Deportment of Monster Vermicules

On the drive to Nags Head the green Soobie will have 4 drivers--3 girls + Tyler--and the silver Soobie will have me. Chauffeuring Jeff and Gabe. But it’s totally fair I guess, because as I drive for 7 hours I’ll get to listen to a streaming monologue about how the best superpower in the world would be “iron face” or “air-cannon sneeze,” while Jeff sits shotgun, forgetting that he just downgraded from a driver’s license to an official Maryland State I.D. card.

I had a plan. (I admit, it was a really lame plan.) Gabe would have his learner’s permit (which we would have obtained today,) and I would make him drive part of the easier slow road down the southern tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, and we’d cross to Norfolk via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The lame part of the plan was that this would not exactly be a restful break for me. I would be insisting that taking out a few trees as we rounded bends too fast was undesirable, while Gabe would be extemporizing on why his first car should be a tank with a rubber-band Gatling gun instead of a horn.

But, in any event, having the permit pre-beach is now an iffy proposition at best. We lined up in front of the DMV this morning, 10 minutes before the 8:30 opening, behind roughly 20 people. It is a strange thing to have to help process 2 people, both of whom appear to be humans who should be able to handle their own affairs. The desk lady gave us our numbered slips--C1 to Gabe, B12 to Jeff, and I tried to sit us where we could see the numbers when they popped up on the magic screen.

C1 popped up first. (Illogical, I know, but it did.) I accompanied Gabe to the proper window, where almost the first thing was looking into the eye-testing machine. “Read the 4th line,” said the man. “GMDV” says Gabe. “Read the rest,” says the man. “The part that comes after that.” Gabe couldn’t. Ok. Give me the dumb award now. Gabe hasn’t had glasses since about 6th grade when he stopped wearing them and never complained that he had trouble reading or seeing the board at school or anything else. It was, after all, a correction for his toddlerhood “lazy eye,” as opposed to a more clearcut case of myopia. But evidently, that right eye is really not up to snuff, and now we’re going to have to do something about it. (And how crazy is this? Gabe having to remember both his wallet and his glasses when he drives?) Still, and fortunately, the optometrist gave us an appointment for tomorrow...so we may yet be able to fulfill my dream of getting to Nags Head with my nerves shot to heck. So Gabe, insouciant as ever, struck up a conversation with an DMV employee about how the room should be filled with bumper cars, while I realized--with slight panic--that the magic board was now on B14, not B12.

”Jeff,” I say to Jeff, who is looking everywhere except at the magic board. “Did it ever say B12?” A man sitting 2 benches back points to one of the service windows. “There’s B12,” he says. I thank him, and Jeff follows me to where a lady sits rapping her nails on the desk. As the lady takes Jeff’s paperwork, I scuttle over to where Gabe is having an animated conversation with a DMV person about candy bars. All seems ok, so I hurry back to hear Jeff say “I have Alzheimer’s.” Ok, I think...guess those cards are on the table now. See, the thing is, Jeff didn’t want an I.D. He wanted a driver’s license, even acknowledging that he can’t use it because he’s uninsurable. So we were just going renew the license, and not mention anything medical...really, just to avoid that step of finality which was troubling to him. But he said it. So when the lady (nicely, in fact,) asked whether it impaired his driving, I confessed that he isn’t actually allowed to drive anyway, he just needs I.D. for airplanes and whatnot. So he has an I.D. card. Yep. That’s that. And there’s this: Next time I go to the DMV with Gabe I’ll only have to watch for one number to pop up.

behoovedness, cloven

People do the stuff they have to do. If the stuff they have to do does not occupy all of their time, they do stuff they want to do. If either the stuff they have to do or the stuff they want to do produces a result that turns out to be especially popular with or helpful to other people, then--one could argue--that they have found purposes in life.

The problem with assuming that people have purposes though, is that there is a much larger subset of humans whose activities prove neither particularly popular nor useful in any notable way.

So, you have to posit that either only a small subset of humans have a purpose (and the others do not,) or that no one does, but the smaller subset have just happened upon fortuitous occupations.

Actually, I suppose you could contend that many among those whom I’ve deemed “purposeless,” do indeed have one--it’s just smaller and quieter. Not notably popular, but possibly helpful.

I don’t know which of those is the case, if either. No purposes at all, in particular, or merely unflashy, under-the-radar purposes for most. I lean toward the former, but in case the latter is true, and one is to be assigned a purpose later in life, it would behoove one to exercise the mind and body so as to be fit to take it on. It would behoove one to exercise the mind and body even if no purpose will be assigned, also.

And that will have to do for a philosophy.

