I Will Go To Congo

I went for a walk today at lunch at the park across the street. It's a nice little 1 mile loop through the woods, and it's a good way to get out of the cubicle and avoid fast food.

Today, I headed out onto a short boardwalk that leads to an overlook of a little meadow at the center of the park. There I found this carved into the wood:

Stop the war in Congo!

Here I was, thinking I just wanted to take a walk during my lunch break, but now...now I'm thinking I might head to the Congo and see what I can do about this situation.

It's amazing to think that a person, somewhere out there, had the belief that if only they were to get a pocketknife and spend a half hour carving someone might come along and end a lifetime of brutality in Congo. Well, that person was me!

They'll write songs about my lunch-time walk once I've fixed Congo! The city of Westerville will be thrust into the center of global politics, and we'll all mythologize the person who had the foresight and wherewithal to deface my favorite Metropark! Congo, here I come. Watch your ass, cuz I'm packing heavy.

Closed Circuit Future

I can't remember if it's been raining for days, but it feels like it. It's that slow, cold, purposeful rain that soaks through tree bark, and slows everything that ducks and hides from its drippings. I stepped out the door this morning, and immediately smelled the worm holocaust on the sidewalk. Having finally given up going deeper into the earth to hide from the rains, they stretch bloated and dying across parking lots and walkways.

Fall showed up big over the past two weeks. Normally, I'm on the watch, studying tree lines for blotches of yellow and red, but this year the season snuck up on me. Today I noticed the orange along the highway, rich and full as any Bob Ross landscape, and it seemed to be even more noticeable against the dishwater skies.

I've been distracted, to say the least. I've been sitting back watching the cliches shared over the years by parents become a welcome truth. I'm smiling more. I often can't remember what I was working on the moment before. I'm thinking 529 accounts, nurseries, and how old a person should be before they sit down to listen to Kid A.

I've become nothing else but these disjointed thoughts mixed with panicked calls to my insurance provider.

I posted the picture of Smudge, but if it weren't for the doctor's guidance, I literally wouldn't have known the baby's head from its ass. People asked me later if I cried when I saw the heart flickering in glorious black and white, but I didn't. I stood amazed thinking that it was beating just like I had always imagined a hummingbird's heart would.

Jen and I held hands and looked at the screen, and when the doctor stepped out to let her get dressed, we held each other and laughed. Call us victims of our generation, but in some ways the pregnancy wasn't real until we could see it on television.

With all of the recent change, I find myself shutting down in some ways. Until tonight, I've not had the focus to sit and write anything. Instead I've spent hours surfing the web reading about what's going on in my wife's body, or looking at Ramones onesies (hells yeah!), or watching The Big Lebowski for the 400th time. I plot and plan, but do nothing constructive. Yesterday, I got a nice box of new records, so I know I'll be in the den a good part of the weekend lost in all the No Age goodness sent my way.

I'm just waiting. I'm waiting for this suburban life to become amazing. I'm waiting for everything to change, and for the first time, change really is coming.

Cutest. Smudge. Ever.