Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Watching Icicles Grow

The first thing that I am usually aware of is the brightness of the sun rising between the crux of two houses across the street and stabbing me in the eyes through an unfortunate conjunction of bed placement and and a broken place in the blinds. The shape of my room, the configuration of heating elements and the fact that I have a memory foam mattress that sits on essentially a low pedestal all conspire to prevent me from moving the bed to a different location in my new apartment. After thinking for something like the hundredth time that I should probably do something about that I attend to important bodily functions such as the taking of iron and the brewing of caffeinated beverages. The first real activity I do is the most I am physically active all day. I cycle on my recumbent bike for seventy minutes or so. Sometimes longer sometimes a bit less- it depends strongly on how long it takes me to play a couple days in Harvest Moon. During the loading screens I look out the living room window- the one I can see out of that is as opposed to the sole window we had in the living room of my last place. The position of my bike is such that most of what I can see is the featureless white siding of the building next door but I can also see the tops of a few trees and a bit of sky. Lately though my focus hasn't gone past the icicles. The weather up here in this bitter northeastern corner of New England has been especially conducive to icicle farming this year. We had snow followed by a couple days of slightly mild sunny days followed by bitter cold with the occasional day warm and sunny enough to make the icicles drip. I live on the second floor of an old house that's been converted into apartments and given that two of the icicles outside the window extend as much as a foot below it I estimate as least those two are going on ten feet in length. I think when they finally break (killing anyone will the misfortune of being below or worse- shearing the cable lines) or melt away I am going to miss them.

I follow up exercising with a hot shower. I then absently look in the fridge and the cupboard to figure out what to eat for breakfast as though I do not know exactly what is in both. Am I feeling ambitious enough to go through the great deal of effort involved in fixing myself canned tuna on toast or am I going to dump a can of soup in our small frying pan to heat and have chowder for breakfast? Not that it truly matters as there are fair odds I will eat the other option later on in the day. I then log onto my computer and look for jobs and try to while away my time. I turn on the radio to try to drown out the inconsiderately loud people that live below our kitchen (as opposed to the chick who lives below our living room as this is the way I think of the two first-floor units). You'd think the people that live upstairs would bother me more but aside from walking very heavily for such small people I notice them much less than all-out shouting matches alternating with children jumping and running so hard they shake my whole kitchen followed by several episodes of back-to-back King of the Hill played at inordinately high volume topped off by leaving Mario pause music playing just as loud for a minimum of eight hours (it was still playing when I went to bed at midnight) while they weren't even home. I watch marathons of shows of Netflix I probably wouldn't have looked at the descriptions of if I didn't have so much time on my hands. Eventually after it's been dark for several hours I go to sleep thinking of nothing in particular and unconcerned that my next real thought is going to be about how I should really do something about the morning light stabbing me in the eyes through the broken blinds.

This is the life of an unemployed person. Or at least this is my life while unemployed. I don't know if other people fall into such eminently predictable patterns while undistracted by things like working or if they struggle to remember the last time they actually went somewhere. The most recent time I ventured beyond our steps was this past friday to fetch presents from my parents' car for our Christmas celebration and the last time I actually went anywhere was... Well, the last two times we needed groceries I wrote my brother a list and he went shopping but I did go the time before that so possibly as much as four weeks ago but I don't really remember because there is nothing distinct about my days or weeks. I have been told recently by people I had never previously interacted with that I should write in my blog again and by people that I do know that I should write in my blog again because I have so much time on my hands. I have to say my lack of inspiration lately is strongly linked to the lack of anything to say in response to 'So, how was your day?'. I can just imagine my movie-dramatic response: 'We-eeeell, I exercised for seventy-six minutes today instead of the eighty-two I did yesterday and decided on soup for breakfast after a hot internal debate that lasted possibly as much as a minute and then I cruised the internet job boards to see what new occupations I am not qualified for had been posted today and oh- one of the icicles I have been watching grow developed a fork for some reason and has a little secondary icicle now.'

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