Jan. 31, 2018,

Hi everyone, we’ve had a pretty good year here so far, we can’t complain. Mark Smith died (my favorite singer), and so did the wall clock in our den. I bought another one on Amazon but it’s battery-powered and the chime sound is bad. It plays the Westminster tune which I didn’t know by name but I definitely know the tune. We’ll disable the batteries soon so we don’t have to hear it, it sounds like a kid’s toy or a bad ring chime. I got a CT scan on my heart and it came back “0.” I had to reread the results, which said I have a >95% of not having major artery failure (too many double negatives always trip me up). Our good friend and neighbor Andrew has been helping me look for a new/used car. Today we went to another dealership to look at some “E” series Mercedes-Benz. The salesman was so young he still had acne (kid-acne). He tried to bait me with classic fear-of-loss tactics before we left and wrote my name/number down on a Post-it note and I just felt sorry for him. I’d like to buy a car from them just to help that kid out, but part of me has died and doesn’t feel so Zen about things as I once did (fuck him).

All month long the weather was a Ball of Suck. It was good for the weekend we went to Portland, but Loren is in a bit of a funk and Dawn was on her diet and couldn’t drink/eat anything really. Loren introduced me to some new cocktails with Chartreuse and gave me a handful of ambient CDs to take home, plus a Philip K. Dick novel. Next time I go down there, it will be in the new/used car and the two of us will drive to the coast and hopefully not get pulled over. There was a “super blue blood moon” last night allegedly, but when I got up at 4:30 all there was was a poached egg of a sky and I went back to bed, and thought about work. And then Lily’s alarm went off and we all got up again. There’s a bush out back that flowers this time of year, some white blooms that smell like jasmine wine. The cat’s been going out more, and today I had to let her in through the window in our bedroom while I was on a conference call.

I took Anthony out for his birthday last night; we met at an old place on Mercer Island halfway between his place and ours. He threw his back out sneezing or doing something inconsequential and we bemoaned life in our late 40s, and knocked back a couple local IPA’s, talked work-family-music. He explained Mark Smith drank himself to death, not surprised.

I ran a series on my blog called Discreet Music but lost interest in it pretty early on. My regular habit of walking to the lake for inspiration got interrupted and I couldn’t find much more to move me. Just have to trust that whatever line I’m following is right, that it’s mine at least, “I know…this…much is…true…(this much is true!).” 

I think I’ve lost a few pounds but it’s hard to tell. I stopped eating bread and have cut my beer down to maybe 1/night. I walk self-righteously out of the Whole Foods with my burlap bag and my kale/collard greens sticking out of the top. When I went to the car dealership today and they asked if I had a trade-in I mentioned the Volvo, that old dog, and it’s really like that, I have to put it down: I have to stick a rifle in its head and pull the trigger, sad.

Categories: Memoir

Tags: David Sedaris, Discreet Music, humor, journal writing, Mark E Smith, Memoir, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, William Pearse writer