I always blush and give a little apology when I write a blog post four or five days late. The lag on this one comes remarkably close to a true decade.
Remembering
The summer after our Sophomore year at OC, T-- and I went to the British Isles on a mission campaign led by Dr. John Maple. I mentioned it in passing the other day, because a chance name on Facebook brought back memories of it, but I've had a deluge of such chances lately. I keep coming across unexpected recollections of that time, and I finally stopped to think about it.
I don't have a great memory of my personal history. That's why I keep such excruciatingly detailed logs of my activity here, because even going back and reading through a page of my life last year floods me with startling memory. Going back two years or three without that assistance is a real stretch, so my college days -- and a mission trip nine years in the past -- is mostly nothing but a blur.
Sometimes things fall into place, though, and the veil is parted, and as that moment in time swam into view recently, I encountered insight with an unexpected shock. There's something I'd never realized before. When I went to Scotland, I didn't know I had social anxiety.
Social Anxiety
I talk about social anxiety sometimes, but not much. I've been told I hide it well, but I've been working hard at that for six or seven years now, so that shouldn't come as a surprise. The anxiety is there, though, and it's been there...pretty close to all my life. Maybe not in elementary school -- at least, not early on -- but it was well and truly in place by the time I got to middle school. I used to call myself "anti-social" because I thought it sounded cooler than "shy." But I wasn't really either one. I've always craved relationships. I make relationships work, and I depend on them, but I'm no good at socializing. Interacting with people on a casual level makes me sick. Really, actually, everyday sick. Low-grade anxiety feels like having the flu. A full-on anxiety attack feels so bad it's commonly confused with a heart attack. I get these things from small talk.
That's the difference between "shy" and social anxiety. And it's something I didn't really grasp when I was a kid, because a kid doesn't have any reference point but his own experience. I got up into college and started encountering a lot more people with a lot of different life experiences, and I started to get a clue. I graduated and got a real job and learned about having to interact with people on a casual level day in and day out -- and my paycheck depending on it -- and that's where I really discovered the truth about myself. These days I've got some good barriers and I've got some coping mechanisms, so I can survive in the workforce. But I learned that all two or three years too late.
The Mission Trip
We went to Britain for six weeks. Dr. Maple invited me personally, and I was ecstatic about the opportunity. My favorite books growing up were The Hobbit and Ivanhoe and The Three Musketeers (and, believe it or not, one of the sequels to The Three Musketeers takes place almost exclusively in England, so that counts!). I couldn't wait to go.
Before we could do that we had the planning sessions, though, and I met the other missionaries we'd be working with. We had meetings every few weeks for months, and I never really enjoyed those. I kept looking for excuses to skip them, but if we passed a certain number of absences we got kicked off the campaign, so I managed to show up. Then we flew over to London -- and that was my first international flight -- and of course that was draining. But we got in early in the morning on a Friday and Dr. Maple didn't want us all crushed by jetlag for a week so he insisted on keeping us all awake until sunset. We went to the British museum and had lunch in town and went to Something-or-Other Square (which is famous) and did a bunch of shopping and sightseeing, and we were all miserable by mid-afternoon. He finally set us loose on the town after dinner, and I remember I went to see Les Miserables at a little theater just to grab a seat in the back row and snooze in the dark. That was one of the happiest moments on my trip.
We went out to the site of our first VBS Saturday, got set up and went over our plans for the week, and on Sunday morning I showed up at church and Dr. Maple told me I'd be helping out with a skit during the morning lesson. I'd be wearing robes and performing a children's play in front of the whole congregation. I learned this at eight and went on stage at nine. I was sick for the rest of the day.
Weakness
That's really how my whole trip went. I was hanging out with these awesome kids, experiencing my first visit to places I'd dreamed of all my life, and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I hated showing up to teach classes, I hated getting together for Dr. Maple's stupid devotionals, I hated meeting with the other missionaries to discuss class schedules, I really hated going out to dinner at the local church members' houses....
I was on a mission trip. I was there to do God's work, and I was surrounded by enthusiastic, happy, encouraging people. And the whole time I felt sick. I was tired, I was frequently depressed, and all I wanted to do, pretty much every minute of every day, was go off to my room, lock everyone else out (because I was generally sharing a room with one of the other missionaries and ten to twelve elementary-school boys), and just hide in the dark, alone, and try to catch my breath.
I don't talk much about social anxiety and when I do, I don't get a lot of sympathy. That's fine. I understand. But the real tragedy of this memory is that, back then, I didn't know. I didn't understand that I was sick. All I knew was that this should be the most amazing, uplifting experience of my life, and I detested it. I couldn't find any excuse other than my own weakness, so I spent more and more of my time hating myself. It astonishes me to read my writing from the time before that, to remember just how much I considered myself a real holy warrior, a dedicated disciple out to fix the world with words and Truth. I went to England, took a real stab at it, and learned that it made me miserable.
That broke my faith. Not...it didn't hurt my belief in God. It just shattered my belief in me. I would sit in the corner -- while everyone else laughed and joked over paper cups of punch and cheap cookies -- I would sit in the corner and hope nobody tried to talk to me, and call myself monster. I spent most of six weeks doing that.
Solitude
I can manufacture fond memories of the things I should have enjoyed while I was there, but the three times I was really, truly happy, I was alone. I remember those stolen hours in the playhouse on our first day in London. I remember the weekend between camp sessions when we got to go stay with my Uncle Perry and his family, and even though I was never too close to them it felt like sweet sanctuary compared to the chaos of church camp. And then I remember an afternoon at Saint Andrews.
I went off alone. T-- went browsing in the town's little shops, and I wandered away, down to the seaside, and sat by myself on the sand, looking out over the cold North Sea. I was there for hours, just sitting by myself, and then I wandered up to the old ruined abbey and sat among the graves for a while, enjoying that, too, until T-- came and found me. And I smiled for her, and hugged her, and she showed me the headstones so old all markings were obliterated, and the path up to the belltower she'd found, and it was fascinating, but it was work. Even as I smiled for her, I felt that day's peace slipping away. The three moments I really felt happy, over the space of six weeks, were moments when I was alone.
Looking Back
Knowing what I know now, there's nothing wrong with that. Knowing what I know now, I could have carved out a lot more of those moments and felt a lot less selfish about them. I could have said no to the game of kickball. I could have found a quiet spot instead of seeking out the quiet kid who needed to be talked with, because that's what I needed to do my job. At the time it just felt like weakness, and selfishness, and I never spoke up.
I wish I had known. I don't bother wishing I were free from social anxiety, because I think a lot of what makes me special has grown from the quiet time alone that I've sought, throughout the years. But I wish I had known already what it was, and what it meant. Lacking that, I wish I hadn't gone on the mission trip. It was a wonderful experience -- even with everything I've said, it was a wonderful experience -- but my reaction while I was there planted a seed of doubt and disappointment and darkness in me that quietly grew and grew. Years later, when we were living in Tulsa, that darkness became a deep depression, a crippling self hate that nearly wrecked my life.
All because my heart beats a little too fast when someone says hi to me. All because I can't quite catch my breath when a stranger reaches out to shake my hand. It's sad, really.
But I'm getting better.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Journal Entry: June 29, 2009
Maybe I'll get back to daily eventually. For now, here's a big update!
Wednesday
Last Wednesday night we went to Poblano's for dinner, with D-- and my little sister, and K-- and N--. The tamale dinner was good as always, and too much food as always. T-- and my sister had to rush out early to get to church for their class, but they weren't too rushed.
D-- and I went back to the house and started up a game of Civ that took up most of the rest of the evening.
Thursday
Thursday I used T--'s car to drive to work, and my sister graciously provided her with transportation for the day. When evening rolled around, I drove up to Edmond to pick her and AB up, and we had dinner there at my sister's place. D-- came along, too, and we spent a little time socializing. AB was tired, though, so we headed home to put her in bed. Then T-- turned on New in Town while D-- and I played Civ in the living room. The movie was horrible, and the game was worse.
Friday
Friday I took off work to get my car fixed. We dropped it off at K&C first thing in the morning, then I watched AB while T-- went to a ladies' lunch and ran some errands. The original plan had been to leave AB with a babysitter, and when I found out I was taking the day off I talked D-- into taking a vacation day, too, so we could play Civ all day. Babysitter canceled on us, though, so I got to do that.
D-- came over anyway, though, and we played a little disjointed Civ until AB went down for a nap. Then we got a good hour or two in before she woke up.
Friday night T-- and I ran out to grab some Taco Bueno for dinner, and then spent the evening watching Jimmy Fallon and Conan O'Brien. Pretty fun evening.
Saturday
Saturday I slept in, then went up to the mall with T-- and AB for lunch in the food court. Afterward we went over to the kids' play area there and let AB romp for half an hour or so. She had a great time, and she played well with the other kids. Then I dropped the girls off at the house and took my new chainsaw over to B--'s for a little topiary work. The project took all of eight seconds, but I hung around for forty minutes or so chatting.
Then I got home while AB was still napping, and T-- said a quick goodbye and headed up to church to prep for her crop. I worked on a programming project for an hour or so, then AB woke up and we played in her room for a while. We watched some Dora, I tried and failed to make a grilled cheese sandwich, and then we did puzzles for almost an hour before bedtime. She loves puzzles these days, and she's remarkably good at them.
After she went to bed I got back to work on my programming project, and I was still doing that when T-- got home around midnight. I finished it up around then, packed it up, and shipped it off to Toby to fix all the problems I'd created. That's what a mentor is for, right?
Sunday
Sunday morning T-- and AB took our only car to go to Bible class while I was still in bed, so K-- and N-- came by on their way to services and picked me up. We had a quick breakfast, and then a church service in which I only got two pages written because I spent most of it helping AB color her pages.
We went to Braum's for lunch with them and D--, and afterward D-- came over for the afternoon so we could try to break our losing streak. After three pretty bad wins in Civ, we started a game with a terrible map but we caught some lucky breaks and managed to put together a pretty encouraging game. I had to break it off around five, though, because T-- had dinner plans.
We went to Hafer Park up in Edmond for a picnic, joined by three or four couples from our Small Group at church, as well as K-- and N--. We ate in the gazebo on the pond, and then AB and I walked around it to feed the ducks, and then T-- took AB to play on the play equipment while K-- and I ran to a nearby snowcone stand for some snowcones. After that I played with AB on the playground for half an hour or so, and then we headed home.
It was 8:30 by the time we got in, so we put AB down to bed, and then I contact D-- on GMail and we finished our game. It was looking really, really promising right up until the point where we lost. Gandhi beat us with a Culture Win, and there was nothing we could do to stop him. Alas.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday
Last Wednesday night we went to Poblano's for dinner, with D-- and my little sister, and K-- and N--. The tamale dinner was good as always, and too much food as always. T-- and my sister had to rush out early to get to church for their class, but they weren't too rushed.
D-- and I went back to the house and started up a game of Civ that took up most of the rest of the evening.
Thursday
Thursday I used T--'s car to drive to work, and my sister graciously provided her with transportation for the day. When evening rolled around, I drove up to Edmond to pick her and AB up, and we had dinner there at my sister's place. D-- came along, too, and we spent a little time socializing. AB was tired, though, so we headed home to put her in bed. Then T-- turned on New in Town while D-- and I played Civ in the living room. The movie was horrible, and the game was worse.
Friday
Friday I took off work to get my car fixed. We dropped it off at K&C first thing in the morning, then I watched AB while T-- went to a ladies' lunch and ran some errands. The original plan had been to leave AB with a babysitter, and when I found out I was taking the day off I talked D-- into taking a vacation day, too, so we could play Civ all day. Babysitter canceled on us, though, so I got to do that.
D-- came over anyway, though, and we played a little disjointed Civ until AB went down for a nap. Then we got a good hour or two in before she woke up.
Friday night T-- and I ran out to grab some Taco Bueno for dinner, and then spent the evening watching Jimmy Fallon and Conan O'Brien. Pretty fun evening.
Saturday
Saturday I slept in, then went up to the mall with T-- and AB for lunch in the food court. Afterward we went over to the kids' play area there and let AB romp for half an hour or so. She had a great time, and she played well with the other kids. Then I dropped the girls off at the house and took my new chainsaw over to B--'s for a little topiary work. The project took all of eight seconds, but I hung around for forty minutes or so chatting.
Then I got home while AB was still napping, and T-- said a quick goodbye and headed up to church to prep for her crop. I worked on a programming project for an hour or so, then AB woke up and we played in her room for a while. We watched some Dora, I tried and failed to make a grilled cheese sandwich, and then we did puzzles for almost an hour before bedtime. She loves puzzles these days, and she's remarkably good at them.
After she went to bed I got back to work on my programming project, and I was still doing that when T-- got home around midnight. I finished it up around then, packed it up, and shipped it off to Toby to fix all the problems I'd created. That's what a mentor is for, right?
Sunday
Sunday morning T-- and AB took our only car to go to Bible class while I was still in bed, so K-- and N-- came by on their way to services and picked me up. We had a quick breakfast, and then a church service in which I only got two pages written because I spent most of it helping AB color her pages.
We went to Braum's for lunch with them and D--, and afterward D-- came over for the afternoon so we could try to break our losing streak. After three pretty bad wins in Civ, we started a game with a terrible map but we caught some lucky breaks and managed to put together a pretty encouraging game. I had to break it off around five, though, because T-- had dinner plans.
