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forgive me the fortnight


Hi. Come on in.

Here, go ahead and have a seat. We had a meeting last night, me and the guys upstairs. We were wrestling with a lot of difficult topics, and your name came up. We all decided, unanimously, that you deserve to know what was discussed.

Basically, what we did was an evaluation… a kind of cradle-to-grave retrospective of our entire engagement thus far. No, no, this wasn’t motivated by anything specific, no performance issues or concerns or anything like that – it’s just a practical thing to do to evaluate the health of a project as you go along, so that’s what we did. All the top experts will tell you it’s just something you should do, it’s good business.

So anyway, I hope I haven’t got you sweating or anything… I’ve actually got a really positive message for you. You see, we all agreed last night, sitting around that table, that you are by far the best thing that’s ever happened to the organization. Your skillset meshes with our culture seamlessly, and, even going back to the awkward formative stages of our relationship – your contributions provided positive guidance in shaping our ultimate direction. Not even trying, the board was able to recall several specific instances where your unwavering dedication and support have generated outcomes we would’ve otherwise likely missed in your absence. I’m not going to go into them all here, I mean, you probably remember them as well or better than we did, but I do feel it’s worth mentioning a few just to reiterate to you how much we truly do value what you’ve done for us.

Take for example the way you steered the organization out of the weeds, so to speak, so very early on. I’m sure you’ll recall that, at that point in time, our mission statement and goals as an organization were fairly undefined. In fact, we were pretty much all over the map. Just the notion that you were able to see the underlying nobility in our muddled intentions is impressive, but even more so is the way your simple presence helped untie those knots and focus us on where we wanted to go. You truly did impart your virtue to the firm in those first months and years, and in small part we owe to you the nature of the corporation we’ve become. Your rational urgings and positive influence really raised our stock, focused us less on our then mentality of immediate gratification and profit-taking and more on a business model that’s long-term viable and less personally taxing. Had your oversight not directed us in those days, we might still be off knee-deep in those weeds, searching for a direction or creed to ally with – the best of our intentions lost to our own indecisiveness and greed. It’s this “righting of the ship” we wanted to specifically recognize today as part of this discussion.

And furthermore, we wanted to pointedly call out and give a little praise for the level-headed steadfastness you offered during the whole (now miserably embarrassing) failed “acquisitions phase” we went through. I know we’ve post-mortemed that period to death, but we wanted to again thank you for sticking by us through the growing pains there. In the end, your metered criticisms managed to refocus us on our core business, and you managed to do it without personal compromise, which is impressive. As a relatively junior member of the team, you showed a heck of a lot of foresight maintaining a belief in the long-term prospects of the firm rather than jumping ship. We recognize that must have been a difficult professional decision on your part, and we’re pretty much eternally grateful you decided to continue your contributions. And the board, we’ve long now been vocal about the mistakes we made as we tried to over-posture the scope of the business at that time – we’re just glad it’s all water under the bridge.

Well, I said I wasn’t going to run down your resume here, but I look to be getting off track just a bit on that. You’ll have to forgive me, but I feel like I have to make a couple more points to really communicate the nature of the discussion we had last night – it’s all positive, so it should at least be easy to listen to. And, I know we reviewed some of those previous accomplishments already when you (rightfully) made partner some eight years ago, but it seemed appropriate to at least revisit them quickly today to frame the message. So, again apologies for the long-windedness here, I’ll try and pick up the pace.

Finally, and this is really the bottom line here, is what our talk last night settled on, I want to talk briefly about your latest project. Honestly, candidly, the launch of that project just a couple years ago, and the tremendous amount of fruit it’s been able to bear since, have been the crown jewel in this company’s short history. I know the near year of solid effort you put into getting this thing off the ground was no small task, and the other members of the board certainly agree. What’s more, the dedication you’ve shown to the new businesses you’ve grown since is simply outstanding.