(The amazing thing is that there is a noun, singular, form of behoove that looks like this: behoof...meaning benefit or use. That's a pretty good word which appears to have nothing to do with feet.)

Remember Grasshopper--real life is not bumper cars

Some day I’m going to buy myself a big fat present--whatever I want--as a reward for teaching 4 kids how to drive.

I’m on the 4th and last. Today was his first time ever behind the wheel. It was different on several counts.

For one thing, the first 3 were girls. I realize this doesn’t apply to all girls, and I can name a few exceptions, but I find that--in general--girls are predisposed to not want to crash into things. There is, very often, just this primordial sense of caution in females which Y chromosomes, apparently, eradicate. So, as we’d lurch to a halt 3 inches from a sapling, he’d guffaw instead of freezing with that deer-in-the-headlights mien. So I would point out--again--that the consequences of not keeping your vehicle clear of other objects are generally negative. And he would laugh--again--and speculate about what you’d do if a full-size house suddenly burst through the pavement in front of your car.

We are starting out in a stick-shifted Soobie. Before, I have taught the girls basic driving in an automatic before we’d tackle the manual transmission learning curve, but I decided to jump into the frying pan right off the bat this time. After all, if kids prior to the 60’s did it, why can’t Gabe? Right. And he did very very well. Honestly. In 30 minutes of driving around the Community College parking lot there was only one instance of that lurching jerking stall-out that so characterized the girls’ early trials. And there was absolutely no discernible frustration. But here’s something that hadn’t occurred to me before today. When you are so focused--in your first lesson--on acquiring the moves needed to start, shift to second, shift to third...there is less cranial capacity available to allocate to basics such as gauging turning radius, lane position, comfortable U-turn velocity...the sorts of things which are pretty much all you’re thinking about in your first automatic transmission experience. So it may be this as much as gender which precipitated our close encounters with several trees and stop signs.

At any rate, 30 minutes was about all I could handle for today, but taking it slowly and steadily over the next year seems a prudent approach anyway. Driver’s ed is scheduled for October, and it’s entirely likely that the kid will hit his 17th birthday, next April, before we actually ink the license deal. And therein lies one more difference between Gabe and his sisters. He himself is as indifferent as he could be. Not that he didn’t enjoy the experience--I think he did. But there is quite obviously no fire in his soul to acquire the license, hence, there is no tugging on the reins required of me. Taking it slowly will suit everyone as far as I can tell.

In fact, I will pretty much have to blackmail him into taking the online practice theory tests 30 or so times until he knows every question inside and out. Because when we go to the DMV to score that learner’s permit, there will be no chance of his flunking the test and my having to appear in that mob one time more than necessary.

I have a fantasy called “drivers’ camp.” You’d send your teenager to...I don’t know...the middle of Nebraska, where’d they’d spend a month or more being taught by professionals who’d send them home trained, licensed, and ready for the Washington Beltway. Or at least Severna Park on a Saturday.

Life always makes me say "oh."

What does it mean when you can actually feel the mental brick wall you keep having to bash through when you’re on a steeply pitched uphill learning curve? Fie on USPS barcodes and the pony express pony they rode in on. Are there people who absorb new levels of technical complexity with ease, or does everyone’s brain hurt now and then?

For my next trick, I will help Olivia get her new MacBook up and at ‘em. What wonders await? (Frankly, this should be easy. It’s my...what...8th Mac set-up?) But even remembering where the heck I put the Office:Mac install software seemed taxing...as it does every time. Had we not missed exercise this morning, I could have aching triceps to balance my brain.

Here is one good and unexpected thing: We got, with the Mac, a “free” iPod Touch, and “free” printer. Which means not really free right then and there, but there’s a rebate. I hate rebates. I hate rebate forms. Usually you need 3 receipts, a UPC code sliced off the actual box, several copies of everything, and reading glasses to fill in all the numbers. But I have never experienced such a quick and simple rebate submission as the online Apple one I did this afternoon. Go to apple.com. Enter receipt id#. Hit go. Done. This is something Apple is definitely doing right.

Today 3 tuition packs came in the mail, from St. Mary’s. 3? Wait a minute...didn’t someone just graduate? I remember something about a blue mortarboard and rain...but there it is, on my desk with the undergrad ones: Math for teachers. Exceptionality. Educational Psychology. So, does this mean we maybe are thinking about the Masters in teaching? Thank goodness I’m not the first to find these things out. What a burdensome drag that would be. (smirky smile at Zoto, who will read this.) At least I was only the second to find out that I may keep all children on my health insurance policy until they are 25. No, seriously. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, if your brain explodes like mine is about to (thanks to postal barcodes) and we have to replace it with silicon, (which could be pricey I’m guessing,) it will be much cheaper if we just have insurance on you in the first place.

