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displacing fever & weariness

Man, Sharaun made some yum dinner.

I can still taste the garlic and onions in my mouth.  No, I might not make the best conversation partner but they are certain pungent flavors which linger in the mouth that I absolutely dig, regardless of unappealing they may make my breath.  A good tobacco is one; pipe, cigar (certainly not the wet-ashes aftertaste that is American cigarettes; making the “why” of my sometimes-vice all the murkier).  Garlic is another, as is onion, and somewhat pungent meats, like lamb. A strong cup of coffee; a properly malty beer (be easy with those hops!, meister); chocolate.  I know there are more, but Sharaun looked at me all crazy when I asked her to name some.

But anyway, it was a fancy dinner to be sure – and I even downed a nice glass of red wine alongside it (yet another pleasant mouth-memory, this lingering malaise can be damned).

The salad had red bell pepper and little bits of red onion, the meatloaf was her “Greek turkey” thing… made with spinach, feta cheese and pine nuts and topped with a homemade tzatziki sauce.  As I enjoyed each bite I kept thinking, “Man, this is some fancy junk!  I mean… like restaurant-fancy and whatnot!  No really… who else has got a wife making him this kind of fare?!”  I think the gourmet spread actually helped me make dents in this cold or sickness or whatever.  Such a well-met meal was able to sneak into those chinks and and cracks and pockets, filling them with delicious and displacing fever and weariness.  And, with the help the pine nuts and the feta and the red onion I’m sure tonight will be my eve of conquer – the night I kick this sick.

It’s good, too.  I need to get back to work something awful, and need to shave my head and face (everything from the neck-up, I suppose you could say) even more.  And… if, by some extra God-given grace, I wake feeling 100% – I’d like to spend an hour at the gym before the sawmill.  One can want, right?

Goodnight internet.

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the breakbone

I spent all weekend cooking in my own skin.

Last night I woke so cold (that deceptive, you know it’s not real, cold of a fever) that I stumbled into the living room in the dark to grab another blanket to cover with.  As I shivered my way back to sleep I stuck the digital thermometer in my ear for a few seconds.  It beeped and I hit a button on my cellphone to get enough light to read by (why, digital thermometer people, would you not backlight the temperature readout?): 102.1°, it said.

Reluctantly, I arose again to pop another couple Tylenol.  At the same time I swallowed a Sudafed, already knowing it wouldn’t, like the others I’d popped before it hadn’t, do a dang thing to diminish the tight ball of pressure in my head – the stuffy pain that I could will to one side of my face or the other by putting that side into the pillow.  I don’t know why that muck is so hard to get out, when it seems to be beating against my cheekbones and eyes all day to do just that.

I thought maybe be tonight I’d be on the mend.  But no, I’m still fevered.  Not running as high as the previous days, but I’m still dosing with a steady regimen to keep the numbers in check.  It goes in cycles, and every few hours I’ll break out in a warm sweat and feel so much better for about sixty minutes.  Much past that, though, and the heat returns to my skin and I get a bone-tiredness that takes me back to the couch or the bed to wait out another cycle.

I know how I got sick; it was that weirdo lady on the plane.  So strange with her two kids, one of them named Sophia who was two-and-something years old yet wouldn’t stop fondling for her mom’s breast and crying.  “As you can see, I’ve not quite weaned her yet,” she said.  Hey, nothing a whit strange by world standards… I suppose – but that wasn’t what made you so odd.  Anyway, you told me as we were parting ways in the terminal: “I’d shake your hand but I’ve got a nasty cold.”  And then there you and your family were, in 29A, 29B, and 29C.  And us, occupying 28D, 28E, and 28F, we must have been well within the zone of communicability.  Oh I know it was you, weird red-headed lady… but I don’t blame you… you got it from someone too.

Luckily, most of the others in the house seem to have recovered.  It’s just me sticking it out.  I’ve all but decided to call in sick tomorrow, but am stubbornly “playing it by ear” until the alarm bell rings.

Until then, goodnight.

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the abhorrent spinning of everything

12:30am and I have precious little time to write before all cognisance is stolen from me by those consecutive shots of tequila.

It’s a brutal set of paces I’m putting my fingers through, they plead and moan and beg and the spellcheck is in spades and things are difficult to type.  Stupid tendons fight every push and pull of keyboard.  Furious fibers pretend they are going to obey, yet betray none the less.  It’s like the Gods are trying to tell me something: Don’t write tonight; don’t.

