Did you miss me? A digression into the Paleolithic era

7:20 A.M. Awake with a pounding headache. Briefly moan in an attempt to draw sympathy. Realize that I am in the house alone. Bemoan the fact that I am in the house alone. Fantasize about skipping work. Realize that my fantasies have really dropped in caliber as I've aged.

Ex:

The morning of December 24th I awoke from a sound sleep and suddenly remembered that I had not submitted my time card. I lay in bed waiting for my aunt to awake so I could submit my time card while trying to figure out whether I would get paid. I can still vaguely remember awakening on late December mornings just extraordinarily excited for what the day would bring. You know how people say they would never want to go back because they've learned so much in life? That's horse shit. I'd give someone five hundred dollars if I could get back the feeling that I used to have about Christmas morning instead of worrying about my time card.

Thought: Perhaps it's a good thing that we don't awake any more with a great deal of excitement at Christmas. Perhaps it's a sign that we've learned that things will never make us happy no matter how many we accrue. Perhaps it's a form of evolution. Or maybe adults are just sadder than little kids and we've forgotten how fun it is to play with G.I. Joe's or My Little Ponies and not worry so much about reality. I don't know.

7:40 A.M. Attempt to take a warm shower to alleviate the sinus pressure in my head/neck. Unfortunately our new low flow shower head doesn't ever provide enough pressure or a wide enough spray band to engulf me in the beautiful warmth of a morning shower.

8 A.M. Go downstairs. Eat a breakfast of Kashi cereal. Briefly debate using milk on said cereal. Pour a bit of water over the cereal instead. Scan the silverware drawer. No spoons. I sit down to a wonderful meal of Kashi cereal with water instead of milk and eat it with a fork. Life is good.

8:20 A.M. Step into the DC weather which was about 16 degrees with the wind chill. Mentally curse myself for ever having left CA. Mentally curse myself for recently buying a house in DC. Mentally curse the East Coast for ever having drifted off from Pangea.

The snow on the street is piled in dirty drifts. Strangers scurry by each other in the cold, hoods pulled tight.

8:40 A.M. Arrive at work with my ears frozen. I can't put my hood up because it would ruin my hair. Realize that this makes me sound a bit less mannish than I'd prefer. I'm running a hand across my beard right now to regain some lost confidence.

9-4:30=That big blank space of the day that we call work. Don't think too hard about work because it will most likely seem obscene. Count the hours until you leave. It's not even as though I dislike my job. I just dislike being told to do anything. Ask my mother.

The best job for me would be as follows:

I'm sitting on a couch with a number of video game systems. Outside is a full swimming pool and a basketball court. And maybe some flying horses. Yeah, a whole lot Pegasus' are just kind of flying around in the back yard. Anyhow, my job would be to do whatever the hell I wanted to do with my time.

Person: What do you want to do today?

M: I want to skin a tiger and then use its skin as a kite.

Person: Ok.

I think you can probably see what a great job that would be. And at some point I'm sure I'd get tired of the guy constantly asking me what I wanted to do, and maybe I'd feed him to the tiger instead of skinning it. The point is that most people don't really want to do what they're doing. But we continue to do it anyway because it's sort of what we do in life. I think the real problem as I see it is that people expect anything at all.

Paleolithic man: I don't want to go out and hunt today.

Wife: Grunts audibly.

PM: Just look at the rain. It's falling in sheets out there. And I was just out hunting yesterday.

Wife: Grunts in a way that indicates the need for the husband to hunt food in order for the family to survive. (Or so one thinks).

PM: Listen. Why don't I just write you a poem about the way the clouds look? Wouldn't that be just as good as brining you back a piece of Wooly Mammoth? And what's with eating mammoth everyday? I want something new, something different? Something....

Wife: Grunts audibly in a way that indicates she understands his mid-life crisis and the existential angst that he's feeling about being just one more being going through the motions of life. She (the grunt of course) really does enjoy some good cave man poetry. The water sits in the rock and the like. However, if he doesn't sack up (And here I'm perhaps making her speech a bit more colloquially appropriate for a twenty first century audience) she's going to go sleep in a different cave.

Just then, his son starts crying. The sound is softened by the rain. And his stone age heart goes a bit tender. He rises from his crouch before the fire. Their will be no more drawings on the wall. Today, he is meant to kill herds of animals. He is meant to blot them out from the face of the earth. His ancestors will be kings. They will bathe in blood.

Wife: Grunts audibly in a way that indicates that the last part was probably a bit much, and she'd settle for just a bit of a hot meal this evening. And really has no desire for any sort of Abrahamic covenant or anything, just food.

PM: He points to the sun setting somewhere in the West. He puts his knuckles to the ground and rubs two sticks together vigorously. "This I can do," he says. And she watches him and smiles.