One of the best parts of this sabbatical that I’ve been taking is that it has afforded me the opportunity to cook far more often than I had been able while I was still employed. As I am tied for least employed among adults in the household, and really don’t feel up to the task of Cinderella (I was a professional housecleaner for the better part of three years, and it still induces flashbacks), I felt that I could head off arguments at the pass by offering to cook five nights a week. It allows me to huff and puff, while actually having a pretty good time. The prep work is a little tedious, but I prefer to use fresh ingredients whenever possible, and the flavor cannot be denied. I had been trying for years to come up with a weekly menu so that we could plan ahead, and cut down on shopping trips, which inevitably produced more one-off junk food nonsense than was entirely acceptable. But no one thought that it would make much difference, and everyone sort of just fended for themselves, dirtying every pot, pan, plate, and piece of flatware which we owned, in the process. My wife would make a huge batch of something that only she (and sometimes, our son) would eat, and the adult children waited until the wee hours to prepare their own food. We were doubling up on food costs for no good reason. What, you ask, did Mr. Batmart eat during this time? Usually I’d go to Walgreen’s and pick up some sort of snack food, and wash it down with soda, or an energy drink. I worked at a restaurant, and really didn’t want to face more food preparation.

Money is tight now, however, and I am once again the unlikely voice of reason. Well, as long as I’m doing the cooking, anyways. I penned a simple weeklong menu, and then set about cooking it. I’m still figuring out what order will work best, but so far, I’ve been able to get meals done from prep to mouth in an hour or less. Sunday we had fajitas, which my wife gave me an assist on. She did up the rice while I cooked off the pre-marinated fajita meat that I picked up at the Mexican supermarket. Everybody ate, and it was gratifying to see. Bolstered by my success, I cooked ribs on Monday (they’d had a rack of them at Grocery Outlet for $4.50, so I picked up two), with my wife preparing mashed potatoes recycled from the baked potatoes that our daughter had prepared two nights before. More so than with fajita night, rib night was amazing. David actually cleaned his plate, as did my grandson. All of the adults grabbed a second helping of the ribs, and at the end of the evening, there was no food to put away. Tuesday afternoon, I was tapped for lunch service, so I did burgers and fries. I will admit that the fries didn’t really go as planned, but in failure, I’ve figured out just what went wrong, and I think I can get it right the next time that I do them. What really surprised me, though, was that my wife had forgotten to set out the ketchup, and although the ground beef was the best of the tubed variety, no one seemed no need to smother their burger in condiments. The secret there was a trick I picked up from Fuddrucker’s: I heated some butter, threw in some finely chopped garlic and Italian seasoning, and then lightly dipped the buns in the mixture before toasting them off in a separate frying pan. They were crispy, and flavorful, and gave the burgers just that little hint of class.

Wednesday night was the night that I’d been dreading: an updated recipe for my Mexican rice dish. To give a little history: when I moved out of my house at 17, and got together with my girlfriend, I wanted to impress her, but didn’t really cook that much. One of the things that I’d been able to prepare without much incident before I had moved out was the Rice-a-Roni Mexican Rice. When I cooked for Crys, I tampered with the recipe just a bit (it was a complex list of items to begin with: Rice, vermicelli, water, butter, seasoning packet), and added mild salsa, ground beef, and topped it off with some shredded cheese. Over the next few years, I would wind up modifying it to include stewed tomatoes and upping the heat to a medium salsa. It stayed that way for quite a while, until my wife and I began to live together. I wanted to try and spiff it up a bit, so I started putting in fresh vegetables, and using strips of beef in addition to the hamburger. When we moved to Not Quite Richmond, I’d found almost every ingredient that I needed to bypass the packed stuff altogether, but was stumped as to the final flavor that I was missing. I was putting in green, red, yellow, and orange bell peppers, jalapenos, serranos, yellow chilies, and a couple of habaneros, roma tomatoes, white onions, garlic, the regular round tomatoes, cilantro, and basil, as well as some medium salsa, ground beef, chopped pork, and beef. It drove me crazy that I couldn’t figure out what was missing. And then one day, when I was fooling around with something else, I popped in some tomatillos on the recommendation of my wife. The missing flavor!

I now could cut out everything that came in a box, jar, or can, and make my rice dish from scratch! Which now leads me to the final change I’ve made (and quite possibly the last): When I was up on The Island for my Holiday Vacation, I wanted to cook my wife a birthday meal. I was going to make my rice dish, was usually quite well received. We went shopping for all of the various ingredients, and I asked my aunt if we had rice back at the house. She assured me that we did, so I didn’t pick any up at the store. We got home, and I began to prep all of the veggies, waiting just a bit to get started on the rice. When it was time, I started rummaging through cabinets, and scouring all the shelves, but the only rice that I could find was a box of Uncle Ben’s. Filled with terror, I began frantically running other starches through my mind, as this dish wasn’t exactly right to do up as a soup. And then I found the elbow macaroni, and decided that, as I hadn’t any other option, I would just have to make do. And you know what? It actually came out better! Everyone except my mother had a second helping (well, and David, but it was a little spicy), and within a day, the entire gigantic batch had disappeared!

So for my dinner on Wednesday, I only slightly adjusted the recipe to remove all of the chilies. I started the veggies cooking about twenty minutes before everything else, so that I could use several ladles’ worth of the juice as the base for my pasta water. Everything just came together, and this time, everybody had a second helping (aside from the little ones, of course, who, to their credit, polished off a bowl and half between them). There was almost enough for breakfast the following morning when I came back after dropping David off at school.

My wife cooks what she likes, and she is the one who mainly eats it. My daughter and son-in-law cook things they like, but usually only for themselves. When I cook, I cook things that I like, but for everyone. Maybe it’s just that they aren’t as picky as I am, but when I’m done, there really aren’t leftovers, and tend to make a lot. Guess my nearly decade and a half in restaurants was good for something after all!

