Category: general

Read this previous post for context.

Saturday morning as I write.

Keaton is sitting next to me at the dining room table eating a bowl of Fruit Loops. I’m drinking coffee, black, third cup so far, and writing. The National‘s new record is on, loud. Sharaun’s taking her parents back to the airport for their return trip to Florida. Her dad came down with some bug the day before they had to leave, slept on the couch all day and didn’t eat a thing. Felt bad for him having to travel cross-country that way; I’ve been there before and traveling while you’re sick is the pits.

Saturdays go like this. Keaton has dance class at 10am so we get up and get ready and take her there and sometimes stay and watch. The remainder of the day is usually filled with discretionary stuff, as should be weekends. Today’s discretionary activity, as far as I’ve been made aware, involves an evening soirée at the house of some friends, in honor of another expecting mom who’s expecting about a month before we are. It’s a strange “colliding circle” of friends that runs just a bit outside our day-to-day clique. Maybe that’s why I love hanging out with them so much; we’re all a perfect-fit but maybe just too large to exist as one friend-unit. I mean, how can you invite twenty people over? You’d be taking over any restaurant. No, there’s some self-limiting pack aspect of tight friends. You get much above five or six couples/families and things will split into packs. Human nature maybe. We’re still just pods of cavemen and cavewomen, cliquing up in little family-units.

So anyway when we get a chance to collide with this group we do and we enjoy it, I especially.

Other than that I think today I’ll work on fixing my flat bike tire and fixing up the TV shelf work I did in the front room. I still need to put a second coat of paint over the drywall work I did. See, it’s a “floating” shelf; meaning it has no visible supports and appears to just “stick out” from the wall – defying physics. As the shelf itself is made from solid hardwood and will be holding all the A/V gear for the living room – the support system that allows it to float needs to be sturdy; capable of bearing the weight. But how to make a “floating” shelf strong like this?

Well, in my case I cut the drywall and fixed flanged pipe “nipples” onto the studs with lag screws. With the wall re-finished flush around them, you get four little threaded receptacles spaced along the studs. Into these you screw four lengths of 3/4″ steel pipe, and onto these pipes you hang and fix the shelf. Finally, with the shelf really being a hollow box, all the wiring between the TV and A/V gear goes behind the wall and inside the shelf and things look mysteriously clean and unattached. I’ll post pictures when it’s done, because I want to.

Goodnight.

Friday; I went back to work yesterday.  Got a lot done but found myself wishing I was able to take the whole week off.

Tonight we all walked down to the little family-owned Italian place across the road from us.  The place has been around forever, has a following and everything.  It was across town for years and only last year moved into its new location which is, near enough, close enough to hit with rocks.  By comparison, our mailbox is at the end of our block (one of those new-fangled community boxes like you’d see in an apartment complex), and if you walked over again that same distance you’d be at this place’s front door.  It really is that close.  That close and this is the first time we’ve been there since they moved into the neighborhood.  We wanted to take Sharaun’s folks somewhere nice for their anniversary, which was last week.

It’s a nice place, but not so highfalutin’ that you can’t wear jeans or order a cold beer.  Prices are high… but the food is fantastic.  While sitting there tonight I kept thinking about how I’ve always wanted a “place.”  Y’know, a local joint where I could be a “regular.”  Even though being a regular probably means spending money and gaining weight, there’s something about being ingrained into the local color that is all old fashioned and seems endearing to me.  I have this fantasy of having a favorite dish, maybe ordering it once a week with Sharaun, having a glass of wine, whatever.  Something fixed, something old-time, something diner-out-of-The-Honeymooners.  But I can’t afford it; and spaghetti costs next-to-nothing to make at home… so I’ll never do it.

Tonight Keaton prayed, “I hope the pipe stops leaking.”  I think that girl knows too much about current events.

Goodnight.

Well, we’ve not done much to speak of with the in-laws in town.  More these days than in days past when the parents visit we’re just sort of “hanging out.”  I actually really enjoy it, at least a lot more than driving around the state to take in the standard tourist stuff (which can be fun too, I’ll grant).

Plus I get some vacation.  Monday I worked in the morning and took the afternoon off.  Today and tomorrow I’m steady-gone from the office.  Thursday I have to go in and ditto for Friday morning.  So sort of an “in and out” kind of week at the sawmill, but even with this little bit of free time I feel liberated.  Not disconnected… but liberated.  Sharaun’s folks wanted to help put together the nursery, so we’ve been shopping and cleaning and painting and whatnot.  It feels extremely good to finally make some progress on something baby related, and all the work going on around me has inspired me to get to work on some longstanding un-done projects of my own.  Made a pilgrimage to the big-box hardware store and got the supplies I need to prep for the new TV shelf a buddy and I are building, cleaned the garage, etc.  You get the picture.  Anyway, it’s been a nice extended weekend thus far and there’s still more non-working time to be had.

