Posts

Posted on

i blame the fetus

Back from Oregon. Wasn’t nearly as wet or as cold as I’d expected. Even saw the stars some nights and some snatches of blue sky.

I didn’t write, though. Between work and doing stuff after work with work people and hanging out with family there wasn’t time. And maybe my fit of productivity the past couple weeks was due for a slowdown anyway. We came home early Monday morning so I could make it into work that day. The plan worked, but it wasn’t the best of days.

Up at 4am to catch the train to the airport, then our flight sat at the gate for 40min longer than it should’ve, then the bus to the car. I got rained on as I walked into work and my umbrella caught the wind and broke. At lunch I dropped my crusty roll in the elevator and scalded my thumb when I spilled hot squash soup on it. It’s karma. Punishing me because I took the Lord’s name in vain when my umbrella broke. Karma, God, whatever…

Tonight (Monday as I write) Sharaun’s got one of her infamous pregnancy migraines.  When she’s got one, she’s 100% out of commission.  This means that it’s Keaton and I on our own and fending for ourselves.  After we ate, we washed up and decided to put on a movie.  Is it saying something about me that I’m genuinely excited about the quality improvement on this new 50th anniversary remastered edition of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty?  I watched somewhat rapt comparing the new vibrant widescreen to the old dingy pan-and-scan we’re used to watching.  We don’t watch movies all that much… I actually start to feel guilty watching television as a form of “interacting” rather than doing something truly interactive.  Nine times out of ten I’ll put on some music and we’ll play house or Memory or dance together.  Tonight, though, dad took the easy road.

I blame the fetus.  Pregnancy’s a mess; and more than once I’ve thanked God that, for me, it’s merely a spectator sport.

It’s late now and I should be getting to bed.  Only, sometimes I think it’s not entirely worth it.  About 50% of the time I can’t get to sleep when I want to anyway.  Why is it that it’s so easy for me to fall asleep on the couch after getting home from work, yet when I finally retire for the evening and want “real” sleep so badly – it refuses to come on-demand?  At “real” bedtime I’ll lay flat as a board in bed and think of a million different things I’ve no reason to think about.  Money.  Time.  Music.  Work.  All sort of topics which would be much better served on a waking brain rather than one tortured for sweet slumber.  I read somewhere that you shouldn’t be on the computer in the last half hour before you want to go to bed, that it overstimulates you and you’ll have a hard time “coming down” to get to sleep.  That’s probably true.

We finally got the car back last week, just before leaving for Oregon. I almost forgot how to drive the thing.

Goodnight.

Posted on

no beep. no light.

Back to non-canned writing now.  Have to keep-up real time.  Wish me continued success please and thanks again for the comments.

Work has me hot-footing it; running the pit of hot coals, deftly letting the balls of my feet linger in the red just long enough for a little layer of perspiration to evaporate into a protective bubble of steam before lifting them again. It’s that time of year at the sawmill where we do annual reviews. That blessed time where I get to sum up both my work, and the collective work of my team, with some words on paper.

Sharaun’s still taking me to work in the mornings and picking me up evenings. The broken car is still at the We Fix It In An Inordinate Amount of Time body shop. ETA on that changes every time they call me on the date they last “projected” we’d get her back. Slipped out in week increments at first but, perhaps sensing my growing frustration, they’ve now taken to half-week delays each time it’s “not quite done” yet. It’ll be nice to have a second vehicle back. Just think about it… in China you’re only allowed one child – and here I am complaining about missing our second automobile. Only in America.

One morning this week, arriving at work and kissing both my ladies goodbye for the better part of the day, I walked up to the doors as always.  At work we have to wear a badge and on the way into the sawmill you’re required to wave your badge in front of a badge-reader.  Once this machine verifies you’re badge is valid and that you’re still lucky enough to be gainfully employed a little green light will come on and a happy beeee-eeee-eeep will fill the lobby.  This is your go-ahead signal; you have been validated; and while it shouldn’t be misconstrued as a personal endorsement from corporate or anything – you will be allowed to toil for another blissfully servile day.

So important is our being badged that we hire a security force to further watch for the green lights and listen for the beep.  In this way, the sawmill suits contract out the most severe responsibility of catching the type of masochistic scoundrel who’d want to sneak into a place where one’s soul is robbed hourly of all joy.  These human redundancies take their employ very seriously, and will shout choruses of, “Sir?  Sir?!  Sir!!” after any who dare pass the checkpoint without a beep and a flash.  They are most dedicated.

This morning, however, my badge did not beep.

I stopped dead and attempted to wave the thing in front of the machine again, not wanting to be caught in a hail of interrogatory “Sirs.”  No beep.  No light.  I walked to the next beeper machine (there are three, I assume to ease congestion).  No beep.  No light.

