all this for eight hours of that

Mmmmgrrph… stupid back to everything normal.  Here goes.

It’s Sunday afternoon and there’s a tight spot in my chest and an thinness to my attentions; it’s a mild sense of dread.  Not an excited dread either, like being poised at the apex of a roller coaster or dropping in on a big wave.  No it’s a dread-dread, in the Websters sense, and it’s because I return to work tomorrow.  This time with family has been perfect and I don’t want it to end.  The feeling is compounded with the fact that there are at least two, if not more, difficult issues waiting for me to be dealt with once I’m back.  Being away from work with those things looming made the time even more sweet, but now coming back looms doubly with the weight of them.  O but Lord I don’t want to go back!

But let’s stay away from the drudgery and keep things positive.  All things in the world of our new four-person archetypal American family unit are going well.  Cohen seems to have picked up the “great baby” torch passed along be his big sister Keaton, and is super low-maintenance – only waking us twice at night for feeding (one late feeding before bedtime for mom and dad, one in the dead of the still of the night, and one right around sunrise).  He doesn’t fuss (yet), doesn’t spit-up (yet), eats well and sleeps well.  His beef-jerky belly button fell of without fanfare last week and he’s already recovered much of the birthweight he lost in those first few days.

Just as Keaton before him, he was an instant source of joy for me; the kid shines with some magical sheen I can get lost in – some aura that I can stare into for hours.  They are so precious, new babies.  I wondered, before he was born, how he’d “impact” the strong feelings and ties I have to Keaton – our firstborn.  Wondered if my attentions or passions would be split or multiplexed or somehow diminished.  Seems so silly now, it just adds together in heaps… you fill this huge space you didn’t even know you had.  My heart swelled the moment the slimy ruddy little man broke free and screamed from his toothless little mouth, and it’s roomier for each yawn and gurgle and startle.  The love I have for Keaton is the love I have for my big, four-and-a-half year old girl.  For Cohen my newborn boy.  Apples and oranges yet both innate and instinctive.

So anyway I’m depressed about having to go back and trade all this for eight hours of that.

Goodnight.

t-minus fourteen days

Another week wanes.

Been working on the half best-of 2010 list, the bit o’ crazy in me that is trying to “get things done” before the baby comes wants to have that piece written and posted soon.  Yes, somehow hitting my blog commitments is important to me, even though these “commitments” have been made to no one, and no one aside from me cares.  So I wrote some of that this evening… you always have to listen to the records you’re writing about as you write them, it’s the only way to be objective.

Speaking of the baby, today is the 24th of June and Cohen is supposed to come on the 8th of July.  By my math that’s exactly fourteen days.  Fourteen days!  How did this happen so quickly?  Where did the time go?  How did my wife’s belly get this astoundingly large?  And yes I’ll acknowledge that due-dates aren’t 100% – but the human gestation period is pretty consistent.  Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if it were less so.  What if term for a “normal” pregnancy was much less predictable, varying by months instead of weeks?  Man that would be tough.  “When’s your kid coming, Dave?”  “Uhh… looking like sometime between July and October.”  Thankfully that forty week average is pretty consistent.

Fourteen days.  That’s ridiculously soon.

I am beginning to feel significantly un-ready for this.  In fact I should stop writing now and do something to prepare.

Goodnight.

sore muscles, family, & fruit

Tuesday and I haven’t worked yet this week.  That’s my kind of Monday.

This weekend Doug and I left our pregnant wifes at home and spent two nights in Yosemite valley.  It was a quick trip, giving us just one full day in the park, but the plan was to somehow find a “workaround” for the new trail permitting system the park has implemented for Half Dome climbers and summit Sunday.  When we made our reservations over a year ago, there was no permit requirement for the cable ascent, and we’ve always been able to just go and summit.  And by the time we learned of the new requirements the permits for this weekend had already sold out.  So, we were apparently stuck.

My idea, however, was to go find out just how high you could climb sans permit.  A couple questions to rangers and I learned that the permits are truly just to limit cable traffic (not Mist or Muir trail traffic to Happy Isles), and that you’re OK going as far as Sub Dome with a permit.  This means you can post up right there in the saddle below the cables and wait for law-abiding permitted people to chicken out (I’ve seen it happen many times with folks who make it that far, I’d guess it’s something in the 40% of folks range).  I queried two rangers and neither saw any issue with begging permits off those who’d given into fear and decided forgo the cables.  So, if you’re willing to be a permit-vulture I think you could make a permitless day-ascent pretty easily.