To say that my intake was over-met tonight is an understatement.  Mark me, internet, I don’t revel in these excesses; I truly don’t.  I promise.  I have some amount of regret, it’s true.  But what’s hard is that, with each incremental keystroke, with each purposed muscle movement, I’m falling off the cliff.  If you, dear friends, could comprehend the effort taken to jot down these few phrases, you’d lavish praise upon me.  For I, tendons and acuity and muscle-memory protesting with ever fiber, have triumphed and written.  I, like so many other pathfinders before me, have overcome the stupor from within which I elucidate… and flipped my handicap to virtue.

What?  You have no idea of which I write?  I am not surprised.  Were ye with me this eve?  Were ye Pat?  Were ye Brian?  Were ye Lang?  Were ye Aquiles?  Nay; ye were not.  Then don’t come to me, step to me, and profess your allegiance and foreknowledge.  This cabal is tight; is locked; loaded.

Can you even understand that I ventured to write?  I somehow think this odd; why would I?  Sharaun, when I informed her so, mocked me slightly.  “Why would you try to write?   You’re obviously in no shape to string together words.”  Not in those words, no… but close enough.

Home.  Both kids and the wife have fevers.  I must attend.  This will not be good.  Water; it is required for said tasks.

But, y’all, because I care.  Now… I must go address the abhorrent spinning of everything.  Goodnight.

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pop a hands-free wheelie

It’s 10pm and I should have been in bed an hour ago.  As soon as I got home from work I started whining about how tired I was.  Carryover tired from yesterday, thanks owed to our our late-night (early morning?) arrival from Florida.  I am not reasonable, however, and did not shoot for a 9pm or maybe even 10pm turn-in.  Nay, I’ll catch-up overnight.

For Christmas Santa brought Keaton a “big girl” bike.  This thing is a clear graduation from the Shiner-sized bicycles she’s had as a toddler.  Her previous bike was quite nice, but in truth she’d outgrown it a year or so ago.  She was still able to peddle around on it, however, and still enjoyed it, so we didn’t have much motivation to upgrade.  Just before the weather started turning rainy and foggy and cooler, though, I noticed her trying to actually use that under-sized thing more and more – and that called my attention to just how much she’d outgrown it.  I told Sharaun: A “big girl” bike from Santa for Christmas.

We ordered it off the web, custom welded by some Chinese kid in an alley (Wal Mart won’t pay for real safety lenses so the kid has cheesecloth tied around his forehead and covering his eyes).  Had it delivered to our dear friend’s house, and before we left for Florida I went over and assembled the thing.  Then, after we’d left, she brought it over to our place, set it out all fancy-like under the tree (or, in front of the tree, more rightly), and took a picture for us which she then sent to my phone.  On Christmas morning in Florida Sharaun asked me, while Keaton opened gifts, “Hey David, can you check my mail for me?”  I pulled out my phone, called-up the picture, and announced that Sharaun had no mail but that Keaton got one from Santa.  We showed her the picture and I “read” Santa’s mail saying he’d brought the bike to California by mistake, but that it’d be there waiting when she returned.

And now I can’t wait to get her on it.  Being that it’s a real big girl bike it didn’t come with training wheels.  I’d initially told Keaton we’d have to wait to try riding it until we could get a pair that fit, but she announced, of her own accord, that she didn’t even need them.  She’s wrong, of course, but I’m going to go ahead try to break her in Navy Seals style and just keep my hands on the bike as we do the first few lessons in the cul-de-sac.  Who knows, maybe she’ll be a natural (I seem to remember me taking off like a boss the first time I rode sans side-wheels, but that could be me remembering wrong) and she’ll take off and pop a hands-free wheelie.  That would be cool.

If the weather cooperates I’ll have Sharaun video the lessons this weekend and maybe have a video up next week.  Should make for good daddy/daughter stuff, and I eat that stuff up.

‘Night.

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decant, decant, decant

Spent the morning working.  Well, I say that… but in reality I probably spent about two hours working and another two hours playing around with the details for the coming of our planned RV odyssey.

I’m glad I did.  I always plan in a series of refining steps, like some alchemist who decants, decants, and decants some more in search of the Philosopher’s Stone – a perfect itinerary.  Today my re-plan, my second-layer planning, led to a couple revelations: #1, I don’t have to burn any vacation like I’d thought – I can take six weeks of pure “paid family leave” and be just fine; #2, Even my second itinerary, which I intended to slow-down the aggressiveness of my first try, was yet still too aggressive.  In re-evaluating things, I started from basics – asking myself how many “zero-mile” days made sense per week of driving.  In other words, what’s the ideal driving vs. not-driving ratio for a “leisurely” RV jaunt?

