Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Wolves

11015941_10206222450863113_658728380782633644_n
A young Tex Batmart and Bad Leon Suave

I was just glancing at photo of myself from the days long ago that are better off forgotten. I recognize most of the people in the shot, but I required third-party authentication before I could believe that the almost skeletal looking dude in the very center of the picture was, in fact, myself. Part of it was the luxurious red hair, thick, wavy, shining in the sun. And I was rocking the best attempt at facial hair which I could muster, which was more of a honey fire outline of my jaw and mouth than anything resembling an actual beard. I believe this was toward the end of the Dark Days, when I weighed about 110 pounds and felt that I had finally cheated the fate which normally befell members of my family: a transformation into a member of a pod of beached orcas. You know, this is the first time that I’ve seen a photo of myself and I just drew a blank. I simply cannot reconcile how that person looked with the man who I remember being. I suppose that’s a PSA all of its own. And I know that it wasn’t a healthy weight, but I am almost twice that now, and I wonder if I’ve really become twice the man who I once was, or have simply gotten fatter.

Oh, the hair. I remember my headbanging hair. Like my Irish great-grandfather, I’ve traded what once sprouted from my noggin to become a member of the Sasquatch family, but let me tell you: on cold days I get the worst kind of headaches. Don’t get me wrong: I love having a beard, and usually only shave annually. I started to dislike shaving somewhere around high school. And being bald means that I spend infinitely less time in the shower washing my hair. But none of that changes the fact that I miss my thick lion’s mane, and sometimes looking like a Mirror Universe Jean-Luc Picard is not enough.

In December, just before we traveled up to the Great Northwest, I began writing a blog entry which never fully materialized. It also had to do with my #beardedmanproblems:

I’ve spent a fair amount of time since I quit my job considering the finer points of beard maintenance. I plan to look for work while vacationing up north with my family, and I am aware that, although facial hair is hardly unique within the borders of the Emerald City, something must be done about my tangled neckbeard (Note to self: Tangled Neckbeard and the Soul Patch Quartet). Down here, in California, my beard is mostly just an affectation, at least in terms of functionality. But next when I’m up there, the temperature looks to be, on average, about 20 degrees cooler during the warmest parts of the day. So I’ve been ruminating on how much of my neckpelt I can trim and still not need to wear a scarf (I bought a new suit for a wedding I attended almost a month ago, and honestly don’t own any appropriately matching neck apparel). I should probably also get a haircut (the bald man said, with some regret).

And if I begin to trim, I’ll wind up needing a full shave, as I usually manage to over-correct until only tiny patches still remain. The downside to that, of course is that I’ll once again look only twelve, and have to place bare skin against the freezing wind. No, better to wear a nice shirt and a fancy tie to plaster down the fur below my jaw. I’ll still need a haircut, though, however sensitive a subject it remains with me.

I look back at that and think about just how hard it is to pound out a full column about beards. I’m actually only rescuing that fragment from its literary limbo so that I can use the title of its parent column for something in the future. Well, that and I wanted to share “neckpelt” with the world. But I suppose it’s time to gently drift back to my original premise: who was that dude in that picture from so long ago?

It was a different time back then. The world had not been thrust into a constant state of terror, and all of my friends were just setting themselves down upon the paths toward their futures. I was in a long-term relationship with a woman who I loved beyond all sense or reason. The very air itself was packed with possibilities, and we needed only to breathe it in to fill ourselves to bursting. My two best friends were both in bands and I’d written a song or two myself. Self-doubt was something that only happened to old people. These were the days free of hangovers and consequence when we were all poised upon the very edge of greatness and dared the world to prove us wrong. Note to my younger readers: Never dare the world to prove you wrong. It will, and usually not in ways which you are prepared to accept. Don’t tempt fate: Keep your challenges to reality to yourselves.

Over the next fifteen years we all got fat, got jobs, got new girlfriends, had those girlfriends break up with us, and found new women who seemed to actually give a crap about us and wanted to stick with us for the long haul. The world isn’t nearly as passionate as I remember it having been, but there is enough stability to more than make up for it. And while stability is hardly the poster child for sexiness, it is infinitely more rewarding. Oh god, I have gotten old. I know that compromise is something that is necessary to the running of the world, but it just seems so… I don’t know… grown-up. I know that I already covered the generational dissonance in growing up in Conversations in Time, but sometimes I still cannot believe how far I’ve fallen. Ah, screw it. I’m happier now than I really ever was before, and that’s got to count for something, right?

-Tex

Tonight I’ll be writing up a supplementary post about an event my friend is hosting in the Bay Area on Sunday (just as soon as she emails me the rest of the details). And, assuming that I’m feeling better, and my wife is up to it, we’ll be attending the event, with a review appearing Monday evening.

Uncategorized

A Big Light Blur

I think my lungs have finally given notice. It looks like they are tired of the pressures that come with looking thirty percent cooler, and would like a shot at easy mode for at least a little while. This year may actually be the year in which Tex Batmart gives up cigarettes, but let’s wait and see how I feel once I am feeling better. I no longer feel edgy or cool when I am smoking, just isolated, mostly, as I can’t smoke indoors, and hardly anybody that I know still smokes anymore. I mean, the last bastion of companionship I had, my son-in-law, just bought himself one of those ridiculous $100 vaporizers and a little bottle of nicotine solution, and now no longer feels the need to keep me company as I brave the elements to bow to my addiction. It seems a little unfair. I remember when a pack of smokes cost less than $4, and almost everybody who I knew was at least a social smoker. But now I remain alone, outside, sucking toxins into my lungs, and I cannot for the life of me remember what it was like to have a nicotine buzz.

At least I gave up drinking before I could discover what level of inebriation would bring me back to “normal.” And on the rare occasions when I do imbibe these days, I have to remind myself that I am no longer in my twenties, pounding back a fifth a day, and that maybe just a drink or two might suffice for the entire evening. When I was beginning to completely let go of booze, I found out that I had a little warning whisper in the back of my brain who advised me when I absolutely had to stop if I wanted to make it through the evening without a tribute to the Porcelain God. And one time, I actually listened. Sure, I felt delicate the following morning, but I didn’t owe a single person a sincere, hungover apology. It’s helped me with this vice, that my tastes have run towards the ridiculously expensive, and that the whisky I prefer costs $200 per bottle. That means that I’ve only ever bought two bottles in my life, and that they lasted me a little over a month each time. Hey, if I’m going to wash away the day, a sip or two fine Scotch Whisky is the way I’m going to do it.