We had Chipotle for lunch. We like Chipotle. We do not eat there infrequently. It tends to be busy, and your orders are processed individually, assembly-line style, as you advise the Chipotlers on what else they should toss on your tortilla. I got to the the cashier, people piling up behind me. There is my burrito, waiting. I turn to Jeff, behind me. “Which is your salad?” I ask. “I haven’t ordered yet,” he replies. But wait. He’s behind me. We’ve reached the cashier. We’re 12 feet from the person he was supposed to tell, and the throng is getting heavier. I say to the guac-girl “He forgot to order his salad down there.” She seems to understand, issues a quick command to the guy at the starting end, and they’ve fixed the flub in fifteen seconds flat. It went well. Later, Olivia says to me: “That’s why you make Jeffy go before you.” Yes, indeed.

we accomplish some stuff

Tonight Tyler bribed Gabe into learning how to shave by promising to play Super Smash Brothers afterwards. I listened from the stairway as Gabe was coached through the steps...women’s shave foam because (said Tyler) it’s softer and smells better, and (and here’s something I didn’t know as I have yet to shave a face) never go sideways--always go up or down. So, I am grateful to have that rite of passage broached by someone more in the know than I. So one more thing is added to the arsenal of hygiene functions which--while he may not employ them to best advantage now--Gabe will at least have the wherewithal to accomplish.

Here’s what I’m exceptionally bad at: Dance Dance Revolution, aka DDR. Like most forms of digital entertainment, it requires much more mind/body coordination than comes easily for me, so it takes quite a bit of determined rewiring to bumble my way through anything involving a screen and associated physical responses. Come to think of it, I have the same problem with my fiddle. Committing anything which requires even moderate dexterity to memory--and muscle memory--is an arduous process. But doing so anyway seems better than accepting slothlike reflexes as the unbreachable status quo. The thing is, I just made up the word “unbreachable” apparently, but it seems to fit.

hodge podgerie of dumbness

Some things are too idiotic to make public. Some people are idiotic enough to make them public anyway. I’m trying to decide (and, being of the above-mentioned ilk, admitting to it) whether I’m really going to find myself as directionless as it looks like soon. And what does one do with finding oneself a) not in the market for a job in the classic sense, b) without young children in need of attention, and c) with an (a)vocation which appears to have been proven untenable?

Many people might have an answer to that, and that’s partly because their vocations are not--or have not yet been demonstrated to be--untenable, so they still maintain a vision of pursuing them. But for the purpose of this exercise, you must assume your vocation has been ruled out. What then?

I can do some unilateral brainstorming and propose a few things.

I could become a scholar. I don’t know if it will work. My attention and focus have been pretty sketchy lately, but there’s much I want to study, in theory.

I could let other people hand me their ideas of fulfilling (or at least useful) volunteer work, but, frankly, I have enough and don’t want more. Nor do I want someone else’s idea of what I should do. It has to be at my instigation, useful or not.

As for fiction...it’s creative hiatus time. I’m just going to be working on other stuff for a while.

Sell Apple/Buy Bucyrus? I hate buying/selling. Makes me feel so...imprudent. And yet, and yet--if it is the one thing Mr. J is able to take a meaningful interest in and the proposed exchange has the hallmarks of a sound buy/hold decision and it’s a shift away from a more volatile industry...well, ok then. Ok.

Who’s up for another crack at Wagon Wheel in August? Me. I want to put the fiddle riffs where they belong. And this time we have to sing. Yes. Really. We’ll sing it. I’ll harmonize. It won’t be that bad.

Anyone want a lichen-hued, pollen-covered, nonoperational minivan? Right. Thought not. (No, you can’t jump it either. But you can call AAA and have them tow it to Hondaman.)

I'll cut it out soon, I promise.

I wrote this:

The nice thing about harsh realities is that existential angst just can't, in the face of them, maintain its grip. Oh, for sure, some existential tricks are helpful, but angst just isn't worth the bother.

But I was mistaken. You might not think angst is maintaining its grip, simply because the general busyness of crisis distracts you, but if angst is fated to be your traveling companion in life, you can be certain it will reassert itself in time.

I was thinking I should give it a name, seeing as how existential angst doesn’t skip daintily off the tongue. So, what I’m going to do right now is see if I can Google-up a random name generator since meaningfulness is not one of my stronger attributes...(so hang on there a second...)

Ok, I’m back. And I’m going to have to confess--the generator was random, but I had to fire it off several times before the right name popped up. So here is the new moniker of my angst-friend: Nitza. Oh, it just makes sense and you know it.

