Much That Is Hidden

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Wow, 10 months. One of the biggest reasons that this blog has been idle for that long is my disdain for the obligation of regularly keeping up with it. That and a little thing called Facebook, which has, despite its shortcomings and sundry aggravations, become my latest Internet obsession. I’ll spare any non-FBers (we’re pretty sure you must exist somewhere) the details of my fancy except to say that it sort of streamlines the Internet social experience and gives you a tad bit more control as to who enters your world (and speaking only for myself, I do NOT mean that in the prison sense). There is also the fact that most people actually use their real name.

So I don’t know yet if MTIH will get the full Lazarus, but what else to start with after nearly a year but a recap? Many of my regular readers (haha) Innertubes pals are familiar with at least some of this, but I need the therapy.

As best I can recall the transition from ‘09 to ‘10 was fairly uneventful, but as our son Max’s third birthday approached we decided to take steps toward determining something that we had growing suspicions about. In early February we received an initial diagnosis that he is “mildly to moderately” autistic. For months Max had displayed some classic tell-tale signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), so the news, while disappointing, was not totally unexpected.

I spoke with my sister not long after the doctor’s appointment, and later she sent an e-mail with these words which moved me to tears with their heartfelt honesty, “You are parents to a beautiful, fun, adorable little boy who brings a lot of joy to a lot of people. Max is ‘special’ not only because he has different needs but because he is an amazing little boy, and I truly believe that he will thrive and flourish, and show us all what he can do.”

Indeed, on the plus side Max has shown improvement in some of the areas we were initially concerned with. And the developmental pediatrician who diagnosed him noted some strengths that, with the relatively early intervention we’ve been provided, indicate the strong possibility that he will lead a relatively normal life.

Of course Jen and I dove right into protective/pro-active parent mode, and after some therapy assessments we determined he would do well to have weekly speech and occupational therapy sessions. It’s interesting to weigh in our minds the differences and similarities between Max and “neurotypical” kids (pardon the jargon – I’ll try to be sparse with it). For example, when he has a meltdown, is it because of the sensory overload that his autism sometimes subjects him to or is it because he’s three?

Max is a bright little boy and very sweet (except of course when he’s not). His vocabulary is solid and he often talks up a storm. The ASD is apparent in the conversations though – the vast majority of his speech is echolalia, or repeating what he has heard; he doesn’t ask questions very often and sometimes has trouble answering even direct “yes” or “no” questions (though he is gaining excellence in the art of “NO!”). He also has trouble making eye contact with whomever he is speaking to. He is not particularly socially awkward, but he is deficient in the area of respecting, much less knowing about, personal space. Sometimes it’s cute how gregarious he is, but he is big for his age (nearly 40 inches and 45 lbs.) and has been known to knock other kids over, sometimes quite forcefully. There is some consolation in that it’s from excitement and not aggression. There is also consolation in knowing that it takes extended observation or a professional eye to even notice that Max is any different from the other kids on the playground. He plays enthusiastically, climbing like a monkey or riding his balance bike (a two-wheeler without pedals and drive train – he really moves on it!). He is usually very friendly and affectionate – he likes to snuggle and be tickled and to rough house and giggle and run around the house naked.

The diagnosis has not diminished our hopes for him, it has just made us aware that we need to be especially vigilant for his sake. There are struggles with the realization that many aspects of human nature that we take for granted will be an uphill battle for him, such as humor and romance and detecting dishonesty. But his literal and logically oriented thinking may often be a plus for him.

Max continues weekly therapy and is now enrolled in preschool full time (8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then afternoon daycare until around 4:00). The initial transition from being home with momma all summer was difficult at times, but he seems to be improving weekly.

The transition for Jen and me was interesting. She got laid off from the school system she has worked in for the past 12 years, ostensibly a “reduction in force” due to funding. While that might be generally believable by way of the governor and his fellow party legislators gutting Georgia’s education system of billions of dollars over the past eight years, it was dubious in the local sense because the county Jen works for pink-slipped over 100 teachers while surrounding counties let NONE of their staff go. Insult was added to injury but then topped by opportunity when the school system then advertised hiring for positions that included Jen’s former job. Oops! To make a long story short, there was back and forth between Jen and her union lawyer and the administration, Bob’s yer uncle, Jen still has a job with no loss of tenure.

In the fear-wracked interim of looking at losing our primary income and family health insurance, I was compelled to seek full-time employment. I was fortunate to not have to look far, as my former employer was seeking a staff writer/reporter. I don’t know who was happier – me for avoiding the dreadful beating of the pavement (which might have involved my head if it had gone on as long as my last bout of unemployment) or the publisher who didn’t have to interview a dozen unqualified wannabes.

