Reminded of my Youth

This past weekend, as my friend, Gar, and I made our way down to South Texas, we passed right by the place where it all began--Baylor University, where we met in tennis class nearly twenty years ago.

I was very shy back then--it was really an accomplishment for me to go out of my way to introduce myself to Gar in the dorm hallways when I ran into him later. He said the same thing--he was so focused on classes (we were both pre-Med) that he didn't really worry about making friends.

A series of wacky events occurred, which caused Gar and me to become roommates in the dorm. In no particular order, here are some of the events:

• One of my original roommates was super-rich--his parents ran a business which supplied all the professional sports teams in the country. He had a brand-new car and as much money and stuff as he could want.

• The other roommate was super-poor. His parents were missionaries and they lived in a house that they made themselves or something. This guy worshipped the super-rich guy, laughing at all his jokes, etc..

• Turns out, I was poorer than the super-poor guy. He seemed to really enjoy that.

• Both of these roommates would go out drinking into the wee hours of the morning, and come back to the room hammered. They were business majors, so they didn't really need to study too hard.

• I ended up getting into a fistfight with the super-poor guy. It was the last actual fight I've been in, and I completely demolished the guy. He kept getting up and I kept knocking him down. It ended when I knocked him down, picked up his bike, which was in the room, and threw it on top of him. I still kind of feel bad about that whole thing.

• I moved out and got a new roommate who ended up being gay. For the rest of my life, I will never understand how this guy had beautiful women throwing themselves on the ground in front of him left and right. He even had girlfriends and everything.

• The gay thing came out when he propositioned a Korean guy named Jimmy, who lived on our floor and EVERYONE thought was gay. Apparently not. We had a group of about 12 guys who would go out for dinner at the dining hall, and one night Jimmy yelled across the table, "Dude--you're roommate is gay! He came on to me!" It was true, and my roommate moved out that night.

• So, Gar moved in. We were the brokest kids in the whole University, and we used to save up a dollar or so every once in a while, and we would walk across the street to the gas station and grab a chocolate milk on Friday night, take it back to the dorm, and hang out. That was our party scene in college for a whole year.

As we drove this weekend, Gar and I talked about all the things that sprang from our friendship over the years, and how the things that we struggled with brought out the best in us later on. Don't get me wrong, it would have been nice to be super-rich, etc., but it was good to find a true friend--and I'm damn sure that he didn't hang out with me for my money. How many friends do I still know from back then? Only one.

As we passed by our old school, we pulled off the road and into the gas station across the street from our old dorm. The dorm is the same--it looks like it should be condemned, but the gas station is shiny and new, having been redone. Moved on to better things--a lot like Gar and me.

We went inside and bought two bottles of chocolate milk, and had a nice laugh as we drove away.

Ghosts of a Small Town

"Oh my goodness, that place is definitely haunted!" Fran warned as she checked out the website for the 100-year-old B&B in the small South Texas town.

So I had to put that statement out of my mind as my friend, Gar and I drove six hours down through San Antonio to a small town near Hondo, Texas. The town we stayed in is so small that their stoplight doesn't change--just a blinking yellow light that slows you down enough so you can turn off the state highway, cross the train tracks, and head toward whichever of the ten buildings in town that you might want to visit--they sit in a row.

It was the first time that Gar and I have gone hunting together in nearly ten years, and I was excited that he was joining me and some buddies from work to go dove hunting. In Texas, dove hunting is a traditional sport and the season always starts the first weekend of September. It is also a somewhat social event--guys getting together for a weekend of hanging out (read: heavy drinking and the insanity which goes along). We usually all stay in a run-down bunkhouse or hunting lodge somewhere, but last year the organizer of the event had stayed in this B&B and he was determined that we all stay there. It was very nice, and I felt a little awkward carrying my shotgun bag into the freshly painted room with antique furniture, delicately hand-sewn quilts, and a claw-foot tub.

The B&B was an historic, if slightly creaky, two-storey train depot which had been completely refurbished into a very nice, homey-feeling inn. The original floor plan gave it an odd symmetry, with a long hall down the middle of the house sprouting into paired rooms left and right. The weathered, wooden floors were original, and the planks were bowed and worn and uneven around the edges. On the bottom floor, one of the rooms had been opened into an awkwardly situated sitting area, which housed an extremely uncomfortable, thinly-cushioned sofa, four rickety wooden chairs, and an quarter-cut oak player piano with eight or nine dusty scrolls laid on top. The only light from the room came from an ancient lamp.

At the far end of the depot was a remodeled kitchen, with a long table and, again, not enough light--the dim bulbs made it seem that it was midnight black outside. I asked about a painted-over plate mounted on the wall, and was told that it had been a vent for the woodburning stove which was there before the electric one was installed.

There actually were no signs of ghosts, except for a drop panel of a cabinet in the living room which kept spontaneously slamming open with a loud bang throughout the weekend, causing everyone in the vicinity to pause and cast sober sideways glances at each other. I didn't really want the house to be haunted, so I would quietly and without comment walk over and close the panel tightly again, testing to make sure I couldn't open it.

The night we arrived, there was a party of sorts out on the upstairs balcony. It reminded me a little of Pleasure Island from Pinnochio--card playing, whiskey, cigar smoking, a rapid-fire staccato of the "f-word", and pretty much every possible way that gas can be expelled from the male physique. But the night was nice and cool with a good breeze (thank God), and it was fun to lean on the balcony rail and chat with the dozen or so guys that were there.

In the morning, one of my first questions at the breakfast table was, "Whose alarm clock sounds like a freight train?!" I had awakened when the innkeeper came through the thick front door outside my room at about 5:15, but lay in bed until 5:25--that's when a huge train blasted through town, horn blaring repeatedly, shaking the windows of the depot so fiercely I thought they might fall out. I guess I hadn't done the math: When you are sleeping in an old train depot, I guess you can't complain too much that a train roars by less than 100 feet away. Throughout the inn, the sounds of alarm clocks going off and banging on doors could be heard, and eventually everyone staggered to the breakfast table where the tired, irritated-looking inkeeper stood guard with her arms crossed next to the coffeemaker, daring anyone to manhandle her precious china mugs.

It was too early to be self-conscious. I poured myself a huge mug of black coffee and retrieved a couple of tacos from the plastic bag on the table where they were thrown as if to say, 'Serve yourself (and then please leave immediately).' She clearly hated the idea of twelve scruffy-looking dudes befouling her oasis. And who knows which cretan threw that whiskey bottle off the balcony.

After the morning hunt, which was a muddy tromp through a barren field, we emptied our game bags by the front gate of the ranch. The farmer who owned the field came up to us and stood shyly nearby as one of the guys had some death-metal song blasting uncomfortably from his truck which stood with all the doors open. The farmer looked as though he had sold his soul for a pittance by allowing these guys from the city to disturb the peace of the countryside for mere dollars.

I walked over to him and struck up a conversation, which seemed to please him. He told me that the farm had been in his family for over 150 years, and started telling me a little about the homestead. He was a very pleasant guy, kind of round and rough-looking at the same time. When we stopped by a store in town later that morning, we found out that he had been a record-setting baseball player for the University of Texas, batting over .400 (which is incredible). I really enjoyed his stories about how his family had moved from Germany and how they had been early cowboys, driving cattle up north and fighting against Indians in the territory. He also told me that several of his family members had gotten together to organize their family history a few years back.

When we got back to the inn, I found a hidden treasure. Risking the possible angering of the house spirits, I explored a little and actually found (out of sheer coincidence) a large, leather-bound book which contained the family history that the farmer had described. In a house with six rooms and fourteen guys (two more showed up late), there isn't much of a quiet corner to sit in, especially when there isn't enough light to grow a potted cactus, but I was able to grab a few minutes here and there. I knew I wanted to read more when I got a chance.

