I was working outside with a contractor on Monday.  We have to escort contractors any time they are on property.  When they took a break, they asked if it was alright if they smoked in the area we were in.  I said it would be fine and they took their break.  After a few minutes one of them asked, “I thought you smoked.”  I told them I wasn’t feeling very well so I wasn’t going to.  After this went round and round for a few minutes it turns out that none of them could believe that I wasn’t going to smoke today.  Any time I’ll be working outside for a while, I enjoy smelling my cigars and they had seen me smoke with them the last few times they were out here.  But this week I’ve been feeling under the weather and chose not to aggravate my body any further.  In fact, I haven’t smoked anything since New Years Eve.  These guys just could not believe that.

A similar thing happened to me a few years ago in Chicago.  When I was on the road I used to smoke clove cigarettes because they smelled good and they were much quicker than a cigar.  I’d take the contractors outside at 3am in the freezing cold and they had their cigarette breaks.  In those conditions, you don’t want a nice 30 minute cigar, a quick cigarette does the trick.  One time I was out of the cloves so I didn’t light up.  One guy offered me one of his regular cigarettes and was confused when I turned him down.  Almost to the point of being offended that I wouldn’t accept his offer.

Another guy I worked with in Miami was surprised to notice that I didn’t smoke on my travel days.  Teresa hates the smell so I wouldn’t smoke for two days before I went home.  I wasn’t hiding anything from her, she knew (but did NOT approve) of my little road habit I picked up.  This guy refused to believe that I didn’t smoke all weekend when I was home.  ”Yeah, but you sneak one out in the backyard or the garage right?”  No.  I just don’t smoke.  He then went on to make fun of me for the rest of the time we worked together.

These people are giving me shit for NOT smoking…  What the hell?  Guys, the bad decision is in lighting up at all.  I know it every time I flick that lighter…  When one of you gets the right idea and decides not to, you should be congratulating him, not dragging him back down into your stinky ashtrays.  I smoke like I drink; I’ll indulge, have fun and then I’ll ignore it for months at a time before going back at it.  For Teresa’s party in September we bought two cases of beer.  Everyone drank the margaritas and we still had one and a half cases of beer left over.  It’s been over four months and I still have one full case.  Half of what’s gone was offered up to guests, two were used in cooking shrimp and brats and Teresa drank one…

Maybe I just don’t have an addictive nature but seriously, I was beginning to smoke pretty regularly while I lived in Chicago.  I had a room on the smoking floor of the hotel, the window was open and I just sat there writing and smoking every day and all weekend long.  Every two weeks I’d crush out my last one on Wednesday night.  Friday morning I’d fly home and I wouldn’t smoke again until Monday afternoon after getting back to O’Hare and I’d pretty much smoke continuously until it was time to fly home again.  When I finally came off the road, the brand of cigarettes I was smoking were banned so I just quit.  It was just that easy for me.  Hell, I didn’t pick up a cigar for over a year and a half after that.  It’s just not addictive to me.  I know it is to most other people but why am I catching hell for this strange “superpower”?

I don’t get it.  It’s like they are afraid one of us is going to get away.  As if lung cancer is lurking out there like a zombie in a room full of people.  Like they think they can hide from it in a large crowd but as the crowd thins, their chances of getting hit go up?  I have no idea what these people are thinking but I have run into enough people that think like this that I’m starting to think it’s some kind of strange cult where they won’t let you quit the gang or something…

Just when I think I’ve got things back under control, they go askew again.

Control is an illusion, I’ll never have things truly “under control” but I can usually at least gain a sense of “normal”.  I’ve been ill since Thursday.  I feel fine but I’ve got a horrible hacking cough and there is a complete drain of energy.  Along with that has come a complete lack of coherency in my brain.  I have done absolutely NO writing this weekend.  Saturday and Sunday mornings are usually my best times to write but I just couldn’t get my fingers moving.  I opened a page and I’d slam out three or four sentences and they sucked.

I couldn’t even pull off a cogent blog post.  Yesterday was my mother’s birthday and I’ve had this fog of an idea of writing something about mothers in my head.  What better time to post it than on Mom’s birthday right?  I sat there for an hour and couldn’t get three words to make sense together.  So I said, “screw it” and went back to bed.

