5 days alone
5 days alone
Sisyphus eats a lot of hot dogs, gets drunk with road comics and becomes the most legendary football coach of all time.
I’m panicking.
My wife leaves for Florida in two hours. She won’t be back until Sunday.
… or is it Texas?
One of those racist but fun states.
Normally when my wife leaves town, I devolve into a structureless protoplasm. There’s pizza boxes on top of beer bottles on top of dead rats on top of smoldering rubble from the wrecking ball-sized hole my overall incompetence creates.
I can’t do anything without my wife. I’m truly pathetic. I can’t fix anything. I don’t know how to cook.
Ask me to dice an onion and I’ll slice a finger. Ask me to cook a pizza and I’ll forget to hit the button to preheat the oven. Ask me to add spices to a chicken marinade, I’ll dump in half the bottle of paprika on accident. I’m a walking fucking disaster in 95% of basic human tasks.
Abby posted this on the refrigerator before she left:
It’s a reminder of all my dinner options so I don’t go out and buy fast food or forget to eat. She’s a sweet lady, married to a complete moron.
I have to become more self-sufficient. I’m 30 for Christ's sake.
I decided, in that moment, that this would be my last time smoking weed. Tomorrow, I’d throw away my vape pen and spend the next five days dopamine detoxing. I’d eat salad and meditate and Abby would come home to a less manic, skinnier, more enlightened man.
I need to start taking care of myself.
Tuesday
My eyes opened to the sound of Butter gnawing on the bedroom door.
I rolled over, hoping she would either tire herself out or chew through the door entirely.
Then, the reality hit me: I’m solely responsible for this dog, like, starting now.
“What do you normally do in the morning?” I asked her. She looked at me like:
“Well, we definitely gotta go potty, right?”
She agreed and sprinted to the door, ringing the bell wrapped around the handle.
I took her out and gave her breakfast.
See, this isn’t so hard? What else do people do in the morning? I was a baby deer finding my legs.
I know she’s on medication for kennel cough. I should probably give her that.
Baby steps, you got this!
Butter rang the bell again, this time, ball-in-mouth.
I love Butter, we get along just fine. But goddamn… ALL she WANTS to DO is play BALLS.
Like, from the moment she has an opportunity to find a ball, she’ll jam it into your face for the remainder of the day.
And when you finally throw it, instead of bringing it back to you, she’ll drop it and kick it under the couch.
I’m like, hey man, I’m down to play fetch with you, but I am NOT trying to get on my hands and knees every two minutes. What the hell are you doing?
And then she has the audacity to bark at me? If you want the ball so damn bad, why do you always put it under the frickin’ couch? This activity is not fun for anyone but you.
Sounds like something I would do…
I can’t blame her. From her perspective, humans must be boring as hell. All I do is sit on my phone and play mobile games all day. Can I show you something?
That was my screen time last week. Notice anything? No, not the porn, I’m talking about the 35.5 hours I spent DOOM tapping.
I’ve been obsessed with this game called The Program lately. It’s a college football simulation game. You basically just tap the same four buttons over and over again. You don’t even get to play the games. I’m on my 13th season.
My overall record is 72-66. We had some lean years there in the beginning, as it took some time to recruit better players. We went from 1-10 to 2-9, to 5-6, to 9-3 in our first four seasons.
At that point, I had myself a SQUAD. We went 10-2 three of the next four years, collecting multiple conference championships and bowl wins in the process.
I am such a genius football mind, that the Waukesha Dogs were invited to join the vastly superior Sunshine Conference after just eight seasons. Around this time, I recruited a man with a name so nice, you have to say it twice.
I love randomly generated players. There’s something special about them. They’re like us. They live and die in a universe that they’ll never understand, doing meaningless tasks all day for a master who doesn’t even know their name.
Well, I know your name, James James. Your sacrifices have not been in vain.
I see you.
All my wide receivers are white guys with Hispanic last names. Both my kicker and punter are black. My starting quarterback, who’s currently leading the conference in passing yards, looks like this:
This man out here lookin’ like Precious.
We went 7-5 our first year in the new conference with a senior-laden team but struggled to keep pace in a more challenging recruiting environment. We only won three games over the next two years, but it gave Mr. Tirando (above) plenty of time to max out his stats and learn the offense.
I used four coaching tokens to upgrade my scout, and we went 8-4 the following season with an absolutely STACKED defense. I’m confident now, with the 3- and 4-star freshmen we’ve brought in, we’re gonna be a force to reckon with in this conference for years to come. We might even challenge Chula Vista State for a spot in the Empire City Bowl. Who knows?
Oh shit, it’s 6 a.m.
Wednesday
I took Butter for a walk to the CBD Shaman. My sobriety lasted exactly… 35.5 hours?
The diminutive woman behind the counter was on the phone.
“Sorry, can I call you back?” she said. “It’s one of our regulars.“
6:38 p.m.
OK, this is a disaster. The power went out while I was cooking a frozen pizza. Plus, I’m hammered, which is weird because I don’t even drink.
How a Coke Zero + Jack Daniels 4-pack ended up in my warm refrigerator, I couldn’t tell ya.
