my typical funk
I’ve decided to make myself get off the internet a bit and write 500 words on some topic, like a kind of column, with a timer running. I am allowing myself only this explanatory note and allusion to my impulse to apologize. [This took 26 minutes, 538 words, not counting these prefatory lines.]
Tonight a bad mood pinched me all over like dry skin in a Minnesota winter. I couldn’t find anything to laugh about. Anything hopeful I thought of came with a big weight attached - sure, my kids are thriving but how will I afford college? Etc. Then I had about a third of a bar of dark chocolate - 72% cocoa, fancy chocolate - and a few really big swigs from the bottle of Makers Mark. It turns out, chocolate and Makers? Great combo, taste-wise and mood-wise. Sure I’m broke, tired, balding, and I apparently can’t eat eggs anymore, but now I’m buzzed, and my mouth’s nice and warm, and I have that pleasant chocolate aftertaste. Who needs a future? This is why our founding fathers in their great wisdom put a human right to chocolate and whiskey in our constitution’s bill of rights. That shit’s in the seventh amendment, no lie.
Unrelated, tonight at the library my wife got in a conversation with another woman at the library about their nipples… and this is before the booze and chocolate. So that happened. To be fair, it was about breastfeeding and injuries that can happen, which are terrible and uncomfortable. The slightly funny part is that we had met this woman and her kids before but only just learned her name tonight. The intimate sorts of stuff you end up talking with other parents about. Part of it is that the exhaustion lowers inhibitions and part of it is that it’s kinda like you all survived some disaster and share a kind of bond as a result. “Oh you haven’t slept in years? Me neither. When’s the last time you got peed on?”
The buzz is wearing off, I may have to get some more chocolate and alcohol. My plan was to write in a good mood for once. Well, mostly the plan was to write for once. Part of the issue is that my wife keeps reading interesting and funny things to me, when I’m trying to be anti-social and write down some thoughts on, like, stuff. Yo I’m burning up my lowered inhibition here and in a minute you’re going to go to bed leaving me sober and alone as usual. Be interesting and funny on your own time.
The real problem is that I’ve read all the post-apocalyptic and/or zombie fiction I checked out of the library, which is great stuff for how I’ve been feeling lately - I’ve been in the mood to read about people getting eaten alive and civilization collapsing. That’s definitely not a whiskey and dark chocolate kind of mood. Wait! I just remembered I have one more book left. So now it’s a dilemma. Drink more and be in a better mood or settle back into my typical funk and read zombie fiction? (By the way ‘my typical funk’ sounds like a title for something.) Decisions, decisions. I was going to end with a metaphor about coffee and booze and dark chocolate and getting older - bitter tastes for bitter people - but that sounds contrived and cliched, so never mind. Maybe a zombie metaphor about being dead inside? Would that be more novel? Shit where’d I put that whiskey bottle?