Sunday afternoon post

It's Sunday afternoon, and I am in the swing of a mild, pleasant day. Disorganized thoughts and notes include:

I played some Overwatch 2 and it had that not-unusual effect of irritating me to the point of crankiness, even after I put the controller down. My temper has always been a test for me.

I have been up since about 3:30 a.m. or so. I "layed down" around 5pm feeling a little weathered, and just stuck with it the rest of the night.

Tina is feeling well, having caught a cold from her Brianna during the two visits in two days we saw her. I wasn;t sure I didn't have it, so took it easy. I feel well enough this morning that I may have either not gotten ill or had a delightfully mild case of "it." 

I'll try not to over do things, but the sun came out and I went outside and got a few thousand steps in; I've been terribly lazy lately, and the scale tells the tale! Oy.

Today, I will have the feast I started late yesterday: four kinds of cheese, half a rack of lamb, some carmelized onions I threw together yesterday. There are ingredients for salad. 

Cheese:

* St. Agur, a bold-looking blue from France

* Daff black truffle (brie, I think), French

* Artikaas 18 month Gouda

* Florette goat brie, also French!

Winter Gardening, Lettuce and Bell Pepper

I had one potted plant from this past year's hillside garden, containing one each of decidedly underachieving bell pepper and bean plants. Neither did well during the summer, but the green bell pepper rebounded once the weather cooled. It gets below 40 degrees lately, and the thing is positively perking up on the front deck, with new fruit looking green and vibrant. 

I was so inspired I decided to plant two new plants indoors, in a/the windowsill. I got them both sewed in moist potting soil, and forgot which was the lettuce, and which was the bell pepper. So, I made little markers that stab into the soil out of slices of milk carton, and placed each one in its respective pot, with a 50/50 chance of being correct.

Also, I've been feeding black oil sunflower to the local birds for weeks now. Yesterday I put out some peanuts for the first time, and got a fuzzy new visitor. I do enjoy the wildlife.

Hey, Stranger

It's been a while since I've written here (understatement of the decade: noted).

It's been a long, eventful and often rough eight years. Relationships ended, started and ended again. So much to say, too much to say just now. But it must be acknowledged; so be it.

John Bizarre

I'm sure I've written about it before, but this morning I'll dedicate the next sip of coffee and scratch of the bum to John Bizarre.

John Bizarre, in his current form, is a Las Vegas-based comedian and filmmaker. He also maintains a blog/website at http://www.bizarre.com/blog.html. His writings there slip and slide from the profound to the profane, and rarely miss a chance to be deliberately, almost obsessively silly. While his (two) books are also written without much reverence, these daily writings are what I'd expect in a way: the little building blocks of thought, speculation and everyday happenstance that decay and ferment and give eventual life to the more refined end results that entertain.

My wife and I saw John Bizarre for the first time in Fairfield, California, at a club called Pepperbellys. It was my first real live comedy show after watching stand-up for decades only on television, and John Bizarre was the right comic to jump start the experience.

Anyway, this isn't meant to come off as a creepy memorial, just a nod of gratitude to the universe for bringing back a ray of twice-weekly light for a deskbound office monkey. Bizarre had taken a few years off from social media, and only recently returned from self-imposed exile. Not only has the website been resurrected, but he's got a facebook page, too. It's a real pleasure to see him back online, and on social media again. I dig it.

Keep it moving

Yesterday was a good day. Let's discuss why.

I had the day off, thanks to the ongoing "furlough days" my company has adopted to help address cash flow problems (theirs, not mine). I started the day the same way I start a lot of work-free days: with a feeling of lightness and energy and all the things I want to accomplish buzzing around the inside of my head like houseflies. Often, the first challenge is to corral and list all these ideas before this fleeting clarity of purpose dissipates like (the opposite of) a morning fog.

I compiled an ambitious list of chores, and got started. Early on, it occurred to me that this was a component of my daily head space that I'd forgotten: just "keep it moving." I have lapsed over the past year or two into a very sedentary lifestyle. While adopting a couch potato-like recreational life sounds very relaxing, it's not a satisfying default. From the couch, I can see and imagine all the productive things that need doing. However, my brain has developed some very effective techniques for thwarting such noble impulses.

One such techniques is drinking the beer. Oh, how I enjoy most every sip of beer. But not all of them. If you pay attention to your body chemistry, you can discern a lot about how your body reacts to booze. You get the rush, the gentle euphoria, the energy boost... and then what the good Lord giveth, He also taketh away. What goes up must come down, and as the tide comes in, so it must go out, etcetera. The high is equal to the crash, and there's only so much you can do to ameliorate that equation. If you avoid it altogether, I find that even this fat, oldish body can maintain natural energy for over a surprisingly longer time period. I'd forgotten that.

And so it came to be that after working through the morning, when I prepared myself a cheap but pleasant lamb lunch, I forwent skipped the accompanying wine. Dodged that metabolic bullet!

At the end of the day, I got just over half my list done. Not as much as I hoped, but the results of a genuine effort are hard to feel bad about.

And throughout the day, it dawned upon me increasingly, that just "keeping it moving" is a pretty good ethos to weave into the quilt of my daily operating procedures. It's especially helpful because I can be quick to despair at too many choices, especially when planning my day. For some reason, this mindset helps me keep it positive and light, and not get stuck.

