I think among the reasons I have had a vague, yet continuous, headache is the fabulous work ethic of the siding guys. Those guys don’t stop from 7-7:30 a.m. until darkness makes it impossible to continue.

For the first couple of weeks, they were banging and sawing on the side of the house away from my bedroom with the hallway acting as a sound-absorbing buffer. Now that they bang around just past my headboard through what must be a half inch wall (judging only by the effectiveness of sound wave transmission), I almost pray for less industrious contractors, ones with a work ethic such as mine (currently non-existent).

I can’t remember from last week if they take Sundays off, but I fucking hope Jesus stills their tools for one peaceful day.

I didn’t shower today (although I vigorously sponged myself and washed my hair in the kitchen sink). By this action I have skeeved out and alienated my gentleman friend. Even over a distance of 3,000 miles, he expects his woman to be clean.

It’s too bad if my hygiene comes between us, as I have begun Christmas shopping. I’d have to find another guy with a similar build and tastes for the stocking stuffers I’ve picked up.

Just in case, if you are an American with an entreprenurial spirit who likes the color black, reads non-fiction, is into fitness and has a fit, trim body, send me an email.

I have no great ideas at all for Christmas shopping sadly.

I spent awhile flipping through a good 30 pounds of old photographs. I think it’s time to throw away the truly shitty and useless and gather the rest into albums to conserve space. Throwing away out of focus or otherwise terrible or stupid would bring the number down to one page.

I thought about making a family album to give to my sister or possibly one of my sisters-in-law, who I think would dig it, with an assortment of old school pictures and stuff from all of us mixed with the next generation. Unfortunately, the old bag of pics my mother made me carry away one day a few years back is thinner than it should be. It contains a handful of photos, where I remember a fair amount, and two siblings are missing entirely.

There is one picture of yours truly. I’m five, and it’s my kindergarten picture. Portrait of the artist as a young dork. I might scan and post it alongside my headshot, so you can track the dork effect across four decades.

Not having the pictures I thought also thwarts the joke gift I was thinking of for M., namely a collage of me. The sheer ego of making a self-collage for someone else tickles me (although the time required versus the laugh resulting may be skewed to make me seem just an egomaniacal dick). Probably, it’s better this way.

Besides, I’m sure he would much prefer a collage of himself.

I have the longest lasting headache that I can remember having. But, that is not why I’m posting. (Literally, at 7:30 a.m. the siding guys were pounding just outside my bedroom walls. Considering I went to bed only 5 hours before, I think it fair to wonder if they have helped extend the headache shelf life.)

Last night, I decided to try not really telling jokes at all, but just telling an extended anectdote with some jokes thrown around it. Seemed to work, and I had fun. Of course, it was these guys’ show, which I usually have fun at even when it’s going so badly they start to fight and/or people leave with looks of confusion and thoughts of escape.

Overall, last night was a fun, relaxed show. There were a lot of different types of people/acts on, and it flowed comfortably, even with (or because of) the differences.

Anyway, though, back to my point — and, “yeah, right,” you’re thinking, “as though you have ever had one.” Last night, and pretty much in most of my comedy, everything I said was actually true. Possibly embellished, but factually true. It makes me laugh afterwards, though, whenever people question me about whether stuff really happened or how I thought of it.

I am actually a lazy writer. I do very little thinking. If shit didn’t happen, I suppose I would just sit quietly and have no tales to tell.

The most amazing true thing I said last night, because I do consider it meaningful although I have yet to discern the meaning, is my locker combination. In order to join the dreaded and feared and otherwise horrifying gym, I had to buy a lock to protect my humble belongings. The combination was a portentuous 36-22-36. Measurements I likely will not have when all is said and done.

A completely lackluster bathroom about to change:

Gross, huh? You might notice the black and gray and various discolored spots and think, “Does she ever clean?” It’s not mildew and dirt, it’s evidence of decay–Rust, holes, cracks, places where all shiney shower surfaces meant to repel water have disappeared.

And, so it begins, nothing is left but 100 year old beams and frame.

