MySpace, March 24 – April 8, 2008

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Poisoned
Current mood: infuriated

We just got back from vacation.Correction: We just got back from the bar-none worst vacation I’ve ever had to endure.

We rented a minivan and got a great deal on a time-share condo for a week in Williamsburg, VA. Prescription for success, I know. We set out on Saturday evening, planning to drive through the night while the kids slept, buoyed by road-food snacks and Red Bull.

How wrong we were.

After twelve hours on the road, I passed out while driving somewhere in West Virginia. I had enough warning beforehand that I was able to stop the van and not kill my entire family. My wife thought I was dead. My kids were screaming my name. I didn’t know any of this. My wife woke me up, we pulled the van off the road, and I got out and vomited in the ditch. That afternoon we checked me into the ER in Winchester, VA. They thought I’d had a heart attack and ran EKG’s, cat scan and a chest x-ray. Not to mention the dual IV’s filling me with fluids and a heparin drip. And they stuck a nitroglycerin patch on my chest. They really thought I was going to heart-attack on them.

Then they admitted me for the night, and kept me awake by sticking needles in me every two hours…and they starved me until they could run an EEG on a tilt-table…which made me pass out again, go figure. After finding nothing beyond exhaustion, dehydration, etc…my wife bitched loudly enough that they let me go, and we made it to Williamsburg a day late.

Well, let’s skip Tuesday and Wednesday — I spent Tues. in bed and saw the ocean on Wed…amongst choking down every bite of food that I ate, and battling waves of nausea and diarrhea.

Thursday we set out to see some plantations…and my wife almost passed out while driving, just like I did. And we realized that the van we had rented — a brand new Grand Caravan — was piping carbon monoxide and gasoline fumes in through the vents, and poisoning us. Poisoning me. Poisoning my wife. Poisoning my seven-year-old boy. Poisoning my five-year-old girl. Poisoning my 17-month-old twins. Poisoning us.

We made Budget bring us a replacement, out in the middle of nowhere of Virginia, and we finally had a clue what was making us all feel terrible. Not the flu, not just wussyness. We were poisoned.

And then Friday and Saturday we drove home…our vacation thoroughly ruined. I saw the doctor on Monday, and she confirmed that all of the symptoms I’m still suffering from can all be chalked up to carbon monoxide poisoning. It may take another couple of weeks to truly get this crud out of my bloodstream. I (and any of us) may show side effects up to 40 days after our exposure. My kids may have permanent developmental damage. We have to wait and see. At the very least, we got a free van from Budget — we did NOT pay for our poison van.

And so we wait and see. We wait and see when we stop feeling nasty and nauseous and dizzy and numb. We wait to see if any long-term effects show up. We wait and see if we can get over our first real vacation in five years being so totally raped by this. We wait to see if we need to hire a lawyer and go for the balls.

I have nothing good or especially funny to say about all of this. Deal with it. We have to.

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Thursday, March 27, 2008

I’m Bitching About Drivers Again

I had to take a road trip for work today — not like interstate long, just 30 miles to Frankfort and back. Man, am I the only one whose head isn’t up their ass?Here’s a great refresher lesson for drivers: If there are cars coming, wait.

Again: If There Are Cars Coming, Wait.

One more time: If There Are Cars Coming,

Wait.It’s like I’m not even there, sometimes — like there’s a gap in the visible light spectrum the size and shape of whatever vehicle I’m in. Here are some scenarios for all of you who need them:If you’re waiting to pull out onto a busy road, and there are cars coming…DON’T pull out. I know it’s a departure for you, but try it. If you’ve already waited for three cars, maybe DON’T pull out in front of the fourth car. If you’ve already waited for a full minute…DON’T pull out in front of whomever’s next. If someone asks you how many cars you wait for before pulling out, any answer except for “all of them” is WRONG! It doesn’t fricking matter how many cars you wait for — if there are more cars coming, you keep your ass off the road!

If there is a school bus or garbage truck on the shoulder, and you want to drive around them…but there are cars coming, WAIT! Let’s actually NOT pull into the oncoming lane when there are oncoming cars in it that are…well….oncoming. It’s not your lane, it’s theirs…keep the fu(dge) out of it!

If you’re waiting to turn left across traffic…and there seem to be large metallic objects approaching…WAIT! If you think “I’ve waited long enough,” and turn in front of them, you may be having a nice T-Bone for dinner tonight. Don’t be stupid, even if it’s a challenge.

And here’s another: If you pull up to a road you want to turn onto, and there are two cars coming, but miles of empty road behind them…just wait for those two cars, and THEN pull out, okay? You won’t be getting anywhere any faster by jumping out in front of them like an asshole…and who knows, they might have been going much faster than you like to go, and you’ll succeed in pissing off people who are behind you where you can’t see them pull a bazooka out of their back seat.

Oh, and motorcycles count as cars. Yes, they do, actually. No, I’m serious, they do. Whatever, jerk, STFU and wait for them, too.

