April 8, 2024
First, some background. I had been offered a very good job in Indianapolis, back in late March. We were making our plans to relocate. After the unfortunate way I was fired at my last job for things I didn’t do, I was finally feeling a sense of hope for a fresh start. This weekend I got a letter in the mail saying the new job is backing out because they cannot verify my background check and reference information. I am in a very low place right now. Am I going to die in Muncie? Did the people that got me fired win?
4:30a – I wake up, and it’s still dark. I look over on my phone and see I’ve only slept for around 4 hours. I can tell that I am awake enough that I will only lay here awake for the rest of the night, so I get up, and see if I can tire myself out again, to come back to bed hopefully before sunrise. I get up, feed the cats, pour myself a glass of water, and by 4:50, sit down to finish a small series on Youtube that I started yesterday – this really amiable British guy playing through a drama video game with a friend of his. After my news that came in the mail yesterday, I wonder if this right here is what the entire rest of my life is going to be – hiding at home from the people that conspired against me, bringing in $700 every 2 weeks working part time, being broke the very next day after I get paid, having barely taken care of the expenses I needed to. No one here in town feels particularly interested that I am here, save for my partner. She will follow me to the ends of the Earth though; I have only to ask. She is really too good to me. I feel guilty for putting her in this position. She is trying her best to keep us afloat, following our both being fired from the same workplace in November.
6:45a – I can tell I am getting sleepy again, so I come back to bed. She is there, asleep; I am jealous of her ability to sleep. I lay there and hear the fresh air out of the open window, and drift kind off half there until I roll over again and see that it is 8am. I remember that I am documenting today, and get up again. I type from 8 to 8:25 in a very still, oddly bright living room. .
8:33a – I make coffee, use the bathroom, and replace the Ball jar of water on the living room table coaster with my coffee cup. I make a Facebook post, letting people know of my predicament now, without a new job. I look over at the Terry Pratchett book I am about ? the way through, and really wish to myself that I lived on Discworld instead of this one. Occasionally catching a glimpse of a titanic turtle flipper would be more interesting than the eclipse, happening here today. I decide to read the book for a bit. Specifically, until 9:11a. It hit me, once I came back into the real world, that due to the recent turn of events, I really run the risk of spiraling today, and will try my best to get a handle on that.
9:13a – I turn on a bit of news, and look over, out of the window; the window-mounted bird feeder has been fully raided by squirrels. I should refill that today. I listen to the TV, and remember yesterday. My partner and I had a pretty heavy conversation about the future, in general. One of the points was the concept of marriage. She would very much like to do that, and I, just getting out of a bad marriage, am a little reluctant. It is not for the lack of wanting to be with her. She is the one good thing in life right now, and I am feeling more and more like I need to do right by her, and hold on to her. She really sees the good in me, and she should finally find happiness and rest, after a lifetime of drama and pain. That really helps me see that not every marriage would be terrible. I bounce between that, and anger over everything that has happened at the hands of others over the past several months, messing with my career like they have. I briefly live in the fantasy of turning up at an eclipse event today, put on by my former employer and rampaging, but of course I will not actually do that.
Around 10a – My partner wakes up, and comes out into the living room to “fetch” me. I realize I need the snuggles, so I go back to the bedroom with her. We talk about the upcoming day a bit, and decide that we need to get out of the house, so we get ready to go find breakfast, and to find some lunch items for the upcoming eclipse picnic we are planning. By 10:25, we are out the door.