At the end of the day, I wasted spent a considerable period of time playing video games, without a pang of guilt or regret, and I got some good stuff done. A good day.

I still have this thing?

I have the urge to write in this blog, for a few reasons:

• It's a fun way to chronicle my life. There are times when I look back at photos, facebook posts and other digital debris, and it's nice to have these "artifacts," as Joe Crawford calls them. Most of blog-thoughts have evolved into facebook-thoughts, and it's not altogether the best thing. Plus, looking back to see only 3 entries for 2015? That makes me sad, bubba!
• I need conversations to work things out in my head. This blog is nothing so much as a conversation with myself, and helps my "flow."
• I'm finding that free-writing can be good for creativity, and I need help getting some jokes written. There are few things more satisfying to me than putting together a promising new joke.
• And finally, sometimes I really like writing and the things I write. I feel surprisingly unashamed at the sound of my typewritten voice.

On the other hand, I really don't like writing about how I should be writing; it quickly becomes annoyingly self-referential. But, I do like that I've come back here and scratched something on the ol' cave wall. Little steps, little steps...

Flu

I caught the flu two Saturdays ago. Dear god, what a curse.

The weakness, the coughing, the gelatin scum constantly creeping from my lungs, interfering with every vital process: sleep, breath itself. There are other indignities and incapacities I can abide, but oh, how I hate being sick.

I don't mind the fever itself so much, or at least the temperature sensation of it. For the first half of my ten-day (I'm on the ninth day now, or so, and it feels like I'm almost done) ordeal, I would roast and sweat like, well, a fevered animal. And I rather enjoyed the heated feeling. It felt oddly like I was cold, but if I wrapped up and stayed insulated, my body heat would rage gloriously and I felt like I was cooking nicely from the inside out, and I reveled in it. It was one symptom I was thankful not to suffer too badly from. I read somewhere that a fever is part of your body's attempt to fight the virus by cooking it, and I like the idea.

At about the halfway point, heat turned to cold, and even though I felt the damned gnawing chill I would still sweat profusely through my clothing, pillow, blanket, mattress. At one point, struggling to find a calm position that didn't feel like I was actively daring my lungs to spawn wracking spasms of coughing fits, I turned face-down to the bed, and smelled the beginnings of a moldy presence in my nostrils, the effect of a constant warm, moist presence without respite of sunlight and ventilation for days on end. Finding new ways to disgust and repel yourself (and an inability to correct them until you are better) are added to the list of curses.

It's the weakness that bothers me as much as anything; the robbing from you the better parts of yourself. Stripped of your inability to handle even the merest challenges, lucky to surmount the run-of-the-mill hurdles like daily hygiene and household duties, you lose the part of your identity that proves worth to you and others.  By the end of the week, I had to put garbage cans out for pick-up, and marching resignedly at 6:00 a.m. to the curb with two rollaway bins I found myself losing a crucial bit of my sense of humor. By the time i was back in the house I hated everyone for leaving it for me to do, and in a fit of impotent impatience I managed to clumsily smash a glass in the kitchen, giving myself another unwanted task to finish before preparing for work. During that clean-up, I broke a plate on the floor. Oh, how I wished I could just give up there and then.

The fever and weakness feel surely to go hand-in-hand, and I have learned to become suspicious of the glimmers of hope when they pretend to waver. In the past I have embraced the first glimmers of energy and become more active, only to have the illness return with vengeance and place what feels like an additional tax of severity and duration upon me for daring to celebrate too early.

Friday saw me visit a doctor and secure an antibiotic prescription. Without this luxury of modern medicine, I don't know how or when I would have come out of it. It certainly didn't feel like I was about to bounce back, as I expected I would have normally done, up to now. I really started to fear for my health (hypochondriac tendencies or no). While the fever felt it was beginning to naturally wane, Friday morning took a brief but surprising downturn and felt like one of those things that would just kill off old people and children and others of weak immunity that the news always mentions off-handedly.

Today, I am feeling better, but still weak. I can still regularly cough myself into a brief headache, but I can feel that I am stronger and less infected with the buffet of maladies I am hosting. I am on the penultimate day of my six-day prescription antibiotic, and I am still affected enough that I wonder if tomorrow's final dose will be enough.

My appetite and energy are feebly beginning to return. There is a silver lining to the cloud of cold and flu, where the downtime provides a break from bad habits; I simply don't have the appetite for them, nor the energy to embrace or enjoy them. Junk food, overeating, alcohol are the main players I speak of. I've eaten little during this ill period. While I'd hoped for some weight loss as a result, there has been none. Being bedridden lowers the other side of the register as well, so with no output, the lesser input is only balanced, not a net improvement. Still, I hope to apply enough will to hesitate when resuming these habits, and maybe secure some benefit from this dreary and hated term. Last night's post-dinner ice cream cone bodes that I have my work cut out for me, but there were several instances where it occurred to me to "reward" myself with sweet treats, and I abstained. These are the components of improvement.

