My alleged shortcomings

It has become apparent that I am widely considered deficient in certain personal attributes relating to both anatomy and shall we say, effectiveness. This has been brought to my attention by the legion of strangers who’ve been sending me e-mails suggesting ways to rectify the situation.

I’m not certain how all these folks came by their information. Mary would never share such personal information…er…that is…if there were information to share, which of course, there most certainly is NOT!

And even if it had been true, which again it’s NOT, how do all these strangers have the time and attention span to worry about my situation? Perhaps I should take it as a good thing, that so many people care so deeply about my deficiencies…if I had them, which I DON’T!

PB&J

In a recent missive I made mention of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I used to make for our daughters when they were young. I guess it put a bug in my mind. So the other night I had one for dinner.

It was really good.

I just can’t imagine why you’d want to know that. In my defense, I never promised all my entries here would be profound.

Not all the heroes wear uniforms

I was supposed to be working in Minot this week but the trip was cancelled. Seems they’re having some flooding. At least two of my good friends there have lost their homes and the agency they work for is surrounded by sandbags.

We’re not talking about the neat single stacks of plump, dry bags of buff canvas that movie makers use to surround movie London during the movie blitz. The whole agency, rehab center and all, is surrounded by a twelve foot emergency dike of plastic bags full of whatever was handy.  They weren’t filled by professionals guided by a set design. They were filled by terrified volunteers who’d had way too little sleep with no immediate prospect of getting any more.

I’ve never been to Jodi or Ron’s houses. We’re the kind of work friends who share rides across the state to check on the services at Air Force bases and then adjourn to our individual hotel rooms to meet again in the morning for the complimentary continental breakfast. We’re comfortable with each other and we’ve shared funny stories about our families without ever having met each others’ families.

Their houses are pretty much gone and they’re saying things like “At least, we’re all safe.” Which is what you say when you are truly thankful for your children’s safety but also mourning the loss of photographs and wedding china. It’s what you say when you’ve grown up in Minot and you’ve faced plenty of awful winters and drought summers and it’s written in your bones that the way to survive is to refuse not to give in.

So, they’re camping at the less-damaged homes of friends and relatives and spending their days minding generators and pumps at the agency so that the people with disabilities they serve will still have a place to go during the day although they themselves don’t have a permanent place to go every evening.

My friends are hurting tonight. These are really good people who spend their lives in the service of other people. They’ll do whatever it takes to be able to carry on helping. And I wish I could be there and useful.

Lessons

I am very aware today of my changing role in my daughters’ lives.  One is on a performing tour in Europe, where she’s learning lessons – both life and professional – that we can’t always comprehend, much less teach. Two posted a comment on her “wall” to the effect that she has so much to learn from the other students with whom she’ll be sharing her college experience.

Some of the lessons and the people teaching them are happy and some not so much.  Learning that Bulgarian gypsies earn at least part of their living by stealing shoulder bags from unsuspecting American girls is surely a lesson. I suppose there is a lesson to be had from a tour roommate who makes unflattering posts about you on a social networking site. Dealing with these and a hundred lesser annoyances and still being ready for curtain provides an important lesson. But then, so does the experience of standing on a hundred-years decrepit stage and letting each creak and pop inform you of the thousands of dancers and singers who’ve stood in this spot, all different from you but all very much you as every one of them wanted to share something of themselves through their performance.

Being told that MIT wanted her to come study there provided Two with a lesson in validation of her journey. And getting to know through conversation with other class of ’15 students just how many smart people are out there in the larger world is definitely a lesson.  Embracing the prospect of learning from each and all of them is a huge lesson.

Not all the lessons are being learned by the daughters. Letting go but staying ready – biggie. Loving without possessing is no small thing. Finding out that we really don’t know our daughters is a liberating lesson that holds out the promise of a lifetime of learning together.

When the girls were younger, it was up to us to shape their lessons, to determine what they needed at each juncture and figure out how to frame it for them.  No more.

We’re forever past the point at which we have any control over which lessons are laid before them. Our role now is mostly to listen. And occasionally, help them absorb and understand the lessons their worlds are teaching them.

And that’s where our learning begins.

Continuing adventures in home ownership

The sewer’s backed up.