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Monday, March 24, 2008

Day-to-day Poop

I’m just finishing the day after Easter. Or as my wife seems to like calling it: Thanksgiving. I am so beat, I actually left work at 1pm, came home, and took a 2-hour nap. Saturday night, we had to be easter bunnies — that’s what mom’s and dad’s do, and there shouldn’t be any kids reading this and getting their universe rocked with this revelation.Where was I? Oh yeah, we stayed up late Saturday to get easter baskets together. This after spending the day cleaning our house to host 15 people for Sunday dinner. So I partook of my first “energy drink” ever. You know, the ones with “Taurine” and “Guarana” and “Guacolocospirulene-L17″ and so on. As it turns out, the darn things work. I drank the thing between say 4pm and 6pm Saturday. I didn’t have my first yawn until 3:30a.m. Good lord in Hoboken, it was like drinking a Sweet-Tart.

So today, I got up at my usual 5:30a.m….after getting a not-usual three hours of sleep. I was dragging ass. I bought another one of those drinks at work and downed it, but this one had some different brew of ingredients, and it made me all hyper-twitchy-stumbly, then it ran out and I realized I was sitting at my desk, staring out the window, completely lights-on-nobody-home. I left.

But Sunday was nice. We hosted the Famn Damily — 17 people in our 1500 sq. ft. house (my wife insists 1400, bleah) including our children. We had two kinds of ham; mashed taters and gravy; green bean casserole; home-made mac’n cheese; taco dip and chips; meatballs; rolls; orange jello-whip stuff; 5-layer salad, deviled eggs and two kinds of pie. Uurp. After dinner, we had three kids whipping beach balls at each other in the living room, with the twins toddling back and forth through it and remaining unscathed like that scene in “The Untouchables” where the baby carriage bumps down the stairs through the middle of the gunfight.

All in all it was a good Easter. The kids liked their baskets. Dinner was low stress despite all the people. Then I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. getting the house into something resembling normalcy and getting a start on all the dirty pots and serving bowls. And that leads into the three hours of sleep before going to work today. Aack.

It was four degrees this morning. Stupid me, I tried to stick the new license plate tags on the car. That didn’t work. Luckily they stuck this afternoon when I tried. And what’s with having to scrape off my car windows after Easter, anyway? That’s not right. I don’t care if Easter is in mid-March…it’s supposed to knock off this winter shit now.

Tae kwon do tonight again. Now that the tournament is done (I didn’t go) there’s less emphasis on sparring and more concentration on our requirements for our next belt test. I have my form pretty well learned — Tae guek II. Chim-bee position; left low block, step forward, punch; right low block, step forward, punch. Forward inside block, forward inside block; left low block, forward kick, step forward, high punch; right low block, forward kick, step forward, high punch; forward high block, step forward, high block; spin counterclockwise and right high block; spin clockwise and left high block; low block to the rear, forward kick, punch; kick, punch; kick, punch with ki-yi, face forward; chim-bee position.

Like, I know, right?

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MySpace, March 15 – 27, 2008

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Favorite Movie Quotes
Current mood: pleased

Okay, so that last blog was pretty grim and dismal. And preachy, and self-pitying. And…nevermind, point made.

So today: favorite movie quotes! At random, for no reason, just individual lines that I like for some reason or another. Maybe they’re applicable in real life. Maybe they were just delivered particularly well in the movie.

“Tina, ya fat lard…com’n get some HAM!!” — Napoleon Dynamite
“I feel terrible.” –

Empire Strikes Back
“Money can’t buy love…but it can buy some of the most remarkable substitutes.” — Gone With The Wind
“No, we’ve come too far.” — Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
“What’s the soup du jour?” “It’s the soup of the day.” “Mm, that sounds good…I’ll have that.” — Dumb and Dumber
“Wanna hear a joke? Knock knock…” — Catch Me If You Can
“We thought you was a toad.” “Nope, I never was no toad.” “See, now that was OUR mistake.” — O Brother Where Art Thou?
“I want my two dollars!!” — Better Off Dead
“Whattaya got on the spacecraft that’s GOOD?” — Apollo 13
“It’s not that I’m lazy…it’s that I just don’t care.” — Office Space
“On the whole, the universe tends to unfold as it should.” — Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
“It’s your dog. It’s your dog, get it? It’s your dog.” — Road Trip
“I didn’t kill my wife!” “I don’t care!!” — The Fugitive
“Be careful what you shoot at, Mr. Ryan…most things in here don’t react well to bullets.” — Hunt For Red October
“There is no try. Do, or do not.” — Empire Strikes Back
“Baby…the other, OTHER white meat.” — Austin Powers II
“AsphinctersaysWHAT?” “What?” — Wayne’s World
“Try not to sing songs that remind them they’re in prison.” “Did you think they forgot?” — Walk The Line
“So it’s basically a smash’n grab.” “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.” “Well, yeah.” — Ocean’s Eleven

I’m really reaching now…so I’ll cut it off. I have to start cleaning the house for Easter, anyway.