I tried playing video games, I went to the store, I sat around the house…  Nothing made any sense to me.  I began to fear that something in my head slipped loose.  Today I’m still feeling loopy and I make no promises that what I write will make any sense but I’m posting anyway because it’s been several days since my last…

-

Saturday we had to go out to what is left of Regency Square Mall.  I’ve let my conceal-carry permit expire (government job, unable to carry on property) so I was staying alert to everything around me.  It wasn’t as bad as I expected.  We were there about a year ago and I actually felt in danger but Saturday was pretty calm.  As we walked through the food court, I watched everyone.  After a few minutes I started to relax.  I calmed down on my hyper-alert for any immediate danger but I also relaxed some of my regular up-tightness.  I observed two examples of my own bias and bigotry.  Things that I try to capture, examine and minimize.  So I expose them here for you to ridicule me…

Most of you know that I have a pretty bad hang-up about everyone running out to get tattoos and piercings.  It was the cool-hip thing for a while and I despised it.  Most of you know I have dear friends, loved ones and others that have tattoos, some are fully sleeved, and I even have tattoos myself.  Most of you know I spent several years hanging out in a tattoo/piercing shop.  How do I live with this contradiction?  I just do.  I don’t try to explain it, I just accept my double-standard and move on with my life.

But when I saw all these twenty-year-olds with exposed tats and fully gauged ears, I didn’t give my “old man scowl” like I usually do.  This time I smiled.  I’ve been paying attention to all these “occupy” protests and how the numbers are stacking up about how difficult it is to find a job even with a college degree.  I looked over at my daughter, the one with normal looking ears, no tattoos on her exposed flesh and I smiled.  I know it’s my own bias but given two applicants, identical in skill but one has face-tats, I’m hiring the other one.  You can holler at me all you want about how the managers are getting younger and more accepting of “alternative people” but I still say that if you’re looking for a corporate job, or scientific grant or anything other than unskilled labor, the exposed tats are not helping.  Undoubtedly this is changing but in the immediate future, in the age that she’ll be looking for a job, she’ll probably be better off looking “traditional”.

This girl just had a conversation with me the other day about how she went to a party with ten friends.  Nine of them had dyed hair, multiple piercings, gauged ears…  She told me, “I wanted to be different and unusual but after looking at how they were ALL the same, I was the already the unusual one.”  That’s right kid, that’s right.  At 15, she’s already figured out what it took me until my late 20′s to learn.

If you haven’t seen the movie “SLC Punk” and you’re about my age, you should go check it out.  It’s a great slice of 80′s life but there is a scene in it where a girl asks the stereotypical punk-rocker why he’s dressed that way.  (Mohawk, suspenders, Doc Martens)  He says it’s a statement of rebellion, a way to stand out.  She tells him that he looks like everyone else, that he’s wearing a uniform.  Hit me like a thunderbolt.  The day I saw that movie was the day I stopped giving a shit about style and fashion.  And that was late in life, only about 15 years ago.  So all I can hope for is that she remembers just how much “normal” can shift in a few short years.

-

So that was a cute story that didn’t make me look too bad.  A little bias against tattoos, a HUGE double-standard exposed.  but I still come off as a decent guy.  I hesitate to expose my next encounter because it exposes something in me that I hate to acknowledge.

We walked into one of the stores and the PA was playing some music.  The last song had ended and the next one was the opening bass riff from the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”.  We walked past some of the store patrons and one guy was bouncing to the beat and mimicking the bass line.  The reason I noticed and the reason I’m confused WHY I noticed was because he was black.

This wasn’t the first black guy I’ve seen that was into the Talking Heads.  But it is a bit unusual.  It just made me notice.  But then I thought, “Well, maybe some rapper sampled the Psycho Killer bass line and that’s where he knows it from.”  That’s the thought that made me cringe.  Somewhere in my head there is still a line between “black” and “white” music.  This line exists in a brain that listens to Ice-T, Run DMC, Public Enemy…  What would this guy think if I was singing along with “Straight Outta Compton”?  Truth is, I’d get my ass kicked.