I am not helped in this regard by the fact that the past ten days have been almost completely without pleasure or respite. While suffering has been full enough, I am mindful it could have been worse and I try to retain some bit of gratitude to the fore. Still, an extended existence without any highs, pleasant experiences whatsoever, taxes the mind and spirit. As noted before, I started down the road of bitterness about five days in, becoming angry at my little plight, and reveling in it maybe a little more than I should. I'll be glad to see this particular black cloud blow away.

I am sad and ashamed that I have passed the illness on to Michelle. I normally shouldn't be ashamed of a biological function beyond my control, but there was a moment we could have been more conservative in our actions, and Sunday showed proof that we should have waited. She is now inheriting my laundry list of woes, and at least I have the promise of improved vigor with which to care for her, as she did me. I feel badly, not just from guilt, but of empathy. She is at her new job and cannot quite as easily call in sick.

There have been times when she will shake off an illness of mine more quickly and easily than I did; I hope that is the case here. I hate myself for my role in infecting her. All I can do is resolve to take the best care of her that I can.

Watching the world pass me by

There is a pernicious tendency in stand up comedy (and other arts, I'm sure), to strike a spark of jealousy against the flint of others' progress. That is, there are people who will quickly develop a hostility (if not outright hatred) for those that they see succeeding, paying dues and making some kind of progress. How awful.

It is childish and short-sighted and actually detrimental to the one who embraces this way of thinking. It is as clear as any an example of the adage: "Anger is like a hot stone; while you hold it and consider throwing it at your enemy, it is you who is burned." My apologies for a rough paraphrase; it's off the top of my head.

But I am wary as I find myself grinding my teeth in frustration as I see my "peers" (the word is used loosely here, as some are 'above' and some are 'below' me, in my estimation. It matters not) beginning to excel. Nick Larson is talented with photography and image editing. Aaron Kromann is cunning with visual arts. Saul Trujillo is much younger than me, and is becoming skilled and respected in the game of comedy.  They all work at it.

These are just a few examples; there are more. It chafes. It burns, occasionally, that these people are "moving up," as the typical sour grapes, left-behind comedy practitioner might put it. I've had ideas, inspiration for shows or writing or lighting or sound or sponsorship or whatever the hell. And I've let them languish, for some reasons that are understandable and for some reasons that are indefensible, like laziness, fear of being outside a comfort zone, or for the inexplicable, incommunicable motivations that all humans experience on their way to not getting things done.

The difference is (and I am very glad there is a difference) that I understand I don't suffer because they progress. I am happy to see each and every one of the shit-encrusted baboons scrape away the caked-on scum of lethargy and lack (some of these poor assholes don't have a car) and failure off of their miserable hides and attain some "next level" of achievement. Kromann put out a terrific piece of illustration that proudly accompanies the current withering pseudo-rivalry of the MAMA awards this year. Each "MAMA-nee" has put effort and inspiration together and come up with something of which they should be proud. Saul made a fine video. Kromann, his illustration, masterfully done. Even Jason Sohm wrote something legible, I think. El Roberto has nicely posted his proximity to insanity for all to see, and I think it's touching.

And I don't begrudge the any of it. Unlike your typical hater, I see that their success does not equal my failure. It is not a zero-sum game where anything they reap comes out of my harvest.  I am truly happy for each of them when they do well, succeed, "pass."  I've seen all of them, every single one, eat their own excrement in front of a spindly, apathetic crowd, and so I feel that I know them. I am in touch with their humility, even if they are not (but to their credit, I think they all are well aware of their foibles).

But still, I am unsettled. I am bothered to see them make something wonderful. *I* should be making something wonderful. I should have been out working on my abilities last year, when I so smugly considered what I *could* do and left it for later, instead of what I *would* do.

And this is at the heart of my dilemma. Encouragingly, I believe that the only real, productive competition is with that fellow in the mirror. The only person to compare yourself to is the person you were yesterday, or today. Or where you thought you'd be tomorrow. If you can outpace THAT guy, then you have won something. If you can surprise him, and widen *his* eyes a little bit, *then* you have accomplished something.

And I have not impressed that ugly jerk in a while. That hard marker sits and languishes and taps his foot disdainfully and impatiently at my reticence and laziness and chuckles not-so-softly at my sloth, and waits for me to get my shit together and stop making excuses and get uncomfortable and risk my effort and pride and do something I don't know that I can do yet. That prick judges harshly, and I've given him no reason not to laugh derisively and dismiss me.

It pains me to sit in the middle (okay, closer to the beginning) of "the race" and watch runners zip by - "zip... zip... zip-zip..." as I sit in my aluminum lawn chair and numbly search the cooler for one more beer amongst the chunks of ice.

That pang is motivational, if you let it be.

A dream deferred

I was on track to visit Paris in the foreseeable future, and I was stoked. I was studying my French language skills, I was buying guidebooks, and I was scouting Expedia like a sniper on crank. I was in the groove, baby.

Now I'm out of work, and we're lucky to pay bills. Money isn't available to set aside. Language skills are going slack, guidebook's getting dusty, and Expedia can breathe a sigh of relief and stop looking over its shoulder.

I miss the buzz of anticipation. I have said long and often that happiness is having something to look forward to.  It was enough to compel me to all these pleasant endeavors, these happy efforts.

I recently came to realize that I'm still going to Paris, I've just got more time now to study the language, history and art that draws me there, which will inform my trip and expand exponentially my enjoyment of it.

