And another thing...

Did You Get This One Yet?

2008-07-21T22:02:00.002-04:00

I got it from my mother:

Wild Pigs

A chemistry professor in a large college had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in The last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity. The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America . The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc.. While we continually lose our freedoms -- just a little at a time. One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut! In this 'very important' election year, listen closely to what the candidates are promising you !! Just maybe you will be able to tell who is about to slam the gate on America . 'A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.' - Thomas Jefferson

Oy. Typical neocon propaspamda.

Here's my reply:

"This is really confusing to me.

Why is this story set in a chemistry class? Is it because whoever wrote this wants you to think that the person talking about wild pigs is smart?

What does the bullet in the back have to do with the story about wild pigs? Is it because whomever wrote this wants you to think the person is brave? (If he's so brave, by the way, why's the bullet in his back?)

What does fighting communists have to do with the story about wild pigs? Is it because whomever wrote this wants you to believe the young man loves freedom?

When was the last time there was a country that had a war against a communist uprising? I'm not talking about a political struggle--a bullets-flying, people-dying war that involved a communist or marxist faction? The last one I can remember is in Nicaragua, back in the late 1970's/early 1980's. But if you recall, the communist faction--the Sandanistas--were in power, and the Contras who were fighting them were funded almost entirely by America.

So, this 'young' man who was wounded would have to be in his late forties. And his anger towards a government that hands things out would be incredibly hypocritical, since he had doubtless been eating at the same trough as those other formerly wild piggies.

But let's put that argument aside for a moment and just look at the wild pig allegory.

What is the function of government? Is it simply to pave the roads and build jails and stay out of the way of capitalism? We have a government that does that right now, more than any other time in the world, and what do we have? More tainted food than ever before--in peppers, tomatoes, ground beef, et c. More poisonous unsafe toys than ever before. More mine collapses than ever before. Higher food prices, higher gas prices, unregulated banks approving horrible-risk people for mortgages that are guaranteed to bankrupt, (and the government moves in to save the corporation just three years after making it harder to declare that bankruptcy) more uninsured people, more underinsured people...the list goes on. All on the watch of a Republican.

Capitalism, at its nature, is a beast. It favors the rich, it punishes the poor. Left unchecked, it destroys societies and creates oligarchies. One role of government, in my mind, is to control this beast. To level the playing field, at least a bit. To make sure that anyone who works hard can succeed, as opposed to just the sons of those who are already in power.

Government should, in short give hope to the hopeless.

I find it interesting, too, that this screed which decries the removal of freedoms that a big government brings us (and in the last forty years, the government has gotten larger, yes. But most of the growth of government has come during the tenure of three Presidents: Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Dubya). Not mentioned at all in this is the actual removal of Constitutionally-guaranteed freedom as laid out in the Fourth Amendment, which is what the telcom immunity clause in the recent FISA bill brought us.

Since the heart of the claptrap below was a bit of 'folksy' animal husbandry, let me lay my own bit of Wild Kingdom on you:

Do you know how to catch a monkey? It's easy: Bury a jar with a slightly narrow neck in the ground. Let the earth around the jar harden, then drop some grapes and some nuts in the jar. Pretty soon a monkey will climb down, and reach into that jar, and grab those grapes and nuts. But the neck of the jar, which let his open hand in, won't let his closed fist out. And that monkey won't let go of that food. He won't let go, even as people come up to him, and throw a rug over him, and capture him, or club him to death.

Sometimes people are like those monkeys. They see what they think is a good idea--usually it's a mention of a past that seems so much nicer than today, or a convenient scapegoat to blame for todays ills, and they hold onto it. They hold on, and the don't let go, no matter if what's coming at them is a disaster. They just don't realize that if they just let go of that, they have a better chance of survival."

Yeharr

This Is New

2008-07-15T22:50:00.008-04:00

I've got two women.

Okay--I don't have two women, but it's damn close to that.

Even that may be a bit of an exaggeration. Okay, I know it's an exaggeration. But this is me we're talking about here.

Here's the rundown: 'A' is a woman I've known for about five years. She was married when we first met; but then again so was I. We work in the same office.

She started about a month before our house was foreclosed. We had to be out by January 1st, but we stayed an extra week so that we could at least be able to take down the Christmas decorations before abandoning the house. In addition, I had just gotten out of the hospital with peritonitis about a week before. There were two people from work who came to help us move: my buddy Al, whom I've known for years, and 'A.'

I had been on sick leave for roughly half of the time she had worked there, and she came and helped me move. That sort of thing sticks with you.

Skipping ahead: my marriage ends, her marriage ends. We talk. We occasionally hug. She tells me I give the best non-threatening hugs. I take her to the roof (where I would go sometimes to let off steam). She uses the roof for the same reason.

One time she couldn't make it to the roof. She came into my edit bay and closed the door. "Can I just cry in here?" she asked.

"Of course," I said. "Do you want me to do anything, or should I ignore you?" She wanted to be ignored, so I sat and edited while she cried behind the door. After a while she said 'thank you' and left. A while later she came back and kissed me on the cheek.

A shift began. She said things like 'if we didn't work together...' She told me things about her life that she normally wouldn't share. We emailed. A conversation thread revealed that she was alone one night. I invited her over to watch a movie. She said yes. I cancelled because I had forgotten I had a gig that night. We rescheduled. More dates were added. Eventually, we settled on three events. The first was Sunday afternoon. The second was Monday night. Monday, as in yesterday.

'B' contacted me through the internet--from a dating site. It was a wary contact. It took a while to get information out of her. I charmed her. I have that ability. Especially over the intertubes. I've said before that the farther away from me a woman is, the more attractive I appear to her. 'B' was from here in Smugtown. So I had to work harder. Compounding the problem was the fact that she was a smartass. Emphasis on the first syllable. She had been hurt and now she was taking a few wary steps into the world. We met for coffee. As befits the pattern, it took a bit of scheduling and rescheduling and last-minute rearrangements to actually meet.

Turns out she's not from Smugtown--just near Smugtown. No, she's from Hicksville. The office building where she works shares the property with cows. I am not making that up. She's bright, funny, and attractive. And she seems to enjoy my company. Or as she put it: "You seem relatively safe."

In a perfect world, 'A' and I would have come together months ago, and I would have never gone out with 'B.' Or 'A' and I would just stay close friends, and 'B' and I would split time between walking to one of several fine international restaurants in my neighborhood, and tipping cows in hers.

But it's not a perfect world, is it? The world's so imperfect, that I ended up
scheduling my second date with 'B' just a few hours before my first date with 'A.'

The 'B' date was fine. She had a good time, I had a good time.

The 'A' date was... well...

We had planned on going to a blues-n-barbecue event in a local park. But the afternoon was rainy. So instead we went to a local barbecue joint, ate some good food and talked. She talked about how her first husband died; I told her about how my Dad died. She talked about her son I talked about my kids. I made her laugh. She has a good laugh.

The rain had stopped, so we walked around. We went for ice cream. As we walked, I got up enough nerve to say 'Can I hold your hand?'

She said no.

But it led us to a discussion about what the hell was going on. It wasn't a 'no, I don't like you' no. It was an 'I'm not ready for this' no. So I didn't hold her hand. I did, however, buy her ice cream.

It was a fair trade--she paid for parking.

We walked. We talked. We ate our ice cream. I said that I didn't know what was going on, but I knew what I wanted to go on. I wanted a deeper, more intimate relationship with her, but not at the expense of our friendship.

She told me that at the beginning of the year, she had decided not to have sex for 2008. I told her that that was OK with me--I want the next person I make love to to be the last person I make love to.

She told me about a disastrous relationship with someone else who had worked at the office. It had ended badly, and a friendship was lost. She decided she wouldn't date anyone from work again.

We sat in a garden in a church yard and talked. She put her head on my shoulder. I liked that.

She said 'If it makes you feel any better, I really want to kiss you right now.' It did make me feel better.

Last night she came over for dinner. I grilled steak and chicken. She talked about her homework assignment for her creative writing class. She needed to come up with four ideas for stories about conflict:

Her vs. someone
Her vs. nature
Her vs. society
Her vs. herself

She could only come up with an idea for the first one. I thought (but didn't say) I should probably take a creative writing class just for the ego boost. So during dinner I lead her to discover that, in the past week, she had perfect examples of each of them.

The last one was my favorite. "Did you want to kiss me?" I asked her. She admitted she did. "So why didn't you?"

She said "Oh."

We played Wii. She kicked my ass in Guitar Hero III. I kicked hers in Mariokart.

We watched part of a movie. She curled up on the couch next to me. I put my hand on her shoulder. She put her hand into mine.

This might seem like nothing to some. It was most assuredly not.

It was time to leave. We hugged. I kissed her on her cheek. She kissed me the same. And it was good.

What a perfect evening.

Oh, yeah...'B.'

So how do I deal with this? She's a great person at the wrong time. How do I tell her that? I don't necessarily mean the words, since I'm a word guy (although any suggestions would be welcome). I mean more nuts and bolt stuff.

I think that in person is the best way, but I sure as hell don't want to have her drive a half hour to tell her goodbye, and I don't want to drive there to do it either. I think I'll have to do it on the phone.

I thought I was done with this shit in Junior High.

Problem is: I never did this shit in Junior High.

yeharr

Twenty Four Days, Seventeen Hours

2008-07-07T14:37:00.004-04:00

That's how long I have left before my kids come back to me.

And they're my kids. Okay, technically they're her kids too, and I know they love her and she loves them as well, but I have been the constant presence in their life from the moment they came into the world.

And I miss them. I miss them terribly.

That being said, I have to admit it's been nice having some Daddy time.

I had coffee with a potential...um...friend.

I rode my bike from my house down to the Erie Canal, and then another 6 miles along the canal path. I did this with a woman who, while is not a potential friend, is a friend nonetheless.

After work today, I'll be doing the ride again, only I expect to go farther and faster (my friend from yesterday wasn't the fastest pedaler).

On Saturday, I'll go a fourth time, this time with the woman who might be the potential...um...friend.

On Sunday, I'm going to a BBQ-and-Blues shindig that's not too far away from my house, and I'll be going with a lady.

The lady.

The lady I like.

A lot.

Who will also come over to my place Monday night to watch a movie.

Yes, I've got two potential...um...friends. Which is kindasorta making me feel awkward.

But lookit: Both of these relationships are in the potential stage. As much as I think I might like a more intimate relationship with the lady I like a lot, there's a number of issues that need to be worked out. And one thing I'm certain about is that I don't want to lose the friendship with her. I'll sacrifice friendship for friendship.

So I continue apace.

And there's movement on the 'Time to get out there and really do some fulfilling work' department: A project that I thought might be stagnant until this fall could be moving forward, and very quickly. This thing is big enough that it might turn into a full-time job in a hurry.

But, just as in the friend category, it's more potential than possibility. But I remain hopeful. Joyful, even.

But still...

Twenty Four Days, Sixteen Hours and Twenty Minutes.

But who's counting?

yeharr

Open For Business

2008-07-02T10:28:00.003-04:00

Here. Not much selection yet. Maybe not much for a while, but I kinda like what I have.
yeharr

Captain Trouble

2008-06-27T15:04:00.007-04:00

He's no longer Lieutenant Trouble. He was promoted a few weeks ago. So now he's actually the rank that matches the duties he's been doing for a year.

I was supposed to fly down to Texas to pin his bars on him; but since he's now in northern Iraq, I didn't get the chance. The bad news is that I wasn't there to pin his bars on; the good news is I didn't have to spend any time in southwest Texas.

So yes, he's in a war zone again. And no, he's not all that happy about it. But there is this: It's the first time in his career that he's actually doing the job he wants to do: policework. It took three-plus years, three changes of station and a tour and a half to get there, but, all in all, it could be worse.

And in case you're wondering, he's still living up to his nickname. A week ago, an Army Colonel was giving one of his troops a hard time (although he's in the Air Force, he and his troops are stationed at an Army base.) According to my son, the important issue that was keeping the Col. away from winning the war was the fact that MP vehicles are parked in a certain position and their lights flashed in a specific way, and this troop's vehicle did not addhere to those specifications. That may not be exactly the issue, but it's pretty damned close.

My son slid in between the two, and informed the man that since the Troop was Air Force Security Forces and not Army Military Police, he was required to follow the Air Force SF procedures, not the Army ones. Additionally, my son pointed out politely but firmly, since the Troop was under my son's command, any issues should be taken up with him, and not the Troop. And, my son added, he was confident that the Troop was following the correct procedure as per his orders.

Believe it or not, the Colonel was not appeased by this. Captain Trouble stood there and took a full-force gale of an ass-chewing from the man. Took it, but did not back down from his position, until the Colonel blew himself out.

When he related the story to me, my son told me that he was secretly wishing that the Colonel would lay his hands on him, or do something else that would allow him to, in his words, "offer the Colonel maximum law enforcement services." Alas, the man seemed to know exactly where the line was in this area, and stood right on it. I told him I wasn't surprised. I figure someone doesn't get a bird on his shoulder who doesn't have a real good idea of where the boundaries are.

Anyways, that was a few weeks ago--not even two days after his promotion. Earlier this week, Trouble was in the gym working out while a couple of Army officers of the same rank were there as well. They got to talking while they were working out, and the following event occurred (copied directly from his email to me)

The Capt from the Brigade asked me my name first (he thought he recognized me). So I told him. He was like "I have heard of you! You are the one that our Commander went out and screamed at, you got him worked up". I said something like "yea it happens once in a while" I mean, I don't know how to respond to that, and he seemed like a decent guy so there was no reason to get defensive either. I was expecting him to go on about how his Colonel is looking into how to get me into trouble or why my Colonel hadn't contacted his yet. But then he surprised me...he went on to say...."yea, I guess he was impressed with you because when he got back all he could talk about was the fact that this Capt (me) he screamed at wouldn't back down and stood his ground". So that took me by surprise. He did mention that his Colonel gets worked up pretty easy. But needless to say, I wasn't expecting that!

Truly, one of the more endearing qualities of this kid is that he has no idea about just how impressive he really is.

So, here's some pictures of him in his native habitat. Already while he's there, he's got to hang out with both Dane Cook and Puddle of Mudd.

Life could be worse for him, you know?

y
yeharr

The Cruelest Month

2008-06-24T17:29:00.001-04:00

Yeah, yeah, I know it's supposed to be April.

Not for me. For the forseeable future it will be July.

My child-free month.

It seemed like a good idea back in September: The ex gets the kids for a month in the summer. Now that the month is one week away, not so much.

Snap out of it, I tell myself. Remember last year? Remember how you ran yourself inside-out finding things for them to do for two solid frikkin' months? Remember how relieved you felt when you realized you wouldn't need to figure anything out for them for a month?

I remember.

But still.

Thing is: I've got plans. I'll be busy. I know that I've only got these kids for a tiny slice of time, so I need to be able to find things to do without them. And I have. I've got at least eight freelance gigs--possibly more; I'm going to ride my bike a lot, I've got a bunch of meetings that I want to attend, and I already have two dates scheduled.

With the same woman.

A woman I've known for several years.

A woman I like.

A lot.

No,what's bothering me the most is: I don't think my kids will have a good time. Their mother has no job, no car, and no money. Yet, she's promised them trips to Chuck E. Cheese's, to the local water/amusement park, and to a Rennaisance Festival that's a three-hour drive east of here. And she's already asked me, in front of the kids, if I wanted to take the kids and her to a state park 45 miles south of here.

Of course the kids want to do this. And I would love to take them. But not her. Plus, I've got every weekend pretty much booked.

I know I'm overworried. I know that, even if they have a lousy time, it's just one stinking month.

But I'm telling you--it's gonna be a cruel one.

yeharr

Bass-akward

2008-06-21T15:22:00.003-04:00

I did something I normally don't do. I went to a bar and had a drink. Actually, more than one.

When I say more than one, I mean more than one drink.

Okay, okay--more than one bar as well.

But the kids were at their mother's, we had just finished working a game, and my buddy and I decided to hoist a few. And the bars were within walking distance of my house. Honest.

The first bar was known for its chicken wings. I had a dozen. Okay, eighteen. But I had gone from my day job directly to the next, so this was, in fact, dinner at 10:30 pm. The place had a wide variety, and I chose chipotle-garlic wings. Yum. But spicy.

So, when you're chomping on wings, of course you need something to wash them down with, right?

Right. That's where the beer came in. Very few adult pleasures* match the combination of spicy chicken wings and cold beer.

But the place was getting crowded, and noisy. A zydeco band was playing. Zydeco's great when you're in the mood for zydeco. We weren't. Especially since the entire percussion session consisted of a guy playing the triangle.

This is the job of the triangle player: TING-a-ting-a-tingle-TING-a-ting-a-tingle-TING-a-ting-a-tingle-tingle-tingle.

Repeat until everyone's drunk.

Doesn't matter what the rest of the band is doing. The triangle part goes TING-a-ting-a-tingle-TING-a-ting-a-tingle-TING-a-ting-a-tingle-tingle-tingle.

"What's the matter? Is the washboard player sick?" I asked the guy to the left of me.

I was joking.

"He's down with pneumonia," was his response.

He wasn't joking.

So we ambled down the street to the ol' Tap-n-Mallet. I'm sure every city has an ol' Tap-n-Mallet in them--the sort of place that treats beer with the same sort of reverence the pimply-faced blue shirted salesboys at Best Buy treat their selection of Hi-Def LCD-based home theatre choices.

Ours happens to be called the ol' Tap-n-Mallet.

Since I was still on a chipotle buzz, I decided to drink a chipotle beer. Yes, there is such a thing, and it's available at your local variation of the ol Tap-n-Mablet. It was good. quite good, with a lip-stinging buzz that matched the one that was starting in my head.

As I was draining the last of it, the spiciness really hit me. This was a problem. When I ate spicy wings, I would cool them off with a nice cold beer. What does one do with a spicy beer?

For guidance, I turned to the pages of the ol' Map-n-Tablet's beer selection. and chose a Raspberry Hefeweizen. A hefeweizen is a wheat beer, and a lot of fun to say--especially after spending half an hour at the ol' Tablinmablet. It did the job of quenching the burn, but the raspberry flavor combined with its native wheat overtones to make it quite similar to drinking a jelly sandwich, which was not at all the sort of thing I wanted when discussing the serious issues of the day.**

So, after finishing that, I picked out a nice hearty Oatmeal Stout. It's about as different from the previous beer as can be while still falling in the beer category, and added much to the important discussion we were having at the ol' Tablabambla.***

For some reason, the staff at the ol' Tapnmallmat wanted to go home for the night, so I wound my way down the wobbly road. And as I did, the thought occurred to me that I had drank, in reverse, the meals I had that day.

This is why I don't do this much.

yeharr

*at least of the leave-your-pants-on-and-remain-upright variety.
**which, at this time was, I believe, what was Casper before he was a Friendly Ghost.
***at this point we were discussing whether baseball or yacht racing was the better sport.

Some Lessons...

2008-06-20T09:33:00.004-04:00

When she was 19 years old, she was just another college student in Philadelphia, riding her bike. That all changed one sunny Sunday morning when someone in a jeep ran into her, and kept on going.

The damage to her body was extensive. Her pelvis was crushed. Plus, there was neurological damage. Cognitive difficulties. Short-term memory loss.

Her recovery was going poorly. The pelvis is not an easy thing to repair. Plus, she didn't seem to respond well to treatment. She felt, perhaps rightly so, that the medical staff was cold and uncaring.

At 23, she walks with a cane. Probably will for the rest of her life. She wears dark glasses and ear protection pretty much all of the time, because the accident left her hypersensitive to bright lights and loud noises. She spends much of her time with a TENS unit strapped to her waist to help with the muscle pains in her lower back that are a symptom of walking around with a reconstructed pelvis. Plus all that neurological damage. All of these issues will likely be with ther for the rest of her life.

In the eyes of the law, she is classified as 100% disabled as a result of this accident. Tragic.

Yet...

Two years to the day ofher accident, she was in a recording studio, the co-producer of her first major album.

Melody Gardot sings with an unironic hipness. A smoky, blues-tinged voice very much like Peggy Lee at her best. I loved her music before I knew her story, and now I love it even more.

And it all happened because while she was in the hospital a doctor had an idea. He had read about music therapy, and suggested she try it. She was a talented pianist, but the broken hip made it impossible for her to sit at a piano. So she was given a guitar,and learned how to play it. The goal was simply for her to find a way to cope with the tragedy that had happened to her, and to give her a mechanism to aid in her recovery.

It worked. Not only did the music help her emotionally, she started writing songs. Let me repeat that: a woman with short-term memory loss began writing songs. She recorded an EP while she was still in the hospital.

Now, this young woman is touring Europe. A person sensitive to bright lights and loud noises is standing in front of spotlights with amplified instruments behind her.

Is her life perfect? Far from it, of course. But she's at a place where she never in a million years would have thought she would be before that person in an SUV left her for dead on an empty street.

This is what I've learned from Melody Gardot: you never know from where the blessings in your life will come.

I told this story to an acquaintance of mine, who asked me if I thought Melody Gardot would trade her fame and fortune for the ability to be a 'normal' twentysomething woman.

That's not a valid question, is it? Point is, she can't. No one can change what has happened to them. We can do is change--if necessary--the way we react.

Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react to it.

Put that way, just about anything can be a gift. Or a curse.

What are the gifts in your life?

Yeharr

Well I'm buckled up inside
It's a miracle that I'm alive
I do not think I can survive
On bread and wine alone
To think that I could have fallen
A centimeter to the left
Would not be here to see the sunset
Or have myself a time
(refrain)
Well why do the hands of time
So easily unwind
Some lessons we learn the hard way
Some lessons don't come easy
That's the price we have to pay
Some lessons we learn the hard way
They don't come right off and right easy
That's why they say some lessons learned we learn the hard way

Remember the sound of the pavement
World turned upside down
City streets unlined and empty
Not a soul around
Life goes away in a flash
Right before your eyes
If I think real hard well I reckon
I've had some real good times
(refrain)
Well why do the hands of time
So easily unwind
Some lessons we learn the hard way
Some lessons don't come easy
That's the price we have to pay
Some lessons we learn the hard way
They don't come right off and right easy
That's why they say some lessons learned we learn the hard way

Happy Birthday, Brad

2008-03-05T23:08:00.007-05:00

I'm late on this one. By more than a week. Lieutenant Trouble turned 26 on the 26th.

Yeah. February's a busy month around here.*

Twenty-six years old. In charge of security--in fact the second in command at an Air Force Base--at twenty-six.** With a tour in a war zone under his belt. And a rising Captain.

Yes--Lieutenant Touble will soon be no more. He will shortly be known as Captain Trouble.

I was going to fly down to Texas and pin his gold bars on for him, at his request, in April.
That won't be happening. He's going to be back in Iraq. He's leaving next week for two weeks of training in Germany, and then he's off to the war again.

He's pretty sanguine about it. He says he'd rather get it over with now, so that it won't impact his wedding next July.Ain't they cute? They're getting married on the beach of an island off the coast of Virginia.

At dawn. That's 5:59 am. I know. I checked.

I told them I would definitely be there. I'll be in my bathrobe with a cup of coffee in my hand, but I'll be there.

But that's down the road. I'm just looking forward to having him back for the weekend. He's flying in on Friday morning, and leaving Monday morning. He's opting to stay with me, and it will be good to have him here.

We'll have people over, and he'll hang out, and after everyone leaves, he'll give me his will, just like last time, for safekeeping. And just like last time, I won't read it. Because I won't need to.

He'll be back. I won't entertain any other thought. Would you?

Happy Birthday, Brad. Godspeed, my son.
Love, Dad

yeharr

*So, apparently, was May. In case you're wondering, No. 2 son--Puddle--was born in November. We're still trying to figure that one out.

**When I was that age, I was in charge of wearing matching socks and getting to work at 8 am. It was too much responsibility for me.

Happy Birthday, Fred

2008-02-21T21:26:00.010-05:00

The first promise I made to you was twelve years ago, today.
I held you, marveling at your strength--just born, but already pushing, testing.
I pulled you close, and whispered in your ear:
"I will fight bears for you."
Bears are in short supply, but there are other dangers out there.
We will face them without fear.
We will have fun facing them
And, too soon, you will face them alone.
But that's okay. You're strong.
But if you ever come across any bears, you know where to find me.
I love you, Frederick Arthur.

Happy Birthday

Dad.

yeharr

Happy Birthday, Zoe

2008-02-17T00:24:00.002-05:00

The first decade of your life has been a very eventful one for me.
But through everything that has happened, one thing has remained constant.
From the first moment I held you in my arms,from the instant that I first breathed your name,
I knew that I loved you.
You have brought me joy.You have made me proud.You have made me re-examine my perspective on things.
You're just so nice to be around. at quiet times,And at silly times.
You know how to move forward. And you're not afraid to fall on your...er...face.
At the end of the day--at the end of every day--I thank God for you.

Happy Tenth Birthday.

I love you,

Daddy

yeharr

I've Been Busy

2008-02-14T22:40:00.018-05:00

I'm really not a 'things' guy. Really. I'm not.

But you couldn't tell that from what I've purchased recently.

Some of the stuff was long overdue. Take, for example this microwave. 1.4 cubic feet interior. I get home around 6:30 pm most nights. I don't want to spend the evening at the stove. It's the first microwave I've ever purchased. The one it replaced was a much smaller 1982 JCPenney model. Yes, JCPenney. It was a Christmas gift from my brother. I think it served me well. I think I needed a new one.

