Absurd Mondays

I wake up cold and sweating. All of the windows are open, and the weather has turned after a series of tornado warnings Easter afternoon in the Midwest. Must be a cold front. I blink my eyes at the alarm clock, eight am. I pull my thin velux blanket tighter around my neck and go back to sleep.

By ten am I have woken many times and my bladder tells me to get up. I do. After reliving myself and noting the grease in my hair, I stumble to my computer to check for important email. I have none. I play online yahtzee. I think about doing work. I think about skipping class. I get up. I walk around. My apartment is cold. I put on a bathrobe, then ridiculous monkey slippers I inherited from my ex-fiancé. I try to call home. No one called me for Easter, and I think maybe my grandmother’s condition has gotten worse in the hospital. I know my mother is at work, teaching elementary school in a very poor part of central Florida. I call my brother’s cell phone for the first time since he got it a few months ago, and get a message. I call the house phone and get a message. I call my almost defunct best friend in Minneapolis and get a message. I call a local friend who went home to Wisconsin for Easter and get a message. I give up.

It’s too cold. I should take a shower.

I close all the windows, leaving the kitchen window open a crack as usual to let out my cigarette smoke. I check the thermostat. The red line is below 60. I turn the heat on.

I get out of the shower. I blow-dry my hair because it’s cold. I get dressed. I’ve needed to do laundry for a month, but I manage to find clean socks and underwear. I wear the pants I’ve been wearing for a week already and pull on a light sweater I’ve only worn once since it’s last wash.

I go back to the kitchen. I look for friends online. They are not there. I check my email. There are no new messages. I try to write, opening a new Word document, and find I have nothing to say.

I go back to my room.

On the way I pick up a copy of a literary magazine I bought at AWP. I read an essay by a writer I solicited at AWP for the journal I work for. The piece in this other journal is much better than the submission she sent me. I sigh. I start reading the fiction and am either unimpressed or indifferent or slightly impressed. I hear a strange noise in my kitchen. I turn my head and realize the sound is my phone. I do not get up right away.

When I get to the kitchen my phone is not ringing anymore. 1 missed call. I check: it is my brother. I wait for the tinkling sounds that indicate a new voicemail message, then I listen. He doesn’t celebrate holidays, so he didn’t think to call. Grandma is still in the hospital, but not getting worse. I can call back later when Mom’s home if I want.

I look at my blank word doc. I type, “Blank page, blank page, how dare you stare at me?” I go back to reading the journal. I am bored. I am out of shape. I go back to the kitchen to check my email. I read the essays for workshop. I feel justified. I email my prof that I’ve had the flu all weekend and am still feeling miserable. Could someone put the pieces for next week in my mailbox?

I think all the moping is not helping anything. I decide to be productive. I find my backpack. I pull out the Job Search Handbook that appeared in my mailbox a few days ago. I pick up where I left off Saturday when I was being productive by not doing anything. I learn interviewing techniques. The MLA conference is mentioned again and again. I think about my lack of interview clothes. I think about what it would be like to have an academic job. I remember that I wanted to buy shorts for the summer, that I put it off all weekend, how hot it was for a few days before today, that I don’t have any shorts that fit, that I should just go buy some and quit thinking that I will magically not be twenty pounds heavier than I used to be tomorrow. I need clothes.

I post a brief blog about being disconnected. I check my email. A lazy student requests an extension on his research paper. I gleefully email back, “I don’t think so.”

I feel pointless.

I find my shoes and put them on. I decide I better get out of the house, even if it is to go shopping, which I hate. I think I could call someone to go with me. I think they are all doing work. I think it would be weird for me to call. I think I don’t really want any of them there anyway.

I lock my front door. I go downstairs to my car. The BBC World News is playing on NPR. The Palestinians bombed Israel again, Tel Aviv, during the Passover festival. I only half listen. Everyone wants to take responsibility. Hamas says the terrorist attack was justified. I imagine cars on the highway blowing up around me. I decide to buy new socks and underwear when I get shorts, so I can wait a little while longer to do laundry.

I don’t know whether to go to Sears or Penney’s. I hate them both and hate it even more when I can’t find what I want at one and have to walk through the mall to the other. I wonder if I should have gone to Target, then remember never being able to find decent shorts there before. Bergner’s and the other place like it don’t even register on my radar. I decide to go to whichever shithole is closer to me when I enter the mall parking lot. I go to Penney’s. I enter by the towels and curtains, past the salon and glossy photos of smiling women wearing gaudy jewelry. I’m already getting anxious.

I go to the men’s section where they have a sale “Buy 1 get 1 for $1.00” on all mens’ and young mens’ shorts. I had meant to only buy two pairs, but something asks me if I shouldn’t buy 4. If for once, I shouldn’t have more than two pairs of pants to wear at a time. My bank accounts are deceptively flush. If I don’t think about my credit cards or the fact that my summer research job only pays $1,500, I feel rich.