We hope, as a company, we’ve been able to assist you where we can – but we realize that this thing is by and large your doing. Never before have we been able to truly sit back and look on with amazement at such a thriving development, it’s a first in company history. And, quite frankly, we hope to see it happen again. With the skill and determination you’ve shown us in expertly crafting and now shepherding it to continued success of its own, you’ve created a near-organic perpetual-motion snowball of success – and we honestly think you can offer a repeat performance, we have that much faith in your ability. I can’t begin to describe in enough detail how much the addition of that project to this company’s portfolio has changed our entire paradigm for the better. We’re a stronger company, we practically self-generate revenue, and we’ve never been aimed higher.

So, in summary, and I’m hoping you understand that gravity of what we’re trying to get across here – we just wanted to thank you for your time, and let you know we intend to continue to live up to what you deserve as the primary contributor you are. We wouldn’t be what or where we are today without you, it just couldn’t have happened better than it has. From the perspective of the directors, you’ve molded us, helped to define us, and pushed us when we needed pushing. We are sure that, with a continued level of teamwork consistent with our relationship thus far, there’s no place we can’t take this business. Our shareholders deserve the best, and together we know we can continue to impress and deliver.

Thanks for everything you’ve done, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for the firm. Our deepest respect and gratitude to you.

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they weren’t that far off


Well, it’s 8pm on Wednesday night and I’ll be leaving for the airport in about 30min to retrieve my wife and daughter. At long last, our family reunited. Sharaun’s feeling better, but not 100%. She called from Chicago during her layover, and I heard Keaton in the background playing in a rocking chair. Taking a suggestion from a friend more thoughtful than I, I stopped off after getting a haircut today to pick up a mylar Backyardigans “Happy Birthday’ balloon which I’ll use as a welcome home prop for Keaton at the airport. I didn’t get anything for Sharaun, I hope that’s OK (that’s OK, right blog?). Anyway, I wrote just a tiny bit upon getting home from work today (I split a little early for lack of concentration). Here it is, be warned: I took license.

It’s been a thousand years or more since I bedded the woman under the sun.

I remember it fondly because our communal joy was used as the basis as a new religion, the point-infinity of zero-time in which the people of that world consider consciousness to have begun. As trees thrashed in the soil, our wrestling drove up mountains, broken and shattered peaks looming around us in the midst of our eternal ecstasy. Our fantastic perspiration dotted the firmament with a flood of salty oceans and seas. Living beings sprang forth from the union of our flesh, animals winged and legged sprouting where we brushed, budding from the rich loam of our combined corpus, pushing through that single-skin and living, breathing. The sound of our tryst established the pantheon of world-language, each rumbling low and trilling high adding depth and soul to spoken word, the genesis of communication.

Each coordinated push of our bodies establishing the regular cadence of time, the cradle of eternity, the friction of our motion warming the surface of the world and giving life to all manner of plant and flower. Beauty bloomed around us, tickling our ticklish bits as it pushed through to touch our flesh and bend to the sun of our union. The fluid results of our strained efforts being the Philosopher’s Stone, that golden egg from which all base and divine sprang and will one day return – Aqua Vitae. As breath filled the first lungs ever to breathe, some of those infant-beings glimpsed our culminating love and the imprint of that God-Union was burned red-hot into their consciousness, destined to be collectively passed down and re-interpreted throughout time, understood and misunderstood by the legacy human froth spilled foaming from our joy.

They called it the Big Bang, and they weren’t that far off.

How’s that for blasphemy? Goodnight and happy Lent.

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laundry coup aside


Tuesday night and my wife and daughter are still not home.

Sharaun came down with the dreaded influenza on what was to be her last day in Florida, and she was knocked onto the couch as her parents traded days off work to help take care of baby Keaton. Luckily, her flight was a free voucher-based one, allowing her to essentially infinitely push it back until she’s feeling up to the long solo flight with the baby on her lap. Well, I say infinitely, but in actuality she’ll have to make it home shortly before midnight tomorrow night, when Keaton officially turns two and goes from a free lap-child to a paying passenger.

