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sharp sticks & throwing stars

Afternoon; most gorgeous Saturday on record; someone call the Almanac.

Sonic Youth is on the stereo and “Teenage Riot” sounds fuzzy and sunny and just perfect for the moment.  You might ask why I’m not outside doing something in the gorgeous weather… it would be a good question.  Sharaun’s down at a local park doing a changing-table “outreach” thing for her mom’s group and I’ve got Keaton plus two more girls (daddy daycare up in here), daughters of our friends.  And even though the girls and I played outside for an hour or more they soon tired of the warm sunshine.  So we’re back inside.  The day played out perfectly, capped with one of those perfect fireside endings where you’re just tight enough to have a burned-in smile and quick wit.

I can remember when my brother and I discovered that we could put sharp edges on things by scraping them on the concrete over and over again.  At first it was just sticks honed into spears, quite serviceable too, at that.  I imagine mankind has been making this same discovery for thousands of years.  One man scrapes a stick on a rock and realizes it’s now sharp and he can throw it at things and it’ll stick.  Hit a moving animal with one and it might die and then you can eat it.  Over and over again until we progressed enough to fashion smarter weapons and didn’t need sharp sticks anymore.  Then sharpening sticks becomes a discovery of young boys.

We turned it up a notch when the K-Mart in town began selling blunt-edged, but made of real metal, ninja throwing stars.  We each had one and we’d spend hours scraping them back and forth across the roughest parts of the driveway, perfecting each tine into razor-sharp points.  I do believe we made them truly deadly.  We could sink them an inch deep into the broad side of the fence when thrown with force; even deeper into the soft living wood of neighborhood trees.  We were the real deal; we had ninja-branded skateboards and we rode around flicking throwing stars into inanimate objects like wild mini-ninjas on wheels.  Back then if anyone in our mostly sleepy little Southern California farming town would’ve stepped to us we could’ve quickly dispatched them.

Stay back.  Goodnight.

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the right time to write

Friday.  Finally.

A long week and barely any entries.  That happens when I don’t write on a Sunday.  Sunday writing has become the key to a good week of entries.  Typically, I’ll get at least one full post knocked out (Monday’s) and a couple outlines or ideas captured down as drafts.  Then I’ll work on those drafts during weeknight evenings or over lunch break at work.  But when I don’t do Sunday, and I don’t crib down ideas… I’m stuck for the week.  Work wrings any free thought from my brain and I end up staring at a blank page most nights.  Such was this week… there was a bunch to write about but never the right time to write.

It’s 9:30pm now and I’m just thirty minutes out of my last meeting of the day.  I’m reclined on the couch, typing, and my toes are icy cold.  I’m wondering what I can snack on.  I finished off the bag of Goldfish Sharaun got in the bulk aisle upon getting home from work.  Sharaun, in some fit of sweet-deprivation, baked a box of pre-mixed chocolate chip muffins (I didn’t even know we had them), but I don’t feel like that.  Late night snacks should be spicy.

I shaved my head last Friday, and have shaved it twice again since then.  I like the way it looks, all bald and smooth.  Keaton also likes it and has taken to calling me “bald head.”  Sharaun is not so sure.  I’ve taken to calling it my “last haircut.”

Goodnight.

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challenging the sea

I used to be scared to death of walking on piers.

It was a thing related to scale; not a fear of tiny docks you’d moor a fishing boat to but of the large above-ocean boardwalks of Southern California.  There were a few near-ish our house when we lived there in my youth, and occasionally we’d visit.  I’d walk so cautiously, all the while looking down through sometimes inch-wide cracks between timbers at the waves rolling slowly in so far below.

The whole construction seemed to tenuous to me.  Here’s these stupid overly-confident humans… they are going to cut down trees and build a stick-bridge out into an environment they cannot natively survive in.  Like I shouldn’t be walking there; like the whole thing was just a bad idea.  The bravado of our race is summed-up by things like piers.  Fleeting instantiations of sentient meat that do ridiculously stupid things like shoot themselves into space and invent fireproof clothing and build roads though hulking mountains of stone.  The cocksure novelty is perfectly human.

The cries of gulls wheeling above, the creosote pungent in the air, the stiff breeze off the water – all doom-inspiring to me.  The farther I walked out to sea the more certain I became that a fall would mean death.  No one could save me down there.  If the fall didn’t take care of it I’d surely be washed into the barnacle-encrusted pilings and shred to bits; if not that then a simple drowning.  It all felt so… so creaky.  Like the whole thing was held together with spit and mud and every wave withstood was another miracle.