The relatively sudden acquisition of my position and resolution of Jen’s debacle presented a new challenge – finding fulltime daycare for a yet-to-be fully potty trained special needs three-year-old. Suffice it to say that the local school system (we live one county from where Jen works) came through with essentially aeronautically navigable hues, and we found a better-than-tolerable facility to watch him for a couple of hours each afternoon.

Max had nice visits this summer with family. First his Auntie Joogie (soft ‘g’) made her annual trip down south, and then, looking at the fact that my new job would not afford vacation time for a year, we decided to return the favor and took a road trip up to Chicago. Not wanting to risk the emergence of Mr. McCrabbypants, we took overnight stops each way, and a good boy named Max took it all in with exuberance.

And now, as regular occurrence is questionable, I present The Occasional Max (I Know What You’ve Done Since Last Christmas edition):
















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Labels: autism, family, life, Max, parenthood, photography

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According to the editors at Popular Mechanics, you just ain't a completely competent man until you can perform the following 80 "essential skills," plus own the 20 tools listed. A hat tip to Grapes for the link and the following format - bold items add to my manliness, whilst asterisk-ed* items are WTF? for either I don't know what the hell this is or I can't possibly see this as essential (some qualify for all three designations). Additional snarkiness appears in fuschia.

Automotive

1. Handle a blowout
2. Drive in snow
3. Check trouble codes
4. Replace fan belt
5. Wax a car * ???
6. Conquer an off-road obstacle * would temporarily disabling it count?
7. Use a stick welder *
8. Hitch up a trailer
9. Jump start a car

Handling Emergencies

10. Perform the Heimlich
11. Reverse hypothermia
12. Perform hands-only CPR I'm pretty good with my feet also
13. Escape a sinking car

Home

14. Carve a turkey * I suck at this
15. Use a sewing machine * I did take sewing in Jr. High
16. Put out a fire
17. Home brew beer * I'd love to learn, but essential?
18. Remove bloodstains from fabric * Bleach, right? Besides, blood is manly!
19. Move heavy stuff
20. Grow food
21. Read an electric meter *
22. Shovel the right way * ??? Shovel what?
23. Solder wire
24. Tape drywall *
25. Split firewood
26. Replace a faucet washer
27. Mix concrete * Aren’t instructions on the bag?
28. Paint a straight line *
29. Use a French knife * Qu'est-ce que c'est?
30. Prune bushes and small trees * Get real!
31. Iron a shirt
32. Fix a toilet tank flapper
33. Change a single-pole switch
34. Fell a tree
35. Replace a broken windowpane
36. Set up a ladder, safely But it's much more manly to do it dangerously
37. Fix a faucet cartridge * I don't know what this is
38. Sweat copper tubing No sweat
39. Change a diaper Yeah, baby!
40. Grill with charcoal It's not grilling if you don't!
41. Sew a button on a shirt In a half-assed sort of way, yeah
42. Fold a flag*

Medical Myths I do need to get my First Aid card renewed

43. Treat frostbite
44. Treat a burn
45. Help a seizure victim
46. Treat a snakebite
47. Remove a tick

Military Know-How

48. Shine shoes
49. Make a drum-tight bed * Not me, no siree
50. Drop and give the perfect pushup * Just one? Sure!

Outdoors

51. Run rapids in a canoe*
52. Hang food in the wild
53. Skipper a boat Though I'd much rather Gilligan
54. Shoot straight* I'm pretty honest most of the time, though
55. Tackle steep drops on a mountain bike * Fun, but essential?
56. Escape a rip current Got me here

Primitive Skills

57. Build a fire in the wilderness
58. Build a shelter
59. Find potable water

Surviving Extremes

I'm going to claim these on the grounds that success is a combination of preparedness and common sense

60. Floods
61. Tornados
62. Cold
63. Heat
64. Lightning

Teach Your Kids

65. Cast a line
66. Lend a hand * ?
67. Change a tire
68. Throw a spiral * I mean really...
69. Fly a stunt kite * See above
70. Drive a stick shift
71. Parallel park
72. Tie a bowline
73. Tie a necktie
74. Whittle * Again, really?
75. Ride a bike

Technology

76. Install a graphics card *
77. Take the perfect portrait *
78. Calibrate HDTV settings *
79. Shoot a home movie *
80. Ditch your hard drive * ???

