Category Archives: Uncategorized

Center

17213468443_369c567e5a_kWhat a fun week it’s been! I haven’t disliked a rollercoaster ride that much since early 2004, when, to avoid what would have been a relationship-ending fight, I got onto The Medusa at Six Flags, which turned out to have been something which is known as a Supercoaster, which seemed more like a suicide machine to me, but without the inherent fun of taking your own life. But unlike that experience, it seems that I cannot exit this ride, and steadfastly refuse to get onto another for the rest of my time here. Also, I’m not sure what kind of metaphor I can make from Dippin’ Dots, but I want to go on record as saying that they were an abomination which managed to lessen my love for frozen treats and tiny snacks of all types. That was a truly horrible day for me. Actually, to be fair, that entire time was one which I would almost rather forget entirely. It summed up everything that I disliked about my life during my twenties, and were it not for the lessons which were hammered into me, I would block out that time entirely from my mind. I haven’t really shared a lot of my relationship with La Diabla with all of you, and I guess that it’s probably the time.

You're seriously not going to get on another ride? Seriously?!
You’re seriously not going to get on another ride? Seriously?!

First, a little backstory: I left Seattle in January of 2003, leaving behind my family on the invitation of my friend to come and live in California and see palm trees. It was a twenty-two hour train ride, and when I arrived in Emeryville, California, I was ready to put my past behind me. It took me about a month to find a job, but I wound up getting in at the new Fuddrucker’s in the local open-air mall. It was only six months between my hire date and my first promotion. I’d poured myself into the job, sacrificing a social life in search of the almighty dollar, pausing only to blow of steam with Fed by drowning our sorrows in a frightening quantity of booze (which I could now buy in almost any store, including the Pack N’ Save next door). But two guys, no matter how good of friends they may be, cannot share a one-bedroom apartment for six months without discovering that they hold within them the secret desire to destroy the other. That, and Fed’s mom was coming to visit, and she’d made it clear how much she disapproved of me.

So, faced with more money, but nowhere to live, I paid for a couple of weeks at the Extended Stay America down the road, and invited my new baker to share place when I wasn’t there. She also needed somewhere to hang her hat, and worked mornings, while I was the closing manager. I should have known better. I’d been working with her for a little while, and had seen that everyone in the restaurant was falling over themselves to try and get with her. I took one look at her, and then back down at my expanding waistline, and suddenly felt peace wash over me, as I realized that she was so far out of my league, that it wasn’t even worth my time to dream. Ironically, it is probably my lack of interest which put me on her radar. I was the only one who was truly able to play it cool, because I knew that we would never be together. Honestly, I didn’t even have an ulterior motive for offering to share a hotel room with her for a fortnight. I was just trying to help someone out, and lessen the financial impact upon myself. And so it might have been, had we not celebrated her “birthday” toward the end of our stay with one another.

We invited all of our coworkers with whom we were friendly over to our room, and drank a few bottles of some type of liquor or another, until it was time for everybody else to go home. Nami and I hadn’t really had a chance to speak with each other during our stay there, but we’d grown… accustomed to each other, and begun to feel comfortable together. The booze played a part, as did the meddling of our friends, but that night, after everyone else had gone, we sat down and spoke about our feelings. One thing led to another, and we decided that we’d stick it out together as a couple, which turned out to be a good thing, at least at first, as our time was up at the Extended Stay, and the only way that we could scrounge up the necessary cash to move into an apartment was to join forces and move in together. It also helped that I had a nasty habit of falling in love at the drop of a hat, and once hooked, that was it. For the first (and possibly only) time in my life, my apathy seemed to have scored results.

We were both young, and better at drinking and fighting than at common sense (much like a couple of kids I know quite well), and before long, we discovered that we were going to be parents. I took the news with all the composure of someone who has suddenly discovered that nothing he knew was what he had imagined it to be. By the time I got back from my walk to the liquor store, she had begun freaking out, and I was forced to do my best to put on a face of resigned serenity. I was going to be a dad. I began experiencing an existential crisis. It wasn’t that I was afraid of fatherhood, in the traditional sense. Rather, I was suddenly faced with impossibility of bowing out early. I looked into the future, a future where I still existed, and it terrified me. No matter where I tried to find my center, it seemed always just out of reach. So I did the one thing that I could think of, the one thing which I thought would fix the growing problems in our relationship, and calm the terror just beneath my skin: I proposed to her.

When I mentioned Nami’s “birthday” earlier, it was in presented as such because that summer date was not actually her date of birth. In reality, it was just a few days after mine. With hardly any cash, I went to The Diamond Exchange, and put the down payment on a set of wedding bands. On her birthday, I dropped down to one knee and proposed. She said yes, and I (stupidly) thought that I’d managed to solve our problems once and for all. That spring, we went up to Seattle so that she could meet my family. It was then that we discovered that we just couldn’t make it work. We’d been to Six Flags, where she’d tried to surprise me with a fun day out doing something which I’d never wanted to do, and since then we’d been walking on eggshells around one another. By the time we started fighting on The Island, I think that we were both out of ideas on how to fix the negativity between us.

Not impressed.
Not impressed.

When we got back to California, she made the decision to abort the baby. She insisted that we tell everyone it had been a miscarriage. True to my word, I never said otherwise until we finally broke up. The final straw in the drama which had become our lives, was when she brought her line cook over to our apartment and… Well, I think you get the idea. By this time, she was also physically violent with me, and in trying to restrain her arms so that she could not strike me (because I still thought that if I could just love her enough, I could fix everything), it left bruises on her arms. Her best friend, who didn’t care for me, was actually the one to stand up to her and tell her to quit saying that I was beating her. She’d been working in the San Francisco store for the past few months (where she found that line cook), and her boss over there decided that he was going to come and “beat my ass.” Due to mismanagement, the owners had to close that store, and I wound up having to incorporate their staff in with my own. Except Nami. She was where I drew the line.

I’m sorry this has been so rambling. I guess the wounds aren’t all as closed as I had believed. The point which I have so spectacularly failed to make is that my twenties, much like my late teens, were defined by my inability to accept the fact that I hadn’t died, and that I believed that unconditionally loving someone would fix everything. For almost the entire time that Nami and I were together, I’d been trying to figure out how I’d managed to snag someone so far out of my league. It wasn’t until I took into account the person who she was inside, that everything began to come together. I understood why her “friend” would kick her to the curb. And I began to understand that I was unquestionably attracted to women who were absolutely wrong for me. I lost a son who never drew a breath (though it was probably for the best that he was never born). I faced the failures of myself and things in which I so fervently believed. And, for the first time in my life, I looked at the repetitions in my life, and tried to learn something from them.

