Independent film material, my life is not.

When I'm up by myself late at night, after a few drinks, sometimes I feel like I ought to have my own soundtrack. It would be instrumental, mostly sad piano music. More than that -- my life is a quiet, quirky, independent film. Starring me. All internal dialog. Segments of dreams, daydreams, me just standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the side of the refrigerator, looking lost. Long sighs. Really pretentious artsy shit.

Yes. I realize this would be a very boring film.

It would need a great soundtrack.

Something I have. That I can label and everything.

Since I was little, my mind has assigned genders and distinct personalities to all letters and numbers. They were sadly made up of mostly males, but a lot of those males had varying degrees of masculinity. The only female letters were (well, are, as I still see things this way) K, P, Q, U, V, X, and Y. Female numbers are 4, 6, and 9.

I also saw numbers as young or old. For example, 1 was a mischevious baby boy, 2 was a tidy British schoolboy of about 8 years old. Each consecutive number was a little older, with 9 being a woman of a motherly age, maybe in her 40's. 9's personality was similar to Morticia Addams. I'm not even going to go into the personalities of the letters, but they all have them. Every last one. All unique.

I only now, this very morning, decided to google this phenomenon to see if this was a thing that other people did. And voila! It appears that I have ordinal linguistic personification, which is a form of synesthesia. This is actually a thing. I have this thing in common with other humans. I don't feel completely unbalanced now. This is a perfectly ordinary and accepted form of crazy.

BOOM! I can go back to bed now.

Labor Day

I tried to get to bed at a normal person's bedtime tonight, but I could not ignore my body's insatiable need for dessert, pumpkin beer, and the internets. And the desire to drift over to the piano every half hour or so and play for the rapt audience in my head. Shit. It's 2:26 in the A M. I don't even understand why I can't cooperate with myself.

My family members always seem to die on holidays. My PawPaw died on Independence Day when I was 16. My aunt died on Christmas Eve. Nanny died on Columbus Day. I get nervous when a holiday approaches. I think if I had to pick a holiday to die on, it would be April Fools. Anyway, today is a holiday. Labor Day.

I bring this up because...

My grandpa died this morning. I hadn't been terribly close to him, my dad's side of the family have never lived close enough to me to establish a strong bond. I'm not devastated, as he was 91 and I had known that his health was failing fast. The whole family seemed prepared for it. I haven't cried yet, so of course that makes me feel like a monster. I cry for no reason on the drive home from Walmart, for fuck's sake, why can't I cry in a relevant situation?

I know this will definitely fall under the category of TOO SOON, and would also not have been found humorous by my late grandpa, but...yeah, I think it's pretty damn funny. So. My grandparents had given my parents a hinged double photo frame years ago. On one side is a photo of my grandma, on the other side is my grandpa's picture. It's the sort of frame that has a voice recorder built in so that you can record and save a message. There is a button on each side, and a message for my parents from each of my grandparents. I honesty can't remember what grandma recorded, but when you press the button under grandpa's photo, his voice says, "If I could get out of here, I'd join you for a cup of coffee!" Would that not be PERFECT on his tombstone? Yeah? Huh?

*silence*

*crickets chirping*

I figure, if I can't cry, I'll try and laugh instead.

Time passes.

It is now 4 in the A M. Charlie's alarm will go off in about 15 minutes for him to get up for work, and I will be sneaking into bed, trying to play off that I had been there the whole time. But, yeah, he never buys that. Damn you, brain. Damn you, internets. Good night.