We're not in New York, anymore...

Over the past 168 hours of my life, I've slept for about 43 of those hours and logged about 103 hours of work. This leaves just over three hours each day where I have had free time; but unfortunately for me, at least an hour or so of said free time was put toward my commute to and from whichever work I happened to be heading to and from.

Which is probably why, when I woke up at the Kansas City airport this evening, I thought my plane was still patiently waiting its turn, grounded on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport in New York City. Actually, that's a bit of an exaggeration of how tired I was, for I didn't sleep through the entire flight, but bear with me for the truth is quite possibly worse; I woke up with about an hour left to go in the flight and only after 20 minutes had passed did I realize that we were not in fact just "sitting there" and that we were in fact flying. I guess I had lost my sense of kinetic motion.

To my credit, it was pitch black outside and the windows were fogged, and it was also a buttery smooth flight. To my discredit, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my phone service (up there at 25,000 ft) was so horrendous, so much for not interfering with airline communication signals and such... I'm sure someone up there intercepted the text that I was trying to send my mother: "It is 9:20 and we are STILL on the tarmac. They are trying to appease us by serving us the fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies early. I won't forgive so easily." The text also contained the following photo of my tray table. 

I figured out we were in the air when the flight attendant informed us we were about to begin our descent into Kansas City. A startling revelation to sleepy little me.

I am happy to say that I am in bed now in Kansas City, and without having sustained too much grief from my mother. So far, she has told me to take my vitamins, to not be single at the age of 40, to try to be more photogenic in pictures, and to eat some pie leftover from the Thanksgiving that I missed--apple and pumpkin with some whip cream from a can. Mmmm. 

Being away from work has given me time to look up a couple of things online that I have been meaning to look up. Mostly, they've been vocabulary words that I had run across in my reading renaissance (reading is making a comeback for me... I've basically been illiterate for the past year). But the most important search query was to satisfy a hunch I've had since my commute to work this morning. I was standing next to a guy that resembled the picture that Junot Diaz had provided on the back of his book, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao, which is the most recent book to fatally convince me that I should attempt a career as a sci-fi/fantasy novelist. I observed him typing away on his mobile device, typing something too voluble to be a mere text; plus, it couldn't be a text, because we were underground where there is no service (contrast this to me typing furiously on MY mobile device 25,000 ft in the air, where the girl sitting next to me must have been wondering the same thing). 

Well, after searching for his photos online, I have concluded, without question, that I was in fact standing right next to Junot Diaz this morning for a good five minutes, which in hindsight, I can treat as really inspiring or really depressing. For the difference between writers like him and writers like me is that while Junot Diaz, my new sci-fi idol was covering the face of his mobile device with the blood, sweat and oil from the tips of his fingers, I, idle-handed, stared at the side of his head and just wondered if he was who I thought he was. Well, he was, and now I feel like a fool. Junot Diaz may not think me a fool, but I know that I have made a fool of myself in front of Junot Diaz. 

Time to sleep off the humiliation, here in the heartland, where my mother can entertain me with all sorts of different filial humiliation rites in the morning. It will get all my real concerns and anxieties off my mind, for at least the weekend.

Day Off or Fuck Off?

Saturday. O! epic Saturday, my first day off since I was first afflicted with overemployment. “What about Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving,” you might ask. Well, let me tell you, I was working.

In any case, I'll consider today a day of thanks. I am thankful for the limitless possibilities. What to do with this glorious free time?

How about wake up at 7am and take a train into the city from Astoria. I am walking around the farmer’s market at Union Square when I get a text from Mikki, who is working a morning shift at Café Gypsy: “Don’t be fooled by the bright and sunny morning, it’s freezing outside!” Silly Mikki, it’s my day off, but that doesn’t mean I’m sleeping in! I cannot squander this boon of free time. I buy some lamb shoulder and hop back on the train back to Astoria; it might seem silly since, round-trip, I have racked up an hour’s worth of commute for a mere pound of lamb. But not a moment has been lost, having spent each sedentary moment on the subway bench finishing up the last few chapters of a damn good book.

I get back home, industriously clean up two piles of dog vomit that Prance has just started reingesting. After washing my hands with an excessive amount of antibacterial soap, I throw the lamb shoulder in a pot with some coconut milk and spices, and voila, makeshift, unauthentic, yet delicious lamb curry dinner for three—Mikki, me, and our new Swedish roommate, who I shall, lacking originality, name the Swede. Mind you, this lamb curry dinner will not be eaten for another nine hours because I'm still in the ante meridiem hours here.

(Side note: I looked up “am” on dictionary.com--"am" as in 11am--just so that I could use the full Latin term. Here I discovered that out of the myriad official definitions for “am,” one of the capitalized definitions is “Asian male.” I didn’t know this abbreviation existed on an official level, but maybe I’ve been out of the chat room loop for a while. In case you’re interested, 25/.5AF/qns)

With dinner taken care of, I’m onto the next project. How about… painting the kitchen! I impulsively paint the kitchen a dusky purple gray, using leftover paint from past projects and knowing full well that there’s only enough paint for one coat. I can’t help it though. I gotta accomplish some shit today. I get even more ambitious and attempt creating vertical stripes using a raisin-hued paint. Unfortunately, this ends in a disaster, and I try to salvage the single botched stripe by going over it with a paint roller, thinking this might give it a cool textured effect. Instead, the patch of wall is now feathered with an unprecedented Lisa Frank-esque amalgamation of the two colors.

I’ll get back to that later. I text Mikki about how excited I am to have a day off, how much fucking time there is in a day and how I’m in a state of disbelief over the fact that I’ve forgotten about said fucking time.

So, next project is…

And this is where the music comes to a halt, where my overemployed fate swoops in with cruel, jinxed irony.

I get a text from someone at Funfetti, entreating me to work her shift tonight. She’s sick with the stomach flu. Essentially, help me Obi-Mc Quenobi, you’re my only hope. So what choice do I have? I concede my day off and tell her I’ll work for her.

She promptly texts back, “Oh BTW, it’s the closing shift so you’ll be there til three in the fucking morning which means you’ll be waking up tomorrow at noon, only to be getting ready to come back to work where you’ll be working another closing shift, followed by a bright and early Monday at Badvertiser where you still have not figured out how to discreetly nap at your cubicle.”

Well, she didn’t actually text me that.

Alas, there passed my day off, a fleeting hope dashed to pieces by my overemployed affliction. Someday, days like this will come as to no surprise for me. But as for now, I’m still dreaming of the day that I can do whatever the fuck I want to do. Is that too much to ask?

P.S. I haven’t had time to eat any lamb. Which merely underscores the fact that the answer to the titular question is a resounding "fuck off."