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Friday, March 21, 2008

Talisman; Volvo
Current mood: contemplative

I drive a Volvo. Or should I stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Nick, and I drive a Volvo,” and everyone else in the room can say “Hi, Nick.” Well anyway, I do. This is a picture from back when it was new:

It looks pretty much the same now, nine years later. The hubcaps are off it for the winter, because ice builds up in ’em and makes the car shake like a broken Maytag, but that’s about it. We ordered it from the factory new in 1999, and we’ve put 167,000 miles on it since then. It wasn’t an expensive car, either — A loaded Ford Taurus was more expensive. Hell, there were Subaru’s more expensive.

Yeah, so I’m bragging about my car. Woo-hoo, right? Well, this Volvo is more than just a car. It’s a really large, shiny talisman. It’s one of the last things that remain of my mother. I lost my mom to cancer in 1997. We auctioned off most of mom’s stuff and sold my childhood home. For a couple of 20-somethings we got a lot of money. Debt was paid off, fun was had, family members showed their true colors, hijinks ensued, and in 1999 we used essentially the last of (we’ll call it) my inheritance to buy a Volvo.

So this car is more than a car to me…it’s a reminder of my mother, and that’s big…even if it is more than a bit Oedipal. We’ve had the thing so long now, that our Volvo has become almost a family member in its own right, too. It’s carried my wife and I from Virginia to South Dakota, from Minnesota to Kentucky. All four of our children rode home from the hospital in the Volvo. It’s carried Christmas presents, rolls of carpet, 8-foot ladders and a week’s worth of luggage. It’s been through a ditching, vandals, countles blizzards and a full-on Indiana tornado. It’s on its fourth set of tires and its third set of brakes. 167,000 miles — that’s two-thirds of the way to the MOON, fer cryin’ out loud.

I have another talisman of my mother, actually, that I carry with me wherever I go. When we visited my mother over Christmas 1996, she took us out for Chinese food. We had fun, we talked, we laughed, she told us how her treatments were going good; everything seemed great.

Three weeks later she was dead.

When I was going through her stuff shortly after she passed, I found the credit-card receipt for that Chinese meal — the last time I saw her alive — and it went into my wallet, where it has remained and will remain, even after all of the cheap carbon-copy ink has worn off the thin yellow paper.

Talismans (Talismen?) don’t have to be reminders of doom and gloom, though. I keep a talisman to remind me of my wife, too — her high-school class ring. I wear it on a cord around my neck, always. She gave it to me back in 1994 when we started seeing each other, and I’ve worn it since. It almost means more to me than my wedding band…I’ve forgotten to put on my wedding band in the morning before, but I’ve never forgotten to hang that little silver ring with the pink stone around my neck. I’ll probably still be wearing it when I’m old and wizened, and people will wonder what kind of pathetic high-school girl is dating the old pervert.

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Monday, March 17, 2008

I Never Forget St. Patty’s Day
Current mood: ecstatic

I never forget St. Patrick’s Day. It falls on the day after my birthday (yes, every year) so I kind of have a recurring reminder of it. So yes, my birthday was yesterday. I turned 38. I’ll spell that out: thirty-eight. I don’t feel thirty-eight. I’m pretty sure I don’t think like I’m thirty-eight. I kind of feel like I just graduated for college, except for that 13-year gap that I can’t account for. Heck, I feel more like I just graduated from high school…not like my 20-year reunion is coming up this year.

So it’s kind of a shock to me to be thirty-eight. That’s an age that makes birthdays feel like “yup, another notch on the ol’ gunstock…one less year before I die.” Gruesome. Macabre. Depressing. Somber. Dark. Dank. But yet…this year not so much. I dunno…I kind of look at that number beside the label, “Age:” and this year I’m sorta shrugging and saying, “Yeah, maybe so, but I don’t FEEL that old.”

Funny thing happened after tae kwon do tonight. Sensei made us run around the gym for five full minutes, and do pushups and crunches and jumping jacks…in addition to all of the actual tae kwon do practice. It’s three hours ago, and I can barely lift my arms. Anyway, on the way out to the car, another parent who’s in the class with me (and if she’s reading this, yes, I’m talking about you!) delivered the statement, “Bleah, I’m too old for this.” Well, I know she just turned thirty, so I returned with “I don’t wanna hear it…I just turned thirty-eight yesterday.”

She stopped. Her mouth hung open. (in a pretty way. Really.) She stared at me. “You’re kidding me.”
“No.”
“Really.”
“Yup.”
“I only said that because I was sure you’re five years younger than I am.”
“Wow, thanks…um, nope, sorry, I’m thirty-eight.”
“No way.” and etc. for a bit longer.

So I’m feeling pretty good about myself tonight. I don’t think I look like a 25-year-old by any stretch of the imagination, what with the paunch and the hair in my ears, and the kids that orbit around me…but an even thirty wouldn’t be out the question. And any night that a pretty younger woman thinks I’m in my twenties is a good night in my book. Like, woo-hoo and stuff. And while I spend the next three days in pain from tonight’s class, I can console myself with this, too!