That night, we went to the only restaurant in town--we sat out in the patio because that was the only seating they had--nothing indoors. I wonder what they do when it rains. And the menu was a little wonky--you could pretty much just order a cheeseburger. You couldn't even get them to make a hamburger with no cheese--it only came with cheese. The lady told us, "too bad it's not Tuesday--we fire up the grill and you can cook steaks!"

Somehow, we convinced them to fire up the grill even though it was, of all things, Saturday night. We went next door and bought steaks from the grocery store which is owned by the same family as the restaurant (which is the same family as the hotel which is the same family as the farmer who owned the field). When the lady told us "...you can cook steaks", what she really meant was, "You have to do it yourself--I'm not going to do it for you." So, a few of us stood out in the parking lot and grilled our own steaks as cars came and went. Best steak I ever had.

We went back in (out?) to the patio and sat under the stars. The patio had strings of decorative lighting, maybe left over from Christmas, draped over the rough boards framing the structure. There was no music, but a TV over by the bar showed a football game. The other patrons had the look of rough, hard-working people who had carefully put on their fanciest clothes to go out for the evening. An odd discussion that I had over a beer with one of my friends that night involved which of the guys would be the best one to pick a fight with.

Back at the inn, most of the other guys had gone upstairs to play poker, and I sat alone at the kitchen table for nearly an hour reading the historical volume. It had been put together by a committee of family members, about twenty of them, and had been collected over a few years. There was a lot of geneological filler with names and dates of birth and a discombobulated chart which seemed to include horses and dogs. There was a fantastic introduction which detailed the social conditions of Germany in the early 1800's which caused the family to make the decision to move, and even some family recipies for things like molasses cookies, some special cake with an enormous number of eggs, and a sort of 1800's Hamburger Helper made with venison.

I flipped the book open to a few pages titled "Memories of my Grandfather", and saw that there were multiple accounts of the same man from a couple of his grandsons. It was so interesting to see how one grandson saw his grandfather as a heroic "Man's man", full of action and vigor, and the other saw his grandfather as insightful and philosophical. The grandson writes how he wishes he knew his grandfather "man to man", so that he could know what he really thought, but I thought to myself that, perhaps because he knew him "boy to man", he will always be a hero instead of a fallible, fragile man.

In another account of the same man, which puported to be the "official" description of the man, he was described to have always kept a journal. Every evening, he would open his rolltop desk, and write his schedule in the journal. He liked to play his Victrola, and was very fond of the song "I Love You Truly". As I read it, I could hear the words of that sentimental song, and a tear came to my eye. It seems that this man, as tough as he must have been, had let people really come to know him. Of course, right at that moment, a group of guys came to the table and they seemed curious at why I would be reading at a time like this.

Hilariously, our little group had differentiated into Science majors downstairs around the kitchen table chatting about philosophy, relationships, and politics, and Business majors upstairs drinking, smoking, and playing poker.

The next morning we awoke as a freight train threatened to demolish our depot, and we found a bag of cold tacos resentfully hurled onto the table and a slightly sarcastic note from the inkeeper inquiring why we didn't get up early to hunt that morning (the farmer was going to charge us full price for the a half-day hunt and the shooting wasn't worth it). I poured a cup of coffee and skimmed the history book. A colleague came downstairs and sat across the table from me. He looked curiously at the book I was reading, and asked to look at it once I had told him that it was the history of the famer's family. He skimmed it for about ten seconds and then tossed it in the chair next to him out of my reach.

After I was packed and was on my way out, I went back to the chair, got the volume, and put it back where I found it lest a ghost haunt me all the way home.

But in some ways, I guess I am haunted by the stories I read as I stayed in that train depot. All the way home, I turned it over again and again in my mind that it would be a blessing to be remembered some day in the same, sentimental way.

More Funny Kaitlyn Stuff

We're having a lot of fun getting Kaitlyn ready for her first day of preschool. She's very ready to go, and has even asked us to drive her by her school a couple of times just so she could see it again.

She is extremely smart, and has a huge vocabulary for a 3-year-old. It really freaks people out, especially people who have kids the same age. I've also noticed that she uses complex grammar correctly, including adverbs. The other day she asked me "Daddy, why does this not fit?"

She even understands very subtle semantics and inflections. We were driving in the car, and I was giving Ryan an example of how exactly the same words can mean different things. By stressing a different word in the following sentence, the meaning is changed:

I did not say he took the money.

For example:

I did not SAY he took the money.

So I went through and said it several different ways. Pausing after I gave the example "I did not say HE took the money."

After a couple of seconds, Kaitlyn piped up, "But someone else DID!"

Fran's sister told us that we're going to pick her up from her first day of preschool and they are going to have Kaitlyn report directly to 2nd grade. I guess the problem is that she is painfully age appropriate when it comes to her behavior--she has that 3-year-old (sometimes known as the "terrible threes") loose cannon trait about her, which causes her to run through the house making mess after mess. Yesterday, she brought me a glass of water and announced, "I used Whoppers instead of ice cubes!" Sure enough, there were little chocolate Whoppers floating in the glass.

We got her a "Hello Kitty" lunch box and thermos so she can take her lunch to school, and she was thrilled with it, hugging it and strapping it to her shoulder. After a few minutes, she came up to us and asked "Are you also going to get me a 'Good Bye, Kitty' lunchbox?"

Lately she's been enjoying watching the Disney movie "The Lion King". She runs around the house singing songs from the movie, and choreographs plays, assigning us to be specific characters and then giving us our lines to say.

"Daddy, you be Scar. Say, 'I'm going to get you, Simba!'"

"I'm going to get you, Simba!"

"Ahhhhhh!" And she runs away.

Fran made her dinner last night, including some sliced cantalope (melon).

After a minute, Kaitlyn told her:

"Mommy, say, 'Simba, would you like some fresh antelope?"

And yes, she knew that was funny.

The End of Summer

Yesterday was Ryan's first day of third grade, and thus officially ends a wonderful summer. What an incredible few months it has been for our family--my kids are unbelievably brown from days of swimming and visiting the beach for the first time. I got to see Ryan turn green with seasickness when we went fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. He constructed a monstrosity of a sand castle, which took hours--in general, we had a wonderful summer.

I'm a little overwhelmed by the prospect of filling the blank screen with meaningful, witty insights after not blogging for months. My company has declared that we can only use our laptops for work purposes, which means that I have to write my blog on Fran's computer which has some kind of weird keyboard--I can't put my finger on it (I guess I do put my fingers on the keyboard itself, but you know what I mean...) but there's something weird about it--like keys in the wrong place or they don't have enough spring to them or something (I like to hear crackling and popping as I type away). I'm pretty careful not to go into too much talk about things that happen at work since that seems to be a hypersensitive issue--sure, you can say whatever you want at the sales meeting, but for God's sake, don't write it out for everyone to see!

The "Year of Fran" continues--she has signed up with the chorus again and will be performing in Europe next year for nearly a month in several countries. In the meantime, she has been exercising and getting very healthy. Since Ryan was born, she has lost over 100 pounds and is now running several days a week. She is signed up to run a 10k in September and a half marathon in November. I can't wait to be there to take pictures of her crossing the finish line. There certainly was a time when I literally couldn't envision her achieving something like that--I guess it goes to show what determination can do--she has really taken control of her health, and I'm really just in awe of that. As for me, until they come up with an eating program which incorporates a fair amount of chocolate, I'm pretty doomed. Last night I fed the kids, bathed them, and put them to bed while Fran was at chorus rehearsal--she left me a note telling me how much she appreciated all the things I do so that she can pursue the things she wants to do--Yes, I needed to get a note like that.

