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Posts Tagged ‘patience’

You Take it on Faith, You Take it To the Heart

April 17th, 2010 Secondhand Karl Comments off

I’m a good tipper. I’ve had many friends who wait tables and I know they bust their ass. You have to really be a crappy waitress to get less than 20% from me, yes, because I’m appreciative, but mostly because I don’t have the patience to do what they do. Or the coordination. Or memory. I hear you’re supposed to remember what people order and shit.

It’s the waiting I have trouble with in my life. Sure, I’m easy-going (mostly). I try to be patient – and sometimes I succeed – but mostly I suck at it.

2010 has been kicking my ass thus far, and the past week hasn’t done much to show me that it’s about to change any time soon. I’m tired of my life, I’m tired of the waiting. The Year of Resolutions can blow me right now. I’ve been so depressed of late that nothing seems to be getting done…not checking sugars the way I should, haven’t been working, haven’t been going to the Y. Suck it.

Friends say I need to grab the Universe by the balls and give them a tight squeeze. I think that’s a great idea, I answer, as soon as the universe lets go of its vice grip on MINE.

I lost a close friend this week. Not lost as in “she died” or “I misplaced her.” There was a series of blowouts in recent months, and this past week served to show me that waiting on a satisfactory explanation was a waste of time. Months I waited, and for what? Nothing. In the end, rather than talk about it, I got cut off entirely – blocked – and that’s been quite the blow for me. I thought we had a far deeper relationship than that. Seems I was wrong.

I realized a while back that the very thing I was waiting for (an answer that would make sense) wasn’t going to materialize. No answer would make everything that’s been happening OK. I was hoping things could be salvaged, but then the decision was made for me, and here I sit, writing off what was a very important relationship.

I’m seeing lately that patience, which they SAY is a virtue, is really a sucker’s game. Waiting by idly for someone else to make a decision often brings disappointing results.

The question now is how do I know what is worth waiting for (or if anything is worth waiting for)? How exactly do I grab the Universe’s scrotal sack without the incessant junk-punching it’s giving me?

I’m gonna start with less waiting. I’m worth more. It’s counter-productive, particularly when it’s the kind of waiting that precludes me from making a move until the other person makes their move. I have shit to do, I have a life to lead…Lord knows what that looks like, but I’m sure I have better things to do.

If I’m not important enough to deal with, fine. If you’ve got other things on your plate, fine.

Just don’t be fucking surprised if I’m not still waiting on your ass when you’re finally ready to get to me.

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Stranded All Alone at the Gas Station of Love, and I Have to Use the Self Service Pumps

March 18th, 2010 Secondhand Karl Comments off

CONTEST

Eden Fantasys is providing me with a prize to give away to you, my lovely, dirty readers. It’s a $25 gift certificate to their shop, and believe me when I tell you, there are lots of things for girls and guys alike in that store. You could even use that $25 toward their Kissa glass vibrator. It’s waterproof and everything.

RULES

1. Email me your funniest sex stories. I want the stuff that makes me spit beer through my nose. Confusing super glue for lube is tragic, by the way, not especially funny. Email your stories to karl at secondhandkarl dot com. Be sure to put Crazy Sex Story in the SUBJECT.

2. Deadline is MIDNIGHT on Wednesday, March 24. That’s just before we officially hit Thursday. Don’t be late.

3. One entry per person, please.

4. I will not be judging the contest. Instead, I have chosen three remarkable individuals to read the stories and come up with a winner and a runner-up. The judges are: Michel (LeSombre), Shannon (Bubblewench), and Janet (IzzyMom). They won’t see the names or emails of the people sending the stories, just the stories themselves.

5. Funniest story receives the $25 gift certificate to Eden Fantasys. Runner-up will receive a special prize from the SecondHand TryptoGear store. It might even contain a peek at the new 2HT design, coming to a browser near you very soon.

So…get to writing. Make us laugh with your dirty, dirty self.

*****

Allow me to share a few photos from the amazing Ben Folds concert the other night. Great freaking show, and my first time seeing him live. Also got to discover a new artist (for me, anyway): Zach Williams. Another outstanding performer.

HOB

Zach Williams

HOB

House of Blues

Party on!

My favorite shot of Ben singing

He played everything I wanted to hear – “Annie Waits,” “Landed,” and even “Gone.” Banged on that piano like you wouldn’t believe. Rocked.

