Well this has been a shitshow, hasn’t it? It’s really easy to bitch about what happened this year. Low hanging fruit. But rather than focus on that, here are some good things that happened this year.

• I was forced to move out of my San Pedro apartment and moved into a place in Downtown LA. Fortunately I was given a buyout.
• I basically spent June in bed. I was prescribed Lexapro, and now I feel a lot better. Amazingly enough this is the first time ever I’ve been prescribed antidepressants (although I probably should have been on them a long time ago.)
• Learned working from home is just as productive as working in an office. So fuck going into the office. No more!
• Went to Montana in October and fell in love with the place.
• Started listening to music again. No. REALLY listening to music.

Here are some things I’ll be working on in 2021:

• Montana vacation starting tomorrow, actually. My boss is going on maternity leave in February, so I’ve got to take the vacay when I can.
• Be healthier overall.
• Move. I’m actually going to move within the same apartment building, but I would like to have more closet space.
• Better clothes. I used to consider myself a bit fashionable. What the fuck happened to me?
• Maybe start creating music? I’ve never been much for writing music. Maybe I’ll remedy that this year.
• Once travel restrictions lift, get my ass over to Berlin. And have sex. Tons of sex. If I don’t get an STD, I will have done things incorrectly. Shit, I want a fucking prolapsed anus. If I’m not sitting on a rosebud, 2021 will be a huge bust.

I’m not one to whine about how awful 2020 was and have any sort of naïve illusions that 2021 will automatically be a better year. Hell, I’m not expecting to be in a post-COVID world until deep into next autumn. I guess with age comes wisdom, and since I’ll be turning the ripe old age of 42 in March, I will have the answers to all of life’s questions? Hm. Whatever.

I just realized that holy shit, Christmas is in 10 days. This week is the last full business week of the year (although I am taking Friday off.) Next week is Christmas and the following week is New Year’s.

Which means that when the calendar turns to 2021, my ass will be back in Montana. I’ll be in a different cabin this time closer to the Montana-Idaho border, but this cabin has a hot tub. My boss is going on maternity leave at the end of January, so I see it as the only opportunity for a true vacation until Labor Day. And who knows, by then we can maybe travel overseas and I won’t have to travel to remote areas in their way way way offseason to prevent the chances of coming down with this damn virus.

Speak of, damn I’m horny. I’ve been having dreams of making out with guys lately. I’m telling you, the second after I get the second shot of the vaccination, I’m going on a fucking orgy.

I had written some half-cooked bullshit about Trump, his calls of voter fraud and how unoriginal it is. But fuck it. I really didn’t care too much anyhow. I’ve just been marveling at what lows he and the RepubliKKKan party would crawl to in order to kill democracy. Besides, today an institution used to keep slavery intact voted to give Joe Biden the presidency. And while CNN and MSNBC both talked about watching democracy in action, I wonder how they didn’t choke with laughter on their own words since the electoral college is the furthest thing from a democracy. Makes me sort of glad to be a college dropout.

But today we also got the first vaccines into the arms of Americans. So I guess 276 days since I started working from home, there is some hope for the future. I guess the question is whether 2021 will be okay and whether I can travel overseas again. By 2022 definitely unless some other calamity comes and affects us all.

It’s one thing to be tired, like you can’t handle the weariness of being awake. That your limbs and brain need to sit down somewhere and regroup. That you yawn a few times an hour.

But I’m flat out sleepy. Like sleeping all night, waking up in the morning and sleeping while having my coffee, sleeping while on lunch break, sleeping once I get off of work, sleeping after dinner. Or like on Saturday where I was basically sleeping the whole day. I don’t know if it’s the lack of daylight or the wonders of depression, but here I am just wanting to sleep.

One thing I have been doing in the few minutes when I am fully conscious is online shopping. My whole apartment smells fruity and herby and delicious because my $95 order from Lush came yesterday. I bought both shower and bath bombs and a salt scrub. Y’all might not be able to smell me, but at least when I sniff myself I’ll be fabulous with a capital F-A-G.