We went to Hafer Park up in Edmond for a picnic, joined by three or four couples from our Small Group at church, as well as K-- and N--. We ate in the gazebo on the pond, and then AB and I walked around it to feed the ducks, and then T-- took AB to play on the play equipment while K-- and I ran to a nearby snowcone stand for some snowcones. After that I played with AB on the playground for half an hour or so, and then we headed home.
It was 8:30 by the time we got in, so we put AB down to bed, and then I contact D-- on GMail and we finished our game. It was looking really, really promising right up until the point where we lost. Gandhi beat us with a Culture Win, and there was nothing we could do to stop him. Alas.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Journal Entry: June 24, 2009
Years and years and years ago, back when we were in college, T-- and I went to the British Isles on a mission trip. We spent six weeks working with kids in VBSs and summer camps.
One of the young women at the last camp was named Siobhan, which is pronounced "shuh von" or something along those lines. She went by "Chevy." As interested as I am in words, I found her name remarkable.
When I go to check Facebook these days, about a third of the time under "People You May Know" it'll put forth a Siobhan Townsend. The first few times I saw that I clicked it, fascinated, but it's just some lady who works at the FAA with me.
It's Celtic, in case you're wondering, so it worked better for the girl in Scotland than I imagine it does for the grown woman in OKC....
I'm avoiding my daily activity report because yesterday was bad news, and it lingers. I got in the car to drive to work yesterday morning, and the air conditioner still didn't work. I was running a little late, and yesterday was ridiculously hot, so that was an unpleasant experience. There was also a Brake warning light on the dash, which made me nervous at highway speeds, and it has persisted. I also discovered that the automatic window control for the passenger rear window no longer works, and that the automatic locks no longer worked either. The switch on the driver door wouldn't lock or unlock that door, and when I pulled the tab manually, it only unlocked the one door (where it usually automatically does all the others, too).
Those last two are just convenience things (and I would throw the A/C in with that, too, except for the ridiculous heat), but that's a ton of seemingly unrelated stuff that all cropped up within a twenty-four hour window. That makes me nervous that something else, bigger, has gone wrong somewhere deep in the heart of the beast. I've got an appointment with the car doctor on Friday, to try to sort it out.
After work I watched some Dora with AB, and T-- made some awesome peppered chicken, and then D-- and I figured out how to play Civ over the internet, so we were able to finish off our compelling victory and start on a game that might offer middling success. We'll see how it plays out.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
One of the young women at the last camp was named Siobhan, which is pronounced "shuh von" or something along those lines. She went by "Chevy." As interested as I am in words, I found her name remarkable.
When I go to check Facebook these days, about a third of the time under "People You May Know" it'll put forth a Siobhan Townsend. The first few times I saw that I clicked it, fascinated, but it's just some lady who works at the FAA with me.
It's Celtic, in case you're wondering, so it worked better for the girl in Scotland than I imagine it does for the grown woman in OKC....
I'm avoiding my daily activity report because yesterday was bad news, and it lingers. I got in the car to drive to work yesterday morning, and the air conditioner still didn't work. I was running a little late, and yesterday was ridiculously hot, so that was an unpleasant experience. There was also a Brake warning light on the dash, which made me nervous at highway speeds, and it has persisted. I also discovered that the automatic window control for the passenger rear window no longer works, and that the automatic locks no longer worked either. The switch on the driver door wouldn't lock or unlock that door, and when I pulled the tab manually, it only unlocked the one door (where it usually automatically does all the others, too).
Those last two are just convenience things (and I would throw the A/C in with that, too, except for the ridiculous heat), but that's a ton of seemingly unrelated stuff that all cropped up within a twenty-four hour window. That makes me nervous that something else, bigger, has gone wrong somewhere deep in the heart of the beast. I've got an appointment with the car doctor on Friday, to try to sort it out.
After work I watched some Dora with AB, and T-- made some awesome peppered chicken, and then D-- and I figured out how to play Civ over the internet, so we were able to finish off our compelling victory and start on a game that might offer middling success. We'll see how it plays out.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Journal Entry: June 23, 2009
It's no surprise that I went a week without posting after accepting a teaching job for the fall, right? Because I had to start getting class materials together and all....
Heh. Right.
Tuesday
Last Tuesday we had McDonalds for dinner. That's all I recall. I probably played a bunch of Civ, but who can say for sure?
Wednesday
Wednesday night I picked up a pizza from Little Caesar's and D-- came over to join us for supper. T-- took AB to church, and D-- spent the evening working on his computer while I sorted files on the fileserver and browsed Netflix.
Thursday
Thursday I had lunch with Toby, and as ever we decided to work on a new programming project. This time it was going to be a memory game for AB, because she loves her Disney Princesses memory game and I get sick of the setup and cleaning up afterward. So I floated the idea by Toby and he said it would be pretty easy technically and a new project was born.
After work Thursday night the cable guy came over to fix a problem we'd been having with our digital cable. He ended up just telling me to unplug the cable from our UPS, with assurances it wasn't necessary anyway. While he was there I had him open up the cable box out back and we got that mess cleaned up. I'm glad of that.
But after he left we noticed that the TV had glowing purple bands scrolling ever upward whenever we watched the TiVo. Everyone's pretty sure that's a ground loop problem, but I don't remember it happening before the cable guy came, and yet he didn't do anything that might cause a ground loop. And, after all, everything is plugged into a UPS which should take care of that anyway. Bah.
D-- brought over Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. That was a bright spot in an otherwise frustrating evening.
Friday
Friday was my RDO. I had a dentist appointment at 8:45, and then lunch with T-- at IHOP, and then took AB home to put her down for a nap while T-- went shopping.
Once she was in bed I checked my email and found a message from Toby with a really basic prototype of the Memory game GUI. It had a 3x4 grid with blank gray cards and you could click on them to flip them over and show photos of his adorable family. Some of them were paired, but it wasn't perfect.
I got to work on that, and really spent most of the rest of my day on it. I grabbed a bunch of Creative Commons-licensed animal photos and wrote some code to enforce pairing (so every card has a match), and even programmed it to handle non-identical matches (what I'm calling Flash Card Mode). I found some free sound effects, too, to spruce it up a bit. By the end of the day, it already looked and felt like an actual game. AB played it with me for half an hour, and ever since she's occasionally come to me asking to play her "puzzle game," which I consider a real victory.
T-- made us dinner Friday night, these weird awesome sandwich pocket things with a honey mustard dipping sauce, and then later we ran up to Freddy's for some frozen custard. After AB went to bed D-- and I finished a multiplayer game of Civ that resolved in our absolute destruction. It was the most thorough, humiliating loss I've ever suffered in that game. We just spent half an hour marveling at the wretchedness of our situation, while city after city fell to enemy invaders. It was spectacular.
Saturday
Saturday morning T-- took AB to a ladies' brunch at church, so I slept in. I got up around ten, spent an hour putting some extra tweaks on my Memory game, and then ran to the bagle place for lunch with D--.
In the afternoon I watched AB while T-- went over to my sister's place to scrapbook. AB spent much of that time taking a nap, so I put some finishing touches on the game, and when she woke up we spent half an hour playing. We also read a couple of her books, watched a little TV, and before I knew it, it was time to meet T-- and my sister and brother-in-law, and K-- and N-- for dinner at Cafe 7. K-- and N-- were the only ones who'd been before, but we all enjoyed it. Very cool place.
Then K-- and N-- came over for a short visit, and I got to show off my game to K--. They left around eight, and T-- gave AB a bath which stretched past her bedtime so she was still busy with that when I left.
T--'s friend Rebecca's husband Dave's band, the Recliners, was playing at the Dugout, a bar that's about a ten minute walk from my house. Back when I was taking Rock Band a little too seriously, there'd been some talk of me taking drumming lessons from Dave, and at the time he'd invited me to come see them play a couple times, but it was never convenient to do so. When I saw that he'd be playing at the Dugout on Saturday, though, I didn't have any good excuses so I decided to go.
By Saturday night it seemed kind of weird, though, because D-- was busy with friends in town, K-- was sick with a sinus infection or something, and B-- was recovering from an extended visit from the in-laws. So I went by myself, and sat at an empty table right in front of the stage to watch the band play.
They were phenomenally good. They didn't play any original songs, but they rocked the ones they did play, and the assortment was impressive. It was mostly rock, with a sprinkling of classic country and eighties stuff. They also did "Party Like a Rock Star," which is fun if it's loud enough. And it was.
I took my scribblebook with me, and while I was there I not only overcame the crippling start on chapter one that had blocked me for two weeks, I got all of chapter two done. I consider 1,000 words a successful day's work, and Saturday night I did 6,500. I also shut down a bar for the first time in forever.
Afterward I walked home, jumped in the shower to rinse of the smoke smell, and fell asleep around three in the morning.
Sunday
I didn't really have any intention of waking up for church Sunday morning, but AB and T-- came lumbering into the room burdened with gift-wrapped presents and cards at about 9:30, and AB was crowing, "happyfathersdayiloveyou" over and over again entirely unlike a toddler who had been carefully coached. Ahem.
Anyway, it was adorable, and the first package I unwrapped was a pound of Twizzlers, which did indeed make mouths happy. I also got some cool stuff for the car, and after distributing thanks in proportion to my receipts, I finally climbed out of bed and got ready.
I got a good start on chapter three during the guest speaker's sermon, then afterward we went to Texas Roadhouse by way of Father's Choice. I had the Dallas filet. It was fantastic. Afterward, when I was groaning about how full I was, T-- said, "Are you totally happy now?"
And I said, "Well, not totally."
And she said, "Do you think the stand is open?"
The first one wasn't, but I have backups. I got a large snow cone, and that was enough to push me over the delicious, delirious edge.
I did a little more work on my game while AB was taking a nap, and then we met D-- and his mom (who was on her way through town for a convention in Dallas) for dinner at Irma's. It was as awesome as always.
Afterward D-- came over and we started a new Civ game, which went considerably better than the previous one. I stayed up way too late playing it, though.
Monday
Yesterday I got home from work and did half an hour on the treadmill. T-- called in an order to Papa John's, so when I was done I ran up to the store half a mile down to pick it up. On the way, I noticed (very quickly) that the air conditioner in the car wasn't working. It had been a little sluggish on my way home from work, but it had eventually kicked in. This time, it was blowing only hot air. So much so that the relatively short trip became surprisingly uncomfortable.
D-- came over for dinner, and stuck around for Civ. We played into another late night, but it was pretty gratifying. We'd ended Sunday night planning to start a war on the Vikings, and Ragnar ended up attacking me on the same turn I'd planned to attack him (which is helpful, for reasons of international opinion). We made quick work of the Vikings, and when they became vassals of the Maya with just one city left, we went ahead and made quick work of the Maya, too. That secured our eastern border (with only the friendly Greeks left on that end of the continent), so we moved our troops back to the other side and launched a war on the Malinese and the Koreans. Before that one was even finished I went ahead and attacked Greece just because I could.
We're tearing up. I can't wait to finish this one.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Heh. Right.
Tuesday
Last Tuesday we had McDonalds for dinner. That's all I recall. I probably played a bunch of Civ, but who can say for sure?
Wednesday
Wednesday night I picked up a pizza from Little Caesar's and D-- came over to join us for supper. T-- took AB to church, and D-- spent the evening working on his computer while I sorted files on the fileserver and browsed Netflix.
Thursday
Thursday I had lunch with Toby, and as ever we decided to work on a new programming project. This time it was going to be a memory game for AB, because she loves her Disney Princesses memory game and I get sick of the setup and cleaning up afterward. So I floated the idea by Toby and he said it would be pretty easy technically and a new project was born.
After work Thursday night the cable guy came over to fix a problem we'd been having with our digital cable. He ended up just telling me to unplug the cable from our UPS, with assurances it wasn't necessary anyway. While he was there I had him open up the cable box out back and we got that mess cleaned up. I'm glad of that.
But after he left we noticed that the TV had glowing purple bands scrolling ever upward whenever we watched the TiVo. Everyone's pretty sure that's a ground loop problem, but I don't remember it happening before the cable guy came, and yet he didn't do anything that might cause a ground loop. And, after all, everything is plugged into a UPS which should take care of that anyway. Bah.
D-- brought over Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. That was a bright spot in an otherwise frustrating evening.
Friday
Friday was my RDO. I had a dentist appointment at 8:45, and then lunch with T-- at IHOP, and then took AB home to put her down for a nap while T-- went shopping.
Once she was in bed I checked my email and found a message from Toby with a really basic prototype of the Memory game GUI. It had a 3x4 grid with blank gray cards and you could click on them to flip them over and show photos of his adorable family. Some of them were paired, but it wasn't perfect.
I got to work on that, and really spent most of the rest of my day on it. I grabbed a bunch of Creative Commons-licensed animal photos and wrote some code to enforce pairing (so every card has a match), and even programmed it to handle non-identical matches (what I'm calling Flash Card Mode). I found some free sound effects, too, to spruce it up a bit. By the end of the day, it already looked and felt like an actual game. AB played it with me for half an hour, and ever since she's occasionally come to me asking to play her "puzzle game," which I consider a real victory.