Back to an ongoing project…filling up that self-worth tank. Mine’s a little rusty, but y’know…

There are people that fill that tank up for me on a routine basis. Well, they try, and I’m trying to be better about absorbing the love.

Just a few of them:

1. Angel. I wrote a post about some of the things I love about that woman. All those things are true. The woman is amazing and helps keep me sane almost daily. Level head, smart as a whip (a really smart whip), and amazingly patient with me. Believe me, I require a lot of patience, particularly when it comes to buying into the nice things people say about/to me. She talks me off the proverbial ledge a lot. Makes me think about things I’m not thinking about, see things from a different perspective. She’s also woman enough to let me know when I’m being an unreasonable fuckhead. Adore, adore, adore.

2. Shannon. My Prick Buddy, and also the woman most likely to make me cough up a lung from laughing so hard. Shannon is real beyond real. She says what’s on her mind, often without a filter, and I really dig that. We text every day, swapping blood sugar readings and diabetic woes, and I wouldn’t have my diabetes under the control it’s under if not for Shannon. I admire her for the way she’s taking care of herself lately. Like me, she’s lost a lot of weight the last year, is actively working more of it off and taking an active role in her health. We talk on the phone every so often, too, and she’s one of the elite people that don’t make me want to rip my ears off if the conversation goes more than 10 minutes. (And it pretty much always does.) Good, solid people. I’d trust her with my life.

3. Sybil Law. Despite her having the blog URL from HELL, Sybil is another amazing gal who I can talk to for hours. Funny as shit, snarky, intelligent. She, too, helps ground me with her level-headed laid-back attitude. Another real-as-you-can-get girl, you pretty much know where you stand with her at all times. She has a problem, she’ll let you know. She’s great to bounce ideas off of. And she occasionally pumps sunshine up my skirt, which I’m prone to believe because I don’t think she’d say nice shit if it wasn’t something she believed. Unless it involved Dave Grohl. Love her.

Three people that make my world a better place.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brokersaunders/ / CC BY 2.0

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Mom Talking Like She’s on Jersey Shore and the Return of 2HRadio

March 9th, 2010 Secondhand Karl Comments off

I’ve gained 7 pounds. Not sure why. I have been exercising. Isn’t that the point of moving, to LOSE weight? Or at least not gain any?

Sigh.

Waiting. I hate it. Yesterday, I waited with Mom at the doctor’s. Almost an hour. With weak Edge, at best.

Visit went well. Mom is now officially without both her leg brace and the thumb brace. We should hear from PT this week to schedule her therapy. You couldn’t pay me to be in that room when they start working her knee. I’m not ready to hear my Mom talk like Hilly.

Fucking cocksnuggling sonofaWHORE! Touch that knee again and I’ll rip off your head and shit down your neck, you festering pool of donkey piss!

Today, we went to Social Security to ask a few questions. They have a brilliant system. If you go into Social Security at, say, 15 years old…then, by the time you get to the window, you’re probably eligible for Medicare.

They also tell you to turn your cell phone off before entering. Whatever. Listen, I’m barely convinced that my cell phone is a threat on a plane 33,000 feet in the air. I’m certainly not shutting it off in the Social Security office. I did, however, mute it.

What? I’ve got to get my Moxie on.

Patience. I don’t have much of it. I quit asking God to give me patience, because it inevitably means He provides me a shitton of situations in which I HAVE to be patient. Screw that. I don’t have the patience to gain patience legitimately.

I don’t like waiting, especially when the ball is totally not in my court. I chomp at the bit, grasping at something to do while I sit around and do, well, nothing. Waiting on YOU. Ugh.

Waiting on friends. Waiting on doctors. Waiting on the assclown in front of me in the checkout line at the grocery store to pay with all coins. Waiting on my meds in the mail. Waiting on 2HT to be finished. Waiting on April to get here so I can see Shannon. Hate it all.

SecondHand Radio Returns

One thing I have been waiting for is SecondHand Radio to return. It’s been months since Mom broke her kneecap. I tried one show after that and it didn’t go over well. I needed a break while Mom healed from her break. Well, she’s walking around now – slowly, but steadily – without a splint, so that’s good.

Thursday at 10pm Eastern, 2HRadio comes back. My guest is the lovely Maria, aka Mommy Melee.

