sunday
June 13, 2005 / 10:13 a.m.
the melancholy sunday afternoon plays itself out like a broken cello.
first it's the last game of a three game series in washington dc for the mariners, that starts at 10 in the morning, much to my fancy. coffee with baseball: a new concept! although what's wrong with coffee past 12, or even at 7 in the evening.
a game (series) that ends with me posting this on ussmariner.com:
"131. lyle in pdx said: June 12, 2005 at 2:18 p.m.
What a pathetic pathetic performance by the mariners this weekend. i'd have rather pulled my nails or undergone a root canal than watched what they were selling the past three games. no heart, no nothing. (other than a few lazy slappers that somehow dropped in).
tons of sloppy fielding, tons of runners left on, tons of weird coaching logic.
just really really bad.
thought that needed to be said."
"135. Deleted for aesthetic reasons said: June 12th, at 12:44 pm
#131 Well said."
But that didn't ruin my day. I was still sad, though.
My mom had been housesitting for a gay couple that lives nearby her, and for a reward they got her a gift certificate to newport bay. which is the octagonal floating restaurant right under the I-5 bridge. I guess this sustained me over the weekend, over a weekend of looking longlingly at my still un-used leftover pill bottle, of lamenting this or that, of feeling intensely lonely, of wondering about the odd irony of the birds that have hatched above my room, who's dull helpless cries have turned to mature squeeking and selfish wanting, and the irony of them soon to be kicked out to fend for themselves while under them the same situation is playing out, although on a much more wide scale.
who cares though?
With her picking me up at 4 commenced a 20 minute rant about how dirty my hair was, how sloppy i looked, how embarrassed she was going to be to be seen with me at a respectable restaurant looking this way. Despite the fact i was wearing really nice clothes, spit shined leather shoes, ironed pants, shirt etc. She just could not let it go.
We arrived at the restaurant and went back and forth as to where to sit. it was good, though. we each had a budget of $23, as we worked it out. if you were to split $70 three ways.
I kept my bill correct with two gin and tonics, a bowl of clam chowder, and a giant shrimp cocktail.
they did not.
so i had to spend the hour after dinner hearing about the bill, hearing about the math, hearing about the logic.
I told a joke during the dinner, amongst the inane conversation that always ensues when we three are put together.
"The guy who has HIV in that couple didn't actually touch the gift certificate they gave us, did he?"
Mom threw bread to the canadian geese that have somehow taken up permanent residence floating around the restaurant, obviously looking for scraps. Sadly she didn't leave it at that, she had to provide running commentary about the bread she was launching at the geese.
And it went somewhat like this:
"Oh, geese are so mean to each other. Look what that one is doing."
"I want to order another plate of bread just for them."
"Aww, sweet little babies."
I told her i wanted to enjoy my meal.
"No, i'm going to throw more to them. They're hungry."
An older couple sits right over our shoulder, quietly, enjoying their meal with some wine.
The waitress walks out to the patio, right as mom shouts "RIGHT IN HIS MOUTH!! Did you see that, guys!!"
I looked distantly at the river where the navy ships were parked for 'meet the fleet week'. I watched the coast guard boat pick up the river barriers that they had set up to constrict the flow of drunken meathead boaters, lest they turn themselves suddenly into fundamentalist muslims with huge bombs and a desire to screw 12 pathetic virgins who can't do anything else with their life but think of how much they want to screw a loser who had nothing better to do with his life than blow himself up.
The coast guard boats with machine guns were in the distance, an suddenly their lights would flash on the top of their boats, and their engines would speed up, the water would turn white behind them, and they would be off. Another drunk meathead within 500 feet of the navy ship. can't have that. have to do something while we're here.
We finished our meals.
As we were walking along the southern riverwalk, after dinner, some woman stopped us with "Don't listen to him, he's stupid" as she pointed to the man sitting next to her and they both laughed.
Erik stopped though, and i continued walking and stopped and pulled out my cellphone to pretend i was busy, an listened.
"Okay, so i want to get a stranger's opinion on if this is inappropriate or not."
"It ISN'T!!!" she cried.
"So, we're sitting here having ice cream, and some middle aged, overweight guy in spandax pulls up on his bike and stops and gets off. He has sweat all over his ass, and you can totally see it. And she goes 'God, it looks like someone blew a load all over his ass'".
We drop erik off at home, he has a soccer game at 9 o'clock somewhere, even though he's tired.
I go back to mom's and have an argument with her about the fact that she's proposing we split up an already half eaten pint of ice cream into two.
'Just fucking have the rest' although i don't think i said 'fucking'.
I got my basketball, my unopened medical bills, and went home. Watched the OSU vs USC game for a while, went up to my room and watched a couple episodes of the BBC version of The Office, went to bed thinking about how much i was going to get accomplished the next day.
As i always do, and never do.