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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.

Posted on

you killed that rhino all wrong

Happy Monday folks.  I wrote this weekend, so I should have good material to draw on for the week’s writing.  Here we go with a personal one.

Sharaun’s folks were in town all last week.  As usual, I enjoyed having them around.  The more we hang out the better our son-in-law to parents-in-law relationship seems to get.  Yes I realize this makes sense, but it’s still something that makes me happy about having them around.

Something that doesn’t make me happy about having them around?  The peculiar changes that come over the way my wife interacts with me.  For see, consistently, since we’ve been married, Sharaun changes ever so slightly when her folks are around.  In short, she becomes emasculating to me.  In long, she adopts an overly-showy “I’m the boss of you; I’m the woman in charge; I run this marriage” way of speaking to me.  It’s an amazing thing, really, as this attitude only shows up in front of her parents; I never see it demonstrated elsewhere at other times in our lives.

And, despite the fact that I’ve made her aware that she does this, and that it destroys me, she says I’m imagining it; being over-sensitive or making something of nothing.   But let me tell you this is not a simple case of my imagination or my sensitivity or me something-izing a nothing.  No; it’s a 100% real and observable change (I promise).  She questions  my decisions; makes it a point to illuminate my errors or faults; informs the room of my failures; and openly doubts my “leadership” and sensibilities.  OK so that may sound justifiably overly-sensitive, and it’s certainly not all of that all of the time, but you get the idea.

I’m a firm believer that this sort of thing is one of the worst fates a man and husband can be made to endure; for it’s truly a humiliation.  Women may not understand this, I cannot know, but for men pride is a living, breathing thing.  And around the man that fathered the woman they are now charged with caring and providing for, pride snarls and bristles and wants fresh meat.  After all, I’ve assumed his former role to some extent: his child is now my responsibility.  The torch has been passed to me, in a manner of speaking.

I think of all the ways I as a father care for Keaton today, and have a better understanding of the implicit trust I’m granted from my own father-in-law.  Not having been there yet, I marvel that a man can ever really wholly get over his God-given fatherly instinct and be secure in knowing that the husband his daughter chose is “good enough.”  I take care of his daughter while she’s sick; my coin fills the coffer that feeds and clothes her; I listen to her when she cries.  To say that I want to appear strong and capable and sensible and in-charge around this man is understating things grossly.  I need to be strong and capable and sensible, for it’s imperative that he understand I’ve got this; his progeny is safe under me; I am in-charge.

So when this unconscious bravado bubbles up in my wife it really derails me; pains me; sucks.  It makes me mad, but an angry reaction only works against me in front of the audience I care so much about.  So the best, and simultaneously worst, reaction is silence – synonymous with acceptance, I’m afraid, for said audience.  Why o’ why woman, woman whom I love so very much, do you seem to strive so hard at making me look and feel stupid and inadequate in front of one of the two men in this world I most need to be a man in front of?  It’s a rare thing that I care about how I’m perceived (outside of work, that is) but in this case it’s of critical import to me.  So it hurts.  It hurts really bad.

But, in the end, I don’t think my wife does it one purpose, nor do I even thing she knows she’s doing it.  I try and make her aware of it, and it’s not like she ignores my feelings or writes me off (even though I may have made it sound that way up above)… I just think it’s some unbidden thing.  So what happens is I end up turning up the machismo in retaliation, projecting some half-hearted misogyny as an ill-chosen, but mostly subconscious, defensive response.  Of course this just feeds the reactor and dials-up the whole thing.  Problem is this “shut up woman I’ll do what I want” attitude likely makes me look more a heel than does being seen as the wife’s do-boy.  What’s that they say sometimes, damned if do, damned if you don’t?  Indeed.

I dunno; I’m,sure that there are some legitimate times where I deserve a little deflating, or am over-reacting out of pride or something….

Well that’s about all I care to write on the matter.  I could go more, but I think I’m done.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll get less introspective.

Goodnight.

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being a regular

Friday; I went back to work yesterday.  Got a lot done but found myself wishing I was able to take the whole week off.

Tonight we all walked down to the little family-owned Italian place across the road from us.  The place has been around forever, has a following and everything.  It was across town for years and only last year moved into its new location which is, near enough, close enough to hit with rocks.  By comparison, our mailbox is at the end of our block (one of those new-fangled community boxes like you’d see in an apartment complex), and if you walked over again that same distance you’d be at this place’s front door.  It really is that close.  That close and this is the first time we’ve been there since they moved into the neighborhood.  We wanted to take Sharaun’s folks somewhere nice for their anniversary, which was last week.

