Renovating At Midnight
My boss and I, both in our forties, six years apart, moan and groan at work, him mostly doing the trim carpentry and me mostly doing the painting. Our backs are for shit and speaking of shit, today at work I made a little funny to myself in the bathroom of a Metairie flood job on which we're doing the final touch-ups. It was so dark in the bathroom, even with the light on, I remarked to myself, I can't see shit in here. Get it? I talk to myself a lot, sometimes out loud and sometimes not. I told bossman on Tuesday that I would only be working to noon until I could put my shoes and socks on in the morning without crying. It happened the next day that I didn't cry like a little baby girl so it wasn't much of a break for me. You're not taking off at noon? he asked me the day after I first took off at noon and I said, no bossman, I didn't cry this morning. Yesterday there were five of us in the house at one time and we all have the same back problem, lower left and into our buttock, and the one woman has it running down her leg a little so she's going for an MRI soon.
Crying out in my sleep doesn't count, I do that even when I'm straight. If they made a movie of my dreams it would evidently be a woeful tale of woefulness (I don't remember my dreams so well for the last twenty years or so, like I ever wanted to be Casteneda's, Don Juan).
Once, when I was twenty-something, I made a mistake in California and spent two weeks in San Jose County jail and one morning this bad seed kid hit me on the bottom of my feet while I laid in bed reading Michener and he said, hey man, you were moaning in your sleep last night, which was very embarrassing indeed, but nobody liked this kid who was sort of making fun of me and the two guys who liked him least beat the shit out of him one day and he cried like a little baby for the guards to rescue him, and they did eventually, but they didn't really like him either, his jailhouse etiquette was wanting, and so they put him in the group cell with the psychopaths, I think that was C-block, and we were all much happier then. There were about forty of us in our block, in a group cell with bunk beds along two opposing walls, an open shower area with three sinks and four non-private showers and three or four stainless steel toilets, and there was a TV room, with no door, connected to the bunk room. There was never anything good on TV but as I remember it, after early breakfast, to which we marched single file to a cafeteria and back, there were exercise shows with women in leotards and those shows were very popular.
I don't cry for no reason any more here in New Orleans, like I did when I first arrived, but if I long for that feeling of unbridled weepiness I just get in the truck and drive north for several miles and then veer east for five, six, ten, twenty, or forty miles, witnessing not even the entirety of flood wrecked homes, and then come home again, and during these trips If I want to cry (sometimes its a good thing to do) I can easily do it.
I'm not sure what is wrong with the St. Charles streetcar line, because that part of town did not flood but their unflooded green streetcars are now running on the two or three year old Canal St. line, which had pretty, new red cars (however they flooded badly in the streetcar barn about six blocks from here) and so I can look out from my front porch, like right now, to this gap, or view corridor if you prefer, across the Pentecostal-owned half acre lot next to me, and across Iberville St. and the NOPD Public Integrity Bureau parking lot and beyond that to Canal St. and can see the cars go by every once in awhile. It's free to ride them until June. And I think the city buses are still free to ride.
I believe the Chauffeur has trailer fever. I'm ready to get back into my house, he says. Not a lick of work has yet been done on his house unless you count talking about work. It is hard to find reliable contractors and none of them want to come and give you estimates because they are overwhelmed by the so many people who are required to get estimates to free up insurance money, but the contractors just want to focus on the people already with the money, who have work they want done right away. Trailer living is not for me, says the Chauffeur. I say, it's very nice in there but it is sort of jail-like. He walks away, depressed, saying, yes, it's a very nice jail.
Debris from gutted homes is still being picked up and regular trash removal, while not exactly reliable, and certainly not twice a week like before, or even once a week like promised, still, eventually, the black trash bags you put in front of your home get picked up. Some people, in some of the nicer areas, are getting pretty wrecked about this trash thing, but it doesn't weigh too heavily with me. I think, honestly, under the circumstances, things are going swimmingly here, unless it is your druthers to bask in woe, and then, let me tell you, you can bask at full throttle twenty-four seven.
I had one last thing the electrician didn't finish but I finally figured out how to fix that myself, so I can now write that jackleg limp boner, Charlie Labourd, off my "dickheads who bother me" list. Problem is, I, even with the qualifier that I don't really know him, recommended him to the Sculptor and he screwing her bad, so I'm not overly happy about that.