But, I didn’t think the plan through until it was too late and we had already decided to just to a morning hike to the top of Nevada Falls.  Even then we were asked three times by permit-checking roving rangers (I don’t think I imagined their heightened presence over years past) if we planned on summiting.  So even though we didn’t summit, the hike was amazing (as it always is), the weather was fantastic, and the barbecue dinner along the Merced later that afternoon with friends was a perfect cap to the day.

The only thing missing from our Father’s Day was our wives and progeny.

As an added weekend bonus, about a third of the fruit on the plum tree was ready to pick before we left for Yosemite, so we grabbed that this evening with the help of the ladder.

Pictures.

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Goodnight.

avian hideaway

What a beautiful Wednesday morning. All that much more since I’m sitting on the couch at 7:30am drinking coffee, not even thinking about going into work.

Yesterday was a workday around the house. Sharaun and her mom painted Cohen’s room while her dad and I worked on installing the mounting hardware (some custom creation of mine) for the A/V shelf in the front room. Made from scratch, it’s going to be a real homespun creation, but with the help of some folks more knowledgeable than I in the carpentry area it should be a fine finished product.

Meanwhile, the work Sharaun and her mother did has the baby’s room looking right official. I will admit, as long as you all promise not to dime me out to my wife, that because we’re reusing Keaton’s white furniture the room has a somewhat “softer” feel than perhaps would a more “hardcore” baby-boy’s room… but I’m not concerned. The masculinity I’ll surely pass along to baby Cohen will surely be enough raw manhood to overpower the influence of any powder-blue walls or white furniture. With his hairy baby chest and deep baby voice he’ll hardly even notice the birds instead of trucks on his bedding. No, I’m not concerned.

There is a family of birds who are living up under the eaves of our house, right at the corner of the garage where I can watch them through the front window. I keep meaning to evict them. I know they’ll poop on everything and lay stinky eggs and leave a huge mess. But it’s interesting to me where they’ve chosen to build their house. I have a penchant for tucked-away quarters: sleeper cabs, hollow trees (man the formatting on that ancient entry is hideous), caves, anything like that – so I sort of have a weird respect for this avian hideout. Those birds have it made. Sheltered from the weather and predators (although I’m not sure what predators they have to be wary of), using my structure as their own, etc.

I’m still going to flush them out and put chicken wire over their access… but y’know, much respect to ’em.

Good morning.

salty-tangy

Writing for me lately has been hard.  Writing for me this week on vacation has been beyond hard.

I’ve had so much time to do other things than write.  Things on the beach.  Things at the park.  Things even in the room.  But above all things with Sharaun and Keaton and friends.  And in the end, what’s better?  Forcing some writing while in a slump or taking a little break and enjoying some coffee while the ocean breeze rides the sun, tangy-salty through the open window.

Last night we went to dinner at a place called Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles.  It’s down near Crenshaw in L.A. and it’s exactly what it sounds like: fried chicken on top of a waffle, syrup and all.  The restaurant was lit inside by red and yellow neon and overhead fluorescents.  Walking in the place looked like something right out of a Tarantino film.  We did this sans kids and went late; Roscoe’s is open until midnight.  We had spent the afternoon at the beach and had worked up a good appetite.

Today we’re going down to feed the ducks at a big pond.  Sharaun is perpetually excited that we’ll run into celebrities (we’ve had sushi with McSomebody from TV and a second-handed brush with some world-famous surfer guy).  Maybe we’ll run into Natalie Portman at the duck pond.

I’ve been sinning though; checking work e-mail regularly on the phone.  Not responding, but checking.  So far I count four “aww craps” I have to react to.  I’m trying to hide from them just for another couple days before I have to come back to reality and face them.

And now I’m going to hide from the reality that is blogging; goodbye.

thinking ahead

Hello to the week’s-end.  At the sawmill we called this week “work-week sixteen.”  Well good riddance to work-week sixteen, says I.  Bring on work-week seventeen; I take all comers.

Long-time readers may recall that the sawmill gives us worker-bees an extended piece of paid vacation every so often.  The suits call this a “sabbatical” and it amounts to a three month paid leave, during which you’re free to do what you want.  I had my first sabbatical a few years ago, and think our family did a great job maximizing my time away from work.  In fact, the image accompanying today’s post is a screen-capture of the spreadsheet I used way back then to map and budget our sabbatical goings-on.