Master Key Workshop Tools

81. Drill driver
82. Grease gun
83. Coolant hydrometer
84. Socket wrench
85. Test light
86. Brick trowel*
87. Framing hammer
88. Wood chisel
89. Spade bit* Is this a shovel (and is there a right way to use it)?
90. Circular saw
91. Sledge hammer
92. Hacksaw
93. Torque wrench * Aw, just fudge it (snap)!
94. Air wrench Which would also require a compressor
95. Infrared thermometer *
96. Sand blaster *
97. Crosscut saw *
98. Hand plane * File the last four under "gimme a break"
99. Multimeter
100. Feeler gauges *

At the risk of seeming sexist, it was upon number 15 that I considered why this is exclusively a list of skills for men. I can personally attest to how much more wonderful life would be if my better half could perform nos. 9, 32 and 67.

I am surprised by the number of things that the editors considered essential to manhood. To choose the most ridiculous one would be hard, but I'd say that car waxing, meter reading, bush pruning, flag folding, mountain biking, football spiraling, whittling and all the ones listed under "technology" suffice for the definition.

In the comments section of the article were a few good suggested replacements such as knowing how to swim and how to use map and compass, though that is fast becoming obsolete in the satellite age.

Lastly, I must credit the Boy Scouts for influencing a major portion of what I'd consider an impressive if debatable showing of my manliness.

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Labels: life, me, vital statistics

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Financial times being what they are, I started a new career this week. Albeit part-time, the job seems to fill the last piece of career pie with respect to the types of employers I’ve had.

Let’s see if I can remember every ingredient chronologically. If you count lemonade stand, then that’s the first incarnation of Me, Myself & I, Inc., where a number of different hats have been worn over the years. But my first gainful employment was as a paperboy, starting as a rookie afternoon carrier packing about 30-40 copies of the now defunct Chicago Daily News into a canvas bag attached to the front of my Schwinn Sting-Ray. Over time I matured into a salty morning route veteran who whisked out a couple hundred Tribunes and Sun-Timeses (and a few WSJs on the tonier side of my route) via large wagon-wheeled carts, “chauffeured” van or car and even dogsled. Yes, dogsled – definitely a highlight of my as yet unpublished, much less written, memoirs.

Next I was a peon at a country club, specifically a caddy. This was a pretty dang good paying job for a high school kid, and can best be described by saying you should watch the movie Caddyshack (perhaps again), which was released at the height of my looping career with much fanfare amongst my colleagues. Brian Doyle Murray wrote the script based on his experiences caddying at a club just up the road from where I worked, and Bill Murray played at our club on a few occasions. The film is of course exaggerated for comedic effect but the basic elements are spot on. The job was great fun, and had a social subculture all its own with just the right amount of teenage shenanigans and debauchery to provide some hard-learned lessons and lasting memories.

For two summers in college I worked for the United States Postal Service as a “casual” mail carrier. Casuals would start about 10 a.m., taking over for the regular full-timers (which included my dad) who came in at six and cased up the mail going out on their route for the day. A lot of them liked burning up their vacation time with half days like that. I loved it because you worked on your own, got to be outside at different locations almost every day and meet different people, most of whom enjoyed seeing the mail arrive. I suppose if I had to do it year-round, like my dad who endured 37 northern Illinois winters of it, I would not have been as enthusiastic.

Another interesting summer job I held was as the overnight dinghy boy/watchman at a harbor on Lake Michigan. Most of the time I could sleep but occasionally had to ferry drunken fornicators back from their yachts at some ungodly hour. Couldn’t just wait till morning, eh? Well no, she has to get back before her husband wakes up. Your secret’s safe with me, pal, and even safer with that fin tip, wink wink. Each morning I had to haul a pack of burly dudes who worked from a barge at the mouth of the harbor. At sunrise they’d pile into the little 12-foot dinghy, causing displacement to the gunwales so that I sweated every turn of the outboard rudder. As a solo occupant I would have a blast cruising around the harbor doing donuts and chasing ducks (yes, I am ashamed of that) and a few times I motored out to open lake in the still of the night to have a smoke and watch the city lights in the southern distance.

My next job came after moving to California, where my brother had been living for a few years. We became roommates - I provided a reason for him to move out from a relationship that had run its course and he provided me with a job at the roofing company he worked for. This was real labor, especially working as a tear-off peon on the hot tar crew. Although I toughed it out for about a year and a half, I had no stomach for showing the initiative to move up into comfier and higher-paying ranks like where my bro was as a skilled roofer installing cedar shakes (the official roof of California). Class establishment that it was, the company ended up laying me off just before Christmas bonuses were to go out.