The one crackhouse on this block will never be a crackhouse again, I think. The Sculptor wants to buy it and tear it down and thus improve her property. Still, once in awhile, people who desire what used to be available there, mosey by and call out to people who aren't there. The moldy couches and end tables and beds and book cases offer no condolences. The madam of the house I don't think will come back and even if she does, there ain't no place for her to live on this block, unless she moves into that little shed next door, which is possible I guess. I saw her son a few months ago and he was down from Houston rummaging through the crap to retrieve some things his mom desired and I should have sent a book or two back with him, because she was an avid reader, but I didn't. I used to fix her reading glasses with duct tape and she used to hit me up for three or four dollars somewhat regularly. It was not exactly a symbiotic relationship but on two separate occasions where I was gone from here for months at a time, and with no one in my house, it was not broken into, so maybe she kept her dogs at bay, and was returning my frequent but sometimes begrudging kindnesses.
It would also be good to see Charles, who lived there and worked for me occasionally, so that we could reminisce, even though it would probably cost me twenty dollars to do that. I can be an easy touch if I like someone. He would want to do some work for the money but I don't think I would work him too hard because I would probably just want to talk with him for a while, until he became bored of me. He is an interesting fellow and skates convincingly on that plain where poverty meets richness and intellect meets ignorance. He always wanted to travel out of New Orleans so one can hope that he is happy wherever it is he ended up, if in fact he survived.
It is midnight now and I can still hear the buzz of a circular saw, someone in the neighborhood renovating through the night.
I feel your pain man... After a year of lower back pain, that hurt to even stay in bed, MRI, physical therapy, meds & nothing helped.
Until I went buy this guy's book: "Pain Free" by Peter Egoscue.
http://www.egoscue.com/htdocs/index.asp
you can listen to his radio show archived on his www.
The guy makes sense. He's an ex-Marine.
advil, ice packs, chiropractic (activator, not manipulation)
Sorry to pile on the advice but even sorrier to hear about your back so here's mine:
I had chronic upper back/neck problems for 20 years, chriopractic helped a lot but it was an ostiopath who fixed me in one visit. She taught me three simple stretching excercises and perscribed that I do five minutes worth every day. It worked. I don't do them that often any more, about three times a week now.
i had a bad back too for several years. a while back i went out to Pa. and had thanks giving at an old roomates mom's house. the street was called "hill road". it just plunged straight down. after drinking a bunch of beer all day. when it was time to go BT's nephews were skate boarding and i gave it a go on one of those new kind of boards that they introduced in the 80's (ok, not so new). any way it got going to fast and i jumped off running as fast as i could but my feet got out from under me and i took a forward fall and then rolled. after the soreness went away from the fall a couple days later i noticed that the absence of back pain and it never really quite came back. i avoid real heavy lifting though.
Thanks for the advice everyone, but Bill, I ain't doing that skateboard therapy.
Best therapy would be MtP. Little less lifting and sweating, little more reading, relaxing and writing. The farm misses you almost as much as we do. Might be a few more new folks in the county now and rumor has it there is new Borders Bookstore in Warrenton.
You are in your pre-golden years so it would be best to not wear out your equipment.
Mrs. has big project planned in May to beautify the grounds.
Lights are on for you.
I'm still on for June.
change of season and boom out goes my back. after a week end of pushing around a mattress up four flights dragging a 40 lb laundry bag and scraping paint. the pollen allergy sneezing starts and two days later boom the back is out again after a few years of being ok. im too chicken to wipe out on purpose but kids do skate board this steep block i live on now. there were a couple of them out there yesterday.
the troubled dude who lives next door hit me up for 5 or ten would be better yesterday. hes never asked me for $ before so i went in and got him fives ones and a five folded twice. three hours later the cops are responding to his disturbance next door. he likes whacking out on angl4 d%st. now i have a real reason not to give him any more doe.
june moon spoon, see you soon.
You should come down for Jazzfest, I'll give you the only bedroom, I was giving it to Mark if he came with his woman but he coming alone so he's in the group quarters, front two rooms. BC said you did a bang up job on the NY office, hit him up for the jet. Little extra rest and a few pills and my back, most whack, is better enough now,
seder at joes w/ the french cousins tonight and im feeling better too.
|
My boss and I, both in our forties, six years apart, moan and groan at work, him mostly doing the trim carpentry and me mostly doing the painting. Our backs are for shit and speaking of shit, today at work I made a little funny to myself in the bathroom of a Metairie flood job on which we're doing the final touch-ups. It was so dark in the bathroom, even with the light on, I remarked to myself, I can't see shit in here. Get it? I talk to myself a lot, sometimes out loud and sometimes not. I told bossman on Tuesday that I would only be working to noon until I could put my shoes and socks on in the morning without crying. It happened the next day that I didn't cry like a little baby girl so it wasn't much of a break for me. You're not taking off at noon? he asked me the day after I first took off at noon and I said, no bossman, I didn't cry this morning. Yesterday there were five of us in the house at one time and we all have the same back problem, lower left and into our buttock, and the one woman has it running down her leg a little so she's going for an MRI soon.
