Noticing

I must have driven – or been driven – past that building a hundred times or more and I can’t recall ever noticing the disappearing edge fountain in front. It’s really quite a remarkable effect, one of the best I’ve ever seen and I wish the bus hadn’t moved me past it quite so quickly. I’ll look again tomorrow.

If you walk instead of drive to the neighborhood grocery, you might become aware of the hidey-holes cleared out under some of the trees along 36th. Homeless people have hollowed them out to create living space out of the rain and close to the prime begging corners.  There’s this whole mini-village down there close along the frontage road.

The guy in the office across the park and half a building over has about twenty trophies lining his windowsill. Don’t know what they’re all about. Might be a design firm, considering most of the tenants of that edifice. So maybe he’s a creative genius. Or a trophy salesman.

One of the young toughs who makes everyone else uncomfortable at the bus stop at Third and Pine is also one of the perennial chess players in Westlake Park just a block away and good friends with a couple of the oldsters who make the Park their homes away from home. Wonder which him is him?

Someone left a size eleven shoe at the bus stop. I would have thought shoe losers would be more in the nine range, but go figure.

 There’s a bird trying like mad to build a nest under the garage eves adjacent to our office / spare bedroom. There’s really not enough ledge to make a start but the poor thing keeps trying, piling twigs laboriously one or two at time until it reaches the tipping point at which time the whole shebang falls down on the ground. The bird returns holding another twig and deposits it as though nothing was amiss and the process continues.  This is one stupid bird. Determined. But stupid.

I need to replace the weather stripping around the front entry door.

The new, less reflective moi

So, you all may have wondered at the relative paucity of postings lately. Well, here’s the thing – I’m busy.

Mary and I are using weekends and some evenings to get serious about our landscaping.

I’m running a major training conference next month in Rapid City, and I’m also teaching a fair piece of it.

I’m taking an Accounting course as one of four little bits of torture that are required of me to FINALLY finish my degree.

I’m also teaching a course in Virginia next month the week before the aforementioned conference.

And my regular work.

And my life.  Did I mention my life?

It’s not so much a matter of time as brain power. Bandwidth, so to speak. I’ve been having trouble evenings thinking of profound things to say.

So to heck with it. I’ll just post musings on whatever comes to mind.

Count this as the first.

Working my butt off

Okay, I’m not actually working my butt off. I mean, there is still evidence of an ample caboose following me around.  But I am in fact, working as hard as ever I have.

I’m so blasted at work, I took work home with me during my recent leave and still didn’t get caught up. I’m taking an accounting class (bluch!) online toward finally finishing the degree that I stupidly promised Mom I would finished shortly before she betrayed me by passing away. We’re landscaping, which of course means plenty of physical labor. And I’m getting ready for a week of paddling and hiking wit me bro.

I turned on the TV and the show that came on was Deadliest Catch. I guess those guys work kinda hard but only for a few weeks at a time. And all the crab they can eat!

They oughter make a show about me.

A quote from Amy Tan

So, I’m reading Saving Fish From Drowning and I come across the phrase “kindness without motives.”

I’m going to think on that one for awhile.

Fans

I decided to take a later bus than usual home last night, to my dismay as it turns out. Naturally, this was the night of the soccer home game that drew a gadzillion fans. My trip home went from a half hour to more than two hours, from a straight shot to a transfer involving forty minutes in a standing room only coach between a guy who smelled of stale stogies and a young women who really should have worn more so I wouldn’t have had to feel so creepy.

I don’t begrudge them their fanship but I don’t get it either. These people who certainly could well afford other diversions, soccer tickets not being exactly cheap, choose to cram themselves into buses for the ride to the stadium, at rush hour of course, displacing the shlubs like me who are just trying to get home. Then they wait in line for the privilege of sitting in uncomfortable seats surrounded by mobs of other screaming  dunderheads, eating overpriced food and in this venue anyway, frequently getting rained on.

All this so they can watch allegedly grown men play a children’s game.

Everyone should do the things I like to do. Only, not at the same time as me. I don’t like crowds. So at least, please stay off my bus.