Who challenges the sea?  A fool, that’s who.

Goodnight.

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thinking ahead

Hello to the week’s-end.  At the sawmill we called this week “work-week sixteen.”  Well good riddance to work-week sixteen, says I.  Bring on work-week seventeen; I take all comers.

Long-time readers may recall that the sawmill gives us worker-bees an extended piece of paid vacation every so often.  The suits call this a “sabbatical” and it amounts to a three month paid leave, during which you’re free to do what you want.  I had my first sabbatical a few years ago, and think our family did a great job maximizing my time away from work.  In fact, the image accompanying today’s post is a screen-capture of the spreadsheet I used way back then to map and budget our sabbatical goings-on.

The other day at work I spent some time thinking way ahead.  It’s something I do every once in a while.  Try and think five or so years into the future, figure out what major things will happen.  It’s my way of trying to anticipate, any maybe even make plans around, large milestones I know I’ll face way down the road.  Normally, I limit this kind of crystal ball stuff to work or financial subjects… for instance, the project I’m working on now at the sawmill will end in a couple years.  I’ve spent time considering what I’ll do then, and what, if anything, I should be doing now to position myself correctly.  Or maybe I’ll re-run a retirement-readiness check on my investments… something boring and grown-up like that.

Maybe it’s the coming baby, but this time around I also started day-dreaming about far-off family happenings.  Once on the subject my mind turned to thoughts of a second sabbatical.  After some quick (OK not so quick) mental math, I figured our kids will be eight and four when this magical time rolls around again. Eight and four; holy crap.  Keaton twice as old as she is now and in 3rd grade.  Baby #2 as old as Keaton is now and about to start preschool.  A smile came to my face: This could be a magical time for a sabbatical.

One could argue, however, that any time when you’re paid to stay away from work for months on a stretch is “magical.”  Yeah, true.  But I’m talking about the relative ages of the kids.  Having a four year old now I understand what things she’s capable of enjoying, so I have a point of reference I can use in dreaming up travel or activities. I can see our family tromping around the world, stopping in all manner of tropical or exotic locales.

Man, I think I’ll start a new spreadsheet right now.  Never too early to think ahead.

Goodnight.

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the great name debate (or, is it kosher?)

Hey there internet. On a streak this week. Don’t mind the fact that I wrote Monday-through-Wednesday all on Sunday night. In fact, the whole mass-write-then-split thing is becoming a trend for me.

Did you know Sharaun and I are having a “disagreement” about what to name our coming son? Yeah well, we are. Thankfully, no blood has been spilled; no armies rallied; no battle-lines drawn; but there the situation might be best described as a stalemate… maybe even an impasse. You see, Sharaun has her heart set on a name and I, I’m not fully won-over. With “Keaton” we both clicked, but this time we’re having a hard time finding some common-ground.

It’s not that I hate the name she’s smitten with, not at all. In fact, I rather like it. But… for what some may consider “stupid” or “silly” reasons I’m not entirely convinced it’s the right name for our boy. Plus, there are several other names I really like which don’t present me with the same “concerns.” Not surprisingly, Sharaun dismisses those concerns as me being “retarded.” Could be true folks, I’ve had my doubts before…

So what’s the name? And why am I yet to be sold?

Cohen.

She absolutely loves the name Cohen. She has all these crazy criteria the name must satisfy. It can’t be the name of anyone she’s known in life who’s left her with a negative impression (a teacher by trade, there are several names forever stricken because of this one); it can’t be the name of any of our friends’ (although there seems to be some sort of distance qualifier) kids; it can’t be anything “normal,” “boring,” or overly-popular; it needs to sound good with both our last name and used together with “Keaton.” And, finally, to be perfect it should actually be a surname re-purposed as a first-name. Cohen meets or exceeds all these bars. But what’s “wrong” with Cohen.

Nothing. Except… we’re not Jewish. Sorry… let me see if I can explain.

It all started when I Google’d the name Cohen. That led me to a spirited thread in an online forum on a baby-names website. In that thread some non-Jewish person was asking about using the traditionally Jewish surname “Cohen” as a first name for their child. A couple responses caught my eye:

I’m Jewish and I find the name Cohen/Kohen as a first name to be highly disrespectful to the Jewish heritage and in bad taste.

A Kohen is is a Jewish priest who is a direct descendant of Aaron from the bible; a very important part of the Jewish religion with a range of responsibilities and restrictions and the surname comes from their title. It has never been a first name such as Sara or David and should not be put in the same category.