Same thing with this vacuum cleaner. I had repaired the old one so many times it was mostly duct tape and carpet fibers. I sat down and did some research. I listed everything I wanted in a vacuum cleaner: bagless, attachments, HEPA filter, lightweight. Everything was over $200. This one had everything I wanted with the exception of weight. $75. Sold.

I already told you about the car. Did I tell you it has a name? Barry. Because it's black. Blackbarry--get it? We had to name it, because whenever my daughter says 'Impala,' it sounds like she's saying 'Aunt Paula,' which can be confusing, because we don't drive around town in Aunt Paula. She gets much worse gas mileage.

The car wasn't the only wheels I've purchased. I also picked up this bike for $150. Actually, the bike (a 24-speed hybrid) was covered with bags, pumps, lights, and other geegaws that in and of themselves probably cost $150. So I bought $150 worth of saddlebags, with a $300 bike thrown in. Man, I love guys who buy a whole bunch of stuff before they decide whether or not they like it.

Then there's this bad boy. If there was one real extravagence in my recent shopping spree, it's this one. It's made by Berkline, and it retails for $1350. It's a recliner couch. Most recliner couches I've seen have three seat cushions, and the middle secton doesn't recline. This one is full sized, but only has two sections. so two people can spread out quite gloriously on this thing. In fact, three can, too, if one person doesn't mind sitting in the middle. And I don't. My kids like to snuggle with me and watch movies, and this is the most snugglable couch I've ever sat in. Oceans of comfort. And a really interesting color. I replicated it as best I could (I love Photoshop) up there. It's pretty accurate. A rich, copper color. A custom color, in fact. Special ordered. Not by me, though. By someone who decided that they didn't like it after all. For $700, it's a great color.

But the really important purchas is sitting right next to me. A Dual 2.5 GHz Power PC G5, with 6GB SDRAM, 750GB storage, loaded with tons--tons--of editing software. Yes, I know the quad-core Intels are faster, and I'm glad. Because if they weren't I wouldn't have been able to afford this one.

Or this 24" HD monitor:

Or these speakers:
This color printer would have been out of the question, as well.
This video capture card? Not a chance.

And then I realized that there's going to be times when I'll be on the computer and the kids won't be able to do any work on it. So there's this used iBook I found...
And of course, I'll need to network to share resources...
But that's it. Really. No more.

Everything I bought was well-thought-out and logical. And yet I feel like an extravagent fool. I'm not used to good things happening. I keep forgetting there's no other shoe to drop.

Time for me to be grateful for this bounty, and to put it all to good use.

Especially that couch.

I'm back.

yeharr

Here We Go...

2008-01-07T15:42:00.000-05:00

You can't make every game a life-or-death situation. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot.
-Dean Smith

The Steelers lost this weekend. I've discovered that how well my life is going is in direct proportion to my reaction to these losses. The better I'm doing, the less important is the result of the game.

I've also discovered that I can control this, which is something new. At least, it's new to me. In other words, even if there's a whole bunch of crap going on in my life, I can still choose how I react to it. So, if I can handle the big and little crises that make up my life, the outcome of a game played by people who don't know me and have no interest in my life, and played several hundred miles away from me, should have no real impact on my emotional well-being at all, right?

Right?

Well, sorta. But surprisingly little. And that's a good thing.

And another thing...

I mentioned a few years ago that I'm not the sort of fan that is so rabid that my fandom takes over my decorating choices. But my brother is. We went cross-state this weekend for a visit, and so I thought I'd share a few pictures of his living room:

The 'drapes' are actually shower curtains, since for some reason, they don't make drapes with Steeler logos on them. I can't for the life of my understand why not. The two non-Steeler pillows are the same material as he used on his desk chair.

See the cabinet in the corner? Filled with Steeler memorabilia and tchotchkes dating back to the mid 1970's. Included in there are DVD copies of all six Super Bowl games, plus an honest-to-goodness record (you know, the ol' 33 and 1/3 rpm jobber) of the radio broadcast of their first Super Bowl victory, in 1975.

Above the TV (which is one of those 50- something -inch HDTV jobbers--but not a plasma screen--he doesn't trust them), more stuff, including his license plates. We live in state that requires both front and rear license plates. Why in the hell did he buy three license plates he couldn't put on his car? I guess for the same reason he bought a fleece throw he won't put on his couch.

And a flag he won't fly outdoors. Those two felt banners, by the way, are originals, too. From the mid 1970's. There's two more over to the left that I didn't get in the shot, also from the same era. I suppose that if he ever wants to buy a new car, he could just put those up for sale on ebay.

So, there is little joy in Mudville, or at least that small part of it that resides in my brother's living room. I'm not sure why he has all this stuff up, other than for some reason, he needs to feel that connection to something outside of himself. I guess I don't understand it.

In other news. I'm putting away my collection of 75 Santas and 34 nutcrackers tonight.

Why are you laughing?

yeharr

Story Idea

2008-01-04T10:37:00.000-05:00

My son is drawing a cartoon right now. His story is about a polar bear who decides to sell his fur, since polar bear fur is considered the height of fashion.

Once he sells it, he uses the money he gets from the sale to buy himself a coat.

He buys a polar bear fur coat.

I love my son.

yeharr

Halls Were Decked

2008-01-01T01:00:00.000-05:00

And I'm back. Happy New Year.

Hope everyone's Christmas was a good one. Most of my Christmas week was good. I had Lt. Trouble and Puddle together at my house for a good part of it. Puddle dropping in on occasion, and Trouble staying with me.

Actually, Trouble didn't even make it into town until about 3:30 PM on the 25th. He got a great deal on a flight that came into a neighboring city on Christmas day, so I had to drive 100 miles on Christmas to get him. Not a big deal, because the kids were at their Mother's this year (as per our divorce settlement), so it wasn't like I had much of anything else to to. Plus, I had my new hooptie, so the ride was pretty sweet.

What do you mean, what new hooptie?

Oh. It has been a while, hasn't it?

The previous week, I finally got out of bankruptcy, and that, coupled with my previous windfall, (with a generous dose of suspicious noises emanating from my old van thrown in for good measure) , prompted an early purchase of a new car. Well, new to me, anyways.

I'm now the proud owner of a 2003 Chevy Impala LS, loaded, with a V-6, sunroof, spoiler, premium sound system, heated leather seats, and only 45,000 miles on it. That picture over there isn't my car, but but it could be--right down to the color and the rims. I have a client who's become a good friend over the past few years, whose used-car business is set up backwards from most: he does a credit report on you, looks at your finances and expenses, and then figures out how much you can really afford to spend on a car, then finds a car that fits. He went out and 'stole' this car for me. Plus he threw in a 5 year, 100k mile warranty on it for one buck above his cost. Man, it's a sweet ride. The kids love it, and even the El-Tee was impressed. Surprised the hell out of him when we left the airport, that's fer sure.

And, yes, it's far too nice to be a real hooptie, but a white guy can pretend to be a brotha, can't he?

So where was I? Oh yeah. Christmas.

I didn't get the kids until Christmas night, so I dropped him off at his mom's and met up with him and the kids (and EW) at one of EW's sister's houses in the afternoon, and they all came home with me.

Lots of fun opening presents. One of my daughter's 'big' presents was a used Olympus digital camera. It sold for several hundred bucks about two years ago, but now it's been replaced with smaller cameras with larger memories, but it's still a good camera--better than the cut-rate ones I would have had to buy if I had spent the same amount on a new one that I paid for it. Plus, the size is better for littler fingers.

She set the timer so that we could take this picture. I got all my kids football jerseys this year. Trouble is a big fan of the Bills, as is my youngest son. Puddle likes the Bills too, but likes the Steelers even more. Just like me. So I got them all jerseys. And Trouble surprised me with a jersey of my own--customized with my last name on the back, but with the number of my all-time favorite player.

After all the presents were opened, I brought out a last, Santa-sized bag, with five identical packages in them. I handed them out, and kept one for myself, and told them not to open them until I said so. Inside were identical Nerf guns. My youngest son wanted the Nerf dart tag game, but I saw these six-shooters at the store, and thought it was cooler, since you didn't need to reload as often. Well, if I was going to get one for him, I'd need to get one for my daughter as well. And I would be a complete idiot (and a sitting duck) if I didn't get one for me. And then when I found out Lt. Trouble would be here, it seemed obvious that I would have to get him (and then Puddle) each one as well.

Best $36 I think I ever spent.

I wrapped them loaded and ready to go right from the moment they were unwrapped.* Since I already knew what was in the packages, I was able to get the drop on them, and nailed them all before they could react. Which was fortunate, because after that I was pummeled. It turned into an hour-long house-wide foam-dart firefight. My oldest, especially was in his element, squeezing off rounds while executing SWAT maneuvers on us.

I still haven't found all the darts yet.

The rest of the week went okay, except for the glaring lack of interest Trouble showed in his mother. He has a lot of anger and resentment towards her, and I had to practically twist his arm to get him to spend any time at all with her. I had to keep reminding myself that it's not my problem, but it's incredibly sad to see. I know it's eating her up that he doesn't want to spend time with her. And, of course, even though I was advocating that he spend time with her, she's already made it known to me that it's my fault he didn't spend time with her.

No surprise there.

But now he's in Vegas with his fiancee, and Puddle's on his way to his girlfriend's house in New Jersey. My youngest two and I did our now-traditional New Years' Eve of games, movies, and watching the fireworks from our front porch.

And as much as I love the holiday season, I'm looking forward to getting the Santa's all packed away, the tree taken down, and the return of what passes for normalcy in my little crooked house.

Maybe it's just my age, but I'm beginning to see the advantages of a little undecking these days.

A blessed New Year to all of you.

yeharr

*Something that I'm doing with regularity these days in 'pre-opening' the kids stuff; making sure the work, have batteries, et c. I'm tired of getting them cool toys that are then nearly destroyed as they struggle to remove them from packaging designed for shelf appeal, not ease of removal from aforementioned packaging.

For the Chic Hick

2007-12-16T23:12:00.001-05:00

Because she asked so nicely, may I once again present to you our collection of plush toys from the annual classic, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. You can see Rudy all the way over to the right, next to coach Comet ("Think of me as your pal. Right? Right!"). Next is the Grape Jelly Squirt Gun (wish I had one of those when I make the kids' sandwiches). Behind him is the Chief Elf (ever notice how is voice changed when he led the elf chorus in 'We are Santa's Elves?' We believe it's because his tights were riding up. ), The Square-Wheeled Choo-Choo, The Abominable Snowman ("Bumbles Bounce!"). King Moonracer, Charlie-in-a-box, The Weather Elf, Yukon Cornelius, Yukon Cornelius, and Sam the Snowman, who, may I add did not have a bout of incontinence; rather, it's the spot where my EW spilled her coffee on him several years ago. Not pictured is the Ostrich-riding Cowboy, and...

Great bouncing icebergs! Two Yukon Corneliuses??*

Yep. Seems that way. Seems one of them slipped on the Netflix Envelope, ** but he's okay now.

Actually, there were two versions sold at CVS on two different years, and we happened to get them both.

There, Heidi. Happy now?

Oh, also not appearing in this picture, although they're now on display are Hermie ("Now you come to elf practice, learn how to wiggle your ears and chuckle warmly and go hee-hee and ho-ho and important stuff like that!"), Clarice, and the Doll from the Island of Misfit Toys.

We have thought long and hard about that doll, and why it was on the island. As far as we could tell, it seemed normal. The only thing we could come up with is that she has a penis.

What? You have a better idea?

yeharr

*Cornelii?
**Monty Python's Flying Circus, Disc 4

Most Festive

2007-12-13T22:33:00.000-05:00

According to our neighborhood association, that's what our house was. This is an improvement from last year's honorable mention.I decided to take a break from shoveling to let you see what the place looked like before the sun went down completely.

Man, it gets dark fast.

The major additions this year were the red bows on the cornices, the silver tree in the corner, the flickering snowflake between the windows, the "North Pole," and the penguins.

According to the head of the association, it was the penguins that did it.

I wonder if anyone other than my children and I are concerned with this holiday migration of waterfowl to the north pole? Penguins are strictly creatures of the southern hemisphere, yet here they are, donning top hats and toques, and making their way into Christmas decorations.

I'm surprised Lou Dobbs hasn't done a special on these immigrants.

Originally, the penguins were closer to the street, but we had to move them back because of the
constant threat of beign run over by gangs of roaming snowplows.

And what post of mine that involves Christmas would be complete without a shot of our tree? This year we went with a 7' concolor. Only 300 lights this year, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ornaments are relegated to the back, thankfully. Th positioning might change on Christmas Day when Lt. Trouble stops by for his yearly visit.

Hope your days are happy.

yeharr

A Simple Question...

2007-12-11T13:54:00.000-05:00

Why does a church need armed guards?

And while we're at it-a cafeteria?

And a theater?

And a bookstore?

And a guest services center?

In my opinion, if a church needs all of those things (especially the armed guards) it's doing something fundamentally wrong.

Fundamentally wrong.

yeharr

So There I Was...

2007-12-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

Wandering around the store, looking for Christmas lights. We finally got the tree, and had it set up, only to discover that every string of light that I owned had huge areas of blackouts. Of course, these were all the same lights I used two years ago. I should learn that the best one can hope for with these two-buck-a-box lights is two seasons.

Let's see if I remember in 2009.

Where was I? Oh yeah--There.

So there I was, wandering around the store, looking for Christmas lights. In my wandering, I noticed a woman--a female clerk--also wandering around, doing a bit of reshopping. The item in her hand was a lamp. One of those small, folksy 20-watt jobbers that women of a certain age and background tend to buy and place on things like small tables in upstairs hallways, or on top of cisterns in the downstairs powder room. She obviously didn't know where these lamps were being displayed, so she was wandering around, holding it in front of her, and searching, searching...

It may surprise you, but I'm not a smooth guy with the ladies. Opening lines don't come easy to me. I need an 'in' to strike up a conversation, and here was one, dropped into my lap. How many times do I get an opportunity like this? It was just handed to me--right out of the blue. I had to go for it.

"Looking for an honest man, Diogenes?" I asked.

She looked at me like a dog watching a card trick. "Umm. No. I just need to put this lamp back on the right shelf."

I then had to show her where the shelf was.

Perhaps I need a lamp, too.

yeharr

Not Dead Yet

2007-12-07T14:57:00.000-05:00

For the one or two of you who care--I'm fine, just busy. Christmas shopping, my jobs, and my online paying gig have taken what little free time I have away from my kids, so I'm not around much anymore. But I've gotten tired of the last post, but no real time to drone on about the present, so I'm just going to give you my most favorite line from one of my most favorite really bad movies:

Superintendent Brown: "There's a huge monster gorilla that's constantly growing to outlandish proportions loose in the streets!"

Yay! Yay for incredibly bad expository dialogue!

It's not just a gorilla--not even a huge gorilla--it's a huge monster gorilla! Better yet--even though it's already huge (as we have previously established), it's still growing! And how is it growing? Constantly! And it's proportions? Ever more (and more) outlandish, apparently. That it's loose in the streets is just gravy, in my opinon.

And the fact that this line was spoken by Jack Watson makes it even better. What--you don't know Jack Watson? Okay-ever see a WWII movie where there was a British Drill Sergeant? That was Jack Watson. Either him, or someone who was imitating him. Most of the lines he said WERE SPOKEN AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE! He played Drill Sergeants because that's what he was during the war. I wish I could have been there when this guy was given his script, and saw the line he had to spew.

And an even more trivial bit of trivia: Jack Watson's father was also in show business: the legendary Nosmo King, who got his stage name from a sign that was cut in half and put on a swinging door at a nightclub.

Well, that's all for now kids. Stay in school!

yeharr

A Teddy Bear Named Jesus

2007-11-28T13:21:00.000-05:00

Boy, it's a good thing we live in the good ol' Ewe-Ess-of-Ayy, where we can name our stuffed toys anything we want, and not worry about getting arrested. Yep, it's good that we don't have governments who impose ridiculous punishments on school teachers because of a high degree of intolerance.

Because this is America, and we don't want the government to do something if we can do it better ourselves:

The parents of a freshman student whose teacher resigned after he gave her a sexually explicit illustrated book said Wednesday their daughter has been the target of harassment from fellow students, and they want the school district to do more to clarify the issue with other parents.
The girl’s father, who asked that his family remain anonymous because it has already been the target of criticism, described the graphic novel that English teacher Nate Fisher gave the student as “borderline pornography.”

Here's the story: A teacher in the Guilford (Ct.) School Disctrict gave his class a reading assignment at the beginning of the school year. One kid decided to not do the assignment. The teacher, trying to come up with something she could read over the weekend (because he didn't want the girl to fail--remember that), grabbed a graphic novel called Eightball #22, by Roger Clowes. The book, while adult in nature, was not really sexually explicit, although it did have sexual references in it.

The father of the girl (who, remember didn't think it was important to do the original assignment) complained to the school district, who, immediately, without thought, suspended the teacher, and made it clear to him that he should just go away and never come back. The local paper made sure to play up the salaciousness of the story (without, apparently, actually reading the comic). According to the New Haven Advocate:

Register reporter Rachael Scarborough King shorthanded Clowes’ complexities by reporting that the comic “includes references to rape, various sex acts and murder, as well as images of a naked woman, and a peeping tom watching a woman in the shower.” Shocking stuff—though the sex and bloodshed aren’t in fact depicted, just talked about, and the nudity is part of a poignant and decidedly non-titillating scene in which a sensitive young woman is afraid her lover will leave her because of an unsightly birthmark. In any case, graphic acts of sex, murder and voyeurism can be found in countless classic works of literature, by such acclaimed writers as Charles Bukowski, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, Ayn Rand, Leo Tolstoy, Gore Vidal, Nick Hornby, Theodore Dreiser, Sam Shepard, Alice Walker, Cormac McCarthy, Jack Kerouac, D.H. Lawrence, John Cheever, Thomas Hardy and Sylvia Plath.

All those writers, as it happens, appear on the official list of 2007 Summer Reading suggestions presented to students by the Guilford High School English department. So do disgraced sex-and-drugs-addled memoirist Augustyn Burroughs and bestselling erotic mystery novelist Janet Evanovich, most of whose books have a hot sex scene within the first few pages. It’s an enlightened, engrossing, wide-ranging list that might actually attract more young people to read.

This was a guy who, rather than let a student fail, gave her a second chance and grabbed something she thought she could read over the weekend. In other words, a caring teacher. And we can't have that. Next thing you know, he might bring a teddy bear named Jesus to class.

Yeharr

Stone Soup

2007-11-26T17:16:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago Sunday, I got a call. "If you've got any apples left, why don't you bring them to me? I'll bake you some pies for Thanksgiving."

In our marriage, the kitchen duties were pretty clear-cut: My ex baked pies, cakes, and cookies; I did everything else.* Truth be told, I was probably as good a baker as she was, but I deferred to her in the baking arena simply so that there could be something in the kitchen she would do.

So I was planning on baking as well during this, my first truly solo holiday in decades. In fact, I was heading out with my daughter to the local cider mill to get some apples when the phone rang. But since she offered, I thought: 'why not?.' I dropped off several pounds of apples with the kids when they went over for the weekend.

One week ago today I got a call. "Could you let me borrow your apple peeler? I don't have one." I could have told her to just use a knife, but after getting assurances that she would indeed return the utensil to me (since it's also my potato peeler), I thought: 'why not.' I would drop the peeler off with the kids on Wednesday night.†

Six days ago I got an email. "Could you go to the store and buy me a peeler? The kids will want to help, so I'll need two. Also, could you pick up some cinnamon and nutmeg? I'll pay you back." By this time, we had already eaten the remaining apples, and I'd already agreed to so much, that I figured it would be easier to go along, so I decided: 'why not?'ª

So, on Wednesday, I drop off the kids, two apple peelers, and two spices to go with the apples I had already delivered to make our Thanksgiving pies. At least I won't have to bake them, I thought.

That night, in the middle of my job, I get a call. "It's an emergency." My heart skips a beat. I imagine my son getting cut on a knife, my daughter getting burned at the stove. "I need light corn syrup."º

I don't know about any of you, but for me, there are very few instances where the phrase 'I need light corn syrup' should ever follow the phrase 'It's an emergency,' unless, perhaps (and only perhaps) it is followed by the phrase 'so that you can lick it off my supple, nubile body.'

This was most definitely not one of those instances.

But, I had already supplied the apples, the peelers, the cinnamon and the nutmeg, so I thought: 'fuck you.'

However, that's not what said, so after the game I went to the store, and purchased the light corn syrup, a product which will now forevermore be linked with the phrase 'supple, nubile body' in your minds.

While at the store, I had one of the few moments of what could possibly pass for clarity in this whole sorry episode, and I called my ex-wife on the phone. "I've got the light corn syrup,ˇ" I said, in a moderate, well-modulated tone, "is there anything else that you need?"

"Umm...yeah. Could you pick up some pie crusts?"

I ended up baking them myself on Thursday morning.

yeharr

*including the dishes.

†our divorce agreement stipulates that she has the right of first refusal to watch the kids whenever I have freelance jobs in the evening--and I had such a job Wednesday night.

ªIt was at the store that I discovered that the only real difference between nutmeg and gold is that one of them tastes good in pie. Price-wise, there's not much separation.

ºIn case the culinary of you are wondering, she also planned on baking us a pumpkin pie as well.

ˇsupple, nubile body.

Happy Just Another Canadian Thursday!

2007-11-22T00:33:00.001-05:00

In Canada, this day is celebrated as the day that occurs between the third or fourth Wednesday, and the third, fourth, or fifth Friday of November. I'm not Canadian myself, but I stand with my brethren to the north on this day, and observe the traditional Just Another Canadian Thursday ritual of bemused head-scratching at the antics of most Americans.

Because here in the Ewe-Ess-of-Ay, we celebrate our own unique holiday--called Black Friday Eve--where we all gather together, and between mouthfulls of turkey, stuffing, gravy, and pie, we strategize our assault on retail centers in the coming days, and then watch football.

It's a weird holiday, but then, we're a weird group of people.

Also, I'm fairly certain that my spotty attempts at blogging will become even spottier for the next month, due to my aforementioned paying gig. If, however, you're jonesin' for a bit of balloonpiracy, you may follow the daily antics at The North Pole Times.

yeharr

Five Figures.

2007-11-19T21:57:00.000-05:00

Here's something I never thought I'd write:

Ten thousand dollars isn't really a lot of money.

Well, it is. But it isn't.

Not that I'm ungrateful for it. Don't get me wrong: being handed a check for ten thousand dollars is, by any way you look at it, a whole hell of a lot better than not being handed a check for ten thousand dollars.

But still.

I suppose I should give you the backstory: For four years earlier in the decade, I wrote, as a favor to a friend, a series of stories for his Christmas-based website. Little 'newsy' blurbs about the goings-on at The North Pole. They ran from Thanksgiving until Christmas Day. The stories were fun, and funny, with a real 'serial' quality to them--there was always some sort of crisis that called into question the viability of Santa delivering the goods on Christmas Eve, but--whew--the crisis was averted in the nick of time, and all pulled together and made it The Best Christmas Ever.

It was fun, but it was work--creating an interesting 32-episode story arc, taking into account that our readership dropped by 60% on weekends, and making it simple enough for seven-year-olds, and fun enough for their parents (and teachers--which we think explained the weekend readership drop) ain't as easy as it sounds.

I did it for free, because he's a friend--who also wasn't making any money from the deal--and because he kept almost getting sponsorship. After the fourth year, we stopped, partially because we were discouraged, and partially because my life was pretty much in the shitter for a while. The site went dark for two years, and last year, my friend told me he was thinking about reviving it. Would I be willing to write again? For a lot of reasons--the lack of compensation being a large, but by no means not the only reason why--I declined. However, I suggested he dust off one of the old story lines, and see how things went.

They went well. This year, he found a backer, and I'm going to get paid. That was where the last post ended. Friday night, he told me he needed to see me. I was working a football game, but told him I could stop by after it was over, so at 10:30 in the evening, the whole ten grand check thing happened. The backer not only wanted to sponsor the site, he wanted to own it. And my friend negotiated a deal, and got the money, which he could have kept for himself. But instead, he designated me as a 30% stakeholder in the enterprise (he gave himself the same cut, and divvied up the remaing 40% among half a dozen other helpers and his lawyer).

So now I've got an extra ten grand sitting in savings. And that's a good thing. Especially if one is financially secure, and already with a sizeable bank account. But that's not me. I've got waay more than ten grand's worth of things I would like to do with it. There's so many different ways I could spend it, and justifiably so: I've got an eleven-year-old car with a leaky head gasket and nearly 170,000 miles on it, my home is decorated in an eclectic mix of Late Relative and Early Curb, and I can't remember the last time I purchased clothes for myself, other than underwear.

And there's other things, too.

True story: Friday morning, while I was meditating, I asked God to help me with my son's education. He really wants to go to the Jesuit High School his oldest brother (Lt. Trouble) went to. The school's annual tuition? Eight grand. How, I asked God, would I be able to afford that? Sixteen hours later, God said 'Keep the change.'

Actually, there probably won't be change. There's taxes to pay, and depending on how my friend sets it up, the bite anywhere from fourteen to thirty-nine hundred dollars. On the other hand, even with this windfall, I'm sure I'll be eligible for financial aid at the school.

But still.

Here's the thing--and it's something that's just as improbable for me to write:

I want some of it.

Some of it for me. Not my creditors, or my kids--me. To buy something nice. Something fun. Because I deserve it.

That last sentence took a lot out of me. I may have to lie down.

There's a voice in the back of my head that tells me I don't deserve this--that success is for other people, not me. I spent a lot of my life listening to this voice. It took me a long time to even admit it was there. Now, I'm doing my best to ignore it.

