View From The Mattress

i felt my opinion is....right....for a second

2006-03-22T01:54:00.000-07:00

the other day at work some co-workers were talking about seinfeld.
i never watched the show when it was actually on. infact, in english 10 our teacher (miss watt, who was my teacher for eng. 10 and eng. 30, and is my 2nd favorite teacher ever because she had dry humor and actually helped to make you better) made an allusion between some story and the TV show sienfeld. she said it was a series of stories that seemed at first not to relate, at the end, came together. she asked if anyone knew about siendfeld, which at the time was popular, and no one in the class raised their hands. we really didn't watch it.
but now i do.
when it was big the show was dubbed 'the show about nothing'. but since i have watched the show i have decided it is NOT a show about nothing. i believe it is a show about 4 losers in new york. 4 friends who have oddly bad luck and make us laugh at their hilarious, criss-crossing, averagely common, lives.
so at work, i heard some guy say, "it really is the show about nothing."
i chimed in and asked, and was told sure enough it was seinfeld they were discussing.
i decided then to voice my opinion. "it is about something,"i said. "it is about 4 loser friends who live in new york city."
the guy paused for a sec and said, "yes but they don't work together, dont live in nearby buildings. it isn't typical."
i retorted, "no, it is not typical. but it is by no means about nothing. it is about 4 people and whatever that may incompass."
and they had to agree.
and that is why i think my opinion matters.

ful cur-kul

2006-03-08T01:54:00.000-07:00

it is a very strange day when your parent confesses that one of her parts officially doesn't work like it should. for the rest of her days this particular body part shall forever choose not to work like it should. a part of her is finished. and i. i sit not even 30. half the years she has had. and i am blown away as to what might still happen.

there is always a plan. we just only

ever

get to see it in hindsite.

Hey Mr. Big Stuff

2006-02-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I wore sweat pants to the bar. Needless to say I was the only one. That coupled with my Prada fanny pack made for an interesting outfit. But somehow I think it worked as I was being checked out all night.
Should I admit I thought about stuffing?
Ok, I won't.

Hello, Dolly

2006-02-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

'Travelin' Thru' by Dolly Parton is a fucking beautiful song. It's country. But that's Ok. The words, really, are the best. Her voice sounds like she is saying a prayer. A prayer to music.
Get it.

old year

2006-02-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

i am almost 2 full months into the new year and there is nothing new about it. save for the fact i feel i am falling futher into the abyss i can't clearly see and therefore cannot get out of.
translation...
i bought an 8 pack of canadian cold shots at 7pm tonight. i even brought a safeway bag with me so i could carry the beer inside that when i arrived home lest my mother have any questions.
that is surely not a good thing.

bay-bee

2005-12-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

last night my sister brought forth her er, fourth child. she is not anything like my other sister i talked about in a previous post. this one has a husband, now 4 kids, a house a degree. she's set.
usually having a baby is an event to be celebrated but in my case i just can't bring myself to visiting her and congratulating her. last time we talked was through e-mail and her and her husband made their thoughts on me quite clear. they still think i am a porn-addicted, christian hating, unreliable threat to their children. what caused this you may ask? i looked up porn on their computer 10 years ago (yes, 10 years) and it has never been forgotten. never mind the fact that i pretty much single handidly took care of our mother while she battled cancer at the same time as working and going to school. nope. that's does mean shit. i could go on about their reasons but suffice it to say 4 things in the matter of 10 years have deemed me a negative influence on people. their loss i have finally decided.
but with an attitude like that the christmas holidays become a difficult time. not everyone is happy this time of year, trust me.
i like to think i could be the bigger person and just see their new child and smile and say the right words. but why does the person who was hurt always have to be the bigger person? have to let things slide?
the older i get the more i realize that i know just as much as the baby born yesterday about life.