I got a chance to travel to visit my grandparents in Idaho--way back in July. It was almost unfair--I got to leave all responsibility behind and just go be a guest in somebody's house. I could literally feel my brow unfurrow as the worries went away--it was a very refreshing break from everything. Not sure if everyone knows the story, but I grew up not knowing that this set of grandparents existed. My mom and dad split up before I was born, and my mom remarried and the dad I grew up with was the only dad I ever knew (I didn't learn about the whole situation until I was pretty old (12?), and then we never talked about it again). A few years ago, I found them through online searching, which was a real identity crisis for me (and the brothers and sister I grew up with, I imagine). So there are lots of stories there, but essentially I was able to add a whole group of people to my family, and I seem to fit in with them very naturally, which, trust me, is a weird feeling. I tried to write an analogy, but it seemed so absurd and incomparable that I just gave up. Just trust me, it was weird.

Maybe things will be changing for me over the next few months--hard to say. I'll be traveling some--going to New York, where Fran and I will celebrate our 16th anniversary in October. We'll stay with Mike D. and his wife in their new home on Long Island. I'll try hard to pick my writing back up again. I guess I'm not sure who's reading these days, although I have had a lot of nice comments and Emails during my absence from blogging--I suppose it's nice when people check you for a pulse...

So I'll get the coffee pot ready again for my early morning blogging sessions. I'll be back soon!

Scenes from a Busy Summer

Hi Everyone--I'm sorry I've been out. A little bit of this, and a little bit of that. Then, you get out of the habit of blogging. Now, I have this backlog of ideas and inspirations that will take me the rest of the year to work through. Another little side effect of being out is that my work has piled up. Two more excuses then I'll be done: My lovely wife kindly bought me a gym membership for my birthday, so I've been trying to exercise more (more than zero). Lastly, I've built up my own expectations so much for my next blog entry that I can't possibly do anything of quality. So, I thought I would show some pictures of where I've been and what I've been doing for the past month and a half...I hope you enjoy them! Deep thoughts and insightful observations to follow shortly...

Free Wheelin'

The rain has continued here in Texas--the last report I heard said that we got rain in 22 days out of the 30 in June. I've actually been carrying an umbrella around with me--typically I just act like a caveman and sprint out of my car to wherever I'm going, sometimes using the "hold whatever is handy over your head" method of keeping my head from getting soaked. But in these recent days of deluge, a little planning has been necessary so you don't show up someplace in a ridiculously drenched condition.

I kind kind of sympathize with eskimos in the arctic circle. After a while, they don't poke their head out and think, "Damn it! Snow again!" Eventually they just shrug their shoulders, put on their yak-coat and beaver galoshes, and trudge out into it and get their stuff done. Friday night I fired up the edger so I could work on our yard. All of our yardwork equipment is ten years old, now, and for the last five years it has "lived" outdoors in a small shed, which seems to age it a little faster but, to Fran's relief, at least keeps the smell of gasoline out of our home. So, after some minor surgery, I got the edger running and, when the downpour came again in the middle of my task, I wasn't about to turn it off.

There I was, standing in the pouring rain, wearing my iPod, edging the yard. I thought to myself, "Well, at least I won't have to sweep this up!" And I was right. My clothes stuck to me, and my socks were squishy in my shoes. Finally, I finished edging the yard and I reached down and flipped the motor off. The rain was coming down in cold sheets, and I headed for the back of the house, passing a side window where Fran was making dinner. I caught her eye, and I could tell from the look on her face that my appearance was pretty startling.

I walked over underneath a heavily flowing downspout, and got under the water. I pretended to be in the shower, washing my hair, and miming getting the soap, etc. I looked up and she was cracking up and holding up her hand for me to wait. I knew what was coming next--pretty soon, my kids were craning their necks to watch crazy daddy. Well, at least they won't think I'm boring.

Last night, we had a fireworks show in the neighborhood, and I was outside before dark setting up chairs for the kids. Our neighbor from across the street, who is a very sweet lady married to a sort of curmudgeonly old man, told me "We saw you mowing your yard in the rain yesterday. I have to tell you, we had a pretty nice laugh at your determination!"

I thought it was kind of funny, too, so we talked about it for a minute. I asked her if she saw my crazy shower show, and she regretfully said that she hadn't caught that part, but laughed at the thought.

Another neighbor from down the street came out and mentioned my rainy yardwork too--it made me a little paranoid that I was being so closely watched. But, I guess it was unusual.

Just so you don't think I'm being unfair calling her husband a curmudgeon: He's one of those people who is always harshly lecturing you. And I mean always. I was sort of dreading what he was going to say about our tree--2 huge parts of the trunk split off from it earlier this year during a violent storm, and now it looks like half the tree is missing. I want to wait a year and see if any new growth will fill in at all, giving me some hope for its future. In the meantime, the tree appears healthy and it shades the front of our house from the hot afternoon sun. Fran swears that she will not authorize removal of that tree under any circumstances. But the buzz in the neighborhood is that, since the asthetics of the tree are ruined, it is bad form to keep it--it should be removed immediately. Sure enough, when he came outside, I got lecture of how my tree is never going to grow back and we should just bite the bullet and cut it down.

Well, this blog was supposed to be about how I went golfing with a huge, 400-lb., cigar-smoking, red-headed stranger who used the "f-word" incessantly and threw temper tantrums and also threw his golf clubs. Then, a sudden thunderstorm hit and he freaked out, panicking and driving our golf cart erratically. We ended up doing "donuts" in the mud just because he had the accelerator to the floor desperately trying to get us back to the safety of the clubhouse as we were being pelted by massive amounts of rain. He took a shortcut which landed us stuck and immoble in two feet of muddy water. As we sat in the water, he was freaking out and whimpering in panic, spinning the tires, panicking! After waiting for a few seconds, I hopped out of the cart, flipped the windshield down, and grabbed the frame of the cart. Twisting, I pointed it in the right direction, and pushed. Muddy water rose over my ankles, and the ground was slick. By now, I was soaked again out in the torrential downpour, and my partner was still freaking out. He gunned the engine and fishtailed off into a muddy hill. Reversing, he gunned it again sidways and I, stifling laughter at this point, had to straighten out the cart again. This went on for a few minutes, and then finally we made it back to the clubhouse and went our separate ways.

Maybe I'll have to just tell that story some other time...

Wingman

It's been a rainy season here in Dallas this year. Something like 10 inches over our average rainfall so far, and counting. Yesterday, we had the privilege of both rain and 90-degree weather, turning our little concrete jungle into a humid tropical rainforest, but I had to venture out in it to the mall, no less, to run an errand that just couldn't wait. I took both my kids with me to the famous Galleria, and we parked in the Nordstrom's parking garage.

As we walked in through the immaculate department store, I could hear beautiful, live piano music wafting through the store, and I made a mental note to come back by the piano so the kids could listen for a moment or two. For some reason, going into this store makes me a little self-conscious about what I'm wearing. Yeah, I know that that's a little silly, but seeing a woman who looks like she just popped out of a Prada catalog makes me think to glance inconspicuously down to make sure I'm not wearing the shorts with the paint stains on them...and I have these great leather shoes that Fran has threatened to toss out--luckily she's afraid to touch them. At one time in history they had gel soles on them, but on a hot afternoon a couple of years back the gel packs popped and green gel oozed out of the sides (which was kind of awesome, but made me self-conscious about losing weight) They've been soaked and dried so many times now that they look similar to a squirrel that's been run over and left out in the street for a few months.

My errand took quite a while, and then Kaitlyn wanted to play in the kid's play area, so by the time we were leaving the mall I was worried about getting something for the kids to eat--Ryan was "STARRRRVING!!!", so I nearly forgot to stop and listen to the music. Even though we have a piano at our house, the resident musician, my lovely wife, plays only occasionally, so I felt compelled to stop.