Saturday night I was filling up my Brita water dispenser — as I do every night before I go to bed — and noticed water pooling up on the floor. I know I can be a little sloppy while doing the dishes, but I’m not THAT sloppy. After a little sleuthing I discover that my garbage disposal is leaking. Fortunately I’m not a hoarder so what little I had underneath the sink was easily moved elsewhere.

Of course the fear sets in. — How long will this take to get fixed? — How badly did I fuck things up? So Sunday morning I put in a ticket with my building’s maintenance team and let the fates take over from there.

Now will you believe me that in three hours someone came to attempt to fix it? Indeed that happened. Unfortunately they needed to replace my garbage disposal and said they were expecting a shipment in on Tuesday. That’s fine. I can deal with doing dishes in my bathtub for a couple of days. But really, I was thinking that they would forget about it and I would have to follow up later this week and that this would drag on and on until I just deliberately broke my lease and moved to like Palmdale just to be as far away as possible.

Well, will you believe me if I told you they came in this morning and replaced the motherfucker and that it works? No drippy, no stress, no anxiety. All fixed!

With the exception of the lack of closet space, this place ain’t bad.

Fuck me.

I forgot to set my alarm last night and woke up late. Then I remembered that I’m still earlier than most of my coworkers, and no one really gives a fuck. But I do. So I run to my office area without my glasses or clothes and turn my computer on.

For the first hour I was a mess. Nothing made sense. But as I was simultaneously working and getting myself washed up and ready and caffeinated, things were getting clearer.

That’s ok. Nothing still makes sense.

This weekend some people in the disabled community were up in arms because people were making fun of the president by calling him “Diaper Don.” My reading on this was his temper tantrum about losing the election and shit and acting like a baby. But some folks thought it was a dig at disabled people. I thought that was the stupidest thing, so I texted my cousin Gina whom, some of you might know, is a paraplegic. Her reaction to the uproar,

That’s dumb. I think they’re just overly sensitive. When you’re a disabled person you have to learn not to take everything seriously otherwise they can’t survive in this world.

I would have interpreted it as making fun of a baby, not a disabled person.

Then again, she is, as my friend Jess would put it, as sensitive as a brick.

Whatever. We know babies are stupid as fuck, anyways.

So I turned off my social media. Fuck you all. I don’t think I missed anything.

It’s been a little over four years since the Grandmother died, and I had a strange dream about her last night.

For some reason my mom still lived at the old apartment but was getting ready to move out. I was walking around and out of the corner of my eye saw someone who looked like The Grandmother sitting on a bench and talking to random people. I do a double-take and start bawling. I’m still confused as to whether that lady was the Grandmother, but my part of my brain that controls my emotions just unleashed this torrent of tears.

I eventually make my way to the old apartment, and I see my mom is also affected by this doppleganger but says nothing. I look in the hallway and see The Grandmother walking out. What the fuck? I’m still not understanding any of this, so I just sit down to try and think through all of this logically.

I ask the Grandmother how she could be there, that I saw her dead, and I was the only person who saw her face right after she died. But she doesn’t say anything. She just sits down in the living room and watches Korean television.

My mom and I go into the kitchen and decide that we will keep the apartment for another couple months until we figure out what is going on. I also decide to keep taking her to her acupuncture and doctor schedules and spend the next couple of nights in the apartment.

The next morning, the Grandmother goes into the master bedroom closet and disappears. It’s strange, but I decide to go back to my current apartment to pick up some clothes and supplies. When I get back to the old apartment, my mom is asking where The Grandmother is. I tell her the last I saw her she was in the main bedroom. We’re looking around, and there is no sign of her. She had vanished.

So I’m wondering if she is really dead or is alive in an alternate universe.

End dream.

I don’t know what the fuck is going on with my psyche, but I woke up emotionally spent. I don’t know if I have some lingering guilt about her death since I was her caretaker. I mean shit, it’s been four years.