Last time this happened, it cost about $4000.00, but that included professionals removing and cleaning the carpets, Red Devil blowers for a week, a full day of a backhoe and two guys, etc.

This time, we have high hopes that the rooter guy will be able to just snake it out.

Wish us luck.

Later that night - $300.00 and we're good for a couple years, mebbe.

Yet another list

Things I didn’t do tonight:

Mow the lawn.

Clean the office.

Check a lotto ticket.

Scratch my knee.

Wash the dogs.

Write my next novel.

Achieve world peace.

Cut a record.

Cut my fingernails.

Paint my fingernails.

Paint the front door.

Learn to make falafal.

(Okay, some of these were never going to happen.)

Dogs can’t do geometry

Please imagine the following:

Two dogs intent on catching the rabbit if Dad (me) would just get his lard butt over here and open the door.

Rabbit, unconcerned, munching greens over behind the dog run.

Rabbit warren – and safety from dogs - is under the shed.

Dogs are closer to the shed than is the rabbit.

In geometric terms, we’re talking more or less about an isosceles triangle. The long hypotenuse side is   the path the rabbit needs to run in order to find safety under the shed. The dogs merely have to shoot down one of the short legs – preferably the one leading directly from the back door to the shed – at a speed more or less matching that of the rabbit to beat it to the shed.

You know what’s going to happen, right?

Hand on door…ready…go! (Crashing and much cussing from Dad as two dogs try to go through the door before it’s sufficiently open to allow them to pass through.)

Dogs run to where rabbit’s starting position was, except…

Rabbit, being no fool, heard the clamor and made a streak down the hypotenuse for the safety of the warren under the shed.

Dogs then run down the long leg, now far behind the rabbit, and end up looking stupid trying to stick dog-sized snouts down rabbit-sized hole.

Rabbit family cracks up laughing as youngest rabbit son paints another dog silhouette on the warren wall.

Dogs slink to the back door, refusing to look Dad in the eye.

Annexation

So, it seems that the city that totally surrounds this little (4,000 souls in 1,200 houses) county pocket is finally about to annex us. People in this area have been alternately fighting off or begging for annexation since I was about ten.

There have been innumerable arguments put forth on both sides but generally, they’ve run something like this:

·         Pro-annexation: We have city addresses and use city services and the city is prestigious and could raise our property values.

·         Anti-annexation: The city has a history of scooping up pockets like us to consolidate their property tax base, then using land use regulations to maintain areas like this simply as buffers to keep the riff-raff away from the city’s uber-wealthy core.

Truth is, they’re both partly right. Annexation would initially lower our property taxes which would then increase apace with property values. And the city does indeed have a dismal record in terms of using “merely middle class” areas like ours as buffers for the wealthy people who live on top of hills or closer to the water.

Ten years ago I would have joined the fray on the ‘no’ side but today, I’m a lukewarm ‘yes.’ The bottom line for me is that the city currently provides all our services, including fantastic fire protection and arguably the top public school district in the country (all five high schools made Newsweek’s Top 100, based on AP testing).  They bought our water district years ago and the library system – which is fantastic, doncha know – is county-wide, so our access wouldn’t change.

The one thing that would change immediately is that our first responder police protection would move from county to city. And the county sheriff’s department is really stretched, making response times for unincorporated pockets such as ours so long that the city already responds to most of our calls under the mutual assistance plan.

My question of the day – what is the question? I mean, it’s a fait accomplis in just about every way. Why is this a bone of contention? Since the outcome is certain, why in the world are we still arguing?

I know most of you don’t give a whit about our micro-political climate up here. That’s okay. I hope.

Parents untethered

I’m cooking about 10 pounds of bacon for the Senior Breakfast tomorrow morning. It’s a sly way of getting the celebrating seniors out of bed and off to the graduation rehearsal in time. I’ve always hated making bacon because of the spatters and after-smell. This time, I don’t mind so much. It’s kind of a labor of love, doncha know.

About this time tomorrow night, we’ll be watching Daughter Two give her valedictory speech and shortly after that, I’ll be helping put her and her buds on buses for the secret overnight party.