There is still a line between white/black music and it’s mostly balanced on the infamous word “Nigga”.  Spell it any way you like, when I come to a stop light and I’m singing along with Easy-E, I stop singing.  So it’s just fine to have this man bopping along with Psycho Killer and I still listen to some of the early raps.  But I think either side is within their rights to notice…

Ahhh, and we’re back.  I’ve been working odd shifts again and sleep is elusive.  It’s normally during these little hell-weeks that I’m off-line and away from the keyboard.  I enjoy these little respites from the internet.  Especially during election season.  Oh my are you people insane.  Some of you attach all your hopes and dreams on one man and close your eyes.  You’ll follow him into Hell if that’s where he leads you.  No one is perfect, neither is the system.

There, that’s the extent of my political opinions I’m willing to express in public for now.  If you’re wondering where all my opinions on the current or upcoming politicians are, they’re not here.  Or on FaceBook, or anywhere you’ll read them.  I’m not a political commentator.  I don’t fall in line with either of the major parties.  Little of column A, little of column B, mostly just my own thoughts.  Many of which are not politically viable…  How awesome would it be to run for President on a platform of, “You won’t re-elect me but I’ll do my best in the time I have”?

Maybe that’s just the sleep-dep talking.  It’s a strange thing having worked half the week but coming in for the first “real time” on a Wednesday.  Like the week has only begun but it’s a half week.  Midnight shifts somehow don’t count.

Sometimes I wish for a job where I work in an office, M-F 9-5 and no call-outs.  Weekends off the cell-phone leash, able to visit people/places without wondering if I’ll have to leave early.  Able to make plans without the caveat of “If I don’t have to work”.  This weekend I had rather special plans at 4pm.  At 2pm I got called out… to Albany, GA four hours away!  Luckily the problem resolved itself without a dispatch but this is the kind of constant stress I live in…

Baby steps man, it wasn’t long ago that you just wanted a job, ANY job, that got you off the road.  Take it slow.  It’s sad, office drones fantasize about being important, I fantasize about being an office drone.

Adventure, excitement, a fat-man craves not these things…

I figured something out.  Soon after, I discovered I was wrong.

I’m not dwelling on it, I know some of you don’t want to see me leave Florida.  I will sincerely miss many of you when I go.  But after more than two decades in this heated shit-hole, in spite of my love for you all, I am counting the days (roughly 880 but yeah, I’m not dwelling on it or anything…) until we finally get to plan our escape.  I’m shooting for the Arctic Circle, Teresa wants something just a bit further south.  Anyway, it’s still an open count because if Becca decides on an in-state college, we’ll probably stick around for another few years.

BUT after years of living here, today I finally found the one thing (other than people) that I will miss when I leave Florida.  The smell of fresh-cut grass on the cold winter air.  Oh it was amazing!  I had to leave the dungeon today and when I came topside I found that they had just mowed the grass.  The air was cold and the smell just lit me up from the inside.  It was incredible!  I thought to myself, THIS is something I could miss.  You don’t cut the lawn with three feet of snow.  In all the years I’ve lived in this state I’ve never found one thing (other than people) I will miss when I leave it all behind.  Then this scent, this feeling crept into me and suddenly I can count ONE thing…

After about three seconds of intoxicating bliss, I came crashing back down to reality.  Hey dumbass, that’s the ordinary smell of cutting the lawn in September/October or April/May in the latitudes you long for.  The reason you feel so exhilarated is because it’s a fond memory of childhood, not because it’s a newly discovered yearning.  It’s not a reason to stay in Florida, it’s just one more reason to leave!

Ohh I wish I could have bottled that feeling though.  I’ve burned the Yankee Candle’s “Fresh-Cut Grass” and it was nice but when you put it on that frigid air…  Seriously, it was like getting high…  I’m going home and mow the lawn tonight…

I had no idea just how influenced I am by proper spelling and grammar. It turns out I’m more upset by typos than I thought.  However, it wholly depends on the format.

If it’s a text, I expect bad spelling. Small keyboards, touch-screens, auto-correct… When I get a text that says, “I garfled your Mothra, meat szygne at the cuxrths” I don’t fear that I’ve received a text from the Great Old Ones, I don’t rage about bad spelling, I just remember that I’ve sent plenty of those kinds of texts too. I’ll probably just text you back, “Whst tnhe heeeell wws tht text supooposed to mesan?”

