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tomorrow will worry about itself

I like to think I’m deliberate.

That I labor over decisions, both big and small.  That I’m meticulous and make well-counselled decisions.

In something approaching 50% of the time, though, I think I operate more on impulse.  This tends to be OK, as I trust myself in most matters.  Deliberate, impulsive, these are things I’m used to both striving for an being, respectively.  One thing I’m not, or at least up until recently have not been, accustomed to is calling.  A decision calling to me is something than an impulsive one.  Impulse is fleeting; I didn’t buy those new $150 earbuds even though I liked them and seem to collect such technical doodads – better judgement, nay, deliberate decision-making, intervened.  A calling, on the other hand, does not fleet.

When there’s this feeling… in your chest or somewhere approximate.  It’s a nagging thing, isn’t it?  Even tainted around the edges to make you feel like not doing it is somehow wrong.  A calling, being willed from the inside or some outside force, as near physical a thing as a pinprick.  I was called to do the RV trip, did you know that?  I don’t say it, but I felt like we were supposed to do that; meant to bond and explore.  Yeah sure, you’re thinking that I’m likely also “called” to my daily bowel movements, that I’m some crystals and auras new-age type getting messages from the Pleiades.  I’m not; as much as one can impartially judge themselves as such a one.  I knew that trip was the right thing to do, while on it everything felt right, and looking back at it there’s no denying the overall correctness of it.  It was a calling I chose to heed.

Is “calling” even the right word?  Not sure.  When someone chooses the seminary, what’s that… a calling?  A desire?  How do you tell the difference.  In my life, I also desired (greatly) that past summer’s trip.  Called, or wanted?  Maybe it’s the persistence of the feeling that leads me to want to dub something a calling versus a desire.  I desire a steak, medium rare, salt and pepper only.  I’m called on a journey.  What does one do, then, when one feels some compelling urge to do something seemingly irrational… like a drastic career and scenery change?

Why do I daydream about teaching middle-school math in upstate New York?  What is that kind of fantasy.  I even see the town in my head, all Bedford Falls and Mayberry.  My kids know your kids and your wife and mine are in the same PTA meetings and church committees.  I don’t work until 10pm.  I don’t work until 11pm.  I don’t work until midnight.  I don’t think about work in the shower.  I don’t think about work on the weekend.  My fucking till balance at the end of my grocery-checker shift doesn’t weigh on my shoulders like an anchor.  My paycheck loses decimal places.  Our saving stalls.  I wouldn’t be able to do things like that RV trip I was “called” to; I’d have to pass-up the calling because I couldn’t afford it.  Right?  Little devil on the right, little angel on the left.  Warring.

I can’t even write one-minded about it and I’m just manic-depressive enough about it to where it’ll likely never happen.  There is this part of me that wants it like an ideal, though.  To get closer to my family, my God, my planet, the things I like about myself and the things I feel my time is best spent on.  Why waste it working until 10pm, 11pm, midnight?  Why waste it rebalancing my 401k?  Why sow or reap or store away in barns?  Why labor or spin?  How long can I keep pretending to seriously ask myself these questions before I give up and admit I’m too scared or convince the family to take the first steps with me?  I’m not serious, surely.

Self-indulgent catharsis.  Feel better.  More coming at a later time.  Thanks for reading.

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walker!

For Cohen, like Keaton before him, walking came (or more accurately, is still coming) late.

His first purposeful unaided steps happened at my parents’ place the day before Thanksgiving.  Maybe three or four little tentative ones, which I luckily captured on video below, not something really aimed at mobility… more testing the nets.  Even now, spending Christmas in Florida at the other parents’ house (no, not a divorce thing, happy to say Sharaun and I are the product of two long-married couples), he’s just finally getting to the point where he’s doing more walking than crawling.

His steps are still fairly straight-legged and deliberate, he ends up on his rear a lot, and he’s mostly walking between two things he can grab onto and cruise around – but with each passing day I see him take more steps and appear more coordinated.  It’s actually pretty fascinating to watch and I’m thankful that it’s happening when I’m not at work all day and would miss the subtlety.  I still clap and cheer for him in my high-pitched “good job little kid” voice, I hope he doesn’t find it patronizing… his enthusiasm would seem to indicate he does not, unless he’s far more sophisticated at cloaking his emotions for my sake than I give him credit towards.

