I got back to my lair, such as it is so, after the shift, the snow falling wet, steady and hearty at first, then becoming a pelting cold rain on the wet end of sleet, and I made the mistake of heating up a few Coleman's hot dogs before going to bed, and then of course, two hours later, I am wide away suddenly, trying to digest.  Dirty dishes to do, anyway.  So, I get up, and I need a glass of wine.

I turn on Classical music, 90.9, turn the tap on to the left so that the water runs hot now, filling the rubber made tub in the stainless steel sink, commencing to wash tea cups, plates, bowls, tongues, the old silverware soaking in the bottom.   They want me out of here, soon as possible, so that they can renovate.  I do not have the funding of steady income to pay for any sort of apartment here, in DC, and so when I wake, it's stress and a timeline, and clear choices, and different voices in the mind, like that of an old girlfriend...  Yes, it's not good.  The only real option seems moving back in with Mom, up at her old university town.

So, the water is hot, the liquid soap doesn't have any SLS, sodium laurel sulfates, to crack the skin's boundaries for the sake of commercially viable soap suds, and I'm too bummed out to find, or put on, tight pink rubber dishwashing gloves that then become too hard to peel away...

And I turn to Episode Six of Ken Burns' The Civil War...  Grant.  Lee.  Seems to fit the early morning here, after the depressed night, overwhelmed with all this move stuff, and where to go.

Mom accuses me of being negative and pessimistic, self-defeating... as I explain what it would take to pay the rent around here.  I don't want to leave DC anymore than anyone else.  But.  But...

After all that, yes, I can understand, mom doesn't want me moving in.  There will be tension.  Shit or get off the pot as far as all these apartments go.  Can't you find something?

What am I doing wrong, anyway, I don't know.  Surely I should be able to afford something, right?

Grant is a special case.  That's what I have been thinking as I pour a little Beaujolais Village over freezer tray ice cubes in a tumbler, a dash of bitters to help the digestion after the rash "need to eat something," coming in the door.  Grant took to drinking out of boredom, out of missing his family, out at some awful outpost grind.  And the barman waiter does the very same thing.  He misses his family, even as he practices this hospitality to the people who come and go,


Four AM Courage.  Shelby Foote on Grant.  Wake him up at four in the morning, and he's calm and ready...