6:20 am: I’m wrestled from this reoccurring dream about being trapped in a Turkish prison. The culprit is Rex, who is licking my face (in the dream, it was a hunky, swarthy Turk…one who had been deprived the company of female Turkish companionship for way too long…but I digress)
6:25 am: Marc gets up and takes the dogs out for the morning pee-pee/poo-poo time.
6:26 am: I turn my pillow over to the cool side and close my eyes in hopes of returning to the Turkish prison. But you know…you can’t just re-dream like that. Anyway. Just a little more slumber.
7:45 am: Marc has left for work. Rex is licking his private parts and digging his paws into the side of my face. Gracie is feverously trying to dig a hole in the middle of the bed and has wrapped herself up in layers of sheets and duvet in the process. I push Rex away and untangle Gracie from the cocoon of 400 ct cotton she has wound herself up in.
7:49 am: Pee-pee/poo-poo time for daddy…if nothing else I am regular
8:04 am: Sit down in the office..turn on channel 6. NBC’s Today Show. Relive 9/11 until I just can’t stand it anymore.
8:30 am: Check my online banking, The Drudge Report, CNN, and AJC. Play some online backgammon to get my brain really in gear.
9:59 am: Martha’s on! Shut up. She’s doing a retrospective of past fun shows, instead of doing a new show on 9/11. Awesome. See ya at 10:59 am.
10:59:30 am: Realizing that I can’t stretch out the “working from home” angle with my boss much longer, I shower and shave and clip.
11:18 am: Kiss the kids goodbye and head out into the cold cruel world.
11:27 am: Get to the office and find that the internet and the POS are both down. I really can’t do anything, so I meander around in the store upstairs (the Virginia Highlands store is upstairs from the offices) and complain about how the merchandise isn’t being presented exactly how we meant it to be. Then me, the troll, returns to his spot under the bridge and fucks around with the network to try to get the internet connection back up.
11:37 am: I have no idea what I am doing. I am no IT guy. I buy and sell cool stuff…I don’t fix computer problems…especially not in the ankle deep crusted mud from the landslide that happened in the basement where my office is, after the city started digging up the sidewalk in front of the store. Thank God my boss calls me to his office at 1:00. That gives me enough time to take a real lunch and a excuse to get out of here.
11:50 am: Really hot guy comes in the store. I think he’s one of the Braves. I pretend to be working on the sales floor for a few minutes.
12:15 pm: Subway steak and cheese sandwich in my truck, parked in front of an unleased space next to The Plaza Theater on Ponce (a possible location for our store), mentally noting traffic counts.
12:59 pm: Nothing but punctual, I’m at my boss’s office with bells on.
1:00 pm: Ridiculously unproductive hours pass in the name of commerce. I watch my boss go through his usual tangents and I play with the French Bull Dog he is baby-sitting for the week.
3:07 pm: Marc calls and tells me about a space for lease on Peachtree across from the old Backstreet in this new development called the Spire. I really like when I get to hear his voice in the middle of a work day.
6:00 pm: The warehouse manager (scary Tommy) shows up to get addresses for shipments that need to be made from weekend sales. We call to clarify two of these sales with the manager of the Atlanta stores. My boss fails to tell the manager of the Atlanta stores that he is on speaker phone and that scary Tommy is in the room. He totally DOGS out scary Tommy over phone without realizing he is listening in on the call and hilarity ensues. Over the speaker phone, they threaten each other with various bodily damage with two-by-fours when they see each other next. Hot.
7:45 pm: My boss’s “boyfriend” shows up with a six pack. Finally! I’m outta here.
8:02 pm: I arrive home. Gracie and Rex have to go nuts as usual, but today they have to sniff me head to toe, because I have been rolling around on the floor with the French Bulldog. I feel like I have been unfaithful. A treat seems to satisfy them though.
8:30 pm: I start to think about where I was 5 years ago on 9/11 and the shock. That next weekend, marc and I were in Manhattan. We had purchased tickets to a Laurie Anderson concert at City Hall. We went back and forth all week about whether or not to up there. We decided to go and see…we decided that our lives would not be altered by the event. The subways didn’t run that far south anymore, but we got to walk the periphery of ground zero that next Saturday.
Smoke was still rising. The grime, the smell, the twisted steel of ground zero and the twisted consciences and determination of New Yorkers was laid bare. This wasn’t the city I had walked a hundred times before. It was a town in recoil. The lights of Broadway were dim. Laurie Anderson dedicated her show that Saturday to the event. The concert was haunting. She chose songs that related to the event. Marc and I were in tears, sitting in that dark old rickety off Broadway theater.
8:45 pm: I have to bring Rex’s bowl into the office and watch him eat, because Gracie obviously thinks she is being deprived with the new diet and will bully him out of his dinner.
8:55 pm: I start blogging and crack open my first Pabst Blue Ribbon.
9:15 pm: I realize that hip hop artists are the only real poets and honest social commentators right now. Listening to Outkast, Lil John, Chingy and Ludicris.
11:45 pm: I drink enough beer to start digging into the tunes of my youth for solace. I’m listening to T Rex right now…via Mott The Hoople, via Brian Eno, via David Bowie.
Sooo that’s a day in your dog’s life. Hey..were you snoring?
