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i’m that dad

Today was the first of my six days without Sharaun.  By now she’s on her cruise ship and is giddy with some pre-teen New Kids on the Block fever.

The day started early as Sharaun was busy getting up and out around 4am.  I slept poorly after she left, tossing and turning until the alarm woke me at 5:30am.  I had a 7am meeting I needed to be on, one of those things where your manager’s manager’s manager would be asking your opinion on something.  Before that, however, I had to get Cohen over to the house of our kind friend who offered to watch him today.  We pulled into her driveway at 6:40am; not too bad.  Keaton colored groggily in the car, waiting while I dropped off Cohen and gave some terse guidance around his daily routine.

We left around 6:50am, somehow found time to run through the McDonalds drive-thru and grab some McGriddles and still make it back to the house by 7am on the dot. I dialed into my call and we ate while I sat on mute waiting to be called on.  The call went the full hour and afterward Keaton and I were out of the house and on the road again by ten after.  Sharaun had made arrangements for Keaton and Cohen to go to a local daycare on the days I had to work, the sawmill offers employees a complimentary week of daycare per child per year for just this kind of situation.  Since the ratio of teachers to babies is higher than teachers to fiver year olds, they had room for Keaton every day but could only fit Cohen in on two of them.

I have to admit, I was probably more nervous than Keaton whilst dropping her off.  She had told me in the car that she might be “shy” and keep to herself… letting me in a little on her through process, knowingly or not.  I tried to play it smart, I walked her to her classroom, introduced her to her teachers, and promptly gave her a big hug and kiss before turning quickly to leave.  I didn’t want to linger, as I was worried it might give her feet time to cool and re-think how “OK” she was being left there.  I caught her by surprise, I think, doing the whole drop-off so ninja-quick.  Out of the corner of my eye as I was leaving I saw a look of trouble and doubt blooming on her face and, although my heart was exploding at seeing it, I strode firmly out the door without a lingering glance or any hesitation.

OK so when I got to the car I nearly had to fight back tears.  Keaton can be “sensitive” socially.  She seems to care, already, at this age, about how people receive her and she wants to be liked.  I could tell she was nervous and shy and more than a little worried about fending for herself among this classroom thick with well-established friendships.  (Or maybe it was all in my head… and I was just projected the old social fears I myself once had onto my daughter, who knows.)  I guess it’s fair to say I was feeling anxious on her behalf, hoping she made quick buddies and fit in and had a good time.   And yeah, I’ll admit that I called the place at noon to get a halfway-point status report.  I’m that dad, apparently.

Happy to say, though, that Keaton loved her day at daycare and is excited to go back tomorrow.  She made friend and they palled around together most of the day; they had music time and she learned new songs; they had an art table that she stuck close to; she had hot dogs and vegetables and tots for lunch.  Not only that, Cohen was a good kid for our friend, napping per schedule and being generally all-around awesome.  After day one, I’m feeling up.  Also could’ve helped that the day at work was busy enough that I didn’t really have time to worry about anything but the present…

I got this dad stuff licked.  Hurry home, mama; we miss you!

What a boring entry.  I’d go back and delete it were I not just happy to have written. Goodnight.

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last trim till july

Two Mondays ago I trimmed my beard for the final time before our big trip.  When we get back, it’ll be with some eight weeks of growth hanging off my face.

I don’t mean shaving (or, perhaps “shaping,” better put).  I’ll still shave, both my head and to shape my beard the way I like it – I just won’t go over the whole of the growth with clippers to keep it to a certain length.  So it won’t be entirely unruly, but it will probably be very unattractive.  I don’t grow a good beard; I’m missing the upper-lip and goatee areas… just don’t grow there.  So what I can do is what I can do.  There is something… manly… or primitive, about not shaving (OK about half-shaving, in this case).  There’s a Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young song where David Crosby talks about a hippie guy who’s considering cutting his hair.  In the song, obviously enough called “Almost Cut My Hair,” Crosby says he didn’t cut his hair because he feels “like letting his freedom flag fly.”  I like that.  In my case though I’m more like unfurling my freedom shag (supposed to be a carpet analogy).

I know I will likely look ridiculous, but I believe this is an essential part of this third-life crisis.  Not only will I wear a belt buckle that has a picture of an RV on it (no, really, Sharaun and Keaton bought me one as a gift – it’s the featured image alongside this post) and a leather cowboy hat, I will be sporting an unruly beard to boot.  In my head this is my road persona… some dust-caked nomad tumbling over hill and dale and stopping for club sandwiches in forgotten diners.  Except I’ll be toting my family along with me, a clean and well-manicured suburban unit which’ll no doubt appear mismatched with my shabby disarray.  OK, OK, I admit… the whole “dust caked” and “shabby disarray” thing is only the glam in my head… people will see me as yuppie-Joe hiding under facial hair and affected accoutrement.  But who cares!