-Tex

So I managed to throw out my right shoulder, which is pretty amazing, considering how active a lifestyle I’ve been leading lately. It’s like a needle burrowing beneath my shoulder blade, and even with some heavy-duty pain relief, it’s been a constant reminder of my own fragility. I normally say that I don’t bend that way when describing any sort of relatively simple motion, but now it’s gone beyond apathetic preference to a more limited range of motion. I’m not sure exactly how I did it, but I’m leaning more towards blaming it on the bed. We’ve had it for a number of years, and it seems to have finally given up the ghost in protest to the constant acrobatics which my son performs, as well as its slow conversion into a water bed. Every year my wife tells me that we should get a new bed, and every year I tell her that we really don’t have the money to get something that will be any better. I think she may have now definitively won that argument, as I’m not sure how much longer I can tolerate her unwavering expression of “I told you so.” I mean, I’m the one who’s supposed to wear a smug facade, reminding people that I’d foreseen the future six months ago or more. The fact that Flor has somehow taken my powers from me is an affront to the natural order, and what makes it worse, is that I didn’t see it coming.

I should really get into the habit of exercising, or at least trying to be a bit more active, but the only times I ever think about it are when I’m in some kind of pain which might have been prevented if I’d taken care of myself more regularly. And who has time for that? Daytime television isn’t going to watch itself (although I think the world might be a better place if it could)! Soon enough, I’ll need to find a job which actually earns me money, not that writing for all you boys and girls isn’t satisfying in its own right, but appreciation alone doesn’t pay the bills. And new jobs mean having to meet new people, co-workers and customers alike. I still believe that the best possible outcome is that someone decides to bankroll my hermitage, but I’m not going to hold my breath. Most people can ignore me just fine without having to pay a tax. It’s always just so uncomfortable to have to go someplace new and try to convince everybody that your resume isn’t mere exaggeration. No, really, I’ve got over a decade in restaurants, I totally know what I’m doing. Don’t mind the fact that I’m standing here in the way, looking like a fat and balding high school kid, clueless as to how to have a proper job. If it were as simple as just following food safety guidelines and federal and state labor laws, I’d probably be alright, but every place seems to need to reinvent the dinner service, and it takes at least a little while to get used to the idiosyncrasies.

Of course, that’s assuming that I succumb to the temptation to just step back into something that I know. 35 isn’t too old to start a new career right? Something mind-numbing like data-entry? Sitting at a desk all day, plugging numbers into a spreadsheet, mind wandering to and fro, collecting a paycheck (and perhaps a bonus, based on speed and volume?), and dreaming of a million million worlds within me? That’s still a thing, right? Or has it been made redundant by programming? Maybe I’ll swing out to Barnes and Noble next week and see if I can get in somewhere in the back. I’m just worried that they’ll want to stick me in their little cafe, where I’ll be forced to judge the customers not only by their taste in literature but also by their taste in over-hyped coffee drinks and pastries. The content of their characters comes further down on the list, somewhere between taste in music, and the color of their skin. I wonder if they’d let me read books on the clock, just so I could make myself more knowledgeable, and therefore a better salesman. Actually, I’m not sure how good a salesman I would be, as my initial response to “no” is a simmering sort of resentment, followed by practiced petulance. And so it all comes back to that: I’m sort of terrified by even the thought of other people.

UPDATES:

The parent meeting was even more irrelevant than I had imagined. David’s teacher could have literally just handed me the agenda, and I could have worked out all the rest, but instead, I got to sit through 45 minute presentation in Spanish, interspersed with rough English translations. I can’t really say that my time was well spent, unless the entire point of it was to convince me that I should be concerned about the future of my son’s education. He actually did his homework yesterday afternoon, however, so at least that’s something.

My resume is updated, and ready for dissemination. It’s a good thing that I got it done and printed before I started thinking that it would be a good idea to throw a Taken reference on there, and mention my particular set of skills. And now I’m thinking of doing up a resume entirely in the style of Liam Neeson. If I don’t have anything coming to mind tomorrow, I might try and flesh that out a bit. As for right now, having it narrated in my head is positively delightful.

Yesterday, my grandson was running around with a plastic hanger, shouting in his adorable toddler voice, “Hot Guy!” It took me longer than it should have to realize he was pretending to be an Avenger. He is just a wonder in my life, and has allowed me to enjoy another baby without having to have another baby. And David basically gets a brother that he can boss around with legitimate authority.

-Tex

So I get to go to a mandatory parent-teacher meeting today at 1 p.m. so I can hear just how hard my son’s teacher’s life is. Aside from the misspelled notice on the front of David’s homework packet, my favorite part of this entire thing is that we were given less than 24 hours’ notice for a mandatory meeting. I realize there are families out there that can shake loose a parent on short notice to serve the whims of of their child’s teacher (for the time being, ours is one), but many people that I know live in households where both parents work (or in a single parent home, just the one), and unless one is extremely fortunate, he or she cannot just get out of work at the last minute for something in the early afternoon. I know that when I was managing, I would have been extremely upset to lose an employee for most, if not all of his shift so that he could attend a 30 minute meeting sprung upon him at the last minute. As someone who has been scheduling employees for years, to take someone out of a crafted shift plan with less than a day’s warning is a massive pain, and that someone would demand it, is beyond inconsiderate.

So my son’s teacher is either clueless about the impact that her summons is causing, lost somewhere in the sitcoms of the past where every family not only survives, but thrives on a single-income budget, or she doesn’t understand the definition of the word “mandatory,” which also would not surprise me. I am sure that she has excellent qualities as an educator, but it gives me pause to think that this woman, with whom I am constantly pleading to just speak to me in her native language, as her accent is so frequently difficult to decipher, this woman is responsible for not only teaching my son proper English, but for correcting his mistakes and enforcing grammatical regulations- something I’ve seen that she, herself, has had issue with. Of course, there is a real possibility that she felt this meeting was too important to put off, and that today was the only day to get it done before it would have been too late. Except… she indicated in the homework packet last week that she was going to have a meeting (no time frame mentioned), to be announced in the coming week’s packet (which we received yesterday), with absolutely no hints whatsoever of its compulsory nature.