We got a taste of things to come this evening when Daughter Two left dinner early to head to work, leaving Mary and me to figure out what to do with ourselves the rest of the evening (other than cooking bacon, of course). Mary’s folding and sorting all the clothes that she’s going to encourage the daughters to give away. I’m stretching out the bacon gig.

Of course, we’re also assembling the supplies we’ll need for the grad party at Bjorn and Susan’s on Sunday. After that, sans doubt, we’ll find fewer and fewer daughter-centered activities to fill our time, and eventually there will come a point at which we’re faced with the fact that we have to live our own lives.

Hm-m-m…

Parcheesi, anyone?

Bloggus Interruptus

I did indeed make my last ever school lunch today, followed by a couple hours in the office, then volunteering at various graduation-related events. I'll pick up again manana.

A tradition of fine dining

Tomorrow morning I will get up, feed the dogs, start the coffee and then, for the last time ever set about making a school lunch for my daughter.  I’ve thought about this perhaps eight times today so I figure either I exorcise it by blogging or let it wake me up in the middle of the night.

I’ve thought a lot about passages of late but it never occurred to me that the last lunch-packing session would be such a rite for me.  I’ll make her half a ham and cheese sandwich on wheat with mayo and put it in a zip lock bag. I’ll lay it out with a piece of fruit, a paper towel folded four ways and perhaps fill her water bottle, if she hasn’t already done so herself. Not fancy, but it’s what she wants.

I wonder how many lunches I’ve made over the years?  I wouldn’t know how to start counting.  Let’s see… there were the three or four years in a row that Daughter One – and therefore Daughter Two, as well – demanded peanut butter and jelly.  It got to the point I couldn’t stand the smell of the stuff, and I truly like peanut butter and jelly.  But again, it was what they wanted.

I used to stop and get the girls those coconut-covered sno-ball things on the way from day care to home. It would keep them quiet long enough to get us safely home. I know, not a great thing to feed young minds but they turned out okay, so what?

Mary and Daughter Two used to have a Tuesday / Thursday night tradition of getting a quick bite between the time DT got out of choir rehearsal and the end of Daughter One’s rehearsal. It was too far to drive home in between rehearsals and one can only listen to the same songs rehearsed so many times.

For a long time, Daughter One would eat anything, so long as it came out of a Spaghetti-Ohs can. I didn’t like that stuff when I opened the first can and I liked it even less while opening can number whatever.

I’m tempted to make her a special lunch tomorrow but that would that mean today had been the REAL last day of the traditional school lunch, which absent a time machine would mean it had gone by unmarked and unnoticed. In order to be the last ever of something, it has to be that thing. Which means tomorrow’s lunch needs to be a school lunch like other school lunches. Not fancy, just half a sandwich and some sides.

And besides, it’s what she wants.

Buddies

On a flight into Idaho Falls a recently, I noticed a guy with a Navy veteran insignia on his hat. I thanked him for his service and asked what was bringing him to IF. Turns out he’s retired Navy and lives there. I’ll save you the early backs and forths.

We eventually determined that he and I had both been Navy nukes during overlapping years, although he went on to make it a career while I eventually had a change of heart and got out. We’d also served on the same ship, although in different divisions (think work centers organized by technical specialty), and again, at the same time. We worked for some of the same officers and shared some of the same memories, although not of each other. Heck, there were 1400 guys on the Long Beach at the time, and you tended to associated with the guys with whom you worked.

We were both aboard when she splashed a MiG and had the little set to with the patrol boat. We both recalled the time we went dead in the water due to an engineering drill gone bad and the insanity of standing Shore Patrol in Olongapo. Then came the day I was called from giving blood to be flown back to the States for discharge. I went on to where I am now and he continued in the Navy.

We’d been chatting about ten minutes when the guy sitting between us says one word, “Targets.”  The guy was a tuber nuke at the same time the other two of us were riding skimmers.  His one-word descriptor of us referred to the insistence among the Silent Service that there are only two types of ships in the world – submarines and targets. Even though he may be right, I could never bring myself to spend my life on a ship designed to sink. I’ll stick with skimmers, thank you very much!

The three of us talked on as the plane climbed out, reliving memories that were mutually recognizable if not perfectly shared. The young guy sitting cat-cornered from me listened raptly while the woman next to him look bored. We eventually wound down and put our noses into our individual reading matter, but I really enjoyed that few minutes of comraderie.

