Frank (Slept Here)

I’m getting back into running after a couple of weeks off with tendonitis, and it feels as if summer is getting into the swing of things as well. It was close to 90 degrees yesterday and was well north of 80 today and, save for a window unit in the bedroom, the apartment is not air-conditioned. Heat and humidity completely kill my appetite for food, so that plus the constant sweating and increased exercise means I’ve lost some weight. I weighed myself last week before my first run and again this morning. Not surprisingly I’m a bit lighter, close to seven pounds lighter, in fact. If you are keeping score at home that is close to a pound a day. At the current rate I will disappear in approximately 150-160 days.

My great grandmother’s last words to me were, “You’re getting chubby.” I’ll show her by starving to death. Who’s laughing now, great grandma?

Morning coffee – 6:45 AM

First time cursing traffic – 7:56 AM

First time someone asked “Is it Friday yet?” – 9:00 AM

First embarrassing Freudian slip by Frank – 9:15 AM

When discussing an issue over email I intended to type “I’m glad we trust one another,” but it came out as, “I’m glad we tryst one another.”

Welcome back to the weekday grind, Frank.

I should tell more embarrassing stories here. Earlier I was looking at my site counter and saw that someone was reading an old post about one of the most traumatic moments of my childhood. It was terrible when it happened, but with time (and therapy) come healing, and now it’s probably one of my favorite posts on this blog.

Here it is, from December of 2008:

The last time I was home, I came across some pictures from a preschool ballet production from 1990 or 1991. Unbeknownst to the casual viewer, somewhere on that stage was a boy living a nightmare. It wasn’t the fact that I had wet myself that day during nap time (a humiliation that included changing into a pair of the preschool’s “oops” pants, which were bright blue, baggy, and let everyone else know that you’d had an accident), or the large bee that had chased me around the yard during recess. It was what I was wearing.

If clothes make the man, I was a little girl on that fateful night. My parents have always insisted that us kids invest ourselves in extra-curricular activities. In elementary school, I played T-ball and soccer in the city league. In middle school, I ran track and cross country and played trumpet in the band. It was the same in high school, and I eventually earned the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts as well. But before all that, my parents had cast onto me the ultimate preschool embarrassment. They put me in ballet class. I was the only boy. I had to wear a form-fitting leotard and white ballet shoes. With my spindly little body and oversized head, I looked just like a Pez dispenser, except this Pez dispenser was expected to do a ballet dance on stage in front of an auditorium full of people.

From the house to the theatre was a blur of rain, traffic lights, and some lovely insults from skateboard-bearing teenagers directed at the boy in tights. By the time I was backstage, I was feeling about as good as you’d think I would, and when the show started I was so humiliated that I really just didn’t care anymore. It was short and painful, consisting of slow piano music, about twenty tutu-clad girls and one boy in tights meandering about the stage with no real synchronisation or harmony. The movements had been marked on the stage floor in white tape, which looked a lot like an NFL playbook, but that didn’t stop us from spinning off cue, falling down, bumping into one another, or staring off into space and picking our noses.

I burst into tears when I was reunited with my parents, who seemed shocked that putting their son onstage in front of a crowd of parents and teenagers while dressed in a leotard might be upsetting to him. In vain, my dad tried to lighten the situation:

“Why don’t we go out to dinner?”
“No, I don’t want to.”
“Why, because you’re dressed like a girl?”

Needless to say, I was unhappy for several days after. It would be a long time before I would trust my parents with anything again.

For a short period when I was in college I took part in a weekly poker game. I knew nothing about poker (I still don’t) but my lack of skill was compensated by the fact that the other guys I played with didn’t know much about poker either. None of us had much in the way of money to bet – usually whoever won ended up with about $20, but $20 can go a long way in college, and when someone won it was expected that he’d call the other players the next day and tell them how he’d spent the money.

Generally the calls went like this:

“Hey (insert loser’s name), it’s me (the winner) and I just wanted you to know that I’m out getting (blank) with the money I took from you last night.”