I was certain that I wasn’t going to outlive my twenties, so I never really gave a crap about any sort of long-term planning. What’s the point in routine maintenance if you’re just going to chuck the whole thing in the bin next week? I am now eight years older than I ever hoped to live, and, not surprisingly, my son will celebrate his eighth birthday at the end of June. As a rational human being (on occasion), I know that there is very little deeper meaning to the coincidence that someone suffering from Manic Depression didn’t buy the farm exactly when he wanted to. But as a writer who enjoys assigning narratives to seemingly mundane events to try and weave them into something larger and attempt to find some moral meaning from the random whirl of happenstance, I prefer to believe that somehow my Highlander-esque inability to expire is somehow tied to my only son, and that I’m supposed to stick around long enough to, I don’t know, teach him something, like how to not become a serial killer. Either that, or I’m not allowed to bite it until I’ve written what I’m supposed to.

That last thought amuses me. Here I am (Rock You Like A Hurricane), allowing the notion of nonexistence to wash backwards through potentiality to sooth away the pain of being, looking forward to the day in which I am no more, and yet I cannot find the words within me which would release me from my suffering and transmute the frailty of a man into the eccentricities of Legend. Could it be that I have some secret, dark desire to keep on living? For shame, Sad Batmart! Could it be that I have simply found something that I feel is finally worth living for? Have all the decades of neglect now put that secret dream just slightly out of reach? I always wanted to leave a legacy, some sort of lasting impression of who I was, stamped into the very fabric of reality. Before my son was born, I always knew that legacy would have to be my words (or, at the very least, a revival in the popularity of Ranger Bob), but now I wonder if might not be my son. I think I have a better shot of being more warmly recollected as a wordsmith.

It’s not that I am a poor father. I mean, I wouldn’t give myself a passing grade, but that isn’t quite the point. I never had a dad myself, though I was spoiled for good and decent substitutes. But that meant that while I witnessed the grand gestures, the public moments, I never got to see the more intimate father-son relationship that built the decent men that I now call my friends. I have no idea what I’m doing with David William. He and I are so far apart, and it’s impossibly easy to ignore the fact that he’s still just a little boy. I haven’t felt that young in practically forever, and therefore we share almost no common frame of reference. He’s all about playing, and jumping, and learning through doing, whereas I prefer to sit and read, or recline and simply observe while I’m figuring out just how to do something. And yes, he’s far more extroverted than I will ever be, but it’s like he’s his own little person, and not just some diluted copy of how I used to be.

I used to live my life in a big dark blur, but now the blur is made of blinding light. With so much to see, and the clock ticking steadily down toward its final moments, I’m finally starting worry that instead of too much time left for me to have to endure, that there might not actually be enough left for me to actually enjoy. I’d like to say that I’ll start living better, take care of myself and eat right, but the reality is that I’m far too lost in stubborn habit to even begin considering that fundamental of a change. But maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I was to stick around just a little while longer, see my son grow up into the man that he will eventually become. Maybe get to know my grandson and impending granddaughter just a wee bit more, give them some memories of me that don’t involve a graveyard. I don’t know. Some days are easier than others, and I always get a little introspective when I’m not feeling well. Hell, this time next week, I’ll probably be back to smoking a pack a day and going on (at length) about politics and religion. I’d like to think that maybe I can make a change, but I know myself too well for that.

-Tex

Pudding!
Cute, manipulative, baby! Who knew that love could get you through your darkest days?

 

 

Uncategorized

Blah

I’m still feeling absolutely wiped, despite spending the weekend in a sort of convalescence. I’ve only begun to believe that I am on the mend as my usual level of pain has started to return. That was the wonderful part of the weekend (if one can count feeling horrible and coughing up a lung or two as wonderful): my legs and back were pain-free, and I only had to worry about fever and mucous production. Now I just have a lingering headache, a cough that won’t go quietly into the night, and that familiar stabbing pain that punctuates my every step. Aside from all of that, though, I’m feeling pretty good. Well, good enough to try and put in a day at the Home Office. I’ve told myself that I won’t turn off the cable news until I’ve written my blog entry for the day, and all the nonsense on my television is only making this headache worse, so I had better get to it.

It makes me want to rule the world with an iron fist. I’m tired of seeing all the slick, pretested messages and the conscious tomfoolery of those in power who seek out prosperity for themselves and their own, while hanging the rest of us out to dry. I’m tired of watching the parade of the worst of humanity, and listening to the inane judgments of anchors trying to fill a slow news day. I mean, I laid out my plan for the betterment of all mankind several times on this very blog, yet apparently no one has been reading it. Either that, or they simply aren’t paying that much attention. If we could all just sit down with one another and talk, we might discover that we have more in common with our polar opposites than we might have imagined. I know this to be true because I am a bleeding-heart liberal, and my family is made up of war hawks and 1% apologists. And yet, when you put to rest the tired rhetoric and talking points, it turns out that we actually feel quite similarly about several key issues. It’s when each side gets lost in their own political code words that the walls are raised and communication fails.

Current events are bleeding into my brain, and the headache has just put in a Jacuzzi. I said it in 2008, and now that the 2016 Presidential Campaign is apparently underway, I’ll say it again: I do not want a Clinton/Bush rematch. I will not vote for Hillary Clinton. I will not vote for Jeb Bush. It’s bad enough that we’re stuck with a two-party system, I cannot even tolerate the notion that we could be stuck in a two-family system. And given enough time, it’s easy enough for two families to become one, and therein lies the road to empire. Worst case scenario? Sure. I mean, it’s not like there are any other parallels in this country to the Roman Empire. I read an opinion piece while I was still on The Island, blaming the fall of the American Empire on our fading values, as in, the secularization of the country. That seems to be the go-to answer these days: everything would be all right if it weren’t for those godless heathens. Maybe I’m just being over-sensitive, as I am not actually in possession of a hearth.

