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pfffft…. whatever

Hit every green light this morning on the way to work.  I love that.

Cohen had his one-year pediatric check-up visit this past week.  At this visit the doctor takes stock of your child, taking inventory of their development and reporting back to you on such arbitrary things as head-size as compared to average, weight compared to average, mobility, verbal skills, and the like.

Whether it’s always been this way or not, these visits are also a time for parents to sit back and revel in the uniformity (or non-uniformity) of their progeny.  I suspect that many modern, rat-race respecting, parents could, in fact, digest the findings of these check-ups with some amount of heartburn.  I try not to allow this; for the most part I don’t care if only my kid and two others globally have heads of a size.  For someone overly concerned with benchmarks and milestones and having their child be “on schedule,” however, I understand this could be a nervous moment.

The suspicious among you might say that all my cool aloofness is perhaps born out of necessity.  Cohen, you see, is all out of whack with where Keaton was at this time – and where most other kids are, to boot.  A year old and he’s not crawling, not walking, not even showing the slightest interest in flexing his leg muscles.  While we were home in Florida during the RV trip, his cousin, three months his junior, was crawling circles around him while Cohen looked on, unimpressed and apparently uninspired.  Heck, he only just started pulling himself up to sitting under his own power just a few weeks ago.

The doctor was interested in this.  Sharaun explained that he’s far from immobile.  In fact he can scoot with some mean velocity, so quickly that I’ll often turn away for a second to find he’s inched off into another room.  At the same time, the majority of attempts to get him to stand on his own, clutching your fingers in that way babies do, are met with his pure indifference.  In the bouncer he simply tucks his legs up and rests his weight happily.

Testing his reflexes, all things appear to be assembled correctly, so that’s a relief.  Initially, the doc wondered aloud if she should have him “evaluated” (whatever that means, I assume by some developmental/physical therapy person).  Hearing this, Sharaun said she could feel her heart rate double in her veins.  As soon as she’d considered this, though, the doctor reneged on the thought and instead opted for the much more parent-palatable advice to, “Call if he’s not crawling on his knees by fourteen months.”

This seems ultimately reasonable to me… I mean exactly whose schedule is the kid on, anyhow?  Not mine; not Keaton’s; not the world according to the WHO statbook, as far as I’m concerned.  While I want little man growing and advancing as expected, I’m not really in any great hurry for him to start toddling around the house.  It’s seems funny to dedicate five paragraphs to saying something like, “I’m not concerned in the least,” but… I’m not concerned in the least.

As far as words go, he’s got “uh-oh” and sometimes what I think is a cognizant “thank you,” but not the apparently expected “mama” and “dada.”  To be fair I don’t remember when Keaton’s then-otherworldly vocabulary developed and flourished, so I’m not sure if Cohen’s is behind or even with her or what.  I do know, though, that he’s entirely doomed if I’m going to hold him up to her as the example of development in the talking and vocabulary department.  So, again, I’m not that uptight about it.

Milestones… pffft.  Whatever.  Goodnight.

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moms & dads are dying

I’m getting older.

It’s a fact.  Despite how I may look to myself in the mirror, it’s there.  I see it most in my forearms.  This might sound strange, but sometimes when I’m driving I’ll look at the bare stretch of arm between my cuffed sleeve and the back of my hand.  That hair-clad length, announced by a fancy shirt rolled to look casual and broken by a watchband and finally topped by a gold wedding band… it’s a picture of how I must look on the outside. Old; established; a family-man; company-man.

One of the more interesting phenomenon around getting older, at least to me, is the way getting to know your friends’ parents changes.  When we were younger, friends’ parents could be imposing, scary.  Authority figures but not your authority figures.  Old people who do dinnertime a little different than it’s done at your house.  Old people who let their kids watch different movies than your folks allow.  As far as relationships go, as a kid mine with my kid-friends’ parents were surface and cordial.

In my thirties now myself, I suppose I’m grown up.  Sometimes there’s a moment where you realize that parents (not just your own, necessarily) are a pretty great thing.  Meeting the parents of your peer-group becomes something different entirely. See because you’re all adults now.  Yes different ages, but past a certain age the field gets leveled a bit and now you’re all just humans watching the clock from different places.  Friends’ folks can be a window into what made a friend what they are today; gave them the feathers that now makes you flock together.

More, though, and what I wanted to write about, getting to know your friends’ folks is reminder of that generation’s mortality.  And, by extension, the mortality of your own parents.

As adults you can relate… at this point the twenty-to-thirty year delta between you means a lot less than what it did when you were diapers or on training wheels.  No you’re probably not going out for drinks on Friday, but it’s a lot different than what you had as kids during sleepovers.  A dad of a friend gets cancer and you can feel that; you feel for his wife, your friend’s mom, for your friend, your friend’s family.  Your friend’s mom dies unexpectedly and it’s not only sad but scary; stings doubly because you know this: moms are starting to die; dads are starting to die.

And amid sharing in the grief when a friend loses a parent, you can’t help but be reminded of that.

“You hear about Mitch’s mom?  She passed away last weekend.”
“What?!  She was just out to visit not a month ago, right?  We did that barbecue… she seemed great.”