“My badge seems to be broken,” I told the uniformed man.  “Try it again,” he suggested, the sum total of his knowledge regarding possible solutions to my problem now plainly evident.  Like smacking a piece of electronics when it’s not functioning right, I waved the badge again so he could watch it fail. “No beep.  No light.,” he said.  “No beep.  No light.,” I said.  We looked at each other and for a moment I was worried I’d broken the poor man’s brain.  But, with his debug procedure complete, he simply pointed me to the “badge office” and said I’d likely need a new one.

It was already past 8am now and despite the sawmill being extremely lax in holding us employees to appointed working hours I’ve always been an eight-to-five kinda fellow.  I checked my watch, five minutes past.  No meetings to rush off to and with only a slight disruption to my coffee and banana acquisition procedure I decided to see the “badge office” right then and there.  I approached.

“My badge seems to be broken,” I told the man.  He took it from me, verified that it was broken, and proceeded to sit down at his computer to fashion me a new one.

Now, let me tell you that I’ve been at the sawmill now for ten years and that back on that first day of my tenure here, now so misty in my memory, they’d taken a picture of me to use on my all-important badge.  I’ve actually written about this picture before, for it is truly horrible.  For ten years I’ve had this post-college me staring back at me on my badge, looking all beer-fat and sheltered to the realities of corporate life.  Ten years looking down at that Napster-loving, $4-pizza-subsistent, neophyte.

I saw my window.

“Sure wish I could get a new picture on there,” I said casually.  Now I know full well that, for whatever reason, likely cost, the sawmill is strongly averse to re-taking badge photos.  I have a friend who lost a ton of weight and his badge photo ceased to resemble him in the least.  Even still he described his ordeal trying to get the badge photo updated as pulling teeth.  Knowing the ugliness of his travails I doubted my offhand comment would accomplish anything.

“Do you need a new picture?,” he asked.  Oh.  An opening.  Play it cool Dave, don’t let on your excitement.  Think logically.  What would be a logical reason to request a new badge photo?  Aha!  “Just look at how fat I am in that one,” I replied.  Now this is true; I have, over the past year, lost a considerable amount of weight.  Not enough, mind you, that I’m certifiably healthy per government standards, but I’ve at least got myself partway there.  He looked at the old photo, looked at me. “OK come on in,” he said.

Took maybe five minutes and I had my new badge.  I think it’s an improvement.

Goodnight.

Posted on

loss prevention

We went to Disneyland back in December with friends.

I took advantage of a promotion and got in free on the day of my birthday. Even though I came down with a stomach bug partway through the day it was OK. I wrote about it here so I won’t write about it again. I have a different story from the trip so I’ll write that here.

While we were there Keaton threw probably the biggest, loudest, most fantastically ridiculous fit of her short career so far. We shared a two-room hotel “suite” with our friends. They have Jake who’s of age with Keaton and we get along well with them and the kids get along well with each other so as joint vacations go it was good from a getting-on standpoint. This day, my birthday, I had left the group at the park and retired to the hotel early because I felt terrible and was near losing my stomach. They returned later in the evening, affording me some good time for resting and recuperation and sparing themselves the hazard of being in close quarters with me and the sole bathroom I was mostly stuck in. Of course Keaton hadn’t napped, and she was out of sorts.

I don’t remember what started it all but likely it was sassy-talk or something from Keaton. Sharaun told her to sit on the bed and not get off the bed and that she was doing a time-out on the bed. I was also on the bed resting under covers, trying not to move much or think much but just lay still and get the better of my bowels through the power of my mind. The bed was now Keaton’s prison for her bad behavior and that meant she was screaming and crying and carrying on next to me in my deteriorated state and it was making me feel worse and I got angry with her. I told her to “stop.” I overcame my malaise and started parenting. Things got worse.

I’ve been meaning to write about what I’ve named the “dam breaking” thing that’s been going on with Keaton recently.  This is the phenomenon where nothing – not soft words, not hard words, not consequences, not abandonment, not the rod – nothing can slow the rolling snowball of her building tantrum.  It’s a relatively new thing, but it’s supremely frustrating and makes a body feel helpless to do anything positive.  This was one of those times.

All I did was a loss. She got louder and more ridiculous. Flailing and screaming and coughing for breath and red in the face. Not wanting to spoil the child I let my anger manifest all old school and took to spanking her. She kept going. I kept going. It was a back-and-forth volley, escalating tears and screams on her for escalating smacks on my part. Still none of it to any effect. All the while our friends were trying to afford us as much privacy as the little room allowed, and may have even retreated into their semi-separate “room” to give me some space. Didn’t matter, I knew in my head they could see and hear my performance.