But I also managed to prove to myself that my ethics were more than just convenient lies I told myself to feel better while looking in the mirror. It should be obvious by now that she was here without permission (why she had both a work and personal birthday). My friends wanted to call in the big guns and have her forcibly removed from this country. I said no. The only person who her presence had hurt was me, and that wasn’t enough for me to criminalize her. I pushed aside my dreams of vengeance, and threw myself into a pattern of comfortably self-destructive behavior instead. But were it not for La Diabla, I doubt that I would have been aware enough to understand how much of a wonderful chance which my Wildflower would represent. I’d vowed to make my life everything that it hadn’t been when I had been with Nami. And really, that choice describes how I now look back upon my early twenties. I lost a decade before I found my wife, and I’m only now beginning to realize that it is not too late to try and give that loss some meaning.

Donations

You may or may not have noticed the button on the right of the screen. You know, the button for Donations. After a lot of hand wringing and soul-searching, I’ve decided that if no one wants to call me back for an interview, I need to find an alternative source of income. So I have decided to appeal to the basic decency of my readers to help me get through this next little while. I have listed a few options in the pull-down menu, and I’d like to explain them to you now:

  • $5- “I Pity You”   This is the introductory package for those of you who are strapped for cash, but want the privilege of feeling superior to me. Included in this package is my thanks, and possibly a poem which I have written just for you. If poetry is not your thing, I would also be willing to say something nice about you in a blog post, in addition to placing you upon the roster on our “Benefactors” Page.
  • $10- “Buy Some Lunch”   You’ve decided that I should probably be able to grab something to eat during the day. Thank you! As my expanding gut can surely attest, I do enjoy a midday snack. Or a 20 oz. Red Bull and a pack of smokes. In addition to a positive mention on the blog, and a place of honor on the “Benefactors” Page, I will also send you a PDF copy of a very special short story (which I cannot name right now due to business reasons). If you really would prefer a poem, I could write you one of those instead, and at the $10 level, I will make sure that it is even halfway decent.
  • $25- “Eat Some Dinner”    Okay, if you are donating this amount, you probably really like me, or you enjoy the blog, and I’m glad for that! At this tier, you get not only the poem, but the short story as well! I hope you like long bouts of rambling, because that is what you’re going to get! Plus, as you may have guessed, I will say something glowing about you on the blog, and put you on the “Benefactors” Page.
  • $56- “Buy Some Smokes”  Everyone knows that smoking makes you look at least 30% cooler, and I’m glad to see that my coolness is important to you. Obviously, you get all the cool stuff mentioned earlier, and a truly embarrassing photograph of me which you may use at some future date to ensure that I do some sort of favor for you (if it is within my power, and not demonstrably illegal). Or you can post it on Facebook and share it with the world. It’s yours: do what you want with it. And to make sure that I don’t dilute the potential for blackmail, I will send each donor at this level a unique photograph (both in RAW and JPEG format) featuring me in some sort of ridiculous scenario. I will also take suggestions, within reason (see above, favors).
  • $100- “Remorse”   Did you ever do something bad to me? Do you feel guilty when you think of me? That must be a terrible burden, and I’d hate to know that I was causing you any sort of pain. Why don’t you ease your suffering, and toss a Benjamin my way? I’ll feel good, you’ll feel good, and I’ll even send you the poem and short story, and publicly thank you for your generosity. Unless you really feel bad about whatever it was that you did or didn’t do. The inclusion upon the “Benefactors” Page is entirely optional at this level.
  • $500- “Secret Crush”    Well, this is awkward… You know I’m married, right? I mean, I’m flattered, but… Oh, what the hell. At this level, I will personally cook a homemade dinner for you if you come out to where I live and buy the ingredients I need. Travel expenses are not included. I mean, I’m begging for change on the corner of the internet. I can’t really cover airfare. You’ll get all the stuff I mentioned earlier, plus a video of me doing something either amusing or embarrassing. Also, seriously, $500? I owe you. Thank you. What the hell: you also get a mention in the dedication page of the book I’ve just started working on.

So now you know what the deal is with the Donations button. I’ve tried to bury it in humor, but really, while I’m getting stuff ready to sell on a certain website which is known for amazingly reasonably priced e-readers, I still need to find a way to pay some bills. I’m hoping that I will either get a call from one of the dozens of prospective employers who are currently in possession of my résumé, my wife wins the lottery, or some other source of riches comes my way, and I can leave this up as an amusing way to see which of my friends really want to blackmail me. Anyway, if you can help me out, awesome! If you can’t (or won’t), no worries!

-Tex

No News Isn’t News At All (With Lunch At Jupiter)

My faith in the universe is usually always tested right before everything works out. Either that, or I’m really good at making lemonade from lemons, but only at the last possible instant. I’d been hoping to hear back from a couple of people by now, regarding the gainful employment of yours truly. I mean, it’s not that I’m not proud of what I’ve accomplished with The Vaults of Uncle Walt since it began early December, but no one has come up to me with wads of cash, demanding that I must be paid, either. I suppose I could have ads, but I hate sites with ads, especially if those sites are blogs. I feel that the advertisements demean the flow of thought and distract from the enjoyment of the author’s written word. That being said, it is a source of income that does not necessitate my leaving my apartment. Something is going to happen within a couple of days; I can feel it. Just like the aches and pains flare up in my knees before there is a storm, I can usually sense something coming which will challenge a status quo, and in this case, that almost certainly means a source of income. Have I set myself a challenge? Sure. Is it impossible? Don’t know until I’ve tried. Any regrets? The damnable speed at which I operate, perhaps.

Even now, as I’m calming writing out these words to all of you, my mind is racing, coming alive with possibilities. I find it better not to interrupt myself when I’m travelling at top speed, so I’m going to keep focusing on the task at hand: distracting myself while I try to work out some solution. Tomorrow looks like it will be a busy day for me, with lots of walking and supplication. If I’m lucky, I can find something to pass my waking hours within walking distance of my home. If I’m luckier, it will pay me enough to actually do more that just keep my head above water. The longer I’ve waited to jump back into the fray, the worse my anxiety has gotten. In addition to not knowing which mindless task I might hate the least, I now have to deal with the prospect of acquainting myself with not only new coworkers, but new customers as well. There’s a pizzeria nearby that could seriously use some help. They’re not advertising it, but I’ve tasted what they have to offer. They need someone to overhaul their dough, and their sauce could use some work as well. Maybe I worked my last job for more than just the opportunity to find my future son-in-law.

