Rss Feed
    Showing posts with label messy apartment. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label messy apartment. Show all posts
  1. Just Stuff

    Tuesday, September 2, 2014

     
     
     
    Well, boo fuckin' hoo.  I didn't get selected to participate in the festival where I had submitted a video of me doing stand-up.  Almost sixty people were selected.  I am very curious about the quality of their work and how mine lacks.  In the past few days, I remembered that announcements would be made soon.  So I again watched the tape I had sent, and I realized that the first minute did not get enough laughs per minute if that's how it is judged.  I wondered if they'd watch the whole thing or if my first minute was it.  Oh well.   

    I have had some free time though quite broke.  My dog had vet needs which came when I'm the most broke.  That's the way it goes.  I know my free-ish time will be coming to an end, and though I was able to do many things, there are still many things I didn't get to.  I knew I'd feel somewhat uplifted if I did some cleaning of very neglected areas.  I already had the supplies, so no money was needed.  I finally put the thought and desire into action at 3am one night.  I felt better about myself turning something awful into its original white and shiny state.  Scents changed as a result, and I wondered for a quick second if I upset the mouse world.  The next day a mouse ran by and into my broom closet.  Ugh.  I have to work consciously to feel like it is my apartment and not the mouse's.  I am afraid of rodents and detest that they enter where I exist.  I stomped around to try to convince myself I am bigger and all the stuff people tell me.  My dog immediately knew what that meant, and he then seems afraid which is just awful.  Meanwhile, I am supposed to make sure he doesn't lie on the hard floor so his elbow can heal.  I feel I need to pad the whole place.  He has a bed, he uses the sofa, and I allow him on a chair, but still he lies on the floor also.  Maybe for the coolness.  But his elbow needs to heal.  I'm not supposed to let him lick it, so I put a cone on his head which he hates.  He's an old man, a darling old man, and I hate to make him miserable with the cone, but he has to heal.  He's on a second round of stronger antibiotics. 



    Soon, both jobs are going to blast me away.  That's how it feels.  I have to remember to breathe and how much better it will be to be able to pay my bills more easily again. 

    I just opened my bottle of wine.  Ten bucks, and I'm my Saturday night date.  I just need a big strong man who laughs in the face of a mouse.   




                                                                                                                                                                                   
    ​Other than that, I need a nonjudgmental cleaning and therapy team to help me.  It's not that I don't want to throw things out.  I am very happy when I've gone through clutter and fill a bag for garbage.  I appreciate the cubic inches of air space.  It feels hopeful.  What is so very difficult is going through and looking at each thing.  No one can do that for me.  I'm digging out, but the pace isn't fast enough.  It's like an archaeological dig.  I find things from eras ago.
     
    I have prepared a shopping bag of clothes to bring to the shelter in the neighborhood.  The more stuff I get out of my house, the better.  I am so overwhelmed.  I need to get this place back to where it once was when it looked like someone creative and healthy enough lived here on a low budget.  Now it looks like a baffling case study. 


    If you would like to come to a free comedy show this Thursday evening, I'll be in Johnny Zito's show at Goodbye Blue Monday, 1087 Broadway, Bushwick, Brooklyn.  (J train to Koskiuszko Street & walk a block.)  7:30pm, nice place, CBGB vibe, affordable drinks, and good food.  I hope to have the honor of entertaining you.  It is my last free Thursday night for some months.  Next week, my evening job will be in full swing.  I am thankful that Johnny fit me into this week's show, and I hope you come and have some laughs with me.  (Hosted by Greggory Daniels! Stand-up from Joe Newman, Robert Commiskey, Monica Taller, Gabe Zucker, Mindy Matijasevic, Rogin Kim, Momoh Pujeh, Mike Hernandez, Dee Marie, Caleb Barge, Yohei Kawamata and Johnny Zito.)
     
     

     

     

  2. Men at Work

    Tuesday, October 9, 2012


     
     
     
     
     
     
     Mindy Matijasevic
     
     
     

     

    While the workers were fixing my ceiling disaster, I was decluttering and found a little strip of paper with words on it like a fortune in a fortune cookie but the paper was thicker.  It said: 'you have mental/mood changes, increased fears, thoughts of suicide.'  C'mon, I know I have problems, but a fortune saying such things is uncalled for and just not helpful. Later I found the container that it came from which said: 'stop taking and call your doctor if...'