The pianist was a 50-ish gay man with a dark 3-piece suit. He was awfully proud of being the Nordstrom's featured piano player, and his fingers floated across the mirror-polished black baby grand piano like Liberace. He was playing "As Time Goes By", from the movie Casablanca with flourishes and trills and runs across the entire keyboard. He wore a contented smile and his head bobbed from side to side, showing off his huge diamond stud earring which was shining brilliantly in the immaculate lighting. His hair was also flawless--freshly cut, the gray completely washed out with Beach Boy color and bright blond highlights. He pounded out the song loudly and dramatically, swaying his body and half-closing his eyes as he played. I had Kaitlyn on one side, and Ryan on the other, and they both stood still for a few minutes, forgetting all thoughts of eating or playing and just enjoying the music.

Suddenly, my 3-year-old daughter bellowed at the top of her voice, "You look like a rotten egg!"
Without missing a beat, the pianist, now with fully opened eyes, smiled cow-like at me and asked "Did she say something?" (People who aren't around little kids seem to not be able to understand their high-pitched voices...thank goodness). But his snapping to full awareness made me suspect that he had an inkling that he had just been insulted.

I answered, quickly, "She says you look like a Rock Star." I mean, why hurt the guy?

His concerned look turned back to pride and contentment and he even seemed to add some extra flourishes to his playing as I led the kids toward to the door. I looked over to Ryan, who had witnessed everything and knew exactly what had just happened. When we were safely away, we looked at each other and both broke out into laughter. I reached out and held my hand out, and he gave me a high five, laughing uproariously.

"That was pretty good, Dad!"

Katilyn then corrected me, "No, I said he looks like a rotten egg!"

We laughed about it all the way home.

My Corny Obsessions...

I'm sometimes accused of being on the obsessive-compulsive side of things around here. It's funny, because I'm sure my actions can be interpreted that way, and I definitely go overboard sometimes when I get involved in a project.

I think it is because I am able to really focus and carry out a project--I'm disciplined and will stick with it. So I guess there are two sides to it, like anything else: On the up-side I get things done. On the down-side, people, including my wife and kids, think I go a little crazy over odd, insignificant things.

One funny thing that has been going on is that I got it in my mind to grow corn. I bought some seeds at Home Depot a year or so ago with the intention of making a small vegetable garden along the side of our house. There's a very convenient spot around the corner, but when I mentioned it I was reminded that the sunlight is just all wrong, the water drains funny over there and sometimes pools, and we have small holes in the bottom of our fence which is the reason that we get rabbits coming through the yard (which is fine with me--we love watching them munching the grass and flowers (Fran: not so much the flowers).

So I missed the good planting time last year, and decided to hold onto the seeds til this year. It was then that I realized that, for some still-unknown reason, Fran has a huge objection to growing corn. She kept rolling her eyes whenever I mentioned it, and stalling me from planting it so I would miss the window again. When I told her on the phone sometime last month that I planned to plant the seeds that evening, she told me that she had thrown them away since they were "five years old" and wouldn't grow. This made me more anxious than ever to get them in the ground.

When I got home, I decided on a trick that would end some of the objection: I asked Kaitlyn to help me plant the seeds.

Instead of making a new bed, I grabbed some large pots that had been abandoned, loosened the dirt and mixed in some soil, and had Kaitlyn help me plant the seeds. We were delighted when the plants came up, and they've been growing at a very fast rate.

I still tease Fran about it, though--she rolls her eyes jokingly and says,"You're going to do all that work, end up with these huge plants, and not one ear of corn." Which is fine with me, anyway.

Heading out to the patio which contains my five or six corn plants, I tell her, "Hey, if you need me, I'm going to be out in the cornfield!" which seems to raise her blood pressure for some reason.

Kaitlyn has now long-since lost interest in them-at first they were our baby plants and needed water, but our deluge this spring has made that less necessary. The plants are now well over two feet high, and could really use replanting in a flower bed somewhere...when I get the time.

But I know why exactly I want to grow corn in the first place, and it's a reason that's hard to talk about. I think that people who live on farms are living a real life. Coaxing food from the earth is not a trivial thing--it's just short of a miracle in my mind. Even though I'm from Texas where we have a lot of farms, I'm still a little in awe of them. Huge stretches of land, large, creaky farm houses, and animals everywhere. I just think that would be a great way to live. I'm not alone: A popular housing project these days in this area are large homes built on 2-5 acre lots, surrounded by fencing--kind of a Mc-Ranchhouse.

I could see myself retiring to the country someday. I wouldn't want to be in a situation where I had go work a farm to live--I would like to have the benefits without the downside. Imagine the peace and quiet and security.

Perhaps the act of dropping a few seeds in the ground is a declaration of intent...Daring to consider the future as something different.

Joy!

Kaitlyn in Bluebonnets

Bluebonnets are the Texas state flower--each year in the spring, they bloom a deep, stacatto blue which dots landscape for a few weeks. In fact, years ago, Lady Bird Johnson, as part of her highway beautification project, had wildflowers planted along the roadways--I love the fields which include Black-eyed Susans and beautiful, crimson Indian paintbrushes. We traveled down to Central Texas during bluebonnet season this year and I was surprised that the blooms have very different colors in different regions--down south near Austin they seemed to be much more blue-colored, and up north they are nearly electric purple. All over the state, though, it is common during the spring to see cars pulled over and parents photographing kids in huge fields of bluebonnets. It's sort of a tradition.

Not our family though--Fran had a nasty run-in with fire ants which has so far kept her from getting too sentimental regarding bluebonnets. Last year was a bad year for bluebonnets because of the drought, so this year they've come out in full force. Fran and her sister (Fran is the youngest of 9) were spending the day together, and her sister insisted on taking Kaitlyn's picture in the flowers beside a building--One of the most common images is to stop down the aperture, get the person in good focus, and blur the field behind them as a practically infinite background of bluebonnets--sometimes the angle is tough to get. This particular picture was one of the only useable one out of about twenty...

Dinner Conversation

We were sitting around the dinner table Thursday night, and it had already been a long week. Long hours of work, school is winding down, and we've got a lot of projects going around the house.

We were enjoying some light conversation, and I wanted to include our 3-year-old girl, Kaitlyn.

"Kaitlyn, your teacher told me that you are the smartest one in your class! I'm so proud of you."

She responded, "My teacher at church?"

"Yes"

A moment's pause.

"The Fat One?"

Fran was looking right at me and she involuntarily laughed out loud. She turned to Kaitlyn and said, "Kaitlyn, we don't talk about other people that way. It would hurt their feelings." (But, yes, that was the one).

Another moment's pause.

"But I can call it a big, fat, bunny?"

Laughing and laughing from all of us except Kaitlyn, who is taking this very seriously.

Another moment goes by.

"I think I'll just call them Circle People."

We looked at each other, amazed, and burst out into laughter again.

What are the odds?

I meant to write about this before now.

Fran got a a part-time job working during market shows at the World Trade Center. She works in a very elegant showroom, and her job is to write up orders for boutique owners who want to stock their stores--she shows them stuff like candles, quilts, furniture, etc. In the meantime, she gets to drink tea and eat finger sandwiches.

She hadn't worked for about eight years before this, and the owner of the showroom noticed her and gave her a very kind compliment.

She even spotted him and smiled a week or so later and said "hello".

Two days later, he checked into a hotel next door to the showroom building, went to the top floor, and jumped to his death, leaving his wife and 12-year-old son as survivors.

I'm not sure what else there is to say--I liked him without having met him because I was glad that he appreciated Fran's effort at work. I was proud of her for getting back into the workforce enthusiastically. Without having met him, I feel a sense of loss.

'Tis a night not fit for man nor beast

Huge storm blew through tonight--90 mph winds (hurricane force). Local storm sirens went off indicating dangerous local conditions. Then the power went out and the kids got scared. We got the flashlights out and I went to close shutters.

