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affirmation

And this is just how the weeks go… one week I’ll go all five days and the next I’ll hit less than 50%.  It’s still a habit and I don’t think I could ever abandon it, but some days are more conducive than others.

This morning I was getting ready to go to work.  As I’ve been out of both my gym-going habit and my eating-better habit, I’ve put back on a shameful percentage of what I once lost and I was looking sadly at my overhanging gut in the after-pants-before-shirt phase of dressing.

I walked into the living room and gave my belly a halfhearted two-handed lift for emphasis as I said aloud to Sharaun, “Man, I’m fat.”  Keaton jumped on that, replying strongly, “Dad, you are definitely not fat.”  I loved the sincerity in her voice; such affirmation!  I told her, “Thanks babe, that’s a nice thing to say.”

“You just have a really mooshy belly,” she finished.

Good to know.  Not fat – check; really mooshy belly – check.

Time to get back to the gym.

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keaton’s crush

The image accompanying this post was drawn by Keaton this Sunday at church.  Let me explain…

The other day I walked by Keaton’s room and saw her sitting on the bed, apparently doing nothing. I did a double-take and rounded to take another look. Upon closer inspection, she wasn’t exactly doing nothing: She was sitting quietly, hands folded in her lap, head angled slightly skyward, with a pie-eyed look on her face. My first thought was that she looked “contemplative.” Since I’m more accustomed to seeing her playing with her dollhouse or reading books or being engrossed in some imagined world, the Rodin-esque pose made me curious.

“Whatcha doin’, babe?” I asked. “I’m just thinking about something,” she replied. “I can see that… what are you thinking about?,” I asked. “Daaaad…” she sung-spoke, “Mom already knows what I’m thinking about.”  A curious explanation to a curious situation, I filed it away and made a mental note to ask Sharaun what she might be thinking on.  “OK,” I said, “Don’t think too hard,” and left her to it.

Arriving in the living room I asked Sharaun, “Keaton’s in there just sitting on the bed mooning over something.  It’s odd. She said you’d know…”  She cut me off, “Oh man, does she have my phone again?”  “No,” I said, “at least I didn’t see your phone.  Why?  What’s she doing with your phone.”  She sighed… rolled her eyes… and began to explain.

There’s a new mom at the weekly moms’ group at church, and with the new mom came a new kid – Jason.  Keaton really likes Jason… he is her new “favorite kid” at the moms’ group.  As she tells me this, I’m wondering if I smile and feel amused or if I frown and wonder why my not-quite five year old daughter thinks she has a crush on a boy.  Keaton, she explains, has been looking at a picture taken of she and Jason on the phone, and then basically doing a tiny mimic of a teenage swoon.

Keaton has mentioned Jason a few times since.  She’s asked me to invite him and his family to dinner.  Asked if Jason could come over and play.  Told me a few times about how much she likes playing with Jason on Tuesdays.  Jason, Jason, Jason.  While it’s not anything over-the-top or truly “concerning,” as a dad it started to get mulled over in my brain-piece.

All of the sudden, I found myself a little confused.  I started asking “parenting” type questions.  Where did she learn about “liking” boys?!  Is it normal for kids this young to do this?  Even assuming she doesn’t really understand what she’s doing, is it normal for her to emulate it?  Those “What to Expect” books stopped after “… the Third Year” so I’m totally on my own here, adrift in uncharted waters… I tried to reason it out.

Where did she learn it?  Oh I’m convinced she learned it from Velma’s unrequieted love for Shaggy on the Cartoon Network’s modern instantiation of the Scooby Doo show.  I’ll admit, I love that new Scooby Doo.  I actually enjoy watching it with Keaton. I should know that, if it’s something I can enjoy, as a full-grown adult, then the themes are probably a little “advanced” for a four year old.  Maybe it’s time to stop watching the new Scooby Doo.

OK so maybe Scooby Doo is to blame for the concept or example.  But how about the question of it being “normal” or not?  Then I remembered the first love-note I got as a kid… in kindergarten.  My folks saved it; stuck it in the pages of my baby book.  Was that abnormal?  I don’t know… but kindergarten is about five years old, right?  Guess what, dad?… so is your daughter.

In the end, I calmed down and chalked it up to kids being kids.  Maybe we’ll invite Jason’s folks over some time so I can check this dude out… get a feel for his aspirations in life, see how he carries himself, whether he’s got good instincts.  Ha.

Girls… man I’m in for it.

I’m just thankful she hasn’t learned how to draw hearts yet; seeing little pretend ones at her hand my break my for-real big one just a little bit.  Goodnight.

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reading

Today I stopped at the bookstore on the way home from work.

The second-to-last book in the epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time was released Tuesday and I’ve been meaning to get it ever since.  In fact, I’ve been waiting on this book (and the next one, which will wrap the series) for over a year.  See, I’ve been reading this series for something like on the order of of thirteen years.  Not straight-through, mind you.  I think I’ve read the first ten or so volumes (a mere ~8,500 pages) a total of three times after I’d “caught up” to the publishing/release schedule and had to wait for new volumes to come out.