A lawn tragedy

One of the stories posted on the CNN site today relates how this guy unintentionally killed his 40,000 sq ft lawn by spraying the wrong stuff on it. He went to his local store and after lengthy consultation with several store employees, purchased not one but three containers of a pre-emergent herbicide designed to kill EVERYTHING. He then proceeded to treat his lawn with what turned out to be a really effective lawn-no-more.

The video story shows this poor chump standing in a sea of dead, puzzling over how the weed killer company could have so egregiously misled him. And that's where I came in.

I have to wonder why CNN thought this was news, worthy of posting to their august site. First of all, dead lawns aren't news, as evidenced by the trail of non-newsworthy yards left behind in various locations by yours truly.

But suppose lawnicide was noteworthy. This guy had to use chemicals to accomplish the dastardly deed. I've killed lawns with little more than inattention. I've killed lawns when neighbors' yards on either side of me sported lush acreage of rye or bluegrass. In fact the only time I've failed to thoroughly kill a lawn was when I wanted it to go away so I could plant something else.

I'm feeling a bit overlooked, CNN.

Goodbye, Marty

Whenever I think of Ernest Borgnine, I picture him in Marty. I first saw the film when I was quite young, and that portrayal opened doors for me that stayed open the rest of my life.

Marty was the loser who ends up winning by being himself. He overcomes his own fear and the limiting ministrations of his mother and  lays it out there for his beloved, offering no apology for being who he is. I can’t imagine any other actor then or since who would have brought to that role the particular timbre that made it so real for me.

I haven’t always been the most self-confident person. Certainly, there are times in my life when I wish I’d just taken that moment of insane courage as did Marty. Looking at his record of five marriages, I have to wonder if Borgnine himself didn’t struggle with many of the same fears. But in the end, he took this great part and made it real for all of us.

If he’d done nothing else in his career, this one would have validated him as an actor.

I wish I had a way to thank him.

Can and Can’t

CAN:

Remember being the first human being other than the obstetrician to see her enter the world

Recall the moment at the concert when my little daughter decided she just had to be a performer

Look back on all the triumphs – and stumbles – between then and now

Sit in her empty bedroom to feel the fading tendrils of her presence and wish it could linger just a bit longer

Pat the dogs, who know something has changed but can’t imagine what it might be

Concentrate on sending her my best thoughts for safe travels and a happy life

Wish I had another minute, hour, day to spend just trading smart aleck cracks with her

Bring to mind the sound of her voice

Know she’s going to reach heights I can’t imagine for her

Feel the pride swelling my chest like someone was pumping in compressed air

Love her with all my soul forever

Wish Orlando was closer

Regret every time I failed to make her feel as loved as she always was

Love being her Dad

Hold back the tears, not because men don’t cry but because I don’t want her to start

Watch her go

CAN’T:

Turn back time.

Problems and relativity

Our family room is temporarily overtaken with the piles of stuff Daughter One and Mary will pack in the Taurus for the trip to Orlando. One is moving there to continue her career as a Disney performer. Mary is driving with her and they’ll spend some time with Mary’s family. We’re worried about how to get all the stuff into the car and thus, to Florida.

We’re also  worried about One being able to handle the completely-independent-financing thing. Will she get enough hours or will she have to go back to Old Navy? Will she get into the show she’s auditioning for and start to move up the ladder? Will we be able to afford to visit home? Or at least, her Grandma on the other side of Florida?

And then there’s Daughter Two. Back in Boston and I won’t see her again until Christmas unless I figure out the time and money to go visit her.

With the girls out of the day-to-day picture, Mary and I are FINALLY getting serious about putting in an adult backyard. Again, money will be a deciding factor in terms of what we will do and how soon we can do it.

It would be easy to whine but then I remember that there are dads within a mile of where I’m sitting who will go to bed tonight not knowing how they’ll pay next month’s mortgage. And in many parts of this world, there are mothers whose own diet won’t support breast-feeding.

Everything is relative. Our problems aren’t so huge. I hope yours aren’t either.