Saturday morning I called my Mother and told her the good news.

Emerging from bankruptcy, getting additional income, and now this--all good things, wouldn't you think?

Mom's take on the subject: "You'll just blow it."

Seriously. That's what she said. Of course, she prefaced it with "It's none of my business, but..." so that makes it OK.

Thanks, Ma. I thought I recognized the voice.

yeharr

Financial Times

2007-11-13T16:06:00.000-05:00

Some interesting tidbits from the pocketbook of my life...

1) I'm about to be a paid writer. I just got a call from a buddy of mine who used to run a Christmas-based website. I would write a daily story chronicling the happenings at the North Pole. A few years ago the site went dark, at around the same time my marraige was doing the same. Well, he's bringing the site back up, but this time with financial backing, and how much would it cost them to have me write for them again? I named my price, he said yes, and if all goes well, I'll be getting a check that would be a decent downpayment for a good used car out of this.

2) It looks like I'll be emerging from bankruptcy more than a month ahead of schedule. According to my most recent quarterly statement, I had less than $1,000 left outstanding on my debts. I had made two additional payments of $249 since that statement had been printed out. I make one more on Thursday. My last payment should be November 29.

I've been scraping by for a very long time. Now, I'm about to get a little breathing room. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I do know that I'm not going to ever get myself into this situation again.

It might be a very merry holiday season, indeed.

yeharr

So many things

2007-11-01T23:24:00.000-04:00

I've been a bad blog buddy.

My postings list has a half-dozen drafts of posts unfinished...
about halloween...

about a fascinating conversation I had with my kids on the history of language and how I think we're on the verge of the next great shift in recorded language...

about a terrific lunch I had with Cadbury and Smitten...

a tale of how I'm so very grateful to have a flat tire at 8:45am on a Saturday morning...

and even a short story.

But I'm unable to find the time to finish them. By the time I get all the stuff I need done in the day, it's bedtime. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish up one or more of them in the near future. Until then, here's a picture of my spooky house. The little skeleton guy is sound-activated. He'll wave his arms back and forth and say stuff like 'Boo! Did I scare you?" In a very child-like voice. Everybody loves Boo, and lots of the older kids like to lean over him and shout to watch him do his thing.

Hidden behind the indian corn on the post is another sound-activated device--a big black hairy spider that drops down on a string. It's nowhere near as sensitive to sound as Boo, so you need to be very near it for it to activate. As it so happens, you have to be at just about the height you would be if you were shouting at Boo to make it drop...

yeharr

Carrot Topped?

2007-10-26T16:28:00.000-04:00

Hey--remember this guy?

I do...Vaguely.

And I used to do stand up.

Actually, every time I think of Carrot Top, I remember that he once won Comedian of the year over this guy:

Of course, the award was announced a week or so after this guy died, so it really doesn't matter. Bill Hicks really didn't give a shit about winning the CoY award. He just didn't want it to go to a hack corporate sellout like Mister Top.

Anyways.

So what's ol' Carrot been up to these days? Well, he's got a semi-permanent gig at the Luxor in Vegas, where apparently all he does is his act and pump iron:

At first, I thought this might have been photoshopped, but it's not.

Steroids, anyone?

yeharr

Weekend Pictures

2007-10-22T13:09:00.000-04:00

Every fall, my church goes to an orchard, where we pick apples, then we bring them back, and using equipment that would make an OSHA inspector blow a gasket, we turn many of them into cider. Then we drop turkeys into vats of 400-degree oil, and consume them as well.

Apparently, sometimes we can take a pass on the second deadly sin if it's a church-approved function.

Some of them apples, however, were put to other use, as my daughter demonstrates:

My son was too quick for me to capture the apple-bobbing. However, I was able to capture this bubble-blowing moment:

When I drag out the ol' photo album for their future boy-or-girl friends, boy are they gonna be pissed.

yeharr

Musical Interlude

2007-10-12T09:38:00.000-04:00

In light of the school shootings in Cleveland, I thought this song would be appropriate:

Sing along, everybody:
The Kingsmen came together in a garage. They could hardly even play.
But they practiced night and day
And pretty soon they got to where they could really play
That song Louie, Louie
So, they saved up all the money from the shows,
Went in to one of them studios
And gave their version of the song Louie, Louie a try

Now, I don't know the words to that song Louie, Louie
And I'm pretty sure the singer for the Kingsmen didn't know ‘em either,
If he did know ‘em he didn't get ‘em right on the record 'cause on the record they sound completely jumbled in his jaws:

"Me think of me girl oh so constantly
Ahmayaaah makaaaah aahh ooohoooh aaaaah"

Well, that last part scared everybody from the PTA to the FBI
You see, the kids had been going kind of crazy lately
And it seemed like nobody could figure out why,
So they decided to form a coalition,
Launch an investigation
You know for the children, they at least had to try
To figure out the words to Louie, Louie

It's the feel good hit of this endless summer
It gets these kids out of control
Singin' along to that star spangled bummer,
Hail, hail rock and roll

You know, Marilyn Manson’s real name is not Marilyn Manson,
He's a skinny public high school Kid from Ohio,
He's not some monster from out of this world.
And like of a lot other skinny long hair public high school kids
He was sick of getting beaten up by the pulling guard all week
Only to go out on the weekend, and watch the quarterback get all the girls

So he formed a band.

He gets a lotta chicks now.

They're weird chicks

But they're chicks.

A few years later a couple of latchkey kids go tragically mad
And everybody's standing around the television store at the mall trying to figure out what went wrong.

This guy says:
You think the life of a kid goin' to high school around here could've gotten so bad?
The other guy goes nah,
It's just the words to one of them goddamn Marilyn Manson songs,
You know which one I'm talkin' about.

It's the feel good hit of this endless summer
It gets these kids out of control
Singin' along to that star spangled bummer,
Hail, hail rock and roll

You know, every ten years or so our country and some other little country,
We start firing all of our newest weapons at each other
For some reason or another, right or wrong,
Like it or not, it does happen, and when it happens
People get shot and when people get shot,
They show it on TV a lot
Every night at six o clock
And you don't even have to be eighteen to see it
You don't even have to be in first grade,
First grade where they teach the kid pride
They tell him he'll need to thrive,
In a world where only the strong will survive,
So he's taught the art of more
To compare to and to keep score
Monday thru Friday while he stares at the floor
'Til Sunday they make him go to school once more
Only this time they make him wear a suit and a tie
And listen to some guy who claims to know Where people go when they die
Tell him that only the meek are gonna inherit the earth
Well shit!
By this time the kid doesn't know what anything is worth
Now brothers and sisters I am only one guy
And I don't even know the words to that song Louie, Louie
But I can tell you right now without batting an eye
That the next time some latchkey kid goes wrong
It ain't gonna be cause that Eminem gets to say the word Fag in his song
Or because anybody gets to say anything in a song.
And I'm not trying to preach to ya either,
I'm just trying to sing to ya too
You know work my way up to San Francisco

Hey kids...
Lets get it on,
Lets get it on

yeharr

A Cat by the Tail

2007-10-09T22:55:00.000-04:00

Friday we made apple pancakes. The kids had the day off from school--the calendar says it's a superintendent's conference day, but the cynic in me sez the teachers wanted a four day weekend. So I took the days off, too. My son's started to take an interest in cooking, and was helping me. The big treat with pancakes (aside from eating them, of course) is The Flip, which I do sans spatula--just slide it off the far edge of the skillet and let it flop back in the pan. I had a cake already flipped and ready to go in the pan, and was letting him get the hang of flipping. He had done about three successful flips, but wanted to change his grip, so he grabbed the handle too close to the pan, and burned his finger.

It took a second of his screaming before I realized that he wasn't going to set the pan down on the stove (he had taken a step back to get a better angle for his flip), so I grabbed his arm and guided the pan back onto the stove, then took him over to the sink to run water on his finger. The whole time from burn to submerge was less than ten seconds, but there was a definite anger mixed in with the pain. And he was letting his anger run, not letting me help him with his finger, refusing to listen to me, and crying about the pain. So, I told my daughter about the time I burned my finger on molten glass, and how the numbing pain of ice was the only thing that kept the pain of the burn down, and finally, he went to the freezer.

On Saturday, while I was shopping, I got a call from my son. This was the first post-divorce-agreement weekend that EW had the kids. They were downtown. They had missed their bus, and it was going to be an hour before the next one arrived. He wanted me to come and get them and drive them back to her boyfriend's apartment. I told him I was at least fifteen minutes away from them, but I would do it.*

At the apartment, as he was walking towards the door, he started doing a goofy little dance-walk down the sidewalk, and turned to see if I was walking. Unfortunately, as he turned, his foot slipped off the edge of the sidewalk onto a little patch of mud, and he fell, twisting his ankle slightly. Again he screamed in pain and anger. His mom, who was standing right there, went to help him up, but she had a bunch of things in her hands, and needed to clear one of them in order to help him. It wasn't fast enough for his tastes, though, and he yelled "Isn't anyone going to help me?"

A pattern emerges.

As a parent, it's very difficult to know when helping becomes a hindrance. I don't want my kids to be hurt, but it happens. And a lot of life is learning how to deal with that hurt.

Getting hurt teaches us a lesson. It teaches us that the pan is hot. It shows us that we need to watch where we're going. Don't want to get burned? Then put it down carefully before you lose your grip. Don't want to fall? Then keep your eyes on where you're going. Or, if you want to clown, don't be surprised when you fall. Just deal with it, and get back up.

And I have to be strong enough to let him learn these lessons. And to let him know he's strong enough to learn them too.

When I picked up the kids, I told them I wouldn't do this again. If they're with their mom, then she's in charge of getting them from place to place. And another lesson: If you don't want to wait downtown for an hour, make sure you get there before the bus leaves.

The title of this post is a reference to a quote by Mark Twain, who took the gist of this diatribe, and condensed it down into a single sentence:
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

yeharr
*There's another EW-related story here, but I'm not getting into that one right now.

Well Done

2007-10-01T17:07:00.000-04:00

On Friday night, the Pastor's kids came over to play. They're just about the same age as mine, and they wanted to play and watch cartoons (one of the perks of working for an entertainment conglomerate is that I have a lot of television channels available to me at a very low price), and have dinner.

What's for dinner? Hamburgers! Yaaaay!

Everyone loves hamburgers. Except my daughter, who patiently explains to me every time that she doesn't like hamburgers--she likes cheeseburgers.

And my son? He likes Fredburgers.

What's a Fredburger, you ask? Well, it's a hamburger. With muenster cheese. And lettuce, tomato, and onion. And bread-and-butter pickles. And ketchup. And mustard. And ranch dressing. And Worcestershire sauce.

And napkins. Lots of napkins.

Well, when the other kids see the Fredburger, they have to have one too. Pretty soon everyone's a big sloppy mess (except my daughter, who doesn't like Fredburgers--just plain old cheeseburgers with American cheese and ketchup), so I hose them off (it's a warm enough evening that a blast from the garden hose is still a treat)--including my daughter, who doesn't really need it, but how can I say no?--towell them off, and the bunch sit on the living room floor, munching popcorn and watching a show called Avatar.

A nice night.

Saturday afternoon, I read this. Turns out there's a chance I fed my kids--and the Pastor's kids--poison on Friday night.

Admittedly, it's a small chance--I make sure I cook my food well, and it's only been a very few cases nationwide--but spending the weekend watching for explosive diarrhea kinda puts a cramp on the amount of fun you can have.

Pun intended.

Plus the phone call to the Pastor's wife was a bit embarrassing. She was understanding about it and all, but it's not something I looked forward to making.

And I think again about all the recalls we've seen in the past few years--years? Hell, try months--meat, lettuce, spinach, toys--and then I think about a government run by people who think that government is too big and meddling. About EPA heads who want to limit the scope of their watchdog activities. About the Bureau of Mines administrators who don't follow through when safety issues are ignored by mine owners. About Interior ministers who want to open up more wilderness for exploitation.

And about how this was all sold as a way for us to get more goods and services cheaper.

And I think about how it's almost like knowingly eating tainted hamburgers, because they taste so good. But shortly afterwards, you're going to have to pay for it.

If you'll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.

yeharr

Wow

2007-09-28T21:30:00.000-04:00

I have always considered myself a moderate/progressive, and tried to keep an open mind about all candidates. Which means that I should examine each candidate's views on the issues, regardless of their political alliance. The recent crop of GOP candidates, all running on the 'Less Taxes/More Fear' platform, has made it quite easy to dismiss them as potential recipients of my vote.

This guy isn't running for President. Too bad, because he would at least be worthy of my consideration.

I don't know anything about any of his other policies, so I can't say for sure that I would vote for him, but I admire his honesty.

Like I said, too bad he's not running for President. Because he ain't gonna be Mayor much longer.

yeharr

Updates

2007-09-27T09:28:00.000-04:00

Wendyno had a tooth pulled. She's on antibiotics, but is otherwise fine. She spent the night a the vets. I'll pick her up later today.

Lt. Trouble thinks it might have just been a a pinched nerve. He's found an inexpensive apartment just off base, and met his troops and his CO, and is thrilled and challenged by the amount of responsibility he has.

His younger brother is suddenly much more aware of the wants and needs of his sister. We'll see how long that lasts.

I'm reassuring my daughter every night that, yes, I will be up to kiss her goodnight. I'm going to do this for a couple of months, and then stop and see if she notices.

Last night for her homework, she had to write about her life. The structure was a comparison thing: "What do people say about/What do I know about" various things, like our neighborhood, our families, et c. The last question was about herself. Under "What do people say about me" she wrote that she's a model citizen, that she's nice to everybody, et c. And that's all true.

Under "What do I know about me" she wrote "I LIKE PIE!"

Love that kid.

yeharr

False Evidence Appearing Real

2007-09-26T00:02:00.000-04:00

"You're coming up to kiss us goodnight, right?"

This was my 9-year-old daughter's plaintive query last night. We had just finished snuggling in my bed for a few minutes, and it was now time for bed. It's a routine that we've had, nightly, for more than three years: they get their clothes out for the next day, brush their teeth, and then we snuggle in my big bed for a while, sometimes reading if there's time, but always snuggling and talking. And every night, for more than three years, I send them to their bedroom, then come in and kiss them good night.

And every night for three years, my daughter asks the same question:

"You're coming up to kiss us goodnight, right?"

•••••••••••••

Sunday nights are in a bit of a flux right now. There is conflict over what we as a family should do when we get home from church (one of the things I like is that the church we go to is run by a group of thirtysomethings who aren't early risers. The service is at five, and there's a meal afterwards). Especially since we ended up watching two of the weekend movies on Saturday night. My daughter wanted to play a game or read. My son wanted to watch Torchwood. Last weekend, we did what he wanted, so I told him that he could watch until his sister got out of the shower, and then we'd turn it off.

When that time came, he threw a fit. He went upstairs to his room and wouldn't take a shower screamed and cried and banged against the wall. Suddenly he was quiet, and a few minutes later he came downstairs.

"I've cracked the wall," he said.

•••••••••••••

Wendyno, my old cat, has been a finicky eater all her life. If it's not mouse-flavored, she'll take it or leave it. So, I don't really know how long she had gone without really eating. It was Friday night that I noticed she was licking her mouth excessively, 'chomping' her mouth, and generally acting miserable. Is this a dental problem, or something worse? Whatever it is, it's going to require a visit to the vets. I'm four years, nine months, and twenty-five days into a bankruptcy, and I've just spent money I don't really have on my divorce. Vet bills? Imagine strapping weights onto the ankles of a marathon runner three miles from the finish line. That's how I felt.

••••••••••••

When the phone rings at 3:41 am, it usually means trouble. This time, it meant Lt. Trouble. He programmed a special song for my cel phone to play when it rings. So when it went off, I knew it was him. His hand was tingling, and he had a headache earlier in the day, so he went to Webmd and decided he was having a stroke.

••••••••••

What do all of these events have in common (other than really preventing me from having a good night's sleep)? They're all reactions based in fear.

Fear-based reactions are an easy habit to get into, and are hard to break. Voice of experience here on this, trust me. The real trick about dealing with fear is that often what makes us afraid is rarely the source of the fear.

When I asked my daughter why, after three years of me kissing them goodnight after snuggling, she was still asking the question, she dissolved into tears. I don't think that was a bad thing.

The fear my two little ones have are similar: He's afraid that I love her more than I love him. She's afraid I don't love her at all.

Lt. Trouble's freak-out, I suspect had nothing to do with his tingly hands. He's 25, a 1st Lieutenant, and on Wednesday he's taking a position traditionally held by a senior Captain, in a west Texas town where he's going to be living for the next two years without his fiance. All that anxiety that he's shoved down below his consciousness needed to bubble up somewhere, and it did it at 3:41 am on a Tuesday morning.

Me on the other hand...well, my fears were a bit more on-target. I don't have a lot of money. What I do have is a fairly extensive support group, and the newfound ability to--gasp--ask for things. Sometimes I ask for what I want. Sometimes I ask for what I need. This weekend, I needed help.

So, at a 12-step meeting on Saturday morning, I talked about my cat, her needs, my situation, and my fears. A woman I don't know--who had just recently started coming to this meeting, caught my eye and mouthed "see me after the meeting." While the next person spoke, there was a meow from outside, and a cat leapt up onto the open windowsill, and jumped into the room and wandered around for a bit.

After the meeting, I spoke to the woman, who gave me information about a program that's just started in my town that offers one-time grants to people in financial trouble who have pets that need medical care.

Through this group, I was able to find a vet, and I've got an appointment with them tomorrow--with any amount up to $300 guaranteed to be paid. I don't know what the diagnosis is going to be (I'm hoping it's just a bad tooth), but at least I won't have to think about having to put her down for something that could be easily treatable.

The woman's name, by the way, is Kitty. I'm not making this up.

Trouble was pretty agitated. His Da had had a series of strokes that, along with renal failure, were the long, drawn-out cause of his death. Trouble didn't want to go that way. I wanted to point out that, among other things, his Da smoked a pack of Camel unfilters per day, and drank four cases of Genny Screamers per week for most of his life, and still, after all that, the strokes didn't start until his late sixties. But I didn't. I listened to his fears, told him it was OK to be afraid, and if he really thought he was having a stroke, he should go to the base infirmary. He conceded that it might, at worst just be a mini-stroke. I suggested that perhaps even that was a bit extreme, and--although the tingling was something to have looked at--perhaps the bigger issue is his anxiety, and to just sit with his fear until it went away. We talked for a half an hour, and I think I convinced him that the best course of treatment would be to get some rest, and see what happens in the morning.

His youngest brother and I had a bit of a talk. There were many tears, and I confessed that his behavior angered and frightened me. Next weekend, we're going to move his bed, and he's going to buy get some tape and joint compound, and repair the cracks.

I let his sister cry in my arms for a good long time last night. Sometimes that's the best thing to do. No talking, just love and understanding. Tonight, after we snuggled, and I started them off to their bedroom, I stopped my daughter. "I'll be up in a minute to kiss you goodnight," I said

I'm only one man. It's hard to deal with two kids who both think that the other one's getting the better end of the deal, but I don't have a choice--or much chance of success. I'll just love them both and let them know that the love that they get will be enough.

And I need to let myself know that I, too, have enough as well.

yeharr

Big Movie Weekend

2007-09-20T23:05:00.000-04:00

Tonight: Big.

Tomorrow night: Big Trouble.

Sunday night: Big Trouble in Little China.

I tried to think of ways to bring Big Night, Big Fish, and The Big Lebowski into the mix, but they just didn't have the flow of these three. Besides, I think they'll have to wait 'ti the kids are a bit older.

Have you seen these films? You should. I'm sure everyone knows about Big--the young boy who wishes he was big, and then turns into Tom Hanks. Hard for me to believe that this movie is twenty years old, and the kid who played Josh--David Moscow-- is now one year older than Hanks was when he made the film. I remember wondering at the time if he would grow up to look like Tom. Did he? You decide:

Big Trouble is a hilarious ensemble flick. Take a look at who's in the cast: Tim Allen, Renee Russo, Stanley Tucci, Tom Sizemore, Janeane Garafalo, Patrick Warburton, Jason Lee, et c. It's based on a hilarious novel by Dave Barry. It's directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who did, among other things, The Addams Family and Men in Black. Yet it barely blipped at the Box Office. It had the unfortunate luck to be a comedy that involved a bomb on an airplane (among many, many other things) that was scheduled for release in September, 2001. Not good timing.

And Big Trouble in Little China is regularly listed as the favorite film by just about everybody who worked on it. Kurt Russell plays his swaggering hero role for laughs in a great comedy-action film, and I'd watch it just to see Kim Cattrall in cheongsam. Yum.

What are YOU doing this weekend?

yeharr

Yeharr

2007-09-19T12:12:00.000-04:00

Avast!
A tip o' the tricorn to comely wench Heidi fer comin' aboard with the news that it be Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Consider me timbers properly shivered.

Yeharr

Visitation

2007-09-17T15:52:00.000-04:00

The first weekend for visitation is slated for October 5. Already, EW's hinting that she won't be able to have them for the weekend.

She wants to move. After being in her current apartment for about five months, she wants to move. This will be, by my count, her ninth housing change since she moved out. This gives her 18 days to find another apartment and move all her shit.

I'm guessing it won't happen. I'm guessing she'll try and have them for the weekend with her at her current boyfriend's place--her fourth boyfriend since she moved out.

Four boyfriends and nine addresses in three years. A model of stability.

This weekend, she took the kids (along with her boyfriend's son) to a festival. Smugtown is filled with festivals. She lost them there. Luckily, our church had a booth at the festival, and so they were safe. When she called me she yelled at me for not teaching the kids to stay with her at festivals.

Funny--I never have a problem with them.

Like I said earlier, I just moved some fights down the road.

yeharr

STBEW

2007-09-13T11:46:00.000-04:00

It's official, as of 11am EDT.

I gave up too much visitation in the agreement. But I knew that going in. I'm confident the kids will vote with their feet. They've already told me that they don't want to spend both winter and spring recess with mom. I'll let them fight that battle on their own. It will mean more coming from them. I've given her a fair amount of rope. What she does with it is her business.

I've got to pay her $90 per month for the next three-and-one-half years. The judge said four, but there's the issue of the $500 she stole from me.

It's over.

Well, the legal part. As my friend Mike says, because we have kids, we'll still be together, more or less, 'til death do us part.

yeharr

Do You Remember?

2007-09-12T22:45:00.000-04:00

The sudden realization that something was wrong--very wrong.

Two cars, going different directions, trying to occupy the same space.

The swerve, the pedals, the instant prayer--

And it's over. You emerged unscathed.

Do you remember the time you almost got into an accident? Do you remember how you felt afterwards? Knowing how close you were to real, true, unavoidable tragedy--and yet you're OK?

That's how I feel right now.

After a very painful hour of mediation, STBEW agreed to my terms of divorce.

I get sole custody.

That's the important thing. I get sole custody. She gets every other weekend, we alternate on Thanksgiving, we split Christmas vacations (one gets the time up to Christmas night, the other gets the 26th through the 1st.)

And she gets winter and spring breaks, and a month in the summer.

That's what the agreement says. I think it's a bit more than she can handle. If it is, the kids will certainly let her know this.

I'm kind of counting on it.

It was a difficult meeting. She cried. She swore. She accused me of lying. She threatened. I was calm, and businesslike. It took a lot out of me to be that way, but it was the way I needed to behave.

I said in front of her much of the things I've written about in this blog for the past few years. So, in many ways, I have to thank you. You've been a great support for me, and a wonderful sounding board.

I may or may not write in more detail about the mediation. Right now, I'm just concentrating on breathing, and staying in the moment.

It's hard to believe that by this time tomorrow, I might actually be able to drop the 'STB' from STBEW.

yeharr

My Demands

2007-09-11T17:40:00.000-04:00

We have another go at mediation on Wednesday. The last one seemed successful until I read the boilerplate agreement that was drawn up. It had nothing about the criteria that needed to be met for STBEW to get the kids, and it had us discussing joint custody.

I'm not sure why I'm even going to mediation. I've given her my best offer. It's actually more than I think she can deal with at the moment. If I was going for that, it woul be unsupervised daytime visits for her. No overnights. No weekends. No vacation weeks. Because that's truly all she can handle right now.

Here's my offer:

I get sole custody. She gets every other weekend, every other holiday, and one month in the summer with them, provided that she meets the following criteria:

She has a place for them to sleep
She has food for them to eat
I know where they are, or at least can get in touch with them
No smoking in the house while they're there

That's it. Fairly reasonable, I think. But more than she can give right now. And we both know it. And it pisses her off. As an addict, she wants what she wants when she wants it, regardless of reason.

So I think I'll go in and give her one last chance to agree to this. If not, well, see you in court. I like my chances much better than I like hers.

I just wish I wasn't so damned worried about the outcome.

yeharr

This, That, and The Other

2007-09-06T23:08:00.000-04:00

This
Was the first day of school.

Here they are with their morning cuppa.* And yes, that's a 'G' on the welcome mat. Actually, it's not really a 'welcome' mat, since it says 'Go Away.' We're a friendly bunch.

We made it through the summer. And it was a good one. Lots of camping, lots of playing outside, they got to hang out with some good people, and we swam in one Great Lake, two Finger Lakes, one Adirondack mountain lake, a pond, and a couple of swimming pools. Pretty good, considering where I was at the end of June.

There she goes, loaded with supplies. Hopefully, they'll last.

That's my boy's uniform. He won't wear pants. It has to be twenty degrees and a foot of snow on the ground for him to cover up his calves.

