Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Live Alone and Like It

It was another sunny, but chilly, day when I got up this morning. I ran the first half of The Hollywood Revue of 1929 as I had breakfast and got ready for counseling. Made in the wake of MGM's Oscar-winning first musical The Broadway Melody, Hollywood Revue was the studio's way of showing off its new talkie stars. Jack Benny is the master of ceremonies. This is best known today for introducing "Singin' In the Rain," performed here by Cliff Edwards (the voice of Jiminy Cricket in the 40s) and the Brox Sisters.

I learned my lesson a few months ago, when I didn't give myself time to ride up to Haddonfield for counseling and was really late. I left for counseling at quarter of noon. Though it was very cold, in the lower 30s, and there was still some ice in places, yesterday's rain got rid of the majority of the snow. It was nothing like last year's January counseling session, when I had to dodge huge piles of ice and snow riding to Haddonfield and wear two or three layers on a day that barely made it into the teens. I arrived with enough time for a brief stop at the Happy Hippo Toy Shop and to get my bike chain replaced at the Freestyle Bike Shop before heading down King's Highway to Mrs. Stahl's office for counseling.

I mostly spent the hour I was there explaining all that had happened in the last two months - Thanksgiving, Jodie giving me her furniture, my suspension and what came of it, my Christmas preparations, all the trouble on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, my fun New Year's, Anny's pregnancy (she'll be having her daughter any day now), Rose's bout with bronchitis, and how annoyed I still am with Mom and Jessa over Christmas. Jessa shouldn't have blown Dad off. I know "Jessa is Jessa"...but Dad is her dad, too. And no matter how broke she is, Mom could have at least sent a card, or an e-mail. She did call on Christmas Day, but I got nothing else from her. E-mails don't take much time. She could do them at work!

 I need to figure out what to do with myself - at Christmas, and all the time. I'm hoping to take some writing courses, and...then what? What should I do next? I usually have a plan, a job or a business I should go after, but now, I don't know what to do. Those jobs and businesses never work out. I do research, get scared, and don't do anything. I never finish what I start.

 I feel so out of place here. I've tried looking up clubs, but all the doll clubs are in downtown Philly and at night, and everything else is at night or times when people like me who don't work normal jobs and don't have cars can't get to them. I feel so out of place. Why can't there be more people like Lauren and Amanda here? I'd give anything to meet some nice, quiet people who are into the same things I am and living the same way I do! Where are all the single people like me? Where are all the people who don't have families? Who live alone, or with single roommates.

She pretty much just said "take those classes and think of other things you can do that's similar." I don't have any ideas right now, either. I badly want out of the Acme - I'm never going to get anywhere there - but I don't know how, or whom to talk to, or where to go, or where I should be instead.

I headed down Haddon Avenue after leaving counseling. I briefly stopped at that little CD/book shop that just opened a few months ago. His heating wasn't working (it was freezing in there) and neither was his credit card machine. There were a few things I wanted, but in the end, I just ended up with the original cast album for the 1997 Broadway version of State Fair. I hit the ATM machine at the PNC a few blocks down to get money for the rest of the week.

Had a very late lunch at The Bread Board Plus, a sandwich shop a few blocks from the Rite Aid on the border of Westmont and Haddonfield. It's basically a larger, more rustic version of Amino Bros in Oaklyn. I had a third-sized Pizza Steak with ruffled chips and a huge pickle spear, three soft, melt-in-your-mouth Double Chocolate Chip Cookies, and a can of Diet Coke. Despite it being late, there were a few people there, enjoying their meals and checking out the salad bar. I watched people pick up orders for the many medical offices near-by.

I went straight home after that, going back the same way I came across the PATCO parking lots in Westmont, over that two-block "bridge," down Cuthbert, and through Collingswood past Haddon Lake Park. I was originally going to do my laundry tonight, but it was too cold for more running around. I worked on updating lists - lists of the AG dolls' things, lists of DVDs I haven't watched, lists of things I want to do this year.

I did one more half-hour episode of The Red Skelton Show while having defrosted broccoli, leftover chicken meatloaf, and the last of the Cranberry Flummery for dinner. In what looks like another 50s or early 60s episode, punch-drunk fighter Cauliflower McPugg is supposed to teach a vain and fussy actor (Vincent Price) how to box for a movie. He ends up stealing his girl instead...which just makes the actor angrier in the ring!

No comments: