A Peek Behind the Curtain

Non-fiction ramble

    It’s a Wednesday morning, 5 a.m., and with one cup of coffee in my system and one cigarette smoked, I am at least operational as a human being, somewhat. My younger son is up, and has been given his breakfast, the puppy has been taken out for potty runs twice, and it sounds like the 7-month-old girl is actively snoring in her bassinet. All in all, it’s a decent, average morning for me.

     The bills are caught up, but we’re running a little low on groceries. Thankfully, I have a planned shopping run all squared up for Friday, so we’ll be good until then. That, and there’s plenty of leftovers in the fridge from the last few days, thanks to my lovely wife having made chili on Monday and lasagna yesterday (our older daughter’s favorite meal, she was having a rough day, and my wife wanted to do something special for her when she got home from school).

     Had to snake the downstairs toilet again yesterday, that friggin’ thing has never been the same since the older boy got a Mega Block wedged somewhere down in along the pipes. At least, that’s what I think he tossed down there last year. The cost of getting a professional to flush the line all the way out to the street is prohibitive, given our budget, so for the time being, we make do with me semi-routinely snaking the damn thing. For now, it works. This is just what you do when you’re a first time homeowner with limited funds for getting stuff taken care of around the house; you buy your own modest tools, and research as best you can (which includes online reading, YouTube tutorials, and asking the father-in-law who has dealt with this crap for decades) what to do and proceed to take care of it yourself.

     That takes up more of my days than you might imagine. Still, what must be done, must be done.

     I’m happy to see my favored Philadelphia Eagles made it into the playoffs, but if I’m honest with myself, the last month-and-a-half of play from Jalen and company looked like they’d forgotten how to play above a collegiate level. They didn’t deserve to snatch back the NFC East from the Cowboys’ grip once they lost hold of it, and that’s sad but true. I don’t expect they’ll make it beyond the Divisional Round, and that’s only if they can manage to get their act together long enough to put down an enthusiastic Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay. Frankly, I’m not too hopeful. Mayfield and his buddies down in Florida may not be the most impressive squad, but they all look like they’re at least enjoying the game of football, where Jalen’s squad looks like they just want to be done for the year.

     Josh Allen, meanwhile, and the Bills look like a phoenix screeching up into the sky from the ash pile that was their midseason position in the grand scheme of things. And how weird was it that at the start of Week 18, they had the potential to miss the playoffs altogether, and by the end of that weekend, they were off into the postseason as the AFC’s #2 seed? Much as I enjoy Cowherd getting dunked on when he puts up a brain-dead take before a game, he absolutely nailed it when he said, “Josh Allen willed this team into the number 2 slot in the AFC, and if opponents aren’t careful, he’s going to send at  least three groups of grown men home crying.”

     My 11-year-old daughter has a choice to make about 6^th grade, Middle School officially, an elective to choose, be it Band, Choir or Music Exploration. The first two are pretty self-explanatory, and she’s in Choir this year, but she’s not enjoying it all that much, and only remains in it because she accepts that she made a commitment to try it for at least one school year. She keeps her promises, God bless her. She’s leaning toward Exploration, because she said that the way it was explained to her in school the other day, it’s more of a class centered on academic examination of music theory, without having to actually play an instrument for an entire year.

     The 4-year-old boy is still having some hit-or-miss days since the worst of the potty training days. I know, go ahead and make your judgments about how this shouldn’t be an issue at 4 years of age, I could care less; the fact of the matter is, the kiddo was barely forming two or three word phrases at 2 years of age, which had us worried, and nowadays, we can hardly keep the boy from trying to tell us every wacky story idea or pretend play notion that comes flitting through his head in full Technicolor detail. It’s pretty amusing, and enjoyable too.

     And then, there’s the day job. Wednesdays are my ‘Mondays’, technically, as my days off are Monday and Tuesday. This has been arranged since I started working at the current workplace because those are also my wife’s days off, and it also happens they are slow days at the casino, and hardly anybody in my department wants those days off, so when I asked for them way back when I came onboard, nobody objected. This week starts an expected drop-off in expected guests on the gaming floor for the season, which means detail cleaning projects; being a Heavy Duty Custodian, this means I will be getting a lot of extra little tasks to do throughout the shift. Not a problem, though, keeps me busy.

     Yes, I’m just a janitor. I feel like I may have mentioned that before. If not, well, there you have it. The guy who spends his space here on Substack chiefly relating fantasy and horror stories from his own back catalogue of published works along with a modest helping of all-new, original material is, at the end of the day, just a janitor. Yup. But I’ll tell you, folks, it pays decent, has awesome benefits, and the work is mostly brainless, which allows me to daydream on the job quite a lot, so most of my mental efforts are spent during my work hours thinking about whatever fiction project I’m currently working on.

     Anyhow, that’s all for now. Just wanted to share a little peek behind ‘the curtain’ as it were, folks. I don’t tend to get too personal here, but I assure you, I’m not just some automaton pumping out stories and essays and being generally a nuisance online. Now and then, I like to remind people that there’s an actual human being on the other end of these words, and sometimes, he’s just trying to get through the day without his kids killing him, or the new puppy pooping all over the house….

     Really got to remember to take her outside on the hour. Cheers!