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Saturday, March 15, 2008

Beware The Ides Of March

That’s all, just beware the Ides of March.

Currently listening :
Hang Me Up to Dry
By Cold War Kids
Release date: 16 July, 2007

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MySpace, January 17 – 30, 2008

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

20 Deep Questions…
Current mood: chipper

This showed up in a bulletin from one of my friends. I thought I’d put it in my blog, rather than load it into the bulletin-shotgun and belabor everyone (that would be seven people) with it.Ultimately, I think this points out the embarrassing difference between what I know I should do in a situation, and what I’d actually do in a situation. The needs of modern society are a bitch.

20 deep questions that could really tell you something.
[ Not simple questions like "How Old Are You?" ]1. Is it difficult for you to look into some one’s eyes when you are telling them how you feel?

Actually, no.

2. You are on a flight from Honolulu to Chicago non-stop. There is a fire in the back of the plane. You get enough time to make ONE phone call. Who would you call?
My wife.4. You are at the doctor’s office and they have just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. (A) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? (B) What do you do with your remaining days? (C) Would you be afraid?
A – I’d like to say that I wouldn’t, and that I’d be virtuous and honorable and not burden everyone with my affliction…but I know me, and I’d blab it to everyone and secretly enjoy their mortification.
B – I’d like to say the easy answer — “live each day as if it were my last.” The grim reality is that I’d probably still go to work, and I’d spend much time on the internet looking for miracle cures. The other grim reality is that we simply don’t have the money to let me do anything other than what we already do — no quick trips around the world before I die or anything.
C – Terrified, absolutely petrified with fear. Hell, I already am.

5. You can have one of the following two things: love/trust
Trust. I’ve lived most of my life without love. Having my trust betrayed hurts more if it’s from someone you love.

6. You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?
I would like to say that I’d save the dog. With the job I currently have, I’d save the dog because my boss isn’tgoing to fire me. Given this artificial situation, though, I’d let the dog drown — if I lose my job, I can’t feed and house my wife and my four children, and their life is more important to me than a dog’s life.

7. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
Since I was a boy, I’ve always wanted to fly a WWII airplane to Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.

8. Think of the last person who you really knew that died. You have the chance to give them 1 hour of life back, but you have to give one year of your life. Do you?
No. That person is my mother. I would hope she wouldn’t want her only child to give up a whole year just for her. Regardless, I wouldn’t deprive MY children of one of their parents for an entire year, just for another hour with my mother — I would love the chance to see my mother again, but not enough to do that. As a side point, I fear she’d spend the entire hour making me feel the way she did when she was alive…

9. Are you the kind of friend that you would want to have as a friend?
No. Not even close.

10. Does love = sex?
No. I’m not sure anything equals sex these days. Four kids notwithstanding, I’ve spent more of my life not having sex than otherwise. I’m the most celibate pervert I know.

11. Your best friend dies, what would you do?
I don’t really have a best friend. In fact, I don’t really have any friends. I really don’t know how to answer this question.

12. When was the last time you told someone HONESTLY how you felt?
All the time. My wife and I are very close, and we tell each other everything. That said, when I tell her how I honestly feel, she usually gets mad at me. Doesn’t seem to stop me, though.

13. What would be harder for you, to tell someone you love them or that you don’t love them back?
It depends on the someone. It would be much, MUCH harder for me to tell my wife that I don’t love her back (if you’re reading this, HYPOTHETICAL situation, honey!). On the other hand, if a co-worker at random told me she (or he) loved me, it wouldn’t be hard at all to respond with an “I don’t like you like that.”

14. What do you think would be the hardest thing for you to give up on?
I don’t know if it’d be my marriage or my children. The thought of either is gut-wrenching.

15. Excluding romantic love, when was the last time you told someone you loved them?
It’s embarrassing, but I don’t know. I don’t say it much; I KNOW I don’t say it enough.

16. If you had to go back in time and change one thing, if you HAD to, even if you had “no regrets” what would it be?
When I was young, and expressed a love of flying, my mother told me I would never be able to fly a plane because I have glasses. I believed her and gave up on my dream. Knowing what I know now, I would go slap myself in the back of the head, ignore my mother and push for that dream.

17. Imagine. It is a dark night, you are alone, it is raining outside, you hear someone walking around outside your window. Who do you call.
I call nobody. I go outside with a flashlight and my double-barrel shotgun and I take care of the situation myself. Somebody’s going to wet themself before the night’s over.

18. Would you give a homeless person CPR if they were dying?
Most likely, I would. They might be disgusting, but a human life is sacred.

19. Are you old-fashioned?
I’d like to say I’m not, that I’m a hip, contemporary guy. Things throughout my life have proven, though, that when the chips are down, I fall back on old-fashioned values every single time. I hold doors open for people, I let others go first, I try not to interrupt, I would never let my daughter go out in public “like that,” and when I was given a chance, I did NOT take advantage of that drunk, horny girl when I was in college.

