Out of Touch

Hello Blog-World Friends,

Sorry I've been out of touch.

August was a crazy month for me, and I seemed to turn - with increasing frequency - to my blog as an outlet to express frustration, confusion, and observations of the casual hilarity my life always seems to feature.

By the end of the month, though, I started to feel sorta self-conscious about it. Then I had my trip to Boston, and since then I've been swamped. In a good way.

While in Boston, I remembered how much I love what I do for a career. I couldn't wait to get back home and do some work. It helped that, when I came home, I didn't have a girlfriend I had to catch up with or commit big chunks of the week to. Instead, I've been able to sit in front of my laptop, hour after hour after hour, and produce.

Today, after crossing yet another thing of a Things To Do list that has seen more action than seemingly ever (Thankfully some part of my life is getting action), I took a break and went to do laundry.

I fucking hate doing laundry. Laundry, Vacuuming, Asking a girl for her number, Breaking Up (as either dumper or dumpee), and tying ties are my very least favorite things to do.

As I looked around and made sure none of my neighbors would see me pilfer someone else's laundry detergent (I'm out, sue me), the break up of last month made a quick and searing return to my mind. Totally out of nowhere.

Well, not out of nowhere, exactly. Let me be clear, I really liked my ex. I appreciated her as a person. She was usually fun (or at least interesting) to spend time with, particularly before the last couple months of our relationship. In no way was I using her for anything.

Except maybe laundry.

I know, awful, right? Yet, it wasn't totally my fault. I'm a pretty liberal guy, and one time, when we were first dating, I was chatting with her on the phone while folding my towels. I mentioned the great level of disdain I felt for laundry and anything remotely like it, and she said I should just drop it off with her and have her do it.

I wasn't looking in the mirror at the moment (duh, I was doing laundry), but I'm pretty sure you could have described me as "stricken" and "ashen" and any other descriptor bad writers use. How illiberal of her to suggest such a thing. I almost went all feminist on her, until I realized we still didn't know each other that well. Instead, I demurred, and we continued to date.

Then one day I had a ton of laundry to do and no quarters. She invited me over and just kinda took over the duty for me. She has some kids, so she was doing laundry pretty much all the time, and it wasn't hard for her to convince me that it wouldn't be a bother to just throw mine in with it.

So I agreed. And then several months passed, during which I was blissfully laundry-free. Soon, I was able to stop by with a basket of dirty, exchange it for a basket of clean, and not feel the slightest bit sheepish.

We pretty much officially broke things off about a month ago, and I haven't done a load since. At first, I figured she'd call back (or I would) and things would be patched up again, so why bother, right? Then, after a few days, I realized how good of a thing the split would be, and made a set of rules for myself to follow so I wouldn't accidentally slip back into a bad relationship, even if I did like the other person that would be in it with me. Then came travel and then a serious case of allergies, which I used as an excuse to either wear dirty clothes or stuff that would only go to the dry cleaners.

Yes, I get it, I'm both gross and strange. If you just now realized that, you probably also only just now started reading this blog.

But today, I looked at my schedule, saw I was going to be meeting friends at a show in the evening, and realized that today would be one of those bad ones where I had to both shower and put on clean clothes.

Except I don't have any.

So after stalling for a few hours, I sucked it up, broke the pile down into small piles, and successfully washed 1/2 of them.

It wasn't that bad.

Now I'm waiting for some wings I just cooked to cool down, about to pop in a documentary that just arrived from netflix after a few WEEKS of reading "very long wait" on the queue, and drinking a cherry coke because (a) I don't have an ex to get on my ass for drinking pop anymore and (b) it is what I like to do when I watch movies.

If I had to guess, I won't be updating this thing as frequently as I have been over the summer. I'm still really digging my work, and have the next few weeks mapped out.

But I'll still check in from time to time, sharing stories that make you happy your life runs smoother (and cleaner, I hope) than mine.

Take it easy...