Concrete Jungle (aka Life Stuff)

Some of you who have been following me for a while might remember the batles we've had with our old house. Basically, it's been falling apart. Several ceiling collapses, trees that came down in the backyard, last year's sewage pipe debacle that ran about twelve thousand dollars. Which we had to borrow. Well, Sunday night a dividing wall collapsed, womp womp. We were do for something.

Around 4 am Sunday night/Monday morning I hear a woman screaming in the street. My hackles go up because we've had incidents in the past, a mugging (which brought out the best in my neighbors, a bunch of us swarmed out to help), domestic fights, fights. Not to mention three house fires on the nearby corner crossroads over the years (one fatal) and a good-sized police standoff with armed robbers down the block (they held up the convenience store and ran up to the roof, I was dumping garbage and saw cops behind poles and cars, guns drawn, and slunk back into the house). Anyway, I hear a woman screaming and it sounds like she needs help. There's other voices. I don't know what to do, but I throw on shoes and creep outside. By the time I get out the people are gone, and I see there's what looks like a large, flattened cardboard box thrown across the bottom of the stairs. Which turns out to be the firt section of the dividing wall between our staircase and the one that our neighbor never uses to reach their backyard. I took a picture and went back inside and finished watching a bad horror movie.

Yesterday I went out there to clean up what I could, which wasn't much. Got the smaller concrete chunks into a contractor bag. I tried to shift the concrete slab off the steps like an idiot, which I managed to barely do and since then I'm hitting up my painkiller collection on the regular. Ouch. Bad, sad out of shape dad. So Monday ws a blur of pills and bad horror movies.

If you look at the third photograph, you'll see a show caught beneath the large concrete slab. Someone's Croc. I am wondering if some kids or whoever sat on the wall and it collapsed. There's no blood. But my feeling is that's what probably happened, someone got hurt and they bolted. I have no way of knowing unless there's a small corpse beneath the slab (there isn't).

I have a concrete removal service supposedly coming today in and hour or so. $400 will go along with the slab. I don't even know if that's a good price or not, I just checked websites and called the first one I had a decent feeling about that customers seemed to like. I'm a bit of a mess when I have to adult things but therapy has helped me deal with things better. I still feel queasy calling places and dealing with people. Doctors, car mechanics, plumbers. I feel like I did something wrong and am going to be chastised or made fun of for it. Which is ridiculous, I know. You're just another customer, patient, whatever, with just another situation. When Sarah was in the hospital a few years back, for a month, I had to pay all the bills and deal with banks and mortgage people, I didn't have account numbers and Sarah was unable to really communicate (it was a bad month). I took care of everything een though I was having anxiety attacks up the wazoo. It was not a huge deal, but for me it was. It helped me to deal with other domestic problems a lot better.

I don't know why I'm typing all this, I'm just nervous and chatty. The rest of the family is away for a few days so I'm on my own and I get a little more anxious on my own dealing with stuff. Some of you might experience the same feeling in these situations. Hopefully, very few of you, or, none of you, even.

Last Thursday I got together with friends in Manhattan for some drinks and conversation. Great night. Saturday night I saw Descendents play in Montclair, NJ with Paul from our podcast and his wife, Stevie. Both longtime friends going back to the Jim Hanley's Universe/Fantastic Store days. We had a fantastic time. Opening bands were Liquid Mike (very good) and Teenage Mortgage (insane). Descendents were just terrific. They played "Silly Girl" and "Good Good Things" which were the two songs I most wanted to hear. They were so good I wanted to go in the pit but I don't want to be a goofball and possibly hurt or get hurt by kids. Plus, one minute in and I'd have a heart attack. But the band was that good, I felt like I was in ym twenties again (except for the bad back, shoulder, arm and ankle pain, ha ha). We got lost going home (map/phone issues) and ende dup at a McDonalds eating in the parking lot like kids. It was such a great time. I should see more shows if possible.

I'm old. I think about it too much. Topic for therapy this Thursday.

Waiting for the concrete removal folks with Winky. Who I'm going to pet for a while.

I'm done petting Winky (for now).

Let's see, anything else? I can't wait to see Catacomb of Torment #2 come out this month. I haven't had any new comics work out in a long time. It looks like my second story will run in #5 of the series. I'm waiting to hear back if my latest pitch was accepted, I like it a lot and will tuck it away for myself if it's rejected. It made the first hurdle with Oni editorial, now it's sitting with whoever at the EC estate approves the pitches. I could write short horror comics for the rets of my life and be fairly happy. I miss the age of antholoiges (that paid).

I'm also the kind of person who has butterflies in their stomach waiting for someone to show up at the house. Even food deliveries have me anxious. One reason I rarely order food to the house. I don't think I have had a delivery since that time where Sarah was in the hopsital. My family sent me food a couple of times for birthdays or whatever which was cool because it was a surprise. I wish I was't so anxiou about things, but I'm glad I'm better about it than I used to be. There's always time to work on yourself.

Hope everyone's okay, hope these bad times aren't crushing you too badly or keeping you awake too much at night. Hope you're coping. There's real serious things out there to be anxious about, and we have to keep moving forward, right? Right.

More, soon, later.