One of the topics sure to arise in this little get-together is the dearth of students actually turning in their completed packets every week. Apparently, according to the notices on the front page of this week’s packet, only about a third of the class is actually following through on these assignments, and she believes that this is making her life harder. Now, I know that there are strategies my wife and I have been trying to implement to get David to do his nightly pages, but ultimately it’s up to him to get them done. I could do it all for him in just a couple minutes, but the entire point of schoolwork is to reinforce the concepts that he’s learned. If enough parents are facing the problem of uncooperative children, if they simply don’t have time for a  battle every afternoon, between however many jobs they have to work, maybe the solution isn’t to keep ramming pages down their throats each and every week. I don’t recall getting much, if any, homework before I was in the 3rd grade. I can remember this clearly, because our teacher asked if anyone would like to start doing it that year, and several hands shot up. I wondered if, since I didn’t raise my hand, I would be obligated to participate. I would, as it turned out. I guess what I’m getting at is that if there is a failure rate of close to 67%, maybe it’s time for my son’s teacher to reevaluate the method she has chosen.

That being said, I’m not just going to be that dad that lays all the blame at the feet of everyone but himself and his. I know there are areas and opportunities for improvement in how we, as a family, move forward with David’s education. Every day is a five hour battle to just get two pages (front and back) done, and by the end of all of that, he is supposed to read (or be read to) for 30 minutes. I would love to set him down and read to him (I’ve loaded the Kindle up with tons of awesome books that I read as a kid, and a handful that I would have, had they been available), to show him that, at least in my family, books are treasured friends, and authors, the true celebrities (full disclosure: I may be a bit biased on that last point). But to accomplish all of that would mean that he wouldn’t get to bed until somewhere close to midnight, and that is too far past his bedtime. My wife and I have tried both the carrot and the stick, but he seems to want nothing to do with either. The bribes my wife has offered (I too, on occasion, have succumbed to negotiating with the terrorist) are all too soon forgotten, as he’s only ever looking toward what he’ll get tomorrow, and any punishments we lay down upon him are also ineffective, as he’s smart enough to have a backup plan for his backup plans when all his privileges have been revoked.

I’ve recently begun discussing the prospect with him, of repeating the 2nd grade. Despite what my wife may think, I am not bringing it up to try and hurt his feelings, or even to motivate him so as to avoid that. He was about six months younger than I was upon entering Kindergarten, and half a year in a child’s development can be profound. I know that it would be humiliating for him, and, honestly, that’s probably the one thing to have kept me from pursuing it since I had to face that possibility. But if he can’t keep up with the work at his current level, he will simply be left behind as he continues to advance. We saw that he was running into problems toward the second half of last year, but his testing showed that he knew what he should know, and so could move up to the 2nd grade. This year, however, we’ve been behind the 8 ball the entire time, and I just think that allowing him a mulligan would be better in the long run. I wish I knew what I was supposed to do, or to how to make this easier, but I do know that if he can’t pull out of this nosedive soon, the decision may be taken from us.

I’ll update everyone after I get back from the thing.

-Tex

I’d like to spend this morning telling the entire world just how much I truly love my wife. I’ve written about her in passing throughout the rambling musings over the past couple of months, but usually in the role of a supporting character: someone who fits neatly into the narrative of my life. But she is so much more than that, a remarkable human being that has deserves the very best in life, and yet, year after year, chooses to remain with me. She is the mother of two wonderfully impossible children, the loving daughter of two amazing people with whom I hope it will someday be my honor to be acquainted, and at least my equal in this life we’ve built, if not my better (in so many ways). And even in those descriptions, I am still defining her by her relationships to others. She is deserving, at the very least, of an entire column dedicated to all of our relationships to her…

Born on the final day of the year 1967, she was the third of six children, but first in character and strength of will. As a child she frequently spoke her mind, and, protected by the anonymity that only being a middle child can provide, set her own course amongst the countless paths which life could offer. She was a beauty of her generation (and her smile is still easily the most radiant which I have ever seen), and fell in love with a man when she was in her early twenties. Of all the eligible bachelors through the Distrito Federal, she chose this man to spend her life with, but he wasn’t worth her trouble. After giving her a daughter, he turned and ran away, unable to see past her beauty to her core of solid steel.

Flor was determined to provide her baby with all she might desire, and put in the effort of at least three people to try and make it happen. She was mother and father to her little baby girl, and what trivialities her grueling hours at work could not provide, her unconditional love more than made up for. Her daughter was her first priority, and like many single mothers, this often came at an unacknowledged cost to herself. Relationships were put aside, as they took time away from someone who required her, and it was better not to get invested, having been burned so badly once before. Eventually, she came to love another, a man of decent means who would offer to provide for both her and her daughter. But, like the last man she had loved, this man would come to disappoint as well, leaving for Los Estados Unidos in search of a better life with the promise of a place for them as soon as he had settled.

That was the last, of course, she heard of him, and she set her broken heart aside. Her daughter had begun to ask to see her dad, and despite her feelings on the matter, Flor did her best to make it happen. That too, was met with entirely predictable results, and Flor was there to pick up the broken pieces of her daughter’s heart after such a profound rejection. I said that I would try to avoid defining her by who and what she was to others, but from the moment that she had a child, she defined her own life by what she might do for her daughter. And when she came to this country, it was not because she’d bought into the golden street propaganda- she had a decent-paying job, and had built a comfortable life for herself and for her daughter. She came out of a sense of duty, a familial obligation. She wanted nothing to do with anybody here, but was the only one willing to come.

When I met her, she was working two jobs (one of them as my subordinate), and had been recently struck by a careless driver who had enough money to have known better, but not enough to make the lasting pain at all worthwhile. Every discretionary cent was sent back home, dedicated to her parents and her now teenaged daughter, and though she knew it was not the same, she hoped that it would at least make her absence slightly bearable. It was at a wedding of a co-worker that she met someone whom she would wind up loving and for whom she would put her life on hold. He wasn’t the most attractive or the richest man she knew, but he also wasn’t married, and seemed like, from what she had been able to ascertain, a generally decent type of fellow.