The sky turned green.

As I was looking out the front window, a huge gust of wind came through in a circular pattern--I don't know how to describe it except to say I could just sense the force of the wind, and I winced. Just then, the wind grabbed one of my trees in the front and twisted one of the main branches around the trunk, snapping it and hurling it to the ground with a loud "crack!".

We had to take the kids into an interior room of the house with no windows and try to get them to hang out and sit still for a little while as the worst of the storm blew through. This was one of the worst ones in recent memory, but thankfully we made it through okay.

Moonyake!

This is Kaitlyn's stock punchline for any situation.

Here's an example:

Kaitlyn: Knock, knock
Me: Who's there?
K: banana
Me: Banana who?
K: Moonyake! (hysterical laughter)

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but here's my interpretation as a dad:

Kaitlyn has extraordinary verbals skills, but she's also savvy enough to recognize that sometimes things are said that are so complex that she doesn't understand them. It sounds like gibberish to her. So, she's invented a gibberish retort that she can use when she feels her verbal abilities fall short. It makes her feel on par with the rest of the family. And that's the child psychology lesson for today.

Mike: traveling

I really like that line from Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" where he ponders "Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hail souls out of men's bodies?". In a way, I feel the same way about jet fuel and terminals. Every time I travel, I seem to invent a new adventure in my head to entertain myself on my journey. Something about walking down one jetway, sitting down, and walking back up another jetway to your destination thousands of miles away, is the closest thing to a magic time machine that I will ever come to. It just seems that the selection of which jetway to walk down is the difference of where you end up and what the day holds for you. Walk down one, and you are that much closer to people you miss and would like to visit. Walk down another and carry out your 20-hour workday that's been planned.

This time I was traveling to help my old professor out with a problem. He's in his '70's now, and it felt nice to be useful to him. I was confident that I could help him--he had some equipment which didn't seem to be working properly, and he was working on-site at an archeological site in Arizona to document ruins from over a thousand years ago. Since he has been a big advocate of my company, I got my boss to approve a visit so I can get him up and running again.

Although I have traveled to most of the states in the US, I have never been to New Mexico, which has a distinct culture. Through an acquaintence, I once found myself house-sitting for a couple who had an entire house decorated in an elaborate Southwestern motif--eh, not for me. But I did learn to appreciate the fact that it is unique and appreciable by some.

The very first thing that caught my attention was the first leg of the journey. The new acquaintences in the row next to me were really hitting it off. I tried reading for a while, but I couldn't focus on the book--there was a charming girl sitting between two men (reminds me of a joke--a pretty girl, settling between two rough-looking men, comments quietly as she sits, "a rose between two thorns..." One of the burly men retorts "More like a tongue sandwich!") Anyway, the girl was loud and laughing and talked the whole time--she was a radio show producer. At one point, I couldn't help but look over, and I noticed that the man sitting next to me had absolutely the hairiest hands I've ever seen. Tufts of thick, black, 2-inch-long hair streamed out of his cuffs and continued up to the row of knuckles on his hand. I thought he might be some kind of tamed Sasquatch. I thought that his paw-fur might be constantly getting caught in machinery or appliances and pose a danger. Ironically, on mandatory and incredulous further inspection, he was nearly bald on top of his head. I wonder if he often poses with his hands folded on top of his scalp...

When the plane landed, I quietly walked out of the plane into the Albuquerque airport. From the air, the desert and the indistinct shadows of mountain peaks in the distance were actually quite beautiful. The sky is particuarly blue and the earth very red. I can see how this would be inspiring to most who are allowed to absorb it slowly and naturally, not force-fed. In the terminal there was a sweet smell of fresh corn tortillas, grilled and smokey, wafting strongly through the whole wing. I could smell the southwestern spices--diced jalapeno peppers and onions mixed with tomatoes.

As I ate some of the local cuisine and waited for the next leg of my flight, I texted Fran "I'm here in New Mexico--I sure miss the USA..." I guess because lots of people don't know geography, or the fact that we also border Mexico, it is apparently true that people possess the misconception that New Mexico is not part of the US.

I finally went through the right door which took me to my old professor, who is actually a botanist. As he drove along dangerously, complaining of all the other drivers on the road, he was often distracted by the local flora, pointing out the giant saguaro cacti flanking the road, the the flowering yucca, red and yellow, along the median.

I solved the equipment problem in about an hour, leaving us about five more to fill before I caught my return flight. He had offered for me to stay over at the house he is renting while working there, but that didn't feel quite right, so I had scheduled everything to be a day trip, flying in on the earliest flight and out on the last one to leave. He's my professor, and I've known him for over 12 years, but I feel more comfortable knowing him at a distance. Inevitably, people fail your expectations when you learn more about them. Riding in the car while they drive, for example.

He took me on a walking tour in the beautiful Arizona desert--the air was cool and dry and perfectly comfortable. We were down in a flat spot surrounded by four or five mountain ranges in the distance. He stopped to examine some of the plants to see if they had pollinated via some kind of botanic OB/GYN exam, which I was a little embarrassed to discuss with him for some reason or another.

We went to a restaurant and, upon his recommendation, I ordered exactly the same thing that he did, but when the meals were delivered, I got some other combination of ground corn meal, beans, and cheese, than he did. Same ingredients, but different configuration--this irritated him greatly because he wanted me to try his favorite lunch. I dismissed it and started eating, and we were talking about the shooting at the Virginia Tech campus. It was particularly interesting to discuss with my professor, because he had personally witnessed the shooting on campus at the University of Texas in 1966. He recounted how he was having lunch with a colleague and they noticed people falling down in the courtyard. Since it was the '60's, they just assumed it was another protest of some sort or another.

In the middle of the conversation, he cut a forkful of his lunch and plunked it on my plate for me to sample. Inwardly, I gagged and wanted to run screaming from the room. Ever since microbiology class, which was followed closely in my education by epidemiology, I have had a slightly skewed, disturbed view of the world of germs and disease transmission. In twenty seconds my thoughts had run the circuit of spilling my tray on the ground, feigning complete satiation, honestly expressing that I didn't want to share man-germs with anyone, and then to acceptance of my fate. I scooped up the corn tortilla with beans and ate it like one of the contestants of Survivor swallowing a hairy worm or uncooked chicken fetus or something.

The rest of the day was occupied by being introduced to nearly everyone else working on the project, which was really nice. We tested the equipment and got great results--the problems were so minor that I started to wonder if I should have come at all to begin with.

The flight home was eventful, but I'll spare all but the most necessary details. My notes include watching a nun sleep while leaning on her hand, and a really tough-punk-looking kid with piercings, tattoos, and scary-looking clothes and shoes menacing everyone in line. When no one was watching, he slowly reached into his bag and drew out an asthma inhaler and used it, then went back to surly thoughts of kicking ass.

As we waited to go up the jetway into the Albuquerque airport, the man next to me commented, "I always have to transfer through this airport and I hate the way it smells! The damned Quiznos always burns their bread and it stinks up this whole section of the airport!"

I put my Ipod headphones on and sat a distance away so I could hum along. Nothing sounded good, and I started to get a little cranky. Then I realized that my humming voice sort of sounded like a someone splatting harshly into tuba. Even being on key with the melody, it still sounded like a tuba in my ears--Who wants to hear the tuba rendition of songs by Sheryl Crow, Neil Young, or Led Zeppelin? It made me sad, and then I couldn't turn off the humming voice, even when I wasn't humming. I might be ruined for life.

Over twenty hours and 1700 miles elapsed, I was home again with new stories to tell...

Childish Misconceptions

I remember the very first popular song on the radio when I was a kid--it was Wings' "Band on the Run", only I knew it as "Man on the Run". I'm not sure why it stuck in my head that way, but I remember hearing it again in the '80's and it eventually sinking in to my head that I had the words wrong.