Nitza has been very evident lately, and I’ve had to think why. Because thinking why is something I can do now so effectively that the whole story becomes quite transparent.

Odd there, that I even used the word “story,” because, right now, what Nitza is on about is the dissolution of my default narrative. The default narrative(s) went like this: There is a guiding force in life from which I can discern a path, a purpose, and a means to creatively contribute to the collective is-ness. It’s a pretty story, and who wouldn’t want live in it?

In fact, it was a portion of the following quote (which is often mistakenly attributed to Goethe, when in fact, only the final couplet is a rough translation from Faust) which provided some of the psychological rocket fuel I needed to get myself through the first book I wrote:

...the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

In fact, this is a passage from W.H. Murray’s 1951 The Scottish Himalaya Expedition. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but magical thinking--regardless of whether one’s muse is Goethe or Murray--was probably better abandoned along with baby teeth.

I do favor narrative, so it’s understandable that I’d want one. But I expect that there are many people who are able to make life meaningful without imagining the guiding nudge of a thinking cosmos, so that’s what I’m working on now. Restructuring the way I see things, perhaps using a material which Nitza isn’t so prone to shake. Until I get at least a good foundation built though, she’s rattling away at the bit of time-space continuum I’m occupying. She likes to remind me of how old I am, and point out acts of notable creativity by others who are not me, and ask (in her tremulous alto) “what did you write those books for??” To which I can only, so far, respond “Nothing Nitza. I wrote them for nothing. And we will make that ok.”

Actually, I’m hoping that now that I have outed Nitza, I won’t feel compelled to write about her so much. On to something more interesting. Like how April showers bring...May showers, which bring, apparently, ants.

Rabbit wisdom

The number of concert association renewals waiting for me to process them is roughly...a lot. And I will. They just need to sit there and age a bit, so that their characters fully develop. Meanwhile I will spend a little time wondering why blank days on the calendar add a special twist of flavor to my baseline anxiety level.

On that note...well, not really that note, but at least in that key and mode...I’m wondering whether it would be appropriate to change my default identity from “writer” to “slacker.” Or whether there’s a more descriptive term than slacker, because that’s not quite what I mean to connote. I don’t particularly evade work and responsibility, and I’m not--as far as I can tell--marked by apathy. I need a word that means “existing without an externally validatable identity.” (She who makes up words when none of the dictionary-approved ones suit her?)

Yes. If you have time to worry about this stuff, perhaps you have too much time. One of the tricky aspects of the aforementioned blank-calendar days. You might say “You need more to do.” I might reply “I have, as I mentioned, a stack of concert association renewals. I just don’t want to do them. They’re tiresome.” You might say “You’re tiresome.” I might reply “Yes. Thank for a defining word.”

I am struggling to continue the book. (though I will. I do feel I owe the characters that much.) But the struggly part is perfectly understandable (to me anyway,) in that I have three completed books and nothing to do with them. It’s kind of like making three delicious cakes, decorating them with Cool Whip™, and saying “Couldn’t we just look at them for a while?” So here I am thinking “Let me hurry and finish the 4th! Heaven knows 4 moldy concoctions stinking up the fridge on their way to the garbage must be better than 3.” So, that’s the thing. Purpose is a bit elusive here.

Which leaves me the determinedly healthy, if sort of labile, support-partner to a wonderful but fading person who can no longer provide the sturdy presence which kept me sane.

So Fred-fred and I went on a sanitizing walk this morning and stared down a good many bunnies. Who continued to nibble their clover, as if to say “don’t you have some concert association stuff to work on?”

I would just rust if I had iron

So great. I’m now, officially, the worst arm-wrestler in the family. It is almost a draw with Becca but I perceive that I would wear out sooner. Sad. Still, I will keep rowing that imaginary boat and lifting that imaginary Earth over my head, Atlas-style, at the community center. I just need bones. Bones are what I need. I suppose it’s not surprising that when you mix an ectomorph and a mesomorph you gets kids who are more mesomorphic than the ectomorph. But now, without further ado, I can quite honestly defer heavy-lifting jobs to whomsoever else happens to be handy, on the grounds that he/she is proven in clinical studies to be musclier.

Yay for the online health insurance apps. Seemed to go without a hitch. Jeff gets part D, and the rest of us have a cheapo (relatively speaking,) low-premium, monster deductible United Healthcare safety mat. I’m still voting Democrat, and I’m still hoping for something better.

In the good citizen department, I tried to donate blood today, at the Community Center. Hemoglobin, as measured by the little red gizmo, has to be 12.5. My first fingerstick turned up 11.5. “You want to try again?” asked the lady. “Sometimes it goes up” (for no apparent reason, I might add.) It did. To 12.0. So two stuck fingers later I was still a reject. I’ll try again in August.

