I have always loved to goof off, it’s so great to live the happy go lucky life–I’ve thought of aspiring to be the man who’s whole life is that life.

Almost..but not. Not all the time.

When faced with bad and dark things in this world you’ve gotta let your blood boil sometimes, some days at the end of a week that is lonelier than an empty cave on a rainy day or when a friend dies, you’ve gotta cry.

Sometimes. And the rest of the time I’ll be the leprechaun on the pogo stick.

———–

This was written about a week ago, here’s what happened yesterday, a conveniently timed epilogue:

I’ve been sick for two weeks now, it started with a nasty fever and sore throat, muscle aches and all, dropped down to a mild sore throat, now it’s a runny nose and cough. So I haven’t been sleeping all that well. When I’m tired, I actually usually fare well with controlling my temper.

Yesterday was valentines day. I didn’t get to sleep till late, and at three in the morning a ****-*** *** ****-**** ***-**-*-***** ****-**** weak excuse of a man pulled up at the window of one of my housemates (whose room is adjacent to mine), and proceeded to serenade her with one abominable pop song in spanish and then another, at full volume from his Landrover with the windows down.

I woke  up. Not only did I wake up, I woke up from a good dream. You know that feeling, when you don’t really remember the dream, but you know it was a good one, and you just woke up from it? Yeah, it was that. The songs finished, finally, and the (insert a lot of asterisks here) drove away. Puchiga mucha.

So rolled to my other side and closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. And started to cough. And coughed more. Legit, abs-hurting real coughing.

So, at this point I’m not only utterly indignantly disgusted at this pathetic excuse of a man that doesn’t have a pair to just knock on the door to tell a girl he likes her (ok, not gonna lie, when I’m tired and sick and it’s 3am, my temper isn’t too tempered) but also mad, because I have to get up at 6 o’clock and wolf down breakfast so I can get to the office because there’s a whole bucket load of work waiting for me that I’m not entirely convinced ought to be as so.

Easy Dave..chill. It’s their way of celebrating Valentines day. Yeah it seems really weird and offensive and…well, weird, but get over yourself already. He’s probably a good guy, likely not worthy of half that many asterisk-words. You just need to stop being a judgmental gringo and go get a nice cup of tea to settle your throat and go back to sleep.

Ok, a cup of hot green tea with panela (pre-sugar sugar-cane extract. Mmmm) sounds really great. So I went to the kitchen for my mug. Now, I’m not sure if it’s a USA thing, or maybe just a Dave thing, but I have MY mug. I like MY mug, it’s from the Marine Hardware Supply store in Anacortes, one of my favorite shops in one of my favorite places in the world. I miss that shop and that town and I like my mug. Every time I use my mug, I wash it out and set it by the coffee machine; creature of habit, I like my mug. So I was alright, calm cool and collected. I’m just going to have some nice tea and go back to sleep.

I hobbled tired halfway to the kitchen–then walked back to my room and put on my hoodie, then went to the kitchen for my mug. It wasn’t there, so I looked around for it. There sat my mug dirty on the table half full with cold coffee and with sticky sugar residue on the inside and on the outside too.

So much for calm, cool and collected.

Two cups of tea and something like two hours later I fell asleep on the couch.

(insert a lot of asterisks here).

That all may not be a bad and dark thing in the world, but it takes the (asterisks) silver medal.