In other news: Yesterday was Free Comic Book Day. I decided that it had been awhile since the Minkey and I had done anything fun outside the house, so we got up at a reasonable hour, got dressed, and headed out to Berkeley to see what free stuff we could wrangle. I’d called up a friend of mine a couple of days before, and made plans to meet up with him as well. I hadn’t seen him since Wildflower and I attended his wedding, and had been unable to actually figure out a time to go hang out with him the entire month of April, so I figured that we could, at least, decimate the local population of birds in just one go. Nick was coming from The City, and didn’t want to wait around in line for hours, and I wanted to be cheap and take two buses instead of shelling out for BART (not to mention that I still wanted at least a little bit of sleep), so figured we would see what the line looked like when managed to get to Berkeley, and go from there. I’m glad we didn’t get there any sooner.

David and I got there a little over half an hour before Nick. At first, the line didn’t look that bad. And then, as we walked toward what we assumed to be its terminus, our hearts began to drop: the line was stretched around the building, and down almost the entire block. It we had come out sooner, we would still probably have had to wait in line. There were people in costumes looking weary, like they’d been there for quite some time. David would never have made it. But it actually worked out. We didn’t have all that long to wait before Nick joined up with us, and once he’d joined our party, time moved a little faster. David, of course, began complaining he was hungry. We finally got inside, grabbed our free stuff, and shuffled out with the little one to go find something to fill his little belly. Of course, being Berkeley on a Saturday, the places which we wanted to patronize weren’t quite open yet. So we bummed around to kill some time until Jupiter finally opened. We bought something to drink, and smoked a cigarette, and tried to leave David wedged inside of Modern Art.

He escaped.
He escaped.

It was then time to go have lunch. I won’t go into too great of detail, except to mention that if you’re in Berkeley, and like good beer and pizza (and the most amazing garlic bread I’ve ever tasted), then make sure you stop in at Jupiter before you leave. That wasn’t a paid advertisement, until the fine folks at Jupiter would like to make it one.

Oh, and the Minkey picked up a new nickname: Derpdevil, The Boy Without Sense. My friend, Fed, has said that my son is either a genius, or its polar opposite, and most everyone else agrees. He’ll spout something so profound that you literally have to stop and process what he’s just said, and then he spazzes out and hits the people sitting behind him with branches which he’s scavenged from the street. And whereas Daredevil has heightened senses to compensate for the one he’s lost, David has all of his intact, and they seem to be having the reverse effect, making him less aware of what’s going on around him.

We paid the bill, and Nick said he was heading back to get a comic signed by Gail Simone. I had wanted her to autograph my Kindle Fire, but I saw the line and just knew it wasn’t worth it. So we said goodbye to Nick, and his friend Oliver (who had joined us at Jupiter for lunch), grabbed a shot with a TIE fighter pilot and Stormtrooper, and then headed home.

The high point of his day.
The high point of his day, despite that look on his face.

We could have taken two buses to get back, but David was bouncing around with an overabundance of energy, so I decided to have us walk almost two and a half miles to burn a little bit of that exuberance away. As any parent reading this will guess, that was a mistake.

He made it almost halfway before deciding that what he’d really like to do would be to stop somewhere and use the facilities. And of course we’d been zig-zagging through the residential zone, so there weren’t any shops around (or decent vegetative cover). With about a mile to go, we finally found a little cafe. The waiter was far nicer than he might have been, and allowed David to run inside to use the restroom, despite the foreknowledge that we would not be paying customers. I’m going to end the story here, because what happened next isn’t for the faint of heart. Suffice it to say, however, I’m seriously considering taking him to some sort of specialist…

Fat Ass

I think that it might be time for me to seriously consider getting into shape. It hurts when I have to tie my boots, and there are places that I haven’t seen for months when I am standing up. As it stands right now, I also need to buy a couple of pairs of jeans, as my ass seems to have increased somewhat, and I’m running out of pants that fit me. It kind of makes me wish that I was into that whole baggy pants craze, as I still wouldn’t have to worry about any of this for at least another few months. But I know that once I’m working, the pounds will begin to melt away, as being on my feet all day, and walking to places outside my apartment will burn the calories that writing has not. I’ve been tempted to try those “supplements” that supposedly “melt the fat away” while you are sitting on the couch, eating Doritos, but I really don’t want to go down the Upper rabbit hole again. I mean, sure, I only weighed a buck and change, but the side effects (not to mention the type of people always hanging around) were something so horrific that, even all of these years removed, I still get agitated just thinking about them. Which means that if I want to lose some weight, I’m going to have to do the old-fashioned way: diet and exercise- two of my least favorite things.

We don’t have a scale in the house, as we’re not masochistic monsters, but I imagine that, after hanging around 200 for the past few years, I’ve managed to erupt into the next weight class. And I have boobs. No matter what I do, I will now probably always have them, at least to some extent. Hairy, scary man boobs. That alone should be enough to inspire me to be more active, but it’s easier to just get down on myself for being a tub of lard, and eat my feelings with a bag of jelly beans. I want to eat more healthful food, but it’s cheaper to load up on crap. I can buy a giant box of Hot Pockets for a third of the price of what I spend when I buy up the ingredients for the food which I’m actually required to cook. And I do like to cook. One of my favorite dishes to prepare is my Mexican Rice dish, which I’ve been playing with since I was seventeen, and evolved from me following directions on a box of Rice-a-Roni to hearty meal made from scratch with fresh vegetables and meat. I’ve even started making it as a pasta dish now, as I really like the colored spiraled pasta, and the way they add just a little bit more color. But those veggies and meat do not come cheap, and even though I make enough to last a couple of days, it’s still a bigger commitment to my checkbook than something I can just toss in the microwave.

If we had guts as a nation (pun intended), we would subsidize nutrition and tax the hell out of junk food. Let’s go after high fructose corn syrup like we went after tobacco. We have the technology to deliver fresh produce all across the country, and yet we insist upon cramming garbage down our throats because the up-front cost is cheaper. The poor among us should have access to the best food we can offer, if only to offset the health risks which their environment provides. Change is never easy, especially when it comes to the subject of our vices, but this is a matter of public health, and we absolutely must do better. We’re hardwired to seek out fat and salt and sugars because in the wild they’re few and far between, but when hunting and gathering only requires a quick trip to the market, maybe we should look back toward moderation. I’d actually like to see a Junk Food Prohibition, wherein all the crap which we consume becomes black market commodities. I’m envisioning back-alley dealings for a box of Twinkies. And it’s not like with alcohol or narcotics. Gangs of obese and over-tired people hardly pose a threat to a police department running off of something besides coffee and doughnuts.