Goodnight suckers.  Love you.

 

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don’t kick that anthill

Hey friends and readers who don’t like me.

It’s Monday we are at t-minus 13 days until the big trip.  From a work perspective this means that I’m at t-minus 9 days (I’m taking that last Friday off to pick up the vehicle).  If I find more time to write between now and then, you’ll likely hear me come back to this theme again and again.  Y’know, the “Oh Lord I only have X days left to get this all done!” with a , “Oh Lord I only have X-1 days left to get this all done!” follow-up.  I have a feeling that, as the sun sets on those last couple days, and the whistle blows at 5pm as I leave the sawmill that this guilt will begin to fade into excitement.  Already I’m making little lists of things I want to remember to bring.  Sharaun’s been doing a good job borrowing things from her Facebook consort… thus helping us minimize our continued investment.

Speaking of Sharaun, she leaves for her New Kids On the Block cruise on Wednesday morning.  Abandoning me to both kids and a full-time job and all the week-before planning madness.  I don’t want to devote much writing time to this cruise, because I’m afraid I’ll get to riled up.  I’m glad she’s going because she wants to so bad… the kind of bad where you might mistake her for a thirteen year old teenie-bopper instead of an established stay-at-home mom of the suburbs.  I’m also glad she’ll have some time to cut loose with her friends, so there’s that.  But don’t ever, ever, try and talk to me about the money thing.  If I think too long about it I get disgusted (probably shouldn’t tell her that either, even though she already knows it’s not good to kick the anthill).  But let’s talk about it just a bit… perhaps…

I wouldn’t deny her the experience because of cost, obviously… no.  What angries up my blood is realizing how rational it is in her mind to spend so exorbitantly on something I consider so wasteful.  I think it’s that mental disconnect around “return on investment” that irks me.  To her it’s a “no duh” to spend so much on something like this, to me it’s akin to burning dollars.  But then again, I don’t expect to understand it… the ROI for her is something I’ll not be able to comprehend.  I’d like to say that there’s nothing I would be willing to spend so stupidly on… but I’m fearful of making such a statement and then getting called down with lightning.  I suppose I can leave it at that, because if we go much further down this route I’ll begin playing the apologetic and start questioning myself in her voice about the money I’m disposing on this silly RV trip (which, I might schizophrenically add, is a family thing).  I could do this all day… debate with my own consciousness.  Probably as good reading as it is thinking, though, huh?

Anyway it’s the kids and Mr. Mom for the latter half of the week, our last weekend in town, and Monday of next week.  Then Sharaun’s back and we have five days to get everything together, load it into the vehicle, and hit the road.  It’s going to go by in a blur, I already know it.  Wish me luck.

Goodnight.

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live bees in the grocery store?

It’s Friday.  Huzzah.

Listening to Nirvana’s In Utero, a kind of underrated record if you ask me.  I think when it came out I had already decided Nirvana was passe, being all cool and hip and sixteen and driving.  I bought the cassette, probably from good old Omni music in the mall (where just a few years later I’d be assistant manager), and listened to it in my read Nissan Sentra.  Aww crap, now you guys can verify you’re really me when logging into my bank account.  You just need to know what highschool I went to and where my dad was born.

Sharaun bought this little baggie of candied pecans from the bulk section at the local supermarket.  She put them into a salad with dried cranberries and some raspberry vinaigrette dressing.  Normally I would turn up my nose at such a sweet, feminine concoction.  Who can expect a man to eat something like this?  Fruit and nuts to complement a salad?  No thanks.  But I tell you internet, that salad was delicious.  And those candied pecans?  Those were the icing on the cake.  The bulk aisle done good.

Speaking of the bulk aisle, that place is awesome.  Bulk anything.  Why buy anything in packaging anymore?  Fill a plastic bag with flour or dogfood or steel-cut-oats or trail mix or candy.  Heck they even have bulk honey.  No, I’m serious.  You know those white beehive-box things you see in fields?  Like the picture accompanying this post.  They have a row of those very things right there in the store, with freakin’ taps on them.  Three kinds, clover honey and some other stuff I can’t remember.  You walk right up to these beehives, twist the lever on the tap, and out flows a slow stream of awesome honey.

