As usual for a weekend, I couldn't remember my dreams. And, as usual for my weekend, it started on a Friday. Within a few minutes of waking up, I'd already decided that it was going to be an entirely useless waste of time. Or, in better words, it was time to study. Curling up with my textbooks and with Pandora Radio playing remixes of metal done by symphonic orchestras, I sunk into work for four hours. Tedious, boring, and completely needed for my academic success.
The remnant of the study session was spent staring blankly at my writer's notebook, which was high irony. We were writing creative non-fiction in class, and aside from this very story, I had no material. Why? Because it wasn't just any creative nonfiction, no. We had to base it off of an exercise in our book, or one we'd done in class. How splendid, because god forbid we do our own work.
A few hours of solid gaming later, my father's dwarven fighter and my human arcane archer stood at level eight, and I went off for a ten-hour stint in bed before waking up nice and late the next day a smile on my face-
We're going to Home Depot.
- a look of apathy on my face, ready to go right back to bed. It wasn't that I didn't want to go out, it was that I didn't want to go to Home Depot.
True, the wall needed to be fixed, but... ye gods. Home Depot was a place of dread, full of heavyset construction workers, various people in their forties, and horrendous customer service.
A shave and a shower later, I stood ready to go. Half an hour after this, I sat in my car with the engine running, still waiting. After another five minutes, the family was off to a nice, happy outing at Home Depot, complete with my godawfully loud music level seven out of thirty. I could barely hear it and my parents were complaining about the noise. It was off to a great start.
The thing about Home Depot I hated the most?
The smell. It reeked, awfully. There was stale sweat, fertilizer, paint, concrete, oil, rotting lumber, and the slightly lingering scent of some industrial cleaner that served only to keep grime off of everything. The three of us stood by redwood boards, studying the plans my mother drew for the new backyard structure. Personally, I'd thought the last binge of outdoor work where my mother literally poured a ton of concrete would do the trick. Some people drank, others shot heroin. My mother did exterior home design.
My mother was a blur of contained energy, an executive-type with a master's degree in project management, a contagious laugh, and a dance to her steps. At any given time, one could find her catching a three-footer on her longboard, lugging around sixty-pound bags of concrete to build a walkway, or half a dozen other things, almost always with a simple and profound joy to every action. It was hardly a surprise that she looked half her age, and with a slight accent to her English that most mistook for Irish, all of my friends had reached the unanimous conclusion that "your mom is pretty cool."
As I watched the cheerful debate continue, I could slowly feel my good mood that I'd lost this morning get picked up by a stranger with free candy and molested. I lost track of just how long it took to decide, but sooner or later, we found ourselves in the Garden section. It was one of the few tolerable spaces of the store sure, it still exhibited the pungent odor of fish, chemical, smog, and failure, but at least it had plants and I felt some leftover creativity from last night. It was flower time, and I indulged myself in some whorton caladium, american astilbe, black walnut gladiolus, and bicolor acidanthera to plant.
The trip back was splendid, consisting of yet another argument and my aged '86 Chevy Celebrity dying twice in the parking lot. The engine had cut out on me at least seven times in two months, but for such a small gas bill, I could deal with a broken fuel gage, a bumpy ride, and the occasional engine stall. Besides, it was a surfmobile, plastered with bumper stickers, window décor, and an overhead rack perfect for hauling longboards. And with the backseat being able to go down, it contributed highly to my odds of re-christening the station wagon.
Eventually, in the spirit of "[forget] this, I need a break I meandered off to my room at four twenty exactly, packed it in, and lit up. Getting baked is always an interesting experience or at least, it should be. There's the initial period of fire and air, filling your lungs to the brim with smoke and holding it until your body is pounding for air, followed by a gradual exhalation of white clouds around you, the familiar plant scent lingering in the air around you. Rinse, repeat, and wait. I'd been trying out some salvia recently, and my body had gotten used to the sage given that it took about two minutes to kick in before you were laying on your back, staring off into the sky with disembodied voices swirling around your head, I was almost surprised at how long it took for Mary to get busy.