I remember another time when my mom told me that I was a human bean (I think she meant "human being"). I was so disappointed to find that out.

Last week, Fran was finishing up the dishes after dinner when I walked into the kitchen. The kids were upstairs asleep, so I turned one of the kitchen chairs around backward and sat down, leaning against the chair back. The radio was playing, and she said, "This is my favorite new song..."

It was a really good song--I hadn't heard it before. It was about a "mystery girl"...It kept talking about a "mystery girl" and "wherever you are" and "it's you that I want".

After hearing it for a while--I said, "I think this song is about you."

She kind of looked at me funny. Very funny. And by funny, ironically, I mean that she was not amused.

I tried to salvage it, "Aren't you my mystery girl?"

"Well, they're saying 'Promiscuous girl'..." The name of the song is "Promiscuous" by Nelly Furtado.

Whoops.

More on Books...and stuff.

I realized why my "accounting of books" was coming to mind the other day--I subconsciusly realize that I am about to lose my box set of The Police. It's the only group that I have the box set of, and, as it turns out, I guess I didn't need to hear everything they possibly ever recorded. I think they had a version of "Roxanne" recorded in the shower and "Message in a Bottle" on a banjo. I guess those are long lost recordings which I will never hear again, but I did like some of the raw tones of their early music.

I was working in the office for a couple of days (I usually work from a home office or on the road), and I overheard one of the new guys (actually, a temp) listening to some older recordings of The Police and we started talking about music. I told him that I own the box set and that I would be happy to loan it to him so he could check it out. It's on a shelf and I haven't listened to it a while, so I would be happy to let him get some use out of it. He mentioned that he may upload the songs to his Ipod or something.

I brought it in the next day and just asked him to be finished with them an a week or so.

That was a month ago.

Now, I found out that it's just, ahem, possible that his temp contract is about to run out and that he will not be invited back--so the clock is ticking on getting my CD's back. This is how I lost a bunch of my books before--a young woman I worked with asked me to compile a recommended reading list for her, which I did, and then she asked me if she could borrow a few of them from me--I brought up a selection for her to choose from and she begged to take them all with her. She got fired within about two days, and never came back. If she read all those books, I hereby formally forgive her.

I'm glad I didn't loan her Winesburg, Ohio--if you haven't read this, please do. It reminds me of blog from a 1900 American small town. I love the way the stories interconnect and show motivations of characters from different points of view. Then again, I haven't read it in 10 years, so maybe it isn't as good as I thought--hate it when that happens.

I didn't include this note about how I didn't learn and still loaned stuff out, to a Temp, no less, before because my entry was already too long...Now I realize that it was the climax of the whole thing. Oh, well.

Fran and I have a running joke about my reading. Sometimes I will challenge myself with a book (for example Dostoevsky), whereas she subscribes to the school of thought that there is enough to read in the world where you shouldn't have to endure something that isn't entirely enjoyable. I think her subliminal point is that I've gotten about as smart as I'm going to get, so give up trying to force the issue any further... Whenever she sees that I'm reading a book that isn't fun, she shakes her head sadly and offers me a Spider Man comic.

I read in Time magazine about this book called Godel, Escher Bach. Now I have to be careful about how I characterize this book, because the author writes about 10 pages about how people always try to describe his masterpiece and how everyone who tries to describe it gets it wrong and how no one should ever try to summarize this book because his book is a magic work that defies summary. Charming. Reminds me of one of those fussy, effeminate intellectuals who look like they suck lemons. So, I beg your pardon in advance. The Time magazine writer says that this book significantly affected his family's intellectual development--his sister became some kind of genius chemist or something. When I described it to Fran, she asked me "Why don't you just get yourself a Cat o' Nine Tails?"

Here's what the book is about: Strange Loops. The mathematical similarities in logical thought of different forms of art, music, and philosophy, and how, in some cases, one idea can be compounded upon to a higher complexity by expanding a basic idea. It's full of anecdotes--one of them is about how Bach wrote one of his fugues after given a basic line by Frederick the Great. I guess, if you turn the notes into a calculus equation and take the derivative of it, it turns out that mathematically it is a really, really good song. I had Fran punch it up on the computer and we listened to it together--not bad. I don't know, though, I prefer the guitar part on Where the Streets have no Name...

I can't remember who it was, but some older woman recommended that, if you are in doubt of whether or not you like a book, there's a formula for how much of it you should read before putting it down--her idea is 100 minus your age. If, by that time, you aren't into it, you can put it down with good conscience. Not me. I gave Anna Karenina about 150 pages and felt like I hadn't made a dent yet. Sometimes, when I've had too much pizza, that book still haunts me. Some day I'll read it. I only have about 1,300 more pages to go.

One of the reasons why Godel, Escher, Bach appealed to me is that I have a similar theory about art, music, and literature. Here's a summary of it: Monet and Hemingway seem very similar in their artistic approach toward art and writing, respectively. See? Pretty easy to summarize. I can expand and explain, but that was the climax. I remembered to include it in the post this time...

A Good Friday

Yesterday, Ryan and I took some time in the early afternoon and went to the Texas Rangers home opener game versus the Boston Red Sox. Yes, this is my first baseball reference of 2007.

We had Standing Room Only tickets, so I hoisted Ryan up on my shoulders so he could sit and watch the game. We were all the way in the back against the outfield, crowded by a menagerie of characters which reminded me of the creature cantina from Star Wars. If I described this soup of thugs, perverts, and hooligans, I would have to take away some of the more fun characteristics just so it would be believable.

Okay, I'm just picking one random guy who was in front of us. He was a heavyset Mexican guy who had gone out and bought a size XXXXL Boston Red Sox jersey. Then he got some size XXXXL white letters which spelled out "SUCK!" and pasted them diagonally across the back of the jersy. He drank 17 beers during the game, so he was feeling great. He must have been rich, too, because 17 beers cost him about $150. How do I know he drank so much? He saved each cup and built a tower with them. Beer guy wore a generic ballcap backward on his head and had that generic heavyset posture that looks a little like a bulldog--his arms didn't fit against his sides, so they kind of stuck out like an accessory. He didn't cheer over-enthusastically for the Rangers, but whenever Boston would do something good, he would curse loudly--this got my attention. We were standing over the bullpen where the Red Sox pitchers warm up--during the game, they started warming up and the Rangers fans, frenzied with emotion, started throwing peanut shells, ice, and trash into the bullpen, which drew the attention of about ten security guards who ringed the area around the bullpen, including one who established his post about five feet away from where I was standing. He made eye contact with me and I said "Hello", but I think politeness is a sign of weakness or something, because he looked at me like I was from another planet. Maybe it was because there was a hyper 8-year-old growing out of my head, kinda like Master-Blaster from that Mad Max movie. When the game was over, Beer guy dumped his whole tower of empty beer cups over the rail into the bullpen, where it exploded into a big mess that someone is going to have to clean up. I thought he was saving them up for a hope chest or something, but I guess he didn't want to carry them to the car.

Ryan: "Wow--this is the best seat in the whole park!"

If I try to hoist him up like that next year, I'll probably squish like an accordian. We spent 1/3 of the game actually watching the game, another 1/3 of the game getting hot dogs, cokes, and playing games in the concourse, and then the last 1/3 of the game counting beer cups, admiring the menagerie, and kinda watching the game in the meantime.

When we were finished, we went to the planetarium--this was suggested by Fran since we were across town, right by my old university, and we had a lot of fun seeing the planetarium show a few weeks ago during Spring Break. They have one of those panoramic screens that is a big half-sphere that can make you seasick since it takes up your whole field of vision. All they gotta do is rotate the image slightly and I feel like I need to lay down.