I was marveling over these things on a rare joint-shopping trip with Sharaun when I noticed large signs posted on each: “Warning – Do Not Lift Lid.  Live Bees Inside.”  Wait… what?  The bees are actually in the thing making honey?  Right there inside the store?  I had to ask Sharaun, “Hey babe, do you think there are really bees in there?!”  “Of course,” she answered, as if it were obvious, “It says so right on the sign.”  Still though, I was tempted to not buy it… I mean there were no locks or straps or catches or anything on those wooden lids.  From what I could tell I could’ve just lifted one up and been attacked by a hivefull of bees.  Seems like a liability.  I thought it must be for the effect… because… live bees in the grocery store?  (I’m not the only one.)

Write some kind of witty wrap-up here.  Goodnight.

 

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days and videos

Hey what’s up internet somehow it got to be Thursday and I need more days before it’s the weekend OK?  How about we make some kind of deal.  You give me a day between today and Friday, or even between Friday and Saturday.  I need this extra day because I still want, and furthermore feel I deserve, two days of weekend yet need another day of work.  We could compromise, call it Tweenday or Foreday or something like that.  Just another eight hours.  But don’t really do it, because I want Friday to be here.  OK thanks.

Tonight I wanted to shoot a practice video to test out both the new point-and-shoot camera as well as the ease-of-use of the new Windows 7 updated Movie Maker software.  Since I’m planning to try upload video content during our trip, specifically a video diary series featuring Keaton’s road-trip commentary, I was hoping that the new version of Movie Maker was as easy to use as the previous one.  Turns out it’s easier and faster, and I threw together a montage in short order.  After uploading to YouTube and linking to Keaton’s webpage, I’m super happy with the results.  You can check it out here.  Best case is we can upload videos like these as our travels bring us to places where we’ll have connectivity (most proper RV places now have wireless, and I’ll be serving IPs from the phone’s connection wherever we have data service, so I feel the chances are good).

I am going to go now.  Give me a break; I did a video.  Goodnight.

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ninety-six hours

Today at work I sat down to make a list of all the things I want to get done, or get to some defined state, before leaving for our trip.

As part of this, I mapped out exactly how many working days I have left to accomplish these things.  Like any analytical person, I then tried to divide the estimated hours of work into my available working hours to see how much of a challenge I have ahead.  Shockingly, I have a scant twelve working days before I’m gone for six weeks.  Upon seeing this, I was struck with two emotional reactions: panic and guilt.  Twelve days is not going to cut it.  And I am working fast.  I’m going faster than I’m normally comfortable with, fast to the point where I sacrifice some of my meticulousness for raw results.

Twelve days is not just scant, it’s impossible.  I changed the name of the column on my spreadsheet to read “Desired leave-ready state” instead of “Estimated date of completion;” it’s not all going to get all done.  I decided that I’m going to start going in at 7am to get an extra hour on each day, I have some false hope that this will make a material difference – and some real hope that it’ll at least ease my conscience.

I don’t know why I feel guilty.  I describe this to some of my friends and they look at me sideways.  I can’t help it; I want to leave things in perfect order and leave without feeling like things are unfinished.  But things at work are in a state of high-flux; fluid, changing around me and some of it beyond my control.  Too many times I feel like I talk about work like it’s more stressful than it is, but really it’s just what I make it to be.  Right now I’m making it to be really, really difficult.  But I do feel guilty about leaving when things are so up-in-the-air.  I feel bad for dropping things and running, and then at the same time feel good about taking advantage of the opportunity to do just that.  Someone told me, “Don’t worry Dave, the sawmill will be here when you get back, just the same as it was when you left.”  I know this.  But the waning days have me sweating nonetheless.

I suppose like I feel like I’m letting my boss down.  Because things haven’t gone according to my supposed-to-be-spotless plan.  Hell, things have gone 180° out from that plan and continue to slide from bad to worse.  Maybe it doesn’t matter in the long run, except it does.  I hate feeling like my image is besmirched.  That guy who always packs exactly days+one pairs of clean underwear when he travels, who never pays a bill a day late… that guy’s plan went to pot.  What happened to that guy, anyway?  I heard he let the wheels fall off then split.  You sure that guy is of the mettle we want?

Goodnight.

 

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barrier to entry

This evening I looked up how much the people who walk around Disneyland dressed in-character make per hour.

It’s a mite.  A pittance.

Not only that, but the “audition” process involves learning a small bit of choreography before you can move on to the improvisation scene.  If the peanuts for pay wasn’t a barrier to entry, the dancing likely would be.

Guides on the internet suggest taking an introductory dance class and working on your “flexibility” before auditioning.  Not the kind of “flexibility” I put on my resume, either; the literal kind which might’ve enabled me to touch my toes back in 7th grade.  Might’ve.

I don’t think a man could support a family as Goofy.

Guess I’ll continue the computer engineer gig for a while.

Goodnight.