If it’s a comment on-line, I forgive it. Same rules apply, many people are using their phones to respond. Touch screens, small keyboards… I can’t get too upset. But, I can insist that I’m able to understand the comment or you must delete it and try again. If I can’t decipher what you meant, then what is the point of having it online? Get rid of it.

I read a lot of amateur blogs, there are many typos. I tolerate it or at the very least, I get over it. The amateurs are passionate about something but they aren’t the world’s greatest typists. They get excited, type fast and hit “Post” before hitting “Spellcheck”. It’s a mistake but we’re just amateurs, I’m alright with it. I got a bit huffy with one person’s blog. I was just about to give up on reading it when I discovered English wasn’t their first language. Oops, my fault… I mean, if I had to write a blog post in French you’d see a lot more than a few errors.

But then there are the professional bloggers. People who write for a living. I hold these people to a much higher standard. When you make your living being a wordsmith, you’d better know the difference between “your” and “you’re”. I can totally overlook a stray word that snuck past spellcheck by masquerading as a different word. Typos happen and if you’re on a deadline, you rely on spellcheck. “On” looks alright to the spellcheck even though you really meant “in”. But when you misuse “it’s” and “its”… I have to slap your knuckles with a steel ruler. Also, have a proofreader. I’ve been guilty of editing my thoughts and restructuring sentences. When you read your own work you read right past those errors when you read your own work…

Somewhere in between the amateur bloggers and the professional writers are the small businesses. When I go to your website and I see typos, I get worried about your services. Yes, you may just be a plumber or you may just be a party DJ, neither job requires proper diction… But if you couldn’t be bothered to check your work while advertising, how can I be sure you’re worth the money I’m looking to spend. Small, local businesses can afford one, possibly two errors if I’m feeling generous. If I see multiple errors on your website, I take my business elsewhere.

Anything that invokes an air of authority must be absolutely correct. When I read physics papers and medical journals, I don’t see any mistakes. I think this is because they know that if I spot a glaring typo, it will damage the impact of their paper. They take the time to check their work because it is important to them. A text; not so much. When someone asks me to take part on an “official survey” and the question has a typo in it, just how “official” am I expected to believe this thing is? Here at work we have an automated ticketing system. When a problem comes up at a remote site, it gathers data from several spreadsheets and spits it out in a form letter. One of the entries is “Drivining Directions”. It’s been there for four years…

And finally, we get the mix of amateur and authority (and the spark that set off this “misspelling” fire). Nothing screams “dumbass” more than a website claiming to be the encyclopedia of all musical knowledge and referring to “Jimmy Hendricks”… If you don’t know what’s wrong with that, you’re probably not a “music” person and that’s okay. I probably wouldn’t even correct you if we were writing back and forth and you made that mistake. But if you’re a music person, even just a casual fan, you’re probably just coming back into orbit after realizing they got BOTH names wrong…  If you’re running a website that (even just humorously) claims to be the final judge of all music and you can’t spell the name of one of the elder gods of guitar… Wow… just wow.

They brought back Beavis & Butthead.  I don’t know why, I can’t imagine there were too many people clamoring for their return… but they are producing new episodes.  Out of curiosity, I’ve watched the new shows and they’re just as good and bad as the old show was.  It’s like they just went to sleep and woke up fifteen years later doing the same shtick with new fodder.  I feel exactly about the new show as I did when it first ran; a solid “Ehhh, whatever”.

But since I have been watching them I have been contaminated through splash damage…  The premise of a standard B&B show is: they get into some trouble, they watch some MTV, the trouble resolves itself.  That’s it.  And through their show (me watching them watch MTV) I have been exposed to some of the shows I’ve head about and never seen.  In small two minute clips with Beavis & Butthead voice-overs, I have now seen more “Jersey Shore” than I care to admit.

Still not enough that I know what the hell is going on in that show, but enough that I can no longer say I’ve never seen it.  I will say that I wouldn’t recognize any of the cast of the show if they walked up to me at a mall, but I think that’s saying more about the show’s influence on pop culture than my recognition skills.  Somehow this show has caught on and I guess it took certain existing fashions and influenced others but now I see where these people I run into get it from.  The “Jersey Shore culture” is everywhere.