But I’m not going down that rabbit-hole today. It’s easy to fall back into dystopian fantasies when surround by hopelessness of today. But things are bad enough without inventing things to fear. At least, that’s what I scream at Fox News every time it happens to be on my television. But that idea of a Bush/Clinton dynasty keeps percolating in the deepest reaches of my brain, and it makes me worried by its utter plausibility. And that’s just the sideshow meant to distract me: that line of reasoning is turning sharply away from where from where my attention should be, which is the rising oligarchy which seems no longer content to remain hidden in the shadows. When money can buy power, and power controls the frame of the debate, it sometimes seems hopeless to the single voices of the common men and women. Hold on, let me get my tinfoil. Sorry, I had to pop a baked potato in the oven.

I apologize if I seem a little all over the place today. I’m still feeling pretty blah, and I just can’t seem to find a rhythm to sink myself into. My wife just informed me that Spring Cleaning is coming early this year, as we’re going to excavate our bedroom, just to see if there is still, in fact, a floor. The downside to moderate prosperity has been the accumulation of things, and with my wife and I sharing a room with the Minkey, it’s not that surprising that we’ve begun running out of space. Well, actually, we’ve been out of space for quite awhile, but as my wife and I were working opposite shifts, it wasn’t necessarily as apparent. I guess that means the clock is ticking for me to find a source of steady income. When the adult kids and our grandson move out, we’ll have all the space of which we have been dreaming these past few years living as a giant family. I look forward to just how empty this nest of ours will appear, though missing out on my grandson will take some getting used to.

But with a daughter on the way, our grown-up kids are aware that we simply cannot fit the lot of us in the same two-bedroom apartment that can’t even fit those of us who are crammed in here at the moment. I wonder if my grandson will realize just how lucky he has been to see his grandparents every day, to spend time with them and enjoy the benefits of a multi-generational familial experience. I hope that we will be lucky enough to spoil our coming princess, and that she will choose to seek us out, just as her brother has done. Okay, maybe leg room isn’t everything. I know we can’t keep living like we have been, but when I get down to the things which I will miss, I find the face of my precious little toddler in a gigantic grin as he plays and runs around the living room chasing after (and being chased by) his uncle David. I wish I had a few million dollars, so that I could set us up in a nice couple of houses next to one another, where we could live nearby, but no longer beneath the same roof.

-Tex

Uncategorized

Losing Cohesion

I’ve broken my new cardinal rule, and am typing this to all of you while snugly in pajama pants. Some illness has descended upon my household, and I’m amazed that I got as far as my computer, to be honest. I miss the days back when I had health insurance (not that I could have gone in on a Saturday (well, maybe when I had Kaiser). You may recall that on Wednesday, I had to cut my ramble short to pick my (not sick) son up from school. He had some sniffles which could easily have been attributable to a case of allergies, as most of the rest of us were suffering similarly, to various degrees. But on Thursday, when I got another call not even an hour into class, and went to get the Minkey, he said that he was fine, and he didn’t even have a fever. My wife felt, as did I, that something stupid was transpiring, so I took my son to the clinic to see if someone there could see him.

Yes, she is the one responsible for teaching him English.
Yes, she is the one responsible for teaching him English.

Mind you, I did give him “syrup” that morning, but it was the kind for allergies, not fever, as his temperature was fine. So we got to the clinic after a twenty-minute walk, and were welcomed by a waiting room full of sick and streaming-boogered children. Offered the chance to get in line behind a couple other patients in case something opened up, or taking an appointment a little over four hours later, I took the guaranteed option. I didn’t want to spend any more time than I actually had to around people who were actually infirm. David and I got some food, and headed home to kill the time before we had to get back to the clinic.

I was still a little tired, as even a couple of months in, having my wife home in the evenings is still taking some getting used to. And David was literally bouncing off the walls, not usually a sign that someone is currently ill (in that sort of way). So we waited. My wife joined us just before the time came that we needed to leave again, and we spent a moment speaking ill of the school which my son has the misfortune to attend. But then our time was up, and we walked back to see David’s Doctor. This time the waiting room was more sparsely populated, but still it looked fairly virulent. Who knows what little bags of disease had decided to gum upon? It seemed that my allergies were getting a bit worse, but anytime I’m stuck in that much heavily processed air, I tend to feel a bit dried out.

His doctor saw us within half an hour, and the first thing out of her mouth was to ask if our son had written that note. She said a sniffle and an occasional cough were nothing much to worry about, and if it was a virus, based on his symptoms, it was likely to have passed. She gave a prescription for a couple of things to treat his symptoms, and wrote a note stating that he was not contagious, and shouldn’t be sent home on that flimsy pretext on the morrow. We thanked the doctor, and then promptly wasted the next two hours in Walgreen’s, trying to fill two simple prescriptions. At that point, all I really wanted to do was go and get some sleep, but I attributed that to all the vegetation we had passed, and that I had not been sleeping well for weeks. That evening I felt horrible, but the Minkey still seemed fine, so I set my alarm for the next morning, and prepared myself for the worst.

When we woke up, I noticed that David, for the first time since last week, was rocking another fever, and I could barely see straight. I looked once more at the Doctor’s Note, then crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. I told David to stop getting dressed, and get curled back up in bed.

And then I watched as the internet exploded in grief for Leonard Nimoy, and despite being the biggest Trekkie that I know, I couldn’t make it the five feet to my laptop to write anything worth reading.

As for David and I this morning, I wouldn’t recommend a visit. I am doubled over in pain, and David’s nose is gurgling. I just hope that he’s better by Monday, because I think another trip to see his Doctor might actually kill us.

Sorry to make this such a short entry, but I desperately need to return to bed. Thank you to everyone who made this my most-read week ever! I may take tomorrow off, depending on how I feel, but we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, have a great day, and enjoy your weekend!

