One more snag with Minecraft. I still can’t play it. I think I know what the problem is, and it is not a lack of capacity to play online. But apparently when I thought I had updated the software, I had only downloaded the upgrade, and it still requires an internet connection to install the upgrade. What the actual fuck. Okay, fucking pick one. Either I have to download an upgrade file or I have to be connected to the internet to install the upgrade. THERE IS NO FUCKING REASON TO HAVE TO DO BOTH.
Nerds. Feh.
It’s not a national crisis. I will get it did probably tomorrow. I will take my laptop with me when I go to Crowley, owing to that big gap between my ass-plumber consult and my boob-squishing redo. Crowley is the Acadia Parish seat and they’ve got the main branch of the Acadia Parish library system. Should go pretty well. Might get a card while I’m there. Definitely will get the fuck online and clear this up.
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Rafael, the neighbor across the street who bought Dad’s old mobile home (sniff… I loved that trailer), is back from the training thing he was doing out of state, so Jodi (our landlady) brought him over to look over the back porch. The wall is rotted on all three sides. Rafael figured out there’s no kind of flashing on the top edge of the wall to redirect rainwater away from underneath the siding. He’ll fix it. I don’t have a timetable but that’ll happen eventually.
Since Jodi was there anyway I asked her about the floor around the laundry area and bathroom. I mentioned that I have never heard Dad complain once about the water bill and that it seems to have been consistent over the last few months, so I’m hesitant to say it really is a leak. She says it just gets really wet under the trailer and I said well, that makes sense because I’m pretty sure the floor was in a little worse shape when we had all that rain. She’s talking about setting up some kind of concrete dam around the outside edge of the trailer so that water doesn’t get in anymore. I was unclear whether that would be done with bags of concrete or if an actual thing was going to be built. I don’t care which it is as long as neither Dad nor I falls through the floor. It’s her damn trailer and if it turns out it was some kind of leak after all, that’s mostly her problem. Dad has adequate savings for relocation if my car doesn’t keep having problems and Lord knows we know at least a few guys who could help with the heavier stuff. The only real question there is how a landlord elsewhere would deal with me living with Dad if I don’t have regular income at that point. But this is rural Louisiana and it may not be that much of a hassle. I can’t see us leaving, though. Dad likes it here too much.
Rafael came back by later because his outside water spigot wasn’t working. We’ve got water, so he left mystified, but not before asking if he could borrow a pack of Marlboros. I obliged. Dad recently bought two cartons’ worth, most of it is still there, and Rafael says he’ll pay Dad back tomorrow but honestly I don’t think Dad’s going to care. I’ll tell him, I’m just not expecting any issues. Rafael helps Dad a lot.
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Oh god, I am finally remembering while in front of my computer.
I have a whole lot of archives I want to add here. That’s all digital. Something I never talk about online, however, is a handwritten diary I used to keep. It wasn’t any great desire to keep a secret, I just never thought about mentioning it when I was at a keyboard. I picked up the book in a pharmacy right when I was about to leave Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1999 with Sean, right after Mike’s arrest. It was this gaudy thing with pages about 8.5″ x 11″, yellow paper and an abstract flower pattern on the cover in pinks and whites and greens and yellows. (There is at least one photo of me in existence where I have it with me.) I have tried before to keep a journal of some kind in a blank book. This was the one time I filled the fucking thing from cover to cover instead of quitting after, like, five pages. Handwritten. In ink. It was amazing.
I still have it. One thing I have never managed to lose.
I won’t have it for long after I transcribe it here. Dad has a burn pit.
I seem to recall a lot of delayed adolescent angst (I was twenty-five and should have been more grown), and not everything there needs to be added here. So what I want to do is transcribe the important shit and then close that door. It’s long past time.
Weirdly, it will be less work than moving digital entries here will be. A LOT of my digital stuff was not in WordPress and so I probably can’t just import it. Even if I could, there’s bound to be a lot of noise and crap that I will have to go back in and edit out. Faster to just do the work offline in plain text files like I do with new journal updates and then have it all ready to go next time I’m online. But the files I’m taking the information from contain multiple posts, and so are often very, very long with a bunch of extraneous crap in between such as likes and comments. (We had likes and comments before Facebook, y’all.) So it’ll be tedious. Which is why I’ve never finished the job.
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I have a lot of mess I need to tidy up, in fact, as far as mementos and photos and that sort of thing. And I don’t want to pass any of this on with no explanation or description added. That’s just irresponsible. One of my regrets where family is concerned is refusing the big gallon Ziploc bag of family photographs Aunt Norma offered me last time I was at her house. I didn’t want to be greedy. I should have been greedy. I don’t suppose I will get another chance; she has dementia now, and who knows what Uncle Boo’s going to do with everything when she goes. But even if I’d taken the bag, I wouldn’t have been able to make sense of all of the photos. As it was, one of the photos I did take may be a photo of my grandfather as a toddler, but if it is him then the wrong year was written on the back, and there is no other information. I can’t leave a mess like that for my kids. If they even want anything from me ever again. So I need to start sorting that shit out. I am not getting any younger.
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Speaking of. I need to put together some kind of packet in case I’m found dead or something. After everything that’s happened, I’m not expecting anyone to give a shit that I’m dead or to do what my final wishes indicate unless there’s a legally-binding will so directing them, but if I don’t at least make the attempt in lieu of a will before I can get that done, my kids will definitely be left with nothing. If they never want to deal with me again they still may be curious, at some point, about my side of where they came from. I have zero problem with giving them that information. I just have to make sure it will actually happen.
I’m so morbid. Fuck middle age.