Some of the “JS” attitude/fashion came before the show, fueling the development of such a show.  Now the show itself steers the fashion, it is the touchstone of douchebaggery…  When I see a group of them hanging out, I used to wonder what planet they were from.  I used to feel like an old man who just didn’t “get it”.  But now I see the truth and it was there in front of my eyes the whole time; Jersey Shore is nothing more than the latest youth movement, the Valley Girls of their time.

They don’t want to fit in, they want to be strange and unusual.  I understood this with other movements like punk, goth and emo because they all but promoted the idea of being the outsiders, the downtrodden.  But Valley and Jersey both appealed to the “up” sides, the rich kids, the popular kids who still want to be different without leaving the best keg parties behind.  I get it now!  Thanks to Beavis and Butthead who have shown me the light!

Now when I see these kids hanging out in their bad Jersey Shore fashions, I’m no longer perplexed.  I smile.  I chuckle slightly under my breath a small “like… oh my god…  fer sure!”  Then I smile again, because I know that in twenty years, their kids are going to find those pictures.  Just like some of you are getting discovered in those neon bandannas and legwarmers.  Every kid thinks they look sooo cool.  Every kid looks like a dork and none of them know it.  Parents tried to tell us, but we wouldn’t listen.  I guess it’s just something we all have to go through.

I’m cleaning out the scrap paper where I keep my “I’ll write about that later” notes from the last year. Here’s a bunch of unrelated crap I’m dumping on you at the last minute…

…

You know that feeling you get when you buy a blue pick-up truck and then you begin to see blue pick-up trucks everywhere? And you swear there were no blue pick-ups on the road yesterday! What’s that called? It’s not quite Synchronicity because there’s no real deeper meaning to it. I see online where some people have started to refer to it as the “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” but I won’t believe that until it’s in Wikipedia!

Anyway… The Krampus was a tiny memory in the back of my head from long-ago mythology studies. I recently wrote a short story involving him and BAM, I’m seeing him mentioned in every television show, every story I read, everywhere! I’m hoping it’s simply an over-active “mental reticular activator” and not the beginning of a new trend. I hate trends and I really don’t want to be part of one.

…

Here’s one that the more delicate of you may want to skip on to the next subject…

Okay, just go with me on this one… You know the movie “Mommie Dearest”? It was based on Christina Crawford’s memoirs right? Well, she was a child for most of the events, she may not have gotten all the information. In an age when talent was “owned” by the studios and women were not considered equal, it is conceivable that Joan Crawford had to do a little “casting couch maneuvering” to work her way to the top. It was the 20’s or 30’s, it’s entirely possible.

It’s also possible that she may have gotten pregnant during one of these trysts. A scandal may or may not have been a problem for the studio but a baby would probably ruin Crawford’s dancing/acting career. So it’s also possible that in order to keep it quiet, they took her to one of those “back alley doctors” we always hear about. If they screwed up the abortion, it could explain her inability to have kids later on.  She had multiple miscarriages and ended up adopting her kids “as a publicity stunt”.

And it would certainly explain the “no wire hangers!” scene.  She tells Christina it’s because wire hangers are beneath their station but that always rang hollow to me. Young kid probably didn’t know what an abortion was at that age, all she knows is; it’s 3am, mom’s dressed up like a Kabukimono and beating the living shit out of her. And who’s going to tell their kid about an abortion anyway?

Unsavory and distasteful subject matter sure but I think I could be on to something.

 …

Okay, we’re back safely in the normal crazy…

What are the colors we can’t see? HP Lovecraft wrote about these in “The Color out of Space” and a few other of his stories. When I read these stories, I’ve always imagined them as a shimmering metallic light. But I can imagine that, so it’s not an unimaginable color. For years I left the question alone.

Now I read about Cichlids having five rod/cones and seeing a spectrum we can’t see. We’ve only got three (like a TV or monitor, RGB) I’ve had one of these damn fish in the hallway of my house for years now, what is he seeing that I’m not seeing?  And should I be worried?