That
the mediation was acrimonious is a given. That we got anything accomplished is a blessing.

The first part of the meeting was pretty much me stating that I really wasn't going to budge on much and her accusing me of trying to keep the children away from her. Then she went and had a cigarette, and the mediator tried a different tack. Once he started dividing up the days--who gets Christmas, who gets Easter, et c.--she became more willing. The mediator was able to get a framework hammered out. The only problem is she wants both winter and spring breaks, plus a month in the summer. I talked to the kids about this and they don't want that. I told them they will have to change their mother's mind. Also not addressed in this post-cigarette agreement was the stipulation that she have food for them to eat, a place for them to sleep, that I know where they are, and that she doesn't smoke in the house when they're with her. I had mentioned this earlier in the meeting, but I didn't bring it up in the second half. I will bring it up in the followup mediation, which will be sometime next week, since we go to the judge on Thursday.

The Other Thing
is that Lt. Trouble has his last day at his current post on Friday. Which is a very good thing, since his new post is under a different Command. Normally this isn't a big deal, but something happened last week that, according to him is "snowballing, except this particular ball is brown and smells really bad." And even though his base had nothing at all to do with what happened, it's in the same Command, and therefore everybody in the group is going to be under a pretty intense microscope for the next few days.

Which is a very good thing. As a civilian, I'm very glad that the Air Force is paying very close attention to this, and not trying to minimize it, or sweep it under the rug. Accorting to the good El-Tee, the top brass is extremely serious about examining procedures, and not from a CYA standpoint, either.

yeharr

*Red Rose English Breakfast, with milk and sugar. My friend Nancy has turned them into tea drinkers.

Hearing

2007-09-05T23:21:00.000-04:00

There was a message waiting from me when I got back from the Adirondacks. It was from STBEW. I expected to hear her asking me when she could see the kids on Monday. That's not what I heard. I heard a message telling me I was rude for not letting the kids go to my nephew's birthday party on Friday.

I was rude.

Here's what I didn't say to her in response: "I'm sorry, but I didn't get an invitation to the party until Thursday. If you want to get technical about it, I didn't really get an invitation; rather, one of the kids told me one of your sisters (not the one who's throwing the party) told them about the party earlier in the day. And when I heard there was a party, I called them to tell them I couldn't make it. Since they never pick up the phone at their house because it might be someone asking for money, I got their voice mail. And on that voice mail, I left a message expressing regrets that we couldn't come, and an explanation of why we aren't coming, even though we really weren't invited in the first place, and what passes in your family for an invitation came one day before an event that they've known about for twenty years. I'm sorry if you think this course of action is rude."

I didn't tell her that. Instead, I called and left a message asking her what time she planned on getting the kids on Monday.

Monday morning she calls from her boyfriends house, and she says she'll come to get them "around 10:30." I plan my day accordingly, making a lunch date with my friend Mike at noon.

She had called early last week and asked if she could spend a day with them over the long weekend. I explained to her what was happening (which she conveniently forgot about when she called to tell me I was rude), and said that the Monday would be the best day. She said she was going to take the kids to the local amusement/water park. I thought that was a good idea. She then asked me to get tickets for her for the park. Since my office does a lot of trade with the park, we had passes, so it wasn't a big deal, and I got them. She then asked if I could get an extra ticket for one of their friends. So I did. The 'friend' turned out to be the son of her newest boyfriend--a kid they had met exactly one time. She also asked for another ticket for the friend's father. I said no.

At 11:30, she calls me and tells me they're 'about ready to come over.' She doesn't get to the house until noon. She tells me to be ready to pick up the kids at 9 that night. At 9:30, she tells me they're just about ready to have dinner. I don't get them home until 11.

I didn't tell her that picking up and dropping off the kids ninety minutes to two hours late was unacceptable.

At least not yet.

I think I will bring this things up on Thursday, though. That's when we have our mediation hearing. I think what I'm going to do is print out a bunch of my posts--like the one about when she stole from me, and the one where she enlisted my son's help in hiding another theft, among others--and take them with me.

I'm sure she'll bring up some stuff from my past, too. Although the stuff she'll bring up happened during the Clinton Administration. And I'm sure she'll accuse me of trying to hurt her. I'm not trying to hurt her. She may get hurt in the process, yes. But it's not what I'm trying to do.

I'll print the stuff out, and bring it, but I don't know if I'll use it, or even need to. My friend Mike, you may remember, went through all of this 20 years ago. His attitude is that she will make my case for me far better than I ever could.

Ill make sure you hear about the outcome.

yeharr

Labor Weekend

2007-09-03T20:26:00.000-04:00

I need money.

That's a given. With all the changes that are happening in my life, the one constant thing that I can say, four years, nine months and one day into my bankruptcy, is that I need money.

This Labor Day Weekend, I was offered a gig at the local stadium. There was a Big Event coming to town, and they needed a crew. I would be in charge of Media Transfer.

Which meant that I would babysit a DVD burning array. It's what I call monkeywork: I push a button, and fifteen minutes later, I push a second button. Repeat 14 or 15 times over the weekend, and walk away with an easy $700. It's the sort of job that Sudoku was invented for.

I turned it down.

Instead, I loaded up a van with batteries, a camera, lights, microphones, tapes, sleeping bags, and my kids, and drove five hours into the Adirondacks, and shot three hours of footage, and two hours of interviews. For which I receive nothing.OK, it was part of my fulltime job, so I'll get my regular salary (which I would have gotten anyway), but will get to take two days off someplace down the road.

Best $700 I ever lost.

One of my clients at work is an organization that runs a summer camp. Back about 47 years ago, this organization bought a lake in the Adirondacks, and opened a camp. They want to have a documentary about the place ready for its 50th anniversary, and they wanted someone to shoot it. So I did. I worked 20 hours, lugging my camera, tripod, and accessories all over the camp, while my kids made friends.

That's what they do, they make friends. We got lost going to the campfire Friday night (hey, I had never been to this place before in my life), and bumped into a family that knew where to go. Before we got to the fire, my daughter had a new best friend. I had to wait until morning to find out who these people were. Luckily, they found us. There was only one guy in camp lugging around a $15,000 camera, so we were easy to pick out.

The whole weekend was like that. I was afraid that all the interviews were going to be these fairly dry reminiscences of the good ol' days--and they were--but there were also two guys who had been friends at camp back in the early 1970's, who hadn't seen each other in thirty years, yet could still finish each other's jokes like no time had passed.

I kept getting asked what I was doing, and when they could see it, and where would it be shown. And I really didn't have a very good answer for them. We were contracted for a 'shoot and hold;' I don't know when it will be finished, or even if I'm the one who will be finishing it.

The work I did this weekend is really just the tip of the iceburg: There's going to be a whole bunch of archival stuff to go through and digitize. Plus hours of transcription, writing, rewriting, editing, voice work, and music to add to it before it's done. But it's a start. And I want to finish it. I hope I get to do that.

I did get a great compliment this weekend: I was asked by the camp director who should he write to request I be the one to work on it. Which surprised me. I didn't know my enthusiasm was showing.

For some time, I have been trying to figure out what it is I want to do with my life. No, that's not true. I know what I want to do, at least in a broad sense: I want to tell stories. I just wasn't sure how to do it.

And then this thing just drops into my lap.

Sometimes it's good to just ask for what you want. You'll never know when you might just get it.

There are some things I need more than money. I got some of that this weekend.

yeharr

If You Were a Tree, What Kind Would You Be?

2007-08-28T16:15:00.000-04:00

I was asked that a week or so ago.

And the answer: Number one: The Larch. The...Larch.

Yes, I have an answer for everything.*

The Larch. Looks coniferous, is deciduous. Who's it trying to fool?

Least favorite: the ficus. Especially braided ones. They don't grow that way, you know. Someone did that to it. Which meant that, some time ago, someone came up with the idea of doing it. How bored do you have to be to think braiding a tree would be fun? What did they try first? A pageboy on a Japanese Maple? Streaks and tips on a elm?

And they're so finicky. My mom gave me one years ago for my birthday. It started shedding leaves immediately. The next time she called me she asked me about it, so I told her about the leaves. "Are you watering it?" "Every week," I told her. "Stop watering it so much," she told me, "it doesn't like a lot of water."

So I cut down on the watering, and it still dropped leaves. "Where is it?" she asked me. "Right next to my front window," I told her. "It's getting too much sun. It doesn't like a lot of sun."

So I moved it into a corner. Dropped leaves. I moved it in the bathroom. Dropped leaves. I moved it into my bedroom. Dropped leaves. I called mom.

"You're moving it too much," she said. "It doesn't like to be moved."

Well, what a finicky piece of vegetation this thing turned out to be! Doesn't like sun. Doesn't like water. Doesn't like to be moved.

Has no problem getting its trunk done up in a French pleat, though.

For that Christmas, I gave mom braided firewood.

yeharr

*Not necessarily a correct answer. Just an answer.

Oh. My. Freaking. God.

2007-08-27T13:35:00.000-04:00

Have you seen this on YouTube yet? Miss Teen South Carolina gets a question about American education, and gives the most accurate answer beauty pageant* answer ever. I found the subtitled version, so that you can get the full effect:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe we've found our next Attorney General.

yeharr

*I don't ever want to hear anyone say that these things are not beauty pageants. Not ever again. Think about it...this is the best South Carolina had to offer.

What's not to love?

2007-08-21T22:51:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy summer for my kids.

Swimming, hiking, exploring, biking. My daughter won a 15-speed hybrid bike at camp--plus a new bike helmet. She has proudly announced to me that she now 'hardly ever falls off anymore."

My son caught 23 fish at camp last week--including an 8.5" bluegill. He won a 203-piece fishing set. It doesn't really matter that 190 of those pieces are plastic lures. He still won them

But even the busiest of kids on the busiest of summers need some down time. We watched a movie tonight. Well, I watched the movie. They didn't make it.

Sweet dreams, my babies.

yeharr

Mrs. Trouble

2007-08-21T10:50:00.000-04:00

The good Lt and his best girl are on a cruise right now. They're sailing through the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, on their way to a ~~caribbean island~~ Key West and the Bahamas.

You can't let a thing like a category 5 hurricane get in the way of a vacation, you know. If it got too close to the boat he would most likely dive bare-chested off the bow of the boat with a knife between his teeth, swim on out to ol' Dean and open up a can o'whup-ass on it.

That's the thing about young men and women: they're just now realizing how reality can get in the way of a good love story.

Starting next month, Trouble will be chief of security at a west Texas Air Force base, a position usually filled by a 3rd-year Captain. It's as much a testament to the depletion of the command staff as it is to his abilities that he's getting this post, but there it is.

There's very little for his girlfriend to do in west Texas. Not yet two years out of school, she's the General Manager of her own rodent-based pizza and games restaurant in Las Vegas. And whenever the higher-ups come to town for trainings, inspections, or what-have-you, they end up at her store.

So here we have two hard-charging kids with dreams and ambitions, whose careers are pulling them apart. So what do you do in a case like this?

Well, at 10:47 am this morning, I got the following text message from my son:

She said YES!

yeharr

Yo Ho Ho

2007-08-19T23:44:00.000-04:00

...and a bottle o' rum! After all, I'm a pirate.

Although I'd rather have a beer. Or a single malt scotch. A finger's worth of calvados can be nice. Perhaps a beefy barolo. Or a nice auslese from the steep banks of the Saar. I've even slugged down shots of vodka while sniffing chornai khleb* in a dingy nightclub in a bad part of Kiev during the cold war.

I've had my share of drinks. Gotten drunk many times. Once or twice I got so drunk that I had to be carried out of the bar. But even though I've had a few God-I'm-gonna-regret-this-in-the-morning moments, I never went into the evening (or, once or twice, afternoon) with the expressed intent of getting plastered. In fact, I always viewed such instances as failures, in a way: I drank so much that I was non-functional. I drank so much I made myself sick. In essence, I poisoned myself.

This was not something that someone told me, or anything; it just made sense to me. If you get too ripped, you've gone too far. I quickly (well, relatively quickly) learned that if I started to suspect that I drank too much, it was too late: I already drank too much. I learned my limits, and tried to stay within them.

Which is probably why I was so taken aback one Friday afternoon in my senior year in college when two attractive co-eds stepped into the elevator I was riding.

"God," one of them said to the other, "I'm gonna get so shit-faced tonight."

Really. Here was a someone who was planning--looking forward, even--to do something to herself that I considered to be a failure of self-control. This wasn't to say that I hadn't heard the expression before. I had, but usually it was uttered by someone who was already well on the path to full fecal-facedness. Even though I went to a college with a reputation of being a party school, I had assumed she was an anomaly. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't.

But one thing I'm sure of is she wouldn't be an anomaly today.

A few weeks ago while driving to work, I hear this NPR report about the dangers of your boss becoming one of your 'friends' on your Myspace or Facebook page. The expert, a columnist for the Financial Times, was going over the potential land mines of this issue, when she tossed this comment off in a very flip way:

LUCY KELLAWAY: But if you say yes, what about all those pictures of you naked and dancing on a table, drunk? Do you really want your boss to see those?

Forget the boss, I thought, why would you want anyone to see them.

Then I thought: If they didn't want anyone to see them, why would they post them on their webpage in the first place? Why would they even take the pictures?

Then I thought a deeper thought. Deeper, and sadder: They did this because they did want people to see it. They're not only not regretful of their actions, they're outright proud of them. It's a mark, a badge, a rite of passage: get completely drunk, drop all your social filters, then drop trou and dance. Bonus points if your a girl and you make out with another girl while naked on a table. Then picture it and post it for posterity.

Like it's a good thing.

I know, some of the pictures aren't posted by the partiers, but by the putative pals of the pukers. But still, it's a sign of the times. If you don't have embarrassing pictures of yourself on the net, then you ain't nobody.

All of my embarrassing pics, by the way, involve platform shoes and polyester suits in the most unnatural shade of blue ever created.

Back to the topic: drinking has gotten out of hand. All the attempts to curb teenage drinking simply drove it underground. Now the main way of teens drinking is binging on hard liquor. Which has led some people to wonder if the best way to solve this problem would be by lowering the drinking age. As the husband of an alcoholic, you might think I have an issue with this. I'm not sure I do.

According to the story:

The federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that in 2005, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, 85 percent of 20-year-old Americans reported that they had used alcohol. Two out of five said they had binged — that is, consumed five or more drinks at one time — within the previous month.

85% of 20-year-olds have drank. 40% of them binge. According to Lt. Trouble (who considers himself a cop first, an Air Force Officer second), any law that 30% of the population breaks is considered unenforcable; that is, you will most likely not be prosecuted if you break that law.

So is lowering the drinking age a good idea? I don't know. I do know that raising it really hasn't stopped the problem. Anyone else got any better ideas?

Yes, I've gotten drunk before. I've been dragged out of bars and tossed face-first into the backseat of my car. I've fallen asleep with my head in a toilet. I've driven drunk and lived to tell about it simply because I was lucky.

I've also had incredibly deep, meaningful conversations over a pitcher of beer. I've sat and watched sunsets with friends sipping Beaujolais. I've toasted newlyweds with champagne, and the dearly departed with whiskey.

Alcohol can be a social tool, or a social weapon. Kids need to be taught that.

yeharr

*Black bread. The Eastern European equivalent to tequila-and-lime was a shot of vodka followed by a bite of pumpernickel. But food shortages were common in the Soviet Union, so to make the bread last longer, you sniffed your slice rather than eat it.

Happy Campers

2007-08-13T17:54:00.000-04:00

I'm childless until Sunday.

Woo-hoo! Salads every night!

A true sign of growing older, I guess, is being happy that the kids aren't around so that I can eat healthier.

I don't feed my kids a steady diet of junk food, mind you, but when the kid palattes outnumber the grownup ones by 2-to-1, it does impact one's menu choices.

They rode off to camp this morning at around 9. This is their third year at this particular camp. There's been a world of difference in my life in the past three years, but I've done my best to keep things with my kids on an even keel.

All things considered.

But it's worth noting that when you're a kid, three years is an exceeingly long time, and much changes simply because it's in the nature of kids to change.

Put it this way: To me, three years is a little bit more than six percent of my total life. For my kids, it's about 30% on average*. Thirty percent of my life ago, we were all wondering what this guy from Arkansas would do in the White House.

In 2005, my kids were like velcro. They stuck to my hips, and didn't stray far. When it came time to load them onto their buses (one for the boys, one for the girls), I spent the next half-hour dashing back and forth between the two, smiling, waving, blowing kisses, and mouthing "I love you" to those two scared, brave little faces until the buses pulled out.

Even last year, although they knew some kids, they tended to hover near me, hugging and holding my hands.

This year? Pfft. See ya, Dad. Make sure the trunks get loaded, ok?

Well. it was almost like that. Even though they met up with their friends, I couldn't just leave. I asked. No, I had to stay. A respectful distance away, of course, but still where they could see me. And while they were on the buses I made a game out of whose friends would say "Your Dad is weird" first.**

So they're gone, with far fewer smiles and waves to me, but with much happier faces over all. And that's good. Because these kids aren't really mine. They never were. They're just two bright comets that came by, and even now are arcing gracefully and inexorably away.

As it should be.

And so I have a week to myself. Well, mostly to myself.

I have a date on Thursday.

With...you know...a lady.

Stay tuned.

yeharr

*Which is why, in my opinion, time seems to move faster as we get older. It seems like it takes less time to get through a year because each year is an increasingly smaller percentage of our lives.

**My daughter's, of course. Although they also laughed at me more.

Rush Job

2007-08-07T22:47:00.000-04:00

A sad fact about popular series is that oftentimes characters get locked into place, and then their essense gets distilled, until all that's left of them is little more than a single concept. Witness Radar O'Reilly in M*A*S*H. In the movie (and even in the first few years of the TV show), Radar was a leering, lecherous, sneaky little cur, who, among other things, had very acute hearing, which allowed him to hear the choppers seconds before everyone else. He was also a virgin, and completely socially inept with women. By about season three, most of that depth had been stripped away from the character, leaving only his virginity and his prescience, effectively making him younger as the years went on, ending up with a sort of psychic idiot savant with a teddy bear at the end of his time on the show.

And here's the thing: M*A*S*H was a pretty well-written show. It just had the misfortune to be set in a time and place that was relatively short-lived. I forget the exact amount, but I believe that this show about the Korean War actually ran longer than the war for about a decade. The characters just got stuck.

Now what, you may ask, does this have to do with Rush Hour 3? Well, imagine the same amount of character distillation that happened to Radar, Hot Lips, Hawkeye, et al., applied to Detective Jack Carter (Chris Tucker) and Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan), and turned up to eleven.
Rush Hour 3 is rated PG-13, which is too bad, because most of the action and humor is perfect for the nine-to-eleven-year-old set. I should know, because there was one on each side of me. They loved it. Looooved it.

And, I'm embarrassed to admit, I enjoyed it. And I'm uncomfortable about that. Not because of the characters, which, as you may have surmised, have become, almost impossibly, even more one-dimensional than they were even in the original Rush Hour.

And not because whenever there was a choice between doing a 'set piece' or advancing the plot, the set piece was chosen (by set piece, I mean some bit of action or dialogue or interplay between the main characters that is derivative of something they've said or done before), which in all honesty was usually the right decision, because the plot of this thing is so bad it doesn't even bear mentioning. It was so bad, that barely halfway through the flick, my 9-year-old daughter leaned over and confidently predicted the good-guy double-cross shocker revelation that she knew would appear sometime in the next half-hour. I sincerely hope that Max Von Sydow enjoys his new vacation villa, or whatever else it was that he was able to get for appearing in this thing.

No, the reason I'm embarrassed over my enjoyment is because the film is just this side of being unforgiveably racist and jingoistic. An asian man is berated because he speaks French. A French cab driver is berated because he doesn't like Americans, and is forced by an American (Tucker) at gunpoint to sing the National Anthem. Yet, a few minutes later, he's driving them around again, and begging to become an American, so that he can get the chance to kill someone.

The only thing that keeps this from being completely offensive is the overall level of maturity of the film, which I would classify as freshmanic--to call it sophomoric would be to give it too much credit. You can't get any madder at these clowns for their offensiveness than you can get mad at Will Ferrell's daughter for her landlord role. Especially since much of the stuff that Jackie Chan says is just fed to him by someone off camera, and he's not even sure what it means.

Bottom line: lots of fun and funny action from two characters who will do pretty much exactly what you saw them do in the two previous movies, and not a damned thing more, with too much ignorance-based humor to wholeheartedly reccommend for even a mindless popcorn flick.

Wait 'til cable.

yeharr

"You're Doing the Right Thing"

2007-08-03T17:12:00.001-04:00

That's what the (female) bailiff told me after she escorted STBEW to the elevator.

Our preliminary hearing had just ended, and she was worried about what my ex was going to do. I don't know if the she was worried STBEW was going to hurt herself or me, and I'm guessing she didn't know either.

Let's start at the beginning:

I got to the court house seconds after the fire engines did. As I mentioned back when I was on Grand Jury, the Hall 0' Justice hasn't aged well. The recent heat wave caused some circuit to go kerbloingy-bloingy, setting off the fire alarms, and forcing everyone to leave the building just when I was supposed to enter it. So, our hearing was delayed for an hour.

By the time I got up to the hearing room, STBEW was already there. On one of the hottest days of the year, she was dressed like Stevie Nicks: A floor-length black crepe dress with a laced-up vest that may have been part of the dress. She has a 'thing' about looking nice for meetings, and this was the best she could do. She also forgot her glasses. About forty minutes of the hours' delay I spent sitting outside the hearing room with her, while we waited for the judge to show up. My lawyer was on vacation, so a junior member of the firm was going with me in this hearing, but she didn't show up until just before we walked into the room, so I couldn't even pretend to immerse myself in conversation with her. Instead I just sat and listened to her bitch about how long this was all taking.

She has no job, yet she's the one complaining about the delay.

The hearing didn't take long, but she managed to make an impression with more than her outfit. She cried about not having a lawyer. According to her, there were no lawyers available who could fit with her schedule, even though she has no job. She tried to introduce another long list of grievances against me from the marriage, even though the judge kept telling her that this wasn't what the hearing was about. And then she accused me of keeping the children away from her.

She did this all tearfully, angrily.

The judge asked why we didn't have a set schedule for visitation. I could have responded in a number of ways, but I simply said the truth: she's never asked for one. I also pointed out that she had seen them the previous weekend, took my daughter to a free concert on Thursday, and was going to be with them all day on Thursday.

I think I've been more than fair with her, although she will never admit to my being anything but mean. Right now, I'm offering her every other weekend with the kids, alternating school holidays, and a month during the summer. My only caveats are:

She has a place for the kids to sleep
She has food for the kids to eat
She doesn't smoke in the house while the kids are there
I know where they are.

These may sound reasonable, but I'm guessing they're unnatainable for her. And I think the judge knows it.

For his part, the judge promised her she'd make sure she gets a lawyer. He also gave my lawyer permission to help her with some of the preliminary stuff necessary for this.

Afterwards, my lawyer told me that it would be good for her to get a lawyer, because otherwise , nothing could get done.

As for me, I'm just sad. It's hard to watch the woman I loved be reduced to what she is now: a barely coherent, angry, defensive addict only interested in pointing out grievances and telling people who's to blame for them. I thought about how many times in the past she would get herself into situations similar to this, and how many times I would rescue her.

And that urge to rescue is strong. Watching someone in such pain is hard--harder still is the realization that she's done this to herself, and only she can get herself out of it. But as of yet, she has no desire to do so.

We have a hearing on September 13th. Hopefully by then she'll have a lawyer. I think what I will do is make the offer one last time (with the caveats), and give her a day to either accept it, otherwise it's off the table, and I'll offer a much less generous visitation.

Hopefully that will work, and I'll finally get some closure.

Until the point, somewhere down the road, when the kids decide they don't want to be with her anymore.

yeharr

Berry-Pickin' Time

2007-07-31T13:20:00.001-04:00

One relatively blustery afternoon we decided to head to the next valley over and do us some berry pickin'.

This valley was too shallow to hold a lake for more than a few hundred thousand years, so instead we have nothing but a fertile valley perfect for farming.

Although there were still a few strawberries on the vine, we decided to go for the rasp:

I wasn't keeping a real close tally, but I'd guess that the ratio of berries picked to berries eaten was someplace around the 20:1 ratio--not too bad, really, considering how many we ended up taking home.

Here's the best reason to pick raspberries when it's a bit breezy: the yellowjackets stay closer to home:

My camera was about five inches away from the wee beasites when I took this picture. It was hard to keep the nest in the center of the frame because of the breeze. The nest was pretty deep in the bushes, too.

After we paid for the berries, we got ourselves some ice cream and sat on a swing in front of the store for a spell

I love this shot. The roof had all these little fan thingies. I'm guessing they're there to prevent humongous snow slides in the winter. Anyone know if that's true?

I can see why Heidi loves farmland. Although, truth be told, I'm happy just to visit.

yeharr

Rainy Day

2007-07-26T21:40:00.000-04:00

When the rain came to the lake, it came fast. The sky would darken before the clouds would arrive.

As you can see, it worried my daughter quite a bit.

The storm came from the north. Here's two shots taken about an hour apart.

It was pretty interesting watching the solid white wall of water sweeping down the lake. And it rained hard.

Forcing us to play inside. We had Games (Skip-Bo, Mille Bornes, Yahtzee, and Cadoo) and DVD's (Arthur, Ghostbusters, Galaxy Quest, Ghost Rider, and The Holiday)--but sometimes a well-placed set of stairs was all that was needed:

Tomorrow: our boat ride.

yeharr

Solids, Liquids, and Gasses

2007-07-24T10:45:00.000-04:00

...were arrayed quite pleasingly at the lake.