She agreed to move in with him, just a few short months later, having spent as much time with her family here as she could bear. The relationship wasn’t everything she’d hoped for, and she was fairly certain that it wouldn’t last, but they signed the lease together, and moved their stuff in, and practiced being tolerant of one another. And then one night, something predictably unexpected happened, and she found that, sixteen years later, she was going to be a mom again. Having the last experience still fresh in her mind, she offered this sweet, but alcoholic guero a way out, should he want to take it. She had done it all alone before, and would rather face this challenge by herself, than to have to try and force him to be something which he wasn’t. Though never quite losing the terrified expression he’d been wearing since she told him, he seemed, finally, to come around, and in the summer of 2007, she gave birth to baby boy.

A couple years later, after having argued more over things both large and small, she gave this man an ultimatum: either he would marry her or they would go their separate ways. They had been together almost three years, and it was time to behave like adults. If he wanted out, she would let him go- no strings attached. She would take her son back to Mexico, and raise him as she’d done with her daughter. I don’t believe she truly thought I’d follow through with it until we said, “I do.” In the nearly six years we’ve been married, she has meant everything to me. She is the one to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks, the bringer of order to the chaos which surrounds me, the unyielding champion for both her children, and seemingly capable of ignoring all human limitations to do what must be done.

We argue, sometimes fundamentally opposed, and sometimes just for sport, and after so long, we know just how to devastate one another. But something that we’ve also both gotten really good at is loving one another. She makes me want to be a better person, if only so that I might give her a little competition. I love her with all of my heart. She is the noblest person that I’ve ever personally been acquainted with, and I count every day that she stays with me as a little miracle unto itself.

-Tex

I wish I had even the slightest idea of what was normal when it comes to milestones in my son’s life. As the only child of a single mother, I really don’t have anything to guide me on this path of fatherhood. I have no clue if what my son is doing is something that I should worry about, or if it’s just a phase that all, most, or even some kids simply go through. For instance, is it acceptable, developmentally speaking, for my son to cry so much? I mean, any time he doesn’t get his way, he breaks down in tears and remains inconsolable for the following five or ten minutes. It’s not all the time, but it happens frequently enough that I’m concerned his only memories of childhood will be tear-stained ragings against the injustice of his dad. I don’t remember weeping all the time (at least until I began falling in and out of love), but I guess it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that it had happened. There is a chance, I suppose, that he’ll focus only on the happy times, or it will eventually all blend together like a moderately moistened yawn. I just don’t know, I really haven’t got a baseline for it…

After having spoken with my mother, it looks like I will probably not be remembered as the Bringer of Tears, but considering what it took to get us back on speaking terms after I moved out, I guess I’ll take that with a grain of salt. I can guide my son down the paths to wisdom, but for lessons in emotional maturity, he’ll have to take an online course. My coping mechanisms have usually involved better living through chemistry, and I’m fairly certain that’s not a lesson that I’d like to pass along. I wasn’t all too thrilled at the prospect of him taking ADHD uppers, as I’ve seen all of the ways in which giving speed to kids can go so terribly wrong, but the undeniable fact is that he is doing better academically on his medication, and is paying attention in class, and even focusing on the tasks at hand. By the time he gets home, of course, the medicine has cleared his system, so it’s hard to see firsthand if it is really working or not. But the progress reports I’ve gotten from his teacher (who is now disturbingly eager to come and talk to me), and my conversations with David have led me to believe that his pills might actually be helping, and he’s not just lost somewhere in zombie mode.

When we were up in Washington, we left his medication at home, and he just flew around my grandparents’ house like a Colombian Turkey, warbling up and down the stairs, and frequently running into furniture and people. Every morning (and every other afternoon), he begged to be taken for a walk down to the beach so he could stock up on cool looking rocks and the very best in only slightly broken shells. Fighting down this modern instinct to overprotect the hell out of him, I told him on several occasions to just pop on his boots and trudge on down. Even for someone with his stubby little legs, he’d only be walking about five minutes, and since the mudslide which took out most of Rolling Bay Walk, there’s really no traffic on the road to speak of. But my wife would have none of that, and accompanied him down there with a look that would have shamed me into action, had I been awake. I told her she should get the most out of her time away from work, and catch up on the two years of sleep that she had missed, but I was told, in no uncertain terms, that she would do what she was going to do, and I could do the same.

I can’t blame either of them for being so enamored of the beauty of the neighborhood where I spent my youth. When I was David’s age, I could walk from the house where my mother and I lived (next door to my great-grandmother) down to the beach, stroll along the rocky shores of Rolling Bay, and up the hill on the other side, to say hello to my grandparents. I knew that telephones were a thing, but it was a lot more fun my way. Every summer I would swim in the frozen waters, thinking that the early warning signs of hypothermia were just a passing current of whale pee (I’m not the only one, either!). For my wife, I think that the bucolic seascape served as a substitute for the home she hasn’t seen in years, whereas for David William, it was a chance to escape all of the dangers (or so his terrified parents kept telling him) of a more urban area (To be clear, I am not using “urban” as code. I am referring to traffic, and the violence which occurs when you cram too many people together). For me, these trips back home are a chance to see my aging grandparents one last time, but for the family of which I am the head, it’s an opportunity to call somewhere new their home.

The first time I flew up with my wife and son, I was treated to the gift of snow in time to celebrate my birthday, and it was the first time either of them had seen such a thing in real life (my son was only five months old, so that’s kind of a given, but it made my wife’s whole day). And it’s that one gift, above all others, that I have to give to my son: The joys of experiencing the beauty of those simple things which we often overlook and take for granted. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, so my mother gave me a childhood of experiences instead, and as I look across my son’s cluttered room, floor littered with electronics, as he’s tuned wholly into LEGO Batman 3, I realize that that I might have had it better. I might not have had the childhood I deserved (in my mind, at least), but I definitely had the childhood that I needed. So maybe it’s for the best that I’m living a life of modern monastic poverty. When I had money, I could spend it on all the toys I would have killed for growing up, but because I was so rarely home, they were just a poor substitute for an absent father. I’m woefully out of practice, but I’m relearning how to be a (slightly) more hands-on Dad. Little by little, I’m trying to sneak a life lesson in when he isn’t looking, but what’s really helping is the time I spend just interacting with him as if he were a person. Who knew?