That’s the other bit of sadness on my part for wife and child not being here as planned: I’ll be missing most of her actual birthday. Not a big deal, but still stinks that I can’t wake up and tell her “happy birthday!” (Guess I could do that Thursday, she’d really never know.)

My head is sleepy-thick right now, I had a tiring day at work and wanted nothing more than to take a quick hour-ish nap before the Democratic debate started. Unfortunately it didn’t work out, and I at best got a few closed-eyed moments while a familiar episode of Andy Griffith played quietly in the background. The only other noise was the whirring of the washing machine, an appliance I had to reacquaint myself with this afternoon, lest I be forced to realize the nightmare of going into work not wearing pants. Honestly, and somewhat shamefully, it’s been a good amount of time since I’ve actually done laundry. Not that it’s all that hard, or difficult to recall in terms of methodology, but it’s just something I’m rusty at – and realizing that made me remember how it used to be living alone. I decided I’m much happier now as a married man.

Not solely for the laundry or anything, but, y’know… whatever…

Although I must admit, as a guy who hardly ever does laundry, I still seem to do it a lot more efficiently than our family’s primary laundry-doer. Heck I did the whole overflowing bin’s worth tonight, and managed to fold and put it away. Maybe I should take over the role? Execute a laundry coup, perhaps, a hostile takeover of that noisy little room. I don’t mind the task at all.

Anyway, folding Keaton’s little socks and shirts and jeans makes me miss her so much. And, laundry coup aside, I these little socks sure do wont for some little feet to fill them up and run around the house with them on… don’t they? She calls it “La-la-lee-la.” Boo!

Oh, and before I go, something interesting: Sharaun says Keaton’s recent st-st-st-stuttering stint has all but disappeared since they’ve been in Florida.

Posted on

you can likely guess


Last day of my bachelor weekend. I didn’t clean anything, didn’t lift a finger. I’m not surprised at all. The motivation is weak with this one. I’m sitting here listening to some Steely Dan the iPod deigned to shuffle up, sounds good in the early evening of a lazy Sunday night. Seriously, when I say lazy, I mean lazy.

My entire day’s activities: Woke up, filled up the Ford on the way to church, church, home, put on the iPod and unsuccessfully fight napping for five hours before going over to Melissa’s for a fine meal. It was a shamefully unproductive day, with so much time wasted – I loved it. Sharaun and Keaton get home tomorrow, that is, unless she decides to push their flight back a day because she’s not feeling well – last time I talked to her she was battling a 102° fever. Not fun flying with a baby on your lap in those conditions, I’d think. We’ll see.

Today I figured I’d lead the week with a long-overdue update to my sixty-days-on-penis-pills adventure. I know it’s been a while since my last update (here, for those who’ve already forgotten or are new to the bit), but I just haven’t had the urge to do the all the ruler and GIMP work that’s necessary to make an entry. But, with a weekend home alone to kill and not spending my time doing anything productive, it seemed like a fruitful time. Now then, let’s catch up on what this whole thing is actually about: I’ve been taking the “natural male enhancement” pill Enzyte now for forty-five days.

For the full backstory, read about the original Enzyte idea here, and check out the first and second set of results I’ve already reported).

During this forty-five days many fun and wonderful things have happened in my life. Unsurprisingly, none of those many things has been measurable penile growth. Yeah, that’s right, absolutely nothing has changed… not a single centimeter. Not that I expected much. So, as I’m sure you already expected, here’s this update’s visual-aide graph of my growth. Showing all of nothing.

(Learn how to interpret this chart here.)

And, folks, you now know why I’m not so hot to update the progress every week. I decided a few weeks back that these pills are bunk, and don’t expect a thing in the world out of my last fifteen days. And, if the Enzyte industry tries to offer me another free thirty days… well… maybe I’d take that, you know, fo rth e skae of th bolg.

Goodnight.

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not some mistake


Oh come on. You really think I’m going to take that for a mistake?

