no glove, no love

I had one of those Deja Vous moments yesterday.

    Yesterday was kind of a shitty day for me. Some unhappy news about the health of a family member, a primo case of diaper rash from working too long in sweaty drawers the day before, and I just got to feeling soggy and hard to light yesterday.

 So one of our generators died via a busted radiator, and we went to the home office & dock for the replacement. Now, my place was with the engineer, as an extra pair of hands... and I was just feeling sorry for myself and all cunty, you know?

Anyhow, at one point I stuck my head in a locker and pulled out a pack of a dozen work gloves.


 I go through work gloves like toilet paper. At any time I've got 6 pairs in rotation, scattered in their respective homes around ship. It makes my partner out here nuts, as it can be unsightly, a pair of dirty leather and canvas gloves looking remarkably like a rag or whatever, and not being shipshape. But it gets tolerated after a fashion, because my hands are dainty and shameful. I've written before about what happened. Couple fingers got mostly severed, rebuilt, some puncture injuries from fishing, at least a half dozen cases of blood poisoning there, lots of broken digits and knuckles and a persistent infection that lasted about 20 years. I can't really write with a pen too well, or hold a shovel without strong discomfort, but I type in the vicinity of 90 words a minute, and can still thread a needle after a fashion and pick my nose, so I get by.

   When I was AB on the tanker NEW RIVER, we got one pair of gloves a month, and that was it. With my pussy hands, it wasn't all that pleasant. I remember distinctly having to break my gloves in every morning so they'd bend, like you do with a baseball glove, after they got a couple of weeks old, and nipping through popped seams with a mortician's needle and palm laced with dental floss to keep them functional until new ones came in.

 That was how that company rolled. You had to have coveralls on and full PPE to prevent exposure to oil and chemicals, but you wore gloves that were marinated in diesel, gasoline, naptha and VGO.
   
     I often use this blog as my personal agony column and portable fainting couch, but every now and again, like yesterday, a little moment comes through, and suddenly, where five minutes before I would have thrown a shackle at anyone who called my name, like oil on the water, seeing that stupid pack of gloves was very calming. I don't know. I'm having my period or something.

    My hands hurt. Every fucking day. From November to May, they're curled up into claws and prone to cracking open and bleeding at the last provocation. But you know? I keep them clean and dry, and fresh gloves when I need them, and it's not too bad. It's better than it was 20 years ago before I did half the stupid shit that I did to them. In the past year, with a new medication, I sometimes even have fingerprints here and there. Currently they're doing well. These are my hand salad days, I guess.

All for the sake of using $20 worth of cheap canvas and leather gloves every month, rather than doling them out like crusts of bread. The idea of that would have made my last employer scoff, and that sort of attitude was exactly why working there required a union. Here, at least, I can take care of my little girl hands, and hell, with the gloves on, I don't have to feel so damn ashamed of them.

Why I'm leaning towards Ben Carson

Well, those damn evil old white Republicans are at it again. Their two best candidates represent polar opposites, and Dr. Ben Carson, who is not a politician, is rising in approval.

 Damn racists.

 Look, everyone on the right kind of likes Trump, but we all know he's not going to get the nomination. Dude's a clown car with some ideas that are phenomenally dead on target with the sentiment of many people. I'm OK, for example, with taking a chunk out of the budget and starting mass deportations- although I think it would be more effective to make it a felony to hire an illegal for any work, and let them choose to repatriate on their own.


         No, I like Ben Carson for his story, his moral stance, and demeanor, which is a fuck load already more presidential than the sucking chest wound of a leader that is currently in the oval office.

 I need to see how Dr. Carson will handle foreign policy, who he will surround himself with, and how he'll handle military issues. I think, like most conservatives, that many of us are holding our breath and hoping it works out.

 I've got to say, and maybe I'm being a fanboi here, but I'm seeing shades of Ronald Reagan.

That's twice

 Red cabbage is officially outlawed here at HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ/ torture chamber. This marks the SECOND time someone farted and set off the carbon monoxide detector.

Wild times

So after a pretty stressful time at home, on my last weekend before heading back to work, we celebrated Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife's birthday at a 5-star hotel in Miami... and proved thoroughly that we're getting old.

