Through A Squinted Eye

Hello world, now cough for me please.   It has been quite some time since I have decided opine.  However, I thought would throw in an awkward check-up with the blog world that doesn’t really care.  

As for life, it is busy and disappointing with splashes of hope.  Obviously it is not all bad, Wife is healthy and doing well with our soon to be child (that it slowly and pains-takingly evolving from a parasite-to-alien-to-baby). However, on the other portion of life, the band has not been able to get together in six weeks.  I did get together with old friend recently who has a band and wrapped up their recording.  I must say that I am quite envious. 

Yet another hurdle has tripped me and that is age.  Though I am not at the point of buying a convertible and smoking pot while working out, I am realizing the sad equation of time and the human body.  Six years ago I dropped 50 plus pounds in about 3 months and maintained it for a good three years.  I slowly put on a good twenty, but in the last two years I have regained it all.  Now after 6 weeks of hitting the gym 4 days a week… Nothing.  I now no that I am older and it wi is going to get harder.  So discontinue my babble to relax on my couch.  Adieu.

In topsy-turvy times you realize one thing, who and what you care about.  For me it is always one thing solid and through.  However, branches may appear that were otherwise unknown until this identified globe was turned upside down, or rather when life was not as expected. In this dim and lightened experience the shadows of branches enfold and I am left to wonder how attached I am.  In many respects the future is not necessarily tied to outstretches, but the connection is apparent. Can a segregated tree pull another down? yes. Will it always happen so? No. Although, maybe it is time to fall and fertilize new life as new life afoot has begun.  Simply put, ones life is never constant and though at times damging winds swoop, it is by grace that life continues to spur.

And then there was the moment of panic…

It is strange to think that I had generated a thought before my wife on this subject, but there I was laying in bed at only 9:30pm and realized that I don’t know nothin’ about raisin’ no babies. Alright first of all I get alot of thinking time lately because wife has been exhausted and is falling asleep around 9pm every night.  Thus, as I am bored with re-runs on tv due to the writer’s strike (more about this later) I drift into my own mental ramblings that are much like a wind storm of debris until an idea is thrust upon me like a piece paper forced to adhere by the wind.  The idea wasmy afore mentioned panic and I looked at the idea as if a headline in the paper stating that a military draft had been reinstated and all people with my first name were first to serve. A little dramatic I know, but I’ve never even changed a diaper before.  However, with a split second I realized that it would be something I could handle.  I rely on my patience and calmness to learn and resolve, however I’m worried about wife.  Her patience is sometimes non-existence, maybe due to me.  Regardless, I was once again imagining the moments of total fear and joy we will have when our child comes home for the first night.  It’ll all work out… really wife, it will.

And now about this writer’s strike.  I am not stating a pro or con on the issue, but I did think about the believability of this.  I imagined when my child is about pre-teen years, you know just before the downfall, and telling him/her that there was a time when there were no new shows on for months. The response will be in the nature of “and you walked up hill both ways to school, through snow ice everyday.”

Where is my snow Mr. Weatherman?  In hopes of a smothering 8″ of white vacation with solid layer of ice beneath that is sure to bar me at home for a 3 day weekend (being that is Friday), I was severely disappointed.  Even though I woke up at 2am to get a drink straight from the 2-liter of diet lemon lime in my boxers (you would think I was a bachelor) and peered out the window to see less than a half inch of snow had fallen, I still held hope.  However, I should have expected when I got up that it would be the same sad circumstance.  All we got was about a 1/4 inch of slush.  I knew that I would be scraping windows and making my journey into the center of hell, aka downtown in the cesspool.

So the hope of having an extra day away from work was shattered by the hype of a Winter Storm that would rival the past 5 years.  What a joke.  Sadly, we will get enough precipitation to be annoying.  Damn you global warming for taking the only positive of winter away.

Consumed by exhaustion, I laid on my couch and drifted until the barking of my hundred pound dog stirred me.  I was empty of energy and it was only due to a 3 hour band practice (and 4 beers). How did I used to play an hour and a half set jumping an moving mindlessly then drinking for hours after?  Oh wait I was seven years younger.  Now the question is, how will I be able to keep up with my kid that will never slow down unless to sleep or recharge as I like to think about it?