T-- made us dinner Friday night, these weird awesome sandwich pocket things with a honey mustard dipping sauce, and then later we ran up to Freddy's for some frozen custard. After AB went to bed D-- and I finished a multiplayer game of Civ that resolved in our absolute destruction. It was the most thorough, humiliating loss I've ever suffered in that game. We just spent half an hour marveling at the wretchedness of our situation, while city after city fell to enemy invaders. It was spectacular.
Saturday
Saturday morning T-- took AB to a ladies' brunch at church, so I slept in. I got up around ten, spent an hour putting some extra tweaks on my Memory game, and then ran to the bagle place for lunch with D--.
In the afternoon I watched AB while T-- went over to my sister's place to scrapbook. AB spent much of that time taking a nap, so I put some finishing touches on the game, and when she woke up we spent half an hour playing. We also read a couple of her books, watched a little TV, and before I knew it, it was time to meet T-- and my sister and brother-in-law, and K-- and N-- for dinner at Cafe 7. K-- and N-- were the only ones who'd been before, but we all enjoyed it. Very cool place.
Then K-- and N-- came over for a short visit, and I got to show off my game to K--. They left around eight, and T-- gave AB a bath which stretched past her bedtime so she was still busy with that when I left.
T--'s friend Rebecca's husband Dave's band, the Recliners, was playing at the Dugout, a bar that's about a ten minute walk from my house. Back when I was taking Rock Band a little too seriously, there'd been some talk of me taking drumming lessons from Dave, and at the time he'd invited me to come see them play a couple times, but it was never convenient to do so. When I saw that he'd be playing at the Dugout on Saturday, though, I didn't have any good excuses so I decided to go.
By Saturday night it seemed kind of weird, though, because D-- was busy with friends in town, K-- was sick with a sinus infection or something, and B-- was recovering from an extended visit from the in-laws. So I went by myself, and sat at an empty table right in front of the stage to watch the band play.
They were phenomenally good. They didn't play any original songs, but they rocked the ones they did play, and the assortment was impressive. It was mostly rock, with a sprinkling of classic country and eighties stuff. They also did "Party Like a Rock Star," which is fun if it's loud enough. And it was.
I took my scribblebook with me, and while I was there I not only overcame the crippling start on chapter one that had blocked me for two weeks, I got all of chapter two done. I consider 1,000 words a successful day's work, and Saturday night I did 6,500. I also shut down a bar for the first time in forever.
Afterward I walked home, jumped in the shower to rinse of the smoke smell, and fell asleep around three in the morning.
Sunday
I didn't really have any intention of waking up for church Sunday morning, but AB and T-- came lumbering into the room burdened with gift-wrapped presents and cards at about 9:30, and AB was crowing, "happyfathersdayiloveyou" over and over again entirely unlike a toddler who had been carefully coached. Ahem.
Anyway, it was adorable, and the first package I unwrapped was a pound of Twizzlers, which did indeed make mouths happy. I also got some cool stuff for the car, and after distributing thanks in proportion to my receipts, I finally climbed out of bed and got ready.
I got a good start on chapter three during the guest speaker's sermon, then afterward we went to Texas Roadhouse by way of Father's Choice. I had the Dallas filet. It was fantastic. Afterward, when I was groaning about how full I was, T-- said, "Are you totally happy now?"
And I said, "Well, not totally."
And she said, "Do you think the stand is open?"
The first one wasn't, but I have backups. I got a large snow cone, and that was enough to push me over the delicious, delirious edge.
I did a little more work on my game while AB was taking a nap, and then we met D-- and his mom (who was on her way through town for a convention in Dallas) for dinner at Irma's. It was as awesome as always.
Afterward D-- came over and we started a new Civ game, which went considerably better than the previous one. I stayed up way too late playing it, though.
Monday
Yesterday I got home from work and did half an hour on the treadmill. T-- called in an order to Papa John's, so when I was done I ran up to the store half a mile down to pick it up. On the way, I noticed (very quickly) that the air conditioner in the car wasn't working. It had been a little sluggish on my way home from work, but it had eventually kicked in. This time, it was blowing only hot air. So much so that the relatively short trip became surprisingly uncomfortable.
D-- came over for dinner, and stuck around for Civ. We played into another late night, but it was pretty gratifying. We'd ended Sunday night planning to start a war on the Vikings, and Ragnar ended up attacking me on the same turn I'd planned to attack him (which is helpful, for reasons of international opinion). We made quick work of the Vikings, and when they became vassals of the Maya with just one city left, we went ahead and made quick work of the Maya, too. That secured our eastern border (with only the friendly Greeks left on that end of the continent), so we moved our troops back to the other side and launched a war on the Malinese and the Koreans. Before that one was even finished I went ahead and attacked Greece just because I could.
We're tearing up. I can't wait to finish this one.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Journal Entry: June 16, 2009
The big news for yesterday is that I officially accepted the offer to teach Tech Writing at Oklahoma Christian this fall. My reasoning was as follows: if I couldn't survive a semester on improvisation and caffeine, I never would have graduated in the first place.
I got home from work on jumped on the elliptical machine for forty minutes before T-- brought home some Taco Bueno for dinner. Then I spent half an hour installing my new hard drive (replacement for one I'd bought a couple weeks ago that showed up dead), and this one actually worked. Joyful, joyful. Now my fileserver actually has some free space on it for a couple weeks.
After AB went to bed, I drove up to Books-a-Million to meet my little sister to discuss the possibility of her contributing illustrative photos to my website project. She's keen, and I'm really excited about the direction that project is heading. We also talked books and writing, of course, and they had to kick us out at ten.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
I got home from work on jumped on the elliptical machine for forty minutes before T-- brought home some Taco Bueno for dinner. Then I spent half an hour installing my new hard drive (replacement for one I'd bought a couple weeks ago that showed up dead), and this one actually worked. Joyful, joyful. Now my fileserver actually has some free space on it for a couple weeks.
After AB went to bed, I drove up to Books-a-Million to meet my little sister to discuss the possibility of her contributing illustrative photos to my website project. She's keen, and I'm really excited about the direction that project is heading. We also talked books and writing, of course, and they had to kick us out at ten.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Journal Entry: June 15, 2009
This is the story of my first chainsaw....
Friday
T--'s family came down for a visit this weekend. They got in around mid-day on Friday, so when I got home I found Karla and John as well as T--'s cousin Owen to greet me. They all went out back to play with AB and I went into the office to take care of some business before turning the room over to them for the weekend.
T-- cooked up hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner, then we watched Hudson Hawk. After that T-- went to bed while the rest of us watched Kicking and Screaming. That one was better than I expected it to be. Then Karla went to bed and John and Owen and I watched Never Back Down, which was a decent modernization of Karate Kid, in my opinion.
Saturday
Saturday morning John and Owen went to the science museum while T-- and her mom got to work organizing the kids' clothes. They'd brought a chest of drawers for AB with them, so the women spent the morning moving AB's clothes into the new drawers, and getting the old chest ready for Alex's stuff.
While they were doing that, I took AB up to Sears to pick up a new chainsaw. I'd been in a week before and picked out the one I wanted, so I walked in the door, grabbed a cart, and loaded it up in about a minute. Then I got to stand in line for a quarter hour and the lady rang up all my stuff before telling me I could use T--'s credit card. Apparently it didn't matter that I'm authorized on it, or that the purchase had already been applied. As a matter of policy, she had to void it out. I didn't have another method of payment on me, so the whole trip was just a waste of time.
We went back to the house, and T-- and her mom made up some fantastic fajitas for lunch. Instead of working in the yard as I'd intended, I spent the afternoon sorting through old notebooks and folders full of papers to figure out what to keep and what to throw away. I got rid of four or five times as much stuff as I saved, so I think it was a pretty productive afternoon.
Then everybody piled into the car to go swimming. I skipped that, spending the time mowing the lawn and taking care of some stuff in the house. When they got back we had pizza, and then watched some Conan before everybody decided to go to bed early.
Sunday
AB kept waking up during the night, crying, so even with the early bedtime we were all pretty slow getting up the Sunday morning. Still, we made it to church for services, and my little sister and her family were there, too. Afterward, we all went to P F Chang's for lunch, which is one of my favorites.
After lunch, T--'s parents took AB back to the house while T-- and I ran up to Sears. With her handy ID available, we were able to complete the purchase I'd attempted the day before, so a little after one I showed up at the house with a shiny new chainsaw. I gassed it up, oiled it up, and then spent about fifteen minutes and four or five reads through the manual figuring out the throttle was too low. Once I had it running, though, it made quick work of a tree stump that's been plaguing us for months.
That was really just a test use, though. My real concern was for a couple huge, dead limbs hanging over our backyard. I had to borrow a ladder from B-- just to get up high enough to work on the lower of the two branches, but I figured that would be enough. The higher one is broken in half and hanging down, resting on the lower one. I figured as soon as I removed the lower limb, the dangling one would come crashing down of its own accord.
Unfortunately there was nowhere to put the ladder that would be clear of the falling tree. I eventually managed to find a place on one of the tree's healthy limbs where I could climb up and sit on the limb and reach across and down to cut the dead one. So I got up in the tree, and John started the chainsaw for me and handed it up to me, and then he and T-- stood off to one side to watch.
A brand new chainsaw with a fresh chain is an amazing thing. I leaned across, said a quick prayer that nobody would get hurt, and then squeezed the trigger and started cutting through the limb. In a matter of seconds it sliced clean through, and the limb fell straight down. A perfect cut.
With the saw still roaring in my hands, I started looking around to see what other dead limbs I could reach from my perch. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted T-- and John behaving erratically, and when I looked down at them I finally realized John was screaming frantically for me to "Turn it off!" I wouldn't be able to start it up again from up in the tree, but he seemed pretty determined do I hit the kill switch.
I immediately heard the hissing roar, but I didn't realize what it was until John darted over underneath me, kicked the fallen limb away, and then pulled back the ivy around our gas meter to reveal that the big round dial had been broken clean off. A moment later I could smell the gas that was jetting out of the broken pipe. T-- ran into the house to call the gas company and John ran in at a dead sprint, passed her, found the pipe wrench in my tool chest, and darted back out to the meter to close off the emergency valve in a matter of probably less than a minute.
I was stuck up in the tree the whole time, though, and to me it seemed like a lot longer. When he finally got it shut off he was able to step up on the ladder and take the chainsaw so I could climb back down. For a while I just stared, wondering what we were going to do, until T-- came out to say that someone from the gas company was on his way. Then we checked one more time to make sure the meter was well and truly off, and got right back to work.
I carved the fallen limb into three pieces small enough to drag out front, and then we cut those down into fireplace-sized logs for John to take back to T--'s brother. We cleaned up the rest of the branches, and then stood for some time looking at the dangling limb.
It was still there, even without the limb supporting it. Worse, we couldn't find any way to get at it. That ladder of Bruce's is ridiculously tall, but it couldn't reach the broken limb. The best plan we could come up with would be to climb up onto the limb below the break, then shimmy out along it as it climbed higher and higher to get into position to cut it. Oh, and to do all that while carrying a running chainsaw.
John tried jumping and grabbing the dangling branches to pull it loose (in spite of my warnings that he was going to kill himself) and at one point it was actually hanging from the stricken limb, and it didn't budge.
Just as we were giving up on that the gas man showed up, and he came back, looked over the broken meter, pulled out a pipe wrench, and methodically disassembled the whole thing. He had a very quiet manner about him. He said, "I'll be right back," and went around to his truck where he spent some time finding the right piece. Then he came back, reassembled the whole thing, lit the pilot light on our water heater, and got back in his truck and drove away.
I'm sure there'll be a charge on our next gas bill. I shudder to think what it might be.
After that I decided I was done for the day. I cleaned up all my tools, then went inside and watched Get Carter and Cool Runnings and Mars Attacks with Owen while I played Civ on the laptop. We had leftovers for dinner, and then T-- and her mom sewed up some new curtains for our bedroom and with John's help they upholstered a headboard for our bed to match. It was a pretty impressive improvement to the room. Then it was time to go to bed, and this morning I woke up to say goodbye to her family before I headed to work.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Friday
T--'s family came down for a visit this weekend. They got in around mid-day on Friday, so when I got home I found Karla and John as well as T--'s cousin Owen to greet me. They all went out back to play with AB and I went into the office to take care of some business before turning the room over to them for the weekend.
T-- cooked up hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner, then we watched Hudson Hawk. After that T-- went to bed while the rest of us watched Kicking and Screaming. That one was better than I expected it to be. Then Karla went to bed and John and Owen and I watched Never Back Down, which was a decent modernization of Karate Kid, in my opinion.
Saturday
Saturday morning John and Owen went to the science museum while T-- and her mom got to work organizing the kids' clothes. They'd brought a chest of drawers for AB with them, so the women spent the morning moving AB's clothes into the new drawers, and getting the old chest ready for Alex's stuff.
While they were doing that, I took AB up to Sears to pick up a new chainsaw. I'd been in a week before and picked out the one I wanted, so I walked in the door, grabbed a cart, and loaded it up in about a minute. Then I got to stand in line for a quarter hour and the lady rang up all my stuff before telling me I could use T--'s credit card. Apparently it didn't matter that I'm authorized on it, or that the purchase had already been applied. As a matter of policy, she had to void it out. I didn't have another method of payment on me, so the whole trip was just a waste of time.