It was nigh unto impossible to take a bad shot.

This one's my desktop image now:

I could have filled my camera with images like these. And these are just a few of the ones I took. Especially at sunset, it was gorgeous.

One evening, I spotted our neighbor sitting in his Adirondack chair, camera in hand. He's had his cabin on this lake since 1975. "Does it ever get old?" I asked him. "These sunsets? Do you ever get tired of them?"

He chuckled. "Never."

yeharr

Portland and Starburst

2007-07-21T23:28:00.001-04:00

That's the closest I could get my daughter to the proper terminology for right and left on a boat.

I'm back from vacation and wish I was still there. I bought a lottery ticket, and if I had won I think I would have called the owners and asked them how much would it cost for them to just not come back.

At any rate, I think I'll post a few pics per day, making this the worlds longest vacation slide show.

That's the view from just above the dock, stitched together by the free software that came with my camera. I think I'll repost it after I photoshop it. And if I wasn't such a Luddite, I might even put this picture up as a masthead for the blog.

Took this one about ten minutes after we arrived. They couldn't wait to get into the water. I just noticed they aren't wearing their swimming shoes. Those are now required footwear in the finger lakes, due to the growing infestation of razor-sharp zebra mussels.

Outside of that, the water was great.

The water was about 15' deep at the float. The lake goes down about 240' at its deepest points, which starts about 50' further out. The lake's about a mile wide here.

They're both excellent swimmers, but they liked playing with the noodles. They invented dozens of different dives and falls.

We regularly swam right up to (and sometimes past) sunset. Sometimes the only way to get them out of the water, though, was the promise of S'mores around a campfire.

The firepit was a regular nighttime hangout. It came with a thick plywood cover. Our first night there, I waited until I was sure the fire was out, and I placed the cover over it, and went to bed.

The next morning, there was little but blackened bits of plywood lying on the scorched firebricks.
Oops. Luckily, the folks next door are the parents of a co-worker, and he had a nice piece of plywood that he cut down to replace the burnt one.

More pics later.

yeharr

You Can Never Stay Mad at Ice Cream

2007-07-12T23:44:00.000-04:00

The kids and I will be at a secure, undisclosed Finger Lake for the next seven days, and I will be unavailable for comments. So I thought I would end this week with a few pictures of what I did last weekend.

My Uncle turned 80, so we all went down to his little town just outside of Pittsburgh for a party. My mom came up from Florida, and my brother went down from his Upstate NY home, along with his two youngest daughters.

That's my bro. As I've mentioned before, one of us got the looks, one of us got the brains.

He pissed me off quite a bit on this trip. On the way down to a place I've been to maybe three times in the past 15 years, I got lost. Actually, I didn't really get lost; Google Maps gave me the wrong directions. I called my cousin for help (I was just a few miles away from his house when this happened), but he didn't answer his phone, so I called my brother, who was staying with him.

ME: Is [Cousin] there?
HIM: Yes. What do you need?
ME: I need to speak to [Cousin]. Can you get him?
HIM: Is there something I can help you with?
ME: Yes. You can give the phone to [Cousin].

I had to explain to him that, had I been lost in upstate NY, I would certainly ask him for directions, but since I was a few miles from my cousin's house, I would prefer to ask him for directions. Why the hell can't he just do what I ask, just once in his life?

Enough about him. Let's move on.

That's m'uncle (it's how it's pronounced), macking on the fruit salad. I told him this is how I will always remember him.

Mom. This is the first time her hair's been its natural color since 1969. I still remember when she started dyeing it. That's another story.

My cuz and my daughter shooting hoops. She's four days short of two years younger than her brother, but only 1" shorter. I'm thinking scholarships already.

The morning before the party, my kids and my brother's kids were put to work slicing the buns for the cookout. My son remarked that he was only going to eat hamburgers, since the last time he had a hot dog he threw up. My daughter pointed out that he also threw up one time after eating ice cream, but still eats that. My son's response is the title of this post. It was either going to be the name of a blog post or a country and western song, and I'm not a songwriter.

It was quite breezy in the pavilion, and the plastic tablecloths were billowing up and blowing off the tables. The grownups were running around, jamming thumbtacks into the sides of the tables, trying to keep them from blowing away, but the wind would quickly rip the thin plastic away from the tacks. We started looking for more tacks, but then I saw my son, calmly poking holes in the tablecloth at regular intervals, allowing the air to escape, and keeping the tablecloths on the tables. I'm thinking scholarship already.

I wonder if Harvard has a water balloon team?
I discovered that I had a plethora of relatives.

Here we are assembling for the family photo.

See if you can spot the Pirate.The white-haired gentleman in the chair is m'uncle Roy. He's had some physical problems, but he's still quite a charmer.
But these were my favorite relatives there:

They're so white. But I love 'em.

See ya in a week.

yeharr

Blame It on Jeff Zaslow: Why Modern Reporting Sucks

2007-07-10T00:21:00.000-04:00

Jeffrey Zaslow
c/o The Wall Street Journal

Dear Mister Zaslow:

I have been a critic of modern reporting techniques* for several decades, and I have noticed a trend among those whose job it is to interpret and disseminate the events of the day. As the years have gone by, reporters are increasingly disinclined to objectively evaluate and filter the news in a dispassionate, disinterested fashion, and more likely to simply repeat the 'talking points' of a particular person or organization. Further, reporters also seem to go out of their way to grab an easy 'hook,' a person, action or event that they feel encapsulates the zeitgeist, regardless of how accurate that hook is.

In other words, I'm seeing less and less skepticism, and more and more laziness in the newsroom. This laziness and desire to titillate the audience by reporters is reflected (or perhaps spawned by) the former reporters who have risen to the positions of columnists and pundits, such as you.

Mister Zaslow, I have finally discovered the root of this laziness, and thought I would share it with you.

The fundamental cause of this sad state of affairs in our nations newsrooms is:

You.

You, Jeff Zaslow, are the reason modern reporting sucks.

I have come to that conclusion by using the same criteria that you used in your recent column placing the blame for self-absorbed college students squarely at the feet of Fred Rogers from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, namely: taking something the man said, willfully misinterpreting it while ignoring everything else the man said and did that was contrary to the point you are trying to make. The main difference between us is that your jumping-off point is something someone else said about the man, while I'm just using my own observations.

Let's take a look at this column, shall we?

First, you conflate the borderline racist** ramblings of a Professor of Finance at one university with a study led by a psychology prof at another. You mention neither the context of Prof. Chances' remarks, nor the name of either the study, nor the lead professor. Why bring one professor's name into it, and not the other? Was this a deliberate attempt to juxtapose a scholar and a scholarly study, or just poorly-vetted writing? Was this a scholarly opinion, or just a rant from a bitter man? If it was the former, why no attribution? If the latter, why take such pains to surround the remarks with the trappings of academia?

Next, you have Prof. Chance damning the man with faint praise, saying "he's representative of a culture of excessive doting." How? In what way did Mister Rogers do this? Because he ended his program by telling children they're special? Does this then mean that every stroke of good fortune, every crisis avoided, every Bingo game won between 1940 and 1958 should be attributed to Edward R. Murrow, who ended his programs with the phrase "Good night, and good luck?"

Later in the column, you write:

On the Yahoo Answers Web site, a discussion thread about Mr. Rogers begins with this posting: "Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement. ... Nice as he was, and as good as his intentions may have been, he did a disservice."

Great. Now you're quoting a semi-anonymous poster on an open website to back your claim. Were all the other comments in the discussion as disparaging? What was the question asked? I just spent 10 minutes trying to find which of the dozens of Mister Rogers questions on the site you were referring to, with no luck. Out of curiosity, why didn't you include the ones who posted comments about the tattoos on his arms that his sweaters covered? Those comments are just as illuminating and have the same degree of factual information as the one you featured.

It's astounding to me how tremendously you misinterpreted the man and what he did. Later on in the column, you question how wise of a decision it is for adults to be overly familiar with children, specifically: children calling adults by their first name. Come on, now, sir--did you notice that his television program was NOT called Fred's Neighborhood?

Similarly, you then quote from a Manhattan psychiatrist who encourages parents to "talk about their passions and interests; about politics, business, world events." On nearly every single episode of his program, Mister Rogers would either have an adult come on the set, or go on location, and give a demonstration about the adult's passions, interests, or business.

My God, Mister Zaslow, have you ever actually watched an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood? Did you ever hear the man talk about children? Fred Rogers did not dote excessively on children. He did not play to the whims of a child. You misinterpreted the mans gentleness as weakness; his willingness to accept a child as he or she is for permissiveness. Neither is the case. He talked about responsibility; and more importantly, he demonstrated it with his actions. He would devote a weeks' worth of programs to topics such as discipline.

He had certain expectations of children, and he let them know what they were. In return, he would deliver exactly what he promised to deliver, and he would do it with gentleness and good humor. He also had expectations of adults, especially parents. One of those expectations was that a parent would watch the program with their child; he never envisioned his program, or any television show, as a babysitter. I imagine that idea apalled him.

Yet, there you go, creating a pop-culture hook upon which we can now hang some blame. Problem kids are the fault of Mister Rogers. Oh, sure we parents had some hand in it too, but it's really that guy in the sweater's fault. Did you know he was a Navy Seal in Viet Nam, too? Oh, sure--that's why he wore the sweaters. His arms were covered in tattoos.

It's already starting to circulate, Mister Zaslow. Fox News did a bit on it. Use the Google and you can see bunches of bloggers all chiming in on it, with so many of them parroting and agreeing with you. And even though Prof. Chance has gone on record stating he has no qualifications to make such claims, it's too late. The noise machine has picked it up, which means it will join such disproven talking points as

Al Gore invented the internet
John Edwards gets $400 haircuts
There's a liberal war on Christmas
John Kerry was a coward
There are roaming gangs of lesbians who brandish pink handguns while forcibly turning pre-teen girls into homosexuals

with a certain group of lazy, fear-filled people when they need to make a point about America's youth.

And all of it is your fault.

Wow, it really is nice to have someone to blame for this. Well, it's nice for me.

Yeharr,

The Balloon Pirate

*By this, I mean that I watch a lot of TV.
**Or maybe this, too is your fault. Either way, your paraphrasing his comments on "Asian-born students...accept[ing] any grade they're given" seems to be just on the PC side of classifying them as 'a hard-working bunch of little yellow people.'

Spin and Shoot

2007-07-05T13:18:00.001-04:00

One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies is unavailable on youtube.

The movie is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the scene is the pentultimate moment in the film.

So I'll have to use words instead of pictures right now to describe it.

Butch and Sundance are eating at a little cafe in Bolivia, when a shot rings out. They've been discovered, and the local police are out in force to get them. Almost all of their guns and ammo are hanging on their horses, so Butch runs out to get it, while Sundance provides cover.

Sundance, at least in this movie, is an expert marksman, fast, and deadly, and the two men rush out to get the ammo. As Butch heads for the horses, Sundance goes out and covers him.

A bullet hits near him, and he spins and shoots, and down goes a man. Another bullet. Spin and shoot. And another. And another. And another. And Sundance spins and shoots. Diving this way, dodging that, spinning and shooting.

Spinning and shooting.

As anyone who's seen the film knows, it's not enough. There's more bullets, more targets, more of them than there is of him, and it ends badly. He was doing everything he could, and it wasn't enough. Too many targets, not enough time.

Right now, I'm trying very hard not to relate to Sundance.

It would be easy to do. I've got targets everywhere I turn. More than I think I can handle right now. And the realization that I got here through my own decisions.

Spin, shoot. Spin, shoot.

Self-pity comes easy. Playing the victim would absolve me of my role in all of this. Except that's not true. Or, I could spend my days kicking myself for getting myself into this situation--which comes even easier for me.

I'm trying to steer a third course: I'm trying to believe I'm doing enough. That I have enough in me, and enough external support that I will be able to work through this. A hard part of this is the actual asking for help. After all, Sundance didn't ask for help.

And look where that got him.

All this is my way of saying that I've got a lot on my plate right now, and so my blogging time may be even more sporadic than before. But I'm not going anywhere.

Just spinning and shooting for a while.

yeharr

Tuesdays are Covered

2007-06-28T23:11:00.000-04:00

That's the good news. I've secured a fun and interesting place for my kids to go every Tuesday this summer.

Seven days down, thirty-seven more to go.

Well, thirty. I've got a week's vacation planned in July, and the kids have another camp in August, plus Independence day. So that's good.

But most of my summer child-care plans have gone kerbloingy-bloingy, for various reasons, leaving me to scramble as best as I can.

On Tuesdays, they'll be going to the Pastor's house--they have kids about the same age as mine. One thing they'll probably do is go bowling. That wily Reverend scored a whole mittfull of free bowling coupons, given away by local bowling centers.

(That's what they're called, by the way--bowling centers. Not bowling alleys. I made the mistake of using the 'a' word once in a room full of Bowling Center Proprietors when I was producing a local TV bowling show. The temperature dropped about 40 degrees [farenheit] when I used it.

Also, there are no gutters on bowling lanes. No one ever throws a gutter ball. You throw a channel ball.

[As an aside to this aside: I have a standing bet with an associate: I'm betting that if I had a jackhammer, I in fact would be able to jam a toothpick up a Bowling Center Proprietor's ass.])

Anyways, these free coupons aren't just because they want kids to bowl. No. That concept doesn't have enough flash! To really get these kids into the ~~alleys~~ centers these days, you need to speak their lingo. So, those tickets are for the (drumroll, please) Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Bowling campaign!

Wow, those bowling hipsters have really managed to catch a marketing wave here, haven't they? Nancy Reagan's so proud of them, although they might be a little bit leery of using a campaign that's one word removed from a certain group's project.

Screw it. It's something for them to do.

I've also got a two week camp for them at a local park, where all they do is play in the forest all day, and I've got a couple more one week commitments from friends here and there. So I'm reasonably confident that I can get this whole 'kids off this summer' thing covered.

It shouldn't be this way.

Yes, I'm aware that many of us--myself included--have fond memories of those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer back when we were kids. But when I was growing up, mom was at home. There was no scrambling to be done. She'd throw us out in the morning, and we'd play until it was time to eat.

Those days are gone forever. Or at least for the forseeable future.

The fact is, for most parents, all summer vacation means is finding a place to put the kids for nine hours until mom and dad (or in my case, just dad) can come home.

Perhaps it's time to change the way we look at this tradition?

If I were the king of the forest, I would make the summer an elective trimester. I would have school districts offer various 'camps' for the students to attend, based upon interests. Like sports? There'd be a sport camp, with different athletics offered. And perhaps a biology camp that would spend most of its time at the local nature center. And a computer camp. Band camp. Theater camp. Video production camp. Admission to the camps would be based on merit--weighted slightly towards the specialty of the camp.

And for those who aren't where they need to be academically, there would still be remedial school, to make sure they continue.

And it would be elective. If there are still moms and dads out there that are home during the summer, the kids can stay home. Or go to a camp, if that's what the parents want. But there would also be something constructive for kids to do as well.

I dunno. Maybe this is a stupid idea, and only sounds good to me because I'm tired, and don't want to scramble for summer care anymore.

Well, that's it. I've still got some open Mondays I need to fill.

yeharr

Memories

2007-06-24T22:52:00.000-04:00

What's your earliest memory?

Mine is sitting outside, in my high chair, on the patio of our house on Sterling Street. My dad loved the outdoors, so when the weather was good we ate outside at the picnic table in the back yard. Even at this early point in my life, it was fairly routine.

But what made this day different happened after dinner. Presents! For me! It was my birthday! The total surprise tells me I didn't have much experience with this kind of day, so it was probably one of my first three. We can pretty much eliminate the first one, since I remember knowing what presents were, and being able to rip open the paper. So it was my second or third birthday. I've got a hunch that it was my second. I'm a fast learner, and expect that I had it figured out by the time I was three. So that means it happened exactly forty-six years ago Monday.

I've always said that June 25 is the best day of the year to have a birthday, because I'm never more than six months away from a present. However, this year will most likely be a bit different, since I dropped my kids off to camp Sunday afternoon. I won't see them again until Saturday.

So, a birthday alone. It's not the worst thing in the world. I think I'll celebrate by cleaning the floor in the dining room. (I mopped the kitchen--twice--as soon as I got home. Do you have any idea how cool it's going to be to have a clean floor stay clean for a whole freaking week!?)

And if you want to give me a present--tell me your earliest memory. Hell, why not make it a meme, and post it on your website? Hell, tag some people too. For me.

My very first meme. Now that's a cool present.

yeharr

Powerless

2007-06-20T15:00:00.000-04:00

I looked at my watch. 5:00PM. My kids get off the bus at 4:10. They're supposed to call me first thing when they get in the house. It was part of the deal to have them watch themselves in the afternoons. I'd been so busy, I hadn't noticed the time.

I called my house. The friendly recorded voice told me that the call could not be completed at this time.

It used to be that I worked less than a mile away from my house. 18 months ago, my office got moved out to the suburbs. If I drive 10 to 20 mph above the speed limit, I can make it home in about 15 minutes.

Instead of that option, I called my friend Nancy. She works from her home three blocks away. She would be happy to go check on the kids.

It takes about five minutes to get from Nancy's house to our house. Longest five minutes in my life.

The storm that passed through knocked out the power to my street. Since I have a VoIP phone system, when the modem goes down, the phone goes down. They were home but couldn't call. None of the neighbors that they knew had phones that worked either. It wasn't until Nancy got there with her cel phone that they could call me.

I drove home early. They were fine, but I didn't want them to be alone much longer without power, and Nancy had plans. I wasn't there for more than five minutes when STBEW came walking to the door. She had tried to call, and since she's relatively close, she walked over. I took her back to her apartment, and the kids went inside to get some stuff she had for them.

So last night we were without power. Actually, we were without power until just a few hours ago. We had dinner in a cheap restaurant, dawdled all the way home, sat out on the front porch until it got too dark, then went to bed early.

My kids bedroom is the hottest room in the house in the summer. It's the only room with air conditioning, because without it, the room's a sauna. Because of that, the kids slept in my bed with me last night. I kept waking up, because neither of my kids are very passive sleepers, and finally around 5 am I got a blanket and slept on my lumpy couch until 7.

Our morning ritual is pretty well set, and I kept to it as best I could. A very important part of the morning ritual is when Daddy Throws our Clothes on our Head. I nailed my daughter with her shorts and T-shirt, hit my son with his T-Shirt, and then grabbed the shorts he was going to wear. They were yesterdays shorts (he had grabbed a pair of jeans for today, but didn't want to wear them because it would be too hot). Something jingled in his pocket, so I didn't throw it. Sounded like a lot of change. In fact, it was more than three dollars' worth of quarters. Not a lot of money, no, but more than he should have had in his pocket.

Questions led to evasive answers and outright lies. He told me his mother gave it to him to give to a teacher who bought a book for him. That didn't sound right.

I called their mother on my cel phone. Turns out she had given him the money to sneak back into my change jar.

How did she get the money in the first place? She had shown up one day while I was at work and asked to play a video game on my computer because one of her current ex-boyfriends won't let her into his house anymore. While she was there, she sneaked into my room and grabbed some money from my change jar.

So to sum up: the kids, against my wishes, let their mother into my house, who in turn, stole from me again, and then enlisted my son's help in sneaking the money back unnoticed.

Excuse me for a minute while I go emit another strangled cry of frustration. I've been doing that with some regularity today.

Okay, I'm back. Didn't help much. Well, it helped a little.

So now, the task at hand for me is to convince my kids that they did nothing wrong.

Because they didn't.

It's easy to see what STBEW did wrong here. Perhaps it's a bit harder to see my failings. The main thing I did wrong was to tell the kids not to let Mom into the house. What pre-teen can do that? Hell, what adult can? It's Mom, after all. I put them in a situation where they had to go against someone--either Dad, who's not there, or Mom, who's standing right in front of them. They had to disobey someone. What a horrible, horrible decision for a kid to make.

I do not ever want to put them in this situation again.

So tonight, I will sit them down and apologize for doing this. I'll stress that this isn't their fault. None of it is. They got caught in the middle of a sucky situation. I will tell them that the only thing they are required to do is call me and let me know she's there. As far as the change thing, I'll apologize to my son for assuming he did something dishonest.

As for their Mother's behavior--I think I'll stress that what she did was dishonest, and manipulative, and leave it at that. Perhaps I'll tell them how sorry I am that she put them in this situation.

Another issue entirely is their 'home alone' status. It's what they've been doing since February--which was when their Mom stole some checks from me and cleaned out my bank account. For the most part, I think that they do a great job looking after themselves for those two hours after school. It's just a pity that the biggest danger they face is from the woman who bore them.

I've also spoken to their mom about what happened. It's her contention that this is nothing big, that the kids have done other things more dishonest than this, and that the major issue here is that I'm just trying to get revenge because I wasn't able to arrest her for stealing from me.

But the worst part is that they're going to be at her house this afternoon. I had already made arrangements for them to be there when the power went out. I didn't want them to have to go home to a powerless house, and once again, I was sucked in by her faking of sanity when she came to check on the kids.

It's been said that one definition of insanity is repeating the same actions and hoping for different results. A variation of that is knowing which actions will work, and failing to do them.

I think I'm covering both bases here.

yeharr

Brain Dump

2007-06-13T22:43:00.000-04:00

My lawyer charges me eighteen bucks for an email. Eighteen bucks. And there wasn't even any good p0rn in it. It will be worth it if the divorce comes through soon.
Apple's offering Safari for Windows. I've used Safari on a Mac for some time and believe me when I say what a horrible idea. If you want to know what Safari is like, look for an old verion of Firefox 1.0.1. I was going to write that this is Apple's worst idea since Newton, or even Lisa, but those were products that were ahead of the curve. This is a real bad piece of catch-up. I hope that this isn't something that's iPhone related, but I'm guessing it is.
(Nölff + Fatrobot) - sarcasm = Manimal - British accent
I totally stole the math bit from Nölff.
My kids' school had an end-of-the-year concert. The first song the band played was identified in the program as 'When the Band Comes Marching In.' It was, I stress, an instrumental--no words were sung--but I really wanted to sing out the lyrics of this grand old piece of Americana:
Oh, when the band
Comes Marching in
Oh when the band comes marching in
Oh, Unspecified Deity, I want to be in that number
When the band comes marching in!
For fuck's sake--are we really living in a society where we can't even use the title of century-old folk/jazz/gospel song in school? No one was singing the words, even though I'm sure everyone knew them. Who does this thinking protect, and from what does it protect them? I'm all for separation of church and state, but I'm also for a modicum of common sense. This is a song that has deep roots in Americana, and we can't even play it in school without Bowdlerizing it?
If someone wants to send me eighteen dollars, I'd be glad to email them. Hell, I'll give you a discount, and email you for fifteen.

yeharr

Land of 1,000 Geeks

2007-06-11T22:47:00.000-04:00

Smugtown was awash in really smart people with bad fashion sense this past weekend. Including my brother. An event known as SAE Baja was in town, hosted by my bro's Alma Mater. 140 teams from schools and universities around the world showed up to test their offroading skills.

Each team was given what is essentially a powerful lawnmower engine and has to build an off-road vehicle around it. Their car has to be able to climb hills, maneuver in mud, water, and rocky terrain, and be fast.

My brother was the co-captain of his school's entry a quarter-century ago. Since his school hosted the event this year (and he could sack out at my place), he came and volunteered his services, plus it gave him a chance to see how much things have changed.

To me, they all look alike, which is to say they all look like the car he helped build (and I should know--he brought it back from school with him, and has dragged it around from house to house ever since. Yeah: a geek and a packrat. But hands off girls--he's taken!)

His take, however was different: "Mine was a Model T compared to these guys."

That's my bro. One of us got the looks, one of us got the brains.

So, I took the kids out on Saturday afternoon to see what this was all about. It was pretty interesting--mostly because there were so many people from different cultures, yet they all spoke the same language: fluid dynamics.

So here's a few shots of what we did on a Saturday afternoon.

Geek fans. The parking area was jammed when we got there, and they expected even larger crowds the next day.

One of three Mexican entries. I love the Aztec design paint job.

Representing Halifax, Buffalo, and Pittsburg, Kansas.

These three are from Korea. They spoke flawless English. Couldn't understand a word of what they said.

I got to peek underneath the Brazilian car. There was a tiny strip of hair between the rear axles.

It was hard to remember these are just kids doing this.

Some of the teams got some big air coming over this ridge. Some of the teams got a little too much air.

Lots of teams broke down. Axles gave, engines blew, and there were a few spectacular crashes. This team's from Dalhousie, in Nova Scotia. Their weekend ended on Saturday. A long way to come for such a disappointment.

I'm glad I went--mainly because it was the only time I saw my brother. He was out on the track at 6 am, and I had gigs in the evening, but it was cool to be able to have him over.

Back when we were in school, I didn't think that we would ever be close. Truth be told, we're not. But we have found common ground, understanding, and love and compassion for each other. And it no longer bothers me that he's such a geek. In retrospect, it never did.

yeharr

Two Degrees in Bebop, a PhD in Swing

2007-06-06T22:53:00.000-04:00

You may remember me saying something about loving music.

This is one of my first loves:

That's classic Little Feat. Not the most famous band in the world, but undeniably influential. This was from its earliest incarnation. They broke up in 1978, then reformed in 1988. And as much as I enjoyed seeing this band in the late'80's and early '90's, and if they were in town this weekend, I'd love to go see them again, it just issn't the same as the earlier era. They can stock the band with all sorts of asskicking musicians, and play tighter than a steel drum, but they're chasing a spark that's been long gone.