20. Which would you choose, true love with a guarantee of a heart break or to have never loved before?
William Shakespeare wrote that “it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved before.” I would have to go with that.

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Monday, January 28, 2008

My Knuckles Hurt.
Current mood: content

Yes, my knuckles hurt. If I were truly manly I’d follow with a story about how I got in a fight at the bar and put a guy in the hospital, and made a 300lb Samoan cry. Guess I’m not truly manly. I got the snot wacked out of my knuckles at tae kwon do by the 7-year-old I was stick-fighting with. We use about 3′ of 1/2″ PVC pipe inside a thin pool-noodle, wrapped with duct tape. This kid was totally not holding back on his swings, either. Two-handed, swinging it like a baseball bat. I had no problem blocking 99% of it all, but he landed a fair number of swats on my knucks. It’s a fun hurt, though. Not like the last time I went and got pwn3d by the dude I already bitched about.Otherwise, the cold snap broke. It hit 46 degrees here. In Michigan. In January. It’s a nice change from being nine degrees. Real nice. The slush melted off the car. I was able to drive fast enough to charge the battery. I didn’t have to wear a fleece jacket under an inflatable snowboarding coat, with wool hat, eskimo gloves, and fleece-lined jeans. I could dress like a human and just wear a coat. Yes, I said inflatable coat. It was a present from my wife a couple of years ago and aside from being ruined by a dry cleaner, it’s a great coat. It’s got a maze of rubber tubing inside, and you blow in through a one-way valve to inflate the coat with your warm exhale and create a warm air-chamber insulation layer. It’s nice.

That said, I think I’m gonna go grab some Ho-Ho’s and surf the rest of the internet.

Currently listening :
Sing, Sing, Sing
By Benny Goodman
Release date: 25 October, 1990

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Weekend? What Weekend?
Current mood: pissy

It doesn’t seem fair, really. Here it is, only 16 minutes left in the weekend, and by the time I’ve posted this it’ll be Monday, and I will be officially up too late, and only be able to get 5-1/2 hours of sleep at the most. It just doesn’t seem fair, this whole 5:2 ratio of workdays to weekend days. I know I’m not the first to bellyache about this, but that doesn’t make any more fair, either.I work a standard 9-to-5 job, (8 to 4:30, really) and have a half-hour commute each way, making for 9.5 hours per day taken up by work. Then, there’s the two hours each morning it takes to wake up, get the kids up and help get them ready for school. That makes it 11.5 hours — from 5:30am when my alarm goes off to 5:00pm when I get home. There’s dinner — either I’m helping get the babies set for dinner, or I’m making it and helping get the babies set. After dinner there’s the 4-children-sized mess to clean up. Say it isn’t really all done until 7pm. I’ve just spent 5:30am until 7:00pm on nothing but work, work work. The twins are really screamy and need to be put to sleep somewhere between 8pm and 9pm.

It leaves about an hour, maybe two every day of somewhat leisure time. If I haven’t fallen asleep with a baby on me, I can most nights get some computer time after 11pm or so…which makes me officially up too late, etc, and the circle is complete.

So we have two days of weekend. Lately, we’ve been packing in house-shopping every weekend for the past month; trekking all over four counties looking at homes, dragging increasingly aggravated kids with us. When we aren’t doing that, we’ve been mucking out the house from the work-week’s worth of scattered toys, crumbled snack crumbs, dirty dishes, muddy laundry and blown light bulbs. After the weekend, I swear I need a weekend. There have been some weekends where I’m actually glad to be going to work on Monday, so I can finally relax a little.

And something else — I would bet a dollar that nothing I’m doing at work is so critical that it needs to monopolize so many days of my week. So somebody’s computer doesn’t get installed on Tuesday, but on Wednesday. In a hundred years, who’s going to know the difference? I’d like to think that I work to support my family…not that I have a family to support my work. But the amount of time that my job demands of me makes me start to think otherwise. I’m damn lucky my twins took their first steps on a Saturday, because if it’d been during the week, I’d have missed it.

It isn’t fair.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

They’re Mobile!
Current mood: drunk

(Let me apologize in advance…I’m drunk. I’ve had lots of a very nice zinfandel, and I may be more of an asshole than usual.)

Both of my babies started walking this week.This is big, so let me say it again: Both of my babies started walking this week. It’s a milestone — not only because we need to move the babyproofing up by about two feet. My twins now can motivate around like real people. They’ve gotten pretty proficient at crawling — they can put their head down and bull forward at a good clip — but now they’ve taken their first venture into adult transportation.

Maybe I could take a minute and bore you with some exposition. If you don’t know what that is, look it up.

www.m-w.com (That’s Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.)I have four children. I have a seven-year-old son, a five-year-old daughter, and one-year-old twin daughters. My son is a tad bit Autistic — as crackpot as it sounds we can control his Autism with a special diet, and we do, and he’s more or less normal. So it’s the twins that just learned to walk.

My son learned to walk when we were in the first and only house we ever actually bought. We tricked him into it with a walker toy…we held it for him, and when he reached for it we inched it away from him and he walked for it without even realizing what he was doing. When he DID realize, he stood there (all of 14 months old) yelling “YEAH! YEAH!!”

