Friday, April 16, 2004

Today I have the day off. So I will be heading over to my father’s house to help him figure out his insurance. To be absolutely honest I am not looking forward to going over there. I usually end up crashing and feeling deeply depressed after visiting. My father’s in his mid seventies arthritic and loves telling you about it. My sister’s a drug addict. Which is a crying shame. She had so much potential when she was young. She used to model and do stuff like that. I think her downfall came when she met her ex David during her freshman year in college. She dropped out of school to help support him through college. He got a kick ass high paying job at NASA then promptly dumped her ass. I couldn't believe the way he treated after she had helped him and had three of his children.

Anyway, also at the house is Shay my four year old grand-niece. My father said that Arlesia, my niece 24 year old, had not come over there in over a week to pick up her daughter. I hope she hasn’t abandoned that sweet little kid. I don’t think she would do that, Arlesia is a very responsible person. She went to nursing school and works as a nurse somewhere in Maryland. I don’t think she would purposely abandon her kid to be raised by an arthritic old man and her drug addicted mother. I think that it’s possible that my father got his wires crossed. He was the one who told me the Shay situation over the phone a couple of days ago.

Before, I went over there I made sure to eat something before I left. I wanted to get a BK veggie meal but Burger King was crowded so I ate instead at this little cafe where I had a veggie burger and a bag of chips and a peach soda. I rarely drink caffeine soft drink or soft drinks. The only time I drink caffeine soft drinks is at work because I know that drinking lots of caffeine makes me jumpy thus I produce more.

When I got there I was surprised. My niece, Alexis had redecorated the place. The walls in the front room and the dining room are both orange. The color scheme of the place is now orange and black. It has this Afro centric vibe to it.

My father later told me that she paid an interior decorator to come over and do the place. I had no idea that she had the money to pay someone to decorate the place. Anyway the place looks great. My father told me that ever since she had the two room professionally decorated no one goes in there because it looks too nice. I have to agree with him it does looks too nice for humans to inhabit.

It kind of reminded me of an episode of Newhart when George the handyman had his apartment redecorated and he rarely touched anything in it afterwards.

Also when I was over there they decided to order food. I told them I didn’t want anything so I went downstairs to do some laundry. When I went back up stairs my father surprised me by telling me that he ordered a cold cut sub for me. I’m on still on Weight Watchers and I know that by eating this it would put me way over my points for the day. Besides, I’m still a vegetarian. However, I ate the sandwich anyway. I did this because my father is in his seventies and yes I feel guilty. The night before my mother died many years ago she offered me some of her soda but I refused because I wasn’t thirsty. Had I known that she would be dead the next day I would have accepted the soda. I don’t feel that my not accepting the soda was the one thing that killed her. It’s just that in a since I feel that if I had accepted she might have lived and also I didn’t want her last memory to be that I did not accept what she had offered. So anytime my 70something father offers me something I accept whether I want it or not. I ate that sandwich and the barbecue potato chips that came with it. Afterwards I felt like a bloated beach whale.

As I waited for the number 91 bus on Garrison Boulevard to take me downtown towards home I sang along to songs on the radio. I was singing along rather badly to REM’s Man on the Moon which was being played on my favorite radio station, WTMD when some guy walked up to me and said, “Didn’t you used to go to City?” I said, “Yes.” He smiled and said, “I thought you looked familiar!” then he walked off before I could say, “DEREK KELLY!” It was nice that he couldn’t remember my name but I could remember his. We were both lousy at math so we were usually the only two from City who had to take math over again in summer school. The celebrity Derek most resemble is Philip Michael Thomas. It was nice to see that he didn’t look like a senior citizen. I’m still shocked at how a former schoolmate of mine, Starlinda Babb looked. The woman is in her early thirties and has large streaks of gray hair! Yikes! Derek looked age appropriate. He left before I could ask him what he was up to. Maybe he thought I was insane as I was singing rather badly to music when he saw me. I just wanted to have the opportunity to yell back, “Why it’s Derek Kelly as I live and breathe!” Well it is nice that he did not remember my name. It’s always eerie when someone I went to school with remembers my name but I can’t recall there’s. The face is familiar but I can’t pin a name to it.