We got to the planetarium two hours too early, so I asked Ryan if he would like a tour of the university. I thought to myself that I hoped that someday he could attend a university, and that maybe he would feel comfortable on a campus. He was very impressed that the library has over 1,000,000 books. There are so many books that they have those shelves that are on rollers--the shelves all pack together until you unpack them to make a walkway so you can go in between them to get the book that you need. Ryan was very excited about the prospect of being squished between the shelves, and asked if that had ever happened. I told him that, indeed, it almost happened one night while I was in the middle of a row and some unobservant girl decided that she should roll the shelves to get a book that she needed--without looking to see if anyone was already getting a book. The book I was retrieving "Lemnaceae of North America". Every time I walk by this library, I get the sinking feeling that I never turned that book back in...

One of the reasons I wanted to show Ryan around wat that personally, I never felt as though I belonged on the campus--It was just something in my head that told me that I didn't deserve to be there--that I wasn't trying hard enough, that someone would find out that I was borrowing the money to pay for my classes and books, that I was not devoting enough time to studying--in fact, sometimes I would have to decide what I was going to study and what I was going to just take a stab at on the test.

Toward the end of my studies in college, I was about 26 or so and I started feeling like the oldest guy on campus--I felt ridiculous.

I know it was mostly in my head, so one of my big goals in life has been not to pass on some of this self-critical thinking to my son. I think I've been successful--the other day I asked him if his teacher liked him, and he said "Yes--I'm actually her favorite student!" Maybe he's right, but at least I'm glad he thinks that way.

Anyway, he was pretty excited about the tour, so I took him to around to some of the different buildings which I knew had kind of cool displays in glass cases in the lobby. The Biology Department had some really neat turtle shells, crocodile skulls, and posters of all the poisonous snakes of Texas. There is also an area called the Free Speech area, which was coined in the '60's and '70's. Essentially, it is a platform near a fountain upon which you can climb and say whatever you feel like saying. Ryan smiled really big and jumped up there and said, "I've got the best Dad in the world!"

One of the big departments is the Engineering Department--there was actually an astronaut who came from this department who died when the space shuttle exploded--her picture was on display in the lobby. Ryan didn't notice this, but he did notice the Aerospace Engineering displays with planes and satellites and things like that. We went down a hallway and saw a crew of guys working inside a laboratory. They were bustling and looked annoyed that some dude and his son were walking down their hall, and that we might possibly get in the way of the bustling. Ryan stood a little back from the door of the lab and watched. I've noticed that there are a few things that Ryan can get wrapped up in for several hours, and building models is one of those things--he can read and interpret the plans and puts together things very well. He also knows how to use tools around the house, which I think is kind of a cool thing for a kid to know. I've bought him a small tool box and toolbelt that he uses sometimes.

While we were standing there, a nicely dressed man came out of a nearby office and started walking toward us down the hall. I saw that he noticed Ryan standing in the doorway, watching the students building the car, and I started getting that funny feeling like we didn't belong. I fought through it, though. As the man walked up, it was clear that he was in charge of the project. He wore glasses and a notebook in his hand. He walked up to Ryan and asked him "What do you think?"

Ryan turned and smiled and said "That looks great!"

I told him, "Ryan is a builder. He loves to make models." What I didn't realize is that the man I was speaking to was the Professor of the Mechanical Engineering Department and that his specialty was mechanical model building and testing.

He smiled broadly and put his hand on Ryan's shoulder, "Come on in to the lab, then!" and he took us on a 20 minute tour of the project, showing Ryan the milling machines, lathes, and assembly stations where they fabricate the parts for the car. Ten students, still bustling, were assembling and fitting the car together. Ryan went over to them excitedly and pointed out to the professor that the cross-tie design was similar to something that he was building for a model roller coaster.

When we were finished and were walking out, Ryan went to the professor and shook hands with him, looked him in the eye, and thanked him for showing him the lab. The professor replied, "Study in school, come here, and join our engineering group!" Ryan nodded and smiled.

Seriously, I couldn't have orchestrated things any better if I had planned it out for a month. As we walked down the hall, Ryan kept saying how cool everything was in the engineering department. I'm just glad I didn't screw it up by getting in the way...

Snippets

Please stay with me...

3:45

AM.

It's very dark outside (and inside).

Crazy beeping sound. Gradually getting louder...

"Oh, that must be the smoke alarm I put in the garage."

Me (yawning): "Theres a fire in the garage?"

"No--the alarm was going off yesterday so I put a new battery in it. But I couldn't put it back on the ceiling thingy."

Me: "Oh, okay." (rolls over and re-closes eyes). Crazy beeping sound persists, but at least the mystery is solved. There is a moment of silence before I realize that handling this falls within my realm of responsibilities. If it was a crying baby, I may have a chance at rolling over and closing my eyes and a lightly passive-aggressive standoff/battle of wills/short straw contest.

"Uuuuuugh." I get up and go turn off the alarm. By "turn off", I mean that I pop the battery out of it and pound it against my left palm until the beeping finally stops. Then I wrap it in a rag and stuff it into a can of something or another out in the garage.

My mind starts to equate this 3:45 AM alarm-going-off thing with yelling "fire" in a theater.

I try to go back to sleep, but I keep thinking that we've disabled our smoke alarm. Seriously, I can envision the fire marshall standing outside our smokey home: "Well, for some reason, their smoke alarm was wrapped in a rag and stuffed into some odd can." The kind of news story I shake my head at when I see them.

4:00 AM. I just decide to get up and get an early start on work. Making coffee--I spot my cell phone on the corner of the bar. I have this friend who, for some crazy reason which we've never discussed, calls at incredibly early hours--usually at least once a week. I'm pretty safe since he called at 6:45 AM yesterday. Makes Fran go absolutely nuts. She wants me to punch my friend in the teeth.

I say that it's some crazy reason--that's not really true. He ended up getting a divorce a year or so ago. I think he was married about 15 years or so, and they have a little boy, who went to live with his mom. Now, the house is probably pretty empty early in the morning when he wakes up. That being said, I'm sure he knows that my house isn't empty at that time of day, but for some reason he chooses to ignore that. I don't have the heart to point this fact out to him, so I've let this somewhat poor judgement go. But spotting my phone, I reach over and flip it to vibrate so we don't have two crazy beeping incidents in the same day.

Work...well, I guess that can wait for a little while.

I picked up a novel that I've been reading for the past couple of days--it's one I haven't read since I was in college. Pressed inside the pages when I opened it the other day was a bank deposit slip to someone that I knew fleetingly in college--on the back, scribbled in pencil, was her name and number. I have no recollection of getting this from her, but I remember this girl--her name was Amy and her family was from Hawaii. She was actually a native Hawaiian. She was one of those friends that you kind of know for about six weeks with a group of friends and then you kind of move on to another group of friends, but she was really nice. So, that's it for Amy: brown, Hawaiian, a little heavy, beautiful heart, about 100 words total passed between us in 6 weeks, haven't seen her since I abruptly didn't return to the same school 17 years ago, and I'll never see her again.

One thing that Amy with her beautiful heart suggested was that several of us volunteer at a soup kitchen for poor and homeless people in Waco, Texas. I did this for a while, until I got tired of it--it's a little depressing. Several old black women, whom I'm sure were very poor, would put on their fancy church clothes and hats with fringe--they would look immaculate. They would sit and wait for us to serve them their meals, and I would be really careful to treat them with a lot of respect and regard. I was embarassed to be serving these older ladies--They were all over 90 years old. The drunks and scruffy homeless weren't a problem--I didn't mind serving them and felt like I was helping them. But for some reason, it bothered me that these ladies needed me to take care them. Maybe I'm guilty for the way their ancestors were treated by the people who lived here decades before my ancestors got here from Ireland (1890's--My aunt has a Bible with the exact date, along with my great-grandfather's patent for the 1940's style of jukebox, which became public domain and later manufactured by Wurlitzer). Seems like a pretty reasonable thing to be guilty about...