Because of this it was all deathly embarrassing and personal. She’d lost control, I’d lost control, and here we were like we’re on a reality show with the voyeurs behind the fourth wall watching it all unfold with their mouths gaping. I imagined the thoughts going through their heads: how they’d have done it differently, how they’d react were it their child and we the ones looking on, how they’d never beat their child so. Oh it was so embarrassing! Afterward I knew that the spanking wasn’t right, hell even during I think I knew it wouldn’t be effective. Ben loves a story I tell about a time I spanked Keaton for hitting Sharaun.  To the rhythm of my spanking I told her firmly, “We. Don’t. Hit!” A wonder the child’s mind didn’t explode at the hypocrisy.  It always feels wrong anyway, and it feels even worse, sorrowful down to the soul, in front of an audience.

Later, when things had calmed down, my buddy did the neighborly thing and consoled me in the way men console other men. “I know how frustrating that can be,” he said, empathizing, “You feel like there’s nothing you can do, like everything makes it worse, so you do what you can. We’ve been there before, trust me.” And even though I know it’s the kind of stuff people say to each other to ease each other’s spirits I’m still ashamed that I whacked my child in anger in front of them. Oh I can smile and laugh and act like it’s all par for the parenting course, and, in reality, I suppose it is, but it still makes my stomach twist to think about it.

Goodnight.

Posted on

what godless monster?

Monday and we’re off to Portland later this week.  Wrote this entry way back on Thursday last week.  Here goes.

I thought I’d written before about how they give us free fruit at work, but I couldn’t find where.

In the café downstairs there’s this large table under a big reddish market umbrella with four or five baskets heaped with fruit. The umbrella really serves no purpose other than atmosphere, I believe, and it’s high enough that I don’t have to duck to get to the fruit so it’s fine. There’s typically a different type of fruit in each basket, with some that are almost nearly always there and some that rotate through more unevenly. There are always, for example, bananas and apples. And there are nearly always some kind of orange or tangerine or the like. Sometimes there are pears or plums or something more exotic. Like I said, there are always bananas. In fact, they have trouble keeping enough bananas.

From my non-scientific study of the free fruit table, I’ve decided that bananas are far and away the most popular fruit item. It’s always the first basket to go empty in the morning, and it’s often refilled and emptied again before lunch. And then it’s over. I have a theory that they only fill it twice a day and that’s it. That accounts for two big boxes of bananas unloaded onto the table, I’ve seen them doing it. Maybe even free fruit has limits. Thing is, if you prefer the bananas – and who doesn’t, they are my entire breakfast all the working week – you have to make sure you get one early enough or you’ll be out of luck. Sometimes you can even get there too early, and they haven’t even stocked the banana basket yet. Oh there’ll be all sorts of other fruits out, but the banana basket will sit empty. It’s always a gamble with the bananas.

I suppose this is because they are just about the perfect fruit. Come in their own wrapping, aren’t messy, not too sweet, perfectly portioned. What the heck kind of Godless monster wouldn’t like a banana? We’re only supposed to be allowed one piece of free fruit each day, but on Mondays and Tuesdays I actually always take two bananas. I’ll tell you why. Oftentimes the are still green and pretty inedible. I take two and let them ripen on my desk for a day. I’m always a day behind on the banana I’m eating, and a day ahead on the bananas I’m taking. This way, come Wednesday I only have to take one and on Thursday and Friday I don’t even have to grab a banana because Wednesday’s or Thursday’s is now nicely ripened back up at my desk. It’s a system. I have a banana system. I figure it works out to one a day anyway, really. Five days and five bananas so I’m within the rules. May not look that way as I walk to my desk with two in-hand Monday and Tuesday, but I’m on the up and up.

Sometimes I mess up though and end up with an extra banana still ripening at my desk on Friday afternoon. I always feel guilty about this, but I don’t permit myself to take the leftover banana home. Somehow that would be stealing. That said, don’t think I’ll let you take this opportunity to challenge me on what I consider stealing and what I don’t. I’m very well aware of the discrepancies between my banana dilemma and my file-sharing habits and I know a day of reckoning is coming for the latter. As soon as Keaton asks me how I get all my new music, and I’m forced to attempt an explanation. I know it’s a day coming. Extra bananas though, those prick my conscience. So I leave them over the weekend. Although this may do for a rather soft brown banana on Monday, but it’s worth it to stay within the law.

Goodnight.

