Is today June 13th? Wow, this month is passing quickly. Highlights! Today was busy, and I’m all sweaty, but I’m ok. Well, let me start with last night. At 4PM M’s “end of the year” work party started. I attended, along with M and the boys, and my full social uselessness emerged. I don’t know if I give off “I suck at talking with people” vibrations or something, but I didn’t do very well. However, 1) I think these people know I’m in education, and you would think that would mean we could converse, but remember, most of the women are in education and their husbands all were wearing Nascar t-shirts and talking about guns. I’m not kidding. So…thank God for dogs and children. I played fetch with a dog named Lacey and baggo with S (he kicked my ass, I tweaked my knee). Anyway, after a brief consultation with M I cut out early. When I arrived home I ate dinner, read a bit, and tried to crash on melatonin. I was somewhat successful but woke at 10:30 and realized no one was home. After a quick set of unanswered texts/phone calls to M I started to worry. They were driving on some dark country roads. But they arrived home minutes later. I was too wired to sleep then so I watched Sportscenter and tossed and turn. By 6:30AM I was up on maybe two hours of sleep. Suckass. The dogs and I read on the back deck until I decided I was sick of looking at the ratty ass couch/ottoman in the living room and drove to ShopKo for a futon frame. Now, follow me here, ok? First off, ShopKo is a depressing store, sometimes more depressing than Wal-Mart, but not often. The ShopKo light is worse and the employees more…mutated. I know that sounds mean, I apologize. The store was deserted, I didn’t see anyone for ten minutes, but I finally found a cheap metal frame for the futon and knocked ten bucks off by signing up for the ShopKo reward card (not a credit card, more like the Borders reward card), so I picked up the frame for a little more than fifty bucks. Why not purchase a decent couch, you ass? Well, the two dogs are not done chewing on crap, and I don’t think they can chew on a metal futon frame, and if they could, well, the frame cost fifty bucks. Knock yourself out, Mack and Pete. The boys were surprisingly adept and helping me maneuver the old couch into the garage (how do we throw that out?) and put together the frame. N and T helped a lot, S not so much. Around noon I hit the Y for 30 hard minutes on the modified stairmaster (the one with the buzzy audio I hate). Later I ate lunch, watched some of the World Cup, fixed the library table, lifted weights/abs, planted hostas and, oh, fucking freaked out when the dogs got out of the yard and I had to chase those little speed demons, yelling “goddamn” and “motherfuck” for the whole neighborhood to hear until I lured them back in the house with dog treats. Yay.

Bullet points, shall we?

• I’m angrier lately. I like to think that’s progress, but I don’t want to scare the kids.

• The new Hold Steady is better than I expected. You can tell the piano guy is gone. I liked him, I don’t mean to say otherwise, but this is very much a guitar record.

• I’m switching my Shebang theme from “weather” to “classical”.

• The kids’ school year is complete. This means I don’t have the house to myself in the afternoons. Shit. Maybe I’ll work at coffee shops more often.

• Work is going well, I’ve finished my autumn syllabi, believe it or not. On to NCATE, etc. I want to take more time off this summer, at least two more weeks. Maybe I’ll travel.

• I finished the excellent Winter’s Bone and have moved on to The Wind-Up Girl. I love Science Fiction in the summer (is “Science Fiction” capitalized?). The start has been slow-going, however, I think because of my horrible lack of sleep. You know, I’m scared I can’t sleep. I’m fucked up. I’ll be ok. Story of my life, I suppose.

That’s it for now. Does tonight feel like Sunday night? Not really, I think, because M and the boys are off all summer.