I don’t know. I’ve been a fat ass since puberty, and until recently, was indistinguishable from the pod of beached orcas from whence I came. Aside from those couple of years long ago when I was happy looking skeletal, I’ve always packed a little reserve to get me through the winter. Ironically enough, the one time that blubber might have come in handy was when I was in the process of auditioning for the role of Skeletor. There’s nothing like camping through a winter in the Pacific Northwest when you weigh 8 stone. Hell, if I didn’t have a family I might consider something drastic like that again. As long as I could get a bare minimum of calories in me, the constant cold and movement to keep from freezing solid would make me bikini-ready by the time that spring arrived. I wouldn’t want to put my wife or son through that, though. My wife could never take that level of frigidity, and my son seems to possess the genetics of a skinny person, despite the appearance of his parents. No, I don’t suppose that plan will ever come to pass. Which means that if I want to ever stop being such a fat ass, I guess I’m going to have to just start somewhere.

I’ll have to give up all the candy which I’ve justified eating because I’m a grownup and can eat whatever the hell I please. And all the soda’s got to go as well. I should probably give up caffeinated beverages, as stress can pack the pounds on, and nothing screams “Fight or Flight” like going a million miles an hour (or, as I call it: Surviving Monday). That also means no chips or crackers, or salsa con queso dip. And I’ll have to substitute the butter in my recipes for extra virgin olive oil. The upside is that I’ll finally be justified in buying buffalo instead of beef, but I will miss consuming the majestic pig. Ughh… just thinking about this is depressing me. I think I’ll go and see if we’ve still got any cookies.

Pictured: Fat Ass running away from exercise.
Pictured: Fat Ass running away from exercise.

The Afterglow of Insomnia

I still can’t get to sleep. Don’t get me wrong: I slept last night, but only for a little over five hours. I don’t know why it is that I haven’t been able to get to sleep before two o’clock in the morning. I’m going to try to avoid taking a nap today, but I make no promises, for insomnia is a harsh mistress. But at least last night I managed to be moderately productive. After being inspired by a comment about a mistranslation, I sat down and busted out a cheesy grunge-inspired song. Well, the lyrics anyway. I’ve now passed them over to Bad Leon Suave, who will add some music and turn it into a proper tune- I hope. But there is so much left to do to get the apartment into shape before our company arrives. Even I, the bastion of not giving even the slightest crap about home maintenance, have begun to feel a little urge to get stuff cleaned and/or put away. And considering that I will be attending a fast food protest/strike tomorrow with my wife, I guess that means we have a lot to get accomplished by the end of the day. I just wish that I wasn’t so exhausted.

It’s not like this is my first bout of insomnia. I’ve been unable to get to bed at a reasonable hour for most of my adult life. Part of that is due to the fact that I’m naturally a night owl, and part of it has to do with not having time to myself to finally decompress. Yes, Virginia, even unemployed writers occasionally need to blow off steam. I thought that I might be able to fall back into a more normal rhythm (at least for me), switching to full-on nocturnal once I was no longer working. But things kept coming up, and now I’m basically on the same schedule that I had when I was working, give or take an hour. I will say that getting my son ready for school and out the door is a far greater challenge than just getting myself ready and off to work. I have a good autopilot system, and would usually finally begin to feel the hints of consciousness somewhere halfway through the BART ride. Being responsible for another human being in the morning is mind-numbingly difficult, especially if it seems like that person is doing all he can to sabotage the whole endeavor.

Me: Come on, get up and get dressed.

David: Ugghhh…. Why?!

Me: School.

David: (angrier) Ugghhh! Fine! I’m not going!

Me: Dude, come on! Let’s get changed out of your jammies and put on your clothes.

David: I need to go pee.

Me: You don’t need my permission.

David: (goes to bathroom.)

Five minutes later, with no sounds whatsoever resembling the flow of liquid…

Me: You done in there?

David: No….

Me: Come on, let’s get a move on!

David: (opens door unexpectedly, wearing only his tank top) Uggghhh….

Me: Dude! Pants!

David: Do I have to?

Me: No one likes wearing pants, but it’s cold outside, so just do it.

David: Fine! But I won’t like it!

Me: I accept your terms. Let’s go.

David: (gets dressed slowly, attempting to raise my blood pressure, not finishing for another five minutes)

The rest of the morning is just more of the same, and it isn’t until I finally let go of his hand when we’ve arrived outside the school that he seems to remember that he knows how to do things. I’ll try to give him one last smooch, and tell him that I love him, and he’ll wipe his face and look around to see if any of his friends have seen him. He’ll tell me goodbye with the finality of a dismissal, and then walk toward the door to disappear inside so that he can go and play. And then, just as he’s about to pass through the doorway, he runs quickly back and throws his arms around me, and tells me, “Last hug!” without a trace of the self-consciousness which wholly consumed him not a moment before. I hug him back, and tell him that I love him, and that I believe in him. And to have a great day. He then runs back inside, still my little boy, but growing up all the same. I can see from time to time, glimpses of the person he’s becoming, and I think to myself that maybe he’ll turn out okay.

And then I come back to my quiet home (everyone else will be sleeping in ’til noon), power up the laptop, and try to think of what I want to say. Don’t tell my wife, but one of the reasons that I love walking her to work is that it usually gives me a little extra time to mull over things when I’m sipping coffee on my walk back. There’s something beautiful about the world in that hour before dawn, and while I would never set an alarm to see it, I’ve spent many nights awake in eager anticipation of its arrival. There are hardly any cars, and I can wander down the streets and work out the first couple of paragraphs in my head, playing with the narrative while talking to myself. I’m not afraid of what other folks may think, and the best way to protect yourself from those who might seek to harm you is to appear exponentially more batshit crazy than even they can manage. We can smell our own, you see. And after spending a night wrestling with insomnia, it’s really not that much of an act.

This e-cigarette just isn’t cutting it. I need the rich, full flavor of combusted tobacco product. I’ve been really bad about staying away from the real thing (ultra lights, though they be), and now I’m pretty much back to where I was before my lungs went on strike. I want to keep living like I’m still in my twenties, but my body keeps reminding me that’s not really feasible. One of these days I’m going to wake up and suddenly discover that I have a spark of self-preservation in me, but today is not that day.

Tomorrow I’ll be doing something about strikes and unions, and Thursday will be a series of shorter posts which will chronicle my adventures in the city with my newly arrived nephew.

Have a great Tuesday, everyone!