Posted on

feeling old fashioned

Happy coming weekend to us all. Tonight I went all blitzkrieg and wrote four full blog entries. For a second I contemplated just combining them all into one but instead chose to prepare them all for auto-posting a day at a time. Boom; all done for tomorrow and half of next week. Beautiful.

This morning, for the first time in my life, I sat and blacked my dress shoes. I suppose people still polish their shoes, but it seems somehow arcane. An activity of yesterday. I vaguely remember my dad shining his shoes. He had a fancy “kit” with a brush and a rag and he looked like he knew what he was doing. Probably learned proper shoe-shining protocol in the service; toned boots to see the CWO’s face reflect in the gloss. Me, I had no idea what I was doing. The instructions on the back of the Kiwi can verified that I already know everything there is to know about the basics: it’s just like waxing a car – put it on, buff it off. But the mechanics befouled me on my first time.

Even getting into the can was initially a mystery until I figured out the little rotating key is to be used as leverage in lifting the lid. For some reason this made the whole thing seem more old fashioned to me. This simple little tin with the clever lever action turnkey thing, it all seemed like an example of the brilliant-simple engineering from the war years. Everything now is overkill. Garbage cans that need to be plugged in so their motion sensors can see you approaching with your refuse and mechanically open and close the lid for you and machines that “clean the air” with negative ions. Over-engineered in the name of modernity and “cool.” Stupid. Here was a little formed tin with a blob of black junk inside and a little key to help you pop the lid. Function without excess. Like I said, made it all seem the more anachronistic an activity.

But I made do. I stuck my hand in the shoe and made what fist I could to hold it tight so I could move the cloth around it and paint on the black. I don’t have a fancy kit with brushes and rags like my dad, so I just used an small microfiber towel (I bought a 10,000 pack, or some such ridiculous example of excess, of them from Costco nine years ago and I’ve since found a multitude of uses for the things). I’d darken the surface with the stuff using one end of the towel, and then go back over it and rub it in with the clean end. I sat at the kitchen table using the light from the sliding glass door to help me see my work. Afterward, I was pretty happy with things. I managed to obscure all the scuffs and little lines and improved the overall “blackness” of the things. I turned the shoes around in my hands admiring them before slipping them on and getting on with getting ready.

Made me feel old… sitting in pinstriped dress pants and a blue dress shirt and black socks shining my shoes.

Like I’m at that point in my life.

Posted on

sun dried tomatoes

Today I write non-linearly. Or, every day I write non-linearly. But today I tried to write non-linearly. Happy Thursday.

I hate to say it because I’ll probably jinx it, but I do believe I’m back.

Writing is coming to me more easily than it has in months, and the blog has benefited from it with a return to the daily posting heyday of years past. Honestly, I think it’s taken me getting back between the pages of some good books for this to happen. When I read more, I want to write more. Seems backwards since both take time and time is scarce, but allot budget for both. I’ve come to conclude, then, that being involved in a good book is key for me in terms of my motivation to write. I read words put together so nicely, see concepts created with sentences, and I want to rush off to the keyboard and do the same. I’m fairly transparent, so you’ll see my “style” shift to the style of what I’m reading at the moment… but that’s OK with me.

Yesterday’s fog lifted today, made for a slightly warmer but equally as gray day comparatively. At night the solid blanket of clouds distributes the light from the moon (now waning gibbous and just slightly out of round) throughout the sky. You’d think that the diffusion would waste some of the brightness, but going to bed last night whole of the sky was like a pale lighted sheet. It was so bright, in fact, that I said something to Sharaun about it as we climbed into bed. She said something contrary; “It isn’t all that bright,” or similar. “Sure looks bright to me,” I thought silently, not rising to the moment.

In the morning when I woke up the pants and shirt I wanted to wear were in a crumple on top of the dryer. I had to pull out the wad of clothes currently in there, add it to the bigger crumple on top, and give them a ten minute whirl before I was even halfway comfortable wearing them. While I waited, I paced the house in my boxers.

I looked out the window in the front room, the one that looks out onto the garden box. I never did plant a winter crop this year. I even had Cynthia donate all her wonderful organic seeds to me before moving out of the country. She and I went as far as to pick out and bundle up a selection of winter crops to plant. Never got around to it. The garden is a massive tangle of dead dried tomato bushes. Amazingly, though, although everything else has returned to the dust from whence it came I spotted some green sprigs. Imagine my surprise when I pulled four well-developed carrots from the soil. Plants, they want to grow.