I read a bit by my friend Michael Young the other day that recalled coming back from overseas and the feeling of disconnection with the World. I didn’t have his experiences (thank goodness) and he didn’t have mine. Even the three of us on that plane didn’t share exactly parallel experiences. But we shared enough to allow each other the differences and celebrate the commonalities.

I haven’t sorted out what all this means to me, and I’m not sure I will. But Michael and those two guys on the plane are buddies whether or not we’re all destined to be friends. Buddy is a term that only a vet really understands and the ones like Michael understand best.

Michael, thank you for your service, buddy!

My Limerick

Plickety, slickety slack

Rickety, tickety tack
A fridget da friz
O gridget ba diz
Lickety, mickety mack.

Motivational Speakers

My drive to work today…Yes, yes, I drove the truck, okay?  Anyway, as I was saying, during my drive to work today…Oh, for Gawd’s sake, alright already!  I drove and I really should have taken the bus! Are you happy? I wasn’t green today and I wasted money as well as gas. In my defense, had I taken da bus, I wouldn’t have had the problem with traffic because I would have been in da bus lane which was unaffected by the streams of chowderheads heading down to the Seattle Center for the cavalcade of motivational speakers. In which case, I’d have had no idea whatever what to write about this evening, so just get over it and play along, okay?

Now, I don’t have anything against motivational speakers, so long as I don’t have to listen to them or deal with the insane crowds of lemmings heading in their direction beforehand like metal filings to a magnet.  On the other hand, I don’t really mind watching the dazed, glow-eyed zombies stumbling away from the venue afterward so long as none of them gets in my way, or oozes slime or chomps the head off a random bystander.

I’ve nothing against Colin Powell or Rudi Giuliani; I even read Powell’s book. But cramming myself into an arena with thousands of other people for the thrill of swiveling my head between watching his ant-sized body on the stage or his circus-sized bust up on the Jumbo-tron – I don’t think so! And who on earth would pay to see that Forbes guy speak? The guy’s as boring as a used toothpick! I’m sure Laura Bush is nice but there are lots of nice people around and I don’t think I need advice from the spouse of a failed President, thanks all the same.

Why do people need to pay someone else to convince them to get off their butts and do something useful? Is it really going to be transformative to watch a retired football player talk about “leading a team to victory” or a former news reader hold forth on how to take charge of your career? (By the way, the secret answer is: get a job as a network news reader so you’ll have hirelings to do everything but wipe your booboo and an unlimited supply of drooling sycophants to congratulate you for being you. Oh and a hair stylist, gotta have a hair stylist.)

 Don’t get me wrong – I watch Survivor, so I’m hardly in a position to flack folks for their choice of entertainment. But couldn’t they keep it in the privacy of their own homes, and stay the heck off the streets when I’m trying to get to work? Especially when I get up too late to catch the bus? Hm-m-m?

List De Bucket

Okay, I watched the movie and I have to say my goals might not be Hollywood material. Still, with Daughter Two going off to college, I'll lose my regular kayak partner, as well as my connection to volleyball officiating, volunteering for robotics and theatre – you know the drill.

 So, it’s time to think about filling time. Oops, what an unexciting way to think of it, huh?

Seriously, I have been pouring some serious brain juice into the whole idea of what I intend to accomplish / see / enjoy / contribute before I kack. And it turns out, there’s actually a lot I’d like to get to while I’m here. (By the bye, there’s a GREAT Phil Ochs song called While I’m Here that everyone with an ounce of caring should have memorized, but that’s just my opinion.)

I know this needs a lot of editing and I’m sure items will be added to and edited from the list as I go along. But for the moment, here’s the list, in no particular order.