…

Zombies were in vogue this year. Lots of people jumping ship from Vampires to Zombies. I’m cool with this because my favorite genre is post-apocalyptic dystopia. Vampires are mostly considered solitary, quiet, sneaky bastards (mostly). When a vampire is after you, the rest of the world will go on just fine. But Zombies… Their story always seems to involve world-wide disasters. I love it! So, here’s my hierarchy of things to save during a disaster:

• 1: Myself. If I die, I can’t protect my family.
• 2: Wife and Daughter. These are the most important things in my life. If my dying will secure their absolute safety, #1 is overruled.
• 3: Weapons. The next step is to secure food and water. If I succeed, I’ll need to protect it. If I fail, someone is going to share, even if it’s at gunpoint.
• 4: Food and water. Duh, I just said that.
• 5: Clothing/shelter. If it’s cold, I need to secure blankets and clothing. Either way, I need shoes. I’m not walking around the disaster flick barefoot.
• 6: Knowledge. Someone’s going to have to know how to plant a garden. Someone has to understand basic mechanical physics. In the two dozen half-started, half-written stories I’ve set in a disaster world, at least a quarter of them have a protagonist who insists on raiding a bookstore.
• 7: Other people. It sounds calloused to have them fall so far down the list. Maybe they can go 6th instead of the books. But saving other people will serve more good than bad. They may have skills I don’t. There will be a larger group scavenging for food/materials. There will be more people to help with the work load. However, more people means more egos, more fighting. This is why people rate below books. I’ll leave these bastards behind when they organize a revolution.
• 8: A vehicle. Escape from the inevitable marauders. Or, the revolutionaries. They will come. They will destroy my beautiful garden.

That’s about it. Cash is meaningless. Money is for civilizations. In a disaster world, I wouldn’t sell you a turnip for a million dollars. Burn your pile of cash for warmth, use it to stuff the linings of your clothes. Now that’s an attractive thought huh? Homeless people with dollar bills falling out of their sleeves? We’re back to earning your keep. Work in the fields for a day, turn the millstone a few hours, now you get fed. Lots of people are going to die from laziness.

…

Why is it that Steve Vai’s guitar sounding like a computer is cool but a computerized vocal track is lame to my ears? I think it’s because I’m a cranky old cuss and the use of Auto-Tune seems like a cheat to me. I’m just an old man living in what they are calling a “post-Gaga” world. Marilyn Manson perfected the look, Madonna perfected the music, Lady Gaga put the chocolate in the peanut butter and now the pop music scene is measuring time as if she were the Christ child. My tastes are obsolete and my opinions are irrelevant.

…

Speaking of getting old:

Not too long ago (in my mind anyway) when you went to the grocery store you paid by check or cash. Everything ran smooth until some idiot in front of you wanted to pay by credit card. The line ground to a halt as the cashier called for manager assistance… it sucked. Now, everyone is using debit/credit cards and we all sigh when some asshole breaks out with good old-fashioned cash. “Cash!? Goddamnit we’re gonna be here all day now!” And I swear if some fucker breaks out a checkbook I’m putting an axe in his skull. Times change and swiping your debit card has gotten faster than cash. I’ll swipe my debit card for a single bottle of pop. I barely carry cash at all anymore.

…

I got tired of listening to the same old arguments about religion. I’ve heard most of them a thousand times, I’m becoming bored with the whole thing. I’m still very passionate about it but I am getting tired of the ever-mutating excuses. Like a deadly virus, they keep adapting to our immunity hoping to one day find a way to infect us all. Truth and consistency be damned, the domination of humanity is the chore at hand! (Why the fuck did I just rhyme that? I knew where I was going and I chose to write that? Ugh, sickening dude…)

Anyway, incensed at how easy it is for them to change tactics, change rules, change entire systems of dogma all while claiming to be “the real” religion, I decided to make one up on my own. I started doodling little rules, dicking around with circular reasoning, threw in a few self-confirming, self-affirming prophecies, claimed to be unfalsifiable and demanded the burden of proof be placed on the unbeliever and not the extraordinary claim… When all of this was done, I knew L. Ron Hubbard was a genius. An acid-tripped sci-fi genius. It’s so damn easy to create your own religion! Just think of how lucrative of a business it is and to never have to actually prove anything? Wow. It’s like selling air-guitar lessons! I’m amazed that he got it off the ground without military or government backing but wow, what an exercise in creative thinking…

