Category: general

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.

This was a good weekend.  The weather was perfect.

Sundays are even more fantastic when you’re not thinking about the fact that they’re the capping days of the weekend.  Last week I barely wrote; work, work, work.  But this week: this week is vacation.  And that means that right now, as I write this on Sunday afternoon, this day is even sweeter and more appreciated than usual.  With no coming week of work to look forward to all that’s in my head is what has to happen to prep for the time off.  We’re spending a week at the beach down south; roadtripping our way down through the valley tomorrow.  I’ve got the laptop loaded with Disney movies and the screen hooked up in the car for Keaton… and Sharaun’s getting the requisite road snacks.  I’m excited to get out of town and spend some time with the family.

Because I’ve been having such a difficult time writing lately, I decided the best sure-fire way to get some content, any content, up on the blog was maybe to do a picture post.  So I took a gander at a couple weeks or so worth of pictures I’ve taken on my busted iPhone and found a few worth talking to.  Below is what I decided on.  A nice collection of random images from the phone.  Each picture comes with a caption.  Even with an entire weekend at my disposal, this is seriously the best I could come up with.  I mean, this is some awful writer’s block I’ve got going on… anyway enjoy the pictures.

[nggallery id=40]

And now it’s after dark and I’ve spent the day in leisure.  Time to pack and prepare for our week away.

Goodnight.

Tuesday and the week already blows.

Tomorrow I rise before the sun, get on a plane just as the sun is showing up, and get back home on that very same plane sometime after the sun is gone again.  Who knows, if there are no windows in the conference room I’ll call home for the day I may not even see the sun for a whole twenty-four hours.  I suppose day-traveling like this is somewhat redeemed by the fact that it’s not commercial.  No parking garages; no security lines; no taking off shoes; no burned-tasting airport Starbucks.  Just a sleepy hour or so with other corporate commuters I plan to iIgnore, buried in the music.

It’s a quarter till ten at night.  A have a meeting at ten that’ll burn forty minutes or so.  After that Sharaun wants me to get out the ladder and climb into the rafters and pull down a bunch of old books and picture frames and other stored-and-forgotten who-knows-whats for some junk-swapping party she has tomorrow.  I take this to mean that, even though I may temporarily cheer the removal of some amount of junk from our house, an equal amount of different and new junk will come back tomorrow night to take its place.  The new stuff then, will enter the rotation, and something else will no doubt move up into the rafters where it will await next years junk-swap.  This is a very suburban-American thing to do.

After the romp in the rafters I need to hit the shower and shave my head.  Yes; I shaved my head.  Bald.  100% bald.  I called it my “last haircut.”  Something I’ve been thinking about for a while and went through with just this last weekend.  “Last haircut” is a misnomer, though, as I find myself shaving the thing every two to three days to keep it nice and slick-shiny.  And since tomorrow I’ll be holed up with the various high mucky-mucks at the sawmill I feel a need to look my slick-shiny best.  Shaving at night seems safest, even though I’ve yet to cut myself having done it solo twice already.

All this means I won’t be in bed before midnight… leaving me with a scant five hours to sleep.  Not enough by at least two hours if you ask me.

Finding time to write at all was hard.  Goodnight.

I used to be scared to death of walking on piers.

It was a thing related to scale; not a fear of tiny docks you’d moor a fishing boat to but of the large above-ocean boardwalks of Southern California.  There were a few near-ish our house when we lived there in my youth, and occasionally we’d visit.  I’d walk so cautiously, all the while looking down through sometimes inch-wide cracks between timbers at the waves rolling slowly in so far below.

The whole construction seemed to tenuous to me.  Here’s these stupid overly-confident humans… they are going to cut down trees and build a stick-bridge out into an environment they cannot natively survive in.  Like I shouldn’t be walking there; like the whole thing was just a bad idea.  The bravado of our race is summed-up by things like piers.  Fleeting instantiations of sentient meat that do ridiculously stupid things like shoot themselves into space and invent fireproof clothing and build roads though hulking mountains of stone.  The cocksure novelty is perfectly human.

The cries of gulls wheeling above, the creosote pungent in the air, the stiff breeze off the water – all doom-inspiring to me.  The farther I walked out to sea the more certain I became that a fall would mean death.  No one could save me down there.  If the fall didn’t take care of it I’d surely be washed into the barnacle-encrusted pilings and shred to bits; if not that then a simple drowning.  It all felt so… so creaky.  Like the whole thing was held together with spit and mud and every wave withstood was another miracle.

Who challenges the sea?  A fool, that’s who.

Goodnight.