You knew all too well what time I was going to be here to pick you up this morning, I told you yesterday before we left. I said it to the minute, there was no lack of understanding. I told you I’d knock on the door at 7:30am, expected you’d be ready to go. Instead you holler for me to “come in.”

Stepping through and clicking the door shut behind me, your apartment presses me towards its belly. You are nowhere to be seen, but I can hear you, you’re off in the bathroom. And, as I walk into the…

Oh… oh no way… nuh-uh… are you being for real right now?

Look, this was no accident, you left this ironing board out for my sake, didn’t you? Laden with your unmentionables… some piled some folded, all drawing my attention like a full solar eclipse at noon. There is no way this was a simple miss on your part, this had to be deliberate.

For God’s sake your underclothes… am I reading too much into this? Maybe you were just in the middle of laundry… nothing so odd about that… maybe you’re one of those chicks who could care less… maybe I’m the prude. But, you’re so chaste, so wholesome… I just can’t wrestle this idea. Eventually, I’ll settle on some hybrid theory that satisfies both my impressions of your promiscuity and my all-Penthouse-Forum-all-the-time thought patterns: You did leave them out knowingly, and for the most part innocently, yet still aware of the typical male reaction.

There, that squares it. Nothing overtly porno, nothing rock-stupid. See, I generally handle these things pretty well, and I’m a lot more comfortable as I ease onto the couch to wait for you. Your echoed shout sounds from the bathroom, “I’ll be right out.” Oh, and here you come now, I’m glad you…

Oh… oh no way… nuh-uh… are you being for real right now?

Leading the way come your long legs, no socks, no shoes, no anything. As my eyes sweep the scene: You, hair wet and curly-tangled down your back, no makeup at all on your face, and a simple mauve towel clutched to you as covering, wrapped tight around you making you the most mouth-watering terrycloth burrito I’ve ever laid eyes on. “I’m running a bit late,” you say, smiling as ordinarily as ever as you glide past me, snatching parts and pieces from the aforementioned folded pile on the aforementioned ironing board.

Oh, you planned this.

Dressed in a towel, the requisite building-blocks of your wardrobe conveniently left in the common room where you know I’ll be waiting. Your fresh-from-the-shower wind as you swish tail back to the bedroom blows at me like a perfumed hurricane, spilling torrents of yours-if-you-want-it promiscuity. This was not an accident, and you’re certainly far from the virginal choirgirl you sell yourself as when we’re in your lair.

I act as normal as possible, I’m a stone, a carved image of a man, unfeeling and unreactive. Just like I expected you to be naked under a towel when I stopped in to pick you up, like it’s normal as Hell. Nothing in the world more mundane than your long legs, like speckled porcelain, bared to high-thigh. Yup, regular everyday stuff that.

But y’know… let not man put asunder… and everything.

Goodnight.

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ch-ch-ch-ch-changes


Hi Tuesday. Back to work today, fresh of my latest trip on ship-sick. Felt OK, the busyness of the day working to keep my mind from dwelling on how I felt, letting me instead be washed away in the stress and decisions of my daily eight-hour farce. I suppose that means I have to go back tomorrow, so I will. Today, I went a little mad near the end there (sorry about breaking the no-cussing streak, blame Art). Let’s do this.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫
♫ Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers… ♫

Just within the past few days, Keaton has begun stuttering. At first, I thought this was utterly cute. She’s always done some amount of stammering or word-repetition at the beginning of her phrases, and I’d always chalked that up to her knowing she wanted to form a long string of words, but needing some extra time to process what she wanted to say and buying it through repetition. This recent stuff though, this is different. All of the sudden at my folks’ place in Oregon last week, she started getting really hung up on her ‘W’ lead-words. “Where’d the doggy go daddy?” turned into, Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-where’d the doggy go daddy?” With the ‘W’ sound repeated an almost comical amount of times. Actually, with the ‘W’ sound repeated a downright comical amount of times.

