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the sniff test

Something is rotten in Denmark.  And, by Denmark I mean Sharaun’s trunk.

Yeah, that’s right – something has completely, totally, and unashamedly stunk-up the trunk of the Saturn.  On Saturday morning Sharaun told me that something smelled rotten in her car.  I heard this in the way that only husbands can “hear” wives – which is to say that I held a completely cogent conversation with her on the matter without really listening at all.  So when I got home later in the day and climbed out of my own vehicle and smelled a horrible smell in the garage, I dug deep and recalled that, at some point that day, I’d heard something about some kind of smell somewhere.  Processing, I recalled Sharaun’s comment and began sniffing around her car.  Her completely closed car, I might add.

Sniff, sniff, sniff… my senses brought me to the trunk where the funk smelled strongest.  I popped it and was awed.  The smell greeted me with all the reception of a brick wall; something in between dead animal and sour milk.  I stuck my head in and recoiled again before I could begin the hunt.  I pulled items out one-by-one, looking for an obvious piece of forgotten produce long-rotted from a week-gone grocery run or some poor decomposing rodent unlucky enough to get stuck.  But each time I removed an item and gave it the sniff test it passed.  Soon I had an empty trunk and no culprit.  I pulled up the bottom panel to peek underneath, nothing.  I sniffed the upholstery in search of perhaps something spilled, nothing.

So it put it all back in and left the trunk open overnight to air-out.  But man, that smell is still there… and it doesn’t seem to be dissipating at all.  Poor Sharaun bought one of those tropical air freshener things to hang in the cab, and it keeps the smell at bay to some degree… but it still ain’t right.

Goodnight.

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every breath & blink

Writing is hard.  I am distracted.  Nights I just want to read or sleep or think.  I’ll come back.

Weather here turned sunny and cloudless and hit the 90s. Far from melting in misery I’ve been drinking it in; letting the heat warm my cold bones – bake the chill from my soul.  In the morning when it’s early, before 6am – it gets light so early now, I like to go outside barefoot.  Sometimes there’s still residual heat in the pavement, or at least some neutral temperature that feels warmer than the outside air.  It’s like some perfect non-temperature suspended between the cool of night and coming heat of the day.  Sometimes I imagine it like the perfect temperature of a womb; just a built-in sense of pure comfort.  Not hot; not cold; just comfortable.

May through August is full of holes: travel; relatives in town; progeny.  Work is suffering from my swiss-cheese-focus.  The simplicity of a day off here, a day off there, crushed by the weight of the requisite catch-up.  And this baby is coming.  Like a train at night I’m not going to see it until the light is on me.  I can hear it coming, echoing somewhere far away and I can put my ears on the track and listen to the rolling steel.  I’ve been feeling guilty.  When Keaton came my entire brain, my every breath and blink, was consumed with thoughts of her.  The second time around it feels almost “routine.”  Sure we’ve planned and readied but it’s nothing like what it was with Keaton.  I guess that’s to be expected… but it still makes me feel… guilty.

Such a random bit of writing.  Told you it’s hard.  Goodnight.

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girls can like rockets

Tuesday work worked me.

After doing my usual cramming of two days into one, working through lunch as is typical these days, I decided to pack up and leave shortly after 4pm.  I wanted to leave early because I had some “work/life balance” errands I wanted to run.  Namely, it’d been far too long since I’d randomly brought home flowers and chocolate to my wife.  I also had been wanting to pick up a particular gift for Keaton for a while, and figured I could kill to birds with one stone and be cheered upon my homecoming as some benevolent springtime Santa Claus.  So I stopped and got some midrange spring arrangement and walked in with it.  They look nice, as much as my male opinion is valid here, in the vase on the kitchen table.

Prior to getting the flowers I made a stop at the local hobby shop to pickup the gift I wanted for Keaton.  See, last week I got this crazy idea that it would be fun to build, decorate, and launch a model rocket with her.  My brother and I used to do this with my dad, and I know it’s typically a “guy thing” but I thought she’d get a real kick out of it.  I bought a starter kit with all the junk one needs to blast the things into the air, and made sure to pick up a can of pink spraypaint and a purple paint marker so we can do some fancy decorating around the Disney princess stickers we’ll surely affix to it.  So yes she’s a little young,  but how cool will it be for her to do the countdown for SpacePrincess One and hit the trigger to launch it?  Then we get to chase after the thing as it drifts back down; I’m pumped.