My oldest daughter first walked at a Leelanau Peninsula winery, when we were wine-tasting with my dad. Maybe that explains a lot about her. ‘Nuff said.

And of the twins, the younger one first walked on Saturday, at my oldest daughter’s ballet class. The older one walked a day or two later in our kitchen.

So saying, it’s now time to move. We seem to be always destined to move away from wherever we live when one of our children learns to walk. By summer we will be living somewhere else. We’d like to stay in the house we’re in now, but our landlord is simply asking too much money — put it this way…we can get my wife’s dream house for $3000 less than our landlord is asking for a creaky, dingy house that’s been trashed by renters. For $33,000 less we can have a 4-bedroom Victorian with beautiful original woodwork, a 2-car garage/workshop, and a huge double lot, across the road from a park and a block away from a lake — the next town over. Is not-moving worth $33,000? Seems not.

But I digress. My babies are walking. Life is good — scarier, but good.

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Saturday, January 19, 2008

Cold. Cold? Cold.
Current mood: awake

So, I know I said it was cold yesterday. But that was yesterday. Today it’s cold. Yesterday it was almost ten. Right now it’s about -4 degrees. That’s “minus four.” Four below zero. Not on the Celsius scale, where that’d be balmy. No, four below zero Fahrenheit. Frigid cold. Damn cold. It’s like, ten thirty at night and dark, that helps. Today at the heat of the day, it might have hit ten…and it was hella-windy, and snowy. Felt like walking through a Siberian meat locker. Uck.On the other hand, it LOOKED really beautiful outside. We drove to town, and it was sunny for the drive. There was fresh snow from last night, and the morning sun lit up the whitened pine trees and made it look like a total winter wonderland. Sure, if you stuck your nose out the window it’d crystallize and fall off, but it LOOKED really nice.

Oh yeah, and we ate lunch at Olive Garden. Ain’t nuthin’ wrong ’bout that!

Currently listening :
Lazy Eye
By Silversun Pickups
Release date: 24 September, 2007

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Friday, January 18, 2008

And Welcome To Michigan

It’s snowing.Yeah, and in other news, the sun came up. Does it snow a lot in Michigan? Only on the days that end in “Y.” I had my arse out at six in the morning clearing the driveway with our asthmatic snowblower. What’s it like at six in the morning, in January, in Michigan?

It’s cold. Cold and dark. How cold? Nine. Nine degrees. You shouldn’t be able to spell the temperature. The accepted AP style for writing numbers less than 10 is to spell them out, you know? It’s like “I’d like to buy a second digit, Pat…a seven.” And Pat has to say, “I’m sorry, no sevens in this temperature. It’s nine.”

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

What Is The F, Dude?
Current mood: bummed

I’ve been noticing a disturbing (disquieting? disgusting?) trend in people in general. The only time lots of people do anything quickly, or assertively, or decisively…is when they’re being an asshole. The only time people duck through a door quickly is when they want to let it close on you. The only time people change lanes quickly in their car is when they want to cut you off. The only time people walk quickly is when they want to be in front of you in a line. And on and on and on.Most of the time, people seem to shuffle through life in a sort of collective unconsciousness. Existing, not living. They don’t look at me as they pass by. They don’t look at the trees, or sky, or snow, or anything…just a blank stare walking by me. Usually with a cell phone mashed against their ear. That’s the worst. Not only are they detached from what they’re really doing…but their conversation is detached from what they’re talking to. How many people on cell phones sound like this: “I’m getting out of work…..getting out of work…..out of work….work. WORK! What? What? What? What? It’s okay. It’s okay, Okay. Okay!”

Honestly, how much of a waste is that? Not only is the entire subject of the call the simple fact that they just got out of work…but the person they’re calling should honestly be able to surmise that fact by just looking at a clock. And the technology fails them so badly that they can’t even get that sad fact across.

But really, is the human race really only alive when we’re trying to screw someone over? Lately it sure seems that way. Nobody expends the energy unless it’ll squash another human at least a little. It saddens me. It really does.

Currently listening :
Battle Without Honor or Humanity
By Tomoyasu Hotei
Release date: 12 July, 2004

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MySpace, January 8 – 14, 2008

Monday, January 14, 2008

On Humiliation
Current mood: disgusted

Okay, so I’m in a tae kwon do class with my son. Every Monday night since summer I’ve gone and had a good time with it. My son and I are at the rank of orange belt — basically two levels off of the bottom. We know some cool stuff; we could do some real damage against someone who knows no martial arts, but we are really low on the totem pole as things go.Well, tonight was the first class of the new session, and the first half went well. I learned a new form, and learned some of the new moves for my next belt. The second half of the class broke into small groups and one-on-one stuff for more practical play/practice. It was the “come at me and I’ll do some stuff” kind of practice. Well, since the orange belt students in the class are myself and my 7-year-old son, we had no peers to spar with. My son was sent to spar with another kid, and I was paired up with — well, I won’t use his real name, I’ll call him “Dick.”

