i can't find the words

My grandfather had quadruple bypass surgery today. He’s OK, apparently — I haven’t had a chance to speak to him, and my dad only called long enough to relay the good news. Well, it was only good news when you consider the no-bypass option. I haven’t seen him in three years and now he’s starting to act his age. This is not supposed to happen.

To be honest, I’ve had very little experience with death. I had pet turtles when I was young, and they had a nasty habit of not living very long. And sure, I cried, but they were easily replaceable.

My dad’s dad died when I was in seventh grade, but he had been sick and bedridden with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes and several other things since I was three. Sad to say, but it was expected. I did not cry. My last memory of him was when he called me Cha-Cha and then tried to get out of his bed.

I remember my great aunt Eloise only because she gave me lousy coloring books when I was little. She was very old, and mostly blind. It didn’t really register that she was ever around, so life was’t much different when she was gone.

Before my brother and I started mowing our lawn, my parents paid a family to do it. It really was a family business — the husband, wife, daughter and both sons all worked. Then one summer they went to the Caribbean for vacation and all but one son died in a freak scuba diving accident. That was just odd.

My orthodontist had a stroke during my freshman year of college (my mom kept me updated on all of the St. Charles news). He recovered, but then was killed in some sort of tractor accident on his farm.

Then, right before my sophomore year at Lehigh, my good friend Andy died when the van he was driving blew a tire. At the time, I thought I’d never from something that upsetting. I mean, I had only known him for 10 months, but we had gotten pretty close. The day I found out, I had plans to go to a concert with then-best friend Jennifer. I made it through that, but the next few days were a mess. I could hardly see any reason to get out of bed, even to eat. Unfortunately, I also had the burden of telling everyone from my freshman hall, which I was not ready for.

Now, my grandfather is deteriorating, and quickly. (Hershey, my poor old puppy, is doing this too, actually, which upsets me every time I fly home.) I already feel awful for never going to visit my extended family, and this makes it worse. I don’t want to think about it.

Also, I had a scary dream last night. Sean and I were standing outside and we saw an airplane explode. Somehow, we could clearly see and hear each person falling to his/her death. Some were still buckled into their seats, some were on fire; all of them made the same ugly thud when they hit the ground. Then the plane fell (it had miraculously stayed airborne for a few dozen seconds) and the resulting impact forced us to run back inside. Oh god it scared me and woke me up.

Prompted by convenience and a lifelong dream of not being transparently white, but also by an impulsive streak a mile wide, well… (I have fake tan lotion oh no!)

So busy lately — frisbee/baseball, “24,” lunchdates, etc. Even some work at Jazzman’s. Next week looks good, too. House to myself for a while. Lots of places to go. Moving Tuesday, maybe. And Mario Kart, I’m certain.

I’ve figured it out: I’m in prison.

I don’t mean to say that I was knocked unconscious and then taken to Alcatraz (and that it’s taken me awhile to realize this), because that did not happen. But this house at two-two-six Warren Square is an able understudy to the Rock, even if it operates on an open-door honor system.

In short, I’m in solitary confinement — I realize that I can go outside if I want to (and sometimes I have to, for menial labor that I’m not being paid for), but there’s hardly a reason to. I can go downstairs, but there’s always someone or someones watching my TV/DVD player or just sitting where I want to sit (this hardly works with the metaphor, oh well). So, although I am free to leave it whenever I want, I keep finding myself in my room with the door shut and locked.

Did I mention I keep my door locked almost all the time? It’s because otherwise it’s easy to sneak up on me.

That’s the other thing — I feel like I’m being watched. Part of it is the fact that my back faces the door and I was scared half to death several times before I started using the lock religiously, and part of it is je ne sais qua. Only I don’t think I’m really being watched, but that I’m supposed to be. Like — I’m only hypothesizing here — wardens and whatnot are paid to watch prisoners, but don’t really want to. Why would they? So they pretend. And it feels like there are sets of eyes feigning an interest in watching me, but obviously not enjoying it. Either way, it bothers me.