In other news, I realize what’s bugging me. The world isn’t magic, and I wanted it to be. I was really kind of hoping for Yoda, or Clarence the wingless angel, or the celestial voice of Mufasa...or something. I might even accept a talking tub of margarine. I just hold a worn blanky of a myth that there should be further instructions, and there aren’t. Well, at least there’s coffee.

Here's a haiku, most excellently generated by this silly little haiku engine:

Haiku2 for messandclutter
who lives here who thought it would be a matter of throwing a few things
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.cominsanejournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

Here are more:

that which had plopped
was breakfast not for us and
sadly for her not

the breakfast shoppe where
the eggs homefries and toast were
fine but the coffee

abstraction that is
simply playing tricks with our
imaginations

did I say I was done with the angst? oops.

I’m looking through The K&W Guide to Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities or ADD. (Anything to avoid facing the book-which-I’m-afraid-to-write. You wouldn’t think that at halfway into book 4 I’d be afraid to write any book, but I am. If I dragged myself through the last one with a psychological broken foot, I’m limping through this one on 2 broken feet and wobbly inner-ears.)

The K&W, meanwhile, is something with which I want to familiarize myself anyway. Now that Olivia’s college roulette ball has staunchly seated itself in the indentation marked SMCM, my attention turns to Gabe and what-the-heck we’re going to do with him.

I need to have more confidence in the guy. I’m comfortable that the girls are raised, as securely as anyone gets raised...but Gabe is such a different story. Not just different. Written in another alphabet. In characters that no one ever taught me. Speaking of which, he wants to take Japanese. Seriously? Can I entertain the notion that this could work? Having no other notions to entertain, I will for now. So where--in the K&W--do they offer Japanese?

American University, for one. Not exactly the small town atmosphere--Massachusetts Avenue, District of Columbia. <6000 Undergrads. At least it’s not College Park. Still, I can’t imagine it, but I’m suffering from a failure of imagination across the board these days. So there’s another function I’d like to turn over to somebody else for 10 minutes or so: Driving, food planning, household maintenance, and imagination.

Olivia smeared me in an arm wrestle yesterday. An absolute rout. And that’s good. Despite my basic strength, and the resistance training at the Community Center (I’m keeping all my osteocytes, thank you,) it is no surprise that a full-grown girl with the female equivalent of her father’s mesomorphic structure would smash a long-boned equatorial like me. So it’s good, because the WWF is not a club I aspire to join, but somehow it has contributed--in a minor way--to my overall feeling that I’m 85 years old, fading into obsolescence, and am done. (Except for getting Gabe situated, that is.) Fortunately--I guess--that feeling of doneness is at least slightly counterbalanced by an angry sort of determination that not only will I keep my osteocytes--but I’ll keep my neuronal pathways cobweb free, my spirits up, and my tendency to be delighted by stupid little things like squirrels fully functioning. Right. So schizo as usual.

For some reason I keep running into (in the magazine sense) Maria Shriver and Jamie Lee Curtis, both of whom declare that they’ve reached points in their lives where they’re fully indifferent to success as understood by the general human public. Meaning in life, they say, is not about that which brought them to fame--it’s about relationships, family, making a positive difference. I absolutely, absolutely believe them. Furthermore, I didn’t need either one of them to tell me that. I have a complete intellectual understanding that this is the case. But I wonder if--without having experienced the accomplishment--without having crossed that plane where people can see, acknowledge, and validate that you did indeed do something, have a career, make use of your brain--without having done that, would they still be able to claim to have reached this more enlightened state of mind? I’m not sure. But maybe I too will own that knowledge within the next decade or so. In which case I’ll check back and assure everyone that external validation is not required.

salad daze

I am really wired, beyond a helpful amount, at the moment. I’m sure that I can pin the condition, at least in part, to the additional cups of coffee we bought at the Marvelous Market on Nebraska Avenue, which--truth be told--was less than marvelous. I’m mainly gauging this quality ranking by hotness of the coffee. In this case it was tepid, reminding me of why I prefer Gary’s Grill to The Breakfast Shoppe for breakfast. Coffee should be served at a not-quite-drinkable hotness. This is not a rule that is bendable, except in cases of medical-based mouth-sensitivity conditions.

Still, this particular trip--to and from Georgetown for dose #2 of the hypodermic substance of unknown composition and efficacy--was, for the most part, pleasant and unfraught with peril. I made up the word unfraught. I hope you like it.