We went back to the house, and T-- and her mom made up some fantastic fajitas for lunch. Instead of working in the yard as I'd intended, I spent the afternoon sorting through old notebooks and folders full of papers to figure out what to keep and what to throw away. I got rid of four or five times as much stuff as I saved, so I think it was a pretty productive afternoon.
Then everybody piled into the car to go swimming. I skipped that, spending the time mowing the lawn and taking care of some stuff in the house. When they got back we had pizza, and then watched some Conan before everybody decided to go to bed early.
Sunday
AB kept waking up during the night, crying, so even with the early bedtime we were all pretty slow getting up the Sunday morning. Still, we made it to church for services, and my little sister and her family were there, too. Afterward, we all went to P F Chang's for lunch, which is one of my favorites.
After lunch, T--'s parents took AB back to the house while T-- and I ran up to Sears. With her handy ID available, we were able to complete the purchase I'd attempted the day before, so a little after one I showed up at the house with a shiny new chainsaw. I gassed it up, oiled it up, and then spent about fifteen minutes and four or five reads through the manual figuring out the throttle was too low. Once I had it running, though, it made quick work of a tree stump that's been plaguing us for months.
That was really just a test use, though. My real concern was for a couple huge, dead limbs hanging over our backyard. I had to borrow a ladder from B-- just to get up high enough to work on the lower of the two branches, but I figured that would be enough. The higher one is broken in half and hanging down, resting on the lower one. I figured as soon as I removed the lower limb, the dangling one would come crashing down of its own accord.
Unfortunately there was nowhere to put the ladder that would be clear of the falling tree. I eventually managed to find a place on one of the tree's healthy limbs where I could climb up and sit on the limb and reach across and down to cut the dead one. So I got up in the tree, and John started the chainsaw for me and handed it up to me, and then he and T-- stood off to one side to watch.
A brand new chainsaw with a fresh chain is an amazing thing. I leaned across, said a quick prayer that nobody would get hurt, and then squeezed the trigger and started cutting through the limb. In a matter of seconds it sliced clean through, and the limb fell straight down. A perfect cut.
With the saw still roaring in my hands, I started looking around to see what other dead limbs I could reach from my perch. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted T-- and John behaving erratically, and when I looked down at them I finally realized John was screaming frantically for me to "Turn it off!" I wouldn't be able to start it up again from up in the tree, but he seemed pretty determined do I hit the kill switch.
I immediately heard the hissing roar, but I didn't realize what it was until John darted over underneath me, kicked the fallen limb away, and then pulled back the ivy around our gas meter to reveal that the big round dial had been broken clean off. A moment later I could smell the gas that was jetting out of the broken pipe. T-- ran into the house to call the gas company and John ran in at a dead sprint, passed her, found the pipe wrench in my tool chest, and darted back out to the meter to close off the emergency valve in a matter of probably less than a minute.
I was stuck up in the tree the whole time, though, and to me it seemed like a lot longer. When he finally got it shut off he was able to step up on the ladder and take the chainsaw so I could climb back down. For a while I just stared, wondering what we were going to do, until T-- came out to say that someone from the gas company was on his way. Then we checked one more time to make sure the meter was well and truly off, and got right back to work.
I carved the fallen limb into three pieces small enough to drag out front, and then we cut those down into fireplace-sized logs for John to take back to T--'s brother. We cleaned up the rest of the branches, and then stood for some time looking at the dangling limb.
It was still there, even without the limb supporting it. Worse, we couldn't find any way to get at it. That ladder of Bruce's is ridiculously tall, but it couldn't reach the broken limb. The best plan we could come up with would be to climb up onto the limb below the break, then shimmy out along it as it climbed higher and higher to get into position to cut it. Oh, and to do all that while carrying a running chainsaw.
John tried jumping and grabbing the dangling branches to pull it loose (in spite of my warnings that he was going to kill himself) and at one point it was actually hanging from the stricken limb, and it didn't budge.
Just as we were giving up on that the gas man showed up, and he came back, looked over the broken meter, pulled out a pipe wrench, and methodically disassembled the whole thing. He had a very quiet manner about him. He said, "I'll be right back," and went around to his truck where he spent some time finding the right piece. Then he came back, reassembled the whole thing, lit the pilot light on our water heater, and got back in his truck and drove away.
I'm sure there'll be a charge on our next gas bill. I shudder to think what it might be.
After that I decided I was done for the day. I cleaned up all my tools, then went inside and watched Get Carter and Cool Runnings and Mars Attacks with Owen while I played Civ on the laptop. We had leftovers for dinner, and then T-- and her mom sewed up some new curtains for our bedroom and with John's help they upholstered a headboard for our bed to match. It was a pretty impressive improvement to the room. Then it was time to go to bed, and this morning I woke up to say goodbye to her family before I headed to work.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Journal Entry: June 12, 2009
Ten minutes ago I was reading an article about stupid mistakes to avoid on Facebook. Unfortunately, it didn't include anything about spoiling the twist ending of your whodunnit novel with a stupid teaser for book three.
Bah.
Tuesday
Tuesday night one of T--'s favorite scrapbooking stores held a we-don't-want-to-go-out-of-business sale, so I agreed to watch AB while she went shopping. We watched some Dora in French, played on the computer some, and then T-- brought home McDonalds for dinner. After AB went to bed, I played Civ while we watched TV.
Wednesday
We had our traditional Wednesday night dinner at our house so that I could get K-- to bring over a special wrench to work on my internet connection problem. Unfortunately he doesn't have the wrench, so my problem persisted. We enjoyed having everybody over, though.
Thursday
Thursday T-- had to work in Tulsa, so AB spent the day with one of her babysitters. T-- got home about the same time I did, and we had a little time to play with AB (who, sadly, is severely sick with allergies), before heading up to Abuelo's for dinner with K-- and N--. We had a good time, and spent a while getting caught up even after we were done eating. Then we headed home and T-- gave AB a bath while I climbed up in the attic to try a different method of fixing my internet connection. This one seems to have worked, but I'll really put it through the paces over the weekend and then I'll have a better idea.
I've also spent my of my free time this week working on my webpage. I've decided to make it a promotional/display site for my creative projects and some of my friends', too, so I'm trying to build it to be attractive, extensible, and easy to maintain. That's no small feat, especially for someone with essentially no experience in web design. I think it's coming along nicely, though. Most of you have already seen it, but I'll post a link here once I've got better than half of the links actually pointing to something.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Bah.
Tuesday
Tuesday night one of T--'s favorite scrapbooking stores held a we-don't-want-to-go-out-of-business sale, so I agreed to watch AB while she went shopping. We watched some Dora in French, played on the computer some, and then T-- brought home McDonalds for dinner. After AB went to bed, I played Civ while we watched TV.
Wednesday
We had our traditional Wednesday night dinner at our house so that I could get K-- to bring over a special wrench to work on my internet connection problem. Unfortunately he doesn't have the wrench, so my problem persisted. We enjoyed having everybody over, though.
Thursday
Thursday T-- had to work in Tulsa, so AB spent the day with one of her babysitters. T-- got home about the same time I did, and we had a little time to play with AB (who, sadly, is severely sick with allergies), before heading up to Abuelo's for dinner with K-- and N--. We had a good time, and spent a while getting caught up even after we were done eating. Then we headed home and T-- gave AB a bath while I climbed up in the attic to try a different method of fixing my internet connection. This one seems to have worked, but I'll really put it through the paces over the weekend and then I'll have a better idea.
I've also spent my of my free time this week working on my webpage. I've decided to make it a promotional/display site for my creative projects and some of my friends', too, so I'm trying to build it to be attractive, extensible, and easy to maintain. That's no small feat, especially for someone with essentially no experience in web design. I think it's coming along nicely, though. Most of you have already seen it, but I'll post a link here once I've got better than half of the links actually pointing to something.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Journal Entry: June 9, 2009
Yesterday T-- got home in time to meet me for lunch at Schlotzky's, then I had to go back to work and she had to go face the grim reality of unpacking the car and washing all the laundry. Poor thing.
After work I ran up to Home Depot to exchange a faceplate and pick up the last handful of pieces I needed to finish my networking project (sort of), then came home and took care of that. It took a little more than half an hour, but I got everything squared away and cleaned up most of my mess.
My internet still wasn't working cleanly, so I took the cable modem and router out of their niche in the closet (that I'd spent the whole weekend setting up) and plugged them into the wall socket next to my desk, with a couple clever bridges to keep everything online that needed to be online. It's a temporary fix, to keep things working until I can get a higher-quality cable connected to the main line.
I finished up just in time for dinner. T-- made us steaks, and they were delicious. After dinner my sister Heather stopped by with her little ones, and we spent a couple hours talking about her trip and writing and life in general. It was fun.
When she left we put AB down to bed, and then I went into the office and foolishly started a game of Civ. I got a pretty good start, but I missed my bedtime by a couple hours. Alas.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
After work I ran up to Home Depot to exchange a faceplate and pick up the last handful of pieces I needed to finish my networking project (sort of), then came home and took care of that. It took a little more than half an hour, but I got everything squared away and cleaned up most of my mess.
My internet still wasn't working cleanly, so I took the cable modem and router out of their niche in the closet (that I'd spent the whole weekend setting up) and plugged them into the wall socket next to my desk, with a couple clever bridges to keep everything online that needed to be online. It's a temporary fix, to keep things working until I can get a higher-quality cable connected to the main line.
I finished up just in time for dinner. T-- made us steaks, and they were delicious. After dinner my sister Heather stopped by with her little ones, and we spent a couple hours talking about her trip and writing and life in general. It was fun.
When she left we put AB down to bed, and then I went into the office and foolishly started a game of Civ. I got a pretty good start, but I missed my bedtime by a couple hours. Alas.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Greatness: The Dream House
A Postmodern Short Story
Facebook has recently put me back in touch with an old high school friend, G--. He was never a close companion on the scale of D-- or Brad or Mike, but we shared classes and we shared conversations for most of six years, so I was glad to see his name and face show up under the enigmatic, "People you might know."
I added him to my friends list right away, and when he confirmed he immediately followed up with an email offering a quick summation of his lifestate, and I responded with one of my own. Then he wrote back, saying, "Man it's good to hear from you! I'd completely lost track, but I've never forgotten all the crazy conversations we used to have. Are you still playing part-time philosopher, or have you finally joined the flock?"
I hesitated over my answer, and finally wrote back, "Still just as crazy, but I hide it better. My big obsession since college is radical social constructionism, which suggests we collectively shape our reality by our expectations. It goes deeper than that, but that's a good snapshot."
I sent that off and put the ball in his court. If he wanted to ask me for more clarification, he could. In the process he would bring down an avalanche of information from me, but at least that way it would be on his hands. If he wanted to let it go, safe in the knowledge that I still had some weird notions ready to hand, he could. He surprised me, though. He wrote back and said, "No way! That is a good summary, but I know all about it. Weird that we would still end up talking about the same ideas after all this time...."
So it turned out I was the one who couldn't leave it at that. I've known a lot of people who get social constructionism when I explain it to them, but never one yet who was already familiar with it. And I sure didn't expect G-- to be the first one! He'd always been willing to listen, stupefied, while I rambled on, but he was never the real philosopher himself. So I asked him for his story, and it was a good one.
He graduated with me in the spring of ninety-eight, and while I went off to Little Rock for the summer and then to Oklahoma for college, he stayed in Wichita and spent a few months working on a roofing crew to save up his tuition. When he got into WSU in the fall, he held onto that job. It paid well, and he liked the work.
So one weekend he was working on this rotted out roof over on the West Side, tearing out ruined plywood and rebuilding the frame while the irritated homeowner tapped his foot down in the front lawn, wanting them to be done. It was a big job, though, and they ended up working until well after midnight, tacking down new shingles by the light of flood lamps so they could do another job the next day. Sunday morning he got up, went to work, and showed up at a home halfway across town to find the same homeowner standing by the curb talking to his boss.
G-- pondered on that while he worked, and when his first break rolled around he struck up a conversation with the client. Turned out the guy flipped houses for a living, and both of these were projects he hoped to clear in a couple weeks. That piqued G--'s curiosity, and I guess the fellow liked G-- because he gave him a business card and told him to keep in touch. G-- did, and at the older man's direction he spent all his free time that fall going to seminars, reading books on the topic, listening to tapes, and checking out videos that all promised the guaranteed secret to financial independence through home sales. By the end of his first semester he was ready to give up roofing and studying and become a real estate man.
By that point he really felt like he knew what he was doing. Nineteen, with no money, no degree, and still working his high school job, he was sure he was ready to make the investment. So he did his research, and over finals week, between tests, he closed on a 2/1/1 FSBO west of Tyler that he knew was worth a twelve percent profit. It cost him sixty thousand dollars and he had the whole Christmas break to get it fixed up and listed.
So he drove out on a Sunday morning in his crappy little pickup, armed with nothing but a little toolchest he could carry easily with one hand. There may have been a power drill, too, but that would be pushing it. He eyed the dead lawn critically, the gutter hanging loose over the front porch, as he approached up the walk and turned his sixty thousand-dollar key in the twelve-dollar Wal-Mart lock. Then he pushed the door open, but it caught fast at three inches. The chain was on. Not only that, but he could smell incense burning in the house, and a moment later he heard someone moving around inside. He took a step back, checked the address, but this was the right place. He'd been here before after all, for the inspections, and the house had been empty then.