 After about 10 days of averaging 3-5 hours of sleep a night, we got to the hotel, were amazed (place was POSH), and cleaned up, getting ready to go to South Beach to an exclusive club where I made diner reservations (if it matters, this place charges you $75  just to get a table for dinner, and if you want to keep it past 8pm, it's an additional $250, and $350 on weekends.

 Well, waiting for the taxi, we both dozed off. When I woke up to the phone call from the concierge, I realized neither of us really wanted to deal with the traffic and sea of humanity that is a Friday night on South beach.

 So we stayed in. Our room had a beautiful view, and the eclectic asian restaurant at the hotel was also highl rated, so we spent the night on the grounds and never left. We also slept for 9 hours and had breakfast in bed the next day before heading home. So a potentially exciting night out became a night to enjoy each others company and get sloshed on scotch, champagne and wine.

 Oh, and I had a $36 cigar. No shit, the bastards charged me $36 for what I assumed was going to be a mind-blowing cigar that I could enjoy on the balcony for a good long while. Instead what I got was a nice cigar that was about the size of a $0.99 Philly Blunt and burnt up in under 10 minutes.

 It actually was  a nice cigar. But turns out quantity has a quality all its' own, and I'll stick to the $10 torpedo that I usually buy, which is about the size of the baseball bat handle I used to use as a persuader in the parking lot of the bar I used to bounce at in college.

what happened

Well, I got a nap in, anyhow, and I'm starting my first watch back on board HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ/ Center for Caffeination Studies.

   I had my two weeks off, and had many, many plans. Like a damn battlefield, they didn't all work out. My mom, brother and nephew came to visit, which was awesome. It was the first time I saw my mom in over a year, and her first trip to FL in 25 years.

 Unfortunately, it was August, and, well, south FL in August is a lot like Boston in August, only moreso. The heat, stress of travel, and going from heat to chilly AC everywhere she went caused her to develop Pneumonia, which stressed her system out, and shut down her kidneys for a bit, so off we went to the ER at 2am on her 3rd day, and her visit turned into a 5-day hospital stay, including a fucking professional-level scavenger hunt across south FL to find her an airline-approved oxygen generator, which was a condition of the docs in getting her released from the hospital, to avoid any additional stress on her lungs while in the air. We pulled in a place with literally 10 minutes to spare.

 Anyhow, we saw my mom, big bro and nephew off. While my mom was in the hospital, my wife develops a case of sciatica. First time in her life. So SHE went off to the doc.

 The day after my mom heads home my wife wakes up sick and miserable. I had rented a car for the day, as we had to drop my wife's car off for new brakes, change out the differential fluid and new tires... so that was $1500 and a deep, deep case of regret for not buying domestic, but my wife pushed through her own sickness until I got her car back at the end of the day, whereupon I took a good look at her and went back to the doc directly. Some sort of general infection, and gastric reflux, two more things she's never had to deal with, at least with me around.

 So I got her home and comfortable. Oh, and after installing her on the couch, I went out and bought a lovely new handgun that I had been eyebanging for a while, which was sort of the first nice thing that happened to me after my mom took ill.

 From there, things got better. I credit the visit to the gun store for the change in the tide of Karma.

 In just a few days, things turned around for us, and, although we were both a touch stressed, we celebrated my wife's birthday with a stay in a 5-star hotel in Miami and a night out, which was awesome and needed, and which is going to be the subject of its' own post, as it was full of ridiculous and sublime shit. But that's for another time.

back at it

Well, I'm at work again, and holy shit was it a roller coaster time home. Ups and downs. More later, after I get acclimated.

high highs and low lows

36 hours, and I'll be back to work.

 How has it been?

 Low: 1 week ago, this time- I was in the ER of one of the most expensive and exclusive hospitals in the US, cussing out some lackadaisical nurses what weren't giving my mom the attention that her fragile health required.

 Hi: few days ago, this time: 220 feet above the Miami skyline, hammered out of my trees on $300 bottles of champagne, kissing my wife.


 To say that it's been a roller coaster is an understatement. Anyhow, details to follow, once I get my shit together and get back to work.