     

    The men here on Columbus Day, making my living quarters better, are Spanish-speaking with enough English to communicate with me.  When I said, “I hope you’ve seen worse,” we all laughed.  They helped me get all the stuff out of the kitchen.  It didn’t overwhelm them.  In that way, they were really men. 
     

     

    I am cold, hungry, and have to pee.  But one man is painting in the bathroom while the other is plastering in the kitchen.  When there is no romantic involvement, it is handy to have men around.  I have plenty of man-type-jobs that need doing in my apartment.  It isn't because of being divorced.  It was worse when my ex was here.  He wasn't the kind of man who helped make life better for anyone.  If I were going to get involved with a man from a Hispanic culture, I might have been better off with a man who isn't afraid of physical work and who teaches their child to ride a bike.  They get shit done.  The men in my apartment demonstrated caring to me, my dog, my items that were still all over the place, and the work they do.  

     




    For a straight "macho" man, my ex (an artist/painter who ended up at a middle management job tossing aside his MFA financed during the marriage) sounded very prissy about certain things.  He often had some ridiculous sounding excuse not to take out the garbage.  My best friend who is a straight man used to be so puzzled by that because he saw my ex as more traditional than my ex was able to recognize himself as being.  My buddy would say to me that he thought a traditional man would want to do the “man” jobs like taking out the garbage.  Either my ex was going to buy food and didn't want to touch the bags or he’d complain that he just took garbage out yesterday or he claimed the bags were too little.  I had never heard anything so prissy from a straight man before.  Even a gay friend's mouth hung open when I told him.  He suggested my then-husband bring a baby wipe with him to take out the garbage.  The gay friend took pride in his own prissiness, but no way would he keep garbage in his house overnight.  
     


     

    If that echoed in your head, it is probably because that is as metaphorically true as it is literally true.

     

    I am working on me. I haven't allowed any new garbage in, but I can't say I cleaned out all the old.

     

    I remember when my then-husband said the bags are little.  That did not compute for me.  I often gave him the benefit of the doubt when he said confusing things because English is not his first language.  So I thought maybe he meant there was too little garbage in the bags.  So I told him they were full and ready to go.  Again he said the bags were so little.  I said that's the size bags I get from the supermarket; they are regular sized shopping bags.  He didn't budge.  I then asked him if he thought we should keep the garbage.  

     




    The shit is when we first met, my building was much cleaner and well kept and rodent-free, so I had no problem taking the garbage out myself.  But then he insisted he didn't want me to go to the basement if he could do it instead.  He expressed concern for my safety (or for his “property”).  I didn't have words for my feeling at the time, but I felt uncomfortable that he insisted on helping when I didn't need help.  It made me suspect that he might not be there for when I would actually need his help. (Bingo! It was one of so many red flags I didn't take seriously enough.  My gut knew everything.  Now I do much better at listening to it AND obeying it.)

     

    Not too long ago when I gave him some stuff of his that was in my house, he again complained about bag size.  With the healthier amount of distance between us, I just looked at him and smiled.  Maybe this is dick-related, I thought.  Maybe he wants it presented that he needs super-duper humongous biggest-dick-in-the-Bronx size bags.  Who the fuck knows.  I thank God that I have a place to really call home where no one brings hostility and hatefulness to my daily existence, even if it is messy and in need of my attention.  He really should be more concerned with being a small man than with bag size.

     

    …..

     

    The workers were done by early afternoon.  It is amazing what two people can accomplish in a short time.  Glad these two were here to do something constructive.  It felt good to be helped by strong men with a lovely attitude.  Unlike my ex, they seemed to really not want me to feel badly about the messy areas.  They didn’t seem judgmental as much as they seemed to just know I was in need of help for whatever reasons.  I felt it as human kindness (which is the only religion I can believe in). They lifted my spirits.  Their actions and tones matched their words.  How refreshingly not schizoid.