… all hands fold
As the two year old says grace.
She says help the starving children to get well.
But let my brother’s hamster burn in hell! … John Hiatt, Your Dad Did
That has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but it made me smile this morning so I thought I’d share.
Little voices cry out in the night. Frail, weary voices masked by coughing and sniffles. They radiate heat, yet complain of cold. They are scared of darkness though light does not relieve. They are tired but cannot sleep. Therefore, neither should I.
The flu sucks! It has come upon us with a vengeance filling little noses too uncoordinated to effectively blow resigned instead to sniff and wipe. They are raw and sore and it adds but one more thing to a long list of complaints.
Today is the first day of the rest—–wait a minute that’s not what I’m trying to say. Besides, that little saying is just a bit too cheesy for my likes. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate a good Gouda every now and again but I gotta tell ya, these feel good sayings sometimes just make me want to puke. Chicken soup for the soul. They should call it ipecac for the heartless. Because that’s exactly what it induces in me, an overwhelming urge to purge!
Actually, what I meant to say is that today is day one. Day one of what? Well, I’m not quite sure. Day one of how many? Another fine question and again I’m going to have to respond, I’m not quite sure. All I know is that today I’m starting. I have no plan, no outline, no agenda, no course of action, no true goal in mind or really no way of determining if and when I have reached my destination. Sounds like a pretty fun trip, huh?
I may be getting more exercise. I doubt I could get any less. I might have to start eating better. I should work harder–I may not be getting as much sleep. I may be getting more. I have no way of knowing at this point.
It’ll work itself out. These things have a way of doing that. They always do.
There’s something to be said for a good purge every once in a while. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not condoning bulimia here. Or any other self destructive means of dealing with severe body dismorphic disorder. Maybe purge is not a good metaphor. How about there’s something to be said for a big fat steamy one every once in a while. Wait, I suppose that, too could fall into the whole eating disorder realm what with laxative abuse and what not. The point I’m laboring to make here is that my mind is a bit cluttered and I feel the need to release some of the incongruent tangents. The fragments of thought processes that lead nowhere and are basically taking up space in my head. Great! Now I’ve added–find a metaphor for purging the random thoughts in my head without appearing to condone body dismorphia–to the list. If someone has a better metaphor, please help me.
1) My gutters need cleaned. No metaphor here. I really need to have my gutters cleaned. Presently the gutters on my home are nothing more than ornate planters, except that stuff growing there is volunteer trees and weeds. How in the hell does a seed get 35 feet in the air and take root? How did the dirt get there?
2) It seems that the battery in my cell phone is refusing to hold a lengthy charge. That sucks! I don’t want a new cell phone. It’s not that I like mine, it’s just that it is a royal pain to transfer all three of the numbers I have presently have stored in my phone. And it’s blue.
3) Why am I washing so many towels? Do we have to wash a towel after each use? I mean, really. You are clean (supposedly) when you step out of the bath and use the towel. It’s clean water–we don’t bathe in the river. Although I have substituted a dip in the pool for a bath on more than one occasion. A wash cloth I can see. You are using that to scrub away the grime of the day but a towel? Can’t we just use the towel, let’s say twice, before we wash it? That would cut my laundry in half right there!
4) Yesterday the high temperature during the day was 64 degrees. June the 30th for Christ’s sake. We had to go swimming just to warm up!! (Not really, but I’m sure the water temperature was higher than the ambient air outside.)
5) I use my video camera to take still pictures. (It has that feature.) But sometimes I wonder if I should use my other camera. I would love a nice digital slr. It’s on a wish list. So is 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep but I doubt I’ll see any of them anytime soon.
6) There are only 55 days until school starts. Can that be right? How can my summer be passing by this quickly? I’ll have a 2nd grader, a 1rst grader and a pre-k der. So for three days a week for 3 hours, I’ll be down to 2 kids. It’s like free time!
7) I’m going to go pet the pig. Again, no metaphor. (You sickos!) The county fair is going on all week and the kids love the pig barn. Actually, they love all of the animal exhibits. The sheep barn is loud! Those suckers never shut up. Really. Then my kids start bleating back at them and I can’t get that freaking sound out of my head! The goats are much more quiet.