Crying out in my sleep doesn't count, I do that even when I'm straight. If they made a movie of my dreams it would evidently be a woeful tale of woefulness (I don't remember my dreams so well for the last twenty years or so, like I ever wanted to be Casteneda's, Don Juan).
Once, when I was twenty-something, I made a mistake in California and spent two weeks in San Jose County jail and one morning this bad seed kid hit me on the bottom of my feet while I laid in bed reading Michener and he said, hey man, you were moaning in your sleep last night, which was very embarrassing indeed, but nobody liked this kid who was sort of making fun of me and the two guys who liked him least beat the shit out of him one day and he cried like a little baby for the guards to rescue him, and they did eventually, but they didn't really like him either, his jailhouse etiquette was wanting, and so they put him in the group cell with the psychopaths, I think that was C-block, and we were all much happier then. There were about forty of us in our block, in a group cell with bunk beds along two opposing walls, an open shower area with three sinks and four non-private showers and three or four stainless steel toilets, and there was a TV room, with no door, connected to the bunk room. There was never anything good on TV but as I remember it, after early breakfast, to which we marched single file to a cafeteria and back, there were exercise shows with women in leotards and those shows were very popular.
I don't cry for no reason any more here in New Orleans, like I did when I first arrived, but if I long for that feeling of unbridled weepiness I just get in the truck and drive north for several miles and then veer east for five, six, ten, twenty, or forty miles, witnessing not even the entirety of flood wrecked homes, and then come home again, and during these trips If I want to cry (sometimes its a good thing to do) I can easily do it.
I'm not sure what is wrong with the St. Charles streetcar line, because that part of town did not flood but their unflooded green streetcars are now running on the two or three year old Canal St. line, which had pretty, new red cars (however they flooded badly in the streetcar barn about six blocks from here) and so I can look out from my front porch, like right now, to this gap, or view corridor if you prefer, across the Pentecostal-owned half acre lot next to me, and across Iberville St. and the NOPD Public Integrity Bureau parking lot and beyond that to Canal St. and can see the cars go by every once in awhile. It's free to ride them until June. And I think the city buses are still free to ride.
I believe the Chauffeur has trailer fever. I'm ready to get back into my house, he says. Not a lick of work has yet been done on his house unless you count talking about work. It is hard to find reliable contractors and none of them want to come and give you estimates because they are overwhelmed by the so many people who are required to get estimates to free up insurance money, but the contractors just want to focus on the people already with the money, who have work they want done right away. Trailer living is not for me, says the Chauffeur. I say, it's very nice in there but it is sort of jail-like. He walks away, depressed, saying, yes, it's a very nice jail.
Debris from gutted homes is still being picked up and regular trash removal, while not exactly reliable, and certainly not twice a week like before, or even once a week like promised, still, eventually, the black trash bags you put in front of your home get picked up. Some people, in some of the nicer areas, are getting pretty wrecked about this trash thing, but it doesn't weigh too heavily with me. I think, honestly, under the circumstances, things are going swimmingly here, unless it is your druthers to bask in woe, and then, let me tell you, you can bask at full throttle twenty-four seven.
I had one last thing the electrician didn't finish but I finally figured out how to fix that myself, so I can now write that jackleg limp boner, Charlie Labourd, off my "dickheads who bother me" list. Problem is, I, even with the qualifier that I don't really know him, recommended him to the Sculptor and he screwing her bad, so I'm not overly happy about that.
The one crackhouse on this block will never be a crackhouse again, I think. The Sculptor wants to buy it and tear it down and thus improve her property. Still, once in awhile, people who desire what used to be available there, mosey by and call out to people who aren't there. The moldy couches and end tables and beds and book cases offer no condolences. The madam of the house I don't think will come back and even if she does, there ain't no place for her to live on this block, unless she moves into that little shed next door, which is possible I guess. I saw her son a few months ago and he was down from Houston rummaging through the crap to retrieve some things his mom desired and I should have sent a book or two back with him, because she was an avid reader, but I didn't. I used to fix her reading glasses with duct tape and she used to hit me up for three or four dollars somewhat regularly. It was not exactly a symbiotic relationship but on two separate occasions where I was gone from here for months at a time, and with no one in my house, it was not broken into, so maybe she kept her dogs at bay, and was returning my frequent but sometimes begrudging kindnesses.