These two are my favorites. Destruction and old structure surround the glistening, unsoiled, brand-spanking new commode.

For this last one, imagine a quiet house at blackest midnight on a cold and extremely windy night, with gusts rocking trees and houses, eliciting creaks and groans and mysterious portents. Now, imagine yourself alone, seated, with new floor just below you and your flank literally exposed to gaping holes leading to a dark and cavernous cellar. Fucking scary. (Not half as scary as this morning, when I took a quite groggy 7:30 a.m. pee and realized one of the siding guys from outside’s construction was down in the basement doing something. Woke me up, and creeped me out.)

Here’s a helpful hint for better living —

Never, ever drink a lot of coffee while your bathroom is being destroyed. Especially, if you don’t have an exit strategy.

A window’s been removed in the bathroom for ventilation and the plumbers are supposed to return with a toilet, but no actual time frame was provided for normalizing the area. I can’t leave with a burglar-ready open window and no way for the contractors to enter (since I didn’t yet give them a key).

I can’t remember if the cafe only one block away has a restroom, and I’m afraid to travel too much further away without knowing what’s up.

If there is any benign force in the universe, I won’t be reduced to hovering over the kitchen sink.

Rousted from bed at 7:30/8 a.m. (might as well be pre-dawn for me) with the handy loudspeaker reminder it’s street cleaning-car towing day.

Not long after and definitely before my final shower, boom the contracting guys are here to start fucking up my bathroom. Only there is what I hope to be the only problem to arise — no key to the cellar where all the plumbing and shit lives. A few frantic phone calls to the other contractors, the siding and windows guys, and the key will be en route in a half-hour or so.

My morning ablution is thus saved. Thank fucking Christ.

Fresh out of the shower and before any kind of caffeine the “demo” guys are here. Demo as in demolition, or as I mistakenly called it “destruction” when I had to call in to contracting HQ. They weren’t sure what to destroy, and they were pretty eager to do it all and start without instructions. But, the head contractor team guy shows up just in time to save my bathroom door and a few other things (like the radiators attached to a gasline, boom).

Crowbars, hammers, pick axes and all sorts of actually recognizable weapons of mass destruction were hauled into my hallway, and next thing my toilet is literally flung out my hall window.

Now I’m drinking coffee, a tad more lucid, and listening to some demo guy (kind of ghetto fun chat involving pregnancy, emergency c-sections and a six-year license suspension) while they take turns swinging sledge hammers. Waking up and letting strange men start going wild with crowbars requires faith.

Faith that, yah, that is what was supposed to happen. Most importantly, faith that someone else will indeed come by with a new toilet.

The purging of crazy ass piles of shit continues at my house of crazy. In today’s episode, I removed a bunch of junk from my bathroom to make way for tomorrow’s wrecking ball.

(I also took some pictures of my delapidated bathroom, because I love me some before and after photos. Among my web list of things to do is an electronic version of the scrap book I made for my mom with the befores and afters of her fire-gutted house and its rebuilding. The book, complete with sarcastic comments and witty observations about the fam was a big hit at Pat’s wake, which is both sad and a propos. She would have been laughing at it too, I think, with a crowd that sized egging her on.)

Anyway, the point of this post is that in clearing the bathroom I found ant spray and ant traps. I don’t recall having an ant problem worthy of that firepower.

However, I do watch a lot (really A LOT) of forensic TV shows. I learned that some ant traps contain warfarin, a blood thinner.

My conclusion, in the absence of an ant outbreak recollection, is that clearly I was planning to kill someone (an ex-boyfriend perhaps) by diabolically thinning his blood and then shanking him with a butter knife. The knife would be dull, but the bleeding would be endless. Of course, the trauma of this as far as I know failed murder attempt caused a blackout, which is why I have the poison, but don’t know why.

Either that or a lot of ants aren’t that memorable over a 10-year period of living somewhere.

Man oh fucking man, are people annoying the piss out of me or what today.

I’m irrationally wounded by foolishness over here. Clearly, I can write shit to death, and for better or worse, the sentences can be long and use more than single syllable words. Once again, an anoymous detractor from my greatness felt it necessary to point that out.