No, the only dicey aspect of the medical visit was that Jeff kept lying down perpendicular and abdomen-up on the bed in the room, with his head hanging backward over the edge, which made the nurses fret that he’d be dizzy when he stood up. I was not worried, as I have known Jeff to recline in odd positions for what seems like forever.

Upon being sprung for the afternoon, we headed up Wisconsin Avenue in search of food. I slowed down in the neighborhood of a parking meter, but ultimately bypassed Heritage India, because I knew that although Jeff would not push his preference, it leaned in the direction of the Tex-Mex place I mentioned having seen many times in passing. Instead, we continued north, parking 3 blocks west of the Cactus Cantina where I feared I’d have to ferret carefully between menu lines to avoid meat and cheese. I ordered a salad--a “Sunshine Salad,” expecting to be gustatorially bored. I was not. Heaped with orange slices, avocado, walnuts, corn, pepper strips, dried tomatoes, and field greens, deftly bathed in a peanut dressing, it was a most satisfactory concoction, and I scarfed the whole pile, which was unlike me. Then I snarfed the rest of the tortilla chips so as not to be carb-deprived. Jeff seemed equally pleased with his chicken-accented Monterey salad.

Here was the only event of concern at lunch. We entered the lively dining-joint which was festooned with cowboy boots and placards of Mexican cinema...(example: El Caballo del Diablo. Well, if you aren’t interested in a film about Beelzebub as a horse in need of a good exorcism, I’m not sure where your priorities lie)...and we sit down. No, wait...

Before we sit down we have to follow the hostess to our table. Which I do. Then, I turn around and realize I have lost Jeff. I backtrack around a column and espy him standing 15 or so feet down the corridor, looking dazedly this way and that. I wave. He spots me. Then we sit down.

There is, just across the street, a derelict corner being retrofitted into a wine bar, and the predominant architectural feature--at the moment--is tarpaper. Jeff says That’s a familiar sight.
What?, I say.
The tarpaper, Jeff says.
Where have we had tarpaper outside the window before? I ask.
Here. he says certainly.
We’ve never been here before, I say...but just as I say it, I am ready to kick myself. He looks at me like a kid who’s just been told there’s no Santa Claus, and, by the way, that he’s really adopted. He does not pursue it, but I can see that this is a troubling thing, and that we’re beginning to touch the edges of that time I know is coming when my kindest response will be to accept whatever he says as his reality. Not until we’re leaving does he bring it up.
Come here, he says, pulling me toward a 2-sided glass case full of southwest paraphernalia, through which you can see the dining room we just left. We sat right there. He points slightly south of the table we just vacated.
No, I say, It must just look a lot like somewhere else we’ve eaten.

The rest of the drive home is better, but there have been those moments throughout the day, and I wonder, not entirely seriously, if that’s what happens when you hang your head off a bed for too long.

want a cubyrop candy?

Gabe is off all week due to Spring Break. My options include tolerating his nocturnal, raccoon-like habits which extend to rummaging through every food-bearing receptacle in the house all night (between blowing away zombies and antlions in Half-Life 2), or coercing him into the odd field trip in a futile attempt to nudge him toward humanoid behavior. Today, we opted for a field trip.

So, piled into the Soobie--Gabe and Jeff in back, Olivia riding shotgun (after convincing her dad he had more leg-room that way,) we forged the dusty--or at least exhausty--trail to H Mart in Catonsville.

The real name of H Mart is Han Ah Reum, and heaven-knows-what in Korean characters, but they helpfully gave it the pronounceable moniker for the benefit of the subset of customers who appear to hail from many latitudes of the Americas.

Our goals were, in part, specific: Pocky--a stick-pretzel snack dipped in a variety of flavors, and Ramune sodas, otherwise known as “marble drinks” for the glass marble trapped in the bottle’s narrow neck, over which the drink must flow to reach your mouth.

Things I was surprised by:
Fuji apples the size of softballs. We bought 4.
Durians. I imagined these spiny fruits to be kiwi-sized. They were bigger than footballs. We bought none.
Green bean popsicles. Gabe, deciding they would be perfect for his friend Matt’s birthday, went on to select several accompaniments: A canister of wasabi peas, a can of Grass Jelly Soda (which I can tell you, based on personal experience, is overly sweet Coke with gelatinous blobs floating in it. yum.), and one of the aforementioned gargantalossal apples.

Not surprisingly as these adventures go, Gabe’s science teacher called my Palm Centro as we were contemplating packages of seaweed roughly the size of boogie boards. Seems that Gabe neglected to mention that he needed to bring in $14 for an upcoming science center field trip. So, I am trying to get the gist of this while steering out of the way of shoppers who actually want seaweed*, and Jeff is scrambling to stick a pen and sticky-note in my face in case I need it but I am ignoring it because I’ve determined that I don’t, but am still multi-tasking while on the phone. Which means temporarily disregarding family members. Whose feelings get hurt. Jeff disappears.