That spark died on Long Island in 1979.

For me, Lowell George and John Belushi were very much the same person: A little bit crazy, a little bit dangerous, a whole lot of fearless, even more talented, ultimately loveable, and dead well before their time.

And just like Belushi, ask anyone who spent any time around him for a Lowell George story, and you'll be sure to get one. Like how he cut his left hand on a model airplane propeller just before the band was set to record an album, so he jammed a 11/16" Sears Craftsman sparkplug socket on his finger, and started playing slide guitar, making it up as he went along. At the time, no one in rock played a slide guitar (I consider Ry Cooder to be more of a blues-folk guitarist), and he pretty much invented a new sound.

Like how he walked into a studio practice session one day when percussionist Sam Clayton and bassist Kenny Gradney were grooving on a funky little riff, turned on a tape recorder, and created the song Spanish Moon from it on the spot.
Little Feat – Spanish Moon

Like how he would go up to folks on tour with him--roadies, techies, musicians, bandmembers--with a cigarette, and ask them for a light. While he would smoke the cigarette, he'd engage the person in a conversation so engrossing that they wouldn't even notice until later that he'd walked off with their lighter. In his den at his house would be these huge display cases filled with lighters, each annotated with date, place, and person from whom it was lifted.

That being said, I was still surprised when a friend of mine sent me a link to this:

I remember seeing this episode of F Troop when I was a kid. You can watch more of the episode here. Lowell Freakin' George and Richie Hayward on F-Troop. I'm guessing that someone on the set of the show was a friend/schoolmate of one of the bandmembers, and reccomended them when they were looking for some 'hippie kids' to play the old-west verison of The Beatles. What strikes me the most about this clip (outside, of course, of the incredibly bad editing, staging, obnoxiously fake laugh track, and horrid interpretation by the studio musicians of what 'Rock-n-Roll' actually sounded like) is how freaking young and skinny the guy was.

I'm glad my friend sent this clip to me. For one thing, it linked me to a whole bunch of early (and later) footage of the band. I didn't know there was so much early Little Feat video on the web. You can find a terrific version of Rock'n'Roll Doctor by clicking on the title of this post--for some reason, the poster doesn't want it to be embedded. And for another, it's awakened the desire to listen to the band again. I'm digging through my old CD's to find Waiting for Columbus.

I miss Lowell. And I know that there's every chance that had he lived longer, he wouldn't have continued producing the same sort of high-quality work that he had put out in the previous decade. It's entirely possible for the spark to die while the person still lives. But it's so nice to see the young, vibrant Lowell in these videos, and yearn for What Will Never Be. At least, not on this earth.

Two Degrees in Bebop
A PhD. in Swing
He's a Master of Rhythm
He's a Rock'n'Roll King.

yeharr

Family Jewels

2007-06-04T17:38:00.000-04:00

No, this isn't another post about getting a boot in the fork. One post like that is enough.

I've always loved music. Loved it. Loooved it.

I wish I was a musician. But I'm not. And it's not for a lack of trying. I took well over a decade's worth of lessons, practiced mightily, and was in a number of bands. And from that experience I learned that my musical talent doesn't go much past my iPod-programming abilities.

I had come to terms with this years ago. But what pains me now is seeing the musical parents with their musical kids. Since I love music, I have cultivated a number of friends with musical talents, and most of their kids have this talent as well. So it's not an unusual sight for me to see dads and daughters playing guitars. Moms and their sons doing duets. I see them, and I wish I had that talent.

I've tried singing with my kids, but the chorus of any song I start seems to be 'Daddy, stop singing."

I also get sad when I see parents watching kids playing sports. As a single parent, I don't have the time or the money to give for these pursuits.

Musical parents with musical kids. Athletic parents with athletic kids. What was I bringing to my family, I wondered?

Yesterday, in the car, I overheard my nine-year-old daughter and my eleven-year-old son in a deep discussion. My son thinks that Catherine Tate's Lauren Cooper character is similar to Molly Shannon's Mary Katherine Gallagher, because both are annoying school girls. My daughter, on the other hand, thinks she compares more favorably to Michael Myers' Wayne Campbell, because both like to disrupt things, and are more intelligent than are originally perceived.

No, those weren't the words they used, but that was the conversation.

This is what I'm teaching my kids. I'm teaching comedy. How many pre-teens in North America today even know who Catherine Tate is, let alone be able to compare and contrast her to two characters who were popular before they were even conceived?

How many of them can go on a rant like Lewis Black? Or can sustain a seven-minute improv scene? Mine can.

When you think funny,* you have to analyze things--not only see what's there, but what's being hidden. You make connections that others don't necessarily see. It's called critical thinking.

No, this is not the only way to learn critical thinking, but it's the one this family uses. And we get a lot of laughs from it, too.

Last night, we were playing a video game. One of the characters we had to defeat was shaped like a toadstool. When my son beat him, he shouted 'Take that, you refugee from a slice of pizza!"

Not everything's educational, okay?

I love my kids.

yeharr

*as opposed to thinking that you're funny. As a rule, most people who think that they're funny, aren't. People aren't funny. Their material may be, but they are not.

Ghosts

2007-05-30T22:10:00.000-04:00

Let's say you're lying in bed. Maybe you're trying to sleep; perhaps you're reading, or snuggling with your kids.

Suddenly, someone, unseen, hidden at the foot of your bed jams two or three needles deep into your foot, in the fleshy pad right underneath the piggy that gets no roast beef.

But these aren't ordinary needles. They're wired up, and your unseen tormentor spends the next three, four, six, ten hours (you never know how long it will last) idly flipping switches, sending currents into them at random.

Wouldn't you just want to reach down and pull those needles out? I want to. But I can't, since that particular foot hasn't been around since 1978.

It's called phantom pain. It's going to be a long night.

Welcome to my world.

yeharr

Trouble in Texas

2007-05-28T23:00:00.000-04:00

Or perhaps not.

The good Lt. has been given his PCS (Permanent Change of Station), and in October, will be reporting to a small Air Force Base in Texas, where he will command a squadron and will be, in effect, the second in command of the entire base. It's a position normally given to a Captain. You'll notice my son's name is not Captain Trouble.

Cool for him. His first real challenge, and a chance to show them what he's made of. Everybody's happy.

Well, no.

There's a problem: His girlfriend.

People often underestimate his girlfriend because she's got a bright, sunny disposition, tries to see the positive side of everything, and has a voice that sounds like she's eleven years old. When she was searching for a house for the two of them to move into, she was in Virginia, and he was in Iraq. She had to repeatedly assure her potential landlord that it wasn't a crank call from some preteen in DC.

She's also a shrewd businesswoman who misses few things, and knows her shit big time. When she bought her new car, she had another dealership on her phone, and was playing them both against each other. She got a great deal, which included a new paint job simply because she didn't like the car's color. She has major plans, and isn't afraid to go after them.

And none of them involve living in a West Texas border town.

So there, you see, is the dilemma.

My son has already decided the military will not be his career; he wants to be a cop. He likes the attention his abilities have brought him, but in the end, he has decided, policework is his dream. However, there is the small detail of his commitment to the Air Force to consider.

Plus, his girlfriend doesn't really like the military, to put it mildly. Right now, the staff in the little border town are putting together ideas and job situations that his girlfriend might find attractive. But she has her own dreams. One of the dreams involves studying in London, and opening a business there.

But no matter how good a cop my son is, I doubt he'd be able to get a job at Scotland Yard.

So there's conflicts right now. He's been out looking at engagement rings. I've counseled him against dropping a ring on her as an ultimatum. He's also said flat out he'll leave the Air Force if necessary. I've told him that if he's prepared to do that, make sure he's leaving it for a committed relationship.

It would be nice if all the pieces of one's life would just fall into place, and folks could just live happily ever after. Unfortunately, lives rarely work out that way.

And maybe that's a good thing.

yeharr

Vegas, Baby

2007-05-25T15:25:00.000-04:00

Finally got the camera back from the El-Tee. So here's the long-delayed photo essay on my trip to Las Vegas.

Vegas at night. Very, very busy. How busy? I was standing still when I took this shot. Vegas waits for no one.

A street preacher. This guy was really getting into it. Fire, brimstone, Sodom, Gomorrah, the whole magilla. Who's more whacked-out, though: him, or the folks who thought it would be a good idea to create a power- water- and money- sucking 'entertainment' city in the middle of the frikkin' dessert?

Here is what should be where Vegas currently sits. This is Red Rock Canyon, a dozen miles or so outside of the ever-expanding city limits. See the family in the corner? That's about how many people per acre this area could reasonably sustain. Any more than that, and you would have to start hauling in water, power, and food. Although the four who lived there would have a significantly different body mass index than these folks.

Red Rock was hot, dry, windy, gorgeous, and unforgiving. I wanted to stay there longer. There's a trail that leads to a little place called Ice Box Canyon, but we had been hiking for about three hours by the time we got to the trailhead for it, and I didn't think the kids could take another four hours. Didn't think I could either. The El Tee was ready for a little sprint. Bastard.

So that's what it's supposed to look like. But here's what's really there:

Thank Terry for this picture. She stopped me on a bridge and said 'Shoot that.' So I did.
One good thing about the place: I don't think I would have gotten the Queen of the Dorks to spend any serious time in the canyon. But we did have a really nice evening.

At the top of the faux Eiffel Tower.

We were up there for about twenty minutes, talking, enjoying the sites, and expounding on the incongruity of this city. Well, I was expounding. She was politely listening.

We actually spent about ten minutes longer than we either wanted, because I stopped next to a sign that led me to believe that we were to wait there for the down elevator. Then Terry politely pointed out that the elevator was actually around the corner.

Oops.

And she thinks she's a dork...

This was the lady at the base of the tower who takes your picture before you go up and tells you that it will be available for purchase when we come back. I took her picture and offered a swap, but she demurred. Oh, well. After returning to the ground, we found the closest thing to a nice, quiet spot in vegas and hoisted a few. I felt mildly embarassed for drinking beer in front of her, but she seemed quite content with the foofy drink* she had in front of her, so it all worked out fine.

After we quenched our thirst, we set off for victuals, and ended up eating in an authentic Mexican restaurant next to a fake Venice Canal. I took this shot inbetween mouthfulls of a very well-prepared tuna. Or flounder. Haddock? Something fishy.

After the meal, we wandered over to Margaritaville where the World's Worst Band was playing. Seriously, they sucked. What they were doing to those instruments was almost, but not quite, exactly unlike music. Luckily, we were outside on a balcony, people-watching and talking some more, so we were only inflicted with superficial wounds, but when the waitress comes over to you and apologizes for the band, you gotta know someone in the booking department's going to get shitcanned soon.

It was close to midnight, so I had to get back to Troubletown. I called my son, and his girlfriend, who was just getting out of work, headed over to pick me up. We waited next to the fountains at the Bellagio

That was pretty much the extent of my time in the heart of the entertainment district. Although later on in the week, we went down to the old heart, and did the Fremont Street Experience:

That was pretty cool, too. What else did we do?

We hiked to the top...or at least, near the top of Mt. Charleston:

We were several hundred feet short of the peak, but we were still about 7500 feet above sea level.

One thing about this part of the world: sunset doesn't linger. It gets dark fast. By the time we made it back down to the bottom of the trail, we were almost out of light. And no, foolish tourists that we were, we weren't prepared for an evening on the mountain. And we were seriously up there, too. On the way back, Trouble put the car in neutral, and we coasted along at 65 mph for about a half hour.

This sign was on the roadside on the way back to the car. It's good to see that elementary geometry is so encouraged in the mountains of Nevada:

Another day, we went onto the base where the LT works.

I suggested that the planes might gain a bit more altitude if they replaced the cement landing gears with a lightweight metal. They're considering my suggestion.

The Grand Prix was in town, too. It was going on the week after we left, but there were time trials being held. We did our own version, though.

That's my little girl taking the inside track. This was probably one of the two biggest things we did while we were there. They were so excited to do this. As a Dad, I was worried they might be in over their heads, but I was wrong. My daughter drives a go-kart better at nine than I did as a teenager. But she was a piker compared to my son:

The 15 car, with the teenager, was the lead car. That's my boy behind him in the yankee cap. He started in the middle of the pack. This was going into the final turn of the second lap. He made up quite a bit of distance already. By the next lap, he was right on the kids tail:

And that's where he stayed, for the next three laps. Just before this spot on the track is an S-turn that neither of them navigated particularly well, but my son was always right on the kids bumper each time, but could never get the inside track.

Until the last lap, when my son, the sneaky little guy he is, put his left-front bumper just inside 15's right rear corner, and ever-so-gently nudged him as they were coming out of the S. Not enough to spin the kid out completely--just enough to fishtail him a bit, and he got around him.

Here you can see them both looking over at the control room. Because it was totally against the rules. Totally. And that's wrong. Yes. And I'm not smiling at the memory of the move right now, I'm not at all proud of his abilities, and yes, one of these days I'll certainly give him a stern talking-to about his behavior.

Yes. I certainly will.

So you may be wondering why, in this city with so much to do, we spent time at a rinky-dink go-cart park? Because the three hours we spent there cost us only slightly more than a three-minute ride for one of us on this:

That's the rollercoaster at New York, New York. We parked in their garage one night, and listened for a few moments to the terrified screams of the passengers as they zoomed past.

So that was some of what happened that week in April. A very laid-back, fun weekend, filled with laughter, swimming, and black-widow spiders, as well as what you've seen here.

It's probably going to be the last time--at least in the forseeable future--that I'll be heading there, too, since the Lt's been given his orders. He's not going to Iraq, thank God, but still, it's a topic for a different post.

yeharr

*It was probably a cosmo, or martini, or something like that. Not really foofy, but my drinks pretty much all have one ingredient: Beer. Red wine. Single-malt whiskey. So, by comparison, something else in the glass besides that seems excessive.

Lunch

2007-05-23T21:36:00.000-04:00

I took STBEW to Subway for lunch today. I had coupons. It was a working lunch.

We needed to discuss the divorce. It all came down to one thing:

Custody.

Even though she's got nothing except an apartment being paid for by someone else, she wants it. Actually, what she wants is joint custody, but I won't do that. I need to be as distant from her as I can possibly be. So it's either her or me.

One of the things that originally endeared me to her was her indomitable spirit. She would not back down, or give up. It enabled her to work her way up from a part-time data entry clerk, to a manager at the local PBS station in about five years.

Maybe it's perspective, or maybe it's something else, but that indomitable spirit seems to have turned to spite-filled stubbornness.

I asked her not to fight for custody. She would lose. All that would happen is that a custody battle would delay the inevitable, and she'd probably get less visitation than what I'm offering.

She said she will get custody because a) my son and daughter share a bedroom* and b) I kissed a girl.**

Umm. Yeah. That all you got?

I offered her quite a bit of visitation: every other weekend, alternating Christmas/Thanksgiving, alternating winter/spring recesses, three weeks in the summer.

Eventually, tearfully, she said she would consider a month in the summer and both recesses. I got one recess back, and agreed to the month in the summer. I wrote it up and emailed it to her and my lawyer.

Then she defiantly demanded that she be allowed to attend school functions, and be able to get the kids after school. I gave in on the first one.

"You're treating me like a common fucking criminal," she said.

I reminded her as gently as I could that in February, she was a common criminal.

I took no joy in any of this. My friend Mike, who is my sponsor in Alanon, went through all of this crap thirty years ago. He's been a great help in this. His view on divorce is that if you're enjoying it, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

I'm not enjoying this. Although the sandwich was pretty good.

I may not be the best parent in the world, but I'm here. I put in the effort on a daily basis. I've been doing it on my own for three years, and wish to continue to raise my children. And I don't want to keep her children away from her, despite what she might claim.

The problem is, she likes the idea of the kids much more than the kids themselves. And the problem is also that she won't admit it. Yes, she loves them. She's their mother. But that's not enough.

I don't know what the future holds. Maybe she'll get back into society and become a healthy successful person, entirely capable of holding down a job and raising the kids on her own.

Maybe, but that's not how the smart money's betting.

yeharr

*Thre's actually two bedrooms available for them, but they've decided on their own to share one room, and make the other into a playroom. I've discussed splitting them up, but thre was much dragging of feet at the decision, so I've let them stay this way.

**Yeah, I told her. I told her the truth: that we were attracted to each other, so we decided it would be best for me to leave the group. I thought that partners were supposed to be honest with each other.

The Pain Game

2007-05-17T22:47:00.000-04:00

As a rule, I try to avoid superlatives.

Words like 'biggest,' 'fastest,' 'most' and 'least' tend to give me the heebie-jeebies. Likewise, I tend to avoid using 'always,' and 'never,' if for no other reason than to prevent me from having to eat my words later.

But when STBEW and her friends talked about childbirth as The Worst Pain Ever, well...

Actually, many times I just let it roll past. But the subject kept coming up. Over and over again. At every gathering, they would swap childbirthing stories, and tell each other that it was The Worst Pain Ever.

But...

Childbirthing is not The Worst Pain Ever.

The guys already know, and the women can guess (and I'm certain that even the guys who disagree with me publicly will, in that dark place inside where only men can go, admit it to themselves):

The Worst PainEver is a hard rap in the testicles.

Don't believe me? Let's do a side-by-side comparison:

DISCLAIMER: I will hereby readily admit that childbirthing is an intense, mindblowing pain, one that I will never truly be able to comprehend, no matter how many times I'm told that it's like passing a watermelon through my urethra. No way, no way, no how am I denigrating the intensity of the pain of childbbirthing. Women are a strong, fearsome lot, and they deserve vast amounts of respect for what they go through to keep the species alive.

AGE: Most women who give birth do so between their late teens and early thirties. Yes, I know that it's possible to give birth as early as 13 and as late as 60, but the predominant childbirthing ages fall inside the aforementioned decade and a half. For men, it doesn't matter if you're aged four or ninety-four. There's no age limit as to when you can get a boot in the crotch.
AWARENESS: Even in unplanned pregnancies, the mother-to-be almost always knows that a bundle of joy's about to be visited upon their household. Whole industries have sprung up around the concept of 'natural' childbirthing, with a lot of time spent on techniques to deal with the pain of the process. And, for many in the western world, there are drugs that will lessen, or completely eliminate, the pain of childbirth. Men, on the other hand, are usually quite surprised by a shot to the nadgers. I honestly can't imagine anyone who would plan to have this happen to them. One minute you're riding you bike, happy as can be, and there's a pothole and boom! Or your four year old son wants to show you his big-leage baseball swing and boom! Or you misjudge the amount of space between your eastbound body and that westbound guy with a briefcase and boom! Your neighbor's Irish Setter is a little to exuberant when he bounds over to sniff you and boom! The asshole in the next cubicle who never outgrew his high school locker room days reaches out and boom! You don't even have to be active; you can be sitting there reading the paper, and cross your legs when Big Jim and the Twins are in the wrong spot, underwear- wise, and, quite embarrasingly, boom.
OPPORTUNITY: Let's put it this way: a whole bunch of things have to happen well before the blessed event in order to have the event happen at all, and if I need to 'splain it further then you shouldn't be reading this blog. And there's lots of women who will live full, productive, happy lives without giving birth. I would love to be able to live out the rest of my life without having something impact me where my personal Alleghany meets my Monongahela to form my very own Mighty Ohio, but we all know that ain't gonna happen.
REPETITION: Once a woman gives birth, even in the most extreme circumstances, it's gonna be nine months at the minimum before it happens again. On the other hand, it can not even be thirty seconds after a shot to the groin, and guess what? Yep...boom! And finally:
OUTCOME: Childbirth, as its name implies, brings forth a child. The only thing a shot to the stones will bring forth is a low groan and a little gas.

Yes, I know, not every pregnancy ends well. I've been there. But even though the US has the highest infant mortality rate in the western world, 99.5% of US births result in a child.

So, ladies: the next time you see a guy inadvertenly rap himself in the sack trying to open a bottle of wine, understand his pain.

And guys, if you have any brains at all, if you hear a woman talk about the intense pain of childbirth, for Pete's sake keep your piehole shut.

yeharr

The Name Game

2007-05-15T22:46:00.000-04:00

First thing you need to know is that STBEW never changed her last name.

She was born a Fornortoner,* and by God, she'll die one as well. I didn't care. I don't know if I would change my last name for someone else, either.

Before we married, we agreed that the first child would have my last name.

Ah--but what about Puddle and Lt. Trouble, you ask?** Weren't they already in the mix?

Well, I'm not their biological father; however, I've been in their lives since they were 3 and 6, and their dads were absentees. And yes, I'm using the plural. Lt. Trouble has his mother's last name, and Puddle has his father's last name. But I never think of them as stepchildren. They're all mine--all four of them. The only real difficulties in this situation weren't ours, but our friends', who had to write really small when they were addressing their Christmas cards to us.

When my wife was pregnant with our third child, we knew quite a few things: we knew the birth date, because since her first two were Cesearean,*** there wasn't any question of her trying to deliver this one traditionally. Her OB/GYN had the delivery date scheduled from the beginning of her second trimester; we also knew what were going to name our child should it be a boy--Frederick Arthur, after his maternal and paternal granfathers. And, we knew the child would have my last name. And we could have also known the sex of the child, but we chose not to find out. We thought there should be some mystery to the affair.

By the way, we also had a list of girl names, but I don't remember what they were. In fact, they were so unforgettable, that we couldn't remember them fifteen months later, when my wife got pregnant again.****

With this fourth pregnancy, there were a few more variables. Mostly in the area of naming the child. Unlike my son, we really didn't feel that there was anyone in the family we wanted to honor--especially if the baby was going to be a boy. And, to be honest, we were sorta betting it was going to be a boy. After all, the first three were boys. I know, I know--having three boys doesn't predict anything about the fourth pregnancy any more than three coin flips coming up heads will predict the odds of the next flip. But it just felt like we were only going to have boys.

As far as girl names--I had considered doing the same thing we did with our son--naming her after her grandmothers. But my mother told me in a very matter-of-fact way that while it may not technically be child abuse, naming a girl Eleanor isn't a very nice thing to do.

My wife's mother, however, was mum on the subject, having been dead for several years. So Natalie, or some variation of it, was in consideration. As was Veronica, which was my Grandmother's name, as well as STBEW's Confirmation name. Those were the early frontrunners, as well as some others pulled out of a baby book, for both genders.

Which was not unusual. What was unusual was the last-name discussion.

She was a Fornortoner, and I was a Pirate. Whose last name would this child take? It wasn't an easy decision. There was already one child with each last name in the family, so neither of us was 'due' (except, of course, in the child-inside-of-you-soon-to-come-out sense; in which case she was certainly due). What other variables could be used? Alphabetical order? Don't laugh--it's a big one in school. Folks whose last names are near the end of the alphabet often have lingering resentments about always being at back of the line. And although my wife's name was in the last 20% of the alphabet, my last name wasn't that far in front of it. Ease of spelling? My last name's Polish, hers is German. Mine has both unpronounced letters, and sounds without their normally corresponding letters. Hers has vowel and consonant clusters so unusual that it, too, needs to be spelled and re-spelled to people in order for them to get it right.

In the end, we agreed to let the baby decide. Or, rather, baby history: On my side of the family, the babies were born with hair. On her side, they were bald. Should the baby have as much hair or more than Frederick, it would be a Pirate. Less than that, and it would be a Fornotoner.

This colored my thinking about the whole event. A typical exchange was the one I had with my butcher the week before the baby was to be born. Like Fred, her birthday had been on the appointment calendar for months. My mom was up from Florida, and we were stocking up. The women at the butchers loved my son from the moment we brought him in, and they were looking forward to the new baby.

"So waddya want?" the woman behind the glass case asked.

"Five pounds of ground sirloin, ten pounds of chicken breasts, that pork loin..."

"No--the baby,"she clarified. "Boy or girl. What do you want?"

"I want hair."

Believe it or not, those sort of responses endeared me to the butcher. After the explanation, she then asked if we had any names picked out. I rattled off the Scotts and Seths and such we had on our list if it was a boy.

"And if it's a girl," I said, "We've got it narrowed down to either Veronica Nathalia, which are variations of family names, or Zoë Lucille. Zoë means 'life,' and Lucille means 'light,' so--

"Oh, don't name her Zoë," my mother interrupted, "I knew a girl named Zoë, and she was just a mean, nasty little girl."

Oh. Wow. What do you say when your Mom drops something like that on you? I didn't say much, really. I was pretty sure a) we'd have a boy, and b) even if we had a girl, we'd call her Veronica.

****

I should mention here that my wife and I didn't always see eye-to-eye, as our last-name disagreement (and, of course, our pending divorce) point out. One of our milder arguments came in the concept of children's names. She believed that you can't just give a baby a name; that name has to 'fit' the baby. I thought this was a kooky idea. You name the kid, and then the kid has that name. End of story.

"No," she said, "the name has to fit. You have to see the baby first, before you can name it."

I pointed out quite pointedly that we had Frederick's name picked out for him well before he was born. She looked at me as if I asked her why things hit the ground if I let go of them.

"That's because he's a Frederick."

Ah. He's a Frederick. It all makes sense to me now.

****

The day of the birth was upon us, and the hour of the birth was nigh. I was sitting outside the OR with my wife's OB/Gyn, while his team prepared her for the C-Section. This, by the way, was not the crusty old gasbag who delivered Lt. Trouble.

Her new doc was an energetic, genteel metrosexual Kentuckian, and my wife adored him, partly for the reassuring way he presented things, and partly for his accent. "That's normal," was his typical response to questions and concerns. Only it came out as "Theyat's nuormel." For instance, we used to meet up at the reservoir at lunchtime and walk two laps around it, but she started getting these pains in her pelvis, so we mentioned this at a checkup.

