Big Box Race Relations and other deep things.

'Tis the day before crew change and so I have arrived to NY and as always it's a gray, foggy, shitty day. Appropriate. I feel... funereal.   Had a great 2 weeks and other than still having a second asshole on the back of my hand courtesy of the cancer fairy and my dermatologist, it was a good 2 weeks. Restful. 

Tomorrow early I retun to the HQ to see how bad the fill-in-crew fucked it up. I heard bad things. 

 But that isn't why I am writing. 

 So I changed my big box store membership from Cosco to BJ's about 5 years ago. Both have stores in Brooklyn, where sadly the HQ is homeported.

 Cosco has more of what I want and is much closer to the office and lay beths... but Cosco Brooklyn is a hell on earth.  Overrun by ultrarude elderly asians, the women especially, as they love to stare at you and yell when you're, God Forbid, eyeing the same selections as them. Waiting politely is not a thing.  To be fair, to a lesser extent the Jewish grandmothers also can be a handful, and they shop in groups, taking great joy in harassing the register clerks and causing delays. 

   BJ's while not as matched to my interest, is further out, close to JFK Airport, and going there means stacking up butts-to-nuts with surly and kinda rude assorted Slavs who also don't jive with waiting politely but do so in a more passive-aggressive manner than the Wrinkled Yellow Menace, and who yell a whole lot less, sharing the Use-Your-Indoor-Voice values I enjoy. 

 Today something was off at the BJ's. Not one shopping cart to be found in the parking garage... and an unusual number of very short very dried up-looking ladies loading things into minivans while slightly less short old men smoked and made gestures and pointed at where the old ladies were to put their bulky shit in the minivan, all without helping.  

 Asia has invaded my Bohunk BJ's. Inside?  Thunderdome Rules. 

 Well, I've been here before. My Cosco days taught me a lot. Male eye contact. Do not slow down and try never to let the cart roll to a full stop or gridlock happens and 5 old prunes will start throwing gang signs and caterwauling a mile a minute in foreign, while staring out from under little hats with unusually long brims. 

The day after the perfect day

 I feel great this morning. 

    The sun's out, I slept in (for me. 7am) late, and I appear to have suffered no negative consequences for having spent an entire day dedicated to flirting with overindulgence of many sorts. 

      Yesterday was a gorgeous hot Florida summer day. I knocked out chores and errands by 10am yesterday, and so just before noon Inappropriately Hot foreign Wife and I loaded up a half-bushel tin with beer, ice, water and soda, opened up the umbrellas that keep me from dying of sun exposure in my own back yard, and jumped in the pool, where we stayed for the next 7 hours. We mostly didn't tune out the world, but conscious that this is my last weekend before what will of necessity be be a big push at work for the remainder of the summer, we avoided serious business, and proceeded to drink, eat (I ordered a big mess of Korean BBQ wings), and swim and be... languid? No, wrong word. We alternated between swimming, floating around and generally enjoying each other's company while maintaining a moderate buzz with the beer. 

   My wife would occasionally come out of the pool to load up on coconut oil and sit out in the sun, and toasted to the gorgeous bronze color, the one that Brazilian morenas (brunettes) are famous for. I mostly managed to stay in the shade, as I already have had skin cancer twice (more on that later) and am a believer now that the horse is well and away out through that barn door.  Still, I got pinked up pretty good, even with sunscreen, because short of wearing a burka, I am going to burn when I'm outside between spring and fall, and I have worked outside pretty much since I was 8. 

      Thing is, we drank a lot of water (and diet soda too, for me) and after the pool day was done, we drank more water and spent the evening mostly on the couch before going to bed around 2300... and so, today, armed with plenty of vitamin D, I'm well rested, and while not sore from the exercise of swimming all day, I'm also not hung over or dehydrated... in fact, I feel pretty good, and yesterday was the first day my hamburgered hand felt ok too, and it's still OK today. 

      The morning after I got home from my last trip, I had an appointment with my dermatologist to get the back of my left hand chewed up and burnt to shit, as I had skin cancer starting in one spot but caught early enough that they didn't need to cut on me, but rather scraped my hand raw and then burn the shit out of a quarter-sized area with a cautery to kill any leftover cancer cells that might have escaped being scraped off. Turns out, if you remove about a sixteenth of an inch of depth of skin and then light it on fire, it hurts more and for longer than simply slicing it and stitching it shut. Who knew?   For the last week my hand has been blown up like a cartoon character and hurt like balls any time that my hand was positioned below my heart. Hydrostatic pressure hurts burns. I've mostly been letting the area dry out and scab over, but cover it when I go out, because it looks like I have a second asshole growing out of the back of my hand and who wants to see that? 

 But, it's healed enough and yesterday it felt ok, finally... and spending the day in the water washed away the scabbing, and there's already mostly nice smooth pink skin underneath. I have a little scabbed area, maybe 20% of the scar, today, but the other 80% appears to be healing well, so when I do go back to work, maybe I won't look like I've been chosen to bear the stigmata. 

 I'm hoping it will look like a bullet wound, and not like someone put out their cigar on my hand. 

______________________________________________

 Now, we got a nice surprise in the form of news from Brazil, too. Construction is  showing some real progress, and the city where our house is located finally approved all the paperwork that wasn't filed as required by the original contractor who embezzled from us, and yesterday the title of the property arrived at our lawyer's office, only 18 months late, so there's a little city at a crossroads in Brazil that has a globetrotting local girl who lives abroad, and her participation trophy husband, with a residence now on the tax rolls there. 