He probably should have been afraid, but young men are fools. He pounded on the open door, loud as he could, and called out, "Hey! Hey! Who's there?"
A woman's voice answered him indistinctly, and a moment later she floated into view. Her haid was black, pulled up on one side in a complicated braid. Her eyes were green, and she was wearing nothing but a threadbare white towel. That stopped him short.
She didn't show any sign of embarrassment or remorse. She just smiled politely and said, "Well? What's all the fuss?"
"This is my house," he stammered, his anger coming back a bit. "I came out here to do some work on it--"
"Good," she said. "You need a new water heater."
"I need to know what you're doing here," he said. "This is my house."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "It's mine."
He frowned, and his heart started pounding. He knew all about liens and he'd spent a week reading about squatters' rights, but he hadn't really expected problems at this place. He'd cleared the title two days ago. His stomach knotted at the thought of the legal expenses it would take to get this sorted out. He shook his head, trying not to think about it, and said, "How do you figure?"
She just smiled and said, "Magic." He stared, blank, and she slipped the chain off the door and withdrew into the room. He pushed in and found a beanbag chair and a tiny, ancient black and white TV plugged in by the front door. A spill of worn paperbacks lined the wall -- the tattered carpet their only bookshelf -- and a stick of incense burned in its holder atop a battered minifridge on the far wall. He took it all in at a glance, and felt his rage rise up again.
"What is all this?"
She shrugged one shoulder without losing the towel and said, "My stuff."
"Why?" he asked. "Why this house?" He felt a desperate fear, and wondered if his dad could help him out of it.
"I had a lovely dream that took place here," she said. "Well, not exactly this house, but one close enough. And I was driving down the road last week and saw the sign out front and I thought, 'That's it. That's my house.'"
"But it's not yours," he wailed. "It's mine. I saw the sign, and then I bought the freaking house."
She smiled and turned away. "That's a kind of magic," she said. "Money. But mine's better."
"And what's yours?" he said, as he dug the cell phone out of his pocket.
"Desire," she purred, turning back to him. "Anticipation. Faith." She gestured to the room around her with a long, slender arm. "This is going to be my house. I can make it mine by sheer force of will."
She caught his hand and dragged him back toward the hall. "This will be my room," she said, opening the door on the smaller of the two. "Just enough room for a twin bed and four bookcases." Then she turned him around and pushed open the door to the master bedroom with one toe.
The walls in there were angry red, the wookwork stained almost black. Bringing that room to a neutral color was a chore G-- was dreading, but it had a dreadfully oppressive feel as it was. It didn't seem to get through to her, though, because the girl danced into the room and said, "This will be the kids' room. Lots of space to play. Can't you just imagine?"
"Listen," he said, "if you want to buy it, I'll have the house on the market soon--"
She shook her head. "No you won't," she said. "Not this house. Besides, I don't have any money."
"You don't need any," he said. "I've got a great guy. I'll give you his number."
She just shook her head again. "I'm not interested."
"Then you have to get out." It was hard to be stern with her, but he had work to do. "Today. Now. Or I'll call the cops." He wasn't entirely sure he could do that, but she didn't call his bluff.
She sighed, and her shoulders fell, and she said, "Fine. I'll go. Can I use your phone? I need my dad to bring his truck if I'm going to get all this stuff out."
He grumbled about that, too, but if it got her gone he could spare the minutes. He waited there with her while she made the call, heard her ask the man on the other end to bring the truck, and then he got his phone back. "Good," he said. "Umm...thanks. Now you can get dressed or whatever. I'm just going to get started--"
"Fine," she said, and disappeared into the guest bedroom. He just stood for a moment, stunned, staring at the closed door. He thought about calling his dad, but decided to wait. He didn't want her to overhear any part of that conversation.
Instead he went to the front door and got his tools. He had a handful of little projects from the inspectors, and he had planned to knock those out quickly and then spend the rest of the day planning his big renovation. He pulled the list from his back pocket, unfolded it, and picked the first item: busted faceplates in kitchen and laundry room. He had a couple cheap tan light switch and outlet covers in his tool chest, so he grabbed those and a flat-head screwdriver and got to work.
Thirty minutes later he was out front with his pickup pulled up in the yard so he could stand on the hood to reach the gutter. He had three long gutter spikes between his teeth and a hammer on his belt, but all his attention was on the warped bit of sharp-edged sheet metal in his hands. He couldn't get the dangling section to match back up to the piece still on the wall.
Below him the screen door screamed open before it banged against the wall, and G-- mentally added two items to his list: oil the hinges, and reattach the hydraulic arm. Then he glanced down at the pretty trespasser. She was wearing patched jeans and a worn brown sweater now, with flip-flops for shoes in spite of the cold. He growled, "You still here?" but the nails between his teeth garbled his words. She giggled and held up a thick paper cup. Sweet-smelling steam curled off the top of it.
"He'll be here any minute now," she said. "Hot tea?"
He just shook his head, amazed at her aplomb, but after a moment he relented. He climbed down off the hood of his truck and let go the dangling gutter. It creaked ominously, but it didn't fall. He took the offered cup, then sank down on the front steps. "Thanks," he said.
She moved around in front of him, fists on her hips, and waited until he looked up to meet his eyes. "I'm not a bad person," she said softly.
"No," he said, biting off the words. "You're just crazy."
She took a step back as though he'd hit her. For the first time since he'd shown up she looked upset. "I'm not crazy!"
"You can't just move into someone else's house because you want to."
"You'd be surprised," she said. "But I didn't. I moved into my house--"
"This is not your house!"
"As you see it," she said, then held up a hand to forestall his argument. "Okay, and the cops, too. I can't suppress that kind of authority."
He took a slow sip of his tea, then set the cup aside. He leaned back and looked up at her, finally curious. "What are you talking about?"
She frowned, as though she didn't understand the question, and he shook his head. "You were talking about magic earlier," he said. "Now it's 'suppressing authority.' You don't look a crazy person--"
She stomped her foot. "I'm not crazy!"
"Then what are you talking about?" He glanced up at the dangling gutter and knew he'd rather hear her story than get back to that. "Spill it."
"Have you ever heard of Phenomenology?" she asked. "Brain in a vat?" He shook his head and she sank down on her heels in front of him. "Your whole universe is a model built inside your head, using your experiences, your expectations, and tiny electrical pulses from your nerves to populate it. Everything you see is just a message from your eyes to your brain, and based on that little spark of lighting your brain adds to the model however it sees fit. Everything you touch, every word you hear me saying--"
"Okay," he said. "What's the point?"
"It's all a dream," she said. "Your reality is a dream. Your brain is making it up, all the time, and you just go along with it. If you wanted to, though, you could change it. Take control of the dream. Put your mind to work for you and start producing reality instead of just consuming it." She was breathing faster now, and her eyes were wide. He couldn't help smiling at her enthusiasm.
"See," he said, "that's where you start to sound crazy."
She rolled her eyes. "That's the hard part," she said. "When dreams overlap. When my world and your world come into contact, and they're not the same, we have to negotiate a common ground."
"And how would you do that?"
"Talking," she said. "That's the purest magic, rhetoric. Money works, too, like you said. And force." She turned up her nose. "You invoked force, and I retreated, and your dream won out over mine." She rose back to her feet, unfolding gracefully, and reached out to touch the fallen gutter with a tender hand. There was sadness in her eyes. "I lose my dream house," she said, "and you get this dump. Congratulations." As she said it her dad pulled up to the curb behind her. He honked the horn once and she glanced back over her shoulder. "I'll be gone in a minute," she said, and disappeared into the house.
After that there wasn't much excitement to the project. G-- got down to work. He fixed the easy stuff quickly, but after that things ground to a halt. He got into the attic to examine the ductwork and found termites in the ceiling. He pulled up carpet to check out the hardwoods and found water damage down to the subfloor. Christmas break came and went. When the lease on his apartment expired in the spring, he moved into the house so he could work on it full-time over the summer.
In spite of his difficulties, he kept an eye on the real estate market, still committed to his plan. In June he bought another place and sold it in July. In August he bought and sold two places, one of them in the same neighborhood as his starter house. He finally settled into a rhythm, learned the eccentricities of the local market, and got pretty good at what he did. He never could sell that first 2/1/1, though.
Then on a Thursday night, two years later, he was at Barnes and Noble grabbing a book on plumbing when he spotted her in one of the comfy chairs reading a trashy fantasy novel. He fell down into the chair next to her and when she didn't look up he said, "Hey, squatter."
That got her attention. She blinked at him for a moment, then grinned sarcastically and answered, "Hey there, cops."
"That's me," he said. "What's happening?"
"The kingdom's crumbling and the lord goes off to war," she said. "You?"
"Better than that." He grinned. "Want to know something funny? I never did sell that house."
She tilted her head, considering him, and said, "If you're looking to unload it, I still don't have any money." She opened the book back up, ready to forget him.
He blinked, and coughed an awkward laugh. "Umm...no," he said. "That's not what I.... Listen, do you think you'd want to go out to dinner?'
Again he got that long, quiet stare, but then she nodded. "Sure," she said. "Where did you have in mind?" They did Mexican, and then the Olive Garden on Saturday, and burgers next Friday before they went bowling. And then in April they got married. He finished college, and two years after that they started a family with twins on the first try. He spent a weekend moving furniture, painting, getting the kids' room ready. And as he put the finishing touches on the new nursery -- their old master bedroom, but they would need the extra space for two cribs, two dressers, and oh, the mountain of toys -- he laughed out loud and went to find her in the living room, curled up with a book.
"It's about done," he told her.
She looked up at him absently, then saw the look on his face and her eyes narrowed. "Why are you smiling?"
"Remember the day we met?" he said, sinking down next to her on the couch. "Here?" She nodded, and he went on. "You said the master bedroom would be your kids' room. Standing there in a towel, you told me that with a straight face." She nodded again and he smiled. "Well, it's done," he said. "It came out just like said. Isn't that crazy?"
But she just smiled, and laughed, and told him, "No. It's just as it should be."
Facebook has recently put me back in touch with an old high school friend, G--. He was never a close companion on the scale of D-- or Brad or Mike, but we shared classes and we shared conversations for most of six years, so I was glad to see his name and face show up under the enigmatic, "People you might know."
I added him to my friends list right away, and when he confirmed he immediately followed up with an email offering a quick summation of his lifestate, and I responded with one of my own. Then he wrote back, saying, "Man it's good to hear from you! I'd completely lost track, but I've never forgotten all the crazy conversations we used to have. Are you still playing part-time philosopher, or have you finally joined the flock?"
I hesitated over my answer, and finally wrote back, "Still just as crazy, but I hide it better. My big obsession since college is radical social constructionism, which suggests we collectively shape our reality by our expectations. It goes deeper than that, but that's a good snapshot."
I sent that off and put the ball in his court. If he wanted to ask me for more clarification, he could. In the process he would bring down an avalanche of information from me, but at least that way it would be on his hands. If he wanted to let it go, safe in the knowledge that I still had some weird notions ready to hand, he could. He surprised me, though. He wrote back and said, "No way! That is a good summary, but I know all about it. Weird that we would still end up talking about the same ideas after all this time...."
So it turned out I was the one who couldn't leave it at that. I've known a lot of people who get social constructionism when I explain it to them, but never one yet who was already familiar with it. And I sure didn't expect G-- to be the first one! He'd always been willing to listen, stupefied, while I rambled on, but he was never the real philosopher himself. So I asked him for his story, and it was a good one.
He graduated with me in the spring of ninety-eight, and while I went off to Little Rock for the summer and then to Oklahoma for college, he stayed in Wichita and spent a few months working on a roofing crew to save up his tuition. When he got into WSU in the fall, he held onto that job. It paid well, and he liked the work.
So one weekend he was working on this rotted out roof over on the West Side, tearing out ruined plywood and rebuilding the frame while the irritated homeowner tapped his foot down in the front lawn, wanting them to be done. It was a big job, though, and they ended up working until well after midnight, tacking down new shingles by the light of flood lamps so they could do another job the next day. Sunday morning he got up, went to work, and showed up at a home halfway across town to find the same homeowner standing by the curb talking to his boss.
G-- pondered on that while he worked, and when his first break rolled around he struck up a conversation with the client. Turned out the guy flipped houses for a living, and both of these were projects he hoped to clear in a couple weeks. That piqued G--'s curiosity, and I guess the fellow liked G-- because he gave him a business card and told him to keep in touch. G-- did, and at the older man's direction he spent all his free time that fall going to seminars, reading books on the topic, listening to tapes, and checking out videos that all promised the guaranteed secret to financial independence through home sales. By the end of his first semester he was ready to give up roofing and studying and become a real estate man.
By that point he really felt like he knew what he was doing. Nineteen, with no money, no degree, and still working his high school job, he was sure he was ready to make the investment. So he did his research, and over finals week, between tests, he closed on a 2/1/1 FSBO west of Tyler that he knew was worth a twelve percent profit. It cost him sixty thousand dollars and he had the whole Christmas break to get it fixed up and listed.