-Tex

My hometown of Bainbridge Island, Washington, is rarely in the national news. This is probably for the best, as it usually involves a High School Biology teacher dying, The Professor, or David Guterson. But a little bit of team spirit mixed with dubious legislation has drawn the attention of the national media once again to the place where I grew up.

Of course, it wasn’t always like this on Bainbridge. For years, nobody much really paid attention to our little island paradise in the Puget Sound. But then the rich Californians came, lured by the promise of a simpler life, and promptly drove up property values, insisted on the luxuries they ostensibly came to avoid, and ran those not already ensconced in homes of their own directly in into the heart of nearby Poulsbo. In the fading light of the 1980’s, and grunge explosion of the 90’s, Bainbridge Island sold its soul to become a suburb of Seattle, as opposed to remaining the last bastion of sanity in the redneck infected boonies of Kitsap County. By a margin of 136 votes, residents voted to make the City of Winslow a thing in November 1990. That, however changed shortly after the law took effect, as the rest of Bainbridge Island couldn’t stand being lumped in with those “city folk” downtown. So the City of Bainbridge Island came into being.

And so it came to pass that the island where I was growing up slowly became The Little Big City. Where, when I was just a little boy, you only needed to give out the last four digits of your phone number, by the time I was in middle school, you were up to seven. And in high school, they added yet another prefix to accommodate all the cell phones and pagers which had begun to outpace the number of residents on the island. The cops had nothing better to do than to harass the general population, as violence and other crimes was still not a major issue. We had a tolerance march to show we could do the whole “civic pride” thing, despite the fact that the population was, at the time, close to 85% Caucasian, and the world was still nearly twenty years away from recognizing gays as people. Compensating for a lack of urban anything, we did our best to hide our inadequacies through hilariously overstated gestures.

When I was just freshly out of school, I moved in with my girlfriend who was living in one of the few places left on Bainbridge where the poor folk could still be kept. I’d spent my childhood in Rolling Bay, where the intellectuals resided. We had our own Post Office (98061, represent!), and after we were roped into assimilation with the City, they put he Municipal Courthouse in the heart of separatist country (I’m fairly certain just to keep an eye on us), located between the Bay Hay and Feed and the Jiffy Mart (Author’s Note: The Jiffy Mart in Rolling Bay is the only one left of the three that were in existence when I was growing up. The others have been bought out by corporate entities or otherwise been re-branded.). I went from living in the land of woods, beach, and insurrectionist speech, to a double-wide just a ways down from Battle Point Park.

It was a simpler life, then, and no one really paid much mind to the hayseeds down in Island Center. Kind of like the slow cousins that no one liked to talk about, the rest of Bainbridge preferred to leave us to our own devices. That is, unless some idiot wanted to fire off his shotguns in an inappropriate fashion, or get into property disputes with the fancypants who just moved in next door. Really, the City only interfered if it absolutely had to, and then, just to minimize the paperwork stemming from your average rural shenanigans.

When I left the Island to make my way in a proper city setting (having grown tired of my camp beneath the trees and shrubbery behind the Safeway), I was a little relieved at leaving all the nonsense behind. And to be living somewhere that didn’t shut down completely by eight o’clock at night. And to have real public transportation. But even saying goodbye to where I had spent my entire life, I wasn’t truly prepared for how much it would change when I was gone. I left at the end of summer in 2001, and every time I came back to visit, it seemed less and less like home. Houses began popping up where only forests had once stood, and ferry rides were crammed with crowds of strangers I’d never even seen before.

Which is why I find it strangely satisfying that 2005 runner-up for Best Place to Live in the United States has once again stumbled into the national spotlight over something so entirely and perfectly ridiculous: Today, January 16th, 2015, all cheese and cheese-flavored products are banned from City Hall in a show of Sportsball Solidarity with the Seattle Seahawks. But Mike Spence has decided that his “part-ownership” of the Green Bay Packers has granted him the right to try and rain on everyone’s parade (Dear god, they probably have decided to have some sort of parade…), by informing the City Manager that, “As a food item, the regulation of cheese falls clearly within the authority of the Kitsap County Department of Health, rather than the City of Bainbridge Island, a noncharter Code City under RCW 35A.11. I see no authority under that statute granting a noncharter Code City the authority to regulate cheese.”

This, stupidly enough, has drawn the attention of a Wisconsin radio station, which has banned all “songs from any band that calls Seattle home.”

I realize that this is all tongue-in-cheek, and just a way to spice up the pregame festivities, but it just makes us all look like a bunch of idiots. It seems, perhaps, that only Berkeley, California would get caught up in something more ridiculously misunderstandable. Let’s all just shut up about this, and get ready for Sunday afternoon, so we can get back to eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos in City Hall, and listening to Pearl Jam in Madison, Wisconsin.

-Tex

GO SEACHICKENS!

So I really only have just a couple of vices that I engage in regularly, and I should probably start thinking about giving them up. I always said that as long as I worked in restaurants, I would probably continue smoking, as those 3 minute smoke breaks (of my allotted 10) were the only time I had to myself since becoming a manager. They were a chance for me to step away from the insanity and chaos and collect my thoughts, regroup within myself and come up with a game plan. That is, of course, until it became customary to be hit up for a cigarette five times in those 3 minutes. Actually, for a little while, I considered giving them up, not because of the associated health risks, but because I was getting sick and tired of random people coming up (no exaggeration, like 30 people a day) and asking to bum a smoke. I know they are a luxury when you don’t have anything to call your own, but I can’t give out a pack and a half a day, especially when I am smoking a little over half a pack myself.

The other evil I should probably excise from my life is the constant flow of energy drinks that I’ve pouring into myself for the past five years or so. I love the rush of caffeination and the way it casually combats a lifelong dedication to apathy, but just like other uppers I have partaken of in the past, I know that I could achieve similar results if I were to just figure out how to get a good night’s sleep. Not that I’m expecting that any time soon. Perhaps when my son is out of school, and living somewhere else, and my wife and I are able to transmute our worries about the daily rat race to something involving a small garden. I’m sure that as long as I am obligated to live by someone else’s schedule, I’ll probably remain intimate with my dear old friend, exhaustion. When I was a teenager, I rebelled against Authority, whereas now I seem to want to incite rebellion against reality. Go figure.