All righty, then. I feel better. A little. Anyway, if you’re looking for some reading with a little more substance check out Jeremy’s site Discovering Dad. He’s running a series this week called What Dads Really Think. It’s a follow-up series to an earlier run of a wildly popular series called (oddly enough) What Moms Really Think. The series involves questions posed by some great mom bloggers and answered by an all-star panel of dad bloggers. Well, except for one–Jeremy asked me to be on the panel. Check it out. Yesterday’s question was about communication and today’s addresses the issue of flirting. It’s a fun series and I’m glad Jeremy asked me to be a part of it.
“Good. For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble.” — “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” I just finished reading an article about the disappearance of the honey bee. Pandeminc proportions of hives totally abandoned not just in America but all over the world causing conspirists to offer up countless suggestions as to why. My favorite is related to the poor managerial tactics used by beekepers that provide colonies to crops all over the country. Basically, these colonies are the equivalent of our very own migrant work force who feel overworked, overstressed and underpaid and just up and quit.
What do I think? Sounds to me like the bees are gone. I haven’t got a clue. However, the article ended with several exit lines from various movies and the one from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” made me smile as some of my earliest and best childhood memories came flooding back. Man, I wanted to be the Sundance Kid. Little did I know that the person I had chosen to be my very first idol was an outlaw bank/train robber. Hell, I was just four and a half years old, my boy Zane’s age. To me, he was just about the coolest person I had ever seen. He got to shoot guns and pistols, he got to ride horses and he had some really neat boots.
So, as is quite often the case, I took the mind journey from icon to icon, hero to hero reviving memories of what I now believe were some of the best days of my life. I soon came to realize that I was never going to be a cowboy. I lived well within the city limits and although we had what I felt was an enormous backyard, it would never be home to a trusty steed. That, and my mom threw away my Sundance boots. There were, as I recall, a few tears shed. What am I saying? I’m not proud. I cried like a school girl. I had worn those boots every day for at least 2 years, they were a part of me and it hurt to see them go. So I moved on.
“Steve Austin: astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology…”—”The Six Million Dollar Man.” Who didn’t want to be Steve? He was fast, strong, could see for miles and he was tough. A real he-man. And he was an astronaut. The guy reaked cool! We would play out episodes of “The Six Million Dollar Man” in our yards for hours on end and if we weren’t done by dinner and bedtime, we’d pick right up where we left off the next morning. My best friend’s older brother had the best imagination in the world. He’s gone now and I think about him from time to time but no matter what triggers the memories, I always go back to our days saving the world as Steve Austin.
“Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”—”The Incredible Hulk.” Two words: Lou Ferrigno. The guy was a monster! Huge! I didn’t care so much for the tv show but couldn’t wait to see him rip his shirt and pants each week and then go on some superhuman rampage. I guess at this point in my life I kind of moved from admiring the character to actually seeing the person behind the role, finding some emulatable quality in them and trying somehow to fit that quality into my own life.
I believe at this point in my life I also began to recognize the fallibility of just about every person I had chosen to place on a pedestal. In one way or another, one after another, all of my heroes began to manifest flaws. Some were as insignificant as a minor physical imperfection while others were simply unimaginable lapses in character. One by one they all fell and with them my faith in the whole hero system. Seriously. Ask me today who my heroes are. I’ve got nothing. I can not think of a single person I wish I was more like, no one I want to emulate.
Some would say, “Well, that’s a good thing. Shows you’ve got a healthy self confidence.” I’m not so sure. Maybe I’m just too critical and need to lighten up. I’m not looking for heroes anymore. Really, I gave up. But, I’ve got kids now who are going to be moving through these exact processes of placing people with whom they come into contact on pedestals, trying to emulate them as they grow and mature. That’s a struggle for me. I fear for them when they come to realize, like me, that heroes are just ordinary people with warts and zits and uncontrolable problems with substance abuse and in the end, they’re going to let you down.
Should I expose my kids heroes before they have invested too much of their tiny, impressionable hearts preventing the inevitable breakdown or just let them figure it all out on their own? I suppose until I get it figured out I’ll just keep plants on my pedestals. Daisies are a whole lot easier to replace.