After some time suckling on the state teet I procured a job at a startup courier delivery company that covered the entire Bay Area. They normally didn’t hire anyone who hadn’t lived in the area for at least five years, but I am a map freak and so was able to prove my navigational prowess to get hired on. I started out as a shuttle driver, which doesn’t deliver on a route but runs between drop boxes all up the Peninsula from Santa Clara to the city (despite San Jose having long since passed San Francisco in population, the latter will always be “the city” of the Bay Area). This job was so simple and required no personal contact other than the radio dispatcher, so I frequently got stoned to the bejeezus (one of the dispatchers was my dealer), captaining my own little starship Enterprise up and down the 101. I gave up that on-the-job habit when I became a route driver, though. There was a bit more paper work and customer service involved - didn’t figure being spacey, scary red-eyed dude was so cool going in and out of all those Silicon Valley offices.

The courier job ended with my exodus from the Golden State. A brief sojourn in New Mexico had me working as a carpenter’s helper before moving on to Georgia, a place I vaguely recalled from traveling through to Florida on a couple of family trips as being hot, green and hilly. Georgia was a place that my formerly long-haired self had never considered to be a viable place to reside, but here I have now been for nearly half of my life.

My first job here was also my first foray into the retail world - a brief stint as a K-Mart cashier. It was also my first major foray into the world of southern accents, to which my attunement was directly proportional to the amount of teeth in the mouth speaking to me. At this time in my life I had, to make a long story short, renounced Christmas (still not gaga over it), and so I had the opportunity to work at the closed store on Christmas Day with a couple of other fellows straightening up and getting rid of all the X-mas displays and décor. The manager let us in and said he’d be back in a few hours, and while we performed our assigned duties we also enjoyed a boom box loudness contest and some BMX racing. Who knew rubber skid marks were such a bitch to get off linoleum?

As even Rain Man knows, K-Mart sucks, so when I heard that the Red Lobster in town was hiring wait staff trainees I made that my next pursuit of a living wage. Here another Hollywood product, Waiting, serves as a fairly accurate, if only humorously mediocre, portrayal of the waiting scene, right down to the busboys sucking all the nitrous oxide out of the whipped cream canisters. The money was decent, but in that podunk micropolis there were too many cases of the “redneck tip,” whereby leaving a dollar per person at the table was deemed generous, never mind that you politely ran all-you-can-eat shrimp and light beer to these cretins for an hour and the checks for the two couples well exceeded $100. The camaraderie at RL was great – we cut up like crazy and made up silly, Weird Al-type songs about the restaurant business. My faves: one to the tune of Sade’s Smooth Operator titled “Ooh I’m Your Waiter,” and “Fry Guy,” fashioned after Mary Wells’ 1964 Motown hit. Once a month we were required to come in at 9 a.m. on Saturday for a wait staff meeting, only getting paid our paltry sub-minimum wage for the time. We often showed up in bathrobes and pajamas in protest, and then would commandeer the kitchen after the meeting for gourmet breakfast preparation by one of our colleagues who was a Le Cordon Bleu dropout. I worked this job for a few years before deciding to head into my next incarnation of self-employment.

My house painting concern was mostly just two guys and some ladders, brushes, drop cloths and other “accoutrements decoratif” packed into a 1978 Dodge pickup, a vehicle so wide that cell phone service varied between the driver’s and passenger’s sides. Things started out pretty well for two reasons. First, my partner and I had a good connection with a local contractor who fed us a lot of jobs. Second, we started up in spring just as the outdoor painting season gets into gear. Add to it our bachelor status and the modest income was plenty on which to enjoy life. So things hummed along for a while - we even survived the first winter slow season - but the following year our contractor wasn’t in need of near as much decorating work. We were also pretty clueless about self-employed income taxes and ended up going in the hole to the IRS for a few grand. The final straw was seeing that outside our original friendly contractor, two yankees weren’t particularly welcome in the old boy network of the construction trades. My partner bugged out first, and I followed a few months later to the same place he went.

That place was a very small art foundry, and the steady paycheck was welcome mainly for my new status as husband and provider while Jen was in school. The product was handcrafted bronze sculpture, mostly working editions of several hundred to a couple thousand but occasionally doing some custom work. It was neat stuff except that the metalworking aspect of it turned your hands green from the copper. I don’t imagine it was great for the lungs, either. It is still the only practical application of my “college education” as an art major. I started as an entry level metal finisher and worked my way up to management, which at a firm this small meant I had to do my job and keep an eye on everyone else. That job was primarily TIG welding, a very marketable skill, and after seven years of basically stagnant pay with bronze I left to take on work in steel fabrication for heavy equipment.

This medium-sized company was Japanese owned, which provided some interesting perspective into the differences between East and West in both industrial and corporate endeavors. Part of the production system required specific adherence to puzzling rules, such as only transporting certain parts on a cart of a certain color. This may have had more poignant management usefulness on the day shift, but I worked the much more lackadaisical night shift, where “dishonor” was much more frequent.

