sounds familiar

I tell my kids this often, mostly in jest.

While I’m washing-up after dinner or taking out the trash or changing the air filters. If I see them I’ll say, “I do a lot for this house, you know.” And they know. Because I say it; all the time.

“Yeah dad, we know. You do a lot for this house. You always say that.”

It takes me a while to get settled into a place. Well, that’s true and then it’s not. I can be comfortable in a brand new place rather quickly. But it takes me a while to feel the sense of lordship that comes to me after making a place really ours. Knowing where things go, optimizing it, reducing clutter, getting that one new organizational scheme or when Sharaun adds some new decorating touch.

At some point it all comes together and blurs into “home” and you walk into the door after work or wander around in the dark after a 3am pee and it’s yours and it’s right and you live in it. It smells right and you can keep your feet off the cold floors by using rugs like stepping stones even with your eyes closed.

So you take care of it, do a lot for it.

I know I can be distracted, in my own head. I know I can not hear things even when people are speaking directly to me, because I’m concentrating on something else, consumed by the thoughts. I know that my family bears this most of all, and I know that they are used to it.

I hope it’s not something they mark me by, remember about me. “Hey, remember how Dad used to just ignore us? Like, not even hear us?” I can hear the words as they laugh while reminiscing later in life. But, I know John and I have had laughs over Dad’s behavior, and, thinking about it, the things we chuckle on aren’t likely character traits he’d introduce himself with or claim with pride. “Hey, remember how dad was so non-confrontational? How Mom always had to be the one to bring the hammer down?”

I guess our kids know the best and worst of us and they’re gonna reminisce about both

It’s time to get the sourdough starter going again.

I maintained it during our year on the road, and retired it when we got to FL permanently. I started a new one at the beginning of COVID quarantine, when things were the most scary and we stayed shut-up and isolated at home most religiously. I retired that when things got crazy last year with the startup business; just wasn’t maintaining nor using it enough to justify keeping it around.

Now that the startup is dying (lord, that’s a whole other thing I’m not even sure I’m ready to write about, but eventually want to, for future me, before it gets too foggy), I figure I have the time to get it going again and give it the love required.

It’s day two and I’ve already got a lot of nice activity in the crock. Florida weather is like having a big proofing box, so I think we get a little acceleration boost. Even with regular bleached flour and tap water I get a nice culture going barely 36hrs into the routine. I’ll be ready to bake my first loaf from this starter this weekend, I’d guess.

Having the free-time to tend-to a starter and make fresh bread is a good indicator of my overall stress level. Hot loaves a couple times a week means I’m doing pretty darn well. I’m also probably reading more, writing more, helping the kids with homework and overall just well-attuned to family goings-on.

Peace.

I’m sure I’ve written down the thought before, and will again… but I see my age almost exclusively in my hands. Reading, in particular, where my hands and fingers frame the pages. The lines make little triangles and the skin just isn’t new anymore. I know my face and body also outwardly show age, but, to me, in a mirror, not so much. In my hands, though…

I’ve been listening to Depeche Mode’s discography… at least up to Music for the Masses, which is where I gave up as a kid. Maybe it’s the nostalgia, but these albums are minor masterpieces. A Broken Frame is on now, but I’ve been backwards through the LPs to this point already tonight and they are all so good. I have my older cousin Nathan to thank for introducing me to the band. They quickly became an obsession.

In 5th grade my best-bud Shaine and I swore we could make songs like Depeche Mode, if only we both had keyboards. Surely, with two keyboards, and all their built-in beats and tempos and pre-programmed sounds, we could make songs like Depeche Mode! We both asked for keyboards for Christmas, and we both got keyboards for Christmas. I actually remember being so excited to start composing. I should ask Shaine if he remembers it this way, or if it was only in my head…

Turns out, a keyboard does not a musician make. I am not sure if we ever seriously applied ourselves to the songwriting pursuit, but I do know that we have no singles to show for what effort we did make. I had that keyboard for along time, maybe even used it when we made the Renegade Collection in highschool. Wonder whatever became of it?

Goodnight.

It’s not downright bad, but meh.

I find that’s the case with Keurig coffee more often than not. But coffee’s not super important to me, I mean not the quality, at least, so I’m not terribly motivated to upgrade.

It’s more about ritual and habit than discernment of taste, in my case. I’ve had what I consider to be really good coffee, so I know my palate can sense a difference. One of the best: A hotel somewhere, I think Radisson on the beach in Eastern Florida. The best: Hot mornings in Mexico on vacation.

It’s also cooled-off too much while I’ve been writing now. Doesn’t make it any better, that’s for sure.

Gonna make another.

Sharaun and I are in bed watching a show on Netflix.

It is a dramatic moment; we are just about to learn an important new clue about the possible identity of the killer.

Through the bedroom door enters Keaton, our almost-fifteen daughter.

“I have an announcement!” She proclaims, holding both hands up near-head height in a stop-listen-this-is-important display.

“Hang on let us pause the show,” says Sharaun, “This is an important part.”

“My announcement is important, too,” says Keaton.

Show paused, killer temporarily safe from our discovery, we both turn our attention to Keaton. “OK, what’s up?,” asks Mom.

Lowering her hands a little, but not fully, she pushes the air forward with each word, as if to emphasize them, or maybe to help push them from her to us.

“I am in a romantic relationship with Andrew.”

Sharaun and I shoot quick smiling glances at each other as we launch into genuine, non-condescending, laughter.

Keaton follows-up quickly, she’s smiling now, too, seeing our reactions. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell you!” Small pause… “He already told his Mom!”

“Well, thanks for letting us know,” we say (or something close to that, I can’t really recall but I remember not saying “congratulations” as it felt wrong).

Two weeks back at school face-to-face and already be-boyfriended.

And there it is.

My brother and I were chatting the other day and I asked him if he remembered when we were kids and Dad came home from work with a bootleg CATV descrambler.

It was probably 1985 or 1986. It remember it being a very small black rectangular box. A simple thing: coaxial in, coaxial out, and one or two potentiometer-type adjustment dials. I think he got it from our Uncle Tom, one of those “uncles” that’s not really a blood uncle. I never knew my dad to be a the kind of guy to “steal,” but I think bootleg CATV descramblers in the mid-80s were kind of like Napster in the late 1990s… they hit the scene and boom: stuff that used to cost money was free. Maybe came-on too fast and were so simple you didn’t really spend much time considering about the ethical implications. I suppose it was basically just a set of adjustable filters for the analog signal, maybe with enough looped passes to be effectively “universal?”

Anyway then we had HBO, and HBO was a big deal to me. I saw movies I should have never seen at my age: Maximum Overdrive, Return of the Living Dead, as well as fell in love with shows like Brain Games.

I remember it working for a few years then becoming obsolete. This would have still pre-dated the digital transition by quite a few years so it must have been the cable companies getting smarter about how they scrambled things.

My brother remembered it, too, it must have been a thing for us.