Dick was obviously a friend of the sensei. He was a blue belt — four levels from the top…four levels above my orange belt. Dick was a blue belt in jiu jitsu, not tae kwon do, and claimed to be “rusty.” We started out practicing the simple block-strike-strike combinations we were supposed to…but Dick started obviously becoming bored with me. Since I’m pretty inexperienced, I kept doing the same thing, and he started lecturing me on fighting. Okay, cool — he’s a higher rank, and I should listen. The lecturing became pretty condescending. Not to mention that his combinations started landing a bit harder on my body. I don’t really like feeling my teeth clack together when it’s supposed to be friendly sparring.

Well, it reached a point where I knew I had to flex my stomach muscles pretty hard when it was his turn, because his knees to the stomach were pretty rough. His strikes to the throat were uncomfortable. It was getting pretty uncomfortable. I told him I was inexperienced a couple of times. When he clacked my teeth together I told him so and said it was too rough.

So he asked if I wanted to do something different. Hell, yes I did…I get tired of just being beat up. So he started to “show me” some “neat moves.” Joint locks where you twist someone’s hand or elbow and put them on the floor. Taking it easy on the one who’s supposed to be learning is usually to be expected. But Dick seemed to take pleasure in reefing my wrist and elbow around. He showed me a finger lock which immediately made my finger loudly go “crack.” I told him point-blank, “If you hear my finger go crack, it was probably too hard.” He wanted to keep showing me the move, and it took not once, not twice, but more than three times of telling him “I don’t want to do that. I don’t like that move,” before he let up on my other hand. I have a sore finger on each hand from it.

We moved to a series of “grab my lapel” followed by him whacking my arms and wrenching either my wrist or elbow. A couple of them drew an involuntary “ack!” from me. When I got to try one of the locks he was showing me, I didn’t get it on the first try, and he outright laughed at me. The final straw for me was when he showed me how to get out of a particular elbow lock, but when it came time for me to get out of it, instead of letting me, he dragged me around the gym in a circle by my arm.

“That’s enough. I’m done.” I said. I straightened up and started to walk away.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I hurt that shoulder in a motorcycle accident,” I told him. It’s not a lie. I did, some 15 years ago, but that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that I was done being beat up.
“You should’ve said something, I’d have used your other arm,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re okay,” I told him. He pressed. I kept just telling him “Don’t worry about it.” I finally said “I think I’m just too low of a belt to work with you.”

My son and I left early.

On the way out, sensei hailed me to say goodbye and I told him about Dick. “Don’t pair me up with that guy again,” I said. “I don’t like having things done to me without explaining them to me first.” Sensei thought we had just paired up and were having fun, and I explained that it started that way and went downhill until Dick was just doing things without letting me know what to expect, and that I didn’t want to disrespect Dick and make a scene in class, but wanted to let Sensei know that he was playing too rough with the lower belt.

It’s the first time tae kwon do wasn’t fun. Dick seemed to want to just show me the stuff he knew but not give me a chance to try it. He wanted to play just shy of full contact, without any pads or protective gear. He seemed to like reefing on my shoulders, elbows and wrists. Worse, he made me not trust him. If you’re sparring with someone that you don’t trust, it’s way more stressful, because you simply don’t know if the guy’s going to accidentally hurt you. The things you learn in tae kwon do can do that…the difference between learning a joint lock and going to the hospital with a shattered elbow is about an inch. You can see how you need to trust your partner to be careful with your body.

Well, I don’t trust Dick. And now if he’s there again, it’s going to be all uncomfortable and stuff. He reacted as if we were having fun and then out of the blue I cried “foul” and walked off. I feel that I gave him ample warnings that he was being too rough. I told him that making my fingers crack was too rough. I told him that clacking my teeth together was too rough. I told him that I was only two levels from the bottom, and inexperienced. I told him “that hurts” a couple of times. It took me saying “That’s enough” and walking away, and I still don’t think he got the clue. Let me say, I was angry enough that I was shaking. I’m guessing I’m going to have stiff wrists for a couple of days.

It sounds corny, but I am striving to learn a lesson from this adversity. I think I have learned, at the expense of my dignity and a few sore joints, that if I am being treated disrespectfully, I don’t have to be stoic and take it. It is entirely acceptable to warn someone once, and if they continue, to remove myself from the situation, and not let that person have another chance.

It doesn’t matter tonight though. Tonight, I just feel disrespected, humiliated and angry.

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Money, Money, Who’s Got The Money??
Current mood: uncomfortable

Maybe I think about it too much, but there’s a huge disparity in the amount of money people have here in Buckley. We live in a decent little subdivision, in a 3-bedroom tri-level with a yard and a porch. We have a minivan, and a Volvo, and an old Ford. I have a motorcycle. We have nice furniture. We have pictures on the wall. We have broadband internet. We cook real food, and can make coffee, tea or hot chocolate on a whim, not to mention Tang or raspberry Kool-Ade.Well, the kids had some friends over today…a little girl and her two twin brothers. Sweet kids. Well-behaved, clean, quiet — I could wish our older two behaved as well as they do. And they come from “the wrong side of the tracks,” as it were…if there were such a thing in Buckley. My wife says they live in a pair of mobile homes that have been parked next to each other and connected. Their yard is cluttered, and they politely didn’t invite my wife inside.

