I am thankful that I can take time off to bond with my child, even before the child is born. In truth I need this time and C. wants me home for this period of interminable waiting. Really though, for me, it's not that bad. There's plenty to do around the house; shelving to be installed, new furniture to construct, some dicey electrical work, landscaping ... home improvement like waiting, never ends.
While the eight of nine, California's employed give or take, were bustling about, many in tall steel and glass towers, we were hitting up the mall and going to see a movie. These places, crowded in our memories, were nearly barren ghost towns during the week. It's a wonder the shops and restaurants even bothered to open. We chanced upon a manager in a fast food restaurant taking up one of many vacant booths, looking over inventory lists or employee schedules. Waiting for business to pick up. Waiting as many of us do, for the weekend.
In a few days, definitely no more than ten, we will finally begin a new stage in our lives. There are worries aplenty in anticipation, the labor, the breast feeding, the sleepless nights, and the never ending series of challenges that come after those first months and years. Our parents are in retirement now, but somehow they are too busy to come up until after the baby is born. I begrudge them nothing. Even in retirement I know, it never ends.
"...there's never a wish better than this/When you only got (100) years to live"
A couple of months ago I caught a cold, which lasted less than a week and wasn't at all that severe. At the same time I started to develop a rash all over my body. I'm used to allergies of all sorts, and I lean pretty heavily on Claritin when the weather is just so. There was this one time in college where I had some bad shellfish and broke out all over the place, but that lasted only one night. This time was much worse. Since it started, I've gone straight through an entire box of Benadryl. Initially, I set up a couple of doctor's appointments ... and then a couple of dermatologist appointments. I fought with my insurance company to get some medication and now eight weeks after it started and a week and a half since I start using the medication, some artificial sunlight in a tube, I'm mostly healed. Despite not feeling very sick, these past couple of months served to remind me that I am, in fact, getting old. There have been other reminders too. It hasn't been a very good year for many people around me, a number of friends have had immediate family pass away this year. I had a close call this year too. It'd be easy if each of us knew just how much time we had. I'd like to think if I did, that I wouldn't squander even a single day.
"I'm (22) for a moment/She feels better than ever"
We saw "(500) Days of Summer" on Monday and if you caught on that I'm stealing from more than one artist, kudos to you. I'm a sucker for these kinds of movies. Movies that aren't love stories. Movies that are about love -- that are exciting, funny, sad, painful and where generally, nothing happens. As the man said, "That's amore!" Maybe that's why I liked "The Half-Blood Prince". Yeah the characters are about half my age, but as Big D. masterfully deadpans, "Oh, to be young and to feel love's keen sting." Since they cut out the fighting, that pretty much sums up the movie. I've been thinking a lot recently about how I'd explain any of this to my son one day. It'd be easier if we listened, understood, and learned. But youth, as they say, is squandered on the young. And maybe that's the point these movies are trying to make, it's just better this way.
"I'm (33) for a moment/Still the man, but you see I'm a they/A kid on the way/A family on my mind."
Today was my last day of work for a while. I feel like it's my first really break in my ten plus years there. I left a few filing odds and ends, but other than that, there's nothing that I feel bad about abandoning. Today, I started paternity leave and in a few days I will be a dad. I'm not sure what comes next. I'm not sure what I need to become. I feel like I've been an adult for a long time now, though I know I haven't acted like it for most of those years. People all around me are trying to give me advice, but for some reason, I can't really hear it. I'm trying to listen, but I just don't really understand. But in a world where you can sample everything vicariously through the web, maybe it's better that some things seem unexpected. Some things you should just walk in to, come what may.
Reset, then a blinking cursor. Once again, as many times before – here, publicly, ere privately.
Recently I’ve been organizing, reorganizing, reshuffling, recycling and just plain throwing away, the physical odds and ends of nostalgia. It’s amazing how much you can accumulate late on Sundays after many a busy weekend. How, over time, all of it can sit and gather dust in the corners of your home or mind. Then one day you return to the scene, find these moments paused. Some things you wonder why you ever kept, others you can’t bear to throw away just yet.
I just moved 3.6 gigs of data from a DVD to the network here at work. Some of it, probably all of it is duplicate. There’s just so much stored there and so little remembered about what things were called or what they looked like that it’s almost impossible to find. I heard somewhere, probably public radio, that the human mind still has the edge on computers when it comes to storage. It makes me feel good about the human mind to think that true; however, it’s never really been about the limits of storage, rather about the methods of retrieval.
It’s amazing to me just how much stuff we can squeeze into this home of ours. How the interior has seemed to grow, even as its value has dropped. Recently we’ve invested quite a bit in a brand new kitchen, the most obvious sign of our reconsolidation, a small act of renewal. This home, my mind, our lives; now in constant reshuffle. I keep bringing to the surface loosened memories, feeling keenly the distance from those simpler times.
A dream of words, I haven’t given it up quite yet. My timing is poor, as it has always been. But I have to try to find a rhythm of writing again, before everything changes.