Moms and dads are dying and that, man, is a bummer.

See ya.

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catching up

I crawled into bed tonight just after midnight after walking the short distance home from the local watering hole.

A long-ago/still-today friend was in town from a world away and we spent the night imbibing and jawing together.  After midnight the place turned up the mood lighting as a signal to the last few holdout drunkards: It’s over; you have families; go home to them.  We all filed out and I did that “I’m perfectly fine” walk for the hundred yards or so back to our house.  Called Sharaun on the phone as I was walking up the driveway so as not to scare her when I jiggled the (inevitably locked) front door.  Got in, took the trash to the curb, did the nighttime disrobe and teeth-scrub and was ready to count sheep.

Wanted to write, though.  I see this guy – the guy that brought me out to the bar, something I don’t do all that much anymore – maybe twice a year.  We shared some fantastic times in years gone by and it’s always good to sit with him and catch up.  I like to think we share some similar motivations when it comes to work, and some of the talk is all high-school coed gossip-central but… I knew that when I paid the admission.  I came for it, in fact.  Why dodge?  While it’s good to remember the old days, it’s even better to gnaw on the now; compare notes, talk shop.  If you’re a soap-opera kind of guy you can get swept away in the politics of it all.  Big companies are all politics and the sawmill is a big company.

More than wanting to write about that, though, I wanted to just write.  I missed writing whilst on the big RV trip and want to get back to it even if it’s a strange not-so-complete sentence thing ala tonight.  I don’t care because what’s important to me is the writing itself.  Even if it’s just a stray thought that’s captured perfectly in two sentences; I don’t know why I sometimes impose a stupid “album-length” mandate on writing anyway… it’s stupid.  A good sentence, a good paragraph, needs to be written.

Bah, it’s obviously time to sleep.  This has gone on too long.  Fun tonight.  See ya.

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a heavyset saint

I was due to start work yesterday, fresh from seven weeks away.

It’s not that I was nervous about going back to work… but a bit hesitant about diving in and trying to drink from the firehose.  Didn’t matter, in the end, as I came upon a jury duty summons while sifting through the pile of mail which accrued during our holiday.  So I sat there today, reading, working on Keaton’s last video, thinking.  I thought a lot about the trip; how lucky we were to be able to take it, how smoothly it went, how it managed to change my perspective just a bit.  To a degree, I think I was wanting to run away from normal… run away and take shelter in the little family we’ve built.  Being there, hidden away in a box just the four of us, was blissfully awesome.  To function so highly together, to enjoy our own company… something about it was almost therapeutic.  Sorry, I could talk about it for paragraphs.  I’ll stop.

So I whiled away the day at the county courthouse.  I met a woman, I figure she was about 300lbs, although I’m not sure how here weight is relevant.  She was complaining bitterly about the whole thing.  “I don’t know why they keep us so long,” she lamented.  “They ain’t never gonna pick me, my husband is a convicted felon and my dad was too.”  This left me, not being a guy who runs with many felons, lacking a proper response.  It’s so tempting, to slip into some least-common-denominator type conversation.  I could’ve said, “I watched a Dateline about felons once,” or, “I learned about felonies in Civics class,” y’know, to establish some common ground.    Instead I just found myself slightly sad that she was registered to vote.  For new readers, here’s the part of almost every paragraph I write where I go back and dilute my own writing by playing devil’s advocate: In the end I shouldn’t be too critical though, I don’t know that woman – she could be a heavyset saint who just keeps bad company.

Being on the road and not writing regularly felt odd, good-odd, but I like writing.  Double-down then, back to the keyboard and blank page and trying to bang out some good reading – things have been mundane.  Stupid brain turns vacations into “being behind” upon return.  Fix this and get back to that and do this so that can be all ready.  First-world problems… flowing like the clean, potable water which flows unabated from the five taps in my house’s central plumbing.  Malaria?  They cured that, right?  That one president invented a vaccine, I think.

Goodnight.

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homecoming

Well folks, we’re back home after our extended jaunt.

I won’t spend a lot of time waxing about how great it was (it was) or how well-behaved we all were with each other (angels) or how I feel more American for the experience (Semper Fi).  Instead I wanted to write about being home.

We rolled up Tuesday afternoon and worked until late that night just unpacking the RV.  Moving load after load of our road-things back into the house – not putting them away in their proper places, mind you, just facilitating the exodus.  Wednesday we rose early and began the arduous process of cleansing the vehicle before return – a process which reminded us both of the old apartment days, facing that “how much do we need to clean?” quandary.  One final sewage and wastewater dump and we had the vehicle back on time.  It was an odd feeling, dropping it off for good again… and the resultant move-out piles are still only partially dealt with.

Sharaun has said to me several times that she’d have been ready to do another six weeks, not come back for double our time away.  I have to agree, although being home is nice.  We took the homecoming mass unpacking as an opportunity to do some spring-cleaning and organizing (something the OCD in me adores).  Having a few days off before returning to work, I had a small list of minor projects I wanted to run-through and have been able to make good progress.  Yes, it’s good being home; I love our house.