Before I become fish food, I will:

1.       Visit every state in the union, at ground level - airport connections don’t count;

2.       See my daughters comfortably settled into their adult lives, at least the early chapters;

3.       Publish a serious work of fiction;

4.       Kayak the B.C. islands and inlets;

5.       Get my guitar chops back;

6.       Learn at least one ballroom dance so I can dance with Mary at our 50^th anniversary – I’ll be 83, so probably not a tango;

7.       Learn no more than one ballroom dance, because I sincerely hate dancing and probably still will when I’m  83;

8.       Take a serious driving tour with my brother;

9.       Hike to the top of Mt. Si and Half Dome;

10.   Finish fixing up this house, sell it and down-size;

11.   Ride the trans-Canada Railroad;

12.   Drive from here to Fairbanks;

13.   Visit Southeast Alaska – Juneau, Ketchikan, etc.;

14.   Finish my letters to my daughters;

15.   Communicate effectively with a dog on the first try;

16.   Have every piece of paper in our house in the place where it belongs, and no excess paper anywhere in the house, and everything else put away, and the house clutter cleared out, all at the same time;

17.   Get down to one car between us;

18.   Calve off one-third of my present body weight, preferably from the blubberier areas;

19.   Know for sure that the people I love know how much I love them;

20.   (To be determined);

Nest-making

So, tonight Daughter Two is going to make her decision as to which residences to prioritize in the freshman campus housing scramble. There are choices involving type of building, size of room, tradeoffs in amenities such as a lounge or a larger bathroom, number of roommates or suitemates, walking distance to the academic buildings, theme vs non-theme, pet-friendly or not...

It was much easier for me when I first moved out of my parents’ house. When one joins the Navy, the choices of residence become somewhat restricted. In the barracks during training, the choice was basically how close you wanted to be to the head. Trust me when I confide that on Saturday nights when you have the duty and just four hours to sleep before you have to report in, you want to be as far from the head as possible.

Aboard ship, you want to be in a cul-de-sac if you can. On the Long Beach, I racked in the ‘Dirty Dozen,’ which was twelve of the mid-level watch leaders, mostly second- class petty officers, in the farthest corner of the Upper B&M Berthing, as distant from noisy ladders and steamy shower stalls as one could get, and with no through traffic. We valued our sleep and John Denver  and Association tapes and wanted to be as far as possible from the younger guys (yeah, I was all of twenty, so what?) who liked their music metallic and loud. Willy D had a really nice TEAC reel-to-reel and a good set of speakers, and we saved it for times when the noisiest youngsters were out of the compartment. We wanted to actually listen to our music. Refined tastes, doncha know.

I used to assign myself to the mid-watch, midnight to 0400 and then the forenoon watch, 0800 to noon.  People thought I was crazy – as the keeper of the Watch, Quarter and Station Bill for the seventy guys in B Division, I could have assigned myself to any watch rotation I wanted.  Most guys in my position would have taken a 4-on, 8-off set with one of the 8-offs being at night. But not me.

The thing is, I loved midwatch. I’d get a mid-rats snack at 2300, then stand my watch in the propulsion plant, getting off at 0400. I’d catch a quick shower (after four hours in a steam plant, one takes on a glow, so to speak) and head up to the mess decks for an early breakfast. Full and clean, I’d hit the rail in time to watch the sun rise out of the depths, then head down to my rack to read or to the cranny behind the blast screen for the #2 Terrier missile  launcher to play guitar and sing some songs without kibitzers. 0730 would see me back in the plant “getting the picture” for my forenoon watch.

I’d usually do my work maintaining equipment or teach onboard firefighting for a couple of hours after watch, then hit my rack for uninterrupted sleep until time to start the cycle over again. It was my underway routine, into which I settled comfortably over time. I got to the point that I could roll over and sit up abruptly just as the Messenger Of The Watch was about to shake me awake, scaring the bejeesus out of more than one Fireman Apprentice.

After all these years, although I’ve forgotten most of the faces and names, my personal routine remains etched in my mind. It was a routine that I defined for myself for the first time in my life. Other than being on time for watch and keeping up with my work, my schedule was my own and I made it just that – my own.

I never had the university experience. Neither did Mary. Daughter One is a senior at university but close enough to home to lean on us occasionally (and us on her, if we’re honest). Each year, she’s changed from dorm to apartment to house and each year, she’s had to re-set her routine so that it served her, rather than the other way around.

But Daughter Two will be across the country and will not have the option of coming home to decompress some weekends. As was the case for me aboard ship, she’ll have to define and settle into a living routine that works for her on the long haul. She may struggle at first, but it will come. By the time she’s there a month, the university will have become her new ‘here.’  Our home will become one of many ‘theres.’

And I suppose that’s the way it should be.