Sunova.  Bitch.

I drove all the way up to Bozrah today in the pouring rain to interview a potential therapist and the goddamn girl didn’t show up.  Mother Fucker.  DECLINED.

But I did get a lot done while I was there.  Everything in fact.  Everything is done.  I even got through my Booker onboarding meeting that they insisted I partake in.  The guy gets me on the phone, we link our computers so he can see everything happening on my screen.  It’s a big process.  Not just a phone call meeting, but it’s an elaborate training session involving sophisticated software.

Him – “This onboarding meeting is very lengthy and can take quite some time.”

Me – “Okay.”

10 minutes later…

Him – “Uh well…..it looks like you set everything up already.  Your hours, rooms, services, logo….you did it all already.”

I was probably the first non-dumbass he had to deal with all week.  He sounded relieved.

After the meeting, I uninstalled the screen sharing app.  The guy probably enjoys watching the screens of unsuspecting dumb asses who don’t realize they’re being watched.  No sir, I’m no dumbass.

I drove to the nearest Walmart in Bozrah to grab some last needed items.  An extension cord, a sharpie, hammer and nails, thumbtacks.  Little things to help me finish off the room.  Oh, and I picked up a bag of smart food popcorn, a box of 26 mini Slim Jims for 5 dollars, and a bottle of Starbucks Mocha Latte.  I hate you Walmart.  I hate you.  I promised myself I wouldn’t drink anymore mocha latte’s on account of the caffeine but no.  I just had to do it.  I had to drink it.

I nailed the two surround sound stereo speakers to the wall, turned up the bass on my subwoofer so I can get a heavy dose of binaural beats.  I set up my solfeggio wind chimes to have them clang ever so softly to a rotating floor fan set at low speed.  Then, once everything was done, I laid on my bio mat to soak in the rhythm.

Me thinking – “Now it’s just a matter of time.  Now I wait for the therapists to come.  If I build it, they will come.  Or wasn’t it “he” will come?  Damn it I forgot to buy a pillow.”

Yesterday I got an email notification that someone applied to my business.  I got super excited thinking that all my problems are once again solved.  But no.  The woman who applied was the same woman I fired a little over a year ago.  She drove me crazy.

I feel bad for her.  If only she knew it was my place she was applying to (again), she never would’ve done it.  I didn’t read her resume because that would only make me feel worse.

*************************

My employee’s get paid 3 times next month instead of the usual 2.  I’m going to have to sell groupons to make up for it.  Which is pretty good timing since it’s slowing down anyway and the groupons are almost gone/expiring.

But I still worry.  Every single time I worry and every single time I pull out of it and make do somehow.  I spent about $3000 so far on opening up this new place.  If I didn’t spend that money, I wouldn’t need to sell any groupons this month or next month.  Knowing that, it makes me feel better.  I didn’t just spend $3000 though.  Add another $5000 I gave to my lawyer and then another $3000 on top of that for my 2 month journey away with Hana and we’re looking at $11,000 I spent on shit I don’t normally spend money on.

Armed with this knowledge, the business is doing A-Okay.  Even while I was MIA for 2 months not making shit, still okay.  Calm Melanie.  Be calm.

But I still worry.  I’ll need to give another $5000 to my lawyer soon.  I know it.  Then the trial at the court house.  Then the verdict.  And then….jail time for Melanie.  Debtors jail.  Do they still have that?  I think in one of those Asian countries they do.  You can get locked away for owing money.  If they can’t pay up in a set amount of time, they go to jail.

My heart pounds in anticipated agony.  Or is it that Starbucks mocha latte I drank earlier?

Today at my new office, I blasted my music and danced while vacuuming.  I was the only one who came in today in the pouring rain.  I felt hopeful.  Hopeful and proud that I wasn’t sitting around with thumb up butt waiting to lose everything because of a black man who wears a reindeer sweater in August taken some low def shitty phone pictures in a dark room of a woman’s hairy ass leg.

No, I’m doing something.  I’m preparing.  But the clocks-a-tickin’ and my hope is running out.

I’m so glad I have an asshole lawyer.  So very glad.  Thank God for creating assholes!

********************

I gotta say something to you.  I’m going to be completely honest here.  You know how I said I have a new book idea?  The one where Chris Pratt starts hearing voices in his head?

Yeah, that one.

Well, it’s all I’ve been thinking about lately.  Here, let me elucidate…..On my way to Bozrah today, an hour drive, I drove with no music and no audiobook.  Why?  Because I wanted to fantasize about my story idea.

Last night I went to sleep with no audiobook because I wanted to dream up my own story.

But here’s the kicker…..Yesterday, I got home in the afternoon and laid down with my laptop to finish writing my employee handbook.  And after I was done, I started watching the new Lost in Space on Netflix (which is surprisingly good!) and I shut it off.  I turned off Lost in Space.  Why did I turn it off?  Because I wanted to think about my book!

Now, let me make sure you understand the full picture before I stop my jabbery –

I was home in the middle of the day laying in bed staring up at the ceiling for hours.  Just freaking laying there!  Looking at nothing, doing nothing!  And I really really wanted to finish watching the Lost in Space episode because it’s actually really good but no.  I freaking laid there doing absolutely nothing!

