(no subject)

This morning, I staggered out of bed and stumbled down the hallway to feed the animals, with cats flowing around my ankles. When I came back into my room, I noticed a small, black circle of something on the floor near my altar and immediately disregarded it as one of my thousands of hair elastics. Five seconds later, I decided I probably should pick the damn thing up because one of the cats could eat it (since they do so love to eat things they have no business eating) and that would be a giant headache. I leaned down to pick it up with my left hand and right before my fingers touched it, I realized what it was and froze.

In my reaching, my left wrist came into my line of sight and I noticed that it was bare.

Any of my more observant friends know that I have worn a black rubber bracelet on that wrist and that I have done so since 1991. It has not left my skin for God or country, I didn't even take it off when I got married (and you know that was a fun arguement with my mother). I originally put the bracelet on when I was working my first job, as an upper hood technician at an oil change place, and it's not actually a bracelet, but a car part. I started wearing it to symbolize something I realized about myself one day, something I've never told anyone before and never will.

Over the years, I've added other bracelets and had them break some time later, but this one has stood the test of time and remained with me for fourteen years.

And now it's gone.

It feels weird, looking at my wrist and not seeing it there. And I'm unsure whether this is a sign of good things to come or more black clouds looming on the horizon.

I picked the broken bracelet up from the floor and set it on my vanity. Shortly after, the metal rod in my closet that holds up all of my clothes broke apart from the wall and sent everything crashing to the floor.

(no subject)

I am going to karaoke tomorrow night after work with my favourite co-workers. I will be singing 'Fairy Tale in New York' by the Pogues, with Amanda doing the drunken Shane McGowan parts.

I am going to drink good bourbon and smoke too many cigarettes. I am going to laugh loudly and tell inappropriate stories. I am going to goad Joanna into singing something wretched, so that I may have ammunition to torment her with at a later date.

This will be the first time I've sung in public, in front of a large group of people, in a mighty long time. This will also be my first time singing karaoke. Knees knocking, but I will do it.

Booze makes you popular and heals all wounds!

That Pogues song is my ultimate Christmas song and pretty much the only one I will tolerate being played or sung in my presence. I have drank great amounts of whiskey, with large and rousing cheers from my ex-roommates and I, to that song. And I have wept quietly, completely alone and in the dark, on Christmas eve to that song.

I may be a fool, but it resonates within my chest.