Leave the house at the typically obnoxiously early hour required to make the usual obnoxiously long commute. Luckily find out on the way down the street that the Turnpike has been closed for the past four hours due to accident. Re-route yourself down a parallel but very slow road.

Here’s where it gets fun. The parallel slow road goes to one lane for about a mile due to construction. It takes about ten minutes to merge – partly because the truck in front is going obscenely slow and partly because every jackass in the neighborhood is whipping out into the left lane preparatory to cutting back into my lane ahead of the lane merge. ‘Cause, you know, they’re so much more important than me.

I finally get through the light and through the merge area and have to suddenly dodge a universal joint that’s fallen out of the very slow truck ahead of me. Whee! Dodge universal joint, swerve to the right to get around the now dead truck that’s using its last bit of momentum to try and get out of the main flow of traffic in the one lane construction zone.

Now all the traffic is moving slowly, the turnpike is still closed and the word is that all the detouring from the four hour closure means the parallel slow road is choked where it joins the main branch of the east-west turnpike. Already it’s taken an hour to do what usually takes 20 minutes. Just as I’m about to declare all hope is lost I hear the turnpike is open and I’m able to swiftly re-route and enjoy smooth sailing from that point forward.

Total commute time: 2.5 hours. Usual time: 1.75 hours.

The funny ending to the story is seeing one of the trucks that caused the problem in the first place unloading its cargo of dry goods through a hole in the side onto another truck.

What a day.

Case in point: I decided I’d take my time today at lunch so I could eat outside, relax and enjoy the bee-yoo-tee-full day. I wandered up the road to have a meal at Sonic and felt pretty damned mellow at the end. Mellow enough that I thought I’d use the five minutes or so left on my lunch break to browse the liquor store next door. Been reading some books on booze and wine and thought I’d take a look around and see what there was to see.

On my exit, I find an old dude passed out on the ground next to my car, bleeding from the head and elbow with a cluster of folks around him and paramedics on the way. Thirty minutes or so later, they have him loaded up and on his way and I’m about ready to sneak out around the ambulance when some other ass clown parks directly in front of my egress. So I sit a while longer and wait.

This is how my luck works. I have a rough morning, I take a little break to improve my mood and the Lord throws something in my path calculated to send my mood plummeting to the depths. It’s some kind of big cosmic joke. Let’s try to find out where the man’s limits are. Let’s take him right up to the edge of the abyss and give him a titanic kick in the pants to see if he can keep his balance.

Well it ain’t goddamned funny. I don’t drink much anymore. Can’t take as much as I used to.

So knock it the hell off.

Then I realized – nothing happened up there. Allentown and the Lehigh Valley have no direct ties to any of the historical events that I groove on. There’s no Civil War battlefield, no Revolutionary War connection, no historical event of any significance. Just a whole lot of flat-ass normal people living their normal lives in normal times. I’ve never lived anywhere momentous things didn’t happen. Everywhere I lived had an energy in the air. But up there, there’s nothing. No entrepreneurial spirit. No drive. No sense that great things are or were in the offing. Just a plodding determination to keep on living where you live and doing what you’ve always done.

In short, it’s boring. Oh well.

Did the population of this area suddenly triple in the last sixty days?

Used to be I could leave work at 5:30 and more or less coast all the way into Philadelphia where I could find a parking space no more than one block from my house on my first drive around the block.

Now I leave at 5:30, sit in traffic for thirty minutes to go about five miles, get back to Philadelphia, drive around multiple blocks in ever-increasing circles for another thirty minutes and finally settle on a dubiously legal parking space no more than one mile from my house on my fifth drive around the block.

I swear to Jesus Christ Almighty – hanging on the cross at this very minute – the next time it takes me thirty minutes to find a parking space I am going to dynamite every single car sitting in a permit legal parking spot within a two block radius that has New Jersey tags.

Those bastards make my life difficult enough without taking up my parking space to re-enact their favorite scenes from Jersey Shore at Fat Tuesdays on a Thursday night.

Anyone up for a good Jersey-stomping flash mob?

Family excepted, of course. Hell, they might help.

Novus Ordo Seclorum

In the grand scheme of Latin phraseology I’ve always been more partial to things like Oderint Dum Metuant and Re Vera, Potas Bene.

Funny how life can continue to surprise you even when you think you’ve got its measure. You can be coasting along, content if not happy, and then something upends everything. And instead of drinking a lot or trying to instill fear you’re sober on St. Patrick’s Day, watching insipid children’s programming, thinking about a new order, happily contemplating a new future. It’s heady stuff.

I started this website as a way to get thoughts out of my head and on to virtual paper. This always helps me think. More importantly, once all the bad thoughts weren’t bouncing around my head I was a much more stable and happy guy; far less prone to occasional bouts of genocide.

Now I find myself to be genuinely happy. For the first time in my entire life there’s a very real possibility I may get everything I ever wanted. I will still have to work, there will still be troubles along the way and the general idiocy of the world will still annoy. But a man finds that when he’s got his own family, everything else gets the volume turned down. There’s a reason to eat shit with a smile. To wake up early and go to bed late. To wash dishes, clean house and maintain an even keel.

The old Mess of the Damned will always stand as a place to lay my burdens down. But I am learning not to ask for those burdens to be lifted, rather I ask for broader shoulders to bear them.