-Tex

Uncategorized

Happiness is…

… an ice-cold 20 ounce can of Red Bull as I’m sitting down to write my blog. If they made it in a 40, I’d be even happier. 378 mg of caffeine in a single sitting? Where do I sign up? Personally, I think they should make a really fancy Red Bull and have it in a champagne bottle. I’d pop the cork, and pour a glass, and sip it like the rich folk do. Of course, the rich folk have no need of mortal remedies such as Red Bull, when it would be much easier to send their manservants out to procure some cocaine. I don’t think that I’d want to get myself dependent on that upper, but I’d sure as hell love to have a manservant, so that I could call him Warner. And now I have admitted my familiarity with a certain film, and shall drop the subject entirely.

I was worried when I sat down and powered on the laptop that I wouldn’t have anything to write about, due to my general feeling of contentedness. This consciousness runs on piss and vinegar, and a happy outlook can ruin all of that. My back feels ridiculously better after having spent the night sleeping on the floor, and I suppose that I am not awake enough to notice the weariness of my legs. My wife is at work, so I am left all of this time to actually miss her, as opposed to when we are together, and feel obligated to find something we can fight about. I’ve told her that if she would simply accept that I am right instead of waiting six months and then trying to convince me of my own idea, we would probably get along fantastically. I am aware that I can either be right, or I can be happy, but it’s not my fault reality so often agrees with me, and I have to say that there is a certain joy in being right. That being said, it is a fleeting victory.

And occasionally, my wife will gain the upper hand, and I will back the losing horse. In those rare instances, I try to do my best to offer up my concession, and then wash the feeling of my error away with another subject. I hate it when she’s right, because it gives her ammunition toward her argument that I am not always so. And then the next six months are agony as I await the opportunity to fight back the temptation to say that I told her so. I figure myself the brains of our operation, not because I am smarter than her (though I have devoted far more time to ridiculous thought experiments than she), but because she is, in fact, far superior in almost every other way. I honestly have no idea how she does it. Sometimes, as I lay awake at night and ponder stupid things, I wonder if I should try and sneak a sample of her blood from her to try to develop some sort of super soldier serum. I’m not saying that she’s Captain America (which would be hilarious), but that she is the standard to which Cap holds himself (you know, if comic book characters were aware of non-celebrities living in the real world).

Years ago, I found out where my limitations were, and put up hazard lights so that I’d know when I was approaching them. I’m not as young as I once was, and working an 80 hour week is simply out of the question for me. I sacrificed my body years ago, both in work and play, and now I must be mindful of stresses throughout the day. That’s one of the reasons why I got into management (the other is because I absolutely cannot stand working for people who are in almost every way, my inferior (and to clarify: I mean in terms of dedication, problem-solving, intuition, etc…)): I know how much my body can tolerate, and I need to make enough with a single full-time job to make ends meet. When I’m at work, I’m not the type to lock himself in the office and do whatever it is that pompous bosses do; I stay on the floor and in the flow until my body cannot take it any longer, and then I wait until the rush has died, and then I go to smoke.

My wife has no limits. At least, that’s what she’s told me on several occasions as she’s hobbling around the apartment, taking care of things that could probably wait another day (instead of resting, which is for weaklings). There is a sort of justified arrogance that comes from naturally birthing a twelve pound baby. I mean, she had an epidural, but there was no surgery involved. I have spent no small amount of time trying to imagine the sheer scale of pain involved in bringing my son into this world (which is probably less than keeping him in this world, but as that is spread out over a lifetime, it doesn’t hit you all at once), and even taking into account the pain numbing drugs injected into one’s spine, I don’t believe that I would stand a chance. My mental illness has prepared me to face down imaginary demons, and I keep in practice by frequently belittling myself while I watch the world spin by (and then berate myself for that), but when it comes to pain on that sheer scale, I can’t even pretend that I am in the same league as my wife. She could get shot, and she wouldn’t even acknowledge it until she had nothing else to do. It seems that I have married Teddy Roosevelt.

I may be right about almost everything, but she very well might be right about the bigger picture. I need her far more than I can believe that she might possibly need me (and not just because she’s the sole breadwinner at the moment). And yet she stays by my side and endures. I am not an easy man to live with. I wouldn’t have checked myself into a facility a fortnight of years ago if I was all kittens and rainbows. I am a pain in the ass, and usually right, and a far poorer victor than vanquished. And yet my wife has stood by my side for all of these years (and not just for the paperwork, because I think that an expired snail would have made things happen sooner than me), at times looking like she wanted nothing so much as to just slap the smirk from my face, and yet she remained. I guess it could be that she doesn’t believe that our son stands a chance if she leaves us, but I honestly think that she’s just better than me, and that notion perplexes and confounds me. Not her superiority, which I have grudgingly accepted, but the thought that she knows something that I do not.

I could tell you all the reasons why I stay (and it would be a manageable list, as over the past three months I seem to have mentioned quite a few already), but I have no idea why it is that she remains. I’m not the prettiest, nor the nicest, nor someone tolerable on most occasions, but my wife is with me all the same. It makes me a little nervous, to be honest. Like I’m not seeing something obvious, something right in front of me. Happiness, perhaps?

-Tex

And come back this evening for part three of A Blast From The Past: Memories of MySpace. Part One is here, and Part Two can be read here.

Uncategorized

Everything’s Coming Up Wrenches

2 Comments

So, our friends over at lappingthecouch.uk have done us one better in the quest to make mental illness more understandable to everyone. I’d say how irritated that made me, but the author is a friend of mine whom I’ve not seen in roughly a decade and a half, and also, her post was amazingly well written. I just hate it when anyone is more articulate than me. I’m including the link to her post “Sunday was not a fun day” so that you guys can go and check it out. It’s worth the time. Go. Do it. I’ll wait here. Back? Cool.

