mondays

i hate monday's!

i grew up reading garfield comic strips
for some reason this fat lazy cat, like roseanne, was popular when i was a kid
he hated monday's
this was his catch phrase
it made people laugh
"ha ha, i hate monday's too, that's genius!"

it's not genius
it's not brilliant either
in fact it's lame

the only thing lamer
(and trust me it's almost in a dead heat with saying
"you look like you have a case of the monday's")
is when the receptionist where i work,
upon my entering and saying good morning to her,
responds,
"good morning."
and when i say,
"how are you doing?"
she says,
"it's one day closer to friday!"
no matter the day
to which i give the courtesy smile
audible but short "hmph" laugh
and look away
because if i look at her when i do this
not only would i lose all respect for her
but for myself as well
conforming to a social ritual that is nothing but a lie
encouraging her to say the same thing to me the following day
even though i would give my liver for her to stop
or at least my firstborn

but i am starting to really hate monday's

not because the weekend is over
sometimes i'm glad the weekend is over
sometimes i'm ready to get back to work
sometimes the weekend is so chalk full of
activities
people to see
places to be
things that i hate doing but need to get done
and can only be done over the weekend
that i am glad that the weekend is over so i can breathe

not because i can't sleep in on monday
because i wake up at the same time for soccer on saturday
and for church on sunday
that i do every day of the week

not because i'm lazy
because, if i'm alone,
doing nothing drives me crazy
i have to do something productive
something active
something that gives back
and involves my brain
and my body

not because i have to go to work
because i enjoy what i do
i enjoy the people that i work with
it's unpredictable,
it's spontaneous,
it's anxiety provoking
and full of stories
and i like stories

no i hate monday's because
i hate saying good-bye

you see, i grew up saying "adios"
to acquaintances
to friends
to teachers
to best friends
and it hurt so bad the first few times that
i stopped feeling it
i pretended that there was no good-bye
only a pause
until i would see them again
this is a lie
some people i will never see again
most of the people i will never see again
a loss like death,
but not dead,
only gone,
divorced from my friendship
how many times can you grieve for yourself as a child?

it has been nothing to say good-bye

until now

i'm starting to hate monday's because
monday's have become synonymous with
me getting on an airplane at 7am east coast time
to fly back to my one bedroom apartment
and if it doesn't involve me going to the airport
it involves me having been there the night before
saying good-bye to jessica
it involves a tearing,
a tired grieving
a melancholy funk that i can't seem to shake the entire day
a loss that i feel in the depths of my being
that i feel i can't really tell anyone about
that it is something special
sacred
deep
unknowable
a longing
for who i leave or who leaves me

only this time it is only about a pause
this time i've let myself feel it
this time i'm not a child
this time i'll willingly grieve every time

goody-bye jess
i love you
i miss you...

God, i hate monday's!

day off

you should take a couple days off

my supervisor told me that when on tuesday the 11th of october, i told her that i had just found out that my grandma had passed away that morning
i was numb and i listen to people for a living
i didn't think that i could listen to anyone, all i could hear were my own thoughts

i had gone out to see my grandma two weeks ago with jessica
she was, according to her, "not in any shape to have visitors", but she had us in anyway

i sat beside her on her bed and held her hand as she talked
i sat in the living room as she sat in her chair either talking to us or falling asleep
i remember seeing her in her chair, asleep, and the only thought that i had was,
"she so near to God right now"
like a thin line separated her spirit from the infinite
i wondered if she could see it...

she can see it now

now, i wonder what she sees
i wonder what she feels
i wonder how much she laughs
i wonder if she sleeps
i wonder if she is a little girl there
i wonder if she is playing
or eating ice cream and saying to her self
"what does my ice cream taste like?
it tastes like ice cream, andy!"
and then laughing
at herself for saying that
at me for asking that
and then, just because she could

so i took the day off yesterday.

i spent some time with my friend aaron
he's lonely and he misses God, he's reconnecting with God now
it's painful for him
but he came out and hung out with me,
in the midst of his existential pain
to be present with me in mine

i spent some time with my friend mynor
he's a father of a one year old
he's trying to get back into shape after an achilles injury
he cares for a lot of people
he took the time to have lunch with me
to care for me
to sit in silence over food if that is what i wanted to do

i spent some time with my friend matt
he just got married
probably the most redemptive ceremony i've ever been a part of
he has a steel rod holding his pelvis together
he just got back from new zealand
he hung out with me last night even though it was today for him
he felt my pain for me, he felt his pain
it connected us

jesus wept

geeking out

so it's the beginning of october and you would think that when you write about sports and october, you're going to write about baseball, but if i were to write about baseball, you would ask me to loosen my pants because it was muffling my voice.
when i think about sports in october, i think about training camp.
in the 80's i successfully avoided the mullet and by avoiding the mullet one seems to thankfully avoid all mullet related sports (with the exception of soccer in my case) and hockey was never a sport i could even bear to watch or even care about. the one hockey game that i did go to, on the assumption that the claim, "you just have to watch it live man, you'll be hooked!" was true, i found myself leaving at the beginning of the third period, ready to pay $20 to watch paint dry. so i never fell for the only sport i felt was hand tailored for rednecks, i mean, where would you ever find more mullet wearing, toothless grinning, facially deformed, hot headed, vocabulary challenged white men on one team?
when i start to think about sports in october, i start to think in purple and gold.
sports in october means hope, it means, potential, it means dreams of may and possibly june, it means get together's with friends, it means calls from my dad and brother and all my other friends who i have lethally injected with the purple and gold serum. it means the beginning of the year for the only team that people in los angeles care about. it means laker season is upon me.
last year october was a disaster. in fact, it was the first october that i wasn't even excited about the team. actually i couldn't even handle the thought of them. i knew that rudy would be a disaster and the lakes would throw up more three balls than loyola marymount from the hank gathers, bo kimbal days. i couldn't even believe who we got for shaq, three scrubs? i mean, i was pushing for nowitzki like it was my job, and only nowitzki would i trade shaq for (maybe garnett), and how could kupchack not get cuban to bite on that?? always trade big for big, never big for small! and at least get another freak of nature, not the same kind of freak of nature, but nowitzki is a freak, he plays like my brother benj if he were seven feet tall. silky smooth moves, great shot and absolutely no defense. kobe and that fool together would have made for an exciting october, even with rudy. but i couldn't even watch the season. it was kind of my protest against all things laker. kind of my way of letting the lakes know that they had hurt my feelings, that they had injured me personally. i would catch glimpses, of games, glimpses where the court looked darker, somehow foreign, to my eyes.
but things have changed in lakerland. i feel like i needed the time away, the distance to work on forgetting what we had, it wasn't like their best player got aids and the second best player's knees went out, these things i can understand and suffer through with a team... the time away allowed for me to come back a different fan, a more jaded fan, but nonetheless a fan whose blood runs purple and whose heart is made of gold. they reached out to the only coach they could reach out to, coach phillip, to make up for rash decisions. kobe has suffered through a year where he was given his reign of a team, a coach, and a city and lost them all, realizing that he is neither of the three and merely the key component on a team. if he can take the energy from the humbling he received and put them into his desire to win and into discipline on the court, and shut his mouth and just play, he could probably win the mvp this year. i guess that i am excited about this team because i have no idea what it is going to look like, i have know idea, or can i even predict what this season will look like. finally the lakers are back to being something worth watching because each game will be a complete surprise, each game will be a crap shoot, each game the lakers could potentially be competitive in if they all play together. finally they seem like a team again, finally they seem like family once again, finally i care about them again, finally it's october.