Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, May 11
This really happened:
I’m sleeping – fairly well – at 0630 this morning when The Wife starts shaking me:
Honey…honey…
It’s not HONEY HONEY GODDAMMIT so the house isn’t burning down or she isn’t hemorrhaging but, you know, I am curious as to what the deal is.
Honey, you left your car running all night…
I am not making that up!!!…I had neglected to turn my car off after getting back from the hardware store Thursday afternoon…I would like to report this was the first time I’d done this but that would not be entirely true because I’ve done it a couple-three times over the years…I’d never left it on all night, but leaving it on itself is hardly unprecedented I’m afraid…For the record, leaving your car on all night, or my car at least, uses more than half a tank of gas, but less than three-quarters.
We are feeding the birds again this year, which is renewing one of the two great disputes The Wife and I have: premium bird seed vs the bargain brand. (The other dispute is, of course, large or small pancakes.)
For reasons which I’m sure The Wife thinks are good, she still favors the fancy stuff…I don’t understand this…They’re birds!!!…It’s food they don’t have to scrounge up or kill for!!!…They couldn’t care less!!!…Now, in fairness to The Wife, she reported the 40-pound bag of fancy-pants bird seed – where the seeds are fertilized with waste collected at Tibetan monasteries – was priced to move and she maintains, as others have, we’ll get more exotic birds…She may have a point…We are getting a lot of finches and this black bird with an orange crest on its chest neither of which I’d noticed before…Had no small amount of squirrel action this morning, too, because a lot of the feed ends up on the lawn, and it was good to see the upscale birds eating in harmony with the squirrels.
Did a live Sparrow For Congress session today…We talked about my ebook, We The People and I groveled for contributions…I told the audience we can’t win financed solely with my debit card and then I pulled some brilliance out of my arse, saying we must have the courage to dismiss the status quo and, more than anything, the courage to believe in ourselves and to believe in me…I had some notes for the session, but not a script and this was completely unplanned and it came it out well.
At the retailer today this girl came up wanting to put $17 on her reloadable debit card…That and the $3 fee would add up to the $20 she had…I tried it but was told the minimum add was $20…I told her this, that the $17 wasn’t enough, she had to add $20…It didn’t get through:
Can I add $15 then???
I avoided the very real urge to throttle her while informing her if she couldn’t add $17 then $15 probably wasn’t going to cut it, either, but I was gracious without being patronizing, a challenge here…Eventually, she got the message and went out and rustled three more dollars.
I got to Hotel A a bit before 2300 (remember, for military time subtract twelve from times greater than twelve to get the civilian equivalent.) and there was a note posted at the front desk advising of a mandatory meeting on Wednesday…Mandatory meetings are funny…I’m working at the retailer Wednesday, all day, and won’t be there…What are they going to do, fire me???…No, they are not…Night auditors that show up every night do not grow on trees…You run into this all the time in sports officiating, too, and it doesn’t do any good there, either…Some genuinely can’t make it and one or two will won’t go just to be ornery and if you penalize them you won’t have enough officials to cover your games…I’ve always found it’s best to ‘highly recommend” people show up.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 2300 Thursday night until 0630 Friday morning, 7.5 hours…Despite The Wife waking me up this morning, the weekly totals should be about average.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.
Read Gaylon’s latest: We The People: Making America America Again at www.GaylonKent.com