I’m not going to write a counterpoint, going in-depth about Bi-Polar, as that would take away some of your attention from what she had to say. Also, a while ago, I posted “The Midnight Hour”, which, despite being eighteen years old, is still a fairly accurate, if metaphorical, take on my illness. Some day I may have to sit down and dole out some examples, but I’ll tell you right now that I probably won’t do justice to the swings of mania, as to me, they just seem like I’ve finally gotten back to normal. But, again, that’s not why I’m plugging Tiffany’s blog. Maybe someday in the future when we’re both writer-types with massive egos we can totally start an international feud (Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun, and a great way to spend the summer!), but for now I will just say that I think the writing is excellent, and I’m enjoying reading what she’s got to say.

But the thing about her blog, is that it actually serves a purpose. She wants to not only have a record of her goals, a written self-proclamation of all which she might hope to (reasonably) accomplish, but wants to offer up a human face to problems that others may also have come to endure. That is one of the most important things to remember, not just if you’re suffering from a mental malady, but as a human being in general: You are not alone. As we grow more interconnected with the world through the use of information technology, we substitute digital interactions for face to face time with actual people. More and more gets taken out of context as the nuance of language is rapidly being lost, and people are letting basic social niceties fall into disuse, as the implied anonymity of the internet divests the user of any sense of repercussion, and encourages less filtering of one’s behavior. This leads to more truth, I believe, hidden among the teenaged bravado, as even in one’s fantasies do his prejudices shine. But it also robs of us of our evolved ability to actually function in the real world.

I use Facebook, and before that, I was rocking MySpace. I don’t know that I’ve made more than a couple of friends on social media, but the point for me was to stay in touch with people I had once known, and allow myself moments of nostalgia. But now if I want to see how someone is doing, I just scan through their posts to make sure they’re still around. I can’t actually remember the last time when I called someone up just to shoot the breeze, outside of my family or Bad Leon. As for meeting up with folks and doing the whole hanging out in person thing? I think it was the wedding which my wife and I attended in mid-November. I’m not going to be too tough on myself for that one, though, as making friends is hard, and I’m separated from both of my best friends by hundreds of miles and a couple states. And even if I do make a friend, it’s not like I’ll really make the time for them. I mean, sure, at the beginning of the friendship, I’ll stop doing something else, and this new buddy and I will be practically inseparable. But then I will come to notice that I’ve been letting other things go to pasture, and soon enough this new friend will join the pile of old friends whom I have discarded in a pile over in the corner. Note: I do not actually have a pile of people in the corner. This was a metaphor.

Okay, I might not be the poster boy for social interaction. Still, I must admit that when I’ve spent some time in the company of people whom I don’t entirely despise, I come back feeling better for the effort. The echoes bouncing around this head of mine hit a little softer when there’s someone there to cushion the blow.

Looking back at everything I’ve written today, I realize that I allowed myself to drift off the topic I had originally planned to tackle: Making goals. I am horrible at laying out a plan as I have most likely shared with you too many times too count. I like to be prepared for every eventuality, but only in a general sense. I think the one thing that Tiffany is doing which I could never do (besides being a good spouse to her significant other), is letting other people in on my secret hopes and dreams. I can lay out a grand plan with broad strokes and hype it up with obfuscation and bravado, but I’m terrified to share the simple steps I’m too paralyzed by fear to take. You may have noticed I use humor, or indignation, or humorous indignation, to get at what I’m trying to say. I developed this writing for a reason. Inside my head, I’m a drastically different person than the meatbag which is typing.

In here, I’m all confidence and swagger, the master of my domain. But put me in a room with anybody else, and all I can think of is, “What if I’m wrong? What if I sound stupid? What if they laugh at me?” It’s easier to handle a sudden chortle if that was your intention. To lay yourself out bare before the world and receive back only ridicule? Hence the snarky outrage.

“What if they laugh at me?” Since I was old enough to shave (you know, like 12-13), I’ve been professing to the world that I don’t care what other people think, all the while checking their reactions to see if they think my outburst somehow made me cooler. Now that I’m in my mid-thirties, I can honestly say that I’m less concerned with what other people believe about me, and more worried with what they believe about almost anything else. I’m bald. I’m fat. I’m not entirely sure why anyone has ever bedded me, but they’ve all said it was because I’ve made them laugh (which causes me to worry that they’re all using the same euphemism to belittle my- well, you get the idea). I’ve almost accepted who I am. At least, I’ve realized that I’m too stubborn to really change. And yet… And yet the notion that someone might single me out for ridicule chills my very blood. I’m going to share something ridiculous with all of you:

I cannot make phone calls to people I don’t know. Just can’t. No cold calls for Tex Batmart. My brain just freaks out any time I have to speak to someone that I haven’t met. I used to think this only applied to when I used to call up girls in high school (let me reiterate that I was also in high school when I was calling high school girls), and the fear seemed justified, as not only could they reject me, but they could mock me to their friends, ensuring that no one would ever want to be my girlfriend. Even worse, her father could pick up the phone, and demand to know who I was and where I lived and what my intentions with his daughter were. Fear just seemed like the most appropriate response. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had the fortune to be liberated from the need to speak my girlfriends’ fathers, but now the terror encompasses every other telephonic interaction. Thank god for online ordering, or I’d never get a pizza delivered. And online bill payment? The best thing since Betty White. I seriously have to work myself up into a lather (of anger- it’s not like I’m phoning from the shower) just to call up Comcast and ask them why I can’t watch BBC America. I apologize to the Customer Service reps at Amazon on the rare occasions that I’ve had to call them! And don’t make me tell you what happens when my wife passes me the phone when she’s chatting with her mother.

I know that there is literally nothing that the people on the other end of the line can do to me. I mean, they can hang up, or if they become abusive, I can. All they can say is “no.” So why am I terrified every time the phone rings from a number that I don’t know? No, seriously tell me. I let every number with which I am unfamiliar go to voice mail. And half the time I hold the phone away from my ear like I’m afraid of the recording! It may seem like I am making light of the suffering of others, using a ridiculous example to garner laughs. And that is why I don’t share my inner feelings with other people. Look how much rambling on it took to get to the root of it. Seriously, scroll up! And this is why I’m drawing attention to my friend, Tiffany’s blog, Transformation in Progress: from caterpillar to butterfly… I hope. With a courage that I cannot hope to emulate, she just jumped right in and laid it on the table. No filler. No hedging. No dissembling. She wrote about what she felt she needed to in the hopes that writing it would lessen its hold on her, and maybe help someone else who didn’t know where to turn.

