Category: general

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.

Hi internet.  How’re ya doin’?  Good.

This past weekend Sharaun and I decided we’d use Saturday as a “spring cleaning” day.  With the new baby on the way I suppose we are both getting a little “nesty.”  The plan goes like this: 1) clean out our 3rd bedroom, which is currently serving as Keaton’s “toy room,” 2) get a new “big girl” bedroom set for Keaton, complete with bed, dresser and some more storage in the way of bookshelves and likely a toychest or something, 3) move Keaton’s existing convertible crib/bed and changing-table/dresser into the now empty toy room.  As the toy room is currently bursting, however, we practiced the art of reduction quite liberally first before any of this musical furniture business could begin.

What’s more, there are things in the toy room that aren’t toys (at least not Keaton’s toys) which’ll need a new home.  Take for example dad’s Pac Man cabinet… or the bookshelf full of books and CDs and DVDs… all that had to go somewhere.  The plan for this was also multi-phase.  Again we began by simplifying and donating everything we could part with from the bookshelf, including the bookshelf itself, and old Wal Mart job we’d had since moving here.  After that the Pac Man machine moves into the family room, where it fits almost-like-it-was-planned tucked away into a little cubby intended for an in-wall entertainment cabinet.  Problem is there’s currently a huge old-school tube TV in there right now, so that’ll have to go.  That means dad gets to get a new slim, small HDTV which’ll get mounted above the cabinet (a nice bonus).  Alongside both the Pac Man machine and TV will go some shelves to hold the few books, DVDs and CDs we’ve deemed keepers.  The homeless tube TV and it’s cheap Wal Mart stand also go to charity.

In our modest home any “cleaning” that doesn’t involve a good deal of stuff-elimination is something like squeezing a balloon: you might reduce the size of the part you’re focused on but you’re really just moving the problem around and inflating another part.  And to you “Dave you’re gonna break down and buy a bigger house” naysayers I’m happy to say that my focus (stubbornness) on not up-sizing to accommodate a collection of things we don’t really need (not counting the new baby) remained strong even throughout the trying exercise of finding places to put more things than we have places for.  Shockingly, for the time being Sharaun shares my staying-put mentality – also in the face of the same “where are we going to put this?!” frustration.

I mean, I’ve been so successful at sticking to my guns on things like this in the past… what could go wrong?

Goodnight.

We will miss you dearly Mimi.

Sometimes I’m torn between my desire to go to sea and my doubts about my ability to handle it.

Not in reality, of course, but in my fantasies of being asea.

It sounds so romantic; months and months of just the water and the horizon and the family.

Also sounds a little The Shining; months and months of just the water and the horizon and the family.

I think I could get along.  I’d grow a beard.  Captains should have a beard.

Sharaun might hate it though.  Keaton probably would too.

Maybe we’d all adapt.  Maybe I’d hate it.

I wonder how one sets about becoming proficient enough at sailing to commit themselves to the swells for a prolonged period?  Get a boat and take a class?

We get sabbaticals at work.  Every seven years we get paid months away.

Months I could be spending with my family in the spray.

Goodnight.