-Tex

Time Is Running Out

Well, this is it. My leisurely stroll through the sunny fields of contented unemployment have officially been numbered. Starting next month, I need to be able to scrounge up at least a couple of thousand dollars on a regular sort of basis. The day has finally come when the kids have found a place and are moving out. I can’t even begin to count the number of times when I was working that I asked them to move out, but now that they are finally going, the moment has turned bittersweet. At least I know that I can jump right in and do my manager thing. I have a particular set of skills, you know. I wouldn’t mind transferring them to a slightly different field, but work is work, apparently, and my experience has transformed a high school dropout into an affordable commodity. And now that I know that I can keep up with my writing, for at least a thousand words per day, I’m not as scared of the daily grind and falling out of rhythm. It just might be the time to put my will back to the test, and make a little money in order that I might finally be able to finance my own dreams.

Strangely enough, this doesn’t really come as a surprise. Not the money thing. I mean, I know I cut out one year early from my compulsory education, but even I can still do basic feats of arithmetic. Recently, my wife has been informing me that she might have to go back to working closing shifts to be able to make forty hours. With her switching back to nights, that leaves me open to run for something during the day, assuming that I would be able to get back home before she had to go to work. I know restaurants in general tend to abhor a nine-to-five, but I am good at what I do, and I think that I could make it worth their while. Part of me wants nothing more than to go back to the man I used to work for and offer to take back over at the store I left (a possibility, since my son-in-law is going to be taking paternity leave as soon as my granddaughter has been born). I know his staffing issues, and I’ve also been made aware of the limitations which he faces in his current management roster. After spending nearly six years in that organization, I know that once I got back, the months I’ve spent away would slide off down my shoulders, and I’d be right back where I started (or ended, depending on just how you want to frame the tale).

Luckily, I’ve still got some contacts in the industry, and my reputation there was always fairly solid. Honestly, if I didn’t really need the cash, I’d probably just settle for some random cashier gig, but my credit cards and rent aren’t going to pay themselves, so it looks like I’m stuck with management again. It could be worse, I suppose. I might never have acquired any skills whatsoever, and be forced to consider the dwindling options which labor can provide. And I’ve worked my way up from the very bottom at almost every job I’ve had over the last ten years, so I know how to grind it out, and I understand how not to be the type of manager who runs the store from somewhere deep within the office. I’ve earned the respect of my employees many times before, and I can do it again if I have to. To be honest, I think that I’d prefer to put a Paypal button for donations in the corner of my site, but all my friends who read this are at least as poor as me, and don’t really have the resources to subsidize my adventures on the run from an honest day’s toil.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that once I left my last job, it would be like pulling teeth to get me into another, as I tend to not want to put myself in a position to have to meet new people when there’s any chance I might avoid it. But the fact is that after a half-dozen years in the crucible of the pizza game, I needed to take a breather and find my bearings again. And, despite the financial shortcomings of writing for a blog which pays me not a single dime, it’s hard to say that it has been anything other than a complete success. I’m writing more than at any other time in my life, and though it’s not all diamond crusted flecks of platinum and gold, on the whole, it’s of a higher quality than the nonsense I was churning out before. Sure, there are fewer moments of inspired genius, but then again, I’m also not penning epic droning poetry that just kept going on for page after page, long after I’d run out of anything to say. With a new job comes a chance for new experiences, and that means sprinkles of inspiration that I seem to be going without due to my isolation and unwillingness to step foot outside my house, cigarettes and escort missions aside.

I guess this means that tomorrow will be my last hurrah before responsibility sets in. I’m glad my wife and I get to have a night out on the town. It’s been too long since we’ve done anything outside of domestic squabbling, and I’d like a chance to try for some redemption from the last time that we went out. It turns out that when you all but give up drinking, you can’t just jump right back into it and pound ’em down like in your twenties. If I could remember anything outside of snippets of our journey home, I’d probably feel as embarrassed as my wife did as she babysat her husband while he wandered around and made a proper ass of himself. Somewhere there’s a cabby who will most likely never be able to forgive me. But this time we’re going to go and do it right, with water and an early evening. I’ve said it before, but I’m kind of glad Apocalyptica is not headlining, and that I have no interest in seeing Sixx:A.M. We can duck out early from the show, and make it home in time for bed.

I didn’t choose the elder life, the elder life chose me.

I promise that someday, when I find the cable for my Nikon charger, I will get a better picture for you all. Right now, however, this will have to do.
I promise that someday, when I find the cable for my Nikon charger, I will get a better picture for you all. Right now, however, this will have to do.

Storm: A Brewing Torment

Storm's a brewin'.
Storm’s a brewin’.

There’s just something about a storm that brings out the spark of life in me. When the wind picks up, and the clouds race in to mass just above me, and the tiny drops of rain come flying in on a slant, followed by a rolling thrum of thunder and cascading shower of lightning bolts illuminating the darkened, purple night about me, I cannot help but feel so amazingly alive, like an abrasion of consciousness wrapped around my mortal frame of flesh and bone. I’ve always loved a good storm. They’re not so terribly impressive, here in the Bay Area, at least not anymore. I remember a few years ago when we could count on a couple of baby monsoons or so, but since then, the weather has been painfully uncomfortable for an Emerald City boy like myself. What rain we do get is primarily for show, and on the off-chance that it’s anything substantial, it just floods the streets and drains back out into the Bay. I have to say that I miss the weather on the Island where I used to live, and that growing up on a little rock in the Puget Sound raised the bar on miserable squalls.

I remember a ferry ride during a particularly brutal tempest, out on the Seattle-Bainbridge run. The boat was rocking side to side, just out of rhythm with blasts of lightning and kettle drums. And of course, this was shortly after Titanic had splashed into the cinemas, and the local papers had been making note of our ferry service’s similar deficiency in life-saving apparatus. I myself enjoyed the ride, and almost fell asleep. This was before the nanny-state surveillance which followed in the wake of 9/11, when the worst thing that would happen to you was winding up back where you started. And then there were the summer storms, when the drops dripping downward had been gently warmed by the rising waves of heat, and fell upon you like a silken shower to wash all of your worries down the dipping hills to drain into the rocky beach. It seemed that every August, I would find a way to re-enact that scene from Shawshank, albeit without the obligatory crawl through five football fields of shit smelling foulness I also could not imagine. The best that I can get in California is the occasional wafting fragrance of all those crawls that I managed to avoid.