Thank you, Tiffany. You’ve reminded me of all that I have yet to do. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, and I hope that I might borrow a little of your courage, from time to time.

-Tex

Also,  in case you are wondering about the title, it comes from an experience in high school. I was directing a play for Drama class, and at a rehearsal, Fed had to sit in and read for one of my actors. One of the lines was about using roses for inspiration, but Fed decided to substitute wrenches. I could have told this story better, but I might want to save it for a later post.

Uncategorized

The Devil Wears Pajama Pants

Hooray for being back to my semi-regular schedule! This past week has let me sleep in entirely too much (something I don’t think I’ve ever worried about saying), and by the time I woke up at the crack of noon, I just didn’t have the will to fend off my precious boy and get down to business. Part of that, I think, is that because I knew I wouldn’t be able to start any job while I had to spend the whole week with my son (and the fact that he was too sick for us to really go out anywhere), something in my brain decided that the week was already shot, so why bother? The best I managed to accomplish was hastily thrown on pajama pants and the same T-shirt I’d been wearing the day before. It has been said that one should dress for the job he wants, not the one he has, but I wasn’t dressing for either. I know that my life’s ambition is to live out an existence free from the tyranny of pants, but there are children living in the apartment with me, and as the year is steadily spinning by, I am reminded of a quote most frequently attributed to Mark Twain in regard to the area in which I live, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” This quote may have been debunked, but the sentiment holds true nonetheless.

Last week I read a wonderful article by Kate Bracy about the necessity of actually dressing like you want to get anything but lounging done throughout the day. I’d never really thought about it before, but it has hung around enough in my mind that I was inspired to put on my pants and sit down at my laptop to write this. Since coming back to California, I have been taking my son to school almost every day, and that involves dressing in such a manner as to avoid the judgment of others, calls to the authorities, and frostbitten portions of my anatomy. By the time I got back home, I would usually be caffeinated enough to pound out my thoughts in an occasionally humorous format, and toy with the notion of trying to get a nap in before I had to go back to the school to pick the Minkey up. This past week, with nothing urgent to occur before three o’clock in the afternoon, all sense of urgency was gone, and with it, decorum and my annoyingly consistent work ethic. I fell into the trap that I frequently complain to my wife about: no one was taking this writing thing seriously, and this time, I couldn’t even claim the moral high ground.

To be fair, last night I was battered by a brutal case of insomnia, and only managed to steal about seven and a half winks (based on a standard conversion rate of forty winks to a full night’s sleep, or five winks an hour) before I snapped wide awake again with heartburn and leg pain. I’ve tried reading (the problem with that is that I actually like to read, and will casually neglect sleep just to finish the next chapter (or ten, if I’m rereading Jim Butcher), listening to music (and say, this album that I haven’t listened to in ages is really good!), listening to audiobooks (since no one here will read me a bedtime story), and finally succumbing to the demon of conflagratory addictions, with a cigarette or three. Amazingly, nothing has done the trick, and it’s my sincere hope that I can keep it together until my wife gets back this afternoon. I know that she’ll be tired, but there were plenty of times when I had to jump into Dad Mode after a long day at work (with a 3 hour commute) because she was exhausted on her day off. But honestly, it’s not really the same thing, as my wife takes care of so many things with just a quiet determination, never seeking out the praise which she so richly deserves, whereas I am fairly pleased with myself if I manage to get out of bed.

The main difference between us on housework, however, is in the nature of how we react to the multiplication of filth due mostly to those also living with us. The apartment could be cleaned from top to bottom, floors swept and mopped, dishes done and put away, garbage and recycling dumped outside into their proper bins, and within a couple of hours, the whole place looks trashed again, with our kitchen sink overflowing with more dishes than it seems reasonable for so few people to have used, and the floors appear worse than before they were cleaned, as the spots of white linoleum stand out in greater contrast to the spilled drinks and tracked in fruit snacks. I am the sort of person who will do the cleaning, and wash the dishes… within reason. If the sink is empty when I go to bed, and I wake up to find a pot, two pans, five plates, a small (complete) set of flatware, and six cups in there in the morning, my first reaction is that the people who made such a production the evening before (cooking a meal for only themselves), are capable of taking care of their mess. I enter the living room in the morning to find barely touched cups of juice on the table, and an array of plates with half-eaten food, offered up like some sort of invocation to the Gods of the Cucarachas.

And so I believe that the only way to teach our adult children that they need to take care of this themselves is to refuse to do anything until either of them lifts a finger. I am a guy, and Chaos is my element of choice. I could wait out just about anybody while the world around me fell to pieces. I’m sure I could outlast the grownup kids. But this will never happen, because my wife doesn’t have the will to let everything go all to hell. “Think of the children,” she’ll plead to me in Spanish, referring to our son and grandson. And she’s right, of course, but I still think we’re doing our daughter and her boyfriend a disservice by bailing them out of the sty which they’ve created, instead of allowing them to develop that instinct for preservation for themselves. That being said, I know myself, and I must be careful not to throw too many stones. I don’t know. I think the reason I’d like to win the lottery (more than fancy houses and never having to work again) is to be able to ensure that my wife will never again be forced to worry about the cleanliness of where she’s living.

Somehow I got from the necessity of pants to singing the praises of my wife. I’m not surprised, for there are many praises I have yet to sing, but I do find it fascinating just how much better of a person my wife is in comparison with me. Hers is the irresistible force, mine, the immovable object. O.C.D. versus Apathy. All bets are off on this one.