Butter rang the bell for the thousandth time.
“It’s raining out there,” I said. “Don’t you see it’s raining?”
I think nature is bipolar. Maybe we’re not meant to be the most consistent versions of ourselves. Maybe we’re supposed to have explosions. It’s good for the soil.
Most people repress their dark side. Much like Mother Nature, I just can’t. All the grass would dry up. The trees would die. There’d be fires every day.
Butter rang the bell again and I finally took her outside to get wet.
Butter sat down in the wet grass while I completed my 20th season of The Program. I’m in the Mid-Mountain Conference now after winning the Sunshine three years in a row. I lost the Empire City Bowl 16-10.
“Come on Butter,” I said. “Time to go inside.”
The heat trapped in the oven cooked my pizza while I was outside.
Thursday
My stove doesn’t know what time it is and neither do I.
I was almost late to my 3 p.m. therapy appointment. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into detail. The old me would've but I’ve changed.
On my way home, I decided to grab Butter and make a run to the dog park. She’s not supposed to go there because she has kennel cough but this dog doesn’t give a heckin frick.
On our way home, I swung by the CBD Shaman and picked up a Delta-8 Seltzer. They had the kid working tonight.
“I thought about grabbing a beer and then I was like nah,” I said. “If I drink this, I won’t feel like shit tomorrow.”
That was a lie.
“You gotta work tomorrow?” he asked.
I had a That’s So Raven flashback to this article.
“Uh, no,” I stuttered. “I’m just at that age where when I drink, it fucks me up for like two days.”
“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
You know what, I’ve never liked this kid. Too forward.
“Just turned 30…” I said, with a deep sense of longing.
I always get the impression this kid wants to be my friend. Disgusting.
He’s the kind of kid I attract: Sensitive losers. Weenies, as they’re referred to on SpongeBob. And baby, I’m King of the Weenies.
But unlike them, I’m doing something with my stupid life. I’m getting high and writing blog posts for 17 subscribers, what the fuck are you doing, bro? Working at Radio Shack like some kinda felon?
Get a grip on yourself, kiddo. Clean your room. Fold your bed. Make your socks. Eat my ass. I’m a budding Jordan Peterson.
When I finally assemble my army of weenies, I’ll be unstoppable. I’ll be on every cool podcast and have all the cool friends. Tim Dillon and I will fuck and the slapping of our curdling Irish bodies will echo across the intellectual dark web. I’ll be more famous than Obama.
9:11 p.m.
I made hot dogs!
9:43 p.m.
My stomach hurts.
Friday
Butter has a little problem.
Ever since we spayed and neutered our dog to help reduce the pet population, she’s been having these little accidents whenever she falls asleep with a full bladder. Thanks, Drew Carey.
I don’t even care, man. This week has been exactly what my inner child needed.
No responsibility. No structure. No rules. I can’t remember the last time I felt this free.
When left to my own devices, turns out all I wanna do is get high, write and play with my dog. That’s my American Dream. I can only hope to get hit by a drunk driver and win a big disability lawsuit like Tom Smykowski in Office Space. This blog is my “Jump to Conclusions” mat.
Saturday
I was about ready to break out the butt plug collection and call it a night when I got a text from Eric Emerson, a Chicago comic.
“Any chance you have a couch or two open for myself and another comic tonight?” he asked. “Sorry for the late notice.”
“Bring like 3-4 beers and you got a deal,” I said.
Sunday
I opened the refrigerator and loaded the remaining Coors Banquet beers into the box from whence they came.
Robbie Bernstein, the bald jewish cohost of “Part of the Problem” with Dave Smith walked into my kitchen.
“Those are yours if you wanna keep ‘em, man,” he said.
“Nah, I’m good,” I said. “I don’t really drink.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
“Yeah, I know… that’s always the plan until…”
“… until it’s night time?” he said.
“Yeah, exactly!” I laughed. He gets it.
“Did you know the guy who founded Coors Banquet Beer beer was named Adolf Coors?” he said.
“Makes sense why they focus so much on mountains in their commercials,” I said.
We drank coffee, riffed, had gay sex and they left. They were off to Cottage Grove for some terrible patio show and I was on cleanup duty until my wife got home.
A few final updates on how the week went:
Not quite what was planned.
Here’s my final screen time for the week.
Jesus fucking Christ.
By any measure, I failed in my mission to take care of myself. So, why do I feel better?
I think this is my version of taking care of myself. I haven’t given myself a break in so long. I’ve been so stressed about money, so all consumed with figuring out my next move, that I’ve neglected to do the things that actually make me happy— like losing myself in a stupid video game or getting drunk with road comics.
My conscience tells me these things are “bad” or “unproductive,” but I’m starting to realize that my conscience is just an extension of the brainwashing I received as a child. As it turns out, all work and no play makes Ryan an emotionally volatile boy. Armed with this information, I need to allow myself to play or suffer the consequences.
Sometimes, when the dog rings the bell, you just gotta play balls.
I threw my vape into the poo-smelling garbage can as Abby pulled into the driveway.
“How was your week?” she asked.
“Productive,” I said.