The series’ original author, Robert Jordan, died in 2007, and another writer, Brandon Sanderson, picked up the quill in his stead, filling in the gaps from Jordan’s notes and determined to complete the story.  I was worried about the Sanderson-penned volumes, but loved the first one he co-authored.  Anyway, I’m super excited to read the new release and be only two years away from the finale.

While I was in line waiting to purchase the book a mother and her son, aged around seven or so by my estimates, queued up behind me.  He was excitedly telling his mother about his intended purchase.  “I can’t wait to read this Mom.  It’s another murder-mystery and his last story was soo good.”  The mom spoke to him about the series, asking him why he liked it so much, and he explained that he “just really like(d) the characters and the suspense.”  I turned around, clutching my tome, and smiled at the mom as if to subliminally communicate, “Good on you, mom, for encouraging your son to read.  You’re doing alright.”  Thankfully I think she got my telepathic message instead of assuming I was hitting on her, and offered a nice knowing smile in return.

I don’t know if kids loving books and reading really means anything about the future of humanity, but witnessing that seemed somehow refreshing and restorative of my faith therein.  Maybe that’s bad… that something as simple and one-time commonplace seems to me so impactful.. probably something wrong with me and not some grand statement on society though.

Gotta go, Towers of Midnight is calling to me.  Goodnight.

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eating breakfast

Something’s happened to me lately. After spending all of my adult life as a person who never ate breakfast, I’m all the sudden hungry in the early morning.

This is new to me. Breakfast has never been part of my morning routine. At least, not in any substantial way. A few years ago, when the sawmill started giving away fruit, I began eating a banana or apple with my morning coffee. I did this more for fruit-intake reasons than any three-squares-a-day thing. Maybe this small expected intake worked to change my metabolism to some degree, training me, as it were, to desire food in the morning. I don’t know, but there’s no denying that I’m now looking for a (more substantial than fruit) meal to start my day.

So far, I’ve handled this poorly. I’ve been purchasing this meal at work and eating it at the desk as I read my morning news. That costs money and likely means I’m eating something in which tater tots have been integrated, not the healthiest options (Father in Heaven, please help me overcome this penchant for tots). To adapt, however, I need to change my whole morning.

In fact, I’ve always thought it might be nice to do the kind of 1950s sitcom breakfast table thing. You know, coffee and paper while I eat half a grapefruit and smoke my pipe or something. OK I hate grapefruit and even though I do enjoy smoking a pipe Sharaun surely won’t let me do so inside. I’d settle, however, for my laptop, coffee, and some toast and jam or an egg or two over easy. If the family is up during this time, which they most often are, it would even be some bonus time with them beyond the typical morning kiss goodbyes.

I have a friend who tells me he does this. Has a morning breakfast sit-down at the table with an old-fashioned analog newspaper and something his wife makes. I don’t expect whatever routine I land on to be quite that anachronistic, but whatever it ends up being it will feel old fashioned to me. I mean, who still takes the physical paper? Tree-haters, Amish, papier-mâcheurs, perhaps. Oh great now I’ve romanticized it, turned it into a mental “quaint” happening like the breakfasts Sharaun and I enjoyed outdoors on Martha’s Vineyard where we honeymooned. It won’t be like that, though. It’ll be a rushed bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and a bagel with the Today Show on in the other room. It’s cool y’all… it’s still breakfast at home.

Now to set my alarm clock twenty minutes earlier than usual. Wonder if it’ll be worth it? Goodnight.

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shopping for me

The other day Sharaun texted me at work to ask if I would stop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a fresh loaf of bread for dinner.

I used to hate these sort of requests, and it was rather unfair of me (I never voiced my dislike, but instead just went about the task in a huff… I’m sure it was totally discrete).  It’s just that I’m very much a creature of expectations, and by that I mean that once I’ve set my mind on a series of events playing out in a certain way it frustrates me when something causes those plans to change.

There is no logic to this, for the things I have mapped-out in my brain are almost always of no importance at all, and executing them out of order or not according to some arbitrary plan almost always brings with it zero consequences.  Still, when I have to go get gas and stop at Home Depot before work, my OCD brain creates an instant order-of-operations “plan” to achieve these things.  No sooner than this plan is formed does my brain christen it gospel and accept it almost as fact; I now have an expected sequence of happenings and I react negatively to any deviation.

I’ve found this trait to be the genesis of much of my impatience, random frustration, and, oddly enough, the reason I so value spontaneity.  I’m always perceiving the little non-occurrences of life as somehow “getting in the way” of my “plan.”    So you can see then, that when I’ve been sitting at my desk at work all day thinking about how I’m going to leave and go directly home after 5pm, that I’ve built up about eight hours of ludicrous expectation things will actually happen in the way I’ve been planning they will.  The out-of-plan bread interrupt, then, throws a seemingly frustrating wrench in the works.  Silly, right?