After dinner, we would clear up the styrofoam plates and serve dessert. I remember the ladies talking in accents so thick that, unless you listened very closely, you couldn't tell that they were speaking English. Since I'm from Texas, I guess it helped, but I would still have to listen very closely.

One of the ladies talked about chopping cotton with her family when she was only 8 or 9 years old. She complained about how heavy the bags got when they were full.

"I don't know how in the world we could carry those sacks around. I really don't know..." She said, perfectly coherent at her age, but staring off in the distance, her voice trailing.

What it really sounded like was "I do know ha da wurl we ca (unintelligible) dose big ol' sacks lak dat. I really don know..."

One of the guys was obsessed with homeless people and helping them. He actually dressed in tattered clothes and would go and hang out all night under bridges with those people. That was kind of over the edge in my book.

One of the guys we were feeding was a handsome guy who was 20-something. He offered me a pawn ticket for a stereo system that he had pawned in order to get money for drugs. He said that for $50 I could pick up a great stereo that was worth $300-$400. I couldn't tell him that I had exactly $12 in my bank account, which I needed to do laundry for the next 3 weeks. But I did get three meals a day. Isn't life funny sometimes?


Coming home from serving, I was in a car with five other people. In the course of conversation, one of the girls told a story about being home when her father killed himself. She didn't even cry when she was talking about it.


Sometimes I wish I could go back and live moments like that again. I feel like I'm a more compassionate, empathetic person now, and I would have something to say, or at least hug her without being self-conscious. At the time, I think nobody in the car said anything. We were flaky college kids--what did we know? Within 2 hours of that ride, we were taking our shoes off and splashing in the fountain outside the student union building.


I slowly tucked the old depsit slip with the old phone number neatly back inside the book where I stopped reading. I am a little surprised at how I can contemplate these memories and note my changes in attitude since I last laid eyes on it. I hope I find it again in another 17 years and can think on these stories again. I wonder how I will remember and interpret them...

Windmill Man

There's this guy that is a topic of conversation at our house--he's the guy who directs traffic in the carpool lane of Ryan's school. The guy we currently love to hate.

First of all, you can't miss him--he's about 7 feet tall and has an Adam's apple the size of a grapefruit--you know, one of those knobby-looking, tall, skinny giants with think, storky-looking arms.

More importantly, though, is his obnixous behavior which I have to endure, usually before completing my first cup of coffee in the morning. He acts like a spasmotic ape, screaming loudly at cars and drivers to "Hurry up!" while flapping his arms around signalling for them to move faster. (I don't know about you, but the elementary school driveway is one place where I prefer to drive slowly and deliberately).

One time, I had to jump out and help Ryan out of his car seat, which I did in about 10 seconds. There were about three cars behind me, and they were letting their kids out, so I wasn't holding anyone up. This guy thought it would be a great idea to scream at me and signal with his hands for me to hurry up while I was out of my car. I turned and looked at him incredulously and said "What do you want me to do? Engage my autopilot?" Then I rolled my eyes and shook my head, got in the car, and drove at the speed which I wished to go...

I'm all for order and efficiency in the carpool lane, but it's not that big a deal--in fact, there have been several days where he's not there, and everything still flows smoothly. My theory is that this guy, whom I have named "Windmill Man" on account of his active, alarming, eight-foot wingspan, has this one kingdom to rule in his life, and he intends to rule it with an iron hand.

I've also abandoned my general rule to teach kids to respect adults when it comes to this guy, and I will dramatically trumpet "Windmill Man!" as though I am introducing a superhero, whenever we suffer his directions in the carpool lane.

The last straw was the song which I made up spontaneously one day and sang for Fran. She laughed so hard that she called and told one of her friends, and now the nickname is spreading through the school underground web.

In case you would like to sing along...


WINDMILL MAN
(to the tune of "Nowhere Man", by the Beatles)

He's a real Windmill Man
Flapping 'round in Windmill Land
Waving both his Windmill hands
At everybody.

Doesn't seem to have a clue
Knows not whom he's waving to
Could you change a bulb or two
while you're here?
Windmill man, what's the hurry?
Could you please cease the flurry!
Windmil man, the school parking lot
Is at your command!

la la la la

Kinda looks like a big ol' stork

Sorta acts like a geeky dork

Don't you need to go to work

or something?

Windmill man, please listen
You don't know what you're missin'
Windmill man, the whole darn school
Is sick of your plan...

la la la la

He's a real windmill man
Spazzing out in grade school land
Waving 'round his windmill hands
at nobody.

Flapping round his windmill hands

at nobody...

Waving like a broken fan

at all of us...

An Accounting of Books

Total number of books irretrievably loaned/stolen from me: 13-16

Janet from work: Stole my book on American Sign Language which was a gift

Crazy Lady who borrowed 6 books from me and never returned them including my Stephen Crane short story Book, London's Call of the Wild, Crane's Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, Henry James' The American, and Drieser's Jeannie Gerhardt and The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton.

At least four other novels, mostly paperbacks which will be easy to replace.

Two software manuals and another how-to book, I believe all of which are in the posession of relatives.

Fran then declared my book-loaning judgement to be suspect, so I had to refuse to let a colleague borrow her Complete Works of William Shakespeare (one of the few books which was acquired prior to our marriage by either of us--it's Fran's). The colleague, who was holding her hands out expectantly, was shocked and kind of stood there blinking.

Alluding to this issue, for a few years this was one of the themes at Christmas--One year, Fran got me a very nice set of book plates to stick inside the cover of my books. The next year, she got me a imprinting seal, kind of like a notary stamp, with my name engraved on it--now I stamp all of my books with it almost immediately--even the $2 used paperbacks I get. At least they will know who the book is stolen from...

I currently have three books out with colleagues from my professional library. I'm nearly confident that I will not get one of them back due to a semantic problem. I was recommending a book on improving verbal communication and brought it in to work to loan. That was about a year ago. Now, I'm convinced that maybe I need to improve my verbal communication--I'm wondering if I need to buy that book and re-read it so I can communicate more clearly in the future whether something is a gift or a loan.


Books I have stolen: 3

1) Swiped a General Woodworking book from my now-defunct private middle school. Not sure if it was on purpose or accident, but I ended up with it--Found it in the attic the other day and flipped through it--pretty much the worst reference book on woodworking I've ever seen. How can woodworking be so boring?

2) Another textbook I ended up with is my second year Latin workbook. I know I didn't buy that--woo hoo! Let's get crazy! agricola, agricolae...

Actually, I did see my high school Latin teacher at Chili's last year. She was really cool. I remember that for some reason I accidentally said the "f-word" in front of her. She gasped melodramatically and said, very quietly, "You just said the worst word in the world!" Then she winked at me and went back to grading papers. It must not have affected her opinion of me much, because of something that happened toward the end of my senior year. She used to tell us a lot of personal stories, and had a good relationship with the kids in the class. Latin students at our school were a peculiar breed, because we really had to go out of our way to take Latin--there was only one teacher, and almost everyone takes Spanish since we are on the border with Mexico. All the cheerleaders took French, for some reason or another.

The Latin teacher had this freaky thing she could do--she was completely ambidextrous, but took it one step further--she could write an English word with one hand and write the Latin word below it with the other...

But the class was asking her personal questions one day and one of the girls asked her what kind of guys she used to date--to my horror at the time, she said, "Well, I would probably date a guy like Mike..." I think my face was red for a week.

3) The third book I stole is Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse Five. It was the first anti-establishment novel I ever read, and I stole it from a classmate of mine who let me borrow in during our sophomore year in high school. If I ever see him again, I'll give it back to him. It's the only book in my shelves that I haven't stamped...