And while I am confessing all of my dietary sins, I should also include all the preprocessed garbage I regularly shove into my bearded foodhole. I am a slave to snack food, candy, and Mountain Dew. My waistline and swelling breasts are evidence that something must be done to curb this slowest and deadliest form of self-destruction, but I’ll be damned if sugar, salt, and fat aren’t just the tastiest ingredients of any unbalanced meal. Unlike the previous two evils on this guided tour of my own failings, I have already taken steps to begin cutting this nonsense out of my life. For years, I’ve said to wife that we should plan out a weekly menu so we can buy groceries with purpose, and minimize on prep time, and the amount of things in the freezer which have microwave instructions. Next week, yours truly has been tasked with the grocery shopping and cooking duties, and I will be ensuring that we’re eating fresher and healthier than we’ve done previously. Vegetables, less salt, olive oil, smaller portions of meat, butter only when absolutely necessary (unfortunately, I will most likely find countless justifications for its usage, but still…). And we’re going to try an have an actual family dinner time!

For the past few years, my wife and son-in-law have worked nights and evenings, while I was stuck with morning shifts, so the feasibility of getting everyone around the table to eat something we could all agree on was so nonexistent as to be laughable, outside of the Big Two holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas). But since I left my job, my son-in-law has been able to take over my shifts at work, and my wife successfully changed her availability to mornings as well. That means that, for the first time since we have all lived together, we have a time when we can all be in the same place at the same time when at least most of us are hungry. I don’t know if it will bring us closer together as a family, or help with my son’s behavior (as has been suggested), but I do know that it will definitely cut down on dirty dishes, as only one meal will be prepared, and at a certain time, as opposed to the two or three separate meals that are our current standard.

Having said all of this, I don’t know how dedicated I am to self-improvement. I’ve spent the better part of three decades just biding my time until I wouldn’t have to worry about it any more, and being disappointed by every passing milestone that I’m still around to see it, thinking, briefly, that maybe I should take a moment to prepare for the future. And of the few things I’ve said that I should do this year, I’ve taken steps to make at least a couple happen. My process is glacial, and I’m inordinately more stubborn than even I might have previously imagined, and yet I’ve still managed to make at least a little progress over the past several months.

The most important thing was getting back into the rhythm of writing every day, so that it wouldn’t be like pulling teeth when I wanted to get started down the path of my dreams, and I can say that it’s finally coming easier. When I started this blog, it was a pain to sit and think of what I wanted to say, and then to pad that out a hundredfold to make it to my quota, and I found as many excuses as I could to avoid the one thing that I ever truly wanted to spend my whole life doing. Sick? Day off. Holiday? Day off. Returning home by train? Okay, that one was totally justifiable. And I’ve been writing every day since, and usually done early enough that I still have time to work on other things once I’m warmed up. So have I done enough? I don’t know, but at least I got the ball rolling, and that’s something.

-Tex

Stay tuned this evening for the first edition of Batmart After Dark, an occasional showcase for the people and things which are currently rocking my entire world.

I haven’t been sleeping all that well since getting back from Washington, and my attempt to return to a more nocturnal schedule has run directly into my obligation to take my son to school at an entirely unacceptable time of day. To be fair, I’ve gotten him there early every single day that it’s been my job to take him, but there’s always the lurking horror that one day I might have to explain myself to the Principal. Some things never change.

7:42 a.m.- 33 minutes until First Bell

The Bedroom

“Dad, wake up! It’s… seven… four… two…”

My eyes still closed, I grasped for my charging cell phone and responded, “You mean 7:42?”

“Yeah, 7:42. Come on, Dad! We’re going to be late!”

I looked at my phone to confirm the time, and saw that I had overslept. To hammer home the point, an ignored alarm began blaring in my face. “Ughh… Okay, get dressed. Your clothes are on the dresser.” I motioned in the general direction of his uniform which my wife had set out the night before. “Change out of your pajamas first.”

“I know, Dad!”

“Okay, I’m saying…”

I seriously considered tossing my phone across the room and going back to sleep, but decided that leaving my son to his own devices would probably come back to haunt me. I watched as my son grabbed each article of clothing, one by one, and carried them across the room to put them on, and then returning for the next layer a moment later. “You know you you can grab the whole stack, right?”

“Dad! You need to get dressed! We’re going to be late!”

“Dude,” I sighed, “Chill. It takes me like, I don’t know… two minutes to put on my clothes. We’re good, man.”

“Okay.” He seemed pretty judgmental for a dude in socks and underwear. I stretched out, and felt my back protest. I calculated how much money I had left, and tried to figure if I had enough for a new bed. I didn’t think that there was much point in getting another substandard mattress and box spring set, but wasn’t sure if I could cover anything much better. I knew it would be an investment in the future, but I-

“Okay, I’m done!”

“Great… Okay, go and-“

“Wash my hands and face?”

“Yeah… Gimme a minute, I’ll get dressed.”

David scampered across the hall to the bathroom, and I dragged myself out of bed.

7:57 a.m.- 18 minutes until First Bell

The Kitchen

Having both finished dressing, and using the facilities, my son and I went to the kitchen to rustle something up. “Don’t forget my pills, Dad. Two today.” I took a moment to look at my son, and the weight of his words sunk into me. Just a couple months ago, he had been terrified to take his state sponsored speed, fearing that he’d choke upon the tiny pills. But now he was an old pro at taking his medication, and only needed his Piña Colada yogurt drink to swallow them. I poured him a glass, handed him the pills, and watched him swig them down with ease.

He’d been eager to resume his medication lately, ever since his teacher had been complaining of his energy levels and telling him that maybe his parents needed to increase the dosage. Her forwardness irritated me, but since we put him back at his full dose, his behavior in class has improved, and everything he’s told me about how he feels while he’s on them has reassured me that it’s not a simple dexedrine zombie state. He seems to be able to compartmentalize his bursting energies when on the drug, and I’d like to see if he can use his strategies to try and deal with this without taking pills every day.