Unfortunately it is NOT just a name. I realise that you don’t think it’s a big deal which is presumably because you don’t understand the profound importance that this title has for Jews.

Whoa.

Now look, I realize that internet message boards are not exactly representative of majority opinion (in fact, it’s probably the opposite…). Sharaun is also quick to point out that the internet is “full of retards,” and that I shouldn’t care a whit about what some crotchety Jew thinks of the name. (Man, Sharaun really likes to denigrate the mentally challenged.) Maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m being silly by letting that one comment in that one thread bother me.

So I did some more research, and found more interesting commentary. I also asked a few friends, a subset of whom replied simply, “Isn’t that a Jewish name?” None of this helped me take a firm stance one way or the other, however.

So friends, help me. Am I being silly? Should I just get over this whole Jewish thing? I do like the name. Let me also state that I have no aversion to a kid with a Jewish name, or a Hindu name, or even a kid named “Mullah” for that matter… it’s the whole “offensive, ignorant, and insensitive” bit that bugs me. Should it?

Goodnight.

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awww dang…

When’s the new iPhone come out again?

Dropped this on the ground from pocket height this past weekend.  The thing is still 100% functional so I guess I’m going to use it like this until Jobs and crew release some new hardware.  It’s a little rough on the fingertips but I tried to get rid of any loose shards by rubbing it on the carpet.  How the “touch” part still works is a mystery to me.

Goodnight.

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man’s men

Wrote this entire thing Sunday night along with the thing you might have read yesterday. I know already it’s going to be one of those weeks and I might not have a ton of evening time to write. I figure I should take advantage while the wheels are turning.

This year for Easter some friends of ours from church invited us to come eat with them at their folks’ place. Or, rather, their folks invited us to come eat at their place – one or the other. Their place is what we call “up the hill” around here; since we’re right at the feet of the foothills anything east qualifies. Easter Sunday was rainy, wet, windy when we set off up into the foothills following behind as neither of us had been there before. Half an hour or so later we wended our way around a few final wooded turns and climbed a steep driveway to stop in front of their place.

Oh man their place.

I was immediately transported back to my childhood. When we lived in Southern California my grandparents lived about an hour away on top of a mountain in a log home. No joke. A straight-up log cabin built from stacked timbers right out of a Lincoln Logs set. I used to love going to my grandparents’ place. It was quite literally “on top of a mountain,” and the inside was right out of a hunting lodge. Logs for walls, broad-mantled fireplaces made of rough-hewn rock and mortar, bearskin rugs, leather furniture, a poker table, and taxidermied animals at every turn. Looking back on it now, being a married homeowner myself, I can’t imagine what husband would have a wife accommodating enough to let him deck out a place with such testosterone. My grandfather, though, was a man’s man (for as much as I got to know him in my youth). A scholar, a hunter, a drinker, and an avid outdoorsman. He had that place appointed just how you’d imagine. Anyway, all this and more went through my head before I’d even stepped out of the car, just looking at their place.

Their place.

Fashioned of logs thicker and lighter in color than those that comprised my grandparent’s place, it was similar enough from the outside to evoke memories. Stepping inside, however, sealed the deal. Three mounted antelopes, what looked to be a bobcat, two birds in still flight hanging from strings, and in the corner a massive detailed installation featuring two brown bears locked in a frozen fight over a deer carcass. The rugs, the furniture, the old-fashioned knick-knacks attached to the walls (they had farm tools, my grandfather had gold pans) – it was like stepping into a facsimile of their place. No, it wasn’t a perfect match; this place had more of a woman’s touch evident in the decor while my grandparents’ place, at least in my memory, was all man.

The inhabitants hearkened too… our friends, her dad, he reminded me of my own grandfather in some way. A man’s man for sure; felled every piece of game that now decorates his homestead. Maybe not anywhere near as outspoken or hedonistic (on some counts, I suppose) as my grandfather, and certainly more God-fearing than he – yet still there were certain similarities. The thing that cinched it, though, for me… was this past Sunday morning at church. One full week after we’d been over for Easter dinner and this man walks up to me in church, shakes my hand firmly, and says, “David; I have to apologize to you for that dry chicken I served last week. I left it on the grill too long.” I chuckled, a real laugh, and replied, “Aww don’t worry about it. I stuck to the drumsticks and they were actually fine.” “Yeah, well,” he went on, “I’m awful sorry it was so dry. I apologize.”

Only a real man’s man takes his barbecuing so seriously that he’d seek another man out in church a week later and make it a point to offer a heartfelt and truly ashamed-sounding apology for the dry chicken.

Goodnight.