Once upon a time, there was a guy, some would call a psychopath, who contributed to that bulletin board, and who would harp on my long-windedness or pedantry. The thing is, though, as fucking harsh as he was, he did it with finesse, and he was often laugh-out-loud-even-though-you’re-reading-a-stupid-website funny. He was pretty ecumenical in his skewering, so no matter what he wrote that was intended personally, it ultimately didn’t cut me fatally. He did it to a lot of people. He’s since been banned for both his psychosis and more political reasons.

Now, what’s left is imitators who fall back on the old insults without the undeniable funny, while hiding behind a fake identity. It’s synthesized down to formula, I write beyond some theoretical retard’s comprehension, ergo I’m boring. I am boring, ergo I am not funny. I am not funny, ergo I bring nothing to comedy and should stop (or perhaps die) and admit what a fucking loser I am.

And, right, I should be taking advice and killing myself or stoppng writing entirely, because some wanking fuckhead says so, anonymously. I mostly hate myself that I ever get goaded into trying to explain myself.

In an effort to self-medicate whatever twitch causes me to post at all, I asked the sys admin for the site to delete my identity from the bulletin board. To the Comedy Studio “Kvetchboard,” D-Rob is dead. Thank fucking Christ.

As I wasted energy on that sink hole of pointless despair, I also let myself get aggravated a little closer to the real world. After months of committing to help a company with a weblogging project, I was finally given access to install some software myself on a test site (and thus end an inexplicable, yet massive, delay in installing something, anything).

Now, the guy who was theoretically going to help me set it up, is insisting on testing it to make sure I did it right. OK, testing is good, I guess. But, he seems to have spent a little energy today in insisting stuff was broken only because he doesn’t understand how it works. Frustrating all around (probably for him, as well).

Not sure how I’m supposed to handle the bit where the people in charge told me I was moderator and are looking for me to write, but he seems to think he should have the admin privileges, not me.

(He ended the convo with something about my having access to set stuff up, but how he will then change the passwords, etc. to close the access. Little tough to moderate or edit without access; maybe I could just type “nah unh” after everthing that should be moderated.)

I hope he was was only referring to overall website security. Still and all, though, not sure why he needed to challenge me about it.

I made some real stupid mistakes and gave up on a much simpler script to finally put this together: www.walshbrothers.org.

At least my knowledge of Flash is slightly less dilletantish now.

I’ve been feeling pretty useless, because I haven’t been able to fix to a non-ugly, uniform state the website I’ve been attempting for some friends.

I’d link to the fixed page here, but they haven’t seen it yet. Soon, though, there should be an unveiling.

While I beat myself up about my inability to handle the flash junk correctly, I’ve spent fruitless hours doing nought but pondering. Irritating really. Especially when you add in all the shit that I have to do around the house.

Other than that abcess of low self-esteem, I’ve been feeling bluesy about my lack of work and lack of the boy-o in an, I don’t know, three-mile radius. The work thing is partially related to restlessness from having an unstructured environment. It’s too fucking easy to sit around in comfy clothes, essentially immobile with the day gone in a minute.

But, the other thing about work is the lingering pissed offedness about the whole ball of stupid wax. The angst emanates from the decay surrounding me, which I am trying to stem. I look at all of the shit falling apart in my house, or the broken teeth in my head, and I’m reminded of all of the extra time I spent on other people’s problems, while neglecting my own. I skipped dentist appointments, I fell behind in home maintenance; something had to give in order to work all of those fucking 60+ hour weeks, and I let it be my stuff.

Now, I got NOTHING, in big old capital letters, to show for the extra hours, because in the end, the people for whom I did all the work gave me the gift of a great lesson in priorities. I fucking hope I remember to never, ever work that fucking hard again for zero gain.

As for the distant guy thing, there is a bright side. If you had asked me a few years back whether I would know anyone willing to jump on a plane to hang with me and the family on Christmas, I would have cracked you one for your big, stupid mouth. But, hey, what do you know, the ticket has been bought and M. will be 100 times more likely to experience a white Christmas.