And I hardly eat, and I sing a lot, and I play mind-numbing games, and my sleeping and masturbatory habits are gone, and my showers are timed, and I have to put up with obnoxious/loud neighbors, and I speak in apostrophe…

I know I’ve beaten the whole prison thing to death already, but I do feel trapped. I know I’d be persecuted on the outside, too.

I dropped my car off at the shop this morning and then had to walk for half an hour to get home.

In case you didn’t know, my odometer broke two weeks ago and I don’t know how many miles I’ve driven since then. It’s weird, almost like those miles don’t exist — it’d be nice if I could break a clock and stop time.

To fix the odometer, the mechanics have to take it, as well as the speedometer to which it is connected, out of the car and send it off to some company in California. So for the next week, I won’t know how fast I am driving. If I get pulled over, I am in big big trouble.

Plus it costs $200. Add that to the monitor I had to buy and a few other big expenses and I’ve already spent $1200+ this month. I haven’t bought anything unnecessary, just food and gasoline, and both of those as sparingly as possible.

But, other than that and a nasty burn from work, I am doing OK. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Whew. So this is the longest I’ve been without a constant source of Internet since I lived in Minnesota, I think. Since noon or so on June 1. I lived in Minnesota 10 years ago. Oh man it’s been so long.

But the word from Verizon is that my DSL is going to be switched on on Monday the 14. That’s still five days from now, and it’s 12 days after I placed the order. You would think that, since the people who lived here before used Verizon, it would be incredibly easy for them to turn on our service — something akin to getting my billing information and then pushing a button, quite possibly the return key. Maybe they’d have to type some things first. I don’t know. Two weeks is just too long to wait. I feel bad about using the Internet at work (and it doesn’t always work), Jazzman’s is too scary to visit for more than a minute and I’ve always had problems with the library.

I’ve talked to Verizon’s customer service department several times – the whole process is a bit confusing, and I thought maybe it could be expedited if I asked nicely. No dice. Ms. Harding (this is how she introduced herself) informed me that it takes some time to run tests on the phone line to make sure it is Internet-ready. I informed Ms. Harding (this is how I addressed her) that the line must be good, as the people who lived here before used it. She expressed sympathy and transferred me elsewhere, where I heard the same thing and was lavished with sympathy and then transferred again …. I wanted to yell and kick and scream, but these people are so gosh darn nice, even if they are reading from scripts.

But I suppose that’s how it is with false niceties. You can turn on the smile façade and kill me with kindness and I’ll sit there and take it. I’ll hate every fucking minute of it, but there’s not much to do other than be nice right back. (My nice is less fake and more confused, though.) Even if the niceness is blatantly fake, I’ll look the other way because I’d like it to be genuine. Instead of getting mad, I just nod along. I don’t get it, though — I only act two-faced if I really, really dislike someone.

I moved into my off-campus house last week and still haven’t reached a decision on it. At first I was visibly upset, mostly about the crappy furniture and the disgusting utility closet that’s part of my room. Unpacking cheered me up a bit, as did rearranging the furniture. But now all I can think about is how hot my room is and how much I hate picking avocados out of the recycle and putting them in the trash, even though the recycle bin is clearly marked and the trash can is easily accessible. At least I hope they were avocados.

My only condolence is that my room is enormous — there’s an empty space on my floor the size of my old dorm room. The entire house is big, actually, but it’s so often empty save for me and Bling that I’ve been going stir crazy. At night I’m afraid the bedroom walls are closing in, or, conversely, that the room is expanding into something cavernous and infinite. (I suppose reading “House of Leaves” didn’t help any.) Even Bling, intrepid as an explorer as he is, doesn’t know what to make of the vastness of my room. He just runs around in what roughly amount to circles.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t like the house one bit. Sure, it’s decent as far as South Bethlehem real estate is concerned, but too many things suck about it and I just haven’t been happy. I’m usually bored and/or upset when I’m home, and there’s not a whole lot to do elsewhere. I’ve been looking for escape routes, but all I’ve come up with is the “Instant Fire Escape” (aka a rope ladder in a box) left behind in the utility closet. And that only gets me so far.