It would also be good to see Charles, who lived there and worked for me occasionally, so that we could reminisce, even though it would probably cost me twenty dollars to do that. I can be an easy touch if I like someone. He would want to do some work for the money but I don't think I would work him too hard because I would probably just want to talk with him for a while, until he became bored of me. He is an interesting fellow and skates convincingly on that plain where poverty meets richness and intellect meets ignorance. He always wanted to travel out of New Orleans so one can hope that he is happy wherever it is he ended up, if in fact he survived.
It is midnight now and I can still hear the buzz of a circular saw, someone in the neighborhood renovating through the night.
- jimlouis 4-07-2006 2:52 pm
I feel your pain man... After a year of lower back pain, that hurt to even stay in bed, MRI, physical therapy, meds & nothing helped.
Until I went buy this guy's book: "Pain Free" by Peter Egoscue.
http://www.egoscue.com/htdocs/index.asp
you can listen to his radio show archived on his www.
The guy makes sense. He's an ex-Marine.
- Lou (guest) 4-07-2006 7:07 pm [add a comment]
advil, ice packs, chiropractic (activator, not manipulation)
- mark 4-07-2006 8:48 pm [add a comment]
Sorry to pile on the advice but even sorrier to hear about your back so here's mine:
I had chronic upper back/neck problems for 20 years, chriopractic helped a lot but it was an ostiopath who fixed me in one visit. She taught me three simple stretching excercises and perscribed that I do five minutes worth every day. It worked. I don't do them that often any more, about three times a week now.
- steve 4-08-2006 7:41 pm [add a comment]
i had a bad back too for several years. a while back i went out to Pa. and had thanks giving at an old roomates mom's house. the street was called "hill road". it just plunged straight down. after drinking a bunch of beer all day. when it was time to go BT's nephews were skate boarding and i gave it a go on one of those new kind of boards that they introduced in the 80's (ok, not so new). any way it got going to fast and i jumped off running as fast as i could but my feet got out from under me and i took a forward fall and then rolled. after the soreness went away from the fall a couple days later i noticed that the absence of back pain and it never really quite came back. i avoid real heavy lifting though.
- bill 4-08-2006 9:00 pm [add a comment]
Thanks for the advice everyone, but Bill, I ain't doing that skateboard therapy.
- jimlouis 4-10-2006 2:27 am [add a comment]
Best therapy would be MtP. Little less lifting and sweating, little more reading, relaxing and writing. The farm misses you almost as much as we do. Might be a few more new folks in the county now and rumor has it there is new Borders Bookstore in Warrenton. You are in your pre-golden years so it would be best to not wear out your equipment. Mrs. has big project planned in May to beautify the grounds. Lights are on for you.
- Bencrest Badger 4-12-2006 6:46 am [add a comment]
I'm still on for June.
- jimlouis 4-12-2006 7:42 am [add a comment]
change of season and boom out goes my back. after a week end of pushing around a mattress up four flights dragging a 40 lb laundry bag and scraping paint. the pollen allergy sneezing starts and two days later boom the back is out again after a few years of being ok. im too chicken to wipe out on purpose but kids do skate board this steep block i live on now. there were a couple of them out there yesterday.
the troubled dude who lives next door hit me up for 5 or ten would be better yesterday. hes never asked me for $ before so i went in and got him fives ones and a five folded twice. three hours later the cops are responding to his disturbance next door. he likes whacking out on angl4 d%st. now i have a real reason not to give him any more doe.
june moon spoon, see you soon.
- bill 4-12-2006 3:47 pm [add a comment]
You should come down for Jazzfest, I'll give you the only bedroom, I was giving it to Mark if he came with his woman but he coming alone so he's in the group quarters, front two rooms. BC said you did a bang up job on the NY office, hit him up for the jet. Little extra rest and a few pills and my back, most whack, is better enough now,
- jimlouis 4-13-2006 1:32 am [add a comment]
seder at joes w/ the french cousins tonight and im feeling better too.
- bill 4-13-2006 6:02 am [add a comment]