Goodbye, Dolly!

And goodbye, $200-each-month storage unit!

And hello, $2,400-each-year-sudden-windfall-liquidity! Let’s go to Paris!

Dear LORD that was a long day

I cleared some stuff out of my storage unit, sold a ton of books (for a meager $20, but still), learned choreography for 4.5 hours with a delightfully talented choreographer and a cast of dancers half my age, did a show that was spiced up with a tornado delay and a couple dropped lines on my part, emptied the litter box, decided to sleep with my gross wrist wound unbandaged to see how it survives a night in the open air, and took a helicopter selfie with Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged neck creases (too soon?) in our Kountry Krafts guest room where I’m still sleeping because the final push of my bedroom project has become kind of overwhelming. Good night!

Two lamps I have loved, sitting forlornly in storage and awaiting whatever fate they have that I have yet to decide

SHIT!

I WAS GOING TO GET SO MUCH DONE THIS WEEKEND.

I was going to finish all the final details on my bedroom and finally be back in my own bed by tomorrow night. I was going to start and finish a little caulk-and-touch-up project in my bathroom while I had all my supplies out. I was going to get rid of the last of the little stuff in my storage unit so all I’d have left would be the big pieces of furniture. I was going to help a friend move some stuff.

But NOOOOO.

As the anesthesia wore off this afternoon I found myself getting nauseous and profoundly exhausted. So I left work early to crash for an alarming FIVE HOURS in not-my-bed and miss our office’s fun summer party tonight. And since I’m forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk FOR TWO WHOLE WEEKS—no hauling boxes, no helping friends move, no throat-punching Mitch McConnell, apparently no putting my pants back on after my nap—I’m left with no options but to stuff myself with pain meds and cookies and watch MSNBC. With no pants.

Great-read books that rose to the tops of the piles in tonight’s brief excavation of the storage unit:

Two are bipolar. Two are totally gay. One is a fascinating historical-fiction fantasia (Let the Great World Spin—read it!). One is the pre-McSteamy actual reference book that I received for Christmas 1981 back when I had dreams of being an ER doctor. But it qualifies as a great read only if you really REALLY want it to be.

There will be light

My prize liquid-mercury lamps—the only good thing to come out of a dumpster-fire rebound relationship when I found them on one of the little shopping sprees we took together because at least when I was using my credit cards I was interacting with something capable of sustaining a healthy, mutually meaningful, not-shit-crazy-psychopants relationship—are finally out of storage and placed where I’ve long been envisioning their deep-glimmer awesomeness against my new rich-people-blue walls.

And ... meh.

Maybe it’s the relentlessly cruel sunlight screaming through those tiny windows that’s killing the mood. Maybe my freshly Liquid Golded shelves need to tone down their competing shimmer with a healthy layer of dust. Maybe the lamps need a few little knickknacks to tower over in an act of passive-aggressive alpha-lamp dominance.

So ... the four important takeaways here are: 1) another bedroom wall is finally touched up and inspected and back to being hidden behind furniture, 2) I got more crap out of my storage unit, 3) meh, and 4) all this hard work is HARD.

Things I Just Found In My Storage Unit:

My second “Who Am I Anyway?” headshot—still stalwartly mounted on its foam core—from my second A Chorus Line in 1996ish. Behold that perfect hang-ten wave of hair crashing over my forehead! Behold that rakish single earring! Behold that attempt at a world-aware smolder! Behold that long-abandoned 32-inch waist (not pictured)!

Things I found in my storage unit today PART III

• A nephew
• A bejeweled jacquard whorehouse lampshade
• A general lack of shame

Things I found in my storage unit today PART II

• A green glass head
• A green headless dressmaking doll
• An apparent history of questionable taste

Things I found in my storage unit today PART I

• A friendly nisse
• Blue suede cake mix
• Prince Albert in a can
• Brett Somers
• Elton John

What’s the ONE THING you IMMEDIATELY find

the first time you walk into your storage unit after having given up all hope of ever finding your TV remote and then buying a universal remote that you’ve already programmed?

That’s right: red whorehouse throw pillows!

The good news is I finally unearthed my TV from the vast warehouseness of my storage unit

The other good news is the remote is right here ... in ... one ... of ... these ... boxes ...

Treasures I uncovered today in my storage unit, part two:

• My collection of tourist-trap figurines from my world travels that I figured I’d never find again among the bajillion unopened boxes I have yet to spelunk BUT I DID
• The glazed ceramic Eiffel Tower ring stand/change dish I have no business owning because I don’t wear rings or carry change but it’s charming and Francophiley and I love it so shut up
• A red Chicago Marathon cowbell that all the spectators jangled along the race route to keep us fired up or at least running in fear from all the crazy people jangling cowbells at us
• National Treasure, the American Da Vinci Code and my gateway drug to swooning over all things Justin Bartha
• MY HELLA COOL A CHORUS LINE BOOK
• Three stray unmatched socks I thought might possibly pair up with the pile of lonely, forlorn unmatched socks I’ve been holding onto for years just in case their prodigal other halves eventually showed up ... AND TWO OF THEM DID!