After getting dressed I roused Sharaun, my chauffeur at present. Keaton was in the bed with us so she woke too. Almost every night she calls from her bedroom and asks if she can come sleep with us. We deny her gently almost always, and she goes back to sleep. This is actually a vast improvement from her older M.O. where she’d simply wander up to the bedside and tap your shoulder to wake you, asking to join us under the covers. It was harder to say “no” then as “no” involved walking her back to her bedroom and re-tucking her in (I know, it didn’t have to involve that… but it did, to avoid complications). Not sure why she started calling from her bed instead, but she’s effectively solved that problem for us.

She got invited in last night because she called out around 3:30am saying, “Dad, I have to go potty!” I sometimes wonder how I’m always able to wake and post-process what I’ve heard when it comes to Keaton. Other noises and other voices would likely go by unnoticed. Must have something to do with what’s good for the species; genetics; God. But I do wake and my brain replays for me what did the waking. I sat up slightly and re-heard, “Dad, I have to go potty!” “Go ahead baby. Get up and go potty.” She was wearing a pull-up. “Just pull down your pull-up.” Light flooded into the hallway and I heard the tinkle and the flush and the faucet. When she was done the light flicked off and I heard, “Dad, can I come into your bed?” It was Sharaun who answered.

“Yes baby, come on in.” This surprised me a little, although not much in my half-awake state. Sharaun’s usually a big proponent of Keaton staying in her bed for the nights. She came to my side. I hoisted her under her arms and rolled her over me into the canyon between Sharaun and I. “I’m so proud of you Keaton,” Sharaun said. Now I get it. Maybe this is a reward for her waking to use the potty. “Yeah babe,” I said, “You woke up and used the potty just like we talked about. That’s great!” We snuggled us three. I took one last look out the window to marvel at that glowing fleece of a sky, the moon’s glow doled out even across the suspended droplets of cloud, before sleep took its revenge on us all.

Even though there was still pee in the pull-up come morning, I can’t help but see it as progress. Tonight we’ll reiterate the get up if you need to get up thing, see if we can provoke a repeat performance. One step at a time.

Goodnight.

Posted on

room for small luxury

Fog never really lifted today. Dissipated a bit, but it only served to hang the misty drifts near the horizon rather than the head-level of 8am. Sharaun’s still taking me to work. The GMC hasn’t come back from the shop. The accident was a month ago come Friday. A month.

I’ve gotten used to being down a vehicle, it has its upside. Sharaun can park in the center of our tiny garage affording passengers on each side a wide enough berth to enter and exit the vehicle comfortably. What’s more, I’ve been able to reclaim some of the space with one of those pop-up camp chairs. Turned it into my own little smoking lounge. Sit out there in the cold and read my book and smoke my pipe and listen to music. No room for that sort of small luxury when there’s two cars shoehorned between the shelves of old boxes and air compressor and bicycles hanging from rafters.

I suppose I could use this as a sort of period of adjustment.

When the second child comes I’ll be hard pressed not to forfeit the new car to Sharaun and our progeny. It’s larger and it’s safer. I should be steeling myself for that day during this period of absence. Too bad you can’t get an iPod integrated into her Saturn. If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t too much mind trading vehicles. I can get on with a smaller passenger car OK, I don’t really mind – it’s not the sports-utilitarianism I’m beholden to. I guess I could put in an aftermarket head unit, but it seems like an awful amount of trouble. I’m so irrational about it that I’ve considered ditching her car and leasing something newer to drive. This is how ridiculously my brain holds to it being “her car.”

The gym is full of new-year-resolution folks. Packed. I remember it like this when I myself resolved to start going shortly after the start of 2009. Like many other good-intentioned people my fervor ebbed in the later quarter of last year. Not to say I stopped going completely, but I did backslide. Late 2010 travel and holiday don’t-cares saw me put back on a good ten pounds of what I’d shed earlier in the year. So I, too, am back with a vengeance.

Before I go… recently there was a comment on a blog I wrote way back in 2004. The “satanic flier” post was my recounting, supplemented with media, of a rather juvenile, yet still pretty funny if you ask me, prank my friends and I pulled back in high school. The comment led me to re-read the post again and remember the event. But I’m not writing now to rehash the entry but rather to laugh at the string of comments its collected. They crack me up:

harmony ponders…

i wonder how santinic people do there richals and thing’s like that cause i have a friend named shadow and he’s only about 14 and i wonder how much he would know at he’s age?

disaster asks nicely…

please send me a photo 4 the satan

Blake isn’t satanic or anything, but…

wow that was amazing. my nickname is SATAN so i think its kinda funny story, im not satanic or anything i think i might do this at my school would u mind if i used a copy of the same flyer?

DarkJoeri warns me…

yow mutherfucker dont mess whit evil

And finally, Anonymous says…

we flier of ot good

Guess the devil really does bring out the worst in people, huh?

Good stuff. Goodnight.