-Tex

Uncategorized

Discarding Pretense

This week has kind of turned into a bust, as far as interesting happenings. It’s already Thursday, and we’ll be lucky to have done anything fun or worth writing about by bedtime tomorrow. This is what happens when I try to plan for things, and the reason why I tend to prefer to play things by ear. It’s hard for all your plans to come unraveled if they never existed in the first place. For those of you who were waiting for news of what David and I have been up to, I’ll just say that we’ve been playing video games and trying to relearn how to cover our mouths when we cough. One of those was easier than the other. Soon enough, the Minkey will be back in school, and I will have to drop off more resumes throughout my community in the hopes that I will have somewhere that I can spend my days. For a quick minute, it looked like I might have been able to get into business with my wife and a friend of ours, but it looks like no one wants my management expertise. But have no fear, gentle readers, Tex Batmart will rise once more to while away the waking hours making money for someone else.

I can feel the proximity of my dream, but I have felt that way before. Every time I try to make things happen sooner than they should, I wind up frustrated at the wait. In a non-religious way, I’ve come to find that everything happens for a reason, and if I’d made things happen according to my schedule, as opposed to being forced to bide my time, I would never have come to know many people who helped add meaning to my life, including the wonderful woman who became my wife. I am not a patient man, nor am I easygoing. I am easily irritated by stupidity, and I tend to ask much from those foolish enough to call themselves my friends. And my worst sin of all is that I am prone to digressive ramblings so convoluted that I frequently forget the point of my diatribe long before I have finished it. I don’t know, maybe I need another whirl working for someone else so that I can try to nail down patience in the face of unrelenting idiocy. It’s time like this when I miss the couple of good people who were kindly enough to employ me.

It’s been a longstanding dream of mine to go out in a blaze of glory on my last day of work; to just completely go off on the worst type of customer and let the remaining management pick up the P.R. pieces. But no matter how many times that I have wished it, I’ve never made it happen. There are times when I wish that I wasn’t such a professional. Even at my last job (the one I left almost three months ago, my wife would like to point out), where I was upset, and feeling undervalued, and a freakout on a rude and deserving customer wouldn’t be entirely out of line, I still held it all together, and continued doing the job I was paid for, up until the moment I clocked out. Heck, I’ve even had people from that company call to ask me a question or two (wrapped deep, of course, in small talk and checking up on how I’m doing), and while I could have easily told them what to do and with which tuberous vegetable, I still made it a point to help them as best I could. I’m not out to get a good reference from them, I simply want to leave the company in better shape than when I got there. And considering what was dragging it down, I don’t know how realistic a goal that has been.

I apologize for such a late column, but I was taking care of some family business, and the day sort of got away from me. I was tempted to put this column off, and just work on my Throwback Thursday post for Batmart After Dark this evening, but I need to keep on at this or I will never polish off all the rust which has ground me to a halt. Despite having gone off at some length about the insidious nature of planning out my future, I’m hoping to get fully back into the swing of things tomorrow with a rant about some minor injustice or another. I think I’ve been pretty good about trying to keep it light over the past week and a half or so, and that I’ve earned myself some grumbling. Don’t worry, though: I will attempt to call out the nouns which have done me wrong in some form or another in an irreverent sort of manner.

On a small side note, I plucked a hair from my upper lip, and as I glanced downward in the direction I had tossed it, I saw a tiny moth hovering just below my face. It may be that the time has come for me to divest myself of facial hair and stare down the world with the face of a tween again. And without the beard and moustache, I will be forced to let my wife trim what little hair remains on the backside of my head, so as to avoid appearing to be a particularly unattractive lady. Not that there is anything wrong with being a lady, unattractive or not. I simply find myself self-conscious of the man-boobs which I have grown through decades of neglect. My eyes are up here, thank you very much!

So, sit back, relax, eat some dinner, or whatever it is that you, my dear compatriot, are wont to do in the early evening. I’ll be starting to go through my old MySpace blogs again just as soon as we say goodbye, and I’ll see you all a little later this evening with some of the best of Tex Batmart in the year 2006!

-Tex

Uncategorized

Presidents’ Week- Day Two

When I planned out this Presidents’ Week Extravaganza, I had thought that my son and I would be engaging all manner of crazy shenanigans, things too awesome to have been done in time to write my post for that very day (and I didn’t want to get into the habit of posting well past bedtime), so we were going to go and suck the marrow from life, and then I would tell you all about our exploits the next morning. It turns out, however, that David is very similar to me in that when faced when any free time, his body decides to succumb to some pernicious bug and sideline him for at least a couple of days. Maybe it’s because he knows we’re broke, and anywhere truly awesome we might go will cost money we don’t have. Nah, that doesn’t really sound like him. He probably just inherited my luck and sense of timing. Looks like I won’t have to worry about being a grandpa (well, from him) until he’s in his late twenties. Small miracles, I suppose.

Yesterday, it seemed that he was on the mend, but this morning he is all smoky voice and stuffed and runny nose. Luckily he has doctor’s appointment this afternoon for another prescription of his chill pills. I’m hoping that his doctor just says it’s some tiny virus that is going to clear up on its own, but if it’s something we can drown in antibiotics, I’ll be happy enough to oblige. I don’t like it when David isn’t feeling well, I mean, aside from the pleasant decrease in energy and volume. He just looks so pathetic, and I really just cannot bear to see my little man in pain. Not since the day he was born, and spend his first night (well, first week, actually) outside the womb in the NICU, connected by the belly button stump to an array of machines which helped him to not die. Most dads have said that they first felt like a father when their child grabbed on to a finger, but when David grabbed me, he was still kind of gooey, and I was in shock from having seen a twelve pound baby born in the natural fashion. But when I followed the team of nurses racing him down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and saw him laying there looking like Progeny of Borg, helpless and suffering, I knew that I would have given almost anything to free him from his pain and make him whole again. Of course, then I got to know him…

No, I’m just playing around. He and I butt heads over just about everything, but I catch rare moments of brilliance where it looks like he finally gets it, and I know that spending my time teaching him how to argue his case before me is paying off. He’s a wonderful boy frustrated by the apparent iniquities of youth, and if he had even an ounce of common sense, he would probably have better luck in trying to convince me. I know that he’s just a few months away from turning eight (and where have all those years gone?), and that I’m holding him to an impossibly high standard, but I’ve seen that he’s got the skills he needs to rule the world with an iron fist, so I’m trying to encourage that. Well, not despotism, but I’d like him to do well in life, at any rate.