I have to face the fact that I am feeling old because of my laziness.  I don’t work as hard as I should or at least I am no longer pushing myself.  Thus, I feel an age, not necessarily my own, but not one of youth.  I will have to exercise, I will have to skip the luxurious long sleep, and I will have to get off my couch.  Alright, so I may have to work into it a little, but I only have 32 weeks left, if I’m lucky.  Help me Jebus.

As I laid in bed after being awaken by wife’s crazy pregnant dreams  (vivid alternate realities that no one warned us about) I began to drift momentarily when my dogs decided my rest was impertinent to functionality.  After letting them wander around the backyard for a few at 3:23am I was again lying in bed.  This time I struggled with a nagging cold that is not quite to Dante’s Infernal Cold proportion.  Finally after being awake for two and a half hours I began to think that this must be what it will be like when we have our kid.  Preparation for years of broken restless sleep.  Sleep began to be apparently void from my grasp as my mind began to wonder about the future of parenthood. 

As I thought about my sleepless nights to come, I though about the teenage years.  A dread fell upon me like a black shroud.  I know it’s a little dramatic, but if our kid is anything like I was …. Let me not divulge.  It did grow apparent that my sleepless night would push into my child’s teenage years as well.  And then it happened, I realized I would be in my Forties.  I know it simple math, but to think about the fact that I would going through my mid-life crisis in turn as my offspring would be facing the fact that their life was to take a giant leap into pre-adulthood was boggling.  Face it the teenage years were a moment when childhood was severed, but the ability to be anything was dangled ever so out of reach.  Essentially a wonderful time to rebel and screw off without immediate consequences.  Oh but they will come at you in adulthood.  So I am considering the notion of beginning my mid-life crisis now for the sanity of my wife during the teenage years.  Being a negotiator to two of me in a world of confusion cannot be easy.

As most already know, fatherhood is nodding at me like a lawyer at my trial.  I just hope I’ve kept up on the retainer.  Regardless, I am excited, ready, and oh so stupid like every other parent who thought the same thing.  What I have learned from parents, children, and working with after school programs is that there is no way to ever be ready to be a parent or be the best one.  I am convinced I will screw up something, but I hope that this is a hand grenades and horse shoes scenario. Here is to effort.

And when you wonder why I put this George Harrison video of Got My Mind Set On You, all I have to say is becasue I can.  So enjoy and don’t ask silly questions.

I realized I had forgotten about other moment of excitable anxiety.  Perhaps one of the most bizarre sequences of life.  Let me take you back, picture it That Place in the spring of 2007. 

As my wife and I sat in our favorite bar we deliberated upon a topic that was never one of deep discussion before in our lives.  We discussed bringing life into the world, a thought until then that was the polar opposite of intended path in life.  This was not a suggestive conversation, it was completely agreed upon.

By the Fall of ‘07 the news was delivered to parents and friends that we were indeed to have a baby and Wife was pregnant (I have super swimmers).  It was a time when I slowly and exponentially gained a happy anxiety.  Knowing that my life would completely change and not being sure exactly how until I got there.  Unfortunately, in week 8 Wife had a miscarriage.  It is something that will take the wind out of you and leave you utterly confused, but I have hope and look forward to having my happy stupid anxiety.

“It’s deja-vu all over again.”

It has been quite some time that I have felt the strange excitement of anticipation.  Not knowing the outcome or being able to assume the prediction can usually result in a stressful and overwhelming sensation.  One that begs of negative connotation.  However, at this point it is much like being a kid on Christmas Eve, unable to sleep.  You try to tell yourself if you just fall asleep now that the morning will come much faster (disregard the reality her, you’re a kid). Yet, the mind wanders in and out the soon to be joyful moments of desecrating decorated boxes.  With electricity coursing through the body, adrenalin obviously, the notion of sleep becomes the most difficult goal to attain.  Eventually, the body wears down and nature/time takes course.

 At this moment I am waiting to arrive at a musical journey with a band I have know for the past 8 1/2 years on-and-off.  As our paths led us away through difficult legs of our lives’ we have returned to near vicinity.  Yet existence is continual and what was then will never be exact.  Now we will have to redevelop the sound, the band, the chemistry, and the art.  Although it is difficult to think it will never be the same, I am not afraid of what it will become.  This journey is not over due, it is just continuing along once again.