My mindset sloshes to and fro, and I lose sight of valuable nuggets of perspective like this. I really should hold on to it, because it is one of the gobs of light and positivity that helps me stay afloat, so I'm writing it down. Don't wanna lose 'em.

Mornings, and airports

Ugh, mornings are getting rigorous.

Even as I type, I am wolfing down oatmeal and looking at eggs that will also be consumed at a quick pace. I've got laundry in the dryer that wants folding. I got started early so all I have to do is dress and all the other things I have to do before leaving. I tried to get in here to commune with my blog (it really does seem to make me happier), and I have so little time now to do it.

Once I started the new job, I knew ahead of time that the schedule change would present itself in a way that made morning time seem longer than it is, just because being up and moving with purpose at that time was a new event, and the effect would be transitory. Transitory has arrived. I gotta leave in not very long at all.

I still dream of Paris. I don't have much time to do it, but when I can, it gives my brain a pleasant place to reside, to imagine. I had a delicious flashback of walking through an airport, on my way to Paris. What a great feeling that was, in retrospect. Just the bigness of the buildings; the low-level stress "Am I on-time? Yes? Good..." repeat 30 seconds later, constant temporal vigilance); the inundation of other people and yet near-privacy, because they don't know or care what you're doing; and the occasional uniform to either help you along your way, or more prevalent these days, scowl and scream at people who don't line up quickly enough. 12 hours on a plane still sucks, but is worth every minute at the end.

I hope I have the wherewithal to enjoy the airport next time.

Paris, this spring?

I have good reason to hope that I can go back to Paris again, some time this spring. And so I am allowing myself to dream about it again; not that I ever resist "les reves" too feistily, in any event.

I should see when Rick Steves will next publish the latest 2015 Paris book. (Ooh, their next edition comes out this month!  Yeee!)

I should consider day trips outside of Paris. Or longer trips not in Paris. Or trips outside of France, even. In a very real sense, the sun rises and sets for me in Paris. But in other real senses, of course it does not.

Paris, France has captured my heart's attention quite dominantly, but I know there are other countries, cultures and people to be discovered, explored and enjoyed. I wonder if I will see wisdom in selecting one of them instead, by the time I put my money down.

I ponder it occasionally.

One thing I would like to do better than I ever have before is to connect with people abroad. And it troubles me when I speak this goal aloud and people look at me funny. Is it so incredible that I might want to have conversations and make contacts in another place? Am I the weird one in this exchange? Am I just not expressing my desire correctly?

I feel like my expectations are fairly realistic, at least for someone who wants to do something they haven't tried before. And yet many people I've mentioned it to, online or in person, get that "back away and don't make eye contact" vibe going when I mention it.

I admit some naivete: on my last trip I chatted up a restaurant worker and the front desk guy at my hotel, and exchanged email addresses with them. I sent a few emails after my 2010 trip, of course unanswered. My naivete was in being surprised at this. I should have been slightly more cynical in my expectations. Imagining being a service worker in a major city, it's easy to foresee not giving two shits about the customers on a personal level, beyond serving them as well as you can, day-to-day. And they were kind and helpful in that regard, I am glad of that.

I guess it reaches back to my own desire to connect in general. I thought I was rid of this burdensome pull, but as my last trip to Paris taught me, I am not. Paris always seems to have something to teach me.

I shake my head when I follow these thoughts into their tunnels, to draw my awareness back to open ground. Only so much progress can be made at a time, spelunking these possibilities and the warrens in which they reside.

Speaking of tunnels - did I mention I want to see the catacombs of Paris on my next trip? I have started reading the most wonderful book, "Parisians." It artfully tells stories, old and new, of residents of Paris form their point of view in history. I have read the first few chapters, including perspectives from Napoleon, an underground engineer (whose name escapes me at the moment, and escapes most common history, according to the book's narration), and the doomed flight from the royal grounds by Louis and Marie Antoinette. They sure made it sound like Marie Antoinette's spoiled bungling cost the entire campaign its success. But they are just the types of stories that bring life to places and times in such an iconic city. I have also enjoyed "Is Paris Burning?" a historical account told in a dramatic and narrative style. I like this style much better than some dull and dry accounts I have tried to read. Non-fiction is a lot more fun and digestible when it dresses in a few of the trappings of fiction.

Another item that has enhanced my long-distance mooning over the City of Lights is Google Earth. The ability to zoom digitally over the city (with the "3D Building" option on, of course!) makes something within me squeal with delight. Twirling the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe on the screen as if on your fingertip dazzles my little brain in a most wonderful way.

Will Michelle accompany me on my trip? Will James, our nephew? Will I go it solo and become my own hero for the year? Will we or I go somewhere unParisian? Will it all fall apart and remind me that tomorrow is promised to no one as it has in the past? It's all wide open at this point. It seems like anything is possible. I like that feeling.

Job life, in my head

Mornings are a lot busier these days. Coffee is still a necessity, and the time to drink it is a carefully guarded luxury.

Man, I hate the learning curve. Everybody knows all the ins and outs I'm trying to comprehend, and they watch as I stumble over the simplest details. Makes you feel like a fool. It ties directly into the stress center of my brain, and I'm building quite a case of anxiety over it. It is a challenge to route all this effort and concern somewhere, if not positive, at least not harmful. I get so frustrated not to be up to speed right away.