…

I’m not much for arbitrary dates and celebrations. As the year closes I do think back on the previous trip around the star. I won’t set up new rules for next year but I like to see where I was last year. About this time I was in the middle of a meltdown (pick a week, I’m always warding off meltdowns…) and eventually decided to focus on my writing. In the last year I’ve gone from a “one day I’ll be” writer to an “I am in the process” writer. I forced myself to finish several stories, I’ve submitted three pieces (one rejected at the slush pile, one passed on to an editor and one “no-response”) I took that step and I liked the water. It’s freezing cold and scary but it’s where I want to swim. So now I need to jump in with both feet. A year ago I was afraid to fail. Now I’m aware I’m going to fail and doing it anyway. There is some growth there I think.

 …

So have a great year whether you measure it from January, April, or any day next week.  Tomorrow is just another day, be happy it’s there at all.

Teresa has been in a near-constant twenty year battle with me and my packratting skills. If it’s got any life left in it, I hang on to it or make sure someone else will use it. I am by no means a hoarder (anymore) but I do have a lot of junk that will probably never get used. A lot of my crap could should be thrown away…

However, there are the shining moments when I need something, (or even better, Teresa needs something) and I pull a solution out of the garage. It’s Sunday night, the stores are closed and you need a picture hanging clip? I’ve got a few of them out here.

This week the magic garage was put to the test and it passed with flying colours! I’ve been slowly organizing the crap into a nice system where I should know where most everything is.

It came time to put up the Christmas lights. I knew right where the bin of lights was. The extension ladder was hung from the garage ceiling and the tywraps were right where they were supposed to be. The cords were hung up, no knots, no twisted loops. When I needed a way to extend the lights to the other side of the front door, the magic garage provided a 2×4, a length of wire, romex staples and a plug. Thank you magic garage for your bountiful gifts.

We downsized Christmas this year, finally getting that small artificial tree I’ve always wanted. So in an effort to “clean up” my junk, after I put up the house/yard lights, I got rid of all the half-working and repaired strings of lights. Two days before Christmas when my sister surprised us with a live tree, we decided to put it up as a decoration in the yard. The magic garage provided emergency reserve Christmas lights, lots of ornaments, a tree stand and spikes to drive into the ground to hold it steady in case of wind. The tree looks awesome in the yard thanks to the generosity of my sister and to the near-infinite powers of the magic garage.

Teresa’s home daycare business gets full during the holidays because she watches a few of the older siblings when school’s out. A few of them brought their bikes last week. But oh no… they needed air in the tires! “Fear not little one, for in the magic garage, there is a compressor. You will be riding on adequately inflated tires in no time!” And they were. Need that football inflated? No problem, the magic garage also holds a small hand pump for such an occasion.

Oh crap, the minor tear in the back porch screen has turned into a full-blown rip up the middle. (Thank you dogs) Family will be here in a few days and the screen is flapping in the wind and making us look more white-trash than normal! Isn’t there anything we can do to stop this!? Why yes, yes there is. In the garage I have a small screen repair kit. When the rip proved to be more than a match for it, the magic garage summoned up some lattice, self tapping screws, nuts and bolts to keep the dogs from jumping through as well as some heavy-duty string to sew up the large rip. Thank you magic garage!

Becca got a video camera for Christmas. When she went to plug it into her computer, she got concerned because it was a direct plug and she was afraid it was too heavy to hang off the side of her laptop. I dramatically rise and shout, “To the magic garage!” and dash through the kitchen into the wondrous cavern of plenty. I return with a short USB extension cable. Problem: solved!