For the final blank spot the items purchased were normally things a college guy would buy – music, movies, pornography, or food. Then you could say things like, “Hear this song? You bought the album,” or, “Hope you like the pizza, you paid for it.”

I played every Sunday for a couple of months, during which time I won exactly once. The next day I was out getting some things for my apartment and I thought it would be an appropriate time to make my phone call. “Hey losers, it’s Frank…just did a little shopping with the money I took from you guys…bought me a new tea kettle.” I realized immediately that I should have lied and said I’d bought ten copies of The Dirty Dozen or a blow up doll – anything except a tea kettle. My time in the poker group was short-lived after that point. I could only take a few weeks of the guys saying things like, “Hey Frank, can you get those doilies now?” before I finally stopped attending. To this day whenever I see one of my college friends there’s always a point in the conversation when he’ll bring up the time I spent the poker money on a tea kettle.

When I was moving out of the apartment I took the tea kettle from its perch above the fridge and tossed it in the garbage. I could no longer use it knowing I had bought it with money earned gambling.

Plus I had just purchased a lovely coffee machine with some cash I won throwing dice.

Because I often find myself very busy during the day, things don’t always get the attention they deserve. Over the course of a day, usually when I’m on the phone at work, I’ll leave myself notes for things I need to do later. These things usually fill Post-Its or receipts or margins on work documents until they start to pile up and I throw them out. Earlier today I decided to go through a small stack of them before I tossed them in the garbage. Among the things that need more of my time and attention:

-Ice achilles
-Get Joe to meet me in NYC
-Cubs fans are babies, the franchise is not cursed just historically bad
-iTunes – Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage
-All my roads have bends / there are no clear-cut beginnings / and so far, no dead-ends
-Wilco at Cooperstown July 28th
-Too many phone messages for one day
-Need more time, less space

Hopefully I’ll get to all of those thoughts in time. If anyone can get to them for me I’d appreciate it.

A few minutes ago I turned my clocks back to 2005 to pick up a few things I’d left behind. I took the note that said “don’t drink so much,” and the Velvet Underground T-shirt that my girlfriend at the time gave me. When it was time to root through my CD collection I knew that a lot of them were left behind for a good reason but I grabbed them anyway, returned to 2012 and I traded them in for the entire catalogue of The Posies. Then I kicked myself for not doing this sooner.

I missed The Posies in their mid 1990s prime – for many years I had no respect for power pop but my hard stance was my loss. I didn’t get wise to the band until fairly recently. Since 2005 my appreciation of music has gotten deeper, expanding past three chords, I heard harmonies and I liked them. Despite a hiatus and various solo projects after the late 90s, The Posies started putting out new music again a few years ago – most recently they put out a tremendous record called Blood/Candy. Here’s a track from it:

If you like that, and you should, you should buy the album, and the rest of their collection for that matter. I give you my personal guarantee that it will be awesome. In fact, if you listen to some of their stuff and don’t like it, you can come out here and punch me in the face. Is it a deal?

You wanna hear about a stupid thing I did the other day? Get this, I managed to hurt my leg from running too much. I never thought I’d say that again, especially since I’m running about half as many miles as I did in college, but I managed to hurt my achilles, regardless. I believe I have what’s called “tendinitis,” but in plain English, I fucked it up. That’s not the stupid part, though – the stupid part is how I made it worse.

A couple of weeks ago, after a road race, I started getting a nagging pain at the bottom of my right calf. I knew that it was the achilles and that it was probably tendinitis, but the discomfort was manageable and it didn’t seem to get any worse, so I kept running on it. Flash forward to this Monday. After my run I had some time before Ella got home, so I flopped down in front of the TV and promptly dozed off. I woke up when I heard her unlocking the door and I tried to do the old “I wasn’t sleeping, I’ve been thinking about presents to buy you” move. I quickly tried to stand but my right leg slipped and my achilles went from sore to oh my god I’m going to need a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I’ve run close to 70 miles since it started bugging me, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was an awkward movement while waking from a nap. I’m such an idiot.