And as the baby’s room finally comes together, I figured it was time to bottom-out on the coming child’s name.  You may remember the flap Sharaun and I were having over her proposed name: Cohen.  Not surprisingly, I came around and welcomed the name in time.  So Cohen it is, with a middle name in honor of Sharaun’s grandmother, who recently left us.  As these things of permanence gain solidity, so sinks in the reality that we’re about to have a baby in the house again.  In fact, Sharaun and I spent Thursday night last week watching old home movies of Keaton on the computer – y’know, from back when she was a baby.  Man, there are whole phases I’ve near “forgotten.”  I mean, I remember them happening, but I  don’t quite remember them happening.  Babies are a lot of work…

I’m getting excited though, as July approaches.  I think we’re all excited to welcome baby Cohen to the family.

Goodnight.

Writing trouble continues as work continues.

The weather is nice again and I pulled my bike down Wednesday morning to ride into work.  I was bummed to find a flat rear tire; it must have happened riding home last week.

Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve changed a bike tire?  Probably since sometime back in middle school, when my bicycle was my one and only means of transportation.  I so remember those morning rides to the “bike cage” at school.  Sometimes it was cold enough in Florida to make your bare knuckles hurt on the way; they always bore the brunt, leading the way out front such as they do.  I rode that bike like it was alive; could turn it with the tiniest muscle motion, something a hair beyond mind-control.  Without my bike I was reduced to padding around town, range severely limited.  Made for an extremely low tolerance for downtime.  Probably the last time I changed a tire; really.

I thought about looking on the internet, but then I don’t really think it’s that hard.  The man part of me says that I will just be able to know how to do it like the birds know how to fly south.  I’ll take out the tube something.  Maybe try filling the thing up and spitting on it where I hear air hissing out.  Then somehow I’ll patch it.  Or maybe I’ll buy a new tube.  I think I’ll have to buy a patch kit if I have to patch it.  I bet they have them at the sports store across the street.  I can walk over there (can’t ride my bike, tire’s flat).  This could be like a test.  Like the first time I changed the brakes on my Ford all by myself.  I screwed up, of course; forgot to put the “chatter plates” back on the right way and the things screeched like hell.

Always just a little too proud.

Goodnight.

Went to lunch yesterday with Jeff.  Stuck to Subway since I’ve gained back a shocking amount of weight over the last two months and I’m back to calorie-limiting.

While there a young mother and her younger boy caught my eye.  The were both sitting on the same side of the table while eating lunch.  The mother had two cellphones with her and appeared to be somehow manually transferring data between the two.  At least, that’s my guess.  Whatever she was about, she was most definitely engrossed.  To the point that she was simply ignoring her child.  I watched her several times as she snapped at the poor kid, who must have been about three years old, for beating on the table or climbing around or talking.

Sadly, for the very bored boy, the alternative to these things was to sit there, motionless and silent.  And sit he did; staring at the table with his little hands on his little knees.  About every ten minutes the poor little kid would forget he was invisible and he’d slip into normal mode and make some kind of noise.  But don’t worry, mom was on top of it.  She’s put down her phones and give him a stern, “I told you already, quit it!”  After which she’d go right back to her important business, and the kid would do his best to disappear.

Now that junk made me sad.

Goodnight.

Stupid weather darkened today; some literary technique employed here could compare that to the every-Sunday calcification of my free spirit as I start thinking workweek.  Chill air and gray clouds taunt the memories of our week at the beach, and I toy with the idea of logging on and doing catching up on mail “just for an hour.”  Fight it.  A single second of a weekend spent trying to “catch up” on the week is a second wasted.  After all, that’s what the week’s for.

The baby is coming in eight weeks and we’ve done nothing.  I mean… we cleaned out Keaton’s “toy room,” otherwise known as the spare room, in anticipation of transforming it into the new nursery – but we’ve not done anything since.  Sharaun took some time choosing the bedding, and everything that I’m responsible for hinged on us having that as a point of reference.  Without the bedding in-hand to do color-matching, Sharaun says we can’t choose paint or furniture or other decorative items.  Until this past week we’ve just been in a state of waiting, having ordered the bedding stuff off eBay to save $20, but now we finally have the stuff and this coming week is going to be go-time for me.  Sharaun’s folks will be in town, and have mentioned that they’d like to help out as they may.

I’m hoping things come together soon… I’m simply feeling guilty about not preparing at all for this child.  For Keaton we did so much.  I know this must play out for most folks when it comes to any non-first child, after all there is a lot one learns simply by virtue of having been through something before.  But still, not having anything ready or prepared to receive this latest blessing feels a bit wrong.  In some ways I guess it feels this way because we actually already have a lot of things we’ll need – and don’t have to do out and do that “oh crap we needs a metric ton of baby gear” buying spree.  We also know what worked for us and what didn’t, so we know what we don’t need I suppose.

What’s that?… Kids aren’t all the same and what works for one may not work for another?  Poppycock.

I still want to have a room painted and some furniture arranged… even if he doesn’t sleep in a nursery right away.

Goodnight.