I Google’d, asked friends and family, and in the end decided that a 40/60 driving/not-driving ratio is ideal – with an even 50/50 split being as miles-heavy as we’d be willing to go.  Coming to this realization meant we had to do some tweaking to the route, taking out the southernmost Key West and the northernmost Glacier National Park spurs.  With the route streamlined to around 7,500 miles we were able to hit near the 50% ratio.  We still plan to hit most all of the same landmarks we’d planned on, as well as visit with family and friends, so the plan didn’t suffer too greatly.

We also got a chance to do some more thinking on the type of RV we want to rent, and get a better idea of cost for the ~30ft Class A vehicle.  Yeah, it’s all in the master spreadsheet.  I also found an hour this past week to register a new domain where we’ll host Keaton’s roadtrip video diaries.  It’s just a  bunch of test entries in an unfinished theme right now, but it’ll do nicely I think.

It’s kind of silly to stop for a minute and think about how excited I am for this trip (which, I might note, is just an ambitious “plan” until we put some money down – which will chart our course more deterministically).  Being that it’s five some months away and, as mentioned, solely on paper at the moment.  But… I think it’s the realization that I’m bound and determined here… it’s going to happen… we’ll make it happen.  That kind of stuff.  And, for reals y’all, the anticipation is high already.

Until tomorrow, when I wake up back in California – see ya.

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smoke and spirits

Happy New Year’s Eve, friends and family (and enemies and the indifferent and still-not-sure).

Last night went and had a couple cigars with the brother-in-law.  Some strip-mall smokes and spirits hole, but really nice.  I told Doug, as we were sitting there, that in a past life I must have been a smoker or frequented places where smoke hung regular in the air – as I’m oddly at-home comfortable in those types of places today.  Even though I leave with my clothes smelling like they were washed in some foul smoke-bath (I guess they were), my skin feels like paper and my sinuses tighten so much my head feels heavier for it – I enjoy the smoking experience.

Pipes, cigars, even the occasional cigarette… all  have a draw.  Like I say, maybe in some previous life this was comfortable to me.  Or, maybe, Piaget was onto something and the stage of my youth which was marked by time spent with the smokestacks who were my maternal grandparents is imprinted alongside “safe, comfortable, and easy” in my mind.

Anyway we hung out and smoked and drank dark beer (Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout, something I fist had as a bottle offered in trade for a campfired hot dog by a dirty hippie at a Grateful Dead festival).  We talked about grown up things to justify our grey hair and sore feet: real estate investments, insurance, the march of technology, our jobs and families.  In the end I found myself again wishing that were we closer to family.  A hollow hope and really not much more for now, since I wouldn’t leave our current situation anyway; I’m risk-averse and happy and comfortable.  But for a lark it’s fun to sit and think what I might do if we up and hauled buggy across the country.  Maybe I could start a whole new career.  Maybe not.

See ya.

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always an odyssey

Disney is always an odyssey.

We left the house just before 7am still partially under cover of darkness and with a thin layer of frost on the vehicle.  The monorail was out of order, so we ferried over to the park and were inside by 8:45am (much later than our intended 8am arrival).  Didn’t matter though, we killed it.  It’s a good thing both Sharaun and I enjoy “maximizing” Disney… and that Keaton has the chops to handle a full day of park.  We didn’t get home until midnight on the nose, leaving the park around 10:30pm.  I know; sounds insane – guess it is kind of insane.  But, we did all the things we wanted to do and didn’t feel too rushed or frantic.

Being just a little too young for fourteen hours of fun, Cohen stayed back with Ami.  Keaton, as expected, had a blast.  She got an autograph book and set off to meet some characters.  When all was said and done she had four princesses (including Rapunzel, her favorite part of the day), one prince, and Donald.  Not bad, and gives her something to “collect” upon future visits.  She also braved the Haunted Mansion without once cowering into our shoulders or covering her eyes (a first).  In fact, she examined the attraction with the cold measuring eyes of a Halloween prop maker’s daughter – noting several times that, “Dad, you could make that for our house at Halloween!”  Way to puff me up.

Let me just say it: I love Disney; I’m like a kid myself when it comes to the place.  And even though I think Disneyland edges out the Magic Kingdom – I’ll take a trip to either any day.  So what if my feet are sore and my day’s diet was crappy park food and snacks?  It was worth it to see Keaton’s smile (and my own, and Sharaun’s) when she got a hug from Cinderella.

Peace out.