I’ve been reading for years about how California is running out of water, and seen myself that we’ve managed to completely fail to make up years of falling reservoirs due to obnoxiously clement weather all year round. I’ve joked around with some of my friends still living in the Great Northwest about the possibility that I might return, but the Evergreen State itself isn’t in the best of shape. It terrifies me to think about a world in which my son and grandchildren will have to go to war over something as basic as H20. Once-prime real estate will be deserted as no one can live without access to water. Well, almost deserted. I can easily imagine gangs in stillsuits roaming the ostentatious paradise we once called San Diego. The Magic Kingdom will begin to crumble, and the animatronic army will secretly start its fortifications of the theme park empire of the West Coast. They will have some success, but by the time that they are able to communicate with Orlando, that capitalistically sacred land will have sunk beneath the sea. And we will observe a moment of silence for America’s wang.

What would be so hard about ensuring a world which future generations might enjoy? I know that it seems un-American to suggest something other than the Almighty Dollar has any intrinsic value, but I am now a father, and I’d like my offspring to have a chance at some sort of life that they actually might enjoy. I know that luxury is not a basic right of life, as any of the animals who died so that I might have something upon which to nibble could attest, but I believe that they possess the chance to find unhappiness as cogs within a giant, uncaring machine, as long as it allows them to buy all the newest, coolest gadgets. All joking aside, every time we go back up north, I make sure to walk around with David William, down the beaches, and up the wooded hills, through the forests and the fields. He’s been a city boy for his entire life, and I like to see him take in nature, cherish it, and fall in love with the sheer beauty of it all. He’s seen the urban jungle, and the clouds of smog between us and the view, so I know that when he gets the chance to breathe in air that doesn’t taste of car exhaust and the bitterness of broken dreams, he can appreciate just how wonderfully special those moments truly are.

The storm has finally come now, with gusting bursts of wind and rain drizzling down without conviction, rather like an afterthought. It rained last night as well, moistening the asphalt in the wee hours before the dawn, but once the sun had risen, all traces of the rains had fled, as the clouds flew toward the corners of the heavens, to reveal a pale blue elegy of sky. Sitting by the window, as I type these very words, I can hear the dripping on the roofs and cars throughout the neighborhood, like a hundred sinks with leaky faucets displayed just feet from where I’m sitting. Maybe I’m just getting all sentimental because I’m not used to being conscious at 2:30 in the morning, or maybe it’s because I simply miss the beauty of the land where I grew up. I came down here because of palm trees, and because I missed my best friend terribly. Of course, he’s back living in Seattle, and I’m stuck here with the palm trees and the loneliness.

All the years that I’ve been here in California, I haven’t really made the time to make new friends to replenish all the people whom I’ve lost. I know a couple of people who’ve been kind of close throughout the years, but like all family, I only see them once or twice a year. I could count Nerdenn Events, but he’s now my son-in-law, and my roommate, to boot. I don’t have anyone like Fed and Bad Leon, and they are both hundreds of miles away. The problem is that I was always working, and only had time to hang out with people on my way home from work, but once I got promoted, and ran the whole damn show, I’d found I’d lost the time I had allotted to get to know the revolving door of tolerable acquaintances. There are a couple of folks whom I still chat with, who know me well enough that I hope I never piss them off, but I don’t know that I would feel too comfortable calling them in the dead of night to whinge on regarding my recurring bouts of melancholy.

When I moved down here, I was young and full of hope. It’s been a dozen years now, and let’s just say that things haven’t quite turned out like I had been expecting. Restaurants were never my idea for a lifelong career choice, and I’d figured that by now I would have become a world-famous author. I have a wife and son, a daughter and a grandson, and a son-in-law who isn’t all that bad; for someone who always wanted a family of his own, that’s like hitting a home run. But with the lot of us squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment, bouncing off one another and always getting in the way, that sense of closeness feels, at times, like a pillow gently laid upon the mouth of a quadruple amputee. And despite being so smothered by attention that I feel sure that I’ve expired, there is a creeping sense of isolation which has overtaken me and made me miss my friends. It could just be that I’d like to have a conversation in my native tongue that didn’t involve children’s shows or bedtime. Or maybe it’s just that I am completely exhausted, and I tend toward thoughts of sorrow when I’m up so late and all alone. I’d say that I’ll feel better in the morning, but I have a sinking feeling that my son will want to wake me up and make me play with him.

And speaking of my one and only, I know that I am hard on him, and that I spend column yards on pointing out his foibles. But I love him so much that there are times that I am certain he has trampled through my heart. What a mind, that kid of mine does have, and the irritating qualities so prominently on display are due, in no small part, to a combination of genetics and my training him in rhetoric and the joy of The Debate. His confrontational attitude is a constant source of muscle spasms (mostly centered in my neck), but I would rather teach him how to think rather than just forcing him to parrot what think. Years ago, I told him that if he could lay out a case before me, using logic and what reason he could muster, I would hear him out, and if he did his job right, there was a chance that I would change my mind. I also warned him that there would be times when he would perform magnificently and yet still fall just short of swaying me. But do you know, in the almost eight years that he’s been alive, he’s managed to argue me into overturning two of my prior edicts. That may not seem like all that much, but when I consider that we still use rubber sheets when he sleeps with us in bed, I’m even more impressed. Yessir, that child of mine is something else.

I think that I have rambled long enough. Thank you for indulging me as I shifted between weather and disappointment, nostalgia and parental pride. I’ll be back again this evening with another report from Spring Break ’15.

-Tex

Mania

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I always tend to overlook the other pole in my disorder. I’ve spent too long gazing into the navel of my depression, learning each and every contour of self-deprecation, and taking for granted the few occasions when I’ve not only gotten out of bed, but actually felt inspired. I don’t know how long this wave will last, but I’ll take it. And who knows how deeply it will mire me into the melancholy aftermath, not that I am all that worried. A little inspiration goes a long way to validate the pain which must come after. This is a side of me which most people never get to see. And I’ve found ways to keep it under wraps for almost a decade, but now that option has expired. So here goes: A little present for all of you, before I finally get started on what I should have months ago.

I feel like I am burning brightly, shining out from within myself, converting will to energy, and racing toward the end. It’s not a sad thing, to burn as such, like a candle warding off the darkness. But as I am that point of light, expanding outward, yet never quite able to outrun myself, I find that I am lost somewhere within a sea of darkness. I am racing on the wave’s edge, surfing at the speed of light, and there can be nothing lit before I have arrived. I’m not going after messianic glory, mind you, just trying for a smidge of illumination. I would like to find a way to transmute my suffering into a beauty which inspires joy. The only hurdle that I face is that I am not all that terribly cheerful of a fellow.