“W-w-w-w-w-wan-wan-wan-w-w-w-wan-wanna use the potty” began to replace the previously smooth and fluid “Wanna use the potty.” Again, the amount of repetition on the lead word was so prominent I figured she must be doing it on purpose as a reaction to the giggles we initially reacted with.

Within just the past forty-eight hours, though, she’s branched out from just ‘W’ words and now hangs up on all sorts of words. She draws out initial words too, like, “Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii wanna bite daddy’s cheese,” or “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmy babydoll is sleeping.” Still, I saw no reason for concern, and figured it was some sort of normal speech pattern per development. Sharaun, however, was a little more prudent, deciding she didn’t like the new Keaton-speech and doing some online research. Here’s what the sage internet has to say about toddler stuttering:

Many children go through a developmental stage of speech disfluency that’s often confused with true stuttering. This normal disfluency does disappear over time without need for treatment.

Children with true stuttering tend to repeat syllables four or more times (a-a-a-a-as opposed to once or twice for normal disfluency). They mmmmmay also occasionally prolong sounds.

Hmmm… sounds like our Keaton…

Children with stuttering show signs of reacting to their stuttering — blinking the eyes, looking to the side, raising the pitch of the voice.

Oh yeah, blinking eyes, screwing up her face, seemingly looking into space for the words: check, check, and check. Hmmm….

True stuttering is frequent — at least 3 percent of the child’s speech. While normal disfluency is especially noticeable when the child is tired, anxious, or excited, true stuttering is noticeable most of the time.

Well, as long as the internet is still an infallible source of information and a viable method of self-diagnosis, I’m convinced: Our baby may have a legitimate stuttering problem. The doctor on the internet said we should alert our pediatrician, so that’s what we’ll do.

Still, I secretly think it’s cute, and am not really too concerned. Call me naive.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫

Tomorrow I’m dropping Sharaun and Keaton off at the airport bright and early so they can catch a flight to Florida to see Keaton’s brand new cousin, baby Hobson (blog-style congratulations to Aunt Breck and Uncle Doug). After that, I’ll be on my own for five whole days. Cast back into the shadowy realm of bachelorhood (well, minus all the wild stripper-pole parties I used to throw in my true bachelor past, ahem). On my own for meals, clean boxers, sexual gratification (nothing much new there), bedtimes and waketimes, and whether or not I have to don knickers on the weekend. My barnburning plans include the cleaning jag I’ve outlined here before, and completely eschewing the television in favor of the iPod. In some ways I’m looking forward to the time, but in reality I think I’ll start to miss my girls right-quick.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫

Has anyone ever heard an old fable, or story, or Mother Goose or… something… about a man, or king, or maybe it was a pauper, who woke up one morning to a solid-gold reflection of himself in the mirror? Yeah, I figured not, because I just made that up. But today was my solid-gold day. I was untouchable. I walked on water. I touched souls. The heart-hardened wept open-mouthed as babes for tit.

Below please find the actual photo that sits unblinkingly on my sawmill’s badge. Note the lethargic smile, crooked nose, and fucking hair. It was taken some eight years ago now, and I’ve worn it around my neck five days a week for those long years like a sinner’s millstone. While this is, in what I hope would be anyone’s opinion and not just my own, a spectacularly awful picture of me, it’s constantly displayed on my chest in miniature contrast to my real face just a foot above it.

I like to think I see something better than that in the mirror each morning, and usually I do (changing that pitiful post-college hairstyle really opened up new avenues for me, how on earth did I ever pull tail with that gel-back?). In actuality it’s likely not that far off the mark. They got the underlying concept right.

I hate that picture. Hate.

So imagine my apoplectic joy when, this morning, smiling back at me in that reflective glass, I saw instead an Adonis of an alpha-male, chiseled face sculpted from shining polished gold. I took avenue-wide strides all the way to work, stepping from cloud to cloud and smiling down on creation from my appointed place in the Heavens. I called lightnings with my fingers, distilled the entirety of human consciousness into my hands and cast it to the wind as worthless. I was amazing.