"Theyat's nuormel," he said. "It's not uncommon for women who've had three or four babies into their thirties to have the bones in their pelvises separate, and some of the smaller bones will poke, like little daggers, into the muscles and tissues surrounding the vagina, it's to be expected..."

This was some new meaning of 'nuormel' that I was not familiar with. I had a physical reaction to hearing it. "Gaaah!" I said, covering my ears. "Stop talking about that! My testicles are retracting!"

"Theyat's nuormel," he said. Testicle retraction in the husband when talking about these things is to be expected..."

****

So, there we were, sitting outside the OR, and he was expressing to me just how nuormel things like spurting blood and amniotic fluid can be, and that since this was a teaching hospital, there would be a group of interns assiting him.

And after he finished telling me about this, he asked, "Is there anything else we need to talk about?" To which I replied, "I will give you $20 if the first words out of your mouth are 'Look at all that hair.'"

And he said it. And although I will never admit it, he shouldn't have. Best twenty bucks I ever spent.

He also said "It's a girl!" Which surprised the hell out of both of us.

And just like with my son, I went over to welcome my daughter into the world, to sing to her, and tell her who I was...

But there was a doctor there. With a stethoscope, and a worried look on her face. "Can I get a nickyou nurse in here?" she asked.

Nickyou? What's a nickyou?

It is, I soon found out, a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. NICU.

What's wrong with my daughter? Soon, they were bundling her into a special gurney, and we went down the corridor to a small little room filled with very small babies. This was a serious room. Suddenly, hair or no hair was of little consequence.

The intern told the nurse that she couldn't hear sustained heart sounds. Or something like that. The nurse thanked the intern, and told her to get back to the OR.

She listened to my daughter's chest for a minute. Then she looked at me and grinned. "She couldn't hear her heart because she's crying so loud. Any baby that's crying like this has no problems. Get her out of here."

The gurney was much lighter on the way to the recovery room.

****

"What's her name?" My wife asked me. I was holding my daughter in my arms, walking her back and forth. She had stopped crying, but was odd in my arms. Not like my son, who felt right. She didn't. It was unusual.

I walked back and forth, saying names in a low voice. "Veronica Nathalia. Natalia Veronica. Natalie Veronica. Veronica Natalie. Nat. Ronnie." Nothing. I looked at my daughter, and I realized the truth. She wasn't a Veronica. Or a Natalie, or even a Nathalia, or any variation on those names.

Oh, well. Mom's gonna have to live with it. I whispered in her tiny ear:"Welcome to the family, Zoë Lucille." And with that, she settled perfectly into my arms, and my heart, and has lived there contentedly, my Life's Light, ever since.*****

And theyat's entaherly nuormel.

yeharr

*Not her real last name, nor anyone else's real last name either. Do a google search for 'Fornotoner,' and you'll end up right back here.

**Only if you're a regular reader of this blog, that is. For those who just showed up: Lt. Trouble is my oldest son, an Air Force cop, and Puddle is his brother, a musician/author/artists, which means he works at a video store. Both are in their 20's, and neither lives at home.

***STBEW doesn't dilate. She was in labor with the future Lt. Trouble for 60 hours before her OB/GYN said, 'well, I guess we better do a C-Section, or they'll probably die.' Needless to say, she no longer required his services after the delivery.

****Of course, I can't tell you any of the boy names we had picked out for my daughter either, so maybe that just says something about us.

*****For what it's worth, my Mom recovered quite nicely. "Oh I didn't mean Zoë--I thought you said Zelda. The girls' name was Zelda. Zoë's a lovely, lovely name." Nice save, Mom. You should be playing for the Sabres.

No, I'm Not A Terrible Person

2007-05-13T22:38:00.000-04:00

I didn't stay at the party last night because you were there. That was the one and only reason I left.

I showed up before you, so I managed to say hello to everyone. And I didn't leave the moment you showed up; I stayed and made polite conversation. I informed you that we needed to talk, and I even suggested buying you lunch to talk about it. But it will be business. It will be about the divorce.

But I didn't stay because, frankly, I don't want to be around you. Not because you're a bad person, and I don't think you're a bad person, only a person making lots of bad decisions. You need help. Problem is, you've burned so many bridges so quickly that help is hard to find. You don't know where to look.

Well, you can't look here. This is the biggest bridge you burned. And that's why I said my apologies and left the party. Because I need to remove myself from situations where you might feel the need to ask, and I might feel the need to say yes.

I spent two years ignoring the signs, believing you were getting better. I helped you out when I could. I gave you money, gave you food, let you use my car, encouraged you. You repaid me by stealing from me. Again.

And you can say you were desperate and you can say it was the drugs and you can say you're sick and you will be right because it was the drugs and yes you're sick and you need help and you need compassion but you won't get it from me.

At least, not the help.

Understand this: I will not help you. Those words mean exactly that, and nothing else. They do not mean I don't care for you. I do. They don't mean I won't be civil to you. I will. You seem to think otherwise. You seem to think that if I speak to you in pleasant tones, and attempt to set aside some time with you to talk about how we will end this marraige and what roles each of us will play in raising our children that I have somehow decided that I will go back to helping you.

I won't.

So I'm sorry that the guy you were living with took all your foodstamps and didn't live up to his end of the bargain and now you have nothing. I won't ask you why you weren't staying at the halfway house where they fed you and gave you a bed and fellowship and support, and ended back up with a guy who dumped all your stuff on the curb. I also won't ask you why in the hell you gave him your foodstamps to begin with. And I won't give you money.

And I'm sorry that you have no way of getting the stuff from my house to your apartment. I told you I won't throw it away. It's yours to take, when you can take it. But I won't drive it over there.

And I'm sorry you didn't get to see your kids today. I am. But I saw you yesterday, and you knew as well as I did that today was Mother's Day. You didn't ask to see them today, did you? You know you don't have a phone. You know I don't know where you live. Still, you didn't do anything when you had the opportunity to do it. You asked me for money instead. I'm sorry, too, that we weren't here when you walked over to see them. But I wasn't going to just sit around on this beautiful day waiting for you to show up.

And I'm sorry most of all that it bothers me that I'm not doing these things.

But it's bothering me less and less. It may not seem like it, but it is.

And that's not terrible, at all.

yeharr

Splitting the Maraschino

2007-05-10T22:46:00.000-04:00

Mom made everything equal. Or at least tried to.

She would spend--right down to the penny--exactly the same amount on her two sons. On clothing, on gifts, on everything. She would scrupulously divvy up everything fifty/fifty between us--right down to the fruit cocktail at dinner. It would only ever have one maraschino cherry in it, so mom would get out the paring knife, and I would get half, and my brother would get half.

For our part, watching our mother carefully weigh and measure every detail of our lives made us realize that she was not playing favorites, since we were of course rational human beings.

Like hell.

There was never any doubt in my mind that my brother was the favored son. He was, after all, the firstborn, the mechanically adept, the chip off the ol' 360-cubic-inch-engine block. Of course mom and dad liked him best.

And my brother for certain knew that I, as the baby, the charmer, quick with a joke and able to worm his way out of all sorts of work because I made my parents laugh, undoubtedly sat at the right hand.

It never occurred to us that we were both wrong.

Of course, it never occurred to mom that no matter how finely she split the maraschino, it wouldn't matter, so why bother?

That lesson is one of the many gifts that I got from my folks. In fact, 'I don't split the maraschino cherry' is my mantra when I get into 'he's getting more than me' situations. I am confident that they will each get enough, and besides, it's the love that's important, and I have plenty of that to give.

Right?

Umm...kids?

All this is by way of saying that, although I do my best, I have an inherent desire to make sure everything is equal between my kids. And since I wrote about my son's birth, I think I'm going to have to post about my daughter's entrance into the world soon.

yeharr

My Future Ex-Brother-In-Law

2007-05-09T22:13:00.000-04:00

For the purposes of this post, I'm going to have to give my Soon-To-Be-Ex-Wife's mother a name, simply because I can't write it without one. So, for the purposes of this post only, STBEW's last name will be Fornortoner. If there's anyone out there whose honest-to-God real last name is Fornortoner, you have my apology. And my sympathy.

I never called my mother-in-law anything.

Actually, she was never my mother-in-law, since she died almost a year before the wedding. But, before she died, I never used her name. She was introduced to me as 'my Mom' by my future STBEW, and her father, of course, was 'my Dad.' I wasn't going to call them Mom and Dad, and as a newly-minted adult, I chafed at calling them Mr. and Mrs. Fornotoner, but they didn't give me permission to use their first names. Hell, I didn't even know what they were for several months. So, I spent a lot of time getting myself into situations where I didn't have to call them anything. Which was fairly exhausting. After she died, and after the wedding, I did start to call the widower Fornortoner by his first name, but it was always impersonal pronouns with Mrs. F.

She was a bit of a hard, case, Natalie Fornortoner was. When we told them we were going to get married, all she said to us was: "Well, you've made mistakes before."

At the time I thought she was talking to her daughter. Now I'm not so sure.

Natalie and Fred met up when he was discharged from the Army in the mid1950's, and were married soon after. Even though she had a college degree and a full-time job, she quit the job shortly after getting pregnant, leaving him, with only a high school diploma, as the full-time breadwinner.

They had four children--all daughters, STBEW being the third--in the span of eight years, and her fate was sealed. Her dreams--and we all had dreams, didn't we?--were dashed.

So, she stayed at home and became a housewife, and from all accounts, not a very happy one. Over the years, all her promise turned sour and hard, and resentment became her ever-present, never mentioned secret companion. She was a bitter woman by the time I met her.

There were other secrets in her life too, as we have just recently discovered.

This weekend, the four daughters will be getting together to meet their brother. Half brother, actually--born in Brooklyn (about 350 miles away from Smugtown) in 1954, and put up for adoption at birth. He managed to find out his birth mother's name, and made contact with the oldest daughter earlier this year.

The eldest had apparently known about the adopted brother since sometime in the 1970's, but for some reason didn't think to mention this particular branch of the family tree to her sisters.

So, now the kids and I have been invited to a party to meet a man from a family I will soon be leaving. And honestly, I'd love to meet him.

But here's the thing: STBEW will be there too. And as much as I would like to meet this guy and his family, I don't want to be around STBEW even more.

I almost wrote 'I don't like feeling this anger I feel towards her.' right here. But that's not true. I do like it.

What I don't like--is that I like it. Does that make sense?

What I would like to feel about STBEW, eventually, is neutrality. Which is different than not feeling anything--which is originally what I thought I was going for. Not feeling anything is amoral, and in a way, hurtful. I don't want to hurt her. I also don't want to help her.

But right now, that's not something I can attain. And it's certainly unattainable when I'm in close proximity to her.

So, I must keep my distance. I'll drop off the kids (he's their uncle, after all), shake the man's hand, and then hit the road. At least, that's the plan for now.

Or maybe I'll stay. Because part of me says leaving would be giving STBEW still more power over me. Besides, it would be interesting to see how the Fornotoner genes developed outside of this particular alcoholic family.

yeharr

Take Me Out

2007-05-07T23:39:00.000-04:00

Sunday afternoon, the kids and I took in a ballgame. Smugtown lost 4-2, in a game they could have won. With one out at the top of the ninth, the second batter got on base with a beautifully executed drag bunt. The next batter popped out to short, but the fourth batter of the inning lined a double into the left field corner, scoring the runner from first...

Waitaminnit. The runners on third? Speedy little sucker who can get on base with a drag bunt doesn't score on a double?

Turns out he was watching the ball. What the fuck? With two outs you run on contact. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth and only down by two you run like hell. Even my son knows that. I guess that's why he's in Smugtown, and not in The Show.

So the next guy up--a 6'3" monster of a first baseman, with arms the size of...well, really big arms--grounds weakly to second. Just like he did the previous three at-bats. Game over.

Despite the loss, it was a good afternoon. Any afternoon at the ballpark is a good one. We had hot dogs. We had big salty pretzels. We drank lemonade (them) and Canadian beer (me). They had Dippin' Dots. And we sat right behind home plate for the first five innings, then we sat up high behind third base to try and catch a foul for two innings, then we sat down on a patch of grass that runs right down to the foul line along third base (with, of course, a fence separating the two areas) for the last two. The park in Smugtown is especially nice--it's consistently listed as one of the best places to take in a game. It's also eleven years old, which is the same age as my son, although his ties to baseball predate his birth.

I sing to my kids. I always have. In fact, I sang to them in utero. I chose a song for them, and sang it to my wife's belly every night. My daughter's song was You Are My Sunshine.

My son's song was Take Me Out to the Ballgame. And in case you're wondering, I picked both songs without knowing their gender.*

True Story: My son showed his independent streak from the moment he came out. He pushed his shoulders back, and arched his little back, and made sure the world knew he was there. I knew this, of course, because I was in the room at the time. I was told I could sit next to my wife, but that was it. No moving around The anaesthesiologist, who had his own theories about childbirthing, told me before we went in that I should ignore that, and go and talk to my baby when it was under the heat lamp, before they smeared erythromycn in his or her eyes.

So I did. I said hello to him, told him who I was, told him who he was, and told him I would fight bears for him. And I sang.

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out to the crowd
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack
I don't care if I never get back
For it's root, root root for the Pirates**
If they don't win it's a shame
For it's one, two three strikes you're out
At the old ball game!

And my son, my beautiful son, stopped crying and looked at me. It was a connection that will never, ever leave me. Then they smeared erythromycin in his eyes, and whisked him away where he cried some more, and shortly took a shit on his pediatrician.

And I continued to sing it to him. When I changed his diaper. While I bathed him. When I fed him, rocked him to sleep or just held him, I would sing it to him.

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out to the crowd...

My son was born in February. In August, we took him to his first baseball game. He was bright eyed and happy, enjoying the evening, and the attention of the folks around him, and even parts of the game. He loved the sound of the crack of the bat.

And in the seventh inning, all nine thousand-plus fans*** in the ballpark stood up and sang:

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out to the crowd...

And my son stopped, and looked around, at everybody in the stadium singing his song with awe and wonder, and when they were done, he clapped. Because they did a good job of it.

And yes, every game we go to--especially at our lovely little stadium--we tell each other the story about the crowd singing to my son.

So it was a good day at the ballpark.

Unfortunately, on the way home, the brakes on my van failed.

But that's another story.

yeharr

*Which was intentional. Both births were planned C-sections--for some reason, STBEW never dilated. So we figured since we knew pretty much to the minute when they were going to be born, we should keep some mystery to the process.

**Who else? Seriously, they've been my team all my life. It's just a coincidence. By the way, my son's a Yankee fan.

***Which is pretty darn good for a Triple-A team, attendance-wise.

In Order to Save Our Country, We Have to Destroy Our Country

2007-05-02T16:53:00.000-04:00

Thomas Sowell, encouraging his fellow thirty-percenters to keep drinking the Kool-Aid:

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

In the Wall Street Journal, Harvey Mansfield tells us that the President is in fact above the law:

In stormy times, the rule of law may seem to require the prudence and force that law, or present law, cannot supply, and the executive must be strong.

If you think I'm reading him wrong, be advised that the title of his article is: "The Case for the Strong Executive: Under some circumstances, the rule of law must yield to the need for energy."

Which circumstances he leaves up to us to guess. As long as it's 'stormy.'

And in todays New York Times, a senior administration official tells us that they had their fingers crossed when they agreed to stop the warrantless wiretapping in January.

But on Tuesday, the senior officials, including Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said they believed that the president still had the authority under Article II of the Constitution to once again order the N.S.A. to conduct surveillance inside the country without warrants.

During a hearing Tuesday of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. McConnell was asked by Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, whether he could promise that the administration would no longer sidestep the court when seeking warrants.

“Sir, the president’s authority under Article II is in the Constitution,” Mr. McConnell said. “So if the president chose to exercise Article II authority, that would be the president’s call.”

You may remember that the White House agreed to bring all requests for wiretapping to the FISA court, rather than take this matter to the courts to decide. Kidding! They were just kidding!

Do you remember the good old days, when Republicans were against having a totalitarian state?

yeharr

Midnight Rides

2007-04-29T22:47:00.000-04:00

Here's something fun to do--in a dorky, historynerd sorta way:

Use the google and type in "Sybil Ludington." Count the number of hits you get. Oh never mind--I'll do it for you. You get about 45,000 hits.

Not bad, considering you've never heard of her.

Now do the same thing for "Paul Revere." You get a lot more hits.

Which is a bit of a shame, since Sybil pretty much did exactly the same thing Paul did--she rode out to warn people that the British were burning Danbury, Connecticut.

Only, unlike Revere, she did it without a support system or an additional group of people to help.

And she assembled a force of about 400 soldiers, who, although they were too late to save Danbury, managed to drive the British foces right back to Long Island, and right onto their ships.

Oh, and she did this after she had put her eleven brothers and sisters to bed--she was only sixteen at the time.

Also she also rode 40 miles, compared to the dozen that Revere rode.

On unmarked roads.

In the rain.

Forty miles in the dark in the rain--ask someone who rides a horse how that must feel.

Seriously, ask. Cuz I don't know. I doubt it feels anything like 'pleasant.'

All of this took place 230 years and three days ago. But most of the world has never heard of her. And there's certainly not a cookware named after her.

There's a little town in upstate NY where she's recognized. Twenty years ago, I shot a documentary about New York's role in the Revotionary war, and I stopped by and shot the hell out of that statue posted above, because there was precious little else about her anywhere. It's a shame, really. It's such an interesting story--moreso than Revere's if you ask me.

But here's the thing--Paul had a penis.

Now, I know that poor Sybil had a lot of things stacked against her besides her gender. Danbury is far less well-known or as important as Boston or Lexington. And there's no way that Longfellow could have written anything as elegant as

Listen, my children, and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere

with a name like Sybil Luddington.

But still...

Is it too much to ask that we honor more people in this country than just the white men?

yeharr

Random Seven

2007-04-26T14:01:00.000-04:00

Colleen tagged me with this meme: Seven completely random things about myself, and then tag seven people.

1) In college, I was a serial pratfaller. I would fall just for the fun of it. Going into class, in the cafeteria, or just walking across campus, I would take a dive on a whim. My favorite fall was down the stairs at my college's library. The stairs started right inside the main entrance and were about 10' wide, and went straight up four flights, narrowing slightly on each floor. It was a 50' drop and about a 70' run, because each floor had a 10' or so landing, which meant that I would have to do some sort of flip or roll to keep the impetus. It was a bit scary, too. I could seriously hurt myself or some other unsuspecting student, which meant that I would have to be very loud as I fell, so they'd know I was coming. I picked an early Thursday evening to do the fall, figuring that there would still be a few folks around, but not too many (the weekends at my college tended to start sometime Wednesday). I grabbed a huge pile of books and hung around the stairwell on the fourth floor until the stairs were nearly empty, and then, with a loud, wobbly yelp, I tumbled down the stairs, scattering books with me, until I landed at the bottom, where I stood up and walked out as if nothing unusual happened.

2) I don't like to order the same food as anyone else in my party at a restaurant. I always try to be the last person to order. I try to find as many things on the menu that I might like as there are people in my party. My default backup order is almost always Cobb Salad. If we're having dinner, and I order Cobb Salad, that means someone else at the table is eating my dinner.

3) My father and I shared the same middle name. When my brother was born, he got my dad's first name as his middle name. Since I was the second born, I got his middle name. That sort of symmetry appealed greatly to my father. I often wonder if the real reason my folks didn't have any more kids was because my dad ran out of names.

4) I constantly get left and right mixed up. I have all my life. Which makes it extremely difficult for me when I'm directing, and telling my camera ops to 'pan left' or 'pan right.' I almost always will say 'left' when I mean 'right,' unless I really concentrate. I used to use my wedding ring as a mnemonic. I can't do that any more.

5) I was terrified of kissing when I was a kid. I was sure I would get it wrong. Even into high school, I didn't kiss anyone. I hugged my prom dates goodnight. My first kiss was when I was a freshman in college at a costume party. I was a drunken Captain Kirk, and I found myself on a couch next to a drunken witch. Little Feat's 'Waiting for Columbus' (one of the best live rock albums ever) was playing, and the song was 'Mercenary Territory,' and we were both singing along:

And I did my time in your rodeo
Waited so long and I've got nothin' to show
Don't you know, that I'm plain ol' loco
But the fool that I am I'll do it all over again

And then the Tower of Power Horns' Doc Kupka starts laying down the most growling, soulful, aching bari sax solo, that screamed a lifetime of unrequited desire that builds and builds and builds to this incredible fifteen second, two-plus-octave glissando that I don't think one sax player in a thousand could pull off...*

...and I found myself with a tongue in my mouth. Thank you, Lowell George. Thank you, Captain Morgan. By the way, I have no fucking clue as to who that witch was. Whoever you are, thank you, too.

I didn't kiss a sober girl (or a girl while sober) until several years later.

6) I've haven't had a whiskerless chin since January, 1980. I trimmed the full beard down to a goatee about seven years ago, but I've had a beard for more than a quarter century. None of my kids have ever seen my clean-shaven. I mentioned that I was considering shaving it off to my two youngest, and they both wailed in protest. So I guess I'll keep it a while longer.

7) Every morning, I meditate for half an hour. I begin my meditation with this prayer:

O God! Refresh and gladden my spirit. Purify my heart. Illumine my powers. I lay all my affairs in Thy hand. Thou art my Guide and my Refuge. I will no longer be sorrowful and grieved; I will be a happy and joyful being. O God! I will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will I let trouble harass me. I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life. O God! Thou art more friend to me than I am to myself. I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord.

Random enough, I hope. As far as tagging--I'm not sure the readership of this thing gets up much past seven anyhow, so if you've read this far, consider yourself tagged.

yeharr

*Seriously, if you've never heard this album, buy it. Or just download this one song off the album. It's worth 99 cents just to hear that solo.

Viva?

2007-04-24T18:10:00.000-04:00

Bright light city gonna set my soul
Gonna set my soul on fire
Got a whole lot of money thats ready to burn,
So get those stakes up higher
Theres a thousand pretty women waitin out there
And theyre all livin devil may care
And Im just the devil with love to spare
Viva las vegas, viva las vegas

Las Vegas has lovely walls.

You see them everywhere-high, warm, reddish-brown walls. Along every street, surrounding every community. Even if they aren't gated communities (and many, many of them are), they are walled communities.

Even the walls along the highway are lovely. Many of them have art on them. Some of it celebrates the Las Vegas centennial, some of it just looks tribal. By 'tribal,' I mean 'of or relating to the indigenous people who once lived in the area.'

Las Vegas has lovely highways.

In addition to the walls--put there, I'm assuming, for sound abatement for the walled and gated communities sprawling just the other side of them, the overpasses are often also arftul, with the name of the road we're crossing under spelled out in bas-relief, often in an italicized, serifed font. And the dividers are carefully maintained as well, landscaped with tall palm trees, yucca plants, and lush grasses, all as native to the area as the people on the other side of the walls, and all requiring careful maintentnence, including regular waterings.

The parts of Las Vegas that aren't walled are divided up into two parts: shopping centers and casinos. The casinos I'll get to later, but an interesting feature of the shopping centers is the high, high number of 'learning centers' in them. Little storefront schools with names like 'Club Z!' 'Kumon,' 'The Learning Center,' 'Kids Campus,' and 'Children's World,' appear right next to the Ross Dress for Less and the TGIFridays. Seriously. You can't drive a mile in Vegas without seeing one.

The reason for this, according to Lt. Trouble, is because the Clark County School District, in his words, 'sucks ass.'

Las Vegas has lousy schools.

The schools are severely underfunded, teacher morale is as low as the grades, and no one really seems to care. Those who can afford it send their kids to these storefront schools, and those who can't, or don't care, well...according to the El-Tee, Vegas is one of the few places where someone can make a lot of money without even a high-school degree. If you're friendly, energetic, and above all, sexy, there's always a buck to be made. And not just in prostitution. Cute waiters and waitresses can regularly come home with thousands of dollars of tip money.

So, no one really cares about the education system. That leaves more money for the walls, roads, and dividers.

If you were to decide where the absolutely, positively worst place to build a major city would be, you would have to look long and hard to find someplace worse than southern Nevada. And if you were to make the main goal of that city 'entertainment,' that would make it even worse. Because in twenty-first century America, 'entertainment' means spectacle and comfort. Bright lights. Lush lawns. Air conditioning. Dancing waters.

Water's a big thing in Vegas. It's everywhere. The Bellagio has a 'dancing water' show every hour. The Venice is surrounded by canals, where the graduates of some of the best music schools in the country paddle tourists around in gondolas, and sing snippets of arias to them. Most of the canals are inside, under a painted tuscan sky, with the temperature a pleasant mid-seventies.

Power's big in Vegas too. All the lights, all the shows. All the air conditioning. I wonder how much power it uses in a day?

And what does it give back?

You know as well as I do. It gives nothing.

Not a God damned thing of value.

And yet we flock to it, flee to it, this mecca of excess. And not just to visit--to live. The city is growing by seven thousand people a month. Seven thousand. That's a mid-sized town. That's more people than lived in my home town, per month, moving to Las Vegas. The entire population of Milltown, New Jersey moved there in January. Andover, Kansas, pulled up stakes and headed west in February. Gunnison, Colorado moved in back in March. And now, with April almost over, we'll stop by and welcome Bluffdale, Utah.

I sure hope Milltown brought its sunscreen. It gets pretty ugly come August.