So he drove out on a Sunday morning in his crappy little pickup, armed with nothing but a little toolchest he could carry easily with one hand. There may have been a power drill, too, but that would be pushing it. He eyed the dead lawn critically, the gutter hanging loose over the front porch, as he approached up the walk and turned his sixty thousand-dollar key in the twelve-dollar Wal-Mart lock. Then he pushed the door open, but it caught fast at three inches. The chain was on. Not only that, but he could smell incense burning in the house, and a moment later he heard someone moving around inside. He took a step back, checked the address, but this was the right place. He'd been here before after all, for the inspections, and the house had been empty then.
He probably should have been afraid, but young men are fools. He pounded on the open door, loud as he could, and called out, "Hey! Hey! Who's there?"
A woman's voice answered him indistinctly, and a moment later she floated into view. Her haid was black, pulled up on one side in a complicated braid. Her eyes were green, and she was wearing nothing but a threadbare white towel. That stopped him short.
She didn't show any sign of embarrassment or remorse. She just smiled politely and said, "Well? What's all the fuss?"
"This is my house," he stammered, his anger coming back a bit. "I came out here to do some work on it--"
"Good," she said. "You need a new water heater."
"I need to know what you're doing here," he said. "This is my house."
"No," she said, shaking her head. "It's mine."
He frowned, and his heart started pounding. He knew all about liens and he'd spent a week reading about squatters' rights, but he hadn't really expected problems at this place. He'd cleared the title two days ago. His stomach knotted at the thought of the legal expenses it would take to get this sorted out. He shook his head, trying not to think about it, and said, "How do you figure?"
She just smiled and said, "Magic." He stared, blank, and she slipped the chain off the door and withdrew into the room. He pushed in and found a beanbag chair and a tiny, ancient black and white TV plugged in by the front door. A spill of worn paperbacks lined the wall -- the tattered carpet their only bookshelf -- and a stick of incense burned in its holder atop a battered minifridge on the far wall. He took it all in at a glance, and felt his rage rise up again.
"What is all this?"
She shrugged one shoulder without losing the towel and said, "My stuff."
"Why?" he asked. "Why this house?" He felt a desperate fear, and wondered if his dad could help him out of it.
"I had a lovely dream that took place here," she said. "Well, not exactly this house, but one close enough. And I was driving down the road last week and saw the sign out front and I thought, 'That's it. That's my house.'"
"But it's not yours," he wailed. "It's mine. I saw the sign, and then I bought the freaking house."
She smiled and turned away. "That's a kind of magic," she said. "Money. But mine's better."
"And what's yours?" he said, as he dug the cell phone out of his pocket.
"Desire," she purred, turning back to him. "Anticipation. Faith." She gestured to the room around her with a long, slender arm. "This is going to be my house. I can make it mine by sheer force of will."
She caught his hand and dragged him back toward the hall. "This will be my room," she said, opening the door on the smaller of the two. "Just enough room for a twin bed and four bookcases." Then she turned him around and pushed open the door to the master bedroom with one toe.
The walls in there were angry red, the wookwork stained almost black. Bringing that room to a neutral color was a chore G-- was dreading, but it had a dreadfully oppressive feel as it was. It didn't seem to get through to her, though, because the girl danced into the room and said, "This will be the kids' room. Lots of space to play. Can't you just imagine?"
"Listen," he said, "if you want to buy it, I'll have the house on the market soon--"
She shook her head. "No you won't," she said. "Not this house. Besides, I don't have any money."
"You don't need any," he said. "I've got a great guy. I'll give you his number."
She just shook her head again. "I'm not interested."
"Then you have to get out." It was hard to be stern with her, but he had work to do. "Today. Now. Or I'll call the cops." He wasn't entirely sure he could do that, but she didn't call his bluff.
She sighed, and her shoulders fell, and she said, "Fine. I'll go. Can I use your phone? I need my dad to bring his truck if I'm going to get all this stuff out."
He grumbled about that, too, but if it got her gone he could spare the minutes. He waited there with her while she made the call, heard her ask the man on the other end to bring the truck, and then he got his phone back. "Good," he said. "Umm...thanks. Now you can get dressed or whatever. I'm just going to get started--"
"Fine," she said, and disappeared into the guest bedroom. He just stood for a moment, stunned, staring at the closed door. He thought about calling his dad, but decided to wait. He didn't want her to overhear any part of that conversation.
Instead he went to the front door and got his tools. He had a handful of little projects from the inspectors, and he had planned to knock those out quickly and then spend the rest of the day planning his big renovation. He pulled the list from his back pocket, unfolded it, and picked the first item: busted faceplates in kitchen and laundry room. He had a couple cheap tan light switch and outlet covers in his tool chest, so he grabbed those and a flat-head screwdriver and got to work.
Thirty minutes later he was out front with his pickup pulled up in the yard so he could stand on the hood to reach the gutter. He had three long gutter spikes between his teeth and a hammer on his belt, but all his attention was on the warped bit of sharp-edged sheet metal in his hands. He couldn't get the dangling section to match back up to the piece still on the wall.
Below him the screen door screamed open before it banged against the wall, and G-- mentally added two items to his list: oil the hinges, and reattach the hydraulic arm. Then he glanced down at the pretty trespasser. She was wearing patched jeans and a worn brown sweater now, with flip-flops for shoes in spite of the cold. He growled, "You still here?" but the nails between his teeth garbled his words. She giggled and held up a thick paper cup. Sweet-smelling steam curled off the top of it.
"He'll be here any minute now," she said. "Hot tea?"
He just shook his head, amazed at her aplomb, but after a moment he relented. He climbed down off the hood of his truck and let go the dangling gutter. It creaked ominously, but it didn't fall. He took the offered cup, then sank down on the front steps. "Thanks," he said.
She moved around in front of him, fists on her hips, and waited until he looked up to meet his eyes. "I'm not a bad person," she said softly.
"No," he said, biting off the words. "You're just crazy."
She took a step back as though he'd hit her. For the first time since he'd shown up she looked upset. "I'm not crazy!"
"You can't just move into someone else's house because you want to."
"You'd be surprised," she said. "But I didn't. I moved into my house--"
"This is not your house!"
"As you see it," she said, then held up a hand to forestall his argument. "Okay, and the cops, too. I can't suppress that kind of authority."
He took a slow sip of his tea, then set the cup aside. He leaned back and looked up at her, finally curious. "What are you talking about?"
She frowned, as though she didn't understand the question, and he shook his head. "You were talking about magic earlier," he said. "Now it's 'suppressing authority.' You don't look a crazy person--"
She stomped her foot. "I'm not crazy!"
"Then what are you talking about?" He glanced up at the dangling gutter and knew he'd rather hear her story than get back to that. "Spill it."
"Have you ever heard of Phenomenology?" she asked. "Brain in a vat?" He shook his head and she sank down on her heels in front of him. "Your whole universe is a model built inside your head, using your experiences, your expectations, and tiny electrical pulses from your nerves to populate it. Everything you see is just a message from your eyes to your brain, and based on that little spark of lighting your brain adds to the model however it sees fit. Everything you touch, every word you hear me saying--"
"Okay," he said. "What's the point?"
"It's all a dream," she said. "Your reality is a dream. Your brain is making it up, all the time, and you just go along with it. If you wanted to, though, you could change it. Take control of the dream. Put your mind to work for you and start producing reality instead of just consuming it." She was breathing faster now, and her eyes were wide. He couldn't help smiling at her enthusiasm.
"See," he said, "that's where you start to sound crazy."
She rolled her eyes. "That's the hard part," she said. "When dreams overlap. When my world and your world come into contact, and they're not the same, we have to negotiate a common ground."
"And how would you do that?"
"Talking," she said. "That's the purest magic, rhetoric. Money works, too, like you said. And force." She turned up her nose. "You invoked force, and I retreated, and your dream won out over mine." She rose back to her feet, unfolding gracefully, and reached out to touch the fallen gutter with a tender hand. There was sadness in her eyes. "I lose my dream house," she said, "and you get this dump. Congratulations." As she said it her dad pulled up to the curb behind her. He honked the horn once and she glanced back over her shoulder. "I'll be gone in a minute," she said, and disappeared into the house.
After that there wasn't much excitement to the project. G-- got down to work. He fixed the easy stuff quickly, but after that things ground to a halt. He got into the attic to examine the ductwork and found termites in the ceiling. He pulled up carpet to check out the hardwoods and found water damage down to the subfloor. Christmas break came and went. When the lease on his apartment expired in the spring, he moved into the house so he could work on it full-time over the summer.
In spite of his difficulties, he kept an eye on the real estate market, still committed to his plan. In June he bought another place and sold it in July. In August he bought and sold two places, one of them in the same neighborhood as his starter house. He finally settled into a rhythm, learned the eccentricities of the local market, and got pretty good at what he did. He never could sell that first 2/1/1, though.
Then on a Thursday night, two years later, he was at Barnes and Noble grabbing a book on plumbing when he spotted her in one of the comfy chairs reading a trashy fantasy novel. He fell down into the chair next to her and when she didn't look up he said, "Hey, squatter."
That got her attention. She blinked at him for a moment, then grinned sarcastically and answered, "Hey there, cops."
"That's me," he said. "What's happening?"
"The kingdom's crumbling and the lord goes off to war," she said. "You?"
"Better than that." He grinned. "Want to know something funny? I never did sell that house."
She tilted her head, considering him, and said, "If you're looking to unload it, I still don't have any money." She opened the book back up, ready to forget him.
He blinked, and coughed an awkward laugh. "Umm...no," he said. "That's not what I.... Listen, do you think you'd want to go out to dinner?'
Again he got that long, quiet stare, but then she nodded. "Sure," she said. "Where did you have in mind?" They did Mexican, and then the Olive Garden on Saturday, and burgers next Friday before they went bowling. And then in April they got married. He finished college, and two years after that they started a family with twins on the first try. He spent a weekend moving furniture, painting, getting the kids' room ready. And as he put the finishing touches on the new nursery -- their old master bedroom, but they would need the extra space for two cribs, two dressers, and oh, the mountain of toys -- he laughed out loud and went to find her in the living room, curled up with a book.
"It's about done," he told her.
She looked up at him absently, then saw the look on his face and her eyes narrowed. "Why are you smiling?"
"Remember the day we met?" he said, sinking down next to her on the couch. "Here?" She nodded, and he went on. "You said the master bedroom would be your kids' room. Standing there in a towel, you told me that with a straight face." She nodded again and he smiled. "Well, it's done," he said. "It came out just like said. Isn't that crazy?"
But she just smiled, and laughed, and told him, "No. It's just as it should be."
Journal Entry: June 8, 2009
Thursday
Last Thursday night we had D-- over to babysit AB so T-- and I could go out on a date. When we started trying to decide where to go for dinner, though, we both thought pizza sounded best, so we just ordered in and shared with D-- and AB. Then he took her outside to play and we went shopping.
I've been looking for new short sleeve dress shirts to wear to work, and T-- has been looking for maternity dresses for the summer. We hit Old Navy, then Gordman's, then Best Buy (which was a total bust), and then Wal-Mart where T-- finally found some stuff she liked. I also hit the snowcone stand for a Tiger's Blood, and filled up the car for T--.
We got home after nine, but AB was still awake and in crisis mode. She couldn't find her white pacifier. She had the orange one, but she needed the white one, too. We had no luck finding it, but I got her distracted enough that she finally forgot about it and fell asleep.
Friday
Friday morning I stuck around the house long enough to have breakfast with T-- and AB before they got on the road. They spent the weekend down in Texas, going to my aunt's birthday party in Houston (with a scheduled stop in Dallas to spend some time with my grandma. I stayed home and went to work.
I met D-- for lunch, then in the afternoon I got a haircut, grabbed some snacks and drinks for our party, and even got started wiring the new office. We had put in network and cable connections in the old office closet to set up a distribution point for our router and cable modem. When we switched AB's room and the office, though, it became inconvenient to have to go in there to deal with networking issues.
So my project for the weekend was to move the two existing network connections and the cable connection from the old office closet to the new one, and add a new network and cable connection on the wall in the new office. I also decided to install a new electrical outlet in the new closet, because I had much easier access to the wall in this closet than I'd had in the other one.
Friday afternoon I didn't get much of it done, but I did find the locations for the two junction boxes in the closet and cut the holes in the wall. I also got in the attic for a few minutes to scout out the setup up there, and that was awful. I hate working in the attic.
After that I had to call it quits and get cleaned up because we had our June Poker Night scheduled to take advantage of the wives and kids being out of town (my sister took her family down to the same birthday party). We met at their house, and K--, D--, and B-- joined us. N-- came over for dinner, too, and they brought us Steve's Rib, which is currently my favorite barbecue. It was awesome.
We watched some Simpsons and Family Guy, and then most of the original Batman movie, and then more Family Guy. Oh, and we played some Texas Hold 'Em. I won out, but then B-- beat me when we switched to Blackjack. Ah well. It was a fun night.
Saturday
Saturday I got up around eight because I knew my plans for the day involved attic time and I wanted to get to it before it got really hot. K-- came over to help out while N-- went shopping for baby clothes nearby, so I put him to work on the electrical outlets while I finished setting up the network connections, then finally (and reluctantly) went up into the attic to drill a hole and feed the two new connections down the wall.
Turns out our air conditioner is situated directly over the office wall. It took me about half an hour to figure that out, searching with my fingertips under the mountains of insulation to try to find the top cap -- trying to guess distances based on the paltry landmarks up there -- K-- finally had to come up to help and we found a spot about eight inches long in which I could place the drop. Anything to the north of that would have been in the living room, and anything to the south was trapped under hundreds of pounds of sheet metal and blower fans.
