A-Typical male's journal.

Later that morning, I got a 35 dollar gift certificate for Harris Teeter's from my office, so I gave Azura a call. "Do we need groceries? Would you like 35 bucks to buy groceries with?" We're a bit strapped this week. I mean, we put 400 dollars into the car, pseudo-bounced the rent check (check protection kicked in), and Need I Remind You? It's Christmas. We're done with shopping, sure, but we're making special plans to cash my Grandfather's Christmas Checks just so we have money to travel on Wednesday. So, of course she was interested.

After Azura picked up the car, she came out to get the certificate. I only asked for one thing: Shaved ham. I really can't stand ham with hair on it. No, I mean, I like it when you don't have little slices of ham, but when you go to get it, it falls apart into a million little tiny pieces. That said, and asked for, I waved her on her way, and went back to work.

Sometimes I feel really 50ish for the way we divide up the labor of our house. I help, but Azura runs the household. I help more when she's working, and admit to helping less when she isn't. She hasn't been working for a couple of weeks now. We're still waiting on the phone call. Of course, the time at home has been good--she got all the shopping done, and the wrapping and the cooking of cookies. I can't complain. I just work, and try to help out where I can.

On the other hand, I know how we feel about each other. We both go to sleep at night wondering, how we got so lucky, that the other person is actually with us. We'll be fine so long as we can keep that perspective, I think.

A simple case in fact, when Azura was shopping for groceries, she bought me some Guava Jelly! Oh, you've never heard of Guava Jelly? Well, it's y'know jelly, made from Guava fruit. Dad says it grows in Florida, and that it's a citrus fruit. The Jelly tastes sort of like apple, but has a little more flavor. It's my favorite jelly in the whole world. And no one carries it, ever. But Azura not only remembered that I like it, and remembered to look for it, but found it (and bought it!) Man I am one lucky, lucky Joe.

We stopped and got the mail on the way home. Normally, I refuse to open the mail until we're back at the house. I hate waiting, and can't do anything about the mail at the cluster box, anyway. Tonight, I made an exception. There was mail from the DMV.

I tried to read it, there at the box, but it was in all-caps, and double-encoded bureaucratese. Azura finally waved me back into the car, and asked me twenty questions about it. None of which I could answer because I hadn't read it for comprehension yet.

I'm not sure exactly, but my license has been cancelled for a year. Now, I can have a hearing in March to attempt to change this, but that's my soonest recourse. So I'm tied to the bus lanes for a few more months. I just looked at it, and set it down, emotionless. I did the best I could to extricate myself from my problems, but it wasn't good enough. I'd feel bad if I hadn't deserved it, in the first place.

I stayed up a bit, and watched TV. Nothing major good on (Well, I finally caught Ally McBeal again--it was good). I mainly wanted to stay out of the bedroom. Azura had taken some medicine which knocked her out. I hope we both get over our colds soon.

When I took Dickens out for his nightly walk, it was as bright as day outside. In fact, I've seen days which were darker. All the streetlights were on, of course, but it was really the city lights, reflecting orange off the clouds that made it so bright. It was eerie and weird and matched my mood. Still, though, I miss living in the country where we didn't see odd things like that.

I woke up at 2am this morning, hacking up a lung. I just let my body do it, even though it hurt like hell. At least it got that crap out of my body. Once I had exhausted myself, I went to sleep and stayed asleep. I'm almost over this cold.

Generic Joe's A Typical Male