Bedlam Reigns

This chaotic phase of my life continued full bore yesterday as all the inordinate details of my personal life had not one but two pointless yet required meetings with the political leadership superimposed. The monthly board meeting was a bad enough way to start off the day but then my excellent boss took off for Maine meaning I had to spend two hours in the afternoon explaining reality to college administrators. They left their ivory towers briefly for a foray into transportation planning which was eye opening, to say the least. At the same time this was going on the upgraded scheduling software crashed spectacularly that had IT people from Long Island to Montreal running for cover. That was kind of fun to watch from the outside (guilty pleasure). While observing their scurrying to assigning blame I also filled out the rental application for our June move. I think we’re a good risk.

Returning home I was reflecting that I’m actually enjoying the pressure and difficult deadlines life has thrown my way of late. It reminded me of my time in the Army when drives home were inevitably spent turning the myriad different missions I was responsible for over in my head. I found myself doing the same things yesterday as I switched mental gears from the house sale, to this weekend’s trip to Panama (buying and selling down there), to the move into Worcester, as well as the serial conundrums work presented this week. The only difference in mindsets being in the military success was required while in civilian life it’s merely preferable.

When I made it home I found my wife once again veering madly between anger at leaving the house and anticipating the move. I think we’re both feeling the siren call of our nomadic blood cultivated during my Army career though as I’m actually starting to look forward to the thousand details involved in moving. I’m just a little rusty at it. Yesterday’s issue was the bathrooms which she upgraded last year with some custom mirrors and was adamantly refusing to leave the house without. I said we couldn’t leave the new owners with no bathroom mirrors so I added reinstalling mirrors to the move list critical path list.

I had the sad yet enjoyable (since I got to hang with my sister and brother in law for an all too brief time) task last night of once again delivering Buddy to his second home in Cranston for the duration of our trip. Before leaving for that trip he helped me in the disassembling of my wife’s old garden cart. It used to be a mainstay of maintaining her vast array of gardens, a plastic cart with multiple levels. It made several moves with us but the last few years has languished behind the house since a wheel fell off.

Aftermath of the Cart's Demise

I dutifully tried to disassemble it in a civilized manner in preparation for today’s consignment to the rubbish bin. My genteel approach involved carefully removing all attaching devices and trying to reduce it to the component parts. When that failed I returned to my default position of brute force combined with ignorance and went to get the axe. I got the whole thing into two garbage bags!

The chaos refused to die for me as I returned home near 11pm from Rhode Island still having the day churning around the cerebellum. I decided to watch a Netflix rented movie to calm down a little, expecting to see only a few minutes before nodding off. I didn’t count on Salam Hyek and Everly though. Salma has always been one of my favorites and I guess she felt the need to remind everyone that as she approaches middle age she’s still got “it”. Curiously she chose to do this portraying a prostitute fighting off hordes of Yakuza assassins and killer whores while skimpily dressed. While I certainly enjoyed the skimpy part (the “it” I was talking about – still there) the rest of the movie was kind of an incoherent mess, like Tarantino on some really bad drugs. She even pauses in the middle of the attack to clean up bodies and stash weapons away since her young daughter is coming for a visit, because that’s what you want to happen in the middle of a blood bath. The movie ends poorly descending into a weird sadomasochistic miasma – who saw that coming!

Chaotic Salma

It was truly like an automobile crash scene – impossible to look away from and my wife even wandered over to watch the pandemonium unfold. As the movie wound down to its predictable finale I couldn’t believe we’d stayed up to watch the whole thing and it was well after midnight. I guess the movie resonated based on my last few days – then again Salma in a nightie!