Random Notes

I'm a fan of the seasons, but my short attention span keeps me from liking any of them for more than just a couple months at a time. Just about the time I start really yearning for warmer weather, winter takes a giant white shit all over my hopes. So, I shovel the walks and listen to the sound of our furnace catching its breath for 45 seconds in between cycles and keep hoping.

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Tonight we were straightening up in the kitchen and I was going through some paperwork, shredding dated bank statements and the like. As I was cleaning things out I finally disposed of the remnants of the Paperwhites out a pot we had set aside. For those unfamiliar with the plant, it's a winter blooming bulb that has tall slender stalks and white flowers that grows in a pot of stones with a bit of water. It also smells like a giant pile of buttery ass. I was never more happy than when I got to cut them back and walk the clippings immediately out to the trash.


So tonight, I empty the pot into a plastic bag, planning to salvage the gravel, when everything slides out in a solid mass. The individual pieces of gravel are practically tied together with a slick white root structure that looked so much like a snarl of tapeworms it actually creeped me out.


Horror movies should be written about this plant. It's what should have crawled under the skin of the wayward hikers in The Ruins. It's what Indiana Jones really should have been afraid of instead of snakes. I pray to God Jen doesn't want that evil spawn in our home again next year.

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I've decided Facebook would be more fun if people would be completely inappropriate with their status updates from time to time. I'm a total voyer so I don't even get upset with the mundane posts from some; I'm usually on board to see whatever it is you're up to. Still, it'd be nice to see something like:

John Doe...

...is pooping.
...is celebrating some "Afternoon Delight" with a giant sandwhich.
...got caught picking his nose today by another motorist when driving home from work.
...listened to Whitesnake today and loved every second of it.

Not that I'm personally going to open myself up with embarassing posts, of course. I just think you should.

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.

Chef Shivers

It's that kind of "in between" cold that brings rain and gray skies. Snow is hinted at, but never quite materializes. The rain hits your skin in the morning on your way to the car, and it becomes a part of you for the rest of the day. I went to work, in my new capacity (which is suspiciously like my old capacity), ran some errands while at lunch (coffee run, etc.) and then hit the grocery store on the way home all with a thin shiver curled under my coat with me.

Thanksgiving is generally spent with my brother and sister in law at their house. We kind crashed their get together a few years back (it is mostly my sis in law's family) and wound up getting invited back each year. When we're not visiting Jen's family in WI, we always go. This year though, Jen's mom is coming to town and we decided to keep it low key for her sake.

It was insane how much money I spent on groceries tonight. I'm only cooking for four people, but it felt like they had to restock behind me everywhere I went. I wandered through the aisles getting more and more worried that I'd exceed my cart's capabilities. Me and 400 of my neighbors listened to piped in Coldplay while loading up on yams and blocks of cheese. I managed to wade through the humanity and come out near the checkout lanes gasping for air with pretty much everything I needed. Since this is my first actual Thanksgiving dinner that I've done, I also loaded up on plenty of booze. That way, if things go belly up, we'll have an excellent Plan B.

Ike Lite

Sunday, after arriving home from my camping trip, Hurricane Ike came to Central Ohio. Compared to the force he displayed down south, Ike's arrival was more of a sigh or half-hearted fart but it was still enough to knock out power across the area. With a lot of our local crews shipped south to help the victims there, our crews here are short handed leaving a few places out of power still.

I don't know how we dodged the bullet. Normally our little neighborhood is among the first places to lose power and the last to get it back, but somehow we managed to only lose it long enough to have to reset the clocks once. We talk to people that we work with that talk about going out every day to find ice to put in their freezers, or who have gone to stay with relatives. We are very fortunate.

Speaking of fortunate, my lucky wife has been off work all week due to the power being out in most of the district that she works in. Each night we would get a prerecorded message saying that the buildings would be closed. Tonight it didn't come, so she headed to bed early to get ready for what she imagines will be a monstrous day tomorrow.

The damage is still everywhere though. Storms like this have the ability to quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. Trees that appeared strong snapped in two like twigs, revealing rotten cores. They are everywhere along the roadsides, tottering on lower branches unable to quite reach the ground, and piled in back yards for seasoning and burning.

Last night we went for a bike ride and the trail was littered with leaves, sticks, branches and a slowly powdering mix of dirt and bark. We rode slower than usual, steering through the mess and smelling that wonderful earthy smell of already decaying wood. It's amazing how areas we have been so familiar with before have changed. The landscape has changed with the storm and in some areas the changes make you feel like you are somewhere new.

So, tonight we headed to another one of our favorite parks for a walk and though the trails had been cleared the damage in the woods was amazing. It was a beautiful night but we walked fast, trying to keep heart rates up, while we examined the fallen trees and counted deer. Tomorrow, it'll be biking again. Hopefully the crews have been out to clean up a bit. Otherwise, I'll start moving branches myself.

Fall

The leaves are noisier now than they were a week ago. Their dry edges and they scrape against each other in the wind. When you're quiet, it's so loud. Last night, Jen and I stood still on a bridge that crosses a small creek not too far from our home and listened. It was a good night.

Some of the leaves are even starting to fall already. We rode our bikes the other day and leaves drifted with cinematic grace around us and on us as we pedaled along slowly, talking. Enough had fallen on the trail that they were being ground into smaller pieces and the air was full of the good sweet smell of them. Even though it was almost 90 degrees that day, it was the first hint of fall and it made me want more.

I've been stuck working a lot of overtime at work lately, and it's kept me from riding to work. The weather the last two days has been so amazing that I couldn't keep myself from taking my bike in, so I woke up at 4:00 this morning to I could get ready and get to work by 6:00. On the trail by 5:00, there was one thing that I hadn't considered before getting out there. It's creepy out there in the dark alone. Just plain creepy.

There was a bit of fog collected along the stream banks, and it swallowed the small straining headlight I had mounted to my bike, reducing my visibility to about 6 feet. Small animals moved in my periphery making me hope I wouldn't scare a skunk in the dark. The things that I don't like about the trail during the day (neighborhoods, apartment complexes, open fields) became the places I loved in the dark (street lights, security lights, the half moon above me). The whole time I was riding though, the smell of the leaves filled the air, and in the darkness seemed even stronger.