And now there are too many thoughts bombarding me, and I can feel myself beginning to fly apart. When I was riding smoothly, there was never any problem, but now, even a tiny pebble can send me tumbling into trouble. It’s something that I should have seen much sooner, something which I think that I’ve instinctively always known: my consciousness itself is the bottleneck to my own creativity. That’s why every time I found something to get me out of my own way, the words would just begin to flow, beautiful and perfect, from my fingertips, and I wouldn’t even realize what I’d written until I’d put the pencil down. I know my voice. I know my myself. I don’t need to always overthink it. I do, of course, because that is who I am.

And now I’m getting a little worried that my two lives have begun to crash into one another, like matter and antimatter, destroying both themselves and everything around them in what can only be described as a blaze of glory. The version of myself which can blindly jump into the wordstream cannot do so if he constantly must worry about silly grownup things. And the part of me that’s somehow managed to grow up knows that’s all fine and dandy, but it’s more complicated than that. But I know that it is not, that it’s only as complicated as we allow it to become. That there are solutions of simplicity, if only we are willing to admit to ourselves that they can exist.

The wave is subsiding once again, and I can feel myself calming. Not that I am actually in a state of peace, but calmer than I was before. I have established balance once again, and the world isn’t spinning quite so quickly. The tapestry of time has faded from tangibility once more, and I am merely its passenger.

Breathe. Calm. Repeat.

Breathe. Calm. Repeat.

The migraine is returning, so I don’t have much time left. But it felt great to feel that moment of inspiration. That moment when I knew that I could tap into something so much greater than the limitations which I’ve placed upon myself. Somewhere within this meatsack is a spark of genius which no one else can fan. Everyone has something which they are able to present the world, a thousands of millions of moments of perfection, burning dimly throughout the world, just ready to ignite, and make the human race its own crucible until we’ve rid ourselves of the impurities that greed and prejudice have brought us. Lighter, then, than air, we shall begin to rise, free of the stupidity of shortsightedness. Let’s throw the world into a conflagration of liberation from the shackles to which we’ve forgotten that we hold the key.

Breathe. Calm. Repeat.

Breathe. Calm. Repeat.

At the end of this journey, there is a land of constant shadow and despair, and I know that it’s but a matter of time before I am welcomed home. I’ve spent too much time basking in the light of day and searching for the happiness which, it seems, must always elude me. Or maybe it’s just that I’m terrified that some day I might actually be happy. Without conflict, there is no tale to tell. The moment when I know that the world can spin on without me is the moment that a part of me will die. Call that arrogance, if you must, but it’s what I need to get through the day. I just want my time here to have mattered. I want to know that all the pain was worth it. I want to contribute something of beauty back to the world before I must depart. Is that so terrible a desire?

I’ve still got stories in me, stories which no one else can tell. But I’m so afraid that they’ll be stupid, or that I’ll find out along the way that I’ve only been telling stories to myself, reinforcing my ego, so that I don’t collapse. I have to believe that the past twenty-eight years have been for something. I have to believe that I’m the way I am for some evolutionary reason. There has to be an answer somewhere deep inside me, if I only have the courage to go looking. And if I can maintain that courage once I find it.

Spiders! They’ll Never Take Me Alive!

Just when I thought that the end had come, I managed to escape to the tide of spiders and get myself to safety. I apologize for leaving you all hanging, but I had to stay ahead of those foul, eight-legged creatures. I made it out the door, which I managed to slam shut, and waited for what would have been the single most terrifying sight I’d ever had the misfortune to witness (aside from the birth of my son): A constant flow of spiders streaming out through the cracks between the door and frame. But, as I waited, breathing ragged and hypersensitive, nothing came my way. As the heavy seconds slowly fell to the monotony of minutes, a new dread settled down upon me. The arachnid army had not come for me, so what in the hell were they doing? I could only imagine how they were now fortifying their defenses and turning my bedroom into a webbed winterland of creeping horror. I briefly considered the ramifications of simply setting my apartment ablaze, but thought better of it, as I had a bunch of stuff that I’d rather not live without. Not to mention that I don’t really have the cash to pick up and move anywhere else right now. No, if I was to keep the spiders from winning, I would have to take them down without collateral damage.

I was then reminded of a dream which I once had when I was just a little boy. There had been a fire in the house where I was living, and when I came back into my room, I looked around and saw everything covered in a layer of soot, with scorch marks rising up the wall like blackened wings poised for flight. My eyes were drawn then to my closet, which appeared more burnt than the rest of the room. Upon the shelf, above the torched and melted clothing, sat a porcelain clown with silken raiment of black and white. As I reached up to take hold of it, it fell on its own, plummeting down past my fingers, and landing with a sharp crack as it hit the floor. Instead of shattering upon the ground only the top of the head broke away. I looked down at the broken clown head, smeared with soot, and reached to pick the doll up. And then I saw the spiders streaming out from within the porcelain. I couldn’t see where they were all coming from, or how they could all have fit. They were tiny, but black as midnight, and going everywhere. Just as they reached me, their little legs scrambling all over me, I bolted upright and escaped the dream. My tiny eight-year-old frame was shaking, and even the daylight filling up my obviously undamaged room did little to allay my fears. And sitting upon the shelf within my closet sat the unbroken porcelain jester, whose dead eyes held secrets I was not prepared to know.

I shuddered back into the present, haunted once again by memories of nightmares long forgotten. The door before me remained unchanged, and I knew that I must act, or lose my will altogether. I crept closer, listening for any sign of the menace which was hidden out of sight within. Nothing. Not a single scrape or scurry. I took hold of the doorknob and gingerly turned it counterclockwise, pressing against the door ever so gently with my shoulder. I was at my most vulnerable in this position, and I was sure the spiders knew it. But I pressed on, pushing through adrenaline and heightened arachnophobia, and cautiously into the room. I saw no evidence of an infestation as the door swung open, not near the frame, nor anywhere between my position and the desk in the corner upon which rests my laptop. I shot a quick glance upward, as no one in the movies ever seems to think in three dimensions, but saw only the empty ceiling which had always been that way. I began to walk over to my desk, when a thought occurred to me.

These creatures had shown signs of intelligence, and were nowhere to be seen. If they wanted to lure me into a false sense of security, they must be hiding somewhere that I would never think to suspect. I slowly turned my head to look at the bed beside me. It appeared to be in the same condition as I’d seen it not ten minutes before, but who pays all that much attention to the mundane objects which no one thinks may one day be completely infested by hyperintelligent arachnids. There was nothing out of the ordinary to clue me in to their position, but I knew, deep down, that the moment when my head finally touched down upon the pillow, I would swarmed by tiny spiders, and wrapped up in a sleeping bag forged from spider silk. I know that one doesn’t normally forge silk, or sleeping bags, but we’re dealing with creatures of indomitable will, superior intellect, and devious resourcefulness. Under those circumstances, I wouldn’t put anything past the little buggers, strained metaphor or not.