Then I finally got to do the actual work, and that only took a few minutes. I put the hole through the cap, K-- went down and cut the square out of the drywall (and I could immediately see the light from the room below), and then I fed the cables down until he could pull them through into the office.
All told I spent more than an hour up in the attic, crouched and supporting my weight on the narrow edges of two-by-fours. Once I got back down into the office, it was just a matter of terminating ends, plugging them into faceplates, and cleaning up. We did about half of that, tested out all the connections we'd made (except the cable modem connection, it turned out), and then ran up to Panera to meet D-- for lunch. That was about noon, and I was completely exhausted.
After lunch, though, I had plans. I'd been supposed to meet Toby for some programming last Saturday afternoon, while I was in charge of AB, but I'd postponed that because I thought she was sick and didn't want to fight with her all afternoon. So this Saturday I got home from lunch, grabbed my laptop, and then jumped in the car to head to Norman.
It was fun. We spent the afternoon modeling furniture for a game we're going to make AB, and while we were at it he turned on Madagascar II for the kids. I'd never seen it, so I paid about as much attention to that as to the work he was doing. Both were pretty entertaining. His wife got home around five and we had an Asian pot roast for supper that was awesome, and then Toby and I went to see Star Trek, which she'd gone to see without him earlier in the week.
It was great on a second viewing. Definitely one worth watching on the big screen. Toby really enjoyed it, too. We got back to his house around nine and spent a few more minutes talking before I headed home. I got in at about ten, totally exhausted and quite ready for bed.
Then I spent six hours playing computer games.
That wasn't actually as accidental as it sounds. On the drive home I called D-- and invited him over for some multiplayer Civ, deciding in a casual, off-hand way that I could sleep for half the day Sunday, skipping church in the process. So D-- met me at the house, and we took three tries to get a game set up right, and then we were off and running.
I did discover, while I was waiting for him to prosecute a war against the Incas, that my internet connection was down. Our network connection was fine, but there was no link to the outside world. I restarted the cable modem, and then got back to the game. An hour later it finally had a connection, and that one stayed live (but weak) for the rest of the night.
I finally went to bed a little after four, looking forward to a really, really late morning.
Sunday
So T-- called me five hours later, discovered I was asleep, and graciously agreed to call back later. I couldn't get back to sleep after that, though, so I got up, cleaned up, and went to church after all. The sermon was a pretty good one, and I got some writing done on the next Ghost Targets book, so in the end I'm glad of the way the morning turned out. I was really dragging all day, though.
After church K-- and N-- invited us over for a cookout (specifically hot dogs and brats), and that was delicious. Then D-- and I went back to the house to finish our game of Civ. I took a stab at fixing my internet connection first, by reterminating the input cable. When I hooked it back up it wouldn't connect, though, same as the night before. We went ahead and started playing our game.
Half an hour later I checked on it again and it finally had a connection, and this time it was fantastic. We played all day, stopping only to order a pizza around six, and at about eleven we found ourselves master of half the world, with three nations our vassals and modern armies capable of annihilating any opposition already in transports headed for the other hemisphere, when England suddenly and unexpectedly won a cultural victory. Lame!
We left it at that, though. D-- headed home, and I spent a little while getting the house cleaned up for T--'s return. I finished off the network connection in the office, vaccuumed up all the drywall dust from all the wall-carving we'd done, cleaned out the trash, loaded and ran the dishwasher, dragged the garbage out to the curb for an early pickup, and then finally crashed in bed after midnight.
The weekend was equal parts productive and awesome. There's very little overlap between those two, but the total is one I'm pretty happy with. I'm looking forward to T-- and AB getting home this afternoon, though. Even busy as I was, I found plenty of time to miss them.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Last Thursday night we had D-- over to babysit AB so T-- and I could go out on a date. When we started trying to decide where to go for dinner, though, we both thought pizza sounded best, so we just ordered in and shared with D-- and AB. Then he took her outside to play and we went shopping.
I've been looking for new short sleeve dress shirts to wear to work, and T-- has been looking for maternity dresses for the summer. We hit Old Navy, then Gordman's, then Best Buy (which was a total bust), and then Wal-Mart where T-- finally found some stuff she liked. I also hit the snowcone stand for a Tiger's Blood, and filled up the car for T--.
We got home after nine, but AB was still awake and in crisis mode. She couldn't find her white pacifier. She had the orange one, but she needed the white one, too. We had no luck finding it, but I got her distracted enough that she finally forgot about it and fell asleep.
Friday
Friday morning I stuck around the house long enough to have breakfast with T-- and AB before they got on the road. They spent the weekend down in Texas, going to my aunt's birthday party in Houston (with a scheduled stop in Dallas to spend some time with my grandma. I stayed home and went to work.
I met D-- for lunch, then in the afternoon I got a haircut, grabbed some snacks and drinks for our party, and even got started wiring the new office. We had put in network and cable connections in the old office closet to set up a distribution point for our router and cable modem. When we switched AB's room and the office, though, it became inconvenient to have to go in there to deal with networking issues.
So my project for the weekend was to move the two existing network connections and the cable connection from the old office closet to the new one, and add a new network and cable connection on the wall in the new office. I also decided to install a new electrical outlet in the new closet, because I had much easier access to the wall in this closet than I'd had in the other one.
Friday afternoon I didn't get much of it done, but I did find the locations for the two junction boxes in the closet and cut the holes in the wall. I also got in the attic for a few minutes to scout out the setup up there, and that was awful. I hate working in the attic.
After that I had to call it quits and get cleaned up because we had our June Poker Night scheduled to take advantage of the wives and kids being out of town (my sister took her family down to the same birthday party). We met at their house, and K--, D--, and B-- joined us. N-- came over for dinner, too, and they brought us Steve's Rib, which is currently my favorite barbecue. It was awesome.
We watched some Simpsons and Family Guy, and then most of the original Batman movie, and then more Family Guy. Oh, and we played some Texas Hold 'Em. I won out, but then B-- beat me when we switched to Blackjack. Ah well. It was a fun night.
Saturday
Saturday I got up around eight because I knew my plans for the day involved attic time and I wanted to get to it before it got really hot. K-- came over to help out while N-- went shopping for baby clothes nearby, so I put him to work on the electrical outlets while I finished setting up the network connections, then finally (and reluctantly) went up into the attic to drill a hole and feed the two new connections down the wall.
Turns out our air conditioner is situated directly over the office wall. It took me about half an hour to figure that out, searching with my fingertips under the mountains of insulation to try to find the top cap -- trying to guess distances based on the paltry landmarks up there -- K-- finally had to come up to help and we found a spot about eight inches long in which I could place the drop. Anything to the north of that would have been in the living room, and anything to the south was trapped under hundreds of pounds of sheet metal and blower fans.
Then I finally got to do the actual work, and that only took a few minutes. I put the hole through the cap, K-- went down and cut the square out of the drywall (and I could immediately see the light from the room below), and then I fed the cables down until he could pull them through into the office.
All told I spent more than an hour up in the attic, crouched and supporting my weight on the narrow edges of two-by-fours. Once I got back down into the office, it was just a matter of terminating ends, plugging them into faceplates, and cleaning up. We did about half of that, tested out all the connections we'd made (except the cable modem connection, it turned out), and then ran up to Panera to meet D-- for lunch. That was about noon, and I was completely exhausted.
After lunch, though, I had plans. I'd been supposed to meet Toby for some programming last Saturday afternoon, while I was in charge of AB, but I'd postponed that because I thought she was sick and didn't want to fight with her all afternoon. So this Saturday I got home from lunch, grabbed my laptop, and then jumped in the car to head to Norman.
It was fun. We spent the afternoon modeling furniture for a game we're going to make AB, and while we were at it he turned on Madagascar II for the kids. I'd never seen it, so I paid about as much attention to that as to the work he was doing. Both were pretty entertaining. His wife got home around five and we had an Asian pot roast for supper that was awesome, and then Toby and I went to see Star Trek, which she'd gone to see without him earlier in the week.
It was great on a second viewing. Definitely one worth watching on the big screen. Toby really enjoyed it, too. We got back to his house around nine and spent a few more minutes talking before I headed home. I got in at about ten, totally exhausted and quite ready for bed.
Then I spent six hours playing computer games.
That wasn't actually as accidental as it sounds. On the drive home I called D-- and invited him over for some multiplayer Civ, deciding in a casual, off-hand way that I could sleep for half the day Sunday, skipping church in the process. So D-- met me at the house, and we took three tries to get a game set up right, and then we were off and running.
I did discover, while I was waiting for him to prosecute a war against the Incas, that my internet connection was down. Our network connection was fine, but there was no link to the outside world. I restarted the cable modem, and then got back to the game. An hour later it finally had a connection, and that one stayed live (but weak) for the rest of the night.
I finally went to bed a little after four, looking forward to a really, really late morning.
Sunday
So T-- called me five hours later, discovered I was asleep, and graciously agreed to call back later. I couldn't get back to sleep after that, though, so I got up, cleaned up, and went to church after all. The sermon was a pretty good one, and I got some writing done on the next Ghost Targets book, so in the end I'm glad of the way the morning turned out. I was really dragging all day, though.
After church K-- and N-- invited us over for a cookout (specifically hot dogs and brats), and that was delicious. Then D-- and I went back to the house to finish our game of Civ. I took a stab at fixing my internet connection first, by reterminating the input cable. When I hooked it back up it wouldn't connect, though, same as the night before. We went ahead and started playing our game.
Half an hour later I checked on it again and it finally had a connection, and this time it was fantastic. We played all day, stopping only to order a pizza around six, and at about eleven we found ourselves master of half the world, with three nations our vassals and modern armies capable of annihilating any opposition already in transports headed for the other hemisphere, when England suddenly and unexpectedly won a cultural victory. Lame!
We left it at that, though. D-- headed home, and I spent a little while getting the house cleaned up for T--'s return. I finished off the network connection in the office, vaccuumed up all the drywall dust from all the wall-carving we'd done, cleaned out the trash, loaded and ran the dishwasher, dragged the garbage out to the curb for an early pickup, and then finally crashed in bed after midnight.
The weekend was equal parts productive and awesome. There's very little overlap between those two, but the total is one I'm pretty happy with. I'm looking forward to T-- and AB getting home this afternoon, though. Even busy as I was, I found plenty of time to miss them.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Journal Entry: June 4, 2009
Last night after work I got a Father's Day present -- T-- picked up a couple new shirts for me from Kohl's. They were really nice, and I immediately changed into the blue one. (Yes, blue.) Then I ran up to Lowe's to buy a couple bags of play sand for T--'s safari-themed Wednesday night Bible class. I met her at the church, we dumped the sand, and then raced over to Arby's to meet everyone for dinner.
"Everyone" in this case was D-- and K-- and N--. We had our sandwiches, then we took advantage of the Pick 5 menu to get a round of turnovers for dessert. Delicious!
Then most of us went to church, while D-- took me back to my house and dropped me off. He went home to sleep, having spent an exhausting night the evening previous chasing down problems for work.
I got my bad hard drive ready to send back to NewEgg, cleaned up the office and AB's room a little bit, and then just had time to sit down for a minute before T-- got home from church, followed shortly by K-- and N-- who wanted to check out the new nursery and office.
They were appropriately admiring, and then after they left we put AB to bed, then sat down in the living room to some Conan and Fallon. Both were good, although both were plagued with connectivity issues. I think Cox might be lashing out at me for threatening to cancel my account last week.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
"Everyone" in this case was D-- and K-- and N--. We had our sandwiches, then we took advantage of the Pick 5 menu to get a round of turnovers for dessert. Delicious!
Then most of us went to church, while D-- took me back to my house and dropped me off. He went home to sleep, having spent an exhausting night the evening previous chasing down problems for work.
I got my bad hard drive ready to send back to NewEgg, cleaned up the office and AB's room a little bit, and then just had time to sit down for a minute before T-- got home from church, followed shortly by K-- and N-- who wanted to check out the new nursery and office.
They were appropriately admiring, and then after they left we put AB to bed, then sat down in the living room to some Conan and Fallon. Both were good, although both were plagued with connectivity issues. I think Cox might be lashing out at me for threatening to cancel my account last week.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Journal Entry: June 3, 2009
Yesterday after work I hung new curtains in AB's room and spent about forty minutes cursing at the register and vent covers I had to hang in the ceiling. I hate those things. Finally got it done, though, and most of my pending work for the nursery is done now.
T-- grilled up some hot dogs for dinner and D-- came over to join in. Then I spent some time getting the HTPC set up with the new Hulu Desktop software, which is pretty slick. It took a while to get it programmed to respond properly to my Harmony remote, but now that it does it's awesome.
Then we watched some Conan and some Jimmy Fallon while I played Civ and T-- and D-- both worked on work stuff. Then it was midnight.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
T-- grilled up some hot dogs for dinner and D-- came over to join in. Then I spent some time getting the HTPC set up with the new Hulu Desktop software, which is pretty slick. It took a while to get it programmed to respond properly to my Harmony remote, but now that it does it's awesome.