And yeah, I’m slowly beginning to peek at work stuff.  I re-downloaded the corporate email app to my phone and have been doing sporadic replies to new threads.  I’ve batch-downloaded everything which came while we were out and halfheartedly parsed through it once or twice.  I had lunch with my coverage guy and good buddy and used the hour to poke a bit about what’s been going on.  You might say I’m thinning the cobwebs, but I guess it’ll be a week or so before I’m back firing on all cylinders.  From what I’ve seen, things for the most part went as things tend to go…

And with that quick summary I’m off to enjoy the day & kick around on Keaton’s last couple videos.  Until Monday for the blog, take it easy.

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ups and downs

Man I wish we hadn’t gone to Vegas.

The Grand Canyon was, to me, the epitome of what’s great about this trip.  An outstanding National Park, expertly run and managed, clean, easy to get around and enjoy – and so dang beautiful.  Part of this could have been my expectations, as I was assuming the Canyon would come up on us while we traveled along the same desert flatland we’d been in for days.  I hadn’t even imagined the forested environment at the park’s elevation.

Before we left I had people tell me all sorts of things about the places we were going.  “Mt. Rushmore is pretty boring.”  “Niagara is a five-minute stop, at most.”  “The Grand Canyon is ‘OK,’ but it’s really just a big hole, it would be hard to spend multiple days there.”  I tell you what, though: No place, not a single one, on this trip inspired me the way that one did.  Maybe it’s because we’re nearing the end and it was such a pleasant surprise, I don’t know.  What I do know, however, is that I’ve got to get back there and do so “adult” hiking.  I want to go rim-to-rim, want to raft… something about that place made me want to settle down and never leave.  Thanks Mike for the recommendation to stay a little while, you were spot-on.

And if the Grand Canyon was the epitome of what I wanted out of this trip, Las Vegas was the antithesis.  When I finally hit the pillow last night around midnight I told Sharaun, “I think it was a mistake bringing the family to Vegas.”  Don’t get me wrong, I think I could perhaps have a decent time here with a pack of friends – but as far as “harshing the buzz” of our current trip, this place was all about it.  One big commercialized, sprawling shopping mall with the worst of human proclivities on display at all times.  All glitz, glam, spray-tan and popped-collars, thudding bass and costume-jewelry and lipstick-on-pigs – it was the polar opposite of what I was seeking from the trip, and my personal nightmare in terms of “things to do” (shop, waste money, dance at a club, pay for sex, etc.).

Thankfully, it was just a one-night “miss” and we’re closing the whole thing down with another few days in God’s country.  And, really, we did have some fun… the Bellagio fountains were cool, the gardens inside too.  The volcano at the Mirage was neat; the Atlantis show was fun, and dinner was good.  Other than that, blech.  Maybe some other time, in some other context… who knows…

And then it’s over!  Keaton’s new video is uploading now, look for it soon.  See ya!

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t-minus seven

A week from today and I’ll be pulling this RV into our driveway at home.  The next day I’ll return it to the rental joint.  The following Monday I’ll rejoin corporate zombieland and trudge among the cubicles groaning for reeeee-sooouurces, sche-duuuules, and the like.  I’m not looking forward to going back.

This week we stopped over in New Mexico.  On our route is a little winery run by a fellow I used to work with at the sawmill.  Only he doesn’t work at the sawmill anymore.  He makes wine in Mew Mexico now.  In his tasting room we had the talk again (I’ve had the same talk with him over dinners in Shanghai, Austin, and California).  Y’know, the talk about running away from corporate indentured servitude, about making your own road and tossing the paycheck for the passion.  One thing this trip impressed upon me, seeing so many old friends in so many places across the country doing so many different things: There’s a lot out there to do.

I almost covet my job, thanking God for the work and the income and the fact that I don’t hate it.  All those things are good to be thankful for.  But when I see so many people doing so many things and living just as happily and fruitfully it reminds me that my job isn’t the only job.  It’s not the only way to make ends meet.  Right now it’s working well, sure.  But sitting at that winery, walking around that cheese farm, riding in that fire truck – those are all good pieces of information to override the typecast poison of the modern cast of the American Dream.  It makes a guy think that there’s infinite mobility out there, and that nothing is good enough to be resigned to, y’know?  I mean there’s gotta be a middle-school math teacher position open somewhere in upstate New York… right?

Anyway, gloom aside – I’m really looking forward to our last week.  Sharaun’s driving us towards the Grand Canyon as I write in the passenger seat and we’ll spend two full days there  bumming around.  After that we decided to make one more last-minute change to the itinerary and toss Death Valley for an evening in Vegas.  The goal is to get in early enough to take in a show, wander around, and eat some buffet.  I’ve never been, and we’ll be at the Hoover Dam that same day so it just made sense.  I know, the only people who take a baby and a five year old to Las Vegas.  After Vegas we close the trip with a few much-anticipated days with friends for the Fourth down in the California high desert.  Can’t wait.

I’m off to edit together Keaton’s newest video, with luck I’ll get it done on the road and have it posted before we arrive at the Canyon tonight.  Until later.