It was then that I happened to see the empty can of Red Bull sitting on the windowsill. I looked down at my shaking hands, and started putting it together. The lack of sleep. Too much caffeine. A memory of childhood terror set off by a single spider in the corner of my room. Mosquitoes flying all about me, and a trip into madness inspired by a blank screen before me. I began to breathe again, surprised that I had not been doing so. The spiders were only in my head. Well, except for the one I’d thrown a shoe at just moments before. I forced myself to chuckle, and walked over to my computer to shut it off, so that I could get some sleep. The laptop itself hardly makes a sound, but the fan beneath it makes a godawful racket, and makes it nearly impossible to fall asleep.

And sleep. Oh, precious slumber which I’d been so long without. How I missed the feel of its warm embrace. Even now I could hear it calling softly. I could feel the tension begin to slide away, and I knew that I was ready. I powered off the laptop, and gently closed up the machine. Just as I was falling into bed, I couldn’t help but notice a small movement at the edges of my periphery. A massing of miniature monsters, swelling now that trap’d been sprung. A nightmare come into sobering clarity, and I could not a thing but continue to fall, both onto the mattress and into dreams.

And as the final light began to fade, I saw nothing beyond the spinning dances of the spiders.
And as the final light began to fade, I saw nothing beyond the spinning dances of the spiders.

 

Fiesta

Last night, the three of us went to the birthday party of the daughter of my wife’s co-worker. Normally, I pass on these types of events, as most of the time, I am the only one who speaks English, and my wife and son are the only people who I actually know. But when I saw that Flor had gotten all dressed up (with makeup and everything!), I decided that I should probably tag along, at least for the sake of appearances. I threw on a suit, and was ready to go when our ride arrived. Years ago, when I started working mornings, I had the perfect excuse of needing to get up early, and normally Mexican birthday parties keep rocking until well after midnight. Actually, based on my experiences, they don’t even really get going until the sun’s gone down. I’m not implying that Latinos are some sort of vampiric entities, but I’ve never seen a birthday party happen in direct sunlight. Putting aside all of my misgivings, I hopped up into the car which came for us, ready for the evening, and knowing that I had a decent chance of getting enough sleep. There are always bouncy houses at these parties, and I knew that if David played hard enough, he might be so exhausted upon our arrival back at home, that he’d sleep a proper number of hours, and perhaps not wake up at the crack of dawn. Sadly, he did, but that is nothing new.

For those of you not intimately familiar with children’s birthday parties in Latino culture, let me run them down for you:

First, the mother spends an ungodly amount of money on the rental of the bouncy house, chairs and tables, and a DJ (This is not because the fathers do not care, or feel that it is women’s work, but rather, they have made the argument (and lost) that there is no need to spend upwards of $200 just to set the stage for a party for a toddler).

The mother then spends most of the day of the event preparing enough food to feed upwards of fifty people, and calling on her friends to make and brings several other dishes as well.

She will begin to grow agitated when no one shows up at the time she has announced, fretting about social standing until her guests begin to trickle in, in what I can only assume is an attempt to arrive fashionably late… to a children’s party.

The mother will then proceed to not sit down for the remainder of the evening, flitting here and there, always rotating through the crowd in an attempt to make sure that everyone is having a good time. Just like small child to whom the party is ostensibly dedicated, she will not remember anything about it.

There will always be too much food left over at the party’s conclusion, so everyone will have a doggy bag thrust upon them.

There is a disturbing trend toward alcoholism at these events. The budget for beverages is usually around $10 for sodas, and $40 for beer, and there’s always that one dude who drinks an entire box of Corona all by himself. The first time I ever came to one of these, I was shocked at how much alcohol was being consumed. At a party for a kid.

No matter how exhausted the hosts have become, they are honor bound to keep the party going until the final guest has finally found a clue, and decided to depart.

The mother will then look out upon the chaos that once was her backyard, and suffer a moment of paralysis at the sheer magnitude of work facing her when she wakes up in the morning.

You may have noticed that I was only writing about the mothers. This is because most of the fathers I have spoken to, would rather spend the money on gifts for their children, instead of competing to win the title of Event of the Season. I’ve had this argument with my wife, every year that my son has been alive. Every year, she almost kills herself making everything absolutely perfect, just to see an underwhelming turnout, an overwhelming mess, and a checkbook that is reduced to whimpering for mercy. And every year she tells me that she finally sees what I was going on about, and how next year, she’s going to do something smaller, for just the family. But I know that her convictions will begin to fade by April of the next year, as the weather warms, and she begins to feel that she needs to show the other moms just how much better of a mother she is. I’ve learned my lesson, after all these years, and now just shut my mouth, and offer what help I may provide. There is nothing that I can say which could possibly change her mind, so I’ve decided that I’d rather not get into a fight with her when passions are running that high.

For me, I’d rather just buy a cake and a goodly amount of toys, and tell my son that I loved him, and then hit the sack at a reasonable hour. I’m trying to learn all the ins and outs of the culture which I’ve married into, but there are so many levels to everything they do, that I feel like watching telenovelas is a form of basic training. I am not cut out for all of this political posturing, as anyone who’s ever worked with me will readily attest. I have neither the time nor patience to play politics, especially when dealing with the nebulous dance of social status. I appreciate the family aspect to the Latin culture, but I also like small, non-mandatory events which end on the same day in which they began. I like getting dressed up and going out with my wife, but not if it’s only to hang out in someone’s backyard to be bitten by mosquitoes.

I don’t know if I will ever truly understand where my wife is coming from. As she is so fond of saying, we are from completely different worlds. But I love her, and every time we do something, it’s an opportunity to learn something new. I moved two states away from my family, and enjoy the distance, but Flor is an entire country distant, and I can see that these little get-togethers are her way of beating back despair. And showing all her friends just how a party should be done. Oh, and if you will be in the Bay Area this summer, please drop me a line. I have a feeling that the Event of the Season may be happening toward the end of June, at least that what my instincts tell me.

Oh, and did I mention that piñatas are falling out of fashion?
Oh, and did I mention that piñatas are falling out of fashion?
Average attendance for David's parties (not really).
Average attendance for David’s parties (not really).

 

... and this was just a baby shower!
… and this was just a baby shower!