Milk experiences for Diary, milk cows for dairy, milk dead men for punker girls

Where did I leave off? It's worth considering considering how much has gone on. A lot, it feels like.

Friday - I'll go there. Friday was full & pleasant. First thing in the day the CFO calls me to his office, nearly stern, almost tense - he starts to query on my affairs - "are you doing anything tonight? You and your daughter?" I'm not and say so - so he lays some orchestra tickets on me - a present from a vendor. I'm alone in probably wanting to go - they're addressed to others yet higher up in the Company - Browns tickets? I'd have never seen 'em - Cavs? Indians? Anything of the sort I'd never know - the Orchestra? Probably me alone in the organization would eagerly attend. Not least because it's right there in my neighborhood. So I'm thrilled to bits about going to the orchestra.

Did I mention how earlier in the week I'd gone to see youngster A play in her school orchestra? She's the viola-ist and she's not shabby. I got her a viola for christmas and that seems to have gone right, I never see her practice but once in a while - the school orchestra was... Okay. The music instructor got pretty preachy, and self-involved and was I'd say, if I had to put a name on it, Oratorically Misanthropic. Just coming at the crowd & audience all plaintive about not having daily music instruction and how it's so important. I... I mean, no. Agatha alternates Mandarin & Art & Orchestra. I think it's pretty gross to just jump up and be all - This is most important. Maybe I wasn't getting it, maybe she wants to take time away from Engilsh or Math? Who knows. Probably social studies takes it on the chin again. I was pretty irritated by the instructor's whole demeanor - and I wasn't really surprised though. The opera - they come out and beg (nevermind that I got free tickets to that just by being handsome & appearing at the absolutely correct time.) The school orchestra they come out and beg. Welcome To Nightvale came out and kinda-begged. Everyone needs more money. Well, not everyone.

I point out that the Orchestra doesn't beg, they don't even announce things. They play in what I think is the prettiest building in this town, they have huge album sales, they have an endowment that probably dwarfs even the CMA and they don't beg. The program is bigger than most magazines- they do well.

The performance was really good - A little Liszt - Orpheus to start which really made me glad, a glad day - kind of mentioning the opening of the sky into a better phase- kind of ripples of minnows and foot-high waterfalls. The main show is Bartock and it's performed incredibly well, the soloist has an athleticism about his playing - he's robust & there's a power that pours out of him, same for the second piece where the pianist is leaping up on the bench, diving at the keys like a fishing bird. It's very excellently executed & leaves one with the sense of having seen something really impressive. Now, the music, well, it wasn't what I was particularly looking for? Not just easy meanders into pleasing scenes - there were attempts and directions-and then powerful emanations of discord, of unseen malice & a shaking awake. It is Not Soothing but rather Menacing. Just not quite the thing I'd been needing - having been feeling shaky and under it for a moment.

Of course shaky & under it. Did I go back to Wednesday? To Thursday? I'd been up, on the scissor lift - I said to take it to it's highest height & we did, and then it stalled, and the other man turned pale & the sweat dripped off of his palms & I laughed at death and laughed at hydraulic safety features and pondered my own durability on a 50 foot descent. I think I'd be fine. I think I'd be just fine. Between you and me, I might not know what's best for me or even what's worst.


Friday, the orchestra, and the work and in between - don't let me forget. We were on our way to dinner, to Tommy's for our regular repast & who do we meet but neighborhood internet friend tylik who showed us, just in passing, some videos of slug experimentation & revealed the secret of the Slug's Grapser - which anatomical oddity provided us with a few days of laughs. "Ow! My Grasper!" Neat meeting the neighbors - plus when they're the right sort of internet team-player that makes it all to the better. I got anxious on the sidewalk talking - I got anxious that we hadda go and eat and make time and get to the orchestra! Deadlines, rather, timetables, I'm no good with them. Resentment! Did you know that the world doesn't start & stop at my convenience? Resentment, getting to places on time in time.

Saturday we messed around and did very little that didn't involve video-games & art supplies and laundry, filthy old laundry my enemy. And friends came to visit and we went to mexican supper, and then sunday was my mother and also snow, and also the thing of it - the problem in waiting that'd given me the bad mood (worse than even the unseasonal, altogether unreasonable snow in mid-may) was my sore fucker of a tooth. I went to a foggy place of distraction & mindless irritation & did my very, level best to be cool to my people who assembled around me a little bit and gently.

Monday I go straight for it - the dentist - I found one, a new one - No Appointments! I was so happy to learn it, no appointments - walk in and try to get there early. So effing swell, the right way to be and walking distance from home. I race over there monday morning and get it all done up about halfway - halfway through the claim is made & the directions laid out - You gotta go over and see the specialist - out by your mother's house - go see the specialist and have surgery done a little. So. Not the thing you love hearing.

I go to work and afterward go to Monay supper with my parents & delightful young niece. Camp out on their sofa as best I'm able. As best...

And really I should get at this matter, this distressing - antagonistic matter - which is the Television. If you want healthcare you must learn to endure the television in the waiting room, the constant & loud television, and then if you want to spend time with your aged parents you're going to get to experience a lot of television - really the worst sorts of television. And then you'll have to listen as a television commands you to buy nonsense while having your mouth sugereyed. You'll have to learn of the sinister forces of american politics as they run rampant over the airwaves, as they demand that you make them your master. It's a grim-bad-world if you have the TV on. And smelling your own skin burn up under the surgeon's electric knife - that's not an awesome time to be hearing a lot about boner-pills and SUVs.

I'm a little disappointed in myself that I didn't ever get around to building that one device that turns off any TV, the tricky key-fob that lets you have a beer in silence and maybe wait, wounded & even bleeding, for a doctor without being advertised at.

(Nobody Tells Me Shit. That's my thought, now, here - now, killing minutes and recounting - diary style - One of the meandering plots of the weekend is the angering discussion I got into with my cousin on the FB - he's a schoolteacher and wanted to joke about failing students who do not care to do the work and I sprang up in their defense explaining the futility & senselessness of school as anything beyond childcare - and his many teacher friends jumped up to be aggrieved and to claim (I must add with execrable spelling) the merits & goodness of their various rubricks, insisting that their methods would measure learning and not merely obedience. My arguments were not very aggressive but I said what I thought aught be said & that is, just pass them all, they're wasting their time listening to you talk about the nonsense you think is important, what the fuck more do you want from people?

And no doubt my animus derives from a bad time with the orchestra teacher - I think it did. I came to see my kid play an instrument and you're making excuses, that's what I'm seeing here lady, excuses and whining and you talking about your bullshit like I would sit in a room and listen to it. Fuck that, I passed middle-school so I don't have to ever listen to a middle school teacher again.)

I think that catches me up pretty well. Tonight is Strahd, I think, we might even meet him? We've been blowing off his supper invitation for so long.