I took him down to the park today, where Keaton and I went yesterday, and watched in awe as he behaved almost the polar opposite of Keaton at the same age.  I set him down and he climbed the green-rubber coated stairs of the play structure, crawled right over to the slide where he situated himself and pushed off.  The first time I guided him with a helping hand, but after he’d walked around to the stairs again and get himself poised for a second go, I let him do it solo.  He loved it, slid on his belly right to the end, scooted himself off and onto his feet and toddled over to do it again.

Anyway, below are his first little steps that day in Oregon.  I love that little boy.

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the wind is refreshing

Yesterday Keaton and I decided to walk down to the little “old town” area.

Not too far from the in-laws’ place, the walk there is an enjoyable one flanked on the right by the Indian River and the left by a row of riverside houses which are always fun to ogle and envy.  The weather was inviting, too, and is part of the reason I proposed the trip.  We’d walk down to the little park (the same park where the Santa incident occurred three years ago), kick rocks on the playground a bit and then stroll through the gentrified shopfronts and maybe get some stocking-stuffers for mom.

On the way down Keaton was being Keaton.  “The wind feels so refreshing in my hair, dad,” she said as she tossed her (somewhat tangled) locks.  “You know, I think I was meant to live in Florida.  Do you think we could live in Florida sometime?”  “Meant to live in Florida?,” I asked, “What do you mean?”  She explained that, since both mom and I were from Florida that it was like she was supposed to live here.  The concept of destiny may be above her, but that’s pretty much what she was describing.  I told Sharaun’s mom about the conversation and she was encouraged.

We picked flowers and dodged fire-ants (currently Keaton’s #1 fear in the sunshine state) and even made a stop at the local magic store to nose around.  And once again this morning Sharaun’s left me with the kids to go shopping (her perpetual pre-Christmas Florida activity, not that it bothers me – being that it relieves me of having to do the same), so I’m thinking we might make a return-trip but this time with Cohen in tow.

Until later then.

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still sometimes call it “home”

Man the weather here is refreshing.  Something about the air here at the in-laws’ place: fresh coming off the water and just a little touch of Florida humidity but without the oppressive heat and density of the summer months.  Christmas-time in Florida really is an excellent clime.

Our trip out was disastrous.  We woke at 3am to catch a 6am flight out of California, and that flight was delayed by all manner of things for over an hour (with us sitting in our seats on-board).  This resulted in a missed-connection at Denver and the airline auto-re-booking us on a 6pm flight later that day.  Not wanting to spend eight hours in the airport with two kids, we tried standby on a couple earlier flights with no luck.  Eight long hours later, as 6pm finally rolled around, turns out that outbound aircraft had issues.  Another hour and a half and a new plane later we were finally on our way.  We pulled into the driveway here at 2:30am Florida time, nearly twenty-one hours of travel time after our west-coast departure.  Poor Cohen didn’t sleep the entire time, stubborn little man that he is, and was wrecked for our entire first day here.

But now we are here, and all the Christmas presents I had shipped from Amazon were here before us, and the sweet tea is plentiful and family’s already come ’round to play… it promises to be a good time.  I’m trying to stay away from work as much as possible, but have so far checked email daily like a sucker.

I’m looking forward to some un-scheduled time.  No having to be somewhere at this time or meet someone at that time.

Oh and maybe some writing if the inspiration strikes.  Bye.

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10 without fanfare

You!  Don’t fret!

These days, the ones where you work twelve or thirteen hours, these days are going to pay off.  OK maybe not in dollars.  Or maybe not in respect or position or stature, either.  OK what then?  Self-respect?  Don’t think so.  Personal satisfaction; yeah that’s got to be it.  Some Eagle Scout sense of selfless fulfillment.  Maybe if it was thirteen hours in a soup kitchen.  Thirteen hours, a daily 1/100,000th of a hundredth of a dollar change in stock price.  OK so yeah it’s not all toil and not a scrap of enjoyment.  The chase; the race; the smugness of high performance.