(I know I’m being cute and all with the dramatic presentation but this is not a joke, I actually pulled a “to the batcave” kind of moment on Christmas morning. Teresa and Becca were underwhelmed. I live a sad life of fantasy…)

I moved the X-Box and big TV downstairs for Christmas because it has become a regular thing for the family to play RockBand and Lips after Christmas dinner. (Don’t ask me how this got started, I don’t know… but it’s fun!) When I moved it I realized this was the first year I had the X-Box, every other year my brother brought his X-Box over. Most everything in the house is wireless so I didn’t install an Ethernet outlet downstairs. You don’t need to be online to play but Teresa has become obsessed with scoring and achievements in the games, specifically, beating Jeff and Trisha’s vocal scores. Afraid of losing an opportunity to score well, the magic garage gave us 100’ of CAT5 and two RJ45 connectors. I crimped them on, tested the cable and ran it out the window up to the router in my den. The magic garage provides…

As we played the game, we started to hear a buzz every time the bass drum was hit. It quickly got worse and very soon, it was unbearable. The problem turned out to be a cracked subwoofer. There were cries of, “just unplug it” and “we can live without it” but I jump up and say to the restless mob, “NO!  I can repair this!” Once again I dash out into the magic garage and I return with… a spare subwoofer! It was waiting in the garage for me to buy a decent receiver for upstairs. In seconds the new speaker is hooked up and the gaming resumes.

Legend says there are two of everything in the magic garage…

Some people are turtles, some are… well, I was going to go with “snake” but snake has such a negative connotation to it.  So my analogy is ruined before I even begin…

What I mean to say is; some people hide, some reach out.

I’m a hider.  When things go wrong, I retract and cut off all extraneous bullshit until the crisis is resolved or at least dealt with.

This explains my absence from the web this week.  (No questions please, there will be no answers), but this is how I go from writing happy, frivolous posts about Harry Potter (not posted yet) and posting silly pictures on Facebook to a complete and utter dark silence on-line.

When I deal with problems, I move into damage control, stop the bleeding.  Sometimes my tactic to “fix” the problem causes more collateral damage than the original problem.  Kind of like Ghostrider.  Did you SEE that movie?  He tore up streets and blew out buildings just to catch one bad guy…  Ugh, there I go with bad analogies again.

But once the trouble is under control, I start to think; what did I do to cause this?  What can I do to make this better?  What can I do to prevent this from happening again?  And when I’m told, “This is not about YOU!” it hurts a little bit.  Not because I was shut down but because someone felt like I was trying to hijack the moment and make it about me.  I just want to make it better.

Anyway, the issue is dealt with and it’s a private affair, no details will be spilled here.  The only reason I mention it is, I realized that I am a very private guy when trouble hits.  This may explain some of my aggression and depression…  But it also made me think about how I treat people in general.  Not all of them are turtles like me.  Have I ignored friends when they reached out simply because I didn’t recognize it?  I know I’ve “minded my own business” many times when I see people fawning all over someone else’s problems.  I’ve always thought it was shitty to watch the vultures commiserate when someone has trouble.  My thought was always, “Leave them their privacy unless they ask for help” and this week taught me that sometimes, it can be very difficult for some people to reach out and ask for that help.

So, if I’ve ever made you feel abandoned in your time of need, please don’t think I’m calloused and uncaring, I’m not, I swear I’m not.  But I do have an over-enhanced sense of privacy (said the guy writing his personal BS out on a public blog) and I may not have recognized your indirect cries for help.  I’m working on that now.  I doubt I’ll ever be the guy who sticks his nose in your business unasked, but maybe I’ll learn to be the guy who recognizes subtle hints.  Maybe…

Remember that teaser note last week?  Well, here goes nothing…

I don’t even know how to introduce this.  This is kind of a big deal for me and I’m so bad with “public” speaking…

You have been reading my blog for a long time, many of you for years now.  You’ve listened along as I’ve tightened up my writing and then got serious about it.  My biggest hurdle has been confidence.  Along the way, you all have given me hope and encouragement.  I’ve come a long way from the guy who always burned his notebooks and refused to let anyone read my “crap”.  I’ve loosened up and actually let a few pieces see the light of day.  I’ve been active with a Beta Reader and I’ve even submitted a couple pieces for publication.

But, as it is far too late to submit this for “proper” seasonal publication, I could file my latest short story away for submission next year.  Or…

Or I could give it to you, the ones who told me not to give up.  And so I do.

I submit as a Christmas present to you my readers, a short story:

-

He Sees You When You’re Sleeping…

-

“… and to all a good night!”