The other day at work I spent some time thinking way ahead.  It’s something I do every once in a while.  Try and think five or so years into the future, figure out what major things will happen.  It’s my way of trying to anticipate, any maybe even make plans around, large milestones I know I’ll face way down the road.  Normally, I limit this kind of crystal ball stuff to work or financial subjects… for instance, the project I’m working on now at the sawmill will end in a couple years.  I’ve spent time considering what I’ll do then, and what, if anything, I should be doing now to position myself correctly.  Or maybe I’ll re-run a retirement-readiness check on my investments… something boring and grown-up like that.

Maybe it’s the coming baby, but this time around I also started day-dreaming about far-off family happenings.  Once on the subject my mind turned to thoughts of a second sabbatical.  After some quick (OK not so quick) mental math, I figured our kids will be eight and four when this magical time rolls around again. Eight and four; holy crap.  Keaton twice as old as she is now and in 3rd grade.  Baby #2 as old as Keaton is now and about to start preschool.  A smile came to my face: This could be a magical time for a sabbatical.

One could argue, however, that any time when you’re paid to stay away from work for months on a stretch is “magical.”  Yeah, true.  But I’m talking about the relative ages of the kids.  Having a four year old now I understand what things she’s capable of enjoying, so I have a point of reference I can use in dreaming up travel or activities. I can see our family tromping around the world, stopping in all manner of tropical or exotic locales.

Man, I think I’ll start a new spreadsheet right now.  Never too early to think ahead.

Goodnight.

the great name debate (or, is it kosher?)

Hey there internet. On a streak this week. Don’t mind the fact that I wrote Monday-through-Wednesday all on Sunday night. In fact, the whole mass-write-then-split thing is becoming a trend for me.

Did you know Sharaun and I are having a “disagreement” about what to name our coming son? Yeah well, we are. Thankfully, no blood has been spilled; no armies rallied; no battle-lines drawn; but there the situation might be best described as a stalemate… maybe even an impasse. You see, Sharaun has her heart set on a name and I, I’m not fully won-over. With “Keaton” we both clicked, but this time we’re having a hard time finding some common-ground.

It’s not that I hate the name she’s smitten with, not at all. In fact, I rather like it. But… for what some may consider “stupid” or “silly” reasons I’m not entirely convinced it’s the right name for our boy. Plus, there are several other names I really like which don’t present me with the same “concerns.” Not surprisingly, Sharaun dismisses those concerns as me being “retarded.” Could be true folks, I’ve had my doubts before…

So what’s the name? And why am I yet to be sold?

Cohen.

She absolutely loves the name Cohen. She has all these crazy criteria the name must satisfy. It can’t be the name of anyone she’s known in life who’s left her with a negative impression (a teacher by trade, there are several names forever stricken because of this one); it can’t be the name of any of our friends’ (although there seems to be some sort of distance qualifier) kids; it can’t be anything “normal,” “boring,” or overly-popular; it needs to sound good with both our last name and used together with “Keaton.” And, finally, to be perfect it should actually be a surname re-purposed as a first-name. Cohen meets or exceeds all these bars. But what’s “wrong” with Cohen.

Nothing. Except… we’re not Jewish. Sorry… let me see if I can explain.

It all started when I Google’d the name Cohen. That led me to a spirited thread in an online forum on a baby-names website. In that thread some non-Jewish person was asking about using the traditionally Jewish surname “Cohen” as a first name for their child. A couple responses caught my eye:

I’m Jewish and I find the name Cohen/Kohen as a first name to be highly disrespectful to the Jewish heritage and in bad taste.

A Kohen is is a Jewish priest who is a direct descendant of Aaron from the bible; a very important part of the Jewish religion with a range of responsibilities and restrictions and the surname comes from their title. It has never been a first name such as Sara or David and should not be put in the same category.

Unfortunately it is NOT just a name. I realise that you don’t think it’s a big deal which is presumably because you don’t understand the profound importance that this title has for Jews.

Whoa.

Now look, I realize that internet message boards are not exactly representative of majority opinion (in fact, it’s probably the opposite…). Sharaun is also quick to point out that the internet is “full of retards,” and that I shouldn’t care a whit about what some crotchety Jew thinks of the name. (Man, Sharaun really likes to denigrate the mentally challenged.) Maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m being silly by letting that one comment in that one thread bother me.

So I did some more research, and found more interesting commentary. I also asked a few friends, a subset of whom replied simply, “Isn’t that a Jewish name?” None of this helped me take a firm stance one way or the other, however.

So friends, help me. Am I being silly? Should I just get over this whole Jewish thing? I do like the name. Let me also state that I have no aversion to a kid with a Jewish name, or a Hindu name, or even a kid named “Mullah” for that matter… it’s the whole “offensive, ignorant, and insensitive” bit that bugs me. Should it?

Goodnight.