   So, yeah, holy shit I own a house in Brazil. 

The breeze feels good, gravity does not

 Fridays at home are for day drinking and swimming. We've been in the pool for 3 hours and a rack of beers. 

     I got out of the pool a few minutes ago for the first time. Gravity was a stone cold bitch after 3 hours without it. In the pool I am a more buoyant version of my 20-something self; outside? Joint aches, hard stone decking... it was awful. 

 I have a 12-foot umbrella over one corner of the pool to rest under while I scorch in the sun and Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife bronzes herself into Brazilian tan perfection.  

A huge day happened in Brazil for us while we were slapping on sunscreen this afternoon too; more on that later. 

Everyone's being an asshole...

 I missed the last 3 days in the pool on account of a sunburn... what kind of dumbshit with skin cancer gets a sunburn? 

 The kind who lives in Florida in June I guess. Whatever, I swam 3/4 of a mile after 4 shots of whisky and 4 beers and getting the back of my hand hamburgered w/my latest skin cancer removal. 

 Not bad .

Don't Make Me Be The Adult In The Room

I'll admit that I looked the gift horse in the mouth. 

        Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife started her new job yesterday. Losing her last job a few months ago shortly after hsving committed to spending a whole shitpot of money on construction of our house in Brazil, we've been running redlined for some time, and the new job was very welcome. 

    Sadly, many months ago I had rented a little cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains, set for next week. This was to be our only little vacation for 2025, and with the new job, we won't be going. I feel worse for her, really.

 I mean, I'm as pleased as a hen with a new egg simply for being able to go home for 2 weeks straight. It's a bummer we won't get to travel, but I'll be at home and there's whisky there and a pool and my wife and kid. And for some reason, my wife, who is attractive where I am not, seems to enjoy my company. Cry me a river, right?  

We're in our 50's.  She doesn't age much, whereas I am apparently Dorian Gray's picture, aging for both of us. 

Plus, last week my sister, who hasn't been in good health for some time, slipped and fell in the kitchen and broke 2 vertebrae, had a spinal fusion done 2 days later.  So I'll be able to visit her in the rehab as she's hobbling about with her walker. Between her and my wife's last job, April and May were the only 2 months in the past 6-8 months or so where I didn't spend a couple of days in a hospital. I will have time to visit now, be the giant ray of sunshine that I am. 

      Now, my company tacked a cargo on us last minute that will fuck with crew change (as is tradition), which kilt my sleep last night what with the wailing and gnashing of teeth and all, so I was up at 0200, but regardless, in 7-8 hours I should be set ashore, I hope, to make my way to the airport for my complementary bag search and handjob. 

    

We're now 4 days into the high holy month of Gay Ramadan. Working on boats means I don't get bombarded by it. We'll see what happens when I get ashore.  I don't really get into it. I'm holding out for July, which is Sloth month. 

        

Disappointing but not unexpected

 Some crappy news from Brazil.

    The prosecutor's office reported Friday that they decline to indict the builder who ripped me off during construction of our house in Brazil. 

         Persuing criminal charges against the guy was always going to be an uphill battle. As the builder was married to a 3rd cousin (who was also my wife's childhood best friend) much of the rehab work on the house was done without a contract and without a set salary being paid to the builder. 

 And sonufabitch we got suckered. You know that motherfucker picked me up in a Toyota Hilux to bring me to my mother in law's funeral. I paid for that fucking truck, I realize now.  The balls on him.

      The prosecutor's report said that proof of intent to defraud was unlikely to be proven, as the issues at hand could be more easily explained by incompetence, negligence and gross mismanagement of construction, and with no contract to provide a framework for payment and construction milestones, the builder could cite subjective difficulties in construction with minimal evidence. 

 Other countries have weird legal standards. IMO.  

   The upside here is that the report also said that there is ample evidence of mismanagement, negligence, misrepresentstion of credentials and failure to abide by existing agreements and required construction standards to justify a civil suit for damages.  

      Well, it would have been nice to see the shitheel get knocked in the dirt, but more importantly, as we're out over 6 figures worth of cash we worked (and work, as in present tense) insane hours to send, I want some of my money back, and we have good odds of getting it... though whether it can be collected from the SOB is a nother matter. 

         I'm saddened but not surprised by all this. Brazil is not famed as a shining beacon of justice in the world... and by not operating under a contract, I put my dick on the chopping block and can't be too self-righteous that I didn't look whether or not I was being made guest of honor at a very aggressive bris. 

           I did my wailing and gnashing of teeth already and I'm tired of mourning. 

        Now, the NEW project manager is co-organizing with the new architect and does have a contract. The house is enclosed, and waiting on finishing touches- tiling, installation of sinks, cabinets, toilets, counters, lamps and the like. Done in 1/3 of the time that the dickhead original builder took to get half done. 

 The facade is under reconstruction now. The facade looks a lot like a storefront to me, but it's just a visual block. Going through the door just puts you in an enclosed foyer. There is also a gate that opens to the driveway. It looks nothing like a house to me.  As of a few weeks ago it looked like present-day Gaza. 

The yard, outbuildings, pool, outdoor kitchen and mother-in-law apartment (which will be where my wife and I stay, as it's built to be airy and sunny for my claustrophobic ass) are still all in states of  suspended construction. I hope to resume there this fall if I can scrape the money up. 

Pictures eventually.

 Anyhow, 2 more days and a wake-up and I can sit in the pool at home and marinate over it.