Jen graduated and began teaching at a school fifty miles away, so we decided to move to a rural area about 20 miles on the other side of her work, not far from her old stomping grounds near Chattanooga. In fact we rented a house from an old family friend, a place we loved and would have bought if he’d been inclined to sell. It is set in the middle of a few acres, and you couldn’t see a neighbor’s house when the leaves were full in summer. I looked for work other than welding because I was getting kind of burnt out with my fish-out-of-water status of being an erudite blue-collar worker.

Alas I was destined once again to eat my yogurt and read my Vanity Fair in the corner while all the cool kids smoked their menthols and talked about NASCAR. The new job, boiler tube fabrication, had me starting just above entry level until I earned my ASME certification, at which point my pay greatly increased. This kept me going for a few years, even in the face of some pretty shitty corporate actions, like having to work on New Year’s Day (but then not the following weekend, which would have been preferred), and the enforcement of petty rules that made the Japanese look mellow. I stayed in good graces with the owner, a fellow yankee, and actually took on my department’s foreman position. But once again the good old boys did me in by choosing to stand by and watch me fail rather than lend a hand of expertise to benefit me and the company. I gladly went back to minding my own business under a welding hood after fourteen months of being chief. Still, after five years my attitude had slipped enough to get me on the short list for the next round of layoffs, and when the time came for the ax to fall I put my head on the block without much regret.

After a period of unemployment I came across an ad in the local county rag that said they were looking for reporters, experience not necessary. I sent off a “what the hell” letter with some writing samples and forgot about it. About a month later the publisher calls me in for an interview, gives me a hokey AP writing and grammar test and shoots the shit about politics with me for about half an hour. After he hired me he showed me some of the other applications and we had a good laugh with a few. Seems several others also had a “what the hell” inclination but also the education to go with it. My pay would be about forty percent less than a certified welder, but my happiness would increase five fold.

It didn’t take any fancy book learnin’ to do the job, just some good social skills, an inquiring mind and a flair for writing stuff that could keep the average eighth-grader interested. I took on feature (aka fluff) stories, covered the business community (aka free advertising) and government (aka BS). In the 3-plus years I worked for this company that owned a dozen or so small papers, I interviewed people from a sixth grade history essay winner to the governor, earning three state press association awards along the way. It currently qualifies as the best job I’ve ever had (paid job, that is – nothing beats stay-at-home daddy).

So, at last we come to the new one, which, while I am quite appreciative for it in these times of increased unemployment, I don’t think it stands a chance of winning the title I just gave my last job. But now, after forays into small, medium and sort of large companies of every stripe, I enter the world of the humongous multinational corporation. Evenings and weekends I will be the cookie man, aka merchandising rep for Nabisco, owned by Kraft, which employs more than 98,000 people in 70 countries. I’ll count ‘em, order ‘em and stack ‘em at various grocers in the area, humming a tune that only a tiny cog in the corporate wheel can:


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Labels: jobs, life, me, the past, work

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My sister e-mailed me the other day to inform me that one of our uncles had died. He passed away peacefully in his sleep. He was my dad’s sister’s husband. They lived in a nearby suburb and I remember many holidays spent visiting them or vice-versa. Although we were not very close, I remember him well as a very kind man with a good humor about him. He was 84, just a couple of years older than my dad, and so his death is yet another signal that I should be prepared for my parents to go at anytime. That will be sad but I don’t expect it will be very hard, especially in the case of my Alzheimer’s-ravaged mom.

Relationships with my extended family have been fairly tepid if not totally non-existent. Some aunts, uncles and cousins I have not seen since I was a child and would not recognize them on the street, while some others I may get to visit on trips back to the stomping grounds if time permits, though it usually does not.

Since I have lived in the south I have had occasion to witness some contrasts in family dynamics, particularly with regard to death. The ancestry of my midwestern clan is Scandinavian, hence rather stoic and often bland, whereas much of the native southerners (which includes my wife) are descended from the more jovial Scots-Irish. And boy can you tell it from the funerals. In both regions the grief of the immediate family of the deceased is kept fairly private, but a brave face is soon put on amongst southerners because, well, there’s some celebrating to do.

Out of financial and scheduling necessity, I won’t be returning for my uncle’s funeral this week. I imagine it will be a tame affair with baleful hymns and rice pudding. By contrast, when my wife’s father died recently, and also when a family matriarch of her mom’s side of the family passed away last week, relatives from all over the lower 48 poured in. And when all the funereal business was complete, it was family reunion time. Barbeque, beer, bourbon - we’re not talking frat party here, though alcohol consumption is generally robust. But the fellowship is one of happiness and remembrance, and I for one think it ought to be so.