I'm a good worker and a natural helper. I hope I get on top of the technical specifics quickly and start spinning dog shit into gold. I like being a benefit, and this company seems nice enough; I'd like to show them what I can do.

What I really need to do is get control of how I view my job, my self, and my satisfaction level between the two. Right now my buttons become too easily pushed and I too quickly become pushed to the wall, in my head. I need some compartmentalization. I don't think most other people get this flustered and head right to DEFCON 5. In the past this trait has served me by allowing me to push harder and perform when I didn't want to. But older Me doesn't have the infrastructure anymore to burn oil to get through a problem; it doesn't feel like a struggle followed by a win anymore. It just feels like struggle. Bah.

My boss communicates and works in a way that presents a lot of chaos, and a demand that it get sorted out. I think I've described it this way before, but it feels like a bomb going off, with the expectation that one catch all the pieces. I had this feeling at the pool company I worked for, and it burned like acid for months, until I stumbled dumbly into each answer, little by little. It could have been so much less traumatic, but the training wasn't there. There is a similar dynamic at the current place, where the gulf between what I know and what they think I need to be taught is wide. I feel like it could be getting done better, and a smoother, more-productive start could be had.

Ah well. Such are the joys of life. At worst, I suppose, the hand will come to be placed on my shoulder, and the boss will announce "it's not working out..." There, that is the base of my fear, or at least it should be, and it's not so frightening. No, my stress is tied to something deeper in my brain, something murkier and less apparent than losing a recently-acquired job. I should find and cut this troublesome connection.

I tried meditating again this morning. I spent five minutes in a quiet room, focusing on my breath. I try it now and then, but I know that a constant, disciplined habit is the path to improvement there, as with so much in my undisciplined life. But it was good for what it was. I would love to reap the benefits of a more controlled brain. Wouldn't that be something!

I suppose it's one of the reasons I'm trying to stick with this blog again; it seems like I had more clarity or least a more-flexible mind back when I was blogging. As if this is a form of meditation itself. Anyway, I like doing it. But time is so limited these days...

Hoo

Hoo boy.

The new job is going fine, but it's an adjustment. I feel like the learning curve is too obtuse, but it always feels that way.

I am relearning one important thing: how valuable my time is! Not only in that I get paid to spend it somewhere, but also how little of it there is left before and after the workday. Hoo boy.

Good luck getting laundry, dishes, lawn care done. Eating, ironing work clothes, and what is this "recreation" again? I feel like I've heard of it before...

Gotta go...

Back on the chain gang

Well, I messed up and got employed again. It looks like a pretty good job, good but not great, like all the positions I end up into. A new place to hate and hope I never leave. People have a pretty dumb idea of how to live, and I can't help but join them until I figure out a better way.

Yesterday was my first day. It went pretty well, as far as I can tell.

I thought I had more to say about it, but it's slow in emerging. Plus, I feel my old familiar fears creeping back: do I say this, do I say that? I rarely set out to be provocative or hurtful, but left to my own devices I often find a way to say something someone wishes they didn't hear. Ah, it's good to be me.

I had a comedy adventure scheduled for tonight, supposed to go to Berkeley and see some public access television get made, but that's off. C'est la vie, mon ami.

I continue to push for an open mike opportunity nearby. I am in contact with one venue, and the owner seems to be swaying in indecisiveness. His default fallback is a callback: "Call me tomorrow," he says, every day this week. I don't want my impatience to spoil what could be a good thing, but chasing him is not my new hobby. We'll see who surrenders first. I am slightly proud of myself for blogging about the pursuit, which I've been wanting to do for a while.

All this also means that my already-somewhat-neglected video series on local comics is still on the back burner, but the front burner just got a whole lot bigger, so who knows when that will get done. I hope to make it a priority, stop being so precious about it, and just some stuff done and published before the lateness of the project becomes embarrassing in itself.

Finally, I continue to dream my dream of Paris. I hope and expect to return to the City of Lights this spring. Employment can only help, one would think.

Until next time, my friends.

Sick on my 43rd birthday

My birthday was last week.

Man, I had tons of fun stuff in my head I wanted to do: wine-soaked visits with friends, dinner out at a bistro nearby with Louisiana-, quasi-French-based food, comedy night out in a big city...

But the Monday before my little day, I came down with a stomach flu that kicked my ass right in its gut, and still lingers today. I tell you, I went down HARD. Fever, shakes, aches, and a diarrhea that made me feel like I had spent time drinking Mexican water with African mosquitoes. So, so painful. And it wouldn't quit! I have a hard time taking to bed, but I have learned that it is the only way.

I have this grudging urge to "tough" these things out, and to avoid taking pills as if they represent some sort of threat on their own. How backwards of me, especially considering the other things I put in my body on a daily basis, including sugar, salt, fat, pot, beer, etc. Yeah, it's a real temple.

So I've learned that the fastest way back to whistling through life is often dedicated rest, the careful application of over-the-counter pharmaceuticals and plenty of liquids.