Treasures I uncovered today in my storage unit:

• Gershwin “Preludes”: A Festival of Sharps, Accidentals and Hand-Breaking Intervals
• Hy-Vee Hy Value Card from the dawn of the Dark Ages when barcodes and loyalty programs were first invented and scannable plastic key fobs were REVOLUTIONARY UTILITARIAN ACCESSORIES
• 2€ coin from my last whirlwind tour of London, Paris and Barcelona—the European economy and the very status of the UK in the EU have been in precipitous flux since I so carelessly brought it home a decade-plus ago and removed it from European circulation
• Hand-made What Would Fred Do keychain given to me as an opening-night gift by a long-ago Ginger in a long-ago Follies where we’d together looked for Astaire-piration as we choreographed our featured white-tie-and-marabou-trim number
• Adventureland pay stub from my living-the-dream summer of 1986 where I sang and danced up to 13 shows a day, 6 days a week for two-digit wages that even then were probably criminal
• Debussy’s “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum”: A Festival of Flats, Accidentals and Knuckle-Breaking Tempos
• Blockbuster card that’s laminated in plastic so thick it’ll outlast, global warming, thermonuclear annihilation, cockroaches and the trump family’s concurrent prison terms

Things I found in my storage unit over the weekend that I’d feared were lost forever, Brushed Stainless Steel Edition:

1. My banana holder whose graceful arcs complement the organic curves of the fruit it suspends in its noble, counterbalanced mission to prevent unsightly, heartbreaking bruises.

2. My prize souvenir from my one and only trip to Paris: a meta cheese knife with FROMAGE carved out of the blade. I found it in—of all things—a quaint—because EVERYTHING IN PARIS IS QUAINT—little cheese shop near our hostel in the Marais district. It’s a CHEESE KNIFE with the French word for CHEESE carved in it, people!

Things I unearthed in this weekend’s storage-unit excavation, from left to right:

* All those random electronics cords that the world has been searching for in our collective, almost desperate random-electronics-cords drought (sorry!)
* A rubber keychain from a Chicago marathon that I will neither ever use nor apparently throw away
* A half-used container of Body Glide that—get your minds out of the gutter—distance runners use to prevent chafing on rubby body parts and that I’ve used only as a very precautious precaution because I’ve never really had chafing issues but I’d rather not discover that I do halfway through a long, sweaty run
* Art magnets for the art-magnet collection I forgot I once started and clearly never spent much time growing
* The knee brace that got me through my first marathon (can you tell I stumbled on a big box of running stuff in my excavation?)
* A crackle-finish ceramic hand that I bought during my Decorating With Fake Body Parts Phase that if I remember correctly also included a phrenology head, a skull and a fully articulated skeleton on a fake-old-timey stand (all of which no doubt await discovery in a future excavation trip to the storage unit)
* Two souvenir Disney luggage tags that currently contain business cards from four addresses ago, but that’s about to be fixed.

I also found an unopened package of razors and a slightly crumpled box of #10 envelopes that seemed a shame to just throw away, but that’s all so unimportant that I won’t even mention them here.

We gays have the best stuff hidden away in our storage units

I SAY I WANT SOME RESOLUTIONS

Here’s last year’s list, amended with variations of CHECK! in front of things I actually accomplished and with updated/new things I have yet to accomplish:

CHECK! I will turn 50 in April (that’s not the actual resolution—it’s just the preamble to the resolution) and to celebrate I will run every race within 100 miles that’s been on my bucket list—plus any other races I discover that sound fun—all summer, culminating in a back-to-back three-day Disney 5K/10K/half marathon in November. [UPDATE: I was sidelined by injuries for two races and I opted not to run the 10K at Disney, but I’m still giving myself full credit for accomplishing all of this. And I can run faster than you if you try to chase me down and explain to me why I didn’t.]

I will finally run the Bix 7 in the Quad Cities this July.

And you should come with me, whether you want to run or cheer or celebrate together at the after-party.

I will continue making the gym and distance running an integral part of my life. Because I’m not getting any younger or less single.

PARTIAL CHECK! I will stop thinking PB&J and Diet Coke are an acceptable dinner.

I will continue enjoying PB&J at all opportunities and I will continue eliminating Diet Coke completely from my diet (14 days and counting!)

MOSTLY CHECK! I will stop launching scorched-earth social-media fights with cousin-curious Trump supporters to the point that I make myself angry every time I open my social media and discover that they still don’t know how to lose and shut up and go away like normal morons.

I will stop losing hours scrolling mindlessly through Facebook and use my newfound free time to pursue something—anything—more productive.

I will keep myself constantly updated on the current slang and the new small talk. And use it only in irony. Because I’m 50. And an adult. I think.

PARTIAL CHECK! I will figure out how to use the universal remote I bought for our TV. [UPDATE: I made multiple attempts last year, and I got it to do everything but change channels via the number keys. PLEASE COME OVER AND HELP IF YOU’RE FLUENT IN TECHNOLOGY.]