When my time comes, hopefully from natural causes at a ridiculously advanced age, I will expect my survivors, descendants and friends to gather one last time in happy memory of me. Drink some and laugh a lot. The only tears I want at my after party are ones of laughter from stories like how grampa got arrested those few times or lost all bladder control during a particular concert experience. Hopefully there won’t be too many sour glares from the lutefisk crowd at the other end of the room.

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Labels: death, family, life, me

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Inspired by Miz UV and Sour Grapes:

O' Tim answers twenty-one questions

1. What was the last blog you left a comment on?

Miz UV’s

2. Favorite black and white movie?

Dr. Strangelove

3. What’s in your freezer right now?

Oh man: frozen veggies & fruit, veggie burgers, veggie chicken nuggets, waffles, lasagna, spinach & feta ravioli, two beer glasses, Stouffer’s alfredo stir-fry stuff, ice, and two really old popsicles

4. How many pillows do you have on your bed?

Five. The extras work great for blocking out the sun on those days I sleep until noon.

5. Do you regularly share your bed with anyone?

Else? No.

6. Do you sleep in Pajamas, undies, nude, or other?

Undies – I toss a lot so tops are uncomfortable

7. If you won $50,000, what would you do with it?

Upgrade one of our vehicles, get new flooring, carpet, some (baby) furniture, new deck, hot tub and save the $15,000 that’s left. Or forego most of that and look for a new house because it is a buyer’s market right now.

8. Something nice you did for someone today?

I let my wife go back to bed this morning to sleep off a bad headache.

9. Something bad you did to someone today?

Said that MIL’s boyfriend’s Jell-O salad looked like it had worms in it because of the thin slices of orange peel (it was really tasty and I said so later).

10. Hardest class you took in school?

Junior year algebra

11. Ever been in a car accident?

Yes – I was in junior high and mom was taking us to school on a snowy morning. A woman with her kids ran a stop sign and smacked us really hard, and she died at the scene.

12. What is one food you won’t eat?

Liver or kidney (organs in general, I suppose)

13. Why?

Because they filter crap from the blood

14. Would you ever eat dog meat?

Not if I could help it

15. What is something as a child you wanted to grow up to become, but didn’t?

A baseball player

16. Name one place in the US you haven’t seen but want to?

Crater Lake, Oregon

17. Name one place outside the US?

Any place in the European Alps

18. Favorite smells?

Eucalyptus, patchouli, skunk (just a whiff from a distance), grilled steak, fresh gasoline, orange, the upper palate of a good porter, the loamy earth of a hemlock forest, the air above a mountain stream, campfires and (inspired by Sour Grapes) a baby’s head.

19. If you could pick any game show to compete on, which would it be?

Jeopardy or One vs. 100 because it seems really easy.

20. Where did you go on your last real vacation and who did you go with?

New Mexico, by myself

21. Your best birthday was for which age?

Would you believe 21? In Lake Tahoe? And that I won money at blackjack? And that I got to see Carlos Santana?

I'm passing this meme along to the following four:

1. Whomever

2. Wherever

3. Whenever

4. Forever!

hee-hee

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Labels: fun facts, life, me, memes

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Today’s episode of MTIH is brought to you by the number 42, which among other important things happens to be the number of years I have completed upon this earth as of 4:05 a.m. Chicago time today. What will today hold in store? Probably not the same fate as my so-designated "Rolling Rock" birthday nine years ago, wherein I attempted to imbibe the contents of as many as possible of the fabled “33” green bottles from Old Latrobe. That was a night to forget, and thankfully beyond knowing that fact, it is.

No, today will be spent with the boy doing all the important things we do between infant and middle-aged father. I would have to say my life’s chief goal in general terms is to live long enough for Max to make it to this age, if for no other reason than to compare notes and likely have him show me the several roads not taken that might’ve made my life a bit more satisfying in my first 4.2 decades. It is my rock-solid belief that anyone who claims to have no regrets in life is telling a bald-faced lie. Perhaps I should rephrase that – anyone who says that if they could do it all over again they wouldn’t change a thing is seriously deluded (never mind the fact that the opportunity for one to do so does not exist).