What?  The rocket thing is just something I wanted to do and Keaton would’ve rather had a 3rd dollhouse instead?  Well… maybe so but too bad… we’re gonna father/daughter bond with this rocket.  We are!

Goodnight.

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phones with wires

Good morning internet, hope all is well with you.

Last month I downloaded the entire run of The Brady Bunch and loaded them up on the hacked Apple TV.  I did this primarily out of nostalgia, as I used to love the show when I was younger and I’ve been on an acquisition streak.  I’ve nabbed the complete Gilligan’s Island and the classic episodes of The Honeymooners and a bunch of other stuff.  And, when I fire up these vintage shows to relive some bits of my youth (or my mom’s or grandmother’s youth, depending), who do you think is right there alongside me?  Oh yeah, Ms. Keaton.  She’s such a fan of this new non-animated medium, in fact, that she can already sing the theme songs to Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch.  I actually enjoy watching these “classics” with her.

I mean, as sappy as The Brady Bunch is each show does have some sort of “lesson” attached: sharing, equality, the value of money, etc.  Although it sometimes takes some explaining to get the point across… for instance, in the episode where the Bradys get a payphone installed to teach the kids a lesson both the old rotary phones and the concept of a “payphone” in and of itself are completely foreign to her.  As far as Keaton knows, telephones fit in your pocket or purse and don’t have wires or require dimes or quarters.  Talk about feeling odd, try explaining that, “In the old days, phones had cords that went into the wall and some of them needed money to work.”  I suppose it’s good that she enjoys these shows, honestly I’d have her watching this stuff over most anything on television today.

And besides, there’s almost nothing at all on any episode of Leave It To Beaver or The Andy Griffith Show I’d not mind her seeing.  Big deal if she goes into kindergarten as some sort living anachronism, right?

Goodnight.

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pods of cavemen & cavewomen

Saturday morning as I write.

Keaton is sitting next to me at the dining room table eating a bowl of Fruit Loops. I’m drinking coffee, black, third cup so far, and writing. The National‘s new record is on, loud. Sharaun’s taking her parents back to the airport for their return trip to Florida. Her dad came down with some bug the day before they had to leave, slept on the couch all day and didn’t eat a thing. Felt bad for him having to travel cross-country that way; I’ve been there before and traveling while you’re sick is the pits.

Saturdays go like this. Keaton has dance class at 10am so we get up and get ready and take her there and sometimes stay and watch. The remainder of the day is usually filled with discretionary stuff, as should be weekends. Today’s discretionary activity, as far as I’ve been made aware, involves an evening soirée at the house of some friends, in honor of another expecting mom who’s expecting about a month before we are. It’s a strange “colliding circle” of friends that runs just a bit outside our day-to-day clique. Maybe that’s why I love hanging out with them so much; we’re all a perfect-fit but maybe just too large to exist as one friend-unit. I mean, how can you invite twenty people over? You’d be taking over any restaurant. No, there’s some self-limiting pack aspect of tight friends. You get much above five or six couples/families and things will split into packs. Human nature maybe. We’re still just pods of cavemen and cavewomen, cliquing up in little family-units.

So anyway when we get a chance to collide with this group we do and we enjoy it, I especially.

Other than that I think today I’ll work on fixing my flat bike tire and fixing up the TV shelf work I did in the front room. I still need to put a second coat of paint over the drywall work I did. See, it’s a “floating” shelf; meaning it has no visible supports and appears to just “stick out” from the wall – defying physics. As the shelf itself is made from solid hardwood and will be holding all the A/V gear for the living room – the support system that allows it to float needs to be sturdy; capable of bearing the weight. But how to make a “floating” shelf strong like this?

Well, in my case I cut the drywall and fixed flanged pipe “nipples” onto the studs with lag screws. With the wall re-finished flush around them, you get four little threaded receptacles spaced along the studs. Into these you screw four lengths of 3/4″ steel pipe, and onto these pipes you hang and fix the shelf. Finally, with the shelf really being a hollow box, all the wiring between the TV and A/V gear goes behind the wall and inside the shelf and things look mysteriously clean and unattached. I’ll post pictures when it’s done, because I want to.

Goodnight.