her character was circling the nurse’s station at the hospital screaming “GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOT!!!!!!!!!!!!” Yeah, it was bad. (I totally love that movie.)

Anyway, when I realized my options came down to using a holiday napkin from the bottom shelf of the pantry, sacrificing a pair of my 2xist underwear, or stapling a Swiffer pad into a dust-attracting filter, I decided juice would be fine. Since I’d been rifling through the kitchen all this time, I knew right where to go for a glass, and when I opened the cabinet and reached for it, there were the filters – right next to the coffee mugs. DER. Surrender, and it comes to you. By the way, the coffee I made was so strong, I think there may have been actual chunks of Juan Valdez in it.

So after that fiasco and some breakfast cookies, I felt like the day was already half over. I wrote a few thoughts for this entry, and by the time I was done with that I said to myself, “You know, I think I’ll put on some pants now.” I lasted about one good hour before this wall of tired fell on me. The entire last week of work and condo preparations prior to leaving for Los Angeles, as well as the tiring travel day yesterday, caught up with me all at once. I thought I’d sleep for 30-45 minutes, but it turned into one of those “felt-like-15-minutes-but-was-really-2-hours” naps.

I was a little distressed because there is a lot I need to be getting through each day: loose ends to tie up from back home, finding a part-time job, plus the whole contact-making, working-in-the-industry thang. This isn’t a vacation, and there’s a lot to work on every day. Part of the reason I’m writing this blog is to hold myself accountable for what I accomplish (or don’t) each day. Post-nap, I did manage to send out a few job-related emails and make some calls. That felt better. I posted my FSBO ad on Craigslist for my condo back home and sent a few emails. It felt good. My list for tomorrow, though, is pretty significant. I know as the meetings happen and the work trickles in, there will be more to share. Until then I suppose you will get to hear about my trials and tribulations around the manse.

Tonight the breeze is cool and I wanted to let the doors open so the fresh air could come through the house. The doors in the living room are large enough for a Barnum & Bailey Circus parade to march through. Here’s a picture, with ONE of the doors leading to the balcony open.

I paused for a split second, wondering if a diseased hawk or nasty bat or something would fly in. But then I remembered: I’m in L.A. If there are no unattractive people here, it follows logically there would be no ugly animals either, and the breeze feels lovely.