Familiarity breeds contempt, and absence makes the heart grow fonder. Last night was an uneasy time had an argument with Mike. I came home from work. I was in a good mood as I settled in. There were various things that I had to do, like make dinner, put things away, and move things around, and it got on my nerves, and my mood swung from happiness to frustration.

Mike couldn’t understand it and took offense. I have the news on the television, which did not help matters since it’s almost always bad news, and when I looked at Mike, he was sitting on the couch with his headphones on as I made dinner so I turned off the news with 3 minutes to go was going to put on music. Mike is always drawn to his phone. He’ll ask for something to watch on television, and we’ll put it on, but minutes later, he’ll sit there looking at his phone with his headphones on.

But his headphones are not on fully, he exposes one ear so he can hear external audio, but I was going to play music as I set about making dinner. And escalated rather quickly from there. He was so upset and was going to leave, and I talked him into staying. We had to talk afterwards whether or not it was good, which it may be for him it didn’t seem like that for me.

Perhaps I’m not accommodating enough for the guest who’s been staying in our apartment. I explained to him to speak to Bill about how I am sometimes not, and I’ve been spacing out until I eat, but he didn’t know that; it just did not go well.

When Bill came home things started to change and I thought it did but when I went to bed all I can think about was the argument I had with Mike and after 3 hours of tossing and turning I may have to actually got to sleep but it wasn’t a restful sleep and it wasn’t a deep sleep it felt more like I was laying there with my eyes closed. And Mike considers it hypocritical for me to sit in front of the computer screen with the TV on and complain about Mike living forward looking at his phone with his headphones half on his head.

Perhaps it is. Bill and I love Mike and welcome his company. Mike says he appreciates us, appreciates me making dinner or even buying dinner or even buying groceries but I suppose he expects us to behave in a certain way which after 25 years together Bill and I are reluctant to do so since we are ourselves and have been doing this with no problem for at least 23 years.

Mike states that he loves coming over and relaxing and interacting with us, but how long and how far should I bend over to make him happy, and at what cost to myself? There are things Bill does that drives me crazy and sometimes pisses me off and then I take a step back I catch my breath and realize that there are things that I do that piss Bill off and drives him crazy.

Funnily enough, Bill seems to be the intermediary in this situation. I explained to Mike last night that Bill knows once I eat dinner, I am generally a better person but last night Mike wasn’t going to allow that to happen so I stood in my juices which did not really make it for a good state of mind.

Once again, this has been dictated into my phone with no typing. Please excuse all errors, grammatical and otherwise.

It is now lunch time…I have gathered my steps walking down 5th Avenue to 12th Street, past the Strand bookstore, by the Cinema Village theater, past where Farfetched used to be, and over to 3rd Avenue where I walked up to 17th Street through Union Square, and now I sit at 5th and 16th Street.

And has not been an easy day and I it should be that to the lack of sleep that I got last night a few tasks were thrown at me I didn’t quite comprehend and it seems that these tasks were out of the ordinary and left to me to figure out and I asked questions and the person I asked took care of it instead.

Right now, the plan is to go home, eat something, and probably go to bed. I am unsure if Mike is going to be around. He did say something about working late until 9:00 p.m. He still has his stuff in the apartment, so more than likely he will have to show up. Oh, the problems of my heart and my head…

Overall, it was a good weekend. Bill came home late or early in the morning around 3:30 on Saturday. Mike was around Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and that was fun. Mike enjoys hearing Bill’s stories, perhaps a bit more than I do. Then again, I have heard them before.

I did have to drag Mike to the really big supermarket on Saturday, and I have to say the really big supermarket is a bit of a sad situation since the wonderful Arti is no longer there and perhaps back in India by now. She is greatly missed; her smiling face and her wonderful personality have been replaced by the cold and indifferent self-checkout.

I took a few photographs of Mike smoking a cigar for his online admirers, and he took a few photographs of me smoking a cigar, mainly for my fat cigar dad down in Texas, and also for one or two Facebook groups. We have discovered a channel on cable that shows nothing but Saturday Night Live clips over the past 50 years, so that was fun. And it was also a rabbit hole that had a few laughs in it.

Bill had slept for a good part of the day, and when he awoke, we watched Ghost Dog. I saw it when it came out with Ro Da 25 years ago. Bill had seen it then as well, and Mike had seen it. Still a very good movie, perhaps one of Jim Jarmusch’s best. It was fun watching a movie filmed in Jersey City. I’m trying to identify landmarks 25 years later, landmarks that more than likely do not exist anymore.

It is a Monday morning in Manhattan. I am a block away from Union Square, where everything is cozy and comfortable. I do enjoy the team that I’m working with, and they seem to enjoy working with me..

Working on a Mac it’s easier than I remembered, considering I’m a PC kind of guy.
Back in the day when I was working for Wolff Olins, it seemed to be more of a struggle to work on a Mac, but nowadays, almost 20 years later, it’s not much of a hardship after all.

Sunday was Mother’s Day, and it was a beautiful day, 75 and Sunny. Out of the three of us, Mike, Bill, and I, Mike is the only one with both parents alive. We wandered around Hoboken in the afternoon for a couple of hours, lots of people out and about. It was Mother’s Day after all, and all the mothers were able to roam around, free-range style.

Bill and Mike went to the smaller supermarket, and I sat on the stoop smoking a cigar, talking to Annemarie. All in all, it was a good day and considering that there was not the usual back to work apprehension on Sunday, I really can’t complain. Once again I am dictating this into my phone, not sitting at my computer and typing since I don’t really have much time to do that and this is a whole lot easier, warts and all.

A few hours later, lunch time walking around 5th Avenue, 18th Street, that’s across 20th Street…I’ve been tempted to send emails to companies that turned me down, thanking them for turning me down. Then I realize it’s best to leave the past in the past.

The past is some place that I visit perhaps too often…for example, I was just thinking of a job that I had 40 plus years ago, I had to deliver law books to the Statler Hilton on 33rd Street. There are several hundred books, and no one to assist me in moving books through a crowded sidewalk is the first time I learned that no one was going to help me.

There were no strangers around to help me, and to be honest, I probably wouldn’t be helping strangers either. It was an eye-opener of a job, and like I said, it was over 40 years ago. That company I worked for is gone.