He finished his drink, and rinsed out the cup before setting it in the sink. “Come on,” I said, “Let’s go see what we can do about your hair.” Like every morning, a large swath of hair was spiking out at random angles in the back, and, although I felt that he looked just like any other little boy in this regard, I knew his mother would have been mortified for people to see him in such an unkempt condition. I moistened my hands, and ran my fingers through his hair, trying to subdue the problem areas, and then ran a brush over his dampened head, hoping that it would be enough, while realizing that, as I didn’t really care, I probably wouldn’t be the most impartial judge.

“Okay, let’s go. Where’s your backpack?”

“I’ve got it right here, Dad.”

“Okay, you ready?”

“Ready!”

“Come on, let’s do this thing.”

“You’ve got your keys, Dad?”

“Yeah, monkey man. They’re right here.” We walked out the door into the Bay Area’s approximation of chilly, and headed toward his school.

8:07 a.m.- 8 minutes until First Bell

Just outside David’s School

“Oh, so don’t forget to tell your teacher that you’ve got a doctor’s appointment today.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve got a doctor’s appointment today.”

“Oh… What time?”

“I’ll come and get you around one o’clock.”

“Can you and Mommy pick me up together?”

“Sorry, sweetheart. Mommy won’t get off from work in time. But we’ll meet her at the doctor’s office.”

We walked in through the gates, and to the packed cafeteria, where David grabbed a bagged cinnamon roll and a juice box. Normally by this time, all the kids had lined up outside, or were at least in the general area, running around, enjoyed the final moments of freedom before classes began, but since the temperatures had dropped, none of the adults wanted to chaperone the playground any longer than they absolutely had to. Of course, by the time that David had gone through the line, and grabbed the sugariest breakfast he could find (parents are not allowed in line- the kids have to learn to make their own choices (or so the sign posted in the cafeteria reads)), it was finally time to brave the elements and get in line. He attacked the pastry with frightening speed, and sucked down the juice without hesitation, tossing the packaging into the nearest trashcan, and dragging my outside.

“Okay, David. Have a great day today.”

“I will, Dad.”

“I love you, big guy.”

“Me too, Dad.”

“Oh, hey- don’t forget to remind your teacher about your homework.”

“So homework and doctor, right?”

“That’s it, man. I’ll see you this afternoon.”

I gave him a hug and kiss, knowing that in just a few short years, if not sooner, I would be forbidden this for fear that it would be considered uncool. But at least, for now, the world is as it should be, and I can still gather my baby boy up in my arms, and plant smooches upon his cheek and brow. I turned to look at him as I walked away, and marveled at just how short a time seven years truly are.

-Tex

Look at me, awake in the morning once again. I picked up a Red Bull on the way to drop my son off at school, and now I’m tackling my thousand words so I’ll be free to accomplish something else (anything else) during the copious amount of free time I’ve got lined up today. David doesn’t get out of school until half past two, so I’ve got literally hours to put towards something besides moping about, dreading the day when I have to face the outside world. I’ve got Pandora on, tuned to the Alice In Chains station, and I can feel something brewing in the burning storms of neurons firing back and forth across my brain. I don’t want to jinx it, but I may have stumbled onto the secret to my happiness (and financial stability). My wife is working the morning shift at her job now, a marked improvement over the hours she used to work before she took her vacation. Instead of being left to sleep, and waste away the day in a state of lethargic apathy, I have to put on pants and step outside the safety of my front door, tasked with delivering my only son to school.

I’ve been blathering on about using this blog as a warm-up for something more important, always reassuring myself that I would start writing when I was ready. I believe I mentioned in an earlier post (toward the beginning of December), that just as I was getting into a rhythm, and started going at full speed, the timer would be almost down to zero, and I would be faced with the impossible choice of work or genius. Well, the clock is winding down, and I haven’t done anything even remotely creative during these past several weeks of indolence, and sooner or later I’ll need to get back working for The Man. At this point, I’m running out of time to get started before it’s not even an untenable decision, but rather a unceremonious sliding back into a quiet whimpering resignation that I simply do not have the will by which I can succeed. But not today, dear friends. I will not face any inevitability beyond that which I’ve known in the deepest secret chambers of my heart (figuratively, for sure, as inspiration is rarely found within a muscle) since I was just a boy (the same age as my son is now).

Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time understanding him: by that age, I’d already had my moment of clarity, and had begun steering my life toward that goal. I see him lost, foundering with no purpose, just bouncing from want to want, carried along by eddies (insert Douglas Adams joke here) sweeping him in circles and disorienting him. I understand that I’m not the best the role model, as I’m really a man of last resorts. I tend to avoid both the stitch in time, and neglect the nine that I’ve failed to save through inaction. I don’t make plans, aside from grand sweeping gestures toward intent, and I definitely sweat the small stuff. All of that combines into a Voltron of decisiveness when my back is up against the wall, and the biggest decisions of my life have been made with a clear head. When the moment comes for me to answer whichever challenge has been thrown down, I can calmly look at the options left to me, take a deep breath, and choose what’s behind door number three. Nothing confuses Fate so much a man ready to mix metaphors at the drop of a hat.

At this time I’d like to take a moment for a brief aside: I miss being able to smoke indoors. It’s not the weather (usually too hot or cold), or the fact that I have to put on pants to give into my addiction, it’s that it’s just so much more convenient to remain seated at my desk than to have to get up, put on a coat, and go somewhere else while the juices are still flowing. I know it would make more sense to just give them up, or at least switch to e-cigarettes, but that’s another set of problems. I have no doubt that someday I will have to give up smoking; I’ve seen too clearly what it’s done to people whom I dearly love. It’s just that I enjoy the chemical reactions from the nicotine (at least for the first smoke or two. After that it becomes more about withdrawal maintenance), and don’t want to subject my loved ones to the monster that I would unleash (which I still remember vividly from when my mother quit smoking almost thirty years ago) as my body fought to free itself of the shackles of addiction. Well, it would most likely be desperately fighting to tighten the shackles (the body being loathe to change self-destructive habits), but either way, it’s not something I’m looking forward to.

