Visit with Mom/Grandma August 2010

Mom was here for five days to visit while also staying with the boys for me while I went to a weekend workshop. They did scavenger hunts, went to the library, played hangman, and Mom worked with Ezra who is suddenly playing two-handed pieces like "Fur Elise" and the "Ode to Joy" where last week he was still using one hand. When I got home we all spent time together. Saturday for example we went to the Minnesota State Fair. If you are from the East Coast (I never knew I was from any coast until I moved here and suddenly am grouped along with everything from Maine to Georgia apparently). You can see such novel things as pigs wearing ribbons, milking demonstrations, and people in real cowboy hats, looking everywhere for Wilbur and Charlotte and finding them several times over, and each year the fair vendors try to top each other for the most unhealthy possible concession. The buzz creates a lot of traffic. E.g., a few years ago someone introduced deep-fried candy bars, then Twinkies, and every year since there is a new abomination. I had spaghetti and meatballs on a stick last year. When we first got there this time the boys "convinced" us (repeated their intention over and over with variations until we just gave in) to go on the Space Tower.

It was high. Maybe Mom has some better pictures of the view. I wasn't thrilled to look out the plexiglass window much less take pictures of what I saw. Vertiginous.

A novelty is the butterfly room. We spent some time in there picking up butterflies. When they are lively they will land on you and stay there. This evening we needed to give them some help. They may have been towards the end of their short lifespan.


At one point I was explaining to Ambrose that "monarch" meant "king" and an adult man surely over the age of 50 leaned in and asked me to repeat it. What did it mean? In his defense, I believe he was a fictional character who only ten minutes before had, disoriented, stepped out of the pages of Garrison Keillor's latest novel. These other pictures are particularly grainy. World's Largest Boar, "Reggie," 1,500 lbs:
The River Rapids Boat Ride. We got a free go-round and ended up very wet. We laughed a lot.
The boys enjoyed the animals but in the only picture I have you're seeing the effects of deep-fried Twinkies and cheese curds on their energy levels.We did a lot of other things but didn't take many pictures so I'll have to skip ahead to the last day, when Mom and I took the kids to the bus for their first day of school. That morning:
The bustop.
I'm glad I've been over the shock of Kindergarten twice so 4th and 1st Grade respectively were relatively painless. While I moaned about the end of summer the past few weeks, really I start doing that around August 1, this year is more of a beginning than anything. My new professional life means I can put the kids on the bus more often, pick them up, and even start doing stuff around their school once in a while. For me changes are coming I can't quite believe. A sense of arriving or just starting to arrive. That also adds a different quality to September. But back to the visit, it's hard to explain my thoughts and the history behind them seeing Ezra so eager to play the piano and practice and listen to my mom, watching them work together. Seeing him make the same concentration-face he made arranging his Matchbox cars in a line at ages two and three. Finding the paper left behind numbering things to find on their walk to the library and imagining Ambrose's reaction to finding a Volkswagen, a baby in a stroller, a man with a cane. How seeing my mom's unmistakeable handwriting on that piece of paper kicks off a flashing filmreel behind my eyes, more dreamlike with each frame, of the tags on the presents of 37 Christmas mornings. This history puts its own frame around pristine new moments in time. And then again sometimes the weight or the lightness of certain moments makes their histories irrelevant.

Thanks Mom. Thanks Grandma.

I listen to dead people.

E and I have gone to a few concerts together, all of them bands she likes. I've enjoyed them or found them at least provocative and interesting, Andrew Bird was by far the best. But I went on Ticketmaster to see if I could find shows for artists I already like or at least whose songs I know. I found Buddy Guy and BB King. Everyone else I'd like to see barring Stevie Wonder is dead---Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, James Brown---or I'm ashamed to say nearly so old I'm forced to wonder if the show will be any good. Please surprise me. Otherwise I retreat fully into memories of a time and a place I can't remember because I was never there.

August 18, 2010

Did I mention that I hate our goddamn fucking dogs? I left the room for maybe two minutes and the top part of the sandwich I have been saving from the really expensive restaurant I got taken to yesterday for a business meeting, the part with the bacon on it and the grilled bread, is now gone. Bitches.

August 18, 2010

I haven't talked about the topic of hypomania yet in these posts but today I'm having what I just decided to call micromania. It's actually just a strong desire to write partly fueled by caffeine but having been once and continually diagnosed you get in the habit of treating every state like a syndrome. Today walking the dogs for example I was composing things in my head that I felt I needed to rush home and get down before half of them were lost inevitably. I'm not saying any single one of them was remotely good because that would be arrogant but they were at least clear --- the words were there. Part of micromania is that the creative urge seems to be against better judgment. Better judgment is the voice telling you you should be working at all costs. I have a lot of work to do. Lately I have been seriously questioning the voice of better judgment. Sometimes it's just judgment period. In all senses of the phrase I don't work like other people do.