I decide to decide after I try on shorts. I thought I was coming to buy jean shorts, but quickly realize I’m going to get khaki shorts with cargo pockets. I browse quickly through the racks, looking for colors and styles that don’t immediately offend me, then scrounging for that one pair of size 36 that might still be left. It is an unfortunate fact that being as plump as I currently am, I wear a men’s size 36 waist, which is the most popular size in men’s pants, drastically lowering my options.

I’m not a picky dresser unless I am paying for clothes. If I am going to buy something, it better not look retarded. No huge logos, no fading, no holes, no fucking dirt stains, however fashionable that may be at the time. Did I mention I hate shopping? Can you understand how much easier it is to shop in the men’s section where the clothes all logically have a waist and length measure, rather than incomprehensible sizes like 12 and 14 and lengths like average, petite, and tall? I cannot find women’s clothes that fit without trying on 30 things. I do not like trying on clothes. When in doubt, I pick up a 36 and 38 in the same style of men’s pants. I take 5 pairs of shorts into the dressing room, defying the “no more than 3 garments at a time” edict on the wall. I don’t even try on the one pair of jean shorts I picked up, knowing they will be tight and constricting. I settle on a pair of Levi’s and a pair of Lee’s. I am not particularly brand conscious so much as I prefer brands with smaller logos and ones that I already know since it means less time trying shit on.

I start to feel faint in the dressing room. I am sweating even though it is 60 degrees outside and I am only wearing a light sweater.

I hurry back to the men’s section to find an additional pair of shorts for each brand. I want the dark khakis, but they are only in sizes 34 and 42. I settle for light khaki. I rush to women’s lingerie and start trying to pick up underwear. I am aghast that they are $9 each or 3 for $22.50 and other ridiculous prices like that. I fumble to find panties in groups of threes. I realize I’ve picked up a pair in French cut. I will not wear French cut or briefs or thongs. I only wear bikini cut because they make sense and feel right, and I’ve learned that no matter the clearance sale, I simply will not wear any other style of undergarments.

I am jittery by the time I have 9 pairs of panties. I briefly think I am spending too much money, but then I don’t want to think about it, so I don’t. I’ve gone too far to stop, exerted too much energy already. The sock selection is pathetic, so I grab a set of 5 pairs of plain white socks for $10, thinking again that it’s too expensive for poorly constructed socks that will fall apart and lose their shape after one wash, but I don’t want to do laundry, so I grab them and go.

At the counter, the woman gives me a punch card for the panties. I am three more pairs away from a free pair. My bill adds up to over $260 before discounts. After discounts, I still pay over $160 and think I must be crazy to be shopping at Penney’s in the first place and then spending that much money on shorts and socks and underwear, but I give her my debit card and I sign the slip of paper and go back to my car, where I am feeling entirely too light headed and I wonder if I’ve eaten, and I know I need to eat right away before I get extremely sick.

On the way home is of course a McDonald’s, and because all fast food and food in general sounds gross, I stop and get a double cheeseburger and small coke. I think about my cupboards and how I don’t know how to feed myself. The jars of alfredo sauce and cans and cans of beans and corn, my freezer full of hot pockets and frozen dinners that sicken the senses, and the one cabinet full of cereal over the stove. I do not know how to feed myself, especially when there is only me to feed. I know how to make lasagna, I think, but would never be able to finish a pan. I know a couple of dishes like that. When I “cook” it is pasta with alfredo sauce or maybe slices of tomato and fresh milk mozzarella. I’ve been known to eat a can of corn for lunch. Pathetic.

I give the woman my money as a BBC announcer says there is a growing number of babies born with fetal alcohol syndrome in South Africa. I chuckle. I know it’s wrong, but I chuckle. How could I not chuckle? A spokesperson says it’s not fair to judge the women because we don’t know what it’s like to live in a cardboard box. Another woman hands me a greasy paper sack and small drink with straw. The spokesperson does not know what it’s like to live in a cardboard box and neither do we, the listeners. I certainly do not. I live in a rather large box full of electronics and books and too many clothes since I have almost a 30-pound weight range. I don’t want to laugh, but I don’t know what else to do.

Life is absurd, and all you can do with the absurd is laugh at it.

They put on the Prime Minister of Israel who blames Hamas whether Hamas was physically behind the bombings or not. Hamas believes it was good to bomb Israel. They are terrorists. We’re all terrorists.

The Supreme Court refused to hear a case of two Chinese Muslims wrongly held at Guantanamo Bay for the last 4 years. They wouldn’t hear the case since it is scheduled to be heard at a lower court in a month. The US doesn’t know what to do with the men. We decided a year ago that we wrongly arrested them, but we cannot send them back to China because they will be persecuted. We do not want them here. We are putting pressure on Germany to take the men. I wonder what the Chinese men would do in Germany. Could they get jobs?

I’m grateful to be home in my box though part of me wants to go outside and get some sunshine. I check my email, but nothing important has come through.