Then we watched some Conan and some Jimmy Fallon while I played Civ and T-- and D-- both worked on work stuff. Then it was midnight.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Journal Entry: June 2, 2009
It always surprises me to get that email from Facebook saying "Such-and-such confirmed you as a friend." Usually that's because of the "such-and-such" in question -- mostly people I vaguely remember from high school who apparently remember me well enough to confirm. Weird.
I spent the weekend watching AB while T-- was out of town, so you can anticipate a long and detailed blog post.
Thursday
Thursday afternoon I got home from work a little early so that I could say goodbye to T-- before she headed to Little Rock for a weekend scrapbooking with my mom and sisters. We got the car loaded, and then she tearfully took to the road.
I played with AB for half an hour or so, until she started claiming she was hungry, and then I made us dinner -- PB and J for her, and PF and Changs for me (leftovers, that is). Then we were heading back to her room to play some more when she asked if we could go in the office (like the cats, she loves it simply because the door is always closed).
So I dragged T--'s desk chair in there, squeezed it in next to mine at the desk, and put VeggieTales on the new big monitor. AB watched TV while I played Civ on the laptop. It was a fun hour and a half. After I put her to bed, I played some more Civ, and then went to bed at a reasonable hour (something I have difficulty remembering to do when I'm home alone).
Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep. I was awake until about 2:00 before I finally drifted off.
Friday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through work on Friday, but AB wasn't tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door, loudly and insistently, while politely asking to be released. I could barely hear her through the banging, saying, "Let me out, please."
I went to her door and told her she didn't have to go to back to bed, but she had to stay in her room until 7:00. She didn't like that information, but there's not a lot she can do about it until she figures out child-proof doorknob covers.
So I hurried to get dressed and ready for work before 7:00, and then got AB fed before the babysitter showed up. Once she was there I rushed out the door and headed to work.
I got home a little after 5:00, and on the drive there I called up D-- and K-- and N--, as well as my brother-in-law who had his own two little bundles of joy in his sole care. In an effort to pool resources, we all met at McDonalds in Edmond and let the kids unleash their havoc on the play equipment there.
At one point AB and her cousin Sophy were fighting over a toy steering wheel and AB bit her hard, right on the chest (bizarre, I know). Jeff retrieved Sophy to comfort her and I got AB to chastise her, and as I was carrying her to a corner AB said, "Sophy's crying."
In my sternest dad voice I said, "She is. Do you know why?"
And AB nodded and said, "Annabelle tried to eat her."
I didn't laugh. Not at the time anyway.
We were there for an hour or so, then fled the noise of the place to regroup at my sister's place for another half hour or so. I finally left at 8:00 so I could get home in time to put AB down to bed. D-- came over, too.
Once she was in bed, D-- made me watch King of Kong on Netflix while we played games in the office. When it was over, I retaliated by making him watch about three hours of Comedy Central Presents. It was 2:00 when he finally left and I went to bed.
Saturday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through the morning Saturday, but AB wasn't tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.
We had breakfast and played some games in the living room, but she mostly divided her time between throwing weird little tantrums (falling on the ground wherever she was and crying softly), and crawling into my lap and cuddling up against me like she does when she's scared. Or, more precisely, she spent the morning acting like she was sick. She'd spent the week playing with her cousin who we found out on Thursday probably had strep, so I was more and more certain as the morning wore on that AB had finally come down with it.
I had some errands that needed run, though, so I went up to Wal-Mart and AB perked up a little bit when she saw the fish in the tanks. She fought me a lot over who got to push the cart, though, and I learned the low-grade terror that is trying to keep track of a toddler at a busy Wal-Mart -- especially with the sure knowledge that, if she decides to run, she can outrun you. She never actually bolted, but there were a couple of close calls.
We got what we needed, though, and then swung by B-- and E--'s place to borrow an extension ladder. I was supposed to take AB over to Toby's place for the afternoon, so she could play with his kids while we did some programming. When she started throwing a fit in the car, though, I called him up and told him I was worried she was sick and she wasn't behaving, and I just didn't have the patience to deal with that all afternoon. He seemed to understand.
D-- picked up some lunch for us, and then I put her down for a nap. I got some work done in the back yard, using B--'s ladder to repair the broken swings, and then D-- and I started up a multiplayer game of Civ. Around 3:30 AB woke up and came into the office, but all she did for about forty minutes was wander around crying. She didn't want to be comforted, she didn't want to watch any of her favorite TV shows or movies, she didn't want a snack or a drink...she just cried. I checked her for a fever, but there was nothing. T-- had told me she'd behaved like that earlier in the week, so we just waited it out.
I did call and cancel dinner plans with K-- and N--, but after AB calmed down and I started trying to figure out what to make her for dinner, I called back and uncancelled. By the time we got over there, AB was perfectly fine, and she behaved pretty well while we were there. N-- tried to put on The Fox and the Hound for her, but AB was much more interested in playing with baby Jason.
We stayed a little longer than I'd thought AB would allow, so it was forty minutes past her bedtime by the time we got home. I decided to postpone her bath, and just put her to bed. Then D-- and I played Civ for three more hours, and got up to Cannons. We finished one war and he wisely suggested we call it a night before starting another. Thanks to that suggestion, I made it to bed by the comparably reasonable hour of 1:00.
Sunday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through church Sunday, but AB wasn't tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.
I gave her some breakfast and turned on WordWorld for her, then I got cleaned up and dressed in a hurry. Then I gave her a much needed bath, and just finished getting her dressed in time to make it to Bible class.
At first she was really clingy, and knowing she'd been through a rough weekend without her mama I stuck around until the opportunity to ring a bell and the promise of goldfish crackers finally enticed her to take her spot at the table. Then I slipped off to the auditorium class only ten or fifteen minutes late.
Jeff joined us for the service, bringing his two girls with him, and we spent a few minutes commiserating. That went like this:
Me (exhausted): They are never allowed to do this again.
Jeff (unsympathetic): You've only got one!
Afterward we went to Mazzio's with K-- and N-- and D-- joined us there. Then after lunch AB went down for a nap, I cleaned up the house a little anticipating T--'s return, and then D-- and I finished off our Civ game. We won it just before T-- got home with dinner.
There were hugs all around, of course, and then while T-- and AB were catching up I took a moment to finish some of the work on the nursery/office switch. Then AB went down for a nap, and T-- and I spent a couple hours watching TV before heading to bed.
Monday
Monday I had to go back to work, dang it all. I even ended up staying late, so it was almost six by the time I got home, and then I spent an hour on the elliptical machine. At seven T-- had dinner ready for us -- barbecue sandwiches, which were fantastic. Then we took a walk up to the Bolings' house -- friends from church -- and spent a while talking with them. By the time we got home it was AB's bedtime, but she stayed up a while longer to get a bath.
After that, T-- and I spent the rest of the evening watching through the Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien transition episodes. That was pretty fun. Then I stayed up late playing Civ, but with T-- back home and my life back in order, "late" was only 11:30.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
I spent the weekend watching AB while T-- was out of town, so you can anticipate a long and detailed blog post.
Thursday
Thursday afternoon I got home from work a little early so that I could say goodbye to T-- before she headed to Little Rock for a weekend scrapbooking with my mom and sisters. We got the car loaded, and then she tearfully took to the road.
I played with AB for half an hour or so, until she started claiming she was hungry, and then I made us dinner -- PB and J for her, and PF and Changs for me (leftovers, that is). Then we were heading back to her room to play some more when she asked if we could go in the office (like the cats, she loves it simply because the door is always closed).
So I dragged T--'s desk chair in there, squeezed it in next to mine at the desk, and put VeggieTales on the new big monitor. AB watched TV while I played Civ on the laptop. It was a fun hour and a half. After I put her to bed, I played some more Civ, and then went to bed at a reasonable hour (something I have difficulty remembering to do when I'm home alone).
Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep. I was awake until about 2:00 before I finally drifted off.
Friday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through work on Friday, but AB wasn't tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door, loudly and insistently, while politely asking to be released. I could barely hear her through the banging, saying, "Let me out, please."
I went to her door and told her she didn't have to go to back to bed, but she had to stay in her room until 7:00. She didn't like that information, but there's not a lot she can do about it until she figures out child-proof doorknob covers.
So I hurried to get dressed and ready for work before 7:00, and then got AB fed before the babysitter showed up. Once she was there I rushed out the door and headed to work.
I got home a little after 5:00, and on the drive there I called up D-- and K-- and N--, as well as my brother-in-law who had his own two little bundles of joy in his sole care. In an effort to pool resources, we all met at McDonalds in Edmond and let the kids unleash their havoc on the play equipment there.
At one point AB and her cousin Sophy were fighting over a toy steering wheel and AB bit her hard, right on the chest (bizarre, I know). Jeff retrieved Sophy to comfort her and I got AB to chastise her, and as I was carrying her to a corner AB said, "Sophy's crying."
In my sternest dad voice I said, "She is. Do you know why?"
And AB nodded and said, "Annabelle tried to eat her."
I didn't laugh. Not at the time anyway.
We were there for an hour or so, then fled the noise of the place to regroup at my sister's place for another half hour or so. I finally left at 8:00 so I could get home in time to put AB down to bed. D-- came over, too.
Once she was in bed, D-- made me watch King of Kong on Netflix while we played games in the office. When it was over, I retaliated by making him watch about three hours of Comedy Central Presents. It was 2:00 when he finally left and I went to bed.
Saturday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through the morning Saturday, but AB wasn't tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.
We had breakfast and played some games in the living room, but she mostly divided her time between throwing weird little tantrums (falling on the ground wherever she was and crying softly), and crawling into my lap and cuddling up against me like she does when she's scared. Or, more precisely, she spent the morning acting like she was sick. She'd spent the week playing with her cousin who we found out on Thursday probably had strep, so I was more and more certain as the morning wore on that AB had finally come down with it.
I had some errands that needed run, though, so I went up to Wal-Mart and AB perked up a little bit when she saw the fish in the tanks. She fought me a lot over who got to push the cart, though, and I learned the low-grade terror that is trying to keep track of a toddler at a busy Wal-Mart -- especially with the sure knowledge that, if she decides to run, she can outrun you. She never actually bolted, but there were a couple of close calls.
We got what we needed, though, and then swung by B-- and E--'s place to borrow an extension ladder. I was supposed to take AB over to Toby's place for the afternoon, so she could play with his kids while we did some programming. When she started throwing a fit in the car, though, I called him up and told him I was worried she was sick and she wasn't behaving, and I just didn't have the patience to deal with that all afternoon. He seemed to understand.
D-- picked up some lunch for us, and then I put her down for a nap. I got some work done in the back yard, using B--'s ladder to repair the broken swings, and then D-- and I started up a multiplayer game of Civ. Around 3:30 AB woke up and came into the office, but all she did for about forty minutes was wander around crying. She didn't want to be comforted, she didn't want to watch any of her favorite TV shows or movies, she didn't want a snack or a drink...she just cried. I checked her for a fever, but there was nothing. T-- had told me she'd behaved like that earlier in the week, so we just waited it out.
I did call and cancel dinner plans with K-- and N--, but after AB calmed down and I started trying to figure out what to make her for dinner, I called back and uncancelled. By the time we got over there, AB was perfectly fine, and she behaved pretty well while we were there. N-- tried to put on The Fox and the Hound for her, but AB was much more interested in playing with baby Jason.
We stayed a little longer than I'd thought AB would allow, so it was forty minutes past her bedtime by the time we got home. I decided to postpone her bath, and just put her to bed. Then D-- and I played Civ for three more hours, and got up to Cannons. We finished one war and he wisely suggested we call it a night before starting another. Thanks to that suggestion, I made it to bed by the comparably reasonable hour of 1:00.
Sunday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through church Sunday, but AB wasn't tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.
I gave her some breakfast and turned on WordWorld for her, then I got cleaned up and dressed in a hurry. Then I gave her a much needed bath, and just finished getting her dressed in time to make it to Bible class.
At first she was really clingy, and knowing she'd been through a rough weekend without her mama I stuck around until the opportunity to ring a bell and the promise of goldfish crackers finally enticed her to take her spot at the table. Then I slipped off to the auditorium class only ten or fifteen minutes late.
Jeff joined us for the service, bringing his two girls with him, and we spent a few minutes commiserating. That went like this:
Me (exhausted): They are never allowed to do this again.
Jeff (unsympathetic): You've only got one!
Afterward we went to Mazzio's with K-- and N-- and D-- joined us there. Then after lunch AB went down for a nap, I cleaned up the house a little anticipating T--'s return, and then D-- and I finished off our Civ game. We won it just before T-- got home with dinner.
There were hugs all around, of course, and then while T-- and AB were catching up I took a moment to finish some of the work on the nursery/office switch. Then AB went down for a nap, and T-- and I spent a couple hours watching TV before heading to bed.
Monday
Monday I had to go back to work, dang it all. I even ended up staying late, so it was almost six by the time I got home, and then I spent an hour on the elliptical machine. At seven T-- had dinner ready for us -- barbecue sandwiches, which were fantastic. Then we took a walk up to the Bolings' house -- friends from church -- and spent a while talking with them. By the time we got home it was AB's bedtime, but she stayed up a while longer to get a bath.
After that, T-- and I spent the rest of the evening watching through the Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien transition episodes. That was pretty fun. Then I stayed up late playing Civ, but with T-- back home and my life back in order, "late" was only 11:30.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
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