Mood: Enthusiastic .: Sandy :.
Listening to: .: Carl Thomas – Emotional :.
Reading: .: The Count of Monte Cristo :.
Watching: .: Some like it Hot :.
Inquisition: Do you think more about others, or about yourself?
Aloha!
And so, here I sit, in Holy Spirit hospital.
Though for the first time in a while, not on my own account.
Tim Laux, my guitarist, coworker and roommate, caught some poison ivy down by the Susquehanna riverbanks a couple weeks back, and today it spread all over his body. I rushed him to the emergency room.
I discovered I didn’t mind. Honestly, I didn’t mind. I’ve noticed within me a begrudging attitude, since the past year. I think it started when Caroline and I broke up. It change a lot, and shook the very foundations of how I looked at life.
I regained the foundations, but I guess I never double checked to make sure they were sound. I noticed I wanted to… help less. I don’t know.
When I was young, I was selfish. I had a short fuse, and a quick mouth. But as I got older, I slowly began changing, realizing how rotten I was and what I could do to change.
I guess after the breakup, I just… stopped caring. Well, I didn’t stop caring. Because my conscience would protest, and moan for me to help selflessly. I used to, and I think I’m starting to again.
I think what messed up the foundation was that although I would do nice and benevolent things, I would only do them for girls. Consciously, I didn’t think anything of it, and didn’t do it for any ulterior purpose. But when I thought about it, I found the excuse that I had already helped out enough didn’t really cover as a reason why I wouldn’t volunteer with no personal gain for myself.
I used to.
I used to care about others to a fault. I used go so far out of my way that I would get hurt helping other just so they wouldn’t be bothered with some frivolous item.
It might have been silly in some ways, but it made me happy to help. That’s just the way I am.
But lately…
Anything that offered discomfort to me, or didn’t give any profit, or required strenuous effort, I shied away from. Even to the point I sometimes lied about it.
I don’t want to live this way. I can do better than that.
So; here I am. At the hospital.
It would seem small to some, it would seem second nature to some.
But I’m glad I’m here.
This weekend was crazy.
Friday Tamika’s cousin Vicky came by for a visit and we all went out to Denny’s for breakfast. I had met Vicky at Tamika’s graduation party. She’s very… frank about everything, and says anything and everything that comes into her head. Her stories are very interesting (though at times derogatory). She’s the kind of person you want to bring around to get an immediate reaction.
As soon as she saw me coming down the stairs when they came to pick me up, she turned to Tamika and said something along the lines of “Who’s that hunk??” She didn’t recognize me with my new haircut.
Needless to say, I was flattered. She did that kind of thing for the whole breakfast, until Tamika had to swat her off and tell her to keep quite and stop embarrassing people. I get compliments like that so rarely, that I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it!
Saturday Tamika and I went to the beach. There was a bit of rain when we left, so rather than taking my motorcycle, week took her Golf. And it was a good thing we did to.
We drove down to Rehoboth beach, but when we got there, the campsite had no vacancy. We decided to sleep on the beach instead. I wasn’t completely sure we were allowed to, but we set up my tents and found a good spot. There were fishermen out there with their rods, so I figured it would be ok. I gave her my tent because the one I was going to let her use I couldn’t find the top for.
I strapped my umbrella to the top of my tent.
It started out beautifully. The sound of the shore and the cool breeze through the tents made it heavenly, and softness of the sand lulled us to sleep.
The storm came at about 3 AM or so, and almost blew my umbrella away. I snatched it and tied it on more securely. The rain began coming down in torrents, but Tamika continued sleeping. I saw the wind was beginning to lift up the corners of her tents, so I shuffled my tent over and blocked the wind with my own. I put our bags and the extremities of the tents to keep them down.
At 8 AM, however, all hell broke loose. The wind blew my umbrella 1000 feet down the beach and though I tore off after it across the beach, the wind was too quick for me and a fisherman rescued it. At that point out tents were collapsing and threatening to lift off and blow away like miniature parachutes. I quickly disassembled them and lay them flat with all our stuff still inside to anchor. Tamika began freezing up, so I got most of our stuff bundled up and ran to the car and started it with the heat on. Everything was sopping wet. The rain was harsh and cold, like needles coming sideways at us. Our sleeping bags and pillows and tents were so soaked with water it was really hard for me to lift them all, and on top of that sand was stuck to everything. I threw everything in the back seats of the Golf and we sat shivering with the heat on full blast.
We found a set of public showers and went and got changed and warmed up.
All the diners we searched for were completely full of people, with on average 30 people waiting outside to get in.
We finally found a less crowded IHOP in Dover, and she dropped me off to get in line. Her cell phone had gotten soaked, but I had baked it on the top of the car’s vents and got it semi working again. She went to Target to get a car charger, and she came back just in time for us to go in.
The meal was delicious, and we were so full and so tired afterwards we retired to the car and slept for several hours.
Tamika’s parents and grandparents and her Aunt Faye were coming down to Ocean City to visit Tamika’s great cousin for her 82nd birthday, so we decided to join them and drove down there.
Her great cousin is really cool, and always laughing. When Tamika’s grandparents arrived, we found misfortune had followed them as well. The radiator hose had popped off underneath the Jaguar, and so Mr. Pinkney Sr. had to crawl under the car in the pouring rain and try to get it back on.
He had to borrow his cousin’s clothes for something dry to wear, and all the ladies couldn’t suppress their snickering. In his defense, I went with him and Mr. Pinkney to go get the food.
We had a really nice time, and then headed back to Harrisburg. Tamika’s Mom (who insists I call her Mom too) stole our tents, saying she would hose them down and give them back to me later.
I apologized profusely to Tamika for such a miserable weekend, but she graciously told me to shut up, and that she had enjoyed herself anyways.
The next morning I got up at 6, and rode the motorcycle back down to Maryland to join my band mates with recording at Echoes Studios. The sessions went pretty well, and I got the keyboard parts down without too much trouble, despite the USB acting up so much. We also got most of the vocals laid down, and they sound pretty good.
I’ve got to get going now,
Ciao,