Even so, this thing was tough to shake. It stomped right on through my birthday like it wasn't even there, and kept going, right up until yesterday when the clouds began to part. I am starting to feel like my old self again, although I still have a gnawing pain in the right side of my chubby gut and a cough that reminds me all is not quite right yet. But I can eat solid food again, and I don't want to cry when I go to the bathroom. These are good signs. For most of the week, I could barely withstand more than broth and a few crackers. To celebrate, I ate some spicy Mexican-style food my wife put together, because I am a slow learner.

I hate getting sick. I hate the randomness of it, catching it from a stranger I didn't want to meet, shaking his grubby, mucus-encrusted hand out of an outdated, forced social construct that suits no one's needs (and yet if I somehow refuse to shake hands, *I'm* the weirdo). And of course, I hate the illness itself, with its insidious effects, working to destroy (or at least sabotage) you from the inside out. Bah!

And yet there are always things to be thankful for. Being temporarily ill can help put a few new bricks in the wall of your immune system, or so I am led to believe. I did also enjoy on some level the chance to lay flat on my back for days at a time and root through television shows and Facebook updates, activities I am no stranger to but to which sickness gave me the unfettered and guilt-free access. I was often too sick to really indulge in these in any pleasant way, but still...

But the thing I have come to appreciate more is the break it gives my body and mind from the bad habits that I am otherwise nearly powerless to shake; the little contracts I have made between my body and my immediate surroundings that creep in and build up silently and incrementally, much like the cold symptoms themselves. Habits like overeating, drinking too frequently (although I have become very workmanlike in my ability to moderate the quantity) and ingesting the pot. These are things I would like to abate and rethink, but they acquire a momentum of their own and I struggle not to walk in the ruts I have so laboriously worn for myself. I have picked up these coping mechanisms along the way in life to deal with stresses and pains that crop up that can break something important within you, or at least threaten to. But when the pains subside, the mechanisms endure and remain. One of life's little tricks, sometimes a little cruel.

Having your body call these time-outs (in its shit-stained, painful way) is otherwise just the tonic that I need to break the cycle and let them go until the habits are no longer habitual. I can eat a normally-portioned meal, because I am no longer so recently "disciplined" to gorge; more so, I am grateful to contemplate solid food at all, so I appreciate it. I am not so programmed to reach for a beer because hey, it's noon, and by golly this life is worth "celebrating."

I am mindful that these habits can and will creep back in. I've done it before, being in a good place with these things, and watched myself slip back into their waiting, grody arms. But right now, I have at least got them on the other side of the door, and that is a great thing.

I suspect that I would be sharper without their daily influence. I like to think that one drink, one puff, one brownie does not a brain destroy. One of any of these does little real harm. But like waves crashing on a beach, I can easily imagine that one applied after another and another on a regular basis would eventually erode the most impregnable fortress. And my creative and mental fortresses aren't looking too impregnable these days. My game could certainly be tighter. There are projects and just little endeavors that lay untouched, and my motivation could be more robust. Great things lay out there, waiting simply to be picked up and smooshed and formed into something other people will somewhat appreciate.

...

Anyway, I think that is what I came to say. Have a good day out there.

Facebook killed the blog star

I deactivated my Facebook account last night.

Unlike most decisions I make, this one was on the spur of the moment. It had been a long day, a long week and a long year for Facebooking. It had also been a long, trying day personally, and I suppose I was fed up.

The main reason that it felt right was the "lurkers." Lurkers is a term for people who rarely share of themselves in any way on social media. Rather, they watch others and sometimes kibbitz and judge quietly from the sidelines. Always spectators and never players, they have no skin in the game, and I find them cowardly in this way.

One reason I joined Facebook was to share with others and keep in touch, with text, images and videos. I enjoy sharing my thoughts and ideas, my occasional creative works, and promoting friends' comedy shows or other interests that benefit from additional eyeballs.

When others only consume and never contribute, it chaps me, as you can tell. I had an incident months ago where I posted a rather stylistic and amusing short essay about how shitty my commute was. I made the mistake of including an unnecessary reference to mother-in-laws, and it wasn't long before a lurking in-law fired up the switchboard to make sure eeeeverybody got a good look at the big bad words I had written, causing strife and woe to all around.

I could have been a lot more charitable in my writing, and I should have been more careful about others' feelings. I freely admit, I shot myself in the foot on that one. It is not in my nature to bash an otherwise innocent bystander. On the other hand, I consider nearly everything I put down on paper or electronic papyrus to be an exercise in creative writing, to one degree or another. And for it to blow up in my face rubbed me the wrong way.

The things that tweaked it for me was that none of these people even post pictures of their cat, much less discussions, family photos, messages, etc. So in the equation between me and them, I was carrying all the downside. Fuck that.

One might point out that I could simply block them, and I did. But still, the social stinginess still rankled. Not everyone has a need to express and be heard like I do, I get that. But holding back to such a perfect degree just seems wrong.

I've made much of this one incident, but it seems to be a common and recurring through-line in many Facebook interactions, and it's a recurrence I can live without.

When I write, it is right in my wheelhouse to choose cheeky, ribald turns of phrase, as well as topics. I playfully push the envelope, it's just how I like to do it. Lately it seems that even my more innocuous little jabs had pinched others' toes and caused the hurting of butts. While it is also in my nature to smile through these little dust-ups and recommend that others suck it up and recall that "names will never hurt you," I don't seek to hurt others, and it gets tiring explaining myself and apologizing.