You hurt Dad’s feelings, says Olivia.

I was trying to hear Gabe’s teacher, I say.

But this is just like what you always tell me, she says, He doesn’t understand.

So we hope he will not go far, and a short while later, after we’ve snagged shark-themed ice cream bars, Hello Kitty marshmallows, and mango juice, we send Gabe out to find him while we navigate the checkout lane (which is roughly 2 feet wide.)

Olivia exits ahead of me in order to corral her dad and brother, so by the time I push the cart out she has them in line.

Now I am home thinking that we should have bought more in the way of actual food, but noting that one could not identify the components of just any product offered at H Mart, due to the fact that I can’t decipher Asian characters of any sort.

*note to Fred, my brother-in-law, who did actually want seaweed. I got confused in the seaweed aisle. But don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll go back.

jazz man

Jeff bought a trumpet player when he was in Florida. He told me about it, and said he’d arranged to have it shipped here, but that was three weeks ago and I’d been wondering whether I’d gotten the accurate story, or whether details had fallen through the cracks like forgotten phone numbers, or the specifics of how locks are rekeyed.

He came today. In a big old taped up UPS’d box that set the dog berzerk and occupied way too much space on the kitchen floor. I knifed through box #1, then box #2, then finally breached box #3 sans knife after entreating Jeff not to lift anything but the payload out of box #1 lest styrofoam peanuts overrun the house.

He was mummified in plastic wrap and tape, so I carefully clipped him free. I was struck by three things: his lovely face and hands, that he only existed from the waist up, and that parts of what there was of him appeared to have been eaten away by alien flesh-eating nano-bots from outer space.

This was disconcerting and unexpected, but I resolved to focus on the positive space, rather than negative, and we set him on the piano as a sort of traumatized musical muse.

When Olivia got home from track practice we made her look. She gazed in momentary wonderment, then said ”This is relatively disturbing...I mean I like, it, but it reminds me of a horror movie I saw where this woman kills people and turns them into puppets. This part (she said, indicating the roughened, hollowed-out cavity where our trumpeter was missing part of an elbow) reminds me of the inside of one of the victims’ heads.”

Clearly we were in need of another opinion, so we pried Gabe out of the computer room to have a look. ”Heh...” (said Gabe.) ”It looks like something ripped the top half of his body off...cool.”

Nonetheless, he remains on the piano. His face is enchanting, his hands and arms, rippled with the veins of a lean musician, are inviting to caress. Perhaps we will adapt to the missing chunks. I think I can imagine what the artist had in mind. Sometimes a chalk portrait will fade out into jagged edges...and it works in 2D. But in 3...well...there’s a juxtaposition here between photographic realism and abstraction that is simply playing tricks with our imaginations. Still, we do not discriminate here against people who are gradually disappearing, whether it be to nano-bots or to other sorts of degeneration, do we?

cooties are not carbon based.

Did you smell Gabe? asks Olivia. He smells good today. I mean, he smells like a boy, but he smells good.

So I go, briefly, into the Chamber of Secrets aka the computer room, and take a whiff. Yes, I conclude. A nice, pleasant masculine aroma. Not the stink that so often occurs after a long day at school under the couple of extra jacket layers the kid always insists on wearing.

Gabe is not impressed one way or the other by having his sister and mother come in to give him the sniff test. But I am gratified, as I hope that one day other people (or person) will want him to live with them, and it is satisfying to know that he can potentially smell attractive.

I cannot yet attest to whether or not he has cooties. Personally, I most certainly do, and I have no doubt that it’s a congenital condition and, as far as I know, not contagious. Yet I have spawned 3 cooties-negative daughters and I hope that once Gabe outgrows his 15 year old boy troll phase that he too will not be the sort of person who sends out my almost palpable “go thither” vibe

Luckily, some cooties-negative folk are immune to the repellant magnetic field we cootie-positives emit, and I know that because I married one. But as my buddy continues his slow fade, I’m confronting, after 20+ years, the ridiculous fact that the cooties are still there. You would think that all that childrearing and middle-age would have eradicated the cooties, but it has not. Hence, I conclude that it is a life-long, incurable condition, and that it is my problem to work around.

Or perhaps most people are like Hydrogen, Oxygen, or even Carbon, and rather inclined to form bonds, whereas I’m Neon, and relatively non-reactive. When I do, it can be quite spectacular, but in the meantime, we neons float around wondering how it is that O and H have such an easy time making connections.

