Day 418

It is 10:30 at night and my neighbor is having another party. There are at least a dozen kids — late teens or early twenties — gathered around a fire pit talking loudly, getting drunk, and blaring music. I’m pissed off because I’d like to go to sleep. My allergies are worse today than they have been all season and when they are bad they make me very tired. But what enrages me most is the party is right below my son’s bedroom window. The noise is making it absolutely impossible for him to sleep. I wanted to call the police. I doubt they’d do anything, they never do anything helpful or useful. But at least calling would be something instead of sitting here fuming. My spouse, however, won’t let me call. Instead, she suggested that our son sleep on the couch in the living room. You can still hear the noise from there, but it’s slightly less loud. My room is right next to the party. I won’t be sleeping at all tonight. Which means I’ll be cranky all day tomorrow and too tired to do half the things I hoped to accomplish. My spouse doesn’t want the cops to show up because she wants to be able to make eye contact with her neighbors. She doesn’t want to upset them or alienate them. It’s better that I just deal with the situation and not sleep. Seriously though, is it just me? Should I be okay with not being able to sleep because my neighbor wants to have a party? I feel stuck and miserable. That’s not new. I’ve felt stuck and miserable for ages now. New Jersey is destroying me. I’m dying here and I can’t escape.

Until I wanted to go to sleep and couldn’t because of the party next door, I was having a good day. In fact, my son and I had a very enjoyable time together. Instead of having school, we took a much needed field trip. As you know, my son — actually, the entire family — is a bit obsessed with Hamilton. One of the lines in one of the songs is, “[General Lee] shits the bed at the Battle of Monmouth.” Well, my son wanted to see exactly where General Lee “bleeped the bed at the Battle of Monmouth.” And so that is where we went today. 

First, however, we took a brief detour to Fort Monmouth to do an Adventure Lab cache. The fort is no longer in operation, and it’s terribly run down. It looks like a good place for unsavory people to hang out and cause trouble.We didn’t meet any. Hell, we didn’t see anyone at all except a few landscapers as we strolled into a residential area. Fort Monmouth is where Julius Rosenberg worked when he was accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union. Until today, I didn’t even know the fort existed. Today, I find out that it was once home to one of America’s most well-known alleged spy. 

Next we drove to the battlefield. It was like every other battlefield I’ve ever been to — a big open field with statues and plaques. As a kid, I vaguely remember learning about Molly Pitcher. This year, her name was briefly mentioned in my son’s history textbook. But like so many people in textbooks, she was nothing more than a name floating through the pages. Today, we saw the stream from which she most likely drew water and knowing (thanks to Hamilton) how dreadfully hot it was the day the battle, I was finally able to connect her to something tangible and understand why she played such a vital role in the war.

But while we were walking around the battlefield, my son only half paid attention to the plaques which explained the battle. He was more interested in caching. My spouse hates caching and when she is with us we don’t do it. It bores her too much. Since it was just the two of us, my son wanted to gobble up as many caches as he could. We found nine traditional caches and must have walked four or five miles in total.

We ended our adventure by meeting up with friends for ice cream. My son was thrilled to have other kids to play with. 

It is now 11:30 and the party is still in full swing. I am going to fall asleep on the mat tomorrow in taekwondo class. This is awful.