When I got home at 6pm, the chump from the badge was back, only he was eight years older and balder. I berated him, tore him down layer by putrid layer and tried to rebuild him again in all the gilt perfection of twelve hours prior. Resisting my efforts, he slithered back into decline, rusting in real-time, biodegrading on a hook in the backyard.

It’s not over.

♫ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes… ♫
♫ Pretty soon you’re gonna get a little older… ♫

To those of you who were lucky today and didn’t even know it – Goodnight and sweet dreams.

Posted on

topic-jumping


Hi internet friends (and real life friends interacting with me through the internet at the moment). Feeling a bit on the mend today, I managed to bang out a few hundred words on the computer in between sleeping and going through the sweating/freezing cycles. Kind of a patchy entry today, with an iPod-only bit that I wrote split out and posted randomly yesterday between then and now (scroll down if you think you might be interested). Splitting that out is part of my new plan to optimize some parts of content for search results, I’ll talk more about that sometime later if I remember. Let’s do this.

I’ve told you guys here before about Sharaun’s recent involvement in this “teen moms” program. She volunteers one night a week to get a bunch of women together to cook dinner for young teen mothers. During the dinner, the moms get to drop their kids off with provided childcare, and then get a chance to visit with the older women – where they presumably teach them basic life-management skills like balancing a checkbook or getting whites their whitest (or, for you feminists, snaking a drain, changing the oil, or negotiating a hostile takeover). As I commented last time around, I see this as quite an admirable donation of time and effort, and I’m glad she’s the kind of person who wants to help like that (Lord knows it’s not my bag, at least not as a full-time thing).

Anyway, she told me a “funny” story about her last session. Apparently, two new teen moms showed up for the evening, and she was directing them to where they drop off the babies prior to dinner. I guess some of the young mothers sometimes bring nothing but their kids, meaning no bottles, no diapers, no nothing. Just a baby and themselves. These girls, however, had both brought diaper bags and left them with the nursery workers, mentioning that there were snacks inside for the two and three year-old kids should they get hungry. When Sharaun heard that, she said she gave some silent applause in her head for a couple younger moms who were thinking ahead and prepared, unlike some of the others. Turns out though, that she later learned that the “snacks” the moms brought were a bag of Cheetos and a baby bottle full of soda. Yeah, that’s right. Cheetos and soda. Oh dear lord, it almost made me wanna cry. Hopefully this support group reviews the FDA pyramid at some point…

Gonna be a topic-jumper tonight, here we go.

I hate the unpredictability of male urination. What happens 95% of the time when I pee isn’t necessarily what will happen the other 5% at all. Most of the time everything goes OK. But, there’s the element of the unknown that you’re always up against. Will something, seen or unseen, somehow deflect your flow? If so, will your compensation fail when that same something, seen or unseen, disappears mid-act, returning your flow to it’s normal trajectory? God forbid that some something, again seen or again unseen, actually bifurcates your flow into multiple sub-flows, each one as unmanageable as the other and no one safe place to aim the distribution. Women seem to have this a lot easier, sitting down, apparatus entirely contained… Maybe it’s the Lord’s way of making up for the whole childbearing thing. Wouldn’t want to have to do that…

And now I’m done. But…

Before I go, I wanted to pass along a couple links I stumbled on while infirmed on the sickbed in our living room. First, remember my old fascination with the “pizza bomber” case? Well, I’d heard there was some break and that the whole thing would be tied up nice and tight soon, but this MSNBC article whet my appetite for those closing details. I’m sure someone like 48 Hours or Dateline has their episode dedicated to this bizarre crime all written and shot but for the ending. C’mon March. Next, and last, this list of humorous children’s science fair projects had Sharaun and I laughing today. Funny stuff.

Well, I’m spent. Time to hit the hay and hope for better feelings in the morning, because I’ve got to go to work one way or another. Goodnight.