It’s a nice place, but not so highfalutin’ that you can’t wear jeans or order a cold beer.  Prices are high… but the food is fantastic.  While sitting there tonight I kept thinking about how I’ve always wanted a “place.”  Y’know, a local joint where I could be a “regular.”  Even though being a regular probably means spending money and gaining weight, there’s something about being ingrained into the local color that is all old fashioned and seems endearing to me.  I have this fantasy of having a favorite dish, maybe ordering it once a week with Sharaun, having a glass of wine, whatever.  Something fixed, something old-time, something diner-out-of-The-Honeymooners.  But I can’t afford it; and spaghetti costs next-to-nothing to make at home… so I’ll never do it.

Tonight Keaton prayed, “I hope the pipe stops leaking.”  I think that girl knows too much about current events.

Goodnight.

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avian hideaway

What a beautiful Wednesday morning. All that much more since I’m sitting on the couch at 7:30am drinking coffee, not even thinking about going into work.

Yesterday was a workday around the house. Sharaun and her mom painted Cohen’s room while her dad and I worked on installing the mounting hardware (some custom creation of mine) for the A/V shelf in the front room. Made from scratch, it’s going to be a real homespun creation, but with the help of some folks more knowledgeable than I in the carpentry area it should be a fine finished product.

Meanwhile, the work Sharaun and her mother did has the baby’s room looking right official. I will admit, as long as you all promise not to dime me out to my wife, that because we’re reusing Keaton’s white furniture the room has a somewhat “softer” feel than perhaps would a more “hardcore” baby-boy’s room… but I’m not concerned. The masculinity I’ll surely pass along to baby Cohen will surely be enough raw manhood to overpower the influence of any powder-blue walls or white furniture. With his hairy baby chest and deep baby voice he’ll hardly even notice the birds instead of trucks on his bedding. No, I’m not concerned.

There is a family of birds who are living up under the eaves of our house, right at the corner of the garage where I can watch them through the front window. I keep meaning to evict them. I know they’ll poop on everything and lay stinky eggs and leave a huge mess. But it’s interesting to me where they’ve chosen to build their house. I have a penchant for tucked-away quarters: sleeper cabs, hollow trees (man the formatting on that ancient entry is hideous), caves, anything like that – so I sort of have a weird respect for this avian hideout. Those birds have it made. Sheltered from the weather and predators (although I’m not sure what predators they have to be wary of), using my structure as their own, etc.

I’m still going to flush them out and put chicken wire over their access… but y’know, much respect to ’em.

Good morning.

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things of permanence

Well, we’ve not done much to speak of with the in-laws in town.  More these days than in days past when the parents visit we’re just sort of “hanging out.”  I actually really enjoy it, at least a lot more than driving around the state to take in the standard tourist stuff (which can be fun too, I’ll grant).

Plus I get some vacation.  Monday I worked in the morning and took the afternoon off.  Today and tomorrow I’m steady-gone from the office.  Thursday I have to go in and ditto for Friday morning.  So sort of an “in and out” kind of week at the sawmill, but even with this little bit of free time I feel liberated.  Not disconnected… but liberated.  Sharaun’s folks wanted to help put together the nursery, so we’ve been shopping and cleaning and painting and whatnot.  It feels extremely good to finally make some progress on something baby related, and all the work going on around me has inspired me to get to work on some longstanding un-done projects of my own.  Made a pilgrimage to the big-box hardware store and got the supplies I need to prep for the new TV shelf a buddy and I are building, cleaned the garage, etc.  You get the picture.  Anyway, it’s been a nice extended weekend thus far and there’s still more non-working time to be had.

And as the baby’s room finally comes together, I figured it was time to bottom-out on the coming child’s name.  You may remember the flap Sharaun and I were having over her proposed name: Cohen.  Not surprisingly, I came around and welcomed the name in time.  So Cohen it is, with a middle name in honor of Sharaun’s grandmother, who recently left us.  As these things of permanence gain solidity, so sinks in the reality that we’re about to have a baby in the house again.  In fact, Sharaun and I spent Thursday night last week watching old home movies of Keaton on the computer – y’know, from back when she was a baby.  Man, there are whole phases I’ve near “forgotten.”  I mean, I remember them happening, but I  don’t quite remember them happening.  Babies are a lot of work…

I’m getting excited though, as July approaches.  I think we’re all excited to welcome baby Cohen to the family.

Goodnight.