rituals, habits, and dependencies
you’ve got your hooks in me
I don’t do drugs. I’d be bad for them. They’d be, like, whoa, will this trip ever end? I take drugs. That’s different. The day starts with two squirts of Flonase up each nostril. A shot of the disc inhaler. A levothyroxine tablet. If I miss any of those things, I get anxious. Not because I need them every time. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But I don’t want to take a chance. Late afternoon is rotuvastatin. That one, for whatever reason, I don’t stress if I run out. Montelukast. God forbid I miss that one. Zyrtec. And now Flomax, because my urologist scared the hell out of me with tales of spending my last decade hooked up to a catheter. Yeah. Fuck that. If I ever reach that point, I’m heading straight for the garage to gas myself. Unless I’m driving a Tesla. This is why electric cars suck.
Sometimes I think I don’t need all these drugs. But I’m used to them. I’m comfortable with them. If I miss my night shot of the disc inhaler, I’m afraid I’ll wake up and not be able to go back to sleep. So I get out of bed and take it. Before all the allergy meds, I’d wake up and not be able to fall asleep again. Now I don’t. That’s a good reason to keep on taking them, don’t you think? But what if all these drugs blow out my liver or ruin my kidneys? Thanks to the meds, I don’t really care. I figure, life’s better without that anxious edge. Even if I don’t make it to 65.
I convinced myself that hot chocolate is good for me. Not the kind in a pouch. The kind you have to get up half an hour early to make, because it involves measuring and mixing ingredients. Cocoa powder and chocolate bars have iron in them. Now I feel like Iron Man. I’ve gotten so good at hot chocolate, I’m pitching a workshop to Williams Sonoma called SOME LIKE IT HOT CHOCOLATE. I’ll have to use their gadgets, which spoils the purity of the concept. I’m not happy about that, but I can live with some compromise, as long as I’m being paid.
Something happened when I started drinking hot chocolate. A better mood. Less ideation. Which, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with ideation. I’ve been practicing ideation since my 20s, and not once have I acted on it, even when I owned a gun and a motorcycle. Or maybe it’s a coincidence. Better not take a chance. Better stick with the hot chocolate habit, just in case.
This is how my weird rituals get started. Do things a certain way for a short period of time, freak out with any variation. Like butter in the hot chocolate. Or direct heat on the Weber. Most people set up two-zone cooking, a hot zone and a cool zone. But then I watched SJ COOKS on YouTube and learned about direct heat. Now I can’t stop.
One of the reasons I resisted going back to hats is because once I started wearing one, I couldn’t get myself ever to not wear one. But then after the doctors told me I had to wear one while recovering from the pre-cancer removals, I got myself a Dylan-inspired black gambler’s hat. Now I can’t take off my fucking hat.
We all die eventually. I’m not scared of that. I should be, but I’m not. God might have something to say about my posting a link to my Christmas show, PUT YOUR CLOTHES ON, YOU’RE IN MIDDLETON NOW, to the credit union’s intranet. He might say, “what were you thinking, Louis,” just like my boss, Cassidy, did.
I should probably try indirect heat at least once more before I die, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I haven’t mastered direct heat yet. I’m going to eat chicken and tritip in daily rotation till I get it right. And a pint of ice cream every night, while watching a movie with my wife.
I don’t know how I’ve managed to make it this long.