this thinking feeling

2005-11-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

last night i was a "good boy" and went to bed right after watching ER. i rarely watch the show but it looked like a gooder. and it was. after reading people magazine i turned out my light and lay there eager for sleep to take me over.
but it didn't. for 1.5 hours i lay there yawning, twisting and turning. my mind just would not stop. i hate it when that happens. you just want yourself to shut up. and sometimes, when it is really bad, you have to argue and reason with yourself. "ok self' you think/say, 'i really have to go to sleep now, so stop thinking.' then you yawn and think about the world and why everyone likes to make things hard for you. 'stop it' you say/think. then you turn over, perhaps yawn, and think about how you want to sleep and how good it will be once you finally do. 'mind go blank' you think/say. and so forth.
when i finally did manage to go unconcious my dream did not leave me feeling rested when my alarm woke me at 7:16 am. i dreamt that my mother (whom i live with) told me i had one hour to pack up my stuff because we were moving. no explanation given. she then handed me some boxes and told me to get started. i told her there was no way i could fit all my things in these few boxes. she just told me to grab my essentials because a bulldozer was coming to tear the house down and we would claim whatever was left in the house through insurance and get "lots of money". i'm not sure what this all means but i'm pretty sure insurance wouldn't give us money to replace the things we bulldozed over ourselves.
i'll ask my mom what she has planned for today, just in case.

wasted

2005-11-01T12:56:00.000-07:00

i find this horrible to think, much less say, but my sister is angering more and more on a daily basis. she has, essentially, wasted her life. she is 33 years old and has nothing to show for it. NOTHING. she has had several, several boyfriends over her lifetime. she gave a child up for adoption when she was 18. she kept the next child (who now lives with her drug addicted father because the courts decided he was a better caregiver than my sister.) and she has had many other pregnancy scares and miscarriges. the longest she has kept a job is about a month. she quit that one because she could get the weekend off to go away with her boyfriend so she stopped showing up. he dumped her shortly after.
most recently she got a job at a hotel downtown which she was very excited about. she was to be a dishwasher (the only job at 33 years old she can get) and it even had health benefits and guaranteed raises. in other words it was a good job, for her. she didn't show up for her first day because she was hanging out with her boyfriend. she was in love with him 2 weeks after meeting him. i heard her telling him on the phone on morning at 2 am while she was drunk. she loved him. she couldn't stand being away from him. that was just over a month ago.
they aren't together anymmore.
the part that pisses me off the most, that i just thought about, is that my sister is adopted. her natural birth parents gave her up in the hope that she would have a better life than they could ever give her. they gave her a chance. and now 33 years later she has essnetially taken that chance, shit on it, and flushed it down the toilet. her life, for all intents and purposes, is almost half over. she is half way to retirement!
i pity her most of all. she meets these guys and takes their attention. she needs their attention. she needs them to fill her up inside because somewhere along the way she lost the ability to do that for herself. so she is at their whim. they date her. they play house for a few months. the guy gets tired of taking care of her so they dump her. and she, because she has no feet to stand on, falls. every single time. until the next guy comes along and takes care of her for a while.
i wonder what she thinks. i wonder where she thinks she will be when she is 50 years old. i wonder why she is allowed to do whatever she wants and i have to work 6 days a week for minimum wage. what makes her so special that she gets to say 'fuck you everyone i'm going to stay with my friends for 3 weeks. i don't need to get a job!'
so she drifts. everywhere. she stays with my mom. she stays with a friend. she stays with her boyfriend that she is always in love with. she passes herself around in the hope that sometime she may get it right.

The Concert

2005-10-22T22:09:00.000-06:00

last night was the culmination of many a dream. not dream in the way that it is running thru my mind while sleeping but dream in that it is something that i really wanted to do. i had 4th row tickets for my favorite singer Jann Arden. she is canadian lives only a few hours from me, but that isn't really that cool. she has a few albums and is as much as a 'hit' in canada as she can be. there aren't many of her songs that i don't like. they all speak. they all make you feel. and some of them can make you hurt.
when she came out with her latest album and the concert was announced i set my alarm and was calling for tickets a full 30 seconds before the phone lines opened.
the concert was definitely worth the wait. she is hilarous to see live. i sat in my seat and just thought about her. she always says music was the last thing she thought she would be doing, but it was always something that she loved. and surprise, when you do what you love the rest usually follows. if your intentions are pure.
the audience was a mix of lesbians and large people. i kinda felt like i was at a cross between lilith fair and a weight watchers meeting.
and to my surprise the friend i took with me returned the favour and gave me a ticket for the nylons christmas concert (front row seats). i loved the nylons in the 80's and i still love christmas music. (i am listening to 'it came upon a midnight clear' right now.) it should be fun