Please mark your calendars, tell your friends. We’re back. I’m returning to one show a week, though. Thursday nights. Twice a week was too much.

Live chatroom to play in while the show is on. You’re all welcome to call in and talk to Maria, say hi, ask questions, whatever. Go to the SecondHand Radio page and get all the info.

Looking forward to it. I’ve missed my show. Thankfully, the waiting for that is nearly over.

I haven’t lined up any other guests. If you know of someone you’d like to hear as a guest, let me know. Even if it’s you.

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2000 Zero Zero, Party Over, Oops, Out of Time

December 31st, 2009 Secondhand Karl Comments off

Avatar KarlI had a great freaking holiday weekend. I really needed it. So much stress, so much bad juju floating around my neck of the blogosphere. Many loved ones in pain right now, myself included.

So I really needed the laughs, and I got them. You can’t not laugh around children; and if you can, we probably won’t get along.

A dear friend of mine - Faith, 6 - routinely makes me spew beverages through my nostrils. She’s a lover of fine cereals, as am I. Her favorite is Lucky Charms, mine is Crunchberries…whatever, it’s a personal preference.

Faith was disappointed to find that the Bob Evans restaurant does not have cereal on their menu. (Course, even if they did, they probably wouldn’t have Lucky Charms.) So the other night, we were all talking about where to go for dinner and I suggested this buffet place.

Before we left, I asked her if she knew where we were going.

“Yes,” she said. “The buffet.”

“You know something, Faith? I’m not sure I understand what a buffet is. Can you explain it to me?”

She nodded. “A buffet,” she said, with big sweeping arm gestures, “is a place where you can have aaaaaaanything you want…except cereal.”

Had I been drinking at the time, I’m sure I would have spewed said beverage about 20 yards through my nostrils. I need more of that for the new year. Laughter. Less stress. I’d forgotten what it feels like to truly relax, to play and be childlike. I hope it’s not something I forget again.

It’s the last day of 2009. Time for me to get my crap together, snap out of the fucking fog that this year has been for me. Time for me to work, get back on the horse, make life a lot less stressful by earning some money.

I have a lot of ideas I want to see happen, a couple of them could really take off.

I want a blog redesign. I want to blog. I want to READ blogs.

I want to continue cutting toxic people out of my life. I simply don’t have the patience to deal with them. And even if I did, I don’t have the desire.

2010 is going to be different. I can feel it. Big things are coming. Good things. The final season of Lost, for one. Listen, I’m not ashamed to tell you this… in my darkest hours, when I’ve all but given up on life? It’s my need to know all the answers on Lost that keeps me hanging on. And they damn well better give me those answers. And if, in the last 3 minutes of the last episode, they show that John Locke IS the Smoke Monster, I’m gonna go postal.

Right, the good things. It’s going to rain Butterfingers in 2010. Cancer will die forever. A Greatest American Hero/Quantum Leap TV reunion mashup movie will be announced. Tiger Woods will join Sexaholics Anonymous. Balloon Boy will inspire a new cult, filled with Balloon Boys and Balloon Girls, and the skies will be filled with mylar and Twitter will freak the fuck out. Again. Dickish ex-spouses and ex-significant-others will stop harassing my friends. Sarah Palin will announce her candidacy for President in 2012, thus assuring that I will vote Democrat for the second time in my life.  Fox TV will stop being an asshole about trying to charge people for broadcast fucking television, like the ads aren’t enough revenue for them.

A shiny new 32GB iPhone will be mine.

People around the world will realize that we all have far more in common than not, and they’ll all stop fighting and killing each other over stupid ass shit, like land and drugs and politics and (for the love of God) God. The lion will lay down with the lamb and all that jazz. OK, maybe I’m getting a little crazy.

It’s gonna be good, people, that’s all I’m saying. I demand it.

I’m off to celebrate the end of this hot mess known as 2009. I hope you all have a great night and that none of you drinks and drives (cuz then I’d have to disown you). For those alone tonight, I hope you’ll take in some warm, fuzzy movies on the telly…or some schlocky B-movie sci-fi. And those of my friends that have my cell can call me, of course. Or text. Just know that I plan on getting my drink on tonight, so I can’t guarantee a speedy delivery on the response track.

So all of you have a great New Year.

2010 - now with Improved Flavor and 90% less injunctions!


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