Another reason I'm happy to be away from it is that Facebook is a seductive time-suck. All day, every day, if you see me hypnotized by my phone, it would be to catch up on my Facebook timeline, a list of goings-on for people and organizations I have some or no interest in. Now that I am "free" of this constant and willing distraction, I realize how much time I had given to it. It is not a frivolous amount. I find myself looking for and finding worthier endeavors in its place.

Finally, as I have long suspected, Facebook's Status Update made it easy to jot down the brief ideas that crossed my mind, but it sort of discouraged long-form thoughts like those I used to post here. While my creativity's waning may not have been fully due to Facebook's influence, I am certain it didn't help. I hope to see some contemplative wordiness return to this space. And extended journaling like this can be very helpful in luring the Muse down from the mountaintop, and that would be most welcome indeed!

One regret that set in within one day is that I won't be so easily able to track and promote friends' comedy shows. There may be other ways to achieve this, but Facebook's interface did make it convenient most of the time.  Ah, well.

One final regret worth noting is that Facebook's interface made it easy to share my creative works with those within and without my social circle, including drawings, videos and written works. I can and probably will turn to my website and YouTube accounts to display my brain's wares, but I will likely miss FB's utility there. On the other hand, I still have a Tumblr account somewhere. While I may be trading one social media platform for another, I am glad for the opportunity to shake things up a bit, and I am hopeful that the change will being welcome new exchanges.

I am encouraged by the fact that this is more than I've written in a good long while already. Let's hope it's a trend that continues.

A new start:started.

So last week I stopped going to work.

The last few years have seen work and its demands intrude farther and farther into our lives. If it isn't the hours spent working, it's the hours spent getting there and back, and the money it takes to maintain a vehicle, make sure the child is supervised: all the little details that every working family encounters and combats. 

That's all fine, but at some point, the machine you're building takes on a life of its own, creates its own demands, and you start doing things for the machine's sake. I was throwing all of my energy at things I didn't want at all. There was no time left in my day (or night) for fun, for relaxation, for reflection, for love. Nothing but eat, drive, work, drive, housework, sleep insufficiently in quality and quantity, REPEAT.

As a creature of habit, I get in a nice comfy rut, and brother, do I ever stay there. It's a strength, and a flaw. I've stuck with bad jobs and bad women for just this reason. So maybe you can see how difficult it is for me to declare "Fuck this!" and step off the trolley. With my habits and lifestyle reaching ever-more detrimental patterns, I truly believe that something awful would have happened, and soon. Physical event, car accident, mental event. I was red-lining on several fronts, and my commitment to routine was carrying me happily to an early destruction.  It wasn't just the 90-mile commute to my most-recent job - that was just the capper.

Even the previous job before that, at the campground in Avery, CA, I felt I was on the wrong track. Some people think I'm smart, but I'd be a lot smarter if I stopped and looked around more often to see where I'm headed. I felt things closing in but did nothing about it. Further committing to plans I didn't really want to be a part of, I was giving my life away.  This course correction I've made last week could have been more drastic, but I'll settle for this, what seems to be an enormous step back in the right direction. 

At a minimum, it is a break, for which I am hugely grateful and in dire need.  It is also an opportunity to embrace parts of me that I imagine to exist: creative thoughts, ideas, needs, passions, impulses, motivations, desires. God, I hope they're not just imaginary.

So last week was about housework (as will all weeks in the foreseeable future, but none so needful as last's). I threw myself at all the labor needed to push back the tide of filth that had worked its way into every corner of our formerly-nice house. The shit was truly disgusting and embarrassing. I was ashamed to be a part of it, and I wouldn't let me kid spend the night in someone else's home if it looked like that. And yet I let my kid spend every night there. My only excuse was that there was no time to spend making it better. And I knew it was literally true: I spent spare minutes and hours just to keep the place no worse than the unfit-for-human-life condition it was in.

So last week I dug in and started moving, organizing, cleaning, keeping house on a more-aggressive level. I cleaned a bathroom, cleared debris from the dining table and reclaimed 2/3 of the once-ample counter space in the kitchen. We can now set groceries down on something other than the floor when we return from the store. A start.

This week though, I have to start making good on the promises and fantasies that clouded my windshield for the last two years of my "supercommute," the name of the daily, merciless trek to work lasting (much) more than an hour each way. Every day and night I promised myself I would exercise, planned to write and perform comedy, and work with some forms of visual arts, if ever I was given the time and grace to do so.

So here I am now, sitting at a quietly-noisy coffee shop with my son, tapping out the longest blog post in a while, just to limber up my creaking fingers, and loosen up my creakier mind. One of the purposes of this blog is to leave little landmarks along my journey, but if nothing else, I hope this has warmed up the old Thinkin' Machine.

Gotta be a good thing.

Yard sales 5/18/13

My son and I went to a few yard sales today.

I have come to regard garage sales and yard sales as one of the great joys of the changing seasons, on par with the blustery broken clouds and winds of fall, the snows of winter (in some areas, rarely mine), or the buds and birds of spring.

I think it connects my frugal nature with my love of variety quite nicely. Add to that that I have taught my son to enjoy it as much as me, and you've got a pleasant family component that is also rare enough in my day-to-day.