I invent a new phobia.

It's called blancheaphobia and it is a fear of accidentally bleaching dark clothes that you like. Is something a phobia if it's actually happened to you, more than once? Once I decided a Clorox spray and paper towels would be a great way to clean up the plastic in the beige interior of my '97 Honda Odyssey. Wherever the rag touched the carpet it was ruined with orange-colored spots. Another time, same product, I leaned up against the bathroom counter before fully wiping off the spray and left a horizontal bleach mark across a dark blue shirt. Then there are the times the washing machine decides to throw random bleach splatters across my clothes, even when there hasn't been bleach in it for a few loads. It's dangerous. I still use Clorox spray but I change into old clothes first and I stand way back holding the bottle as far away as I can.

On phobias, I am also a checker. Ezra and I went on a camping trip last weekend and before we left I made him stand there next to me as I checked each dial on the stove, twice. First I wiggle them to make sure they're really off. Then I check to make sure in wiggling them I didn't accidentally turn them on. Then I do it at least one more time.

After trying to convince myself this is phobic behavior and that I should, deep breath, try and check things only once (the iron, the oven, the stove, the water running) or not check at all, that's the one time I come home to find I've left the stove on.

I check twice leaving a restaurant to make sure nothing has fallen under the table.

On the checking. I can't fault myself entirely because I was trained as a child in the inevitability of losing things. I grew up watching my father lose every possible thing that could be lost, a pathological level of forgetting that caused a lot of trouble. I still remember him tearing around the house once hissing out a garbled version of "where are my keys," which were in his mouth. The first time we left for England, for him, it was to move there for good, he had thrown out his new passport and kept the old one after getting it renewed for the trip.

He found this out on the line to check in at the aiport, lugging all the shit that wouldn't fit in the hold or that had not gone with the shipping, including the Dune action figure of Sting that his second wife who was with us at the time had given him as a joke. Sting sat stiff-legged on top of the luggage as my Dad tore through his bags in the middle of the line at the airport, cursing.

Was he cursing himself or cursing fate, or both? Bleach is an outside force, though even when the washing machine is at fault I still blame myself. I should have known somehow, the thinking goes. When I have actually forgotten something or screwed something up by not thinking it through however, I blame fate. Nobody asks for a hole in his head like the one I have, a missing space that fills up easily with worry and compulsion. It's another phobia, fear of one's own capacity to forget.

August 18, 2010

I've had some one-on-one time with Ams because his brother has had sleepovers. When Ams is by himself there is little temper, no stomping, kicking, yelling, protracted wailing or throwing of objects. No war toys. There's just a little boy who plays with stuffed animals and can't seem to get enough of me.

Polish Festival '10

I will destroy Earth. Hell is better.

More camping pictures.

2nd Annual Scout camping trip, Ezra and Dad.

This year's:

Last year's:

August 9, 2010

Being so self-directed lately I veer back and forth between thinking I should take this opportunity of being self-employed to explore creative but entrepreneurial things I wouldn't have the time or flexibility for previously or feeling like I need to rack up as many billable hours as possible. It came to me this morning that if you focus on any one thing too much however wholesome or necessary it seems you are in danger of missing something else.

July 6, 2010. Afternoon.

Working in the coffee shop. There is a little boy here younger than my kids will ever be again with his pacifier and his small shoes and big cheeks, sitting with his grandfather (who happens to be an ex-Hippyish duuude with a long beard). They are enjoying each other's company. Being a grandparent is my only hope for always having little kids around, forever. If my children don't reproduce some day I swear I will kill them.

July 6, 2010. Morning.

Dream: Suspense/intrigue adventure. Sadistic villains chased me for reasons unclear. (Example of sadistic: earlier, one leered, studying diagrams of meat cuts, planning my death). I entered the lobby of an industrial plant crowded with corporate and plant workers, even security guards. Someone holding a puppy stopped my pursuers, convincing them to adopt it. They lost interest in me. Without urgency I walked away.

Lies my father told me.

Ezra has a routine ear infection so I had to take him to the pediatrician yesterday morning. In the car he asked me what I looked like as a kid.

"Well, your Grandma was a big fan of characters called Raggedy Ann and Andy..."

When we got to the doctor's office I looked up Ragged Andy costumes on my phone and clicked on one of the most ridiculous-looking results from a Halloween shop. "Kind of like that," I said. "She died my hair red, and drew dots on my face every morning." Ezra keeps his cards close so when he laughs at something it kind of breaks away from him. Not only is it an endearing mannerism but the fleeting moment of genuine bonding, sharing amusement over an apparently privileged piece of embarrassing information, almost broke my resolve.

