Life Wasted.

He was so tired, all he wanted to do was finally get some rest. He was awakened on the couch from a big bang, drenched in sweat. It appeared to be five minutes after he had fallen asleep, but the clock on the cable box across the room read six o five; two and a half hours later. He had lowered the sound of the TV before closing his eyes, but the TV was loud, much louder than he remembered leaving it. The moving truck outside his window closed the other door, slamming it shut, repeating the banging noise that had woken him a few seconds earlier. He was exhausted from his prior 18 hours, and knew that grabbing the fleece blanket he had on the couch would create a layer of insulation from the cool air the fan was creating, but he didn’t care. He was wet, so wet that after removing the blanket, he could feel the ceiling fan’s air cooling his wet skin in a hurry.

Freakin’ movers had woken him up from his death sleep. He eventually came to his senses, and mustered up enough energy to sit upright and turn the volume down even more. The lack of phone calls, emails or text messages inviting him out on this Saturday night had him disappointed, but not in his friends but in himself. He clearly had no reason to get dressed other than to drive over and feed his friend’s dogs and water the deck plants.

His mood had swung from flat to bad to worse in a matter of minutes. What was causing this? Everything seemed to be a catalyst to deepen the dejected mood...
-The perfect looking couple walking their two dogs looked too perfect life. ‘Ugh. Look at them… all happy… walking their dogs. I bet they’re off to a nice dinner after this… Probably meeting up with some friends at Vespaio at eight.’
-The fifty year old man in his stupid, black, convertible Porsche Carrera was really an idiot that deserved the name calling he was getting? He was blocking the two right lanes, and impeding others from taking a right-on-red. The Porsche owner knew he was a cause of frustration. He was on the phone and had just determined that he needed to be in the third lane, the left one. NOT the right one. He looked in his rear view mirror and got an eyeful of our pissed off road-rager ready to trash his stupid ass Porsche. Get out of my way, you stupid ______.
-The guy driving a truck with his dog, in the back bed, untied, thinking his dog “will be alright back there. He won’t jump out.” No you stupid idiot. He won’t jump out, but what if some Sunday driver decides to cut you off and you have to swing your car from a lane to the other. Do you not think your dog’s going to go flying off your truck and get hit by the driver following you. You stupid moron.
-The idiot washing his cars in his front yard with a water hose. “Hey man, don’t you know we’re days away from critical drought and you’re just wasting water washing your car with a hose? Lazy moron.”

Pearl Jam was blasting out loud on his satellite radio. He was hungry, damn hungry, but he didn’t feel like cooking tonight. He was in the mood for pizza; Home-Slice pizza or Rounder’s or Maryie’s or some other original kind and not chain store pies. But he also looked like shit. Old t-shirt, soccer shorts and flip-flops - he couldn’t face the downtown Saturday night crowd in that gear.

Earlier in the day, some friends he doesn’t see very often came to his tailgate, and one of them noticed his volatile, short-fused temper. What’s up with you? He asked. It was easy to blame it on being tired from running.

It was now nine o’clock and he still had not eaten. So maybe he would call the pizza delivery guy after all? He could mix his favorite hot sauce into his ranch dressing then. Good idea. But he hated the idea of being ‘that guy’. You know, the loser sitting in his apartment on his own, ordering a pizza. The delivery guy would clearly walk away thinking: ‘What a loser, sitting at home on his own on a Saturday night. That guy has no life.’

But there were reasons for his sitting at home. He had raced hard the night before. He hadn’t gotten enough sleep to recover and had run seven additional miles by eight am the next day. He had stopped at the local store to buy ice for his beers, but had failed to actually grab the bag of ice before he left the store, and now had no ice to keep his beverages cold. He had sat in the blistering sun all day; a day which the devil had taken the shape of television executives, forcing a record eighty-five thousand to endure a four-hour-burning-hot-sun-bath at high noon. But were those superficial excuses really what had him in a rut? Probably not.