I’m hoping that tomorrow we can go and do something somewhere outside of the apartment. We’re both feeling a little cooped up, and the fresh air and exercise will do us both some good. And I think my wife is off tomorrow, so maybe we can make a family outing out of it. It’s a shame that we don’t own a picnic basket, or we could make a day of it: pack up a lunch and head somewhere where there are no video games and spend some quality time with one another. Of course, all of this could be academic, as it’s been overcast for the past couple of days, and a chill has infused the air. Maybe we can just head on over to Berkeley, and grab lunch at Jupiter. I haven’t been there for quite some time, and I think by noon tomorrow that I will be in sore need of a quality beer and artisan pizza.

Actually, that sounds wonderful. If Flor wasn’t working today, and if David didn’t have his appointment, I’d suggest that we just go this afternoon. We need to get out and do more as a family (and my wife and I also need to get into a routine of having a date night once a week), and we all love pizza (and I love beer), so I think that this plan of mine has a shot of happening. My wife also wants to check out that 50 Shades of Grey movie, but I think we’ll save that for another day, one spent without our impressionable son. I don’t think that I want to expose him to that kind of garbage. I mean, from what I’ve read, the writing is abominable, and that’s not something you force upon someone that you love (I’m less concerned about my wife, as English isn’t her primary language, and writing so clunky that one could trip over it might actually make it easier for her to understand); also, I don’t think graphic presentations of that nature are something he is ready for. I mean, even the French think that children should be twelve years of age before being allowed in to watch it.

You may have noticed that I seem a little off. I apologize. My son is playing LEGO The Hobbit right next to me, and it’s just the slightest bit distracting. It does look pretty cool, though. I may have to kick him off at some point so that I can play. It’s nice that he’s getting finally getting into Tolkien, and he’s expressed some interest in checking out the book!

Anyway, so goes my life. I’ll see you all again tomorrow!

-Tex

Uncategorized

Presidents’ Week- Day One

I remember years ago that any time that I didn’t have to be at school was the best time of the year. I could set my own agenda and lounge about or play as I desired, free from the stress that a structured environment would provide. Of course, it always seemed that my mom got a little out of sorts during these vacations, which I never understood until a couple of years ago. Don’t get me wrong: I love my son, and we have had a lot of fun together over the years, but I’ve come to appreciate the time we spend apart, and I’m not sure if we’ll still be on speaking terms when the week is through. We are able to stand one another in small doses separated by his mandated attendance in a place of learning. Any more than that, and we find reasons to start arguing, and within moments, one of us is crying. And there is nothing more saddening than a fat, bald man brought to tears by a little boy.

As fortune would have it, we were granted a brief reprieve from having to find some sort of entertainment. Sunday night, the Minkey came down with a cough, a fever, and a case of good behavior; in other words, he got sick, and hard. Poor little guy looked absolutely pathetic, and just completely drained of the overpowering spirit which is normally a trial to man and beast alike. I picked him up off the couch and carried him into bed, tucking him in beneath the covers and pouring a dose of cough medicine down his gullet. It was only five o’clock in the evening, but when I suggested that he might want to try and get some sleep, he didn’t scream, he didn’t argue, he just rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes. Of course, it was evening on a Sunday, so a quick run to the clinic was out of the question (not that a cough and slight fever is reason to go running right away), and we would have to make it through the night.

David may have closed his eyes for a bit, but he didn’t actually sleep, and shortly after I’d settled in beside him, he said that he’d like to watch something on the television. I scrolled through several choices on my Netlfix account until he found something that he was interested in watching. So we wound up checking out the Green Lantern animated series which I had noticed before, but never really given a second thought. I have to say, I’m kind of glad that my son is a DC fan, because no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to give a crap about the Marvel Universe. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve enjoyed the movies that they’ve put out, but I never got into the comics (even during the ubiquity of X-Men in the 90’s), and the animated series that I’ve seen haven’t really won me over. Even the LEGO Marvel video game, while interesting, to be sure, didn’t capture me in a nerdy state of rapture in the way that the LEGO Batman games are able.

My grandson, on the other hand, is Marvel fanboy to the core. He’s always glued to the screen while Avengers Assemble and Superhero Squad are cycling through on a seemingly endless loop of half-rate superheroism. This is a kid who will run around the apartment with a hanger held out like a bow, shouting “Hot Guy”. He will also grab one of his many toy shields and randomly bang into things, grunting “‘Merica!” The best he can do for my guys is lower his voice, get a constipated look on his face, and say “I’m Bat.” I’ve tried several times to correct him, and coax him into adding “man” but he doesn’t seem to find it all that important, and I don’t get much help from his parents, as my daughter couldn’t give less than a crap about spandex-laden tomfoolery, and my son-in-law is Captain Marvel through and through (and yes, I know what I just did there, my nerd brethren).

But despite the blood feud about imaginary role models between the older generations, my son and his nephew don’t seem have it in for one another. Actually, they are almost inseparable, and will roughhouse for hours, with only a few breaks in between to break down in booger-streaming tears and run to their respective corners. I think that my son’s illness has been harder on my grandson than it has been on my son. We’ve had to keep them separated, with my son under quarantine to protect our toddler grandson and pregnant daughter.

Yesterday, it seemed, David started to make a small recovery, as he had just the right amount of gumption to demand to be allowed to play on the Xbox, and it was everything that his mother and I could do get him to stay on the bed, and try and get some rest. There’s always that moment of shameful joy that a parent experiences when their child is sick. On the one hand, every strand of DNA is crying out for you to fix your child so that his genes may be passed along at some point down the line. On the other, for the first time in what feels like forever, your bouncing baby boy is finally refraining from the bouncing, and the house is at least twenty decibels quieter.

So we’ll get through today, as my son is on the mend, and try to think of something that we can do tomorrow. I guess that means that I’ll have to think of something fun to do tomorrow. Of course, it could rain, and we’d have no other alternative but to bundle up in front of the T.V. and play the Xbox until the batteries run out (which, judging by what the controller is flashing on the screen, could be sooner than tomorrow).

-Tex