Well that’s easy. They don’t have cooties. And we wish Gabe smelled good all the time.

house too big

Fredfred the Varfolator is expressing her most irate opinion to Zoe, the little westie who lives next door and has the nerve to sniff around her own back yard.

This morning I hustled Jeff and Gabe both out the door at 7am. It was not simple or pretty, but both seemed to be more or less dressed and washed. We dropped Gabe off for carpool, then hit the Breakfast Shoppe where the eggs, homefries, and toast were fine but the coffee was tepid. Consequently, after a quick homeward detour to collect the following items which Bill had requested, last minute, that Jeff bring: sunglasses, poncho, sunscreen, we got airport hot coffee, and now I am quite clear about that. I like my coffee hot.

Now it is 2 days later and I’m feeling the way the house would feel almost empty, except for Gabe popping out of the computer room intermittently to boil pasta or peppermint tea. It is emptyish, and I don’t like it too much, but Jeff’s return on Wednesday will not quite fill it with what’s missing, and that’s the empty-houseliness problem. That it’s not easily correctable. How about a smaller house? An urban house? A beach house? No, no, not now. The fundamental tokens are positioned on their fundamental gameboard squares, and the available moves are scarce and of limited value.

But, in the meantime, I am procrastinating my way out of working on the book like a three-toed sloth and I’m not even sure I’m climbing in the right direction. So, I must now force myself to write at least one sentence. Which is what I’m going to do. Now.

off script

Not sure why I’d have even a vestigial notion that there is a script anyway, but I have had a nagging little sense of anxiety in my shoe that “the script” calls for something more mainstream than my current choices.

But nevermind. If someone asks what I do, I might just say, “I’ve gone off-script. Hard to give a one-word answer to that question.” No doubt he/she will be very sorry to have asked, and that will save me the trouble of having to explain further. (But if I did explain further it would be something like this: “I write, and try to appreciate life. How about you?”)

big stink, little stink

Jeff has just come home from exercise class, and gone upstairs to change clothes. He appears in the kitchen, shirtless, in his skivvies. "Look at me! I'm a decorated veteran!" he says, proudly displaying 2 ECG patches, their grab-tabs pointed downward on his chest like ribbons.

"Wow," I say..."that was when, Monday? Which means you haven't had a shower since Sunday?"

Jeff is taking a shower now. It's amazing though, that I hadn't even noticed. Especially compared to the amount of stink generated by a 15 year old boy (who showered that morning,) after a day at school. I guess we can call that a positive aspect of aging.

aargh, and just aargh.

I’m not sure why I’m feeling so half-crazy about having effectively put the kibosh on Jeff’s career as a driver. Because I didn’t exactly sort of mean to do that, exactly. (As Olivia used to say at around age 4: “I wasn’t gonna mean to.”)

But since I, with more or less honest intent, let slip to the insurance company our situation, by way of trying to extract an explanation of the insurance implications in a theoretical context...well, les jeux sont faits.

And if I could flutter up above my particular family situation and make a judgment as a perfectly impartial consultant, I think I would have had to recommend to myself the exact course of action I took. In fact, I would not have even advised the flimsy attempt to be theoretical about it.

I do think Jeff’s condition has had a markedly bizarre effect on his driving which he, for the most part, seems unaware of. But who wants to keep putting the screws on? Not I. It’s just my job. I don’t think the roads of Maryland (or anywhere else) need an unnecessary erratic element in the mix.

A form will come soon, requesting some sort of medical person’s aye or nay, and if it didn’t come soon, it would have come in September when Jeff’s license comes up for renewal.

But I wasn’t gonna mean to.

dresses, drams, dreadful divas...

For the moment, the evening routine has shifted to the slightly more nursely. Dose #1 of the substance of unknown composition and value entered Jeff hypodermically yesterday, and it is my duty to take nightly temperatures and blood pressures in addition to the pill dispensing.*

A large chunk of today went to early prom dress shopping with Olivia. We finally found something she likes at White House/Black Market, and additionally, I snagged something off the clearance rack for the Community Center Gala. Then I decided I liked myself just as well in Becca’s 2006 prom dress. I am rarely a fashion emergency, because I just don’t care that much.

I’m sitting in the dark, typing. It’s 7:30 p.m. Jeff is making little snoring noises behind me. His sleep/wake, not to mention his eating schedule is all wacky, but mostly at night. He may just miss American Idol at 8:00.

I’m a deep person. Can you tell? Prom dress shopping and American Idol.

*Merck, you see, ok'd us. We are now a guineau pig and his carrot-feeder.