At this point the two strangest things that stand out in unison of sorts are that I do not feel 42 emotionally and that at the age I do feel (for simplicity’s sake let’s just invert the number) I looked at 42-year-olds as being some seriously old fuckers for sure. Maturity for me has come slow, and as my beloved spouse can affirm is still very much a work in progress. Ironically that has a sort comforting youthful aspect to it, which is more often than not just an excuse to misbehave I suppose. My cosmic recipe at this point is an addiction to fun and excitement mixed with an aversion to the mundane “hafta-dos.” Sprinkle in a spicy case of procrastination and you have a life full of mediocre accomplishments, anger, frustration and a mess of really great memories, I’d guess much like any man who lives in quiet desperation.

But don’t get the impression that I am unhappy, in fact far from it. Yearning to be happier, certainly, but even in that I am daily learning more patience, moderation and wisdom, the lessons of which seem to come in a concentrated form from the midst of my son’s smiles and giggles.

Enough public display of introspection, onto the celebration! A few fun facts about

It is the atomic number of molybdenum, which is an element of high end steel alloys used for things such as mountain bikes.

It is the number of teeth dogs have, so there are 84 of those in our house.

The eight digits of pi beginning from 242,422 places after the decimal point are 42424242.

The song So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, (from the original score of the film The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) was one of 42 possible nominees in the 78th Annual Academy Awards for Best Song.

42 is one of “The Numbers” on the television show Lost, along with 4, 8, 15, 16 and 23

42 is the jersey number of Jackie Robinson, and when New York Yankee Mariano Rivera retires it will become the first and only number retired by all Major League Baseball teams.

42 is the number of laws of cricket.

In the ASCII character code 42 represents the asterisk* character.
*A handy indicator to have when discussing the Ultimate Answer.

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland has 42 illustrations. In Chapter XII, the king explains “the oldest rule in the book”: “Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.”

42 has some interesting parallels between Judaism, Christianity and Paganism:

It is the number of generations in the Gospel of Matthew’s version of the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is the number of months the Beast will hold dominion over the Earth according to Revelation 13:5.

It is the number of youths which are mauled by bears that God sends upon them for mocking Elisha’s baldness 2 Kings 2:23 (Their God is an awesome God!)

It is the number of principles of Ma'at, the ancient Egyptian personification of physical and moral law, order, and truth.

It is the number of the “Forty-Two Lettered Name” ascribed to God in the Babylonian Talmud. A 3rd century source in the Talmud stated “The Forty-Two Lettered Name is entrusted only to him who is pious, meek, middle-aged, free from bad temper, sober, and not insistent on his rights.” (Well, one out of six is...pretty shitty)

In Japanese, 4 (shi) and 2 (ni) are together pronounced like “going to death.” Because of that they considered it a disastrous number. This happens in Hong Kong too, as 42 sounds like “easy death” in Cantonese.

Despite that last bit of superstition, my advice to myself today is




DON’T PANIC

Labels: Damn I'm OLD, fun facts, life, me, religion, superstition, Time

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Lots of good remembrances on the blogs today. The theme I am relating to best is not so much remembering what we've lost but rather what we've given away. Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart wrote one of the best essays, copied here from HuffPo:

Six years ago three thousand Americans lost their lives. They need not have. Their deaths could have been prevented. Their lives could have been saved.

The Bush administration was warned months before 9/11 that terrorists were going to attack America. They did nothing. They have yet to be held accountable for the preventable loss of American lives. Yet the administration blames its critics for not understanding the terrorist threat.

The perpetrator of those American deaths is still at large and the war to eliminate those who harbored him threatens to drag on inconclusively for many years. Instead, administration operatives, with the approval of their masters, find it convenient to use him to create fear, and therefore justify their positions of power.

The United States has suffered more than 30,000 casualties in another war that had nothing to do with those attacks. This folly is producing more haters of America than it can ever possibly eliminate.

The backbone of domestic security, the National Guard, is deployed in that war and is thus not at home being trained, equipped, and deployed to protect America.

The consolidation of federal border protection and attack response in a single agency did not begin until at least 18 months after it was proposed and, six years later, it has proved to be woefully inadequate, in large part because those responsible for its administration possess a political philosophy that does not believe government can or should be effective. And they use every occasion to prove it.

The U.S. is currently pursuing a foreign policy in the Middle East and throughout the Arab world that is dementedly designed to promote a clash of civilizations. When this policy produces further attacks, our current policy makers will respond that this is what to expect from those who hate America and only tough-minded conservatives know how to deal with them.

Those who claim to understand terrorism and the use of force, meanwhile, have so exhausted our combat forces that our true national security is greatly at risk and our nation is weakened.

This administration stands indicted for incompetence and mendacity. That it still commands the loyalty of even a quarter of our fellow citizens is testament to the persistence of willful ignorance. Against all the facts assembled in this indictment, that the administration's operatives can still make claims on strength, security, and determination is chutzpah on stilts.