I can understand that my son has no patience for the busy work that his teacher sends back home with him (which will come as no surprise to any teacher who had me for a student), but the lesson to be learned with busy work (which I never took to heart) is that it is preparation for the “real” world: most jobs require some form of tedium and repetition, and the sooner you can develop strategies to keep your brain from atrophying, the better suited to survive the rat race you will become. And I hate to side with the woman who is “educating” him, but he needs to work on penmanship like I need to quit tobacco (doesn’t see the point, kind of painful, but ultimately necessary). I know that we’re living in a world of ever-present technological advancements, and that my two year old grandson can navigate a tablet computer easier than my wife (whose age is a closely guarded secret, integral to national defense), but I can easily imagine scenarios where my son might some day be without electricity, and need to communicate something through the written word.

And then there’s the issue of his reading. He can do it, that’s not the problem. It’s that he has no interest in reading. He just doesn’t see the point, when there are hundreds of shows and games and literally anything else he could be doing instead of burying his face deep into a musty book (or even brightly lit screen). As a writer, this is incomprehensible to me. I began reading at an early age, and have lived and died a thousand times between the covers of countless books. Sure, I still binge on Netflix, and indulge in a game or two on the Xbox (or on my phone), but I always make at least an hour or two available to lose myself someone else’s life. Maybe I was able to fall so deeply in love with the written word because I grew up poorer than not (especially on the Island which I called my home), and didn’t have all of the distractions that a better life has been able to provide. I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to write an amazingly engaging book to draw him in, and keep hold of him until he can seek out other works.

-Tex

For the first time since leaving behind my job of six years, I will be actively seeking out employment tomorrow. I’d like to avoid working in a restaurant if it can be avoided, but it ultimately comes down to being able to pay my bills next month. Realistically, I only need something that can pay me $1200 in a month (significantly lower than I was making, but enough to pay the bills and pay off credit cards), but that will probably mean getting back into management if I only want to work part time. I’d really like to limit myself to 25-32 hours in a week, leaving time to keep writing on the blog, and start working on a novel. I think if I can nail down something for $12-13/hr, I can pull it off. I mean, that’s only going to be $3-4 over minimum wage here in California, and I do have years of management experience.

I have to polish up my resume, and iron out my suit, and find a printer I can use to canvass the businesses in my neighborhood with queries about work. It would probably help if I didn’t always feel entirely so exhausted. I honestly could sleep for at least a week, wake up for a bowl of cereal, and catch another hundred z’s. It seems like so much effort when I’d rather just stay at home, and despite the knowledge that I’ll be performing at a veteran level within a week or two, the notion of a first day at work completely terrifies me. Like every other newbie, I always feel I’m in the way, and I just want to get through the first couple days without screwing up anything major. Of course, I could stay awake all night and bust out the first quarter of a novel so that I could buy some more time from my wife before her hammer drops. I guess I better remember how to use an iron.

Brief Interlude- Things Which Shouldn’t Amuse Me, But Do:

A carnivore in a vegetative state

Angina

Poop deck

What is the most flavorful Spanish animal? Un delicioso 

Hippies

I wish there were a job that would allow me to lounge about all day and come up with inappropriate names for Metal Bands (Snuggle Riot), while still receiving a steady paycheck. It’s basically my goal to become a well-paid hermit, but one that only has to write occasionally, such as when the mood has stuck him. This blog is helping, for sure, as I’ve written over 30,000 words since I began, which is easily double what I wrote in the whole of the 12 months before that. I’m getting more comfortable with the mechanics of the clickety-clackety, and my inner narrative voice has regained some of it composure. The only thing I’m really missing at this point is my imagination. I’ve gotten too used to trying to rationalize all of the insanity, that any time I try to start something, I have to understand its universe molecularly, and that makes it a little daunting, to be sure. But fear not, people who might one day want to give me money for something which I’m currently providing free of charge: These little 1,000 word epistles are, for the most part, completely different every day, free of themes or plotlines. I am giving myself a crash course in improvisational wordsmithing, starting from scratch almost every day, and wrangling from the ether something that resembles intent.

It’s a bit nerve-wracking, but it’s also kind of fun. I get the chance to just let loose with whatever comes to mind, and pad it out with verbiage. I know I’ve been saying it for awhile, but I really do feel like I’m on the brink of a substantial composition. My muscles have been stretched, and I’ve broken a sweat (figuratively, that is), and I feel like when I choose to start, I’ll be able to keep going. I just need to actually get through to my muse, who seems to have been screening my calls since we took a break. She’s a fickle sort of inspiration, and I have to admit that I could have tended better the sweet nothings which we once shared. But I know she misses me, and sooner or later (most likely in the middle of the night) she’ll toss aside her better judgment, and drunk-dial Mr. Batmart.

Brief Interlude- Things I Don’t Much Care For:

Cable news

49ers fans

Cauliflower

Waiting in line

Pants

So what are my priorities for prospective jobs? Well, aside from enough money to make it all worthwhile, it should ideally be fairly close to home, so that I don’t have to waste the first hour of my shift paying to get out there and back home again. I’d like a minimum of customer interaction, as I’ve had quite enough of that over the course of my working life, and I’d like to do something that required me to sit for at least a quarter of my shift. I’m getting older, and those desk jobs that I read about when I was younger are looking more and more attractive. I know that if I wanted to, I could call in a couple favors, and get back into restaurant management (and a decent salary) almost immediately. Depending on how the job search goes, I may have to go that route. I’m not thrilled at the prospect of it, but the fact is that I’ve built up a decent network of contacts over my time in food service, and they know what kind of man I am, and what level of competency I bring to the table. Personally, I think a peripheral recommendation is almost more valuable than a direct one, as it is based only on results and high-impact interactions, where as office politics can sometimes get in the way with people who you’ve worked with.

I did this so that I could look my son directly in the eye and tell him that money can’t buy him happiness, and to always go after his own dreams. I just hope my example is more inspirational encouragement, rather than cautionary tale.

-Tex