Instead of a sudden sledgehammer to the frontal lobes, it was a gradual relaxation of the body's tense muscles, a steady blurring between rational thought and emotive-guided mental processes, and then before you know it - you're stoned. About sixty percent of all stoners go through the stage of muttering dude I'm so baked for the first few minutes until your attention span drifts off towards the nearest cool thing. In my case, it was a book. When your brain is soaked in THC, read a book you know and love everything will seem new, vivid, and at at least one point you will need to put the book down to simply marvel at just how well-written the book is.
With no dinner in sight, I decided to go outside to see just what was going on. As usual, my parents were enjoying the backyard, sitting on the far swing with cups of Diet Dr. Pepper.
Do you want to cook dinner?
[Heck] no!
Not really, but I will. When do you want it?
Whenever you're ready.
It'll be about eight thirty. I'll just start cooking now.
After some consultation with my parents as to the entree of choice, I'd decided to make good ol' stove-cooked BBQ chicken with mashed potatoes. A simple enough meal, but I felt creative and I had the munchies. In other words, it was time to cook.
Three chicken breasts boiled with a squirt of barbecue sauce and some red wine vinaigrette dressing later, I had already decided to make some caramelized pineapple garnish. Tossing a handful of slices into a microwave-safe dish, I cut some butter into chunks, tossed it in, and added brown sugar, giving it a minute in the microwave at the time. A dash of virgin olive oil and barbecue sauce to the drained chicken to brown it on simmer, and I started mixing up the mashed potatoes, complete with a liberal shaking of Parmesan cheese, a bit of chicken bullion, and a few tablespoons of ranch dressing for flavor. Before I knew it, I'd served dinner to everyone, tossing a small handful of cheddar and mozzarella on the heaps of potatoes. I'd made another great meal out of an experiment and I'd need to cook it again, especially given the praise I received for it.
I spent the rest of the evening simply talking with friends about a variety of subjects school shootings, the stark ignorance of the Democrats, female idiosyncrasies, and the ever-popular subject of everybody's favorite, passion online. Why I and my friends continued to fall in love with people online was a total mystery to me. It never worked and for the most part was devoid of physical affection, but we did it anyway. I hadn't dated someone I hadn't met first online since high school.
Between MidwestNinja (who actually wasn't from the Midwest and entirely hated the area) and I, we'd come up with a great plan to get [female attention]: sympathy sex from school shootings. Get shot, play up the emotion, and boom, instant morphine-aided bow-chika-wow-wow. Our alternate plan involved being the friend of someone who died, but that was a bit macabre. Bros before [loose-moraled females], after all, and if you'd meet a chick who'd [have sex with] you for getting shot or losing a friend you'd need to [wear a lot of protection]. DarkFay and I spoke of her emotions, of the person online who'd dropped the L-bomb and given her butterflies over the phone before we turned on the subject of love itself.
Yeah, don't do what I did.
Oh, agreed. DarkFay doesn't do that.
...is it sad that I still want to fall madly in love and want to elope with someone?
No. You're in love with the idea of being in love.
There's a few people who you can trust with your emotions and actually appreciate their blunt honesty. It's the kind of thing that could ruin friendships, but DarkFay and I had drank together, crushed on each other, shared cigarettes, shared a kitten, and cooked for each other back in Spokane when it was just two poverty-struck couples chilling together to save money. A little honesty wouldn't kill it and hell, we both valued the opinions of the other. It was like a breath of fresh air.
I can live with being single. Hell, I'm writing again now. I just... want to be in love.
Yeah, I get that myself too.
As I signed off and went to bed, it occurred to me that strictly speaking, it wasn't really an urge to get married. I just wanted to fall asleep with a warm body nestled against mine, the familiar scent of hair and well-worn sheets lulling me to dreams. I wanted to wake up next to someone beautiful, to be able to reverently and passionately run the tips of my fingers over her skin.
I wanted to cuddle, dangit.
). So I sit in the train and I got to see coat hanger (Sydney Harbour Bridge) at night which was awesome. So I finally got back to the airport and had dinner, went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and realised I looked like a giant panada 