More and more I want to steal some time back and writing gives me that.  If I’m sitting here writing I’m not working or thinking about work.  More: I’ve been wanting to write.  I get home and I think about what I might write.  I email one-line ideas to myself when I’m on the go.  Motivation is a strange thing.  Did you know that during the “break” this year, the one I may or may not still be on, I let the ten year anniversary of this blog pass silently by?  Earlier in the year I had big plans for that September date… was going to do some big self-indulgent “look back” kind of feature… go all out.  Alas, it came and went unnoticed whilst I wasn’t writing.

Like I said, thought to day about how I wanted to write tonight; wrote tonight.  To me that’s good.

We’re off, traveling again for weeks running, this weekend.  Away from work for a while.  Look for me.

Goodnight.

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dramaturgically

Just the other day I learned there’s a word in German which is defined as the “vicarious embarrassment” a person can feel whilst watching another party doing something embarrassing   The word is fremdschämen, and I’d like to get it integrated into my vocabulary as I’m very prone to experiencing this embarrassed-by-proxy emotion.  In fact, I seem to be somewhat inclined to the “transfer” of other emotions, as well… let me expand.

Last week I took Keaton up to her school to watch the third-through-fifth grade spelling bee.  Not just some rinky-dink thing, this was an “official” Scripps Howard rules bee, complete with fee paid to the aforementioned governing body to both use their rules and qualify winners for advancement to the state and national level (you know, the one they show on ESPN2?).  She wasn’t in the spelling bee, mind you, they don’t let the K-through-2 kids participate, but she had been talking about the thing so much that I decided we’d do a daddy-daughter date night centered around it.  Nevermind that, once getting there, the glam and seduction of the spelling bee seemed to dissipate quickly under the reality of the event and she was complaining of being “bored” within the first half-hour, for that’s not where this story is going.

We were talking about “emotions by proxy,” recall?  What I came here to remark on was the sense of pride I found myself feeling watching children who weren’t even my own.  Pride that these kids were getting the words right, pride in the way they handled being on stage and mic’d in front of a crowd of adults, pride at their aplomb even after misspelling and having to leave the stage.  Proud-by-proxy; it happens, at least to me.  That fourth-grade kid named Pinder, the tall slender one who just spelled “dramaturgical,” a word I’d never even heard, that kid’s smile and triumphant walk back to his seat after the judge’s “correct” was almost enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Is that odd?  I get it too sometimes when I see a local kid sing the national anthem in their hometown before a pro ballgame.  For real.

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appease problem

Today Cohen finally stuck a pea so far up his nose that it was irrecoverable.

Backing up a bit, he was in the (bad) habit of putting food in his nose and ears a few weeks back.  The phase came and went quickly, waxing and seemingly waning away to zero within the span of a couple weeks.  We thought we were past it, thought it was just a funny bit of growing up kid-stuff.  Until lunch today, when he got one pushed up just high enough that it’s only partially visible with a flashlight at the right angle.  Sharaun, in fact, was only somewhat sure there even was a pea up there until I got home from work and was able to confirm it by restraining the poor little man while I peered down his nose.

So, I consulted the internet for medical help.  There’s plenty of help out there for foreign objects in nose, even specifically peas for that matter – but most of it seems to assume that the pea is completely blocking airway in the offending nostril and as such relies air pressure (sucking, blowing, sneezing, etc.) to dislodge it.  Cohen’s pea, though, isn’t completely blocking his nostril.  He can breathe right around it so suction or blowing simply moves air past the not-going-anywhere pea.

Poor little guy just doesn’t get why mom and dad have him pinned-down to the bed, holding his arms and legs and shining a bright light into his face.  To him it’s torture.

Sharaun’s on the phone with the doctor now.  Poor Cohen got too tired of me sticking the suction bulb in his nose or blowing through his mouth or having pepper shoved at him in an effort to invoke a sneeze and just dropped into bed.  He’s sleeping peacefully and we don’t plan on waking him to deal further with the pea problem.  But to be safe we wanted to make and vet our executive parental decision with an actual M.D.  I don’t think even the doctor will be able to convince me that waiting hours in the emergency room or urgent care is the better than an early morning pediatrician appointment, anyway.

Goodnight friends.