Well, it bears some thought. Or maybe it doesn’t and I’m being an elitist prick, it’s entirely possible. But how can we show up in their driveway in an expensive-looking Volvo without worrying that it looks like we’re flaunting something? I know their kids went home, and if they asked about our house, they can tell their parents all about our kids’ embarrassing piles of toys, and well, all of the stuff we have. If I were them and heard even once about this house, I’d be mortified to invite them into my trailer. And it’s embarrassing — not only that somebody might think that way about what I have, but that I’m actually thinking that someone might be envious of ME. I mean, how &*%^ conceited is that?

But really, they can’t see from the outside that our Volvo is nine years old and has 165,000 miles on it. They can’t see that we got our stereo piece by piece on eBay, or that our furniture was inherited from my mother. They can’t see how tight we are most months, or that I buy my clothes at Goodwill. They can’t see how close our minivan is to barfing out its transmission or melting its wiring into a Mongolian cluster%$@.

Yeah, listen to me bellyache. Oh boo-hoo, I have it so hard. Yeah, I know that’s what it comes off like, but that’s not what I mean. Stuff to me is just stuff…no matter how nice my stuff is, there will always ALWAYS be someone with better stuff. And there will always be someone with better stuff than theirs. And someone else with better stuff than THEIRS. It’s never-ending. Stuff is just stuff, and it’s so stupid to hate someone, like someone or envy someone just because of their stuff. I’m honestly embarrassed at the amount of stuff we have sitting around. My kids are too focused on stuff and not enough focused on being good people, I fear.

These three kids are going to be coming over next weekend, too, and on one hand I have the reprehensible thought that their mom sends them over to get what they can — lunch, maybe a free toy — and I immediately feel like a worse person for thinking something as petty and hateful as that. I don’t know, is it pity? I sure hope not. But there’s no denying that my wife felt bad taking them back to their own home — even though they’re loved and treated well.

And so I’ve reached the point here where I feel like the thought I’m trying to express is dancing just outside my grasp, leaving me babbling and mumbling and totally unable to say just what it is I’m trying to say. Maybe part of it is this: Why can’t we just say “they seem like nice people” and leave it at that? On both sides of the spectrum, why can’t we just say “they seem like nice people” and leave out all of the rich/poor judgemental crap? What is it that makes being poor mark you as a bad person, and being not poor marks you as a good person? I mean in reality, I’ve seen quite a few rich people who are thoroughly bad people; rotten to their core.

I’m stopping.

Their kids are welcome in my home. They seem like nice kids.

Currently listening :
Hang Me Up to Dry
By Cold War Kids
Release date: 16 July, 2007

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Only On The Days That End In “Y.”

The subject of this post doesn’t have anything to do with anything I have to write. I just thought it sounded catchy. It’s like “Does the Pope shit in the woods?” I’ll come right out and say that I have nothing to say, and nothing worth typing in this little text window.That’s what a blog is for, right?

Um, today I got up at four a.m. because one of our babies (we have 14-month-old twins) woke me up, and I decided to stay up rather than catch a single hour of sleep. I went to work. I ate leftovers for lunch. I came home, it rained. It was a day. Sure, it’s a rare day that it’s 46 degrees and rainy in January in Michigan, but these things happen. Last year it was warm enough on New Year’s Day that I put away our Xmas decorations in my pajamas.

Yesterday, now, that was some weather. The morning was so foggy that I couldn’t see the pavement under my wheels — all I could see was the hood of the car. And there was wind, so this thick-ass fog was blowing across the road. It was real “Hound of the Baskervilles” fog, blowing in off the moors. Though Buckley’s version of moors look more like cornfields. Smell like ‘em, too. In the evening, for my commute home, it was a thunderstorm complete with thick, pink bolts of lightning, torrential rain, gale-force winds. Again, I couldn’t see the road, for the buckets of water being dumped on the windshield. It was cool.

And after all the snow melted, I found our other car! We used to have a big snowbank with tires, but without snow, I see that it’s really a big, blue Ford with a dead battery! Woo-hoo! It’s too bad that the battery’s drained, though, because it really isn’t worth charging it up before spring, since we aren’t going to drive it in the winter…and that means that we can’t sell it this winter, because we can’t start it up for someone, and I don’t want to sell it for $20, because it really is a decent car even if it is 24 years old and 17 feet long.

But then, it’s supposed to get cold and snow on us again tonight, so pretty soon the Ford’ll be covered with snow again, and I’ll forget about it until June when the snow finally melts again.

See ya.

Currently listening :
Crush Crush Crush
By Paramore
Release date: 27 November, 2007

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