Going Indoors, B Side

The Inside Out

By Marcus

Every good story or album has a solid B side, or at least a shaky one, right? Well, here’s my side of the record.

The Study

If you read the A side, then you know why we’re here in Old Town San Diego, and you know there’s isn’t much I can say about the study itself. But, what I can share is what exactly Marcus and the Girls (Biggie & Smalls) are doing for roughly an hour a day, Monday through Friday. 

Balboa Park is one block east of the study, so we take full advantage of this space to run and play in the grass. The smells make the girls extra happy and playful. Everyone is so nice and eager to allow their dogs to get verbally accosted by our two would-be “therapy dogs,” if they only had the chance to be understood! Oh, we can do this for five to possibly ten weeks, no problem. 

Old Town San Diego is actually a California state park and the “Birthplace of California.” Oh yeah, right here is where it all began, people, back when Mexico still ran the place and the Missions were a plenty! Each building you see or walk into is a piece of history. I dare you to not feel transported somewhere else in time when you’re inside Fiesta De Reyes. 

The tempo change for this part is quite different as I explain the compromise for all this beauty here in Old Town. 

The Getting Here

Old Town was selected for its proximity to the study location, but that was the easy part. The hardest thing about finding rental housing that’s furnished and not a hotel/motel is the internet platform. There’s something about the middleman (or middle woman, actually) being a person instead of an entity that still matters to me.

What’s that? An example? Well, my pleasure. 

The Example

Using the internet as a search engine to find a property to rent comes with inherent flaws. One of those is the removal of the “middle person” for an entity that acts as a paid participant to bring buyer and seller together, emphasis on the paid part for them. I like the word “conduit” for this electronic version of a delivery guy.

Long story short: Don’t trust VRBO, because this rental is the second runner-up, which is way better than the previous location. That conduit still has not returned our 3K for reasons of finger pointing at the host, who is conveniently pointing a finger back at VRBO. Now, I have to brush up on my Defamation Law as to not get sued, because they have messed with a fixed-income entity that’s a force to be reckoned with, named Shana Pinkney, CFO/Internet Juggernaut. Sucks to be them.

Nature Neighbors

Somehow, at some point in my life, I have managed to change the way I see the world. The things I used to regard as luxury have been reframed as conformity.

When you live in nature, there is no fitting in with anything but the ecosystem. If the squirrels don’t like where you placed your tent, they’ll let you know about it, trust me. No debate of, if, or maybe. Nope. Squirrel hates it, gotta move. Simple, straight to the point. 

Dealing with the expectations of humans is exhausting. Having their expectations pushed on me is even worse. I try to live my life without them (expectations that is) as I’ve found they lead to a life of nothing but disappointments or deep self-loathing and let-downs. There’s something about being around other humans that forces a level of civility that shackles you into conforming so as not to offend, upset or lower someone else’s expectations. Not that I would, but I just recognized it. Have any of you?

I digress, so I’ll leave a programming note here. That entire rant is brought to you by the walls we’re sharing with other humans who have, you guessed it, expectations. Of what is still unknown. Allow that lunacy to sink in, ha! Squirrels.

We can fix all that with a booster shot of Mother Nature. After roughly two test flights of sleeping indoors, we decided the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze and grabbed our own inflatable bed and created our own oasis on the private patio of the rental. Sleep has returned, and thus the tempo is much better, our friends.

Marcus will be on the mend as well, as he will be having his abdominal wall strengthened with mesh and sutures, a procedure known as hernia surgery. But, he dreams of waking up one of the X-Men or Blackcules. His words (after all, it is a Navy Medical Facility); he’s hopeful. Shana is hopeful her love “conduit” is repaired and ready to keep it flowing and keep it glowing!

Marcus is also writing this in the third so, yeah, keep up with the tempo changes of the B side. So for now we B’s outside loving the rhythm of healing.

Five, six, a five, six, seven, eight…