That the media still treat these operatives and spokespersons, and indeed the president himself, seriously is witness to their desire for "access" and "sources" rather than their commitment to the truth.

America is today under the steady gaze of billions of the world's citizens and even more under the examining lens of history. Nothing is more difficult than to admit that we made a tragic mistake in selecting our leaders. But that is the first step toward redemption. Absolute rejection of those who lay claim to ownership of security is the next.

We are too old to behave as adolescents any longer. That includes particularly our president. America must grow up. We must redeem ourselves in the name of those who lost their lives unnecessarily six years ago. We must reclaim our dignity and our honor from those who have neither.

And here is my annual perspective check from that watershed time (cut me some slack on my over-the-top newscaster tone).
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Labels: death, facts, histoire, justice, life, madness, martyrdom, milestones, politix, religion, remembrance, terms of enragement, tragedy, turrists, war, weaponry, words

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I haven't posted lately for the simple fact that, as happens to everybody, life got in the way. This time it was by way of that common irony in life - dealing with someone’s death. I learned last week that my eldest sister, all of 57 years old, is stricken with terminal cancer. Her condition was reported to be quite grave, a perfect storm of symptoms that prompted me to travel to my hometown where she and a majority of my immediate family still live, fearfully holding a hope that I could be with her one last time.

The night before I left I was lying in bed with my wife and my newborn son when the fear and grief took hold, and I sobbed harder than I can ever remember, taxing the nearest pillow so as not to frighten the baby. After I calmed, my wife said something that struck me at first as a bit insensitive. “It’s tough being a grown-up, isn’t it?”

What do you expect? I thought in a classic kneejerk that was more from embarrassment than from anger. Quickly I came to know that what she said was no insult. I didn’t immediately reconsider that I’ve made it 41.5 years on this earth without the loss of anything more painful than a favorite pet. I say reconsider because that fact was made apparent a few weeks back when I read a moving post about sibling death that Don wrote. A fellow commentor mentioned that after her older brother died, there was a strange passage, “a particularly odd time,” that she and each of the younger siblings went through when they reached the age of his death. I considered that as the sixth of seven children I was likely to have to go through similar odd times, quite possibly several. I also thought that the first of those would be closer to 20 years from now.

Another commentor, who has lost three siblings, said that losing them "also meant losing my witnesses,” which is particularly poignant in the case of my sister since, in another revelation I had over the weekend, she and my eldest brother (turning 54 next week) were “the family” for 10 years before the baby boom of five latter day siblings that arrived every other year beginning in 1959. As adulthood caught up with each of us and we scattered about the country, phone calls and visits home usually revolved around the here-and-now and the “great to see you,” with only occasional discussion of family history. Thankfully my mother was somewhat diligent and proficient in the media of family journalism, photography and 8mm silent film. Still, that archive leaves much to be related, pardon the pun, given that my rather taciturn father requires Mike Wallace-caliber probing to recall anything and my mother’s spiral into the darkness of Alzheimer’s now sadly precludes her further contribution (visiting her this past trip sped up the emotional see-saw that was already cranking). My sister’s condition has stabilized to the point that she is fully lucid, if quite beleaguered. So with a greater hope of having her with us a while longer, I am committed to my part of chronicling the family reserve.

Beyond that simple task is the decidedly more complicated one of dealing with her imminent passing and the support she and her husband and daughters and granddaughter will need from here on. And then of course that her father, four brothers and two sisters (we’ve decided that it serves no purpose to inform mom) will need to cope with a loved one lost far too soon. But there are myriad others who have dealt with this, and I will as sure as anything be seeking out them and/or their writings in order to bring myself and my family a little comfort and wisdom.

Nora Ephron recently wrote a commentary on John and Elizabeth Edwards’ situation regarding her cancer and Elizabeth’s proclamation that she had two choices: to go on living, or begin dying. Ephron respectfully disagreed with the simplicity of that, offering this jewel that for me settles the mud in the puddle of meaning just a bit more:

“I believe instead that at a certain point in life, whether or not you've been diagnosed with illness, you enter into a conscious, ongoing, unending, eternal, puzzling, confusing negotiation between the two (choices). Some days one of them wins, and some days the other. This negotiation often includes decisions as trivial as whether to eat a second piece of pie, and as important as whether to have medical treatment that may or may not prolong your life.”

And I was reminded recently of the grace, dignity and humor with which musician Warren Zevon faced his terminal diagnosis. His chief nugget of wisdom (the simplicity of which just about brings me to tears every time I think of it)?

“Enjoy every sandwich.”

So the deli of my soul is now open 24/7

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Labels: death, family, life, sandwiches