Worse Than Dirty Underwear

A lesson most folks learn before turning 16 is this. Never leave your house wearing yesterday’s underclothing. Because if you get hit by a truck on your way to wherever, when they wheel you into the emergency room, you don’t want to embarrass yourself in seasoned boxers or briefs. We also learn it’s wise to “get your own house in order” before you start sniping at how others live their lives. Good advice times twice.

With a major writing deadline immutably fixed at the end of this month, and after two days of sub teaching at LHS and DS, the most obvious task at hand on Wednesday was GETTING THE HELL TO WORK ON THE ASSIGNMENT! But I didn’t get to work on it. I followed my disintegrating sense of true north to any task BUT the assignment which, when completed will unload some serious, overdue debt.

Parts of the house which I’ve not touched in years were cleaned up. Books moved and rearranged. A walk in closet cleared of everything I won’t reference again in six months. Conger genealogy publications and correspondence removed in storage boxes to basement shelves no visitor will ever see. Files relating to my former role with Vinegar Hill Neighborhood Association De-freaking-LETED! (I had already given copies to the continuing powers that be at the helm today. God save the queens! Even a small box of pictures of poetry open mics at Kanes and Capitol Caffe, taken 10 or more years ago, set aside to donate to Poets & Writers Literary Forum of Springfield, Illinois and duly donated Saturday morning, the 27th. A lot of this was simply myopathy at play. optimising arrangements to they are as I’ve wanted them to be subconsciously for years. I even brought ArtsLinks http:..www.civag.com/artslinks.htm up to date for the first time since November freaking NINTH!

I had promised myself to get started on the MAJOR WRITING ASSIGNMENT, but a part of me (the BIGGEST part since it inflenced the rest of me) has felt anxiously, woefully incapable, of completing it by deadline. So why the pathological procrastination? I didn’t want to rush into swimming in my incapacity. Wednesday, hoping for a sub teaching assignment on Thursday, I showered, hoping like the fellow who washes his car in hopes of rain coming the next day) that the desired undeniable impediment to my writing would come with a call from the sub teacher line.

It didn’t come and I was a bitter fart until Thursday afternoon when I FINALLY began work on the writing project. And I absolutely enjoyed the effort! Didn’t do a lot because I was also determined to finish that article culling project with surplus flying model airplane magazines, and I FINISHED that project, by the grace of God! Another distraction fro WRITING ASSIGNMENT! alayYIPPEE!

Friday I hoped the sub line would not call me and this time my hope was granted. And I completed the first part of WRITING ASSIGNMENT and sent it to the editorgod. I say “editorgod” because without his favoring my froggy countenance with honest work assignments, I risk another week of Dinty Moore Stew and Chilli Man Chilli, and like most gods, I never see him; only the happy effects of his beneficence to moi. As a result of the paltry portion of effort given to esteemed weekly publication, I was assigned more writing. EXCELLENT.

I never share what I’m doing before the event because I don’t want the criminal element who peruse blogs to know I’m going to be away from my orifice — make that office. But I ga ron tee you this. I’m accepting no sub assignments next week because I’ll be here working on the WRITING ASSIGNMENT, “all de lib-long dei.” GLAD for the work, being in the grove that comes when everything else is off the agenda, and dancing my fingers across the keyboard like the engaged, writing hummin’ bean I was born to be.

And in the meantime, my house is in order. If the floor were vacuumed and I had wine and cheeze, I’d invite you over this minute. And from my prespective (as 43 might gurgitate), the condition of my underwear doesn’t matter. If I get hit by a truck before my financial dire straights are successfully navigated to safe harbor, the last thing people will care about is the condition of my underwear.

BTW, about the picture if you can see it at the top. It was taken last fall during my friend John Winterbauer’s guided Springfield ghosts walking tour. Unlike some local citizenry, I celebrate the coincidental tie to Abe. Why not be happy with a fellow citizen who did many things RIGHT? Are you ashamed of your successcul brother or sister? No you say? Then why not take pride in this man and his accomplishments as well; aye?

Live long . . . . . and proper!