3 cents

2005-10-19T15:10:00.000-06:00

on a recent trip to the local mall i was riding the 'down' escalator and saw quite a hilarious scene unfold infront of me.
usually when riding an escalator my mind is thinking about the store i am heading to, the cute guy's ass in front of me or, if there is a mirror, getting a quick glance to make sure i look alright. but this time i a jarred from my thoughts when a man was saying, "you're gonna get stuck" to a woman beside him. he was grabbing her arm trying to pull her up as she was bent over trying to do something. i thought, at first, that she perhaps had a shoelace untied (a big no-no when riding the escalator, we all learned in elementary) and i was moderately fearing for her safety too. images of her getting caught and me only a few steps above her falling on top of her and somehow breaking my nose, or worse my cheekbones. (can you just break a cheekbone?)
the man kept trying to pull her up and the woman kept resisting. it wasn't until he said, "just leave them, we're almost at the bottom" that i realized her life wasn't in danger, really, and whatever it was she was doing could most likely be filed under the 'you're dumb' file.
sure as shit the couple gets to the bottom and in a fraction of a second i see her still bending over trying to pick up 3 PENNIES she had dropped. the woman did fall flat on her ass and my face braced to meet tile. the man, however, was quick thinking (or used to her stupidity) pulled her up and pushed her forward lest she try for the pennies again.
i walked off the escalator face intact, thank you very much.

the real me/you

2005-09-29T01:29:00.000-06:00

it's funny. well, not funny, but kinda interesting. i have worked at my new job for a month now and 3 times i have had a manager say to me, "Is everything ok? You seen quiet today." What does that mean? It floors me how people, who have known me 30 days out of 26 years on this planet, feel that they know me enough to make judgements like that.
It isn't a judgement per se, but rather a comment about who you are. And I wonder what the basis of this speculation is. To me I am just myself. Most days, I guess. But to only see me in the capacity of work, doing what I am paid to do, and then ask me why I am not 'myself', who are they to know who that even is?
But really, who am I to know who that really is?

here's pop in your face

2005-09-18T04:27:00.000-06:00

i dropped my first tray of glasses tonight. ever. in my 7 years of serving and working in the restaurant setting i have never spilled a drink or dropped a tray. tonight i had a table of 12 in my section. i hate big tables. they are rarely worth it. i was doing my 2nd round of drink refills (before the meal was even out :S) and for no reason at all the only pop on my tray decided to fall. i have re-played it many, many times in my mind and i have no idea how it fell. but it did, all over the girl with spikey blonde hair. i got her good. i suppose if you're going to do it at all...
the people were really nice about it and were quite understanding. "first time for everything!" they said. my manager too was fine with it. she just said we would buy their meal. i told the girl who i dumped it on that she could have a free dessert (as she only ordered a side of mashed potatoes.) of course her mother had to pipe up and ask what she was getting (even though she barely got any of it).
long story short - they were fine. not grumpy at all. laughed with me after. the bill was $224 after taking off almost $20 for me showering them in pop.
i got $13.
on a $224 bill.
i guess they weren't that understanding after all.

funless 'fun'

2005-09-16T15:02:00.000-06:00

two days ago it was my 26th birthday. god, i am glad it's over. birthdays, or almost any celebration for that matter, have so much pressure surrounding them they have barely any meaning. you just do them because you have to, hardly because you want to.
my favorite new years eve that i have ever experienced went something like this. 1) go to work. 2) come home from work and do not answer any phone calls. 3) have a hot bath and a glass of wine. 4) go to bed before midnight. it was the best decision i ever made. well, perhaps not the best decision ever, but it was not regretted one bit.
it seems when ever there is an occasion or something that has a title or a reason attached to it the fun that is had never equals the fun that was expected. the real fun happens when you least expect it. it happens when it is just a group of friends sitting around and saying 'what do you want to do?' and then one friend says, 'we could do X.' and you all agree and you go and do X. and then crazy things happen and you all wake up the next day and say, 'wow, that was fun.' (or something of the like.) but being very, very virgo spontaneous things rarely happen in my life. i don't let them. maybe that's why the fun has left me.
i need to find the fun. i need to find the waist i had 3 years ago. i need to find some money. i need to find myself.

through the eyes of...