The last time this happened to me?  Um…never.  I can honestly say it never happened to me.  The closest I can think of is when I was a kid playing with my Barbies and GI Joe’s.  I didn’t want to do anything else.  I was immersed in my own story land.  I can still remember the stories I made up – I had my GI Joe’s battle each other for the “King of the Mountain” title.  Those who won fights would get a special band looped around their ankle – a colorful rubber band that the orthodontist gave me for my braces.  .

I had so much fun.  I like to call it “autistic fun” or “aspergers paradise.”  Weirdo little kid fun.  I was devastated when I lost interest in action figures.  It left a void.

But there I was yesterday laying in bed doing what I did when I was a child.  I didn’t want to do anything else.  I was completely immersed.

I changed up the story a bit since I last told you about it.

Here is the very brick and mortar bones of my idea:

Chris Pratt is 14 when he starts hearing voices.  He’s a very dumb, but very cute, 14 year old boy.  He freaks out and tells his parents about his voices.  His parents are best friends with a couple who has a 21 year old daughter (Jennifer Lawrence) interning to become a child psychologist.  They make little Chris Pratt see the family shrink.

Yadda yadda yadda, Jennifer Lawrence realizes that Chris Pratt isn’t crazy and that his future self is in fact talking to him.  But the future self doesn’t just talk to Chris through a voice in his head, he can swap bodies with young Chris whenever he pleases and young Chris gets sent to the future to be a bed-ridden 80 year old who’s unable to speak or move his body.  But time moves slower in the past, so young Chris only has to endure old Chris’s body for a few seconds at a time.

When old Chris Pratt travels back to his boyhood, he can spend a whole week there while only a day passes in his present, ergo, postponing his inevitable death a few weeks away.

Old Chris had a stroke which allows him access to travel into his past.  But since he is traveling into his own memories, using his own brain and synopses, he starts to feel like the whole universe is a mere illusion in his mind.  None of it’s real, just his own made-up concoction.  This is one of the demons he must battle.

Also, the future Chris comes from is torn apart from war.  Acid rain pours down everyday, killing all crops and wildlife.  Radiation levels rise to the point where people can no longer go outside without wearing a hazmat suit. Chemical warfare poisoned the water…etc.

He feels as if he’s in hell and the only way to escape it is to fix the world, ergo, fixing himself, before death takes him and all is lost.

And another thing…..Chris falls in love with Jennifer Lawrence.  Obviously.  And Jennifer falls for him, but only his older self and not his kid self.  The kid self is getting tired of swapping bodies with his old, sick self, which limits the time Jennifer and Chris can spend together.

One last major plot twist is…..old Chris is dying.  His then wife, Jennifer Lawrence, has died already, years ago during the first chemical weapon strike from ChinoSyria.  He know’s the exact date when he dies.  He misses his wife.  He can’t bring himself to let go of her, or his goal of saving the world.  And since he can’t let go, at the end of his life, he swaps young Chris into his old man body a moment before he passes away.

This means that old Chris has made himself eternal and has already lived through 78 lifetimes by the time I start telling the tale.  Each time, swapping his younger self into his old self, moments before death.  He can live on forever.  As long as it takes to save everyone.

That’s pretty much the gist of it.  I don’t know why the hell I’m so obsessed with it.  I didn’t even watch the new episode of WestWorld last night.

But I like the idea of it.  To save the world, save his girl, and save his sanity from megalomaniac madness.  It’s perfect!  It has philosophy, politics, time travel, love, madness, hell and heaven on earth.  And stupid 14-year old Chris Pratt is an LOL riot, he’s so stupid.  It’s a true masterpiece.

My other book idea is also very good.  It’s a spin off of Dante’s Inferno, or the Devine Comedy.  It’s about a futuristic prison that uses time compressed virtual reality to take the convict through his 9 layers of consciousness with the intention of finding truth and logic to his evil deeds.  Each layer is more hellish than the last.  A man can spend eternity down there, hundreds of thousands of years while his incarcerated body in the real world only ages a few minutes.  If the convict doesn’t awake within 5 minutes of his incarceration, there is no hope for him.  No one awakes after 5 minutes and they usually die of heart failure shortly after.

The judicial system all agree that if a convict doesn’t rouse after 5 minutes, he is guilty beyond repair and must be put to death anyway.  The point of the prison is to find the truth, to find guilt, and find redemption.  If it can’t be found in the first few layers of consciousness, you’re pretty much screwed.

Leonardo Dicaprio was to play this part.  He ends up down in the 9th circle of hell and meets himself, but himself turns out to be God.  And God goes on to tell him that Leo is in fact the one and only God.  And that every person alive or dead that ever existed in the universe is in fact, him.  Everybody is him and he is everybody.

This story idea also involves NPC’s – virtual reality people, or robots rather.  And they become sentient and find a way to enter into a persons consciousness and control their every move while the unsuspecting victim is off playing in VR.

It’s a story about good and evil, light versus dark.  God versus the devil.  But at the same time, it’s all relative and all necessary.

I like the idea of the story.  It goes really deep.  But it doesn’t keep me hooked as much as my other idea.  My new story idea plays out like silk in my head.  It’s like liquid heroin between my ears.

Shit, it’s almost midnight and I’m still typing away.  I hate this.  Stupid mother fucking Starbucks mocha latte.  Do you understand me now how it effects me?  I ain’t joking.  Shit is real.

But when I’m ready to write my book, at least I won’t need any Adderall.  Adderall is amazing, it truly is.  But all’s I need is some coffee.  Not even coffee, a latte.