was proud of my climbing league write up today

 WEEK THREE (but it’s your dad talking while you have to help him in the garage)

The thing about Climbing League, kids, is this: they’re gonna try to tell you after Week Two that it’s all wrapped up with a pretty bow and said and done and nothing to see here and better start heading to your cars early to beat the traffic. That’s a trick, okay? Now they’re not lying to you about the numbers. The numbers are what the numbers are. But what they’re doing is engaging in psy-cho-logistical warfare, ya follow? Sigmund Freud and his best good friend Sun Tzu and all that. They’re trying to differentiate the ones who signed up because they thought, shoot maybe I’ll do well at this and the ones who bark at cars just because they can. Heck, they might not even know what a car is. But that doesn’t stop them from barking. Are you smelling the fumes being released from the decaying leaves at the bottom of this river bed that I’m stepping in? Can you grasp the odor? It smells like poopy, don’t it? Well it ain’t doo-doo water. It’s bio-degradation-able material of the carboniferous sort. Makes the ever-loving world go round.

We should get Team Papa's Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate - The Sequel: ENDGAME Extended Addition’s hearing checked because I think they might be physically incapable of hearing the bell. Team Papa's Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate - The Sequel: ENDGAME Extended Addition clawed their way into 3rd place and are within spitting distance of The MidLife Cruxes. And that’s the thing about Team Papa's Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate - The Sequel: ENDGAME Extended Addition. When the going gets tough they just add more phrases onto the end of their team name. The ground we trod upon is just millions upon millions of years of compacted material. And eventually you smoosh it down so much it spurts back up again and this band called Bastille writes a song about it.

3rd place- Team Papa's Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate - The Sequel: ENDGAME Extended Addition

5th place- The Space Dolphins

7th place- Pyros & Crimps

9th place- Seam Rippers

And I’ll say this about the Seam Rippers, they bit down on 9th place and they are not letting go. If the Rock Lobsters, the Beta Testers, Guajiro’s National Liberation Front, Melissa and the Danimals, Team Fall Risks, OR the Super Villains can supplant them from their tower, I’ll give away a hat I found on a post 6 years ago. And if the Seam Rippers can bump Team Fossil Fuel down to 9th place I’ll give them the self-same hat I mentioned AND a cup I crudely made out of bamboo in June of 2022. Now get over here and hold the light for me while I check the brake calipers.

 And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

"Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;--

This it is and nothing more.

once again trying to memorize Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

 I attempted this in high school and college halfheartedly but this time we'll really go for it.

I know the start. It goes

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came up a tapping,

as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this. And nothing more."

Ah! How distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly, I wished the morrow--vainly I had sought to borrow

from my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore.

Nameless here for evermore. 

It's kind of harder to type it because I don't know exactly where all the line breaks are and which punctuation he uses where but I can do the first stanza well and today I was working on the second stanza.

Tomorrow I'll try to do the first two stanzas and then work on the third.

Surcease. Great word. Stoppage.

the novemberest of days

 A bias I have is that I remember my childhood as having more ideal seasonal weather. Growing up we had winters where it really snowed and felt like winter. And the Spring time felt like Spring when it was supposed to. And the Fall was as Fall as Fall ever get.

But I gotta say,

Today is an all-time November day.

Grey skies. Beautiful red, yellow, and orange trees. Moderate temperature. Just a dead-on early November type day. 

There's a little ol' critter in me rocking back and forth on its rocking chair on the porch saying to itself "mmm-hmmm. that's real good, november."

they done shut my water off!

 not because I didn't pay my bill or anything

they just shut it off!

I can't wash my hands!

The thing about having my water shut off is that I automatically start to assume I can't do other things that aren't related to water. 

Like I forget that I can still use electricity. 

And use the internet.

And flush the toilet.

ONCE!

Exactly one time.

You can flush the toilet exactly one time.

But yeah.

You can still drink the old cold coffee out of the pot.

Just not shower, make rice or pasta, or wash your hands.

nobody said it was easy

 I won't lie to you

This life ain't easy.

Except for the parts that are wildly easy sometimes.

And then other things that seem like they should be doable--

completely impossible.

So I guess what actually isn't easy

is knowing if things will be easy or not.

Because you really can't argue that at least a few things aren't easy.

Grilled cheeses.

Couldn't be easier.

But I'm lactose intolerant.

Scorned by God then, I suppose.

Retire to your chamber of seclusion

and wax on about sorrows innumerable.

Not me though.

Over here on the couch

eating this banging grilled chee

rainbow kitten unicorn leotard

 this girl came into the gym yesterday hiding behind her mom, she was probably like 4 years old, and she looked upset and her mom explain that at the gymnastics gym across the parking lot where she had just been, she had seen a leotard with rainbow kitten unicorns on it and she really wanted it.

they checked in and before they went up the stairs to the climbing area the girl had to pause and, like an actor giving an especially juicy monologue, say, "BUT I WANT IT! I WANT IT!"

And she kind of threw herself to the ground as if the force with which she wanted this rainbow kitten unicorn leotard was too much for her body to contain.

I used to want things that badly. I remember my dad had to drag me away from a card stand in the mall because I was screaming that I need to buy an Electabuzz Pokemon card with my own money for like thirty dollars and it was such a rip-off that my dad refused to let me buy it. But man did I want it.

It's probably some combination of training self-control and seeing enough things that you lose that all-consuming want but I aspire to want something as bad as this girl wanted this rainbow kitten unicorn leotard