There was a long wait for the doctor and the sterile examination room left nothing to occupy kids' or attention-deficient adults' attention. "I wonder if they'll do an eye-polishing today."

"What's that?"

"Well they're supposed to do it every couple of years for kids. There's this glass tube with a vacuum attached. They hook it right here (I pointed to his orbit) and it sucks your eye out into the tube. Schluuuup. Then they can clean it off. To get it back in they reverse the vacuum and it blows back into your socket."

"Really?" he asked, eyes wide, lips pulled down in an anxious, mortified bow, "You're laughing." I hadn't been able to keep a straight face that time.

Money's tight so I'd asked the sleepy-eyed pediatrician for the cheapest possible antibiotic, which was a pill. Waiting at the pharmacy I told Ezra I should warn him, it was a suppository.

"My teacher told me infinity's not a number," Lucas said. "She's lying!" Ambrose replied. "You're in preschool. Teachers don't start telling the truth until you're older."

Some albums need to be listened to all at once and don't work as invividual MP3s. Radiohead's In Rainbows is one, another is Thom Yorke's Eraser. I was feeling sad that "listening to albums" was a thing in the past with electronic music but apparently with good storytelling, which a well-conceived album is, the pieces of the story are drawn to each other and you just can't break it apart. It wants to be told that way.

Trying to decide if I like being called a "man." My impression of man as a kid which I guess I still hold is coffee breath and stinking up the bathroom. No offense dad.

I name the folder where emails from my bank get sent with a "z" so they're not right in front of me when I log on. I changed an angry ex's name in my cell phone address book to "Take a breath" so I'd see that when she called. In my laptop I call my "work" folder "workin" and once, when I had a shitty job, I changed that folder to "I'm so grateful I have a job." How did people practice denial before technology?

Father's Day '10

Had a really nice Father's Day. The boys made me cards and E bought me the most perfectly chosen Dad-type gift on their behalf. Most unexpected present was from Merry, who has no familial obligation to me but wanted to get into the giving spirit, a keychain with a rubber sandle on it that said, "I ♥ Chad."

Capitalism, in 140 characters or less.

I am an unlikely capitalist. I fell into business by accident, well actually I chose it, but during a period of uncertainty and I'd say even weakness. I was really more of an academic, non-profit kind of person. Not too far out of college, well, of dropping out of college (I finished not too long after) a friend of mine from school got married. All of these people were there at the wedding who I hadn't seen for a year and a half. They all seemed to have jobs in Manhattan working in "Marketing." I was working as an evening supervisor in a homeless shelter on Long Island. Another friend of mine, my best friend from high school, had a job at a startup software company. He got me a job writing for them; it was 1998; it was exciting and people in .COM were looking for anybody smart and interesting even without traditional business experience. That one wedding led me to make a decision I'm still living with today. I've been trying to dig my way out ever since. I'll write more about that later.

Anyway. I spend a lot of time thinking about "business" and whether or not it is evil or useless. I had progressed and got jobs at large corporations where I saw very smart, very cool, very creative people do amazing things together and always thought, if only they were building bridges or wells in India or something rather than selling home theater systems and potato chips. Some of these people never see their kids anymore. For what? I wonder if someday their children will look back and think "I never saw my mom growing up, but it was for a good cause. She grew the Pop-Tarts division at Kellog by 25%." I toy with communism, which is a recipe for total frustration, because good luck with that one.

Over the past 11 years I've seen capitalism at first as evil, then as an unecessary evil, then as a not necessary but realistic and practical evil given human nature, and then I guess just seeing it as the-way-things-are. Lately my thinking is more positive. Many people in the corporate sphere are trying to do some good and believe in what they're selling, even home theater systems. And then there's, you know, Band-Aids and dish soap and bananas and shit you need. I don't think the failure of communism is not having three hundred different brands of toilet paper --- I don't need that. It's having none because bureaucracies don't do a good job getting people what they need.

So, I meditate, and sometimes when I do that answers to some of the things I philosophize about during the day in my car or walking the dog pop into my mind very clear and simple and inarguable. Today the thought arose:

"Everybody needs things that they have to buy."

The diapers and band-aids and bananas have to come from somewhere. Also, who am I really to judge what people need. My ability to play mp3s is arguably unecessary but man, it adds a lot of dimension to my life to have music.

Everybody needs things, and currently, they have to buy them. So they have to be marketed and sold. This makes me feel a little better about the time I will spend helping shareholders at large corporations, many of whom are probably nice people looking to build college and retirement funds, make money. The messed up thing is, I entered the business world to make money, and I'm still not really. When I do actually start making money in business I will feel even better about it.