Yeah, silly.  And some years ago when I realized I have this brain-curse I strove to overcome it.  I am constantly internally asking myself, “Does this matter?  How does this change anything?” and then reminding myself, “Why worry or bother over it then; just let it happen.”  I want my plans to be ultimately malleable, changeable, adaptable – I feel like if they aren’t I might miss out on something truly random and unintentional.  When we go on vacations, when we travel, when we’re at Disneyland… in all these places I have to take a breath before I let my brain react with, “No!  This isn’t how I envisioned this!”  People call it “going with the flow,” for me I just have to surrender to the flow.  I think I’m better at it for acknowledging it.

But this isn’t what I came here to write about.

The other day Sharaun texted me at work to ask if I would stop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a fresh loaf of bread for dinner.

Since I’m a better man and this kind of tasking no longer irks me, I replied with a simple, “Sure.”  As luck would have it I was able to leave work about fifteen minutes early that day, and thus found myself alone at the grocery store with some perceived time to kill (a notion which also owes its existence to my forever mental scheduling).  In no particular hurry, I found myself ambling about the aisles a bit.  Suddenly, a thought came to me: “I’m here, alone.  In the grocery store alone.  With all the buying power my Capital One Venture card endows me.  I am the decision-maker!  I can buy anything I desire!”  For the non-husbands in my audience, this translates roughly into something like, “Sharaun cannot tell me that this is too expensive, or too bad for me, or that I’m the only one who likes it so why buy it?”  In other words, I was free to do my own shopping.

I relished the moment.  I strode the aisles with a sense of power and domination, evaluating everything I saw by my standards alone.  Some $9 Hoisin sauce?, might be interesting.  A jackfruit?, sure, why not?  Bread made from potatoes?, dear God yes someone finally invented it!!  Now where’s the pasta made from the potato bread?  It would be like the Godhead of a foodstuff!  In the end, I didn’t go quite as crazy as I thought I might have, but I did manage to score some very “me” purchases.  Here’s what I came home with:

  • A hunk of exotic veined cheese & “water crackers” to eat it on (probably the most luxurious purchase, in terms of dollars)
  • 90 pack of “combination” flavor Pizza Rolls
  • One of each flavor Ramen, and three each of the super-spicy seafood ones that are all in Korean
  • Grape Nuts (Sharaun refuses to get them for me)
  • A bag of barbecue kettle chips, the ones that looked the hardest and crunchiest
  • Butter & vegetable oil (what?, we needed them)

And yes when I got home Sharaun looked on my spoils with skepticism, tsking the chips and cheese.  Perhaps it was my subconscious playing passive-aggressive; we’ll see if I get asked to pick up bread again anytime soon.

Gotta run, the Pizza Rolls are ready.  Goodnight.

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the moments that make up a dull day

8ish on Monday night.  Got a lot done today.

All the Halloween decorations came down over lunch.  They’re still piled in the garage and need to be put away for the year, but at least the house wasn’t out of theme for more than a day.  Came home, ate dinner, cleaned up the dishes, gave Cohen a much-needed bath, and spent a good undistracted hour with the voter’s guide studying for my early-morning trip to the polls tomorrow.

Glad I did, because I vary decently from my party’s line in some places.  Those voter guides man… it’s like reading a transcript from a highschool debate.  These people can’t be more persuasive?  They write like they’re trying to convince teenagers and simpletons.  I resorted to reading the text of the propositions and making my own call, at least they show you what current law will be null and void and give you the new language…

Today I shaved some very noticeable hair off my earlobe.  Really.  I have no idea when my earlobe got hair, but once I saw it in the sunshade mirror on the way to work this morning there was no unseeing it.  It’s obviously been there, it didn’t wholly sprout overnight.  And even though it wasn’t anything dark or stringy like facial hair, it was fuzzy and clearly visible.  No one wanted to tell me I had ear hair?  This business of getting old is for the birds.  I still remember the first day I shaved my face and on that day I’d have never pictured myself holding my beard trimmer to the inside of my ear.  “And when I die… I expect to find him laughing.”

I obviously have nothing to write.  Things have been busy.  Maybe with more time to think.  Goodnight.

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halloween 2010, some pictures

Halloween weekend went off just splendidly.

Our annual let’s-pretend-we’re-in-college-again soirée was (and maybe I say this every year, but…) my favorite yet.  The be-cosutmed attendees took the whole thing to another level, and it’s the first year we’ve had the police grace us with a visit (two cruisers the first time, and one came back to hang out later).  Part of me sometimes goes, “Dave, why do you still have a party like this?”  I mean, I’m old… we have kids… I can’t just spring back into action the next day like I used to.  But every year I have a great time.  Maybe that’s why.  I was proud of Sharaun too, she closed the place down with me and the usual late-night crew around 4:30am, sitting around a big bowl of molten pizza rolls drinking rum on the rocks.

And, while I didn’t have a whole ton of time tonight (Sunday, “beggars’ night”) to write a fancy blog (even though you might think I’d have a bunch of test stored up after last week’s dalliance), I did find time to upload some pictures of the costumes from the party to the normal place.  Thanks to Bill for the loaner camera after our died midway through the evening, and double-thanks for the Saturday morning upload that made the gallery possible.

So then, head on over to the Halloween 2010 Costume Contest and vote for your favorite getups.  After that you can check out some candids that Bill put up over at his place.

Until tomorrow, take care.