LIFE'S A BLUR...OR DID I SAY THAT ALREADY?

Here's a new wrinkle... having spent several hundred dollars on new glasses which officially take the slow decay of my eyesight into account, I now find that my old detail specs do better than the new progressives when it comes to working with the computer. I think that, somewhere along the way, I wuz robbed. But why am I not surprised? This is after all a business where one routinely pays over a hundred dollars for 59 cents' worth of plastic...

I was feeling cranky earlier today because it seemed that every blog on my list I visited had deleted me from its posted links. Poor Mr. Bigg got a personal note on the subject, and hurried to assure me that it was in fact nothing personal. Considering that it took time away from his idyll with the Beautiful David, I am most impressed at his response, but it did leave me wondering: is it something I said? have I suddenly become de trop? not trop enough? am I just too boring now that I no longer wring my hands about whether or not I should leave my life and start over? now that I have started over -- if, God help me, that is what this is? Well, I knew I had my fifteen minutes of fame as one of the "Blogs of the Week" back in April, but this is ridiculous. How soon they forget...

The summer officially comes to an end with the last visit of my eldest son this week; he is the last of the children to depart from the Old Home of Folks, and the only one to [a] help me move, or [b] spend the night here, so far. I got a dresser and a mattress delivered today just to accommodate him [no bed, but that's a long story...], and it has led me to reflect on the way that I have been throwing money out the window in an effort to replicate something resembling my former life [what, you need a broiler pan? try broiling the steak you can buy for the price of a hamburger without one...]. The brand new [guest] dresser got gouged in the delivery process, and I didn't notice it until the guys had taken off... I spent less time worrying about that, however, than I did about the fact that I will in all likelihood be moving out of here sooner rather than later, and I will not have a couple of fairly cheerful twenty-somethings to do all the heavy lifting when the stuff LEAVES the building... They did say I could call them, but for some reason that strikes me as a pleasantry.

My new so-called job involves answering the phone, doing data entry, and generally not believing what people can't do with computers. I have never thought of myself as particularly tech-savvy, but my various bosses [as it is a non-profit, there is an infinitude of people in charge] all seem to be completely clueless. I spent a piece of today setting up a user account on the office computer, only to be told that that might be dangerous, and I should clear it with the tech guy first--the tech guy who has long since bailed out of his own business, taken gainful employment elsewhere, and as a result, probably no longer makes house calls... Well, it makes me wonder how people get anything done. People who are, by the way, entirely enmeshed in the Microsoft machinery and have no idea of a world on the outside. It reminds one of Patrick McGoohan on the Cornish coast...

I have several offers from various friends back at What Used to Be Home of beds and dinners, and I am calling in one of these chits this weekend. It was going to be completely simple, with me winging down to pick up the Number One Son on Thursday and returning him on Saturday just on time to make...

My appointment. My first date. With a guy I met online. The deal here is that I actually ran across his picture, or what I am 99% sure is his picture, on a very upscale college site, and so I am pretty sure I know who he is, which of course I am not meant to. Plus, I don't fulfill any of his "dream" requirements [who would?], and we are only meeting for coffee at 5 pm. I can't make up my mind whether this is a prelude to dinner if all goes well, or his way of working in a brief flirtation before an existing dinner engagement, in which case I will be left [a] with my nose seriously out of joint, and [b] without any place to go for dinner... The joke is that he lives and works near me, but spends his weekends where I used to live -- and where is it convenient for us to meet? You guessed it. Well, as Ma Castorini said in Moonstruck: "Don't shit where you eat."

Now the drama. My son calls yesterday to let me know that a famous theorizer is making a speech at The College on Thursday afternoon, so rather than returning on Saturday, he would like to be back by that time on Thursday. No problem. It only means re-booking dinner with my mother, pleading for Friday morning off from work, and massaging my hosts in the Home of Folks into accommodating an entirely new arrangement which not only means new meal plans all around, but not one but THREE nights on their doorstep. Well, much to my surprise, it all went off very well, but it does leave me wondering WHAT I think I am doing, running off to points north just to have a cup of coffee with a professor at a Major College in My Area. Am I trying to make this work in spite of all the signals that we are misaligned from the get-go? Am I trying to cover up for the fact that I still have not figured out how to dope out who is meant to do what to whom, assuming we ever were to get around to that and other Really Big Questions? I think there should be some way of establishing this basic information, short of spelling it all out on a T-shirt, say, unless it's all just meant to be one Big Mudbath.

So it's just as well for me that this is a dry run. No hanky or panky planned, and indeed, none contemplated for months yet. It's just that having once gotten my mind around the idea that I am in fact that Mighty Faggot from Hell that you hear so much about, it's hard not to think about trying it on. The problem of course is that I also know that the rebound and depression are both very bad indicators for lasting relationships... or "relationships" of ANY kind. And I am not sure I could handle Real Life just at the moment. I have enough trouble imagining it. But my imagination has always worked overtime to compensate for the shortcomings of reality, so here I am, driving several hours and staying way past my due date to have A Cup of Coffee with another man. Not someone who did what I did ten years ago and has miraculously found someone to love. [Two of them have somewhat soured me on any introductions that start, "Oh, you have to talk to so-and-so, he went through exactly this ten years ago." Both of them were perfectly nice, and delightfully supportive, but they are on the other side of the mess and the hurt and the anguish, and it just doesn't help as much as it should to have their happiness paraded before my unbelieving eyes.] Just someone whose profile caught my eye... Oh, well.

Who said I was a nice person? Not me. The good news? I actually went out and walked three miles yesterday. It felt great. Today I just had a late lunch and waited for a furniture delivery...

Hang in there.
Stay in touch.
And, ahem, get to work on those links, please...