12:01p – Back at home now after our morning trip. Diet Coke is my partner’s lifeblood, and she was all out. SO the first stop was the corner gas station on Bethel/Tillotson for that. Then was a sort of aimless drive deciding where to go for breakfast. We end up going down Tillotson, turning on to White RIver, then onto Jackson to go downtown. We stop at Bird Dog cafe, but of course they are not open, being a Monday, so we drive back up Walnut to McGalliard. I suggest that since it’s 11 already, I should just get something to tide myself over until lunch. Why is breakfast in this town so tough?…everything is either done with breakfast by 10:30, or is overcrowded, or closed, or really crappy. Anyway, my partner suggests just swinging through Dunkin Donuts for a sandwich, which I do. We both get one, and eat them in the Payless parking lot. We get out, shake the crumbs off, and head in for picnic stuff. I immediately spot the assistant director of the place that fired me. She also blocked me on Facebook maybe 2 weeks ago, so I know that she was totally on board with what went down with me at my old job. She pretends she doesn’t see me as she leaves. I can never seem to get away from bad people here. So we go to the deli section, and start finding fun lunch stuff. Chevre, crackers, apples, ham/pastrami, and stuff like that. I periodically check the reactions and comments from my post – lots of “care”, “sad”, and “angry” reactions. A couple of people responded that maybe the best thing for me at this point is to get out of town for good. I am starting to agree. I certainly feel like I am hitting a wall here in Indiana. We check out, and head home. On the way, we try and decide where we will go for our picnic, and settle on the riverside. We saw lots of geese there earlier on our drive, so that should be nice.It would be fun to try and feed them. I only hope it is not overrun with people when we get there. Given that the eclipse starts at 1:52, we have time to go home, pack the lunch, and she will finish the cake she is making for the day, a sunny lemon kind of thing. I don’t think I can ever say I’ve gone on a proper picnic.
12:38p – I finish making the sandwiches while she ices the cake. Everything there is homemade; she is such a little baker! I go outside and check with the eclipse glasses to see if the moon is anywhere near the sun yet. Not that I can tell. I am trying to get into the spirit of a unique day, and not let the grease-fire of my life completely take over.
1:25-3:50p – The Eclipse – We find an eclipse playlist on Spotify (Here Comes the Sun, Black Hole Sun, Bad Moon Rising, etc.), and head out. We drove down Tillotson blaring “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, and it was the exact kind of silly that I needed. Neither of us wanted anything to do with the official eclipse events going on around town – at Minnetrista, Canaan Commons, the Libraries, or the Fairgrounds. So when we were driving down along the river, I was delighted when I saw an empty space along the parking area on White River Blvd., just across from Dill St. I settled in behind a car with Columbus, Ohio plates – I love having a small car for this reason, and we made our way down the embankment, and laid out the blanket about 30 feet off of the river. It was lovely! There weren’t more than 20 or 25 people there at most during the whole thing. When we settled in, we put on sunscreen, and attempted to feed frozen peas to some geese. They weren’t having it. We had our sandwiches and cheese/crackers while eavesdropping on a set of 3 college-age folks at the neighboring blanket, going on about musical theater and Fort Wayne – I think they were from there. I took a few pics of the scene, and another couple, to our other side, could audibly be heard asking each other if I took their picture. (I didn’t.) It started to slowly get darker and cooler. We kept an eye on the eclipse until about 3 when it was almost time. We were laying there, her using my leg as a pillow, looking up, and I play “Total Eclipse of the Heart” as loud as my phone could go. I raised it up, waving it like some lighter at a concert. The musical theater kids very briefly started singing along. I stopped it before someone started complaining. Then it went VERY dark – I really underestimated how dark and chilly it would get. It grew silent as well; all the birds shut up. I lost the sun in my glasses, and took them off really quickly to see the corona, clear as day. Of course I had seen images like that in books or online, but to see it hanging there in the air, for real, was really kind of breathtaking. My only comparison so far is what it was like to see the Grand Canyon with my own 2 eyes. During those 4 minutes or so, everything was so still. And dark. And quiet. It kind of felt like I had been transported away. And just like that, the sun popped out from the other side of the moon. I was listening to the folks around kind of in awe. I didn’t bother trying to get a picture of it; I knew tons of images would be found online very soon. I just took in the experience, remembering that this would not happen again while I’m around (unless I am willing to travel some great distance in the future, which who knows, I might be.). We hang around for 20 minutes or so afterwards, letting some of the others take off before we pack up and head up the embankment to the car. There were fireworks (or gunshots, I can’t tell, probably both) nearby. At some point during our time there, I suggest that we should do picnics more often – they are peaceful and nice! We drive home, and I thought there was finally a pretty good reason to be In Muncie. I do not believe in signs or anything like that, but I think I would like to take this as some sort of opportunity to think about how there are things bigger and more impressive than my troubles, and this actually goes a long way towards me thinking that I can fix them.