I will start (or finish) reading all the books I bought (or received as gifts) in 2018 (or 2017) (or 2016) (or before that).

I will continue to cultivate the wonderful friendships—and keep my distance from drama—that I’ve been abundantly fortunate to have found since I moved home four years ago.

I will quickly learn the names of people I meet, especially when we do shows together. But no promises—I’m mired in a lifetime habit of convincing myself I suck at names and therefore not even trying.

ONGOING CHECK! I will get the hint and cut my losses the first time someone shows me we don’t have much of a friendship and it’s never going to go anywhere.

SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME PICK A COLOR BECAUSE I’M SERIOUSLY PARALYZED WITH INDECISION! I will bury my tinkle-colored bedroom walls in a deep, rich, handsome, masculine, adult color that I have yet to determine.

CHECK! I will nag and complain without shame or reservation until we replace our pinky-beige, mousy-blah, suburban-horror Formica countertops with something that doesn’t make me want to hide under the sink and slowly die of mousy-blah ennui hastened by poisoning from any store-brand Formica cleanser we have stored there.

I will continue to cull and integrate and sell and give away the two-bedroom-apartment contents of my storage unit ASAP so I can eliminate that $200+/month line item from my personal budget.

I will use my newfound storage-unit savings to pay for regular voice lessons [which I started in December!]

I will make practicing the piano a regular part of my weekly schedule to try and regain some of my long-dormant skills.

I will try to get a gig choreographing something smallish somewhere or finagling my way into playing in an orchestra pit somewhere. [YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. CALL ME. LET’S TALK.]

I will more regularly give myself private tap lessons from all the YouTube tap videos I’ve found.

I will stop wasting time winding up the vacuum cleaner cord.

I will scoop the cat box twice a week instead of once.

I will finally visit the local museums I’ve been woefully absent from seeing: The African-American Museum, The Czech and Slovak Library & Museum, The Masonic Library and Museums, and any others I discover.

I will work harder (notice that I’m not giving myself any form of schedules or deadlines here) to post more frequent #ArtThrob essays about my favorite works of art.

I will stop accepting Facebook friend requests from strangers just because they’re cute.

I will stop accepting Facebook friend requests from strangers just because they’re cute.

I will stop accepting Facebook friend requests from strangers just because they’re cute.

I will reduce forgetting my bipolar meds from once a month to zeroth a month.

I will avoid the New Year’s Day Rose Parade. And all other parades. Just like always. Because parades are stupid.

A few years ago I made a resolution to say or text or email something nice to somebody—longtime friend or random Internet stranger—every day. The resolution has slowly evolved to also include just texting or emailing a random hello to someone I haven’t talked to in a while and to check in almost daily with people I know are struggling with mental illnesses themselves or in their families. I’m sure I’ve missed a few days here and there, but overall it’s become a happy little daily habit that’s kept me in touch or even reconnected with people from every corner of my 50-year (ACK! How did that happen?) life (except for a handful of guys I’ve had longtime crushes on because I’d die inside whether they did or didn’t respond—and, sadly, at 50 years old (did I mention I’m 50?) I’m still kinda scared of guys I have high-school crushes on). Crippling insecurities aside, I’m renewing my daily-compliment/hello/check-in contract for yet another year. And I encourage all of you to consider trying something similar. Because it’s WAY cheaper than flowers. Or therapy. Happy 2019!

I read Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham years ago in a book club in Chicago

Even though I was an English major in college I'd pretty much lost all interest in reading fiction by then -- and still to this day -- preferring instead to bury myself in books about social science and American and European history. But I DEVOURED this book for our book club. Then a couple years later I devoured it again. And for some reason, something reminded me of it a couple weeks ago. Then I had an opportunity to bring it up in a conversation soon afterward. And now I want to devour it a third time. If I still own my original copy, it's currently filed away in one of more boxes than I can count in my climate-controlled storage locker across town. So I ordered another copy and it arrived last week. And I can't wait to devour it again -- and since I've decided to forgo being in shows all summer so I can focus on training for all the Running Away From Being 50 races I want to do, I'm also going to attack the piles of books I've purchased over the last few years but have yet to even alphabetize by author on my shelves. Because that's how I roll.

Anyway, in Flesh and Blood Cunningham crafts a richly complex family narrative that germinates literally from the imagination of an eight-year-old boy as he plays in his father's garden in pre-war Greece. That boy -- mightily named Constantine Stassos -- eventually emigrates to America, marries an Italian immigrant, and becomes the imperious and by degrees powerless patriarch of an expanding family dynasty whose story is told both as a beautifully messy, eminently human drama and as a faceted metaphor for the American Dream filtered through a prism of post-war immigration, the uncertain but dogged progress of cultural assimilation, and the inconstantly evolving boundaries of familial love and obligation. It's as engrossing as it is complex, and as beautiful as it is essentially American.

White. Pure. Floating.

When you finally find your most prized possession in a storage box and hang it in its rightful place as the pièce de résistance in your luxurious, not-unlike-a-delicately-bergamot-scented-indulgently-deluxe-spa bathroom.