The people come, and they visit. They spend their money there--lots of it, and not just on gambling. They spend it on shows, and on trips up towers, and on amusement rides that cost more for one ticket than I would spend for a day pass to our local amusement park, and on dinners and on limos and rooms and luxuries, and all of this spending is a lie.

Because it's not sustainable. And the fuck of it is, we know it. We know it and we choose to ignore it.

The water's going away. It's drying up. The water level on Lake Mead's dropped something like 50 feet in the past decade. And it's being pissed away--on lawns and in swimming pools, and quite literally, every hour in front of the Bellagio.

Temperatures are rising. So the good folks spend more time indoors, running their air conditioners, using up more and more power.

And the money. Where does the money go? Pretty much exclusively to folks like Kirk Kerkorian, Steve Wynn, and their investors. They're making billions. And whatever they're giving back is probably pennies on the dollars they're making.

So which will go first? The water? The power? The money? Because one of them will go away. Maybe not entirely, but certainly enough to notice. And that will cause the other two supports to give way quite quickly, and the whole shebang will end.

Like Sodom and Gommorrah. And although it will be biblical in proportion, no Divine Hand will be needed to cause this city to crumble. Maybe there's be another energy crisis, this time not an Enron-enduced one, but a real one. Or perhaps it will be the interest rates those sub-prime loans given out to New Baltimore, Pennsylvania, that suddenly double or treble a few years down the road, that will start a mass exodus of workers. Or perhaps the water will simply evaporate. It tends to do that in Nevada. It's a desert, you know.

And then, suddenly, the construction boom will go bust--right in mid-hammer swing. The megacasinos will suddenly not have enough workers to staff them--not that it matters, since the cost of keeping the place cool has priced the rooms out of reach of most people anyway.

And who wants to take in a show, when water restrictions limit the number of times you can bathe, or even flush the toilet?

This is all speculation on my part, of course. I've been wrong many, many times before. But I can't help thinking that the best thing that Las Vegas can be, in the end, is the canary in the coal mine. Perhaps its death will wake us up to the realities of the world around us.

I started this post with a snippet of a song that was written about this town. I think I'll end it with another bit of poetry--written 90 years before Las Vegas was founded, but, I fear, very appropriate to the way it might end:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

yeharr

Of Shoes, Shampoos, and Guns

2007-04-17T13:03:00.000-04:00

We got to the airport ninety minutes before the flight, and we were worried that we wouldn't make it.

Because once, a few years ago, somebody tried to smuggle a bomb in their shoes. The bomb was a dud, but that didn't matter. Because one guy one time tried to blow us up with his Hush Puppies, we now had to take off our shoes and belts.

And, because there was a group of people in London who were trying to conceive of a way to smuggle a bomb onto planes using liquids hidden in bottles (which, most people with any knowledge of this believe, would have at worst caused the person mixing the chemicals to suffer some serious burns), we now can only carry small plastic bottles onto the plane, and they have to be in ziploc bags.

My son's bag had to be pulled aside and checked because his mom had given him a small bottle of a special shampoo for his hair. Even though the bottle was the right size (less than 1.5 ounces), it was not in a plastic bag. It was confiscated.

As we all know, the baggie is all that stands between us and safety. You're either with the SC Johnson Company, or your with the terrorists.

Perhaps, sometime, somewhere, someone killed someone else by ramming a bottle of shampoo down his or her throat, hitting it with a shoe to force it deeper and deeper. So I can't say for certain that no one has ever been killed by shoes or shampoo, but I'm betting the number of deaths from these particular items is hovering right around zero. I'm betting you could add in a plethora of hand lotions, colognes, beverages and other confiscatable liquids to the mix and it still wouldn't get the death toll up to double digits. That doesn't matter, though. The reaction from the government through the Department of Homeland Security was quick and decisive in these instances: extra precautions and outright bans. Meaning sweating that we'll miss the flight because the line through security was hundreds of people long. At 4:50 am on a Wednesday.

Yesterday, a student walks onto a campus in Virginia, and opens fire. Within minutes, more than 30 people are dead, a similar number wounded, some gravely. The kid might still be firing now if he hadn't saved a bullet for himself.

This is not the first time this year that someone had been killed--killed, not potentially killed--by a gun in this country.

Not the first time this year? Hell, it probably wasn't the first time that hour. I know, lots of other things can kill you--knives, cars, explosives, even, yes, a shampoo bottle hammered down your throat by a shoe--but of all those things, only one of them was built with the exclusive purpose of doing what it did; namely, kill, and kill quickly.

The reaction from Washington?

"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said yesterday.

Let's recap: My 11-year-old son can't walk onto a plane with an ounce and a half of shampoo in his backpack, but some basket case can legally buy a gun that can shoot 25 rounds in ten seconds, and walk onto campus (or into the Post Office, or into a McDonalds, or into your daughter's daycare center) and start pulling the trigger.

There will be a reaction, to be sure. I'm sure that any number of security agencies are right now contacting any number of colleges, telling them that, for a fee, they will man the doorways to the classrooms and cafeterias of our nations colleges, ensuring a greater sense of security due to the presence of more guns and the absence of a few pesky rights.

Because, God knows, all of our rights should be thrown away to increase our security.

Exept, of course, for the right to bear arms.

Yeharr

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jog

2007-04-12T22:48:00.000-04:00

5:00 AM, PDT:

Lt. Trouble: Got everything?

Me: Yes.

Lt. Trouble: Are you sure?

Me: Of course I'm sure. I spent half the day yesterday packing to make sure it all fit. You realize you and your girlfriend gave the kids about three pounds of candy each?

Lt. Trouble: Did you pack your camera?

Me: Of course I packed it! Do you think I'm some sort of idiot? I wouldn't forget that! It's got all my pictures--including the ones of me and The Queen of Dorks. I'm not forgetting that!

Lt. Trouble: Okay, if you're sure--let's get to the airport.

5:00 pm, EST:

Me: (on the phone) Hi! We just landed! It was a good flight....ummm....I think I left the camera in my bedroom.

Lt. Trouble: Yeah. We'll mail it to you tomorrow.

yeharr

I Am Here.

2007-04-03T15:53:00.000-04:00

Actually, not yet, but by lunchtime on Wednesday.

Between then and now will mostly be travel, or preparing for travel.

I have no idea if I'll have the time or inclination to post while there. If I do, you'll be the first to know.

Or maybe the second. Definitely in the top five, though. This site doesn't get much traffic.

I'll be back to Swillburg on the 12th!

yeharr

Major Trouble

2007-03-27T17:17:00.000-04:00

This is going to be the blogging equivilent of the older neighbor behind you in the checkout line of the supermarket bragging about his kid. Difference is, you don't have to be stuck there pretending that you're interested if you're not. Oh, and it's the seven items or less line, and you've got nine items there. Just thought you should know.

The following are the comments my son's Commanding Officer--a full-bird Colonel--wrote on his T-ODP.* It's sort of the military's report card/letter of reccomendation that all the Junior Officers get. Other than the XXX's, the footnotes, and the name thing, it's word-for-word:

[LT. TROUBLE]is ready to be an Operations Officer of a large unit. I have invested my personal time and professional energy to confirm his success! Send him to the most challenging assignment open!

If an Operations job is not open, then send him to a MAJCOM** Staff. This assignment will provide the staffing skills required for him to be successful. I look to see him as a commander soon.

Additional Developmental Recommendations/Assessment:

Okay, pay attention! Take your time in getting this one RIGHT!

[LT. TROUBLE] has learned the XXXX, XXXXXX, and XXXXXX*** portions of our duties. Currently, completing his MS degree, he is ready for more challenges. Either deploy him as a Operations Officer or Joint Staffer in the AOR****, and he will succeed. I am expecting him to pin on Captain soon and we need to position him to take on the toughest of missions. Push him to SOS***** as soon as possible so he can focus on executing the mission. I want this guy to eventually go to Air Staff as a seasoned Major, so prepare him for command early!

Wow. Is this the way they write up everyone? I've never been in the military, so I may be wrong, but it sounds to me like this kid is being groomed.

Thing is, he's not even sure if he wants to stay. One of the captains he worked with at Nellis is now a patrol officer in the Las Vegas PD, and is trying to convince him to come to work there.

And, of course, there's this nasty war business. You may have heard something about it. McCain and Lieberman say we're winning it. However, Lt. Trouble, in his duties in the back office at Nellis, was dealing with a Major who was looking for officers to send to the dessert for the next deployment in December. Apparently, the Major was having a bit of tough luck. For every Colonel's positon he needed to fill, he had to ask eight officers, because seven of them would resign their commisions rather than go over there. That's a big loss of leadership. Especially for a war that we're winning.

Perhaps that's why he's being fast-tracked. There's no one left.

By the way: he told me he's '80% sure' that he's going to be deployed again in December.

Major Trouble, indeed.

Yeharr

* Transitional Officers Development Plan.
Major Command. A big-league job.
** Redacted by me. They probably could have been blogged, but I want to be careful about revealing too much.
***Area of Responsibility. Aren't abbreviations great?
****Squadron Officers School. Yes, they are.

My Deepest, Darkest Secret*

2007-03-27T11:30:00.000-04:00

Or, Why Am I a Balloon Pirate Which is Really Not That Deep and Dark but Makes a Suckier Subject Line:

In college, my friends Phil, Larry and I produced a TV series called "The Nothing Special." It was a lot of fun, but our ideas always exceeded our capabilities and our means. Which didn't really matter. We were doing something creative. Phil and Larr were TV-Radio majors, and I was an actor. Well, I was an Acting major, as opposed to an acting Major, which is a pro-tem field promotion to a positional operational command which may or may not become a permanent position.

We wrote our sketches by a process known as 'riffing,' a very poor example of which is above. Someone says something, and we ran with it, twisting the words this way and that, looking at if from different angles, trying to 'find the funny.'

One bit that we were working on was a pirate radio station that was run by real pirates.

(I, on occasion, will write stuff that seems incredibly obvious. But I have made the mistake of writing things that are blindingly obvious to ME, but not to others, thus finishing up what I thought was a cogent point or an amusing anectdote and getting a response similar to that of a dog watching a card trick. Even though we all speak the same language, cultural [and perhaps generational] differences do appear. If I explain a blindingly obvious point, this is why.)

Pirate radio stations were high-powered stations that were run in Canada, offshore or in Mexico, thus avoiding FCC licensing and regulations, but still able to reach a large portion of American listening audiences. With the internet, I don't even know if any still exist, but they were a big thing back in 1979, when this story takes place. (Blindingly obvious?)

Where was I? Oh yes. Pirate radio run by real pirates. I have a facility for voices, accents, and dialects, and because I do look a little pirate-y, we were working on a sketch where I was to play Artie Mehartie, from WRDR (say it like a pirate and it's funnier). Anyway, we were riffing on it, figuring out what I would be playing and saying--sea chanties, looting and pillaging ettiquette, the ravishing wench o' the week, stuff like that. This was not the only idea we were working on at the time--we had notebooks filled with sketch ideas, and we would go from one to another whenever we seemed to hit a dry patch. Thirty minutes a week of comedy is a lot of work, especially when you're taking a full course load.

One night we were working at the campus pub (yes, there was a place on campus that served alcohol), where the relentlessly cheerful people who put on relentlessly cheerful school activites were doing something relentlessly cheerful and getting the fuck in the way of what we were doing, so we went back to Phil & Larr's dorm room to work some more. The RC squad had put up a whole bunch of balloons, so I grabbed some on the way back to the room.

So we sat around their dorm room, throwing ideas around. When you're in college the novelty of a helium-filled balloon wears off rather quickly. So, while we were trying to figure out what was going to be in this week's show, I untied a balloon, inhaled, and in my best pirate voice (and I do a pretty damn good one), I said "Give usssss yerrrr ballllooooons!"

Howls of laughter, and thus was born the balloon pirate.

Although it never made it on the show, over the years, whenever we would get together, the balloon pirate would show up.

I haven't seen Larry in 10 years, haven't talked to him in 5. Phil and I have kept in closer contact (of course, him being in LA and me in NY meant it wasn't that easy, but we do what we can). When Phil started blogging, and eventually asked me to be a contributor, I had the feeling that there would be times when I would want to retain as much anonymity as I could (I'm in Al-anon, STBEW's supposedly in AA and NA, and the principle is very strong) because I could see where I might want to reference something in my life to make a point. So, for blogging purposes, the Balloon Pirate was reborn. Besides, it matches my initials.

So that's the story of how the Balloon Pirate came to be. Phil's blog has gone dark, so I no longer post there. It was a political blog, where we would vent our spleen over the crap that the current administration is doing to our country. I've pretty much given up on poliblogging, since it seemed that either folks agreed with me, or disagreed vehemently--no one ever changed their minds, and it resorted to ad hominen attacks. So that's why there's political references in my profile and the subhead. I suppose I could change it, but I don't. I guess it's laziness, but how many of you read that stuff anyhow? Now go get a glass of warm milk, and go to bed.

yeharr

*This is essentially a copy of an email I sent to a blog buddy asking about the story behind my name. So if you feel like you've read this before, that's why.

Information Dump

2007-03-21T22:31:00.000-04:00

Stuff about my life that might be of interest:

Youngest son gave up on the carrots. Actually, he broke his promise of 'nothing but carrots' when the corned beef came out. So he's still the traditional family color of ghost white.
Daughter is indeed precious and precocious. The artistic director of a local theater group has inquired if she might be interested in appearing in a play this season. The part was written for a 14-year-old, but she said it could be reworked for a younger girl.
Two weeks from today the kids and I will be in Las Vegas hanging with Lt. Trouble and his girlfriend. We'll be there until the 12th. I don't know how much blogging I'll be doing from Sin City. Just thought I'd tell you.
On the 12th, we will be the other traditional family color: lobster red. In a week, the red skin will peel off, and we'll be back to ghost white again.
Sometimes I should be better at telling people stuff. For instance, even though we made these plans two weeks ago, I only told STBEW about it today. To be honest, it didn't occur to me to tell her until yesterday, and so I figured it wouldn't matter if I waited one more day.
A very significant step towards making STBEW just plain old EW will occur in the next few days when she's served with a subpoena that will tell her I'm suing for full custody. We had a very amicable joint custody agreement that was written up more than a year ago. I tore it up.
Fecal matter will impact upon the air-moving appliance when she reads it.
I haven't been a very good blog-buddy these recent weeks. I apologize for not commenting more on your posts. I do read them fairly regularly, though. I just don't have the time to add anything right now.
I've been told I'm a steampunk. I'm not 100% sure I am, but I do know I want this keyboard:

You can read about how the dude made it here.
I don't know which I would like better: to have the time and the tools to make it myself, or to be wealthy enough to have someone make it for me.
Actually, I think I'd like both
yeharr

Good Times

2007-03-19T22:13:00.000-04:00

Hope your weekend was good. Mine was.

Went to a Saint Patrick's day party. I think it was my first ever. I've never been much for this particular holiday, what with most of my heritage coming from Poland and Germany. I'm not much of a drinker any more, and even when I was, this had a bit of an 'amateur hour' feel to it. Besides, I tend to ignore holidays that don't have presents, turkey, or both.

But this year, Saint Paddy's fell on a Saturday, and moreover, on a Saturday that I didn't have any freelance commitments, so I went over to Nancy's place with the kids. Nancy's half Polish, half Irish, but she tends to favor her Irish side, especially on days like this. She lives right up the street. When the kids get home from school they call me, and they call Nancy, and let us both know they're home. If there's an emergency, they call Nancy, who can be there in two minutes if needs be.* Plus, I've worked out a sometimes babysitting gig with her: she watches the kids some evenings in exchange for tickets to upcoming hockey games.** Sometimes she watches them on off nights and I get her ducats for the next home game, sometimes she takes the kids to the game on the night they play.

Anyways, Nancy has a big shindig every Saint Patrick's day, and we were invited, so off we went. It's a fairly hard-core Irish crowd, with some of the older folks being first generation--or even off the boat. There was lots of Guinness, soda bread, and corned beef and cabbage. But before the food was brought out, Nancy asked a number of people to read poems from different Irish poets. She even asked one of her younger neices to read, and my daughter volunteered to recite a poem.

Or one of the poems that she has written. It could have been either.

I wasn't around when she volunteered to do this. Nancy announced it to the crowd as 'a poem she'd written,' but she sometimes gets minor details wrong. Hell, she sometimes gets major details wrong too. And while I was proud of my daughter for volunteering, I was a bit worried.

My nine-year-old daughter is a poet. She's been writing poetry for a few years now, and we've read a few poets together as well. She's a big fan of Ogden Nash. She has a number of poems that she's written that she has memorized, and a few that we've written together, and these are fine little dittys.

But she also knows a few whose origins are somewhere in the murky past. I believe, more or less, in age-appropriate language and reading materials for my kids, but I will on occasion call up a couplet that might not please everybody, especially some stodgy old folks with provincial ideas about childrearing. Nothing that she knew was in the 'There once was a man from Nantucket' range, but one of the couplets she knows is this one:

Spring has sprung
Fall has fell
Winter's here
And it's colder than
Usual.

A harmless enough thing, but perhaps not the most appropriate thing to come out of a nine-year-old's mouth after a few stanzas of Yeats and Heaney.

So it was with a bit of trepidation that I listened to the readings, waiting for her turn. The place was packed, and Nancy had brought up all of the readers to the front of the room. There was no way I would be able to go and talk to her about her poem without making it look exactly like what it was: a father vetting his daughter's choice of poetry. And I wasn't going to do that.

Verses and stanzas proceeded apace, and with a flourish, announced my daughter as the pentultimate poetry presenter.

And my beautiful daughter, with a smile on her face, recited a little ditty:

There once was an Irish leprechaun
That everyone thought was so much fun.
But everyone, both young and old
Kept on trying to get his gold.
That is, until Saint Patrick's day
When the leprechaun gave his gold away.

James Joyce it ain't, but it's pretty damned good for a third-grader. Especially when she delivered it in a dead-on Irish brogue.

After I hugged her and gushed over her for a while, I asked about the poem--mostly, because I had never heard it before. With a shrug, she explained it to me: "It's just something I wrote in the first grade. I had to do it in a brogue to make the first stanza work."

So if you heard a strange popping sound coming from the Great Lakes area early Saturday evening, that was me bursting with pride. Plus, there were a number of cute women there who just fawned over her (and me, collaterally), so that was a bonus.

In case you were wondering what my son was doing during all of this, he was consuming about a pound and a half of carrots. That was just about all he ate on Saturday, after he read that eating a lot of carrots could turn your skin orange.

And I can't tell you how glad I was that it didn't take effect in the middle of a room full of Irish Catholics.

My son, the genius.

yeharr

*My office is a twenty-minute drive from my house; she's a writer who works from her home.

**Working broadasts for the local hockey club is one of my more regular freelance gigs; and part of the deal is tickets.

Halfway

2007-03-15T23:18:00.000-04:00

There will be no kittens.

STBEW is back at the halfway house she first lived at when she got out of the clinic two and a half years ago. There's nothing that says we must always be moving forward, but part of me says the past thirty months have been a big waste of time. I know that's not true, because I can look back at what I was like back then, and I know that I've come a long way. And maybe this time recovery will stick for her. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

Nor will I bet against it.

As angry as I am at her right now, I don't think I hate STBEW. I know I don't want to see her, hear her, or even breathe air that's been near her, but I don't wish her ill. Well, no serious, long-term illness, at least.

Do you know what I want? I want to stop time, and pull out an Al Gore-style power point presentation that outlines in excruciating detail all of the shit that she's done to me. All of the pain that she's put me through. And I want to put electrodes into her brain, and flick a button to let her feel all the anguish that I've had to go through because of the actions of someone else. Specifically, her. And I want to keep her sober, because I was sober. I had to be, in order to deal with all the crap. There was no escape for me. I couldn't afford to be selfish.

That's what I want.

And maybe a new car. I want one of those, too.

Oh, and I got a call from current ex boyfriend #2--the one she got drunk with. Apparently, she still has clothes over at his house, and he was instructed by STBEW via current ex #1 to drop her clothes off at my place. Of course, she never asked me if this was acceptible to me. Par for the course.

But I'm glad that she's back in the halfway house. It lets me know where she is, which will make it easier for the divorce papers to be served. I've gotten that ball rolling pretty well, although I know that she's going to fight the full custody thing. Even though she'll have no chance of getting custody, she'll pull out every trick she knows to cost me money.

I'm girding my loins.

In other news: the kids and I will be flying out to Las Vegas in two weeks to visit Lt. Trouble. We'll be there for eight days over spring break. He's very excited to have me out there, and is bugging me to give me a list of things I want to do.

Here's what I have so far:

Sit by the pool and relax

Have I missed anything?

More cool news from Vegas: Tomorrow the El-Tee will be leading his squad in PT. He does that all the time, but tomorrow, one of the guys in his squad will be Terrence Howard, who's getting into character for his upcoming role as Jim Rhodes in the Iron Man movie.* The top brass wanted to make sure he got a good workout, so they picked my son. Yes, I'm bragging.

Time for bed.

yeharr

*For those who aren't cool enough to be Marvel Geeks: Jim Rhodes is the Air Force test pilot that inventor Tony Stark hires, ostensibly to be his pilot/bodyguard, but he also was Iron Man for a while when Stark was battling his alcoholism. Now, Rhodes has a similar suit as Stark, and goes by War Machine.

Because There's More to Life than Just Bitching About My Wife...

2007-03-13T00:06:00.000-04:00

New snark over at Celery of Humanity. Go, look, and feel slightly superior.

yeharr

Kittens

2007-03-11T22:52:00.000-04:00

The kids are all excited. Mom's going to go get kittens!

Kittens?

Fuck.

The woman who last week was begging me to bring her toilet paper wants to take the kids to get kittens. The woman who is freeloading off of a guy who threw all her stuff in the trash one month ago is going to get kittens. The woman who stole my checkbook, and on four separate occasions forged my name on said checks in order to buy crack is going to get kittens. The woman who has no car, no job, no house, and (at least up to and including last Sunday) nothing with which to wipe her ass is going to get kittens.

And she wants to take my kids with her.

Kittens?

Fuck.

They thought she was going to take them this weekend to get the kittens. They kept asking me when they were going to go with her to get them. When were they going? I told them that I had no control over this--that she hadn't informed me as to when she wanted to do this.

And, of course, I didn't mention that if she had enough fucking money to buy fucking kittens, plus pay to get them spayed or neutered, plus buy the fucking kitten food and the fucking litter box and spend all the other fucking money that you need to spend on kittens to keep them alive, then why the fuck wasn't she paying me the fucking money she fucking stole from me?

I didn't mention that. I don't even know if I'd mention it to her. Why should I? She knows she stole from me. Lucky you, though--you get to read it.

However, if she does call and ask about taking them out there, I will tell her that, should she suddenly find herself unable to support the kittens, which by my reckoning should happen immediately, under no circumstances will they come into this house.

Kittens?

Does she think that getting kittens will somehow make her sane?

Kittens?

Does she think that getting kittens will somehow repair the damage she's doing?

Kittens?

Does she think?

Kittens?

Fuck.

yeharr

Whelmed

2007-03-07T23:20:00.000-05:00

Sorry if I've been a bit distant recently. I've been a bad blogbuddy and I apologize. I've been kindasorta busy these past few days. After a month of little or nothing to do at work, everyone wants everything all at once. Clients who blew me off in January and February are now calling, wanting me to drop everything and take care of their project right now.

On top of that, the kids didn't have school yesterday because of the extreme cold, so I had to go to work, firewire a bunch of projects onto a laptop, and I worked at the dining room table until midnight--taking time off for things like playing with them, making dinner, and going to the gym, of course.

On top of on top of that is the paperwork I have to fill out for the divorce. I need to give them my net worth. Sheesh. They want to know how much I spend per month on toothpaste before they help me divorce my wife. Actually, I've been working a program to find out a lot of this stuff anyway, so I had already started some of this. It's just a drag filling it out.

And STBEW is pretending to be sane again. She's back with the other current ex-boyfriend--the one who dumped all of her stuff out onto the curb and poured shit-filled cat litter onto it.

Or, as I like to call him, the more stable of the two.

I took the kids to see her last Sunday. They were there for a bit more than an hour. The kids were quiet and unsure as I drove them to the place where she's staying, but as soon as they saw her, they ran joyfully up to her.

It broke my heart to see that. Because she is their mom, and they love her, and she loves them. And I will have to keep them far more seperated than either generation wants in order to keep them safe. And that sucks and it hurts and I'm so angry at her for putting us all in a situation like this. A situation where I have to be the 'bad' guy and regulate her contact with them.

And I believe she's going to fight it. She's going to fight against my full custody. She'll take it personally, and do everything in her power to prevent it from happening. She won't win, but she will drain my reserves down to nothing.

But that's ok. It really is. It has to be, because there's no other options.

So, I'm whelmed right now. No one ever uses 'whelmed' anymore. I'm bringing it back. It means 'to be completely submerged.'

Once upon a time, the wordguy in me railed against the usage of 'overwhelmed:' If you're completely submerged if you're whelmed, I asked, then it would be impossible to be more completely submerged. It's like something being whiter than white. Or tasting more like orange juice than orange juice. Or being north of north.

But then I got overwhelmed, and shut the fuck up.

I won't let that happen again. I'll be fine with my whelming. I'll deal with the stuff I have to do, and know that soon I will break the surface.

In the meantime, I think we all need a smile. So I'm posting one of my alltime favorite clips. This is the trailer for Comedian, a documentary that followed Jerry Seinfeld right after he ended his series, and decided to dump all of his old material. This clip is apropos of nothing--not even the movie it's shilling.

Share and enjoy.

yeharr