My God Forsaken Fingers

So I basically chopped up the tips of my fingers on my right hand, except my pinkie, like fifteen minutes ago via air conditioner fan. They are currently wrapped and throbbing under bandages. I was pressing on the styrofoam casing shroud, because the drum fan was rubbing on it, to diagnose the problem and my finger slipped on the styrofoam right above the fan and my first three fingers got their pads torn asunder like arugula. I immediately yanked my fingers from the machine and hid them behind my back. Whenever you cover your hand with your other hand or grab your face or your knee immediately after an injury this is s sign that something bad just happened. Especially if you can barely bring yourself to look at it afterwards. I am not squeamish so I looked right away. It looked like a held a .22 across my finger tips and pulled the trigger. How could I be writing you ask. Well, I don't think it's set in yet that my fingers are totally fucked for at least a month.

I always thought to myself how stupid could someone be to stick their fingers in a snow blower or under a lawn mower, now I know. I consider it more of a temporary lapse in judgement resulting in catastrophic injury. It is a very effective learning tool this pain thing.

A real entry!

Yesterday was spent drifting in and out of reality to the cadence of central air. It's amazing how climate control can sedate a person or make it possible to watch three HBO movies in a row without a second thought. Since I moved home I've been spending a lot of time at my sister's apartment. She lives about fifteen minutes away in Franklin MA. In exchange for eating all her food, ordering random movies from On Demand, drinking at least half of the wine in the house at any time and general boarding privileges I have been painting rooms in her apartment while she or her room mate Sanne are at work.

All this coming and going at the apartment have attracted the attentions of the resident butt smoking, sweat pant wearing, Borat quoting speed freak whose name I shall not use. We will call him Al.

Recently we encountered Al in the open and covered stairway system of the Franklin apartment complex while on our way into the building from a grocery store run for dinner ingredients. He was sporting a beater and gray sweatpants all propped up against the hallway wall just out of the rain's reach smoking a Marlboro Menthol while at the same time waving his smoke free hand slowly in front of his face.

This was not our first encounter with Al. We had employed his services earlier to procure a small amount of smoke from the resident black market merchant. Having to walk by him we naturally were drawn into an awkward and forced exchange of small talk. His share of the conversation consisted of singing the first three lines of Borat's fake Kazakhstan national anthem as he tried to work out the rest. Halting and uncomfortable laughter from us appeared to satisfy whatever exchange he was hoping for and we left to continue upstairs.

An hour later there was a knock at my sister's door and then suddenly he was in the apartment using the bathroom. Then he was talking about his job then about paint then asking me to borrow my car to go pick up a bag then trying to help us cook. It was fucked. Guess you had to be there.

My second Posting!

How do people do this every day? The Lyme's is fading and my health is returning. I'm writing tomorrow. Going to bed. Sorry.

Are you serious?

It's late. Me and my sisters just came back from the Uptown in Franklin. I am hammered like a horse hair plaster two by three. Shit, I might puke. This sucks, this is all a surprise.

Is this my first post?

So it started with me thinking I was going crazy, really.   How does a man determine that he is, in some way, slowly but inexorably losing his grip on what he came to understand in thirty one years of life as reality?  For me it began with occasional peripheral hallucinations at all times of the day.  A fire hydrant would look like a sitting dog.  I would jerk to a halt walking by a mirror, mistaking my reflection for another person in the hall with me.  While driving I would wince for an impact, sure that a car (that wasn't there at all) had run a stop sign at an intersection I was crossing.  

Next it was spelling.  I noticed more frequently that I was forgetting how to spell common words that I used every day like business or eventually or forget simple rules of grammar like where to put apostrophe.  These manifestations of dementia were accompanied by increasing feelings of nagging anxiety, joint and chest pain and exhaustion.  I was not quick to tell  anyone the extent of my condition as I thought it would pass.  On its own, it did not.  Then, two weeks ago I was diagnosed with Lyme's disease!  Hooray!  This was the answer I was looking for.  I'm on meds now for it and the symptoms have almost completely ceased.  I must have had the shit  for a while because  four months ago was the only time I have ever been bitten by a tick and not found it right away.  It was almost completely in my wrist when I did find it.  I dug it out with a shiny Buck knife, the same model Chuck Norris used in Missing in Action part one.  

[On a side note I carry this knife around with me and it freaks people out but that's not why I carry it.  They say it's scary, that I could hurt someone.  These are the same people who text while driving.  That is more dangerous.  I'm not accidently going to hurl a knife across a diner into a patron's temple dropping them into their home fries face first while spraying the women at the counter waiting for her coffee with bright red blood.  It is more likely that the person driving carelessly will swipe someone off the sidewalk or run a light into a school bus sending the driver arms first through the windshield into a rod iron fence or twisting the kid crouched down to find the dollar he dropped, while showing his friend how to fold it funny and make swear words, around a seat frame and into a wheel well crushing his skull.]

Long story short, the antibiotics are working and I'm feeling like my old familiar self again.