2005-07-21T19:34:00.000-06:00

i went to the theater today. the movie theater. i saw 'charlie and the chocolate factory' with my niece. whenever i feel like i want a kid i do something with her. it reminds me that i maybe don't. not that she is bad, by any means, but kids can be frustrating. as a person who likes order and labels and the like, a child is just too unpredictable for me. i had to tell her to be quiet during the movie about 10 times. they don't get it. or maybe they do more than us, older people. she is is playing around on the piano as i write this. it makes me feel guilty.
the movie was good. i love tim burton's style. over the top, loud, dark, intense and colourful. it's great.
shawn desmond is at klondike days today, in 40min actually. he is hot, but can't sing and has a lisp. i don't hold those things against him. i'm sure he's very nice.
mike and i decided we are going to go to vancouver at the end of september. it will be my second time back since i moved away from there. i think i will go tanning before i go back. i'd like to look different from when i left.
i'm gonna go play with my niece. she's a good kid.

sundays are for nothing

2005-06-12T15:49:00.000-06:00

sundays are the perfect day to do absolutely nothing. i think it is my strict christian upbringing that as created in me a sense that nothing should really be done on these days. no work. no school. nothing. it has gone from a respect for the big guy upstairs to just a thing i feel people should not do.
i remember many years ago my sister and i convincing our mother to buy a vhs vcr. we suffered for far too long with our beta machine and finally after a decade or so of being on the market vhs machines were cheap enough for us to afford one. the real persuading wasn't so much as getting her to buy one, it was the fact that we were pleading our case on a sunday.
my mother was against shopping on sundays as apparently it made baby jesus cry. it took a few hours of crying, begging and promising to do our chores until the end of time but finally she agreed. i remember driving to the mall as excited as a fat kid who just found a suitcase full of chocolate. my mind was full of all the movies that were now available to me. the possibilities seemed endless. i also remember, as we pulled into the parking lot to buy said machine, my mother saying, "i just don't feel right about this."
as we all know now the world didn't stop on that sunday my mother bought a vcr. but maybe, just maybe, me being a big 'mo is god's way of getting even.

j'ai fini

2005-05-02T20:53:00.000-06:00

this past saturday was my unofficial 'i quit my job' party. i made the mistake of eating kraft dinner before going out. not only is it one compound away from being plastic but it also absorbs alcohol quite well, making it a little difficult to get drunk. i gave it my best shot anyway.
the 'party' was fine. the only co-workers i wanted to show up did. i got enough of a buzz on to make mc donalds sound like a good idea. at the door i was a bit saddened by my co-workers saying they would really miss me.
so here it is monday and i have no clue when my next day of work will be. it is a nice feeling, but scary too. i realized that i have not had more than 3 days off in a row since september. all work and no play...make matthew something something.
and so it really happened. and so it really begins.

careless or care less

2005-04-27T02:58:00.000-06:00

it's 3 a.m. and i have been tossing and turning for the past hour. i am having trouble closing my eyes and allowing myself to sleep. a lot on the mind i suppose.
last night dale and i had our first official fight in 6 years. after as many years of him being late for almost every single thing we have planned to do together it all blew up. he told me that just because he is late doesn't give me the right to insult him. he is right, i know. and i also know that him being late has little to do with what is going on externally around him. it is all in his head. he asked for a little compassion and i refused to give it.
i often wonder how i care so little. i can name 5 people that i was once 'best friends' with and in the span of a week got rid of. what is it inside of me that enables me to cut the strings so easily and readily? i think back to my childhood and can't find any reasons, save for that maybe it is a defense mechanism. get rid of you, before you get rid of me. it makes some sort of sense but i know that isn't what it is. i don't drop friends because i fear them dumping me first. i get rid of them because i find a fault, a flaw, that i find inexcusable. no more reason given than that and in my head i really don't feel like i need one. and i don't even regret it.
it's not pleasant to think you don't understand yourself. and you don't even care.

begin, again

2005-04-22T00:35:00.000-06:00

it's been a few days since i quit my job. it doesn't seem real yet. to think that i need to get a new job downtown, so i can move downtown and enter a different way of life.
i know that it is all for the best, but a part of me still wants to hold on to the now. things never really work out the way that you want them to, or the way that you thought they would. but they work out the way the are supposed to. each event, failure and success is intended for something. for the 'greater good' of you. it is just hard to see it in that way, when you are in it, in that way. things become more clear when they are behind you and you can see it for all that it is. and all that it really was. i guess the best thing to do is to trust. easy to say, of course, difficult to do. because when you are trusting a situation it isn't even a tangible thing, like a person, that you can hold on to for comfort. and blame. you just kind of have to let go and let it all fall where it wants, and you find yourself in pieces of it all. hopefully not all in pieces.
so here it ends. and here it starts.
all to begin, again.