4:24p – I start to put away some of the picnic leftovers, and type this. Sure enough, there were at least 30 people I knew posting things about the eclipse – images and videos. I am glad I just took it in, instead of trying to document it. My former workplace makes a post just now about how they had 150 people attend their eclipse event this afternoon. I resist the urge to comment “I had 400 show up for the 2017 eclipse event I did for y’all, just saying!”. Maybe for my own mental health, I should unfollow their page. I get up and do a bit more cleaning up in the kitchen. There is just the slightest tinge of sun making the back of my neck tight. The back door is open, letting in the very decent weather. Given how early we both woke up this morning, she absolutely crashes into a nap, and I almost crash that hard, but I stay awake. The cats take our cue, and crash there with us. We just take it easy and heavily lounge around until…
6:40p-7:36p – Her alarm goes off, over on the sofa, and I sit up, a little bit rested. I find the baseball game I’d like to watch, starting at 7. Before she passed out, she mentioned us needing to sort out dinner, and I suppose that is true, but I am just not hungry right now – being in the sun takes the appetite right out of me. She is up and we just chat about the day, and we watch the intro of the baseball game – it’s our favorite team, and it’s their home opener, so there was this nice little ceremony beforehand. She asks about dinner, and I say no, everything is frozen, let;s just order something. So we do. She is in a great mood after her nap, and I am ready for a nice night in. There’s still plenty of light outside, and I am loving how nice it still is, going on 7:45p.
7:45p-10:15p – This time was spent together, enjoying the game. Not much to be said about it, really. Neither of us were in the mood to cook so we ordered delivery. We cracked our usual jokes about the team, things like how 1 specific player looks like a 1970s serial killer – her crusade against standalone mustaches will never end – or how their social media hypes certain players as being fantastic, although they are currently getting cooked by the internet for only having a .182 average to start the season. The correct team eventually won. We talked about our upcoming trip to Cleveland – how we have to maintain our trend of visiting zoos in any new town we visit.
10:15p-11:22p – We kind of began our wind-down after the game. Just calm, quiet quality time together. We somehow got on the topic of the band Rush. It is so fun that she can pull such random facts out of her head! We ended up putting on an old Rush concert to talk about Neal Peart’s drum kit and the row of active laundry appliances on stage with them. I don’t particularly care for Rush, but it was fun to share a totally random thing for a little while. I really had no idea I’d take part in a conversation about 2112 today! She decides ok, it’s time to go get ready for bed. She is first into the shower. I very quickly realize yes – that is the perfect thing to do right now…I need to get this old sunscreen off of me. When she is done, we shut off everything in the living room, feed the cats, and lock up. She heads to the bedroom to start her “going to bed” ritual – mainly consisting of taking her prescriptions. I jump in the shower, and only then realize how much I needed one. Being outside in the nice weather does that to you! I get finished with that and head to my side of the bed.
11:22-12:00 – We finish the day with the lights out, window open, heater and A/C off. Cat 2 pulls up to my corner of the bed like always. I wonder aloud if we can see the moon again, for the 2nd time today. She pops up really quickly to look out of the window. It isn’t out there. Settling back into bed, I roll over, and put on the sleep podcast we like to use. Tonight, it is a “sleepy history of seed dispersal”. WHat a nerdy thing to type! But I love it. I love my silly, nerdy little life with my silly, nerdy little partner. I have my issues, but it’s moments like this that remind me that it’s all ok in the end. By the time I hit play on the sleep thing, it’s right at midnight again.