ANYHOO.

My son and I found a fairly sparse number of yard sales to review, with NONE of them advertised on Craigslist.org. Unusual!

But the ones we found were remarkably high quality, with very few of them simply piles of clothes and dirty baby toys, or similarly weirdly bare offerings. Today was great because there were the novelty of choices that make garage sales fun. And the deals couldn't have been better.

The crown jewel of my purchases today was a $30.00 Compaq Presario laptop that has a firewire port! Huzzah! Up until now, I haven't had a way to offload video from my Canon camcorder, as my previous firewire-enabled laptop for the job finally failed. Looks like I found an affordable way out of that, at least for now. So happy.

Here's Poppa Rickie

It's been about a week since Michelle's Dad Ken (aka Poppa Rickie) moved in with us. He's got a little trailer he stays in, and it's his own space.

He helps a lot outside, and spring is a good time to have an energetic outdoor-doer. We all make an effort to get along and so we do. It's an adjustment, but not a big one. It's nice to have him around.

I was looking through one of those big coffee table books on Paris which I had recently scored at a local estate sale, and I took some satisfaction at showing him the image of the topless dancers in the Red Light district. With very little prodding I blabbed on and on about the history of the Eiffel Tower in a nusthell, and he and Michelle and I had such a good conversation I felt like they were doing me a favor, and maybe they were. I enjoyed it in any event.

Death of the Easter Bunny

My son is eight years old now, (nine later this year) and he has been making good use of his burgeoning frontal lobe, applying logic to long-held beliefs. I couldn't be happier. I hope he continues the trend for all his days. But his newfound fact-finding culminated this year in doubt at the existence of a favorite spring harbinger: the Easter Bunny.

I don't know if he saw the goodies hidden in his parents' closet or if there was some other evidentiary loose thread to prompt his suspicion, but a day or two before Easter Sunday the kid was all questions; mainly, one big one: "Is Momma the Easter Bunny?"

I did what any unprepared coward would do: I stalled for time.

"What if she were, son?"

"I'd be sad. But I'd rather know."

We talked a little longer and I felt around inside his head to see just how much damage I'd do if I told him that the Easter bunny had tattoos and kissed Daddy goodnight at the end of every day.  After further review, I found that the "sad" part outweighed the "I'd rather know" part, and he seemed more reluctant for the unvarnished truth than he did originally.  So, and with both of us becoming weary of a conversation where one doesn't quite know what he's talking about and the other won't talk about what he knows, I offered the limpest-wristed confirmation that: "Yeah son, your mom's totally not the Easter bunny," complete with a sarcastic and defeated delivery, my lack of sincerity itself a clue.

My uncertain choice to flaccidly continue the lie for juuuust a little longer was proven the right one when my son eagerly snapped up the confirmation and let the whole mess go.

One sacred cow, rescued.

As it turns out, the cow was massacred just as sloppily not twelve hours later, when my wife set her alarm for 5:30 a.m. I knew as soon as we awakened that we were treading on thin ice. As soon as we stirred, our still-new Mastiff puppy "Kaos" sensed movement and start to fret and jostle, not ten feet from my son's sleeping head. With the spring sun already tickling the edges of the sky, it didn't take much for my son to rouse.  That, plus the fact that our house's layout demanded that we either creep directly past his bedside or climb out the second-story window, I "could smell what the Rock was cookin'."

Sure enough, one of us tried to slip by with a ridiculously large and colorful Easter basket, and the other with a plastic grocery bag full of eggs, my son piped up in the darkness: "Whatcha doin'?"

"Go back to sleep!" Came the slightly harsh reply, attitude borne of guilt.  But the little monster was not to be swatted away so easily. In fact, the persistent (dare I say "spoiled?" You better fucking believe I do) early-riser was so indignant and cranky about the whole thing (and about not being allowed to collect eggs sooner than planned, while Momma and Daddy still futilely clinged to hopes of returning to bed), that we threatened to tell the Easter Bunny to forget the whole thing, and meant it! I think part of his obstinacy was rooted in his disbelief that we had such powerful connections that we could cancel our reservations with His Egginess at such a late date.

After ten cold, dewy minutes of egg dropping, we were still finishing up the furtive task when the front door of the house opened, and there again, was my enterprising, curious young boy.  Again, we shooed him back to bed a little more stridently than would otherwise be called for, but there were secrets to be kept. Dark, difficult-to-explain secrets.

The task finally done, we "sneaked" back into the house, only to face a disillusioned and skeptical child who reminded me that the ladder to his bunk bad sits next to the window, out of which he looked when climbing back into bed. And what did he see?

You know damned well what he saw: his two lying parents dropping plastic eggs full of money and candy and a basket with his favorite new video game ("Luigi 3D for the Nintendo 3DS" or some shit like that, a forty dollar value by itself) in the front yard. My little toe-tapping darling was surprisingly hostile for someone who just found out his parents are way more generous than previously thought.

But soon he was over it and happily collecting eggs and money and sugar and plastic grass and singing our praises in a sugar-rush that will likely entwine with our benevolent betrayal in the catacombs of his child mind, and take years of psychotherapy to untangle.

Ah, parenthood. Good luck defusing this little brain-bomb, Dr. Quackenstein.