Memoirs Of J

We’re home!  I’m planning on writing a couple of posts about our trip out west soon (probably this weekend).  The bottom line is we had an amazing time in Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico.

I’m still not quite settled back into the normal, mundane routines.  I always hate that rush to unpack, do laundry, go grocery shopping, and all those other tasks that go along with returning home after being away for awhile.  Plus, it didn’t help coming home after being on another time zone for a week.  We arrived home late Monday night, so I took Tuesday off to recover and pick up J.

Then today (Wednesday) arrived and I (ugh) had to return to work.  So not only was I jet lagged from the time zone difference, J decided to scream bloody murder most of the night last night.  She just wanted to be held, so I rocked and calmed her, laid her back down, then went through countless iterations of the same as she kept waking back up distressed.

Yeah, and somehow I ended up shutting off my alarm this morning so I didn’t actually get up until 7am (the time I intended on being AT work 45 minutes away), and that was only thanks to C who shook me and told me what time it was!

Needless to say, I had a very drowsy and rushed day.

It may be a few days before I can resume my regular posting!

While driving home from Lowe’s this afternoon (had to get a few keys copied), I encountered (or should I say, was encountered by) some twat in a black Cadillac.

I was approaching the intersection of Willoughby and Aurelius.  There was a car in the intersection waiting to turn left.  The light changed to red and the car did not go – he just sort of sat there almost in the way of cross traffic.  The ass in the black Caddy rolls up behind me (remember, the light is red by now) honking his horn and waving his arms frantically about.  I didn’t give too much thought to it at this point – I was a little amused and just thought “what an impatient asshole” before putting my focus back on the light,  waiting for it to change.

A minute or two later, the light changed to green and the left-turning guy finally went.  I proceeded through the intersection, entering a residential area in which the speed limit is 35mph.  And I obey the limits here because I’ve been pulled over in this area more times that I’d want to admit!

So how do you think black-caddy reacted to being stuck behind someone going the snail’s pace of 35?  Not great.  He rode my ass through the entire no passing zone.  Since I hate tailgaters, I deliberately checked my speed to make sure I was not going even the slightest bit over the limit.  I was, so I slowed down to precisely 35 and set my cruise.  Black-caddy asshole is again waving his arms at this point, undoubtedly mid-tantrum and swearing out loud.

I maintained my speed despite his impatience.  Don’t tailgaters realize that the act of tailgating usually pisses people off so they’ll slow down if anything?  No one is going to suddenly speed off because you are right on top of them.  When there finally was a passing zone, guess what?  There were several cars coming from the other direction so passing wasn’t possible.  B-C was, amusingly, flailing his arms and possibly even pounding on his steering wheel.

I decided to turn into the 2nd entrance of my neighborhood because I was afraid the guy might have some anger issues and try to follow me or something.  I don’t want some psycho seeing where I live (hey, you can never be too careful).  I quickly learned, however, that B-C wasn’t going to follow me.  No, instead he turned into the church right across the street from our neighborhood!

So this aggressive, no-patience f*ck was driving in an outraged fury to get to church?  Wow, is that what Jesus would have done?

It’s so weird and surreal having a kid.  I just keep staring at J trying to discern if she looks like me at all and in what way.  Sometimes I think  she does a little, mostly in the shape of her eyes maybe.  She definitely looks more like C at first glance though.

It’s so fun watching her.  She dances whenever she hears music,  even if it is just a commercial on tv or something.  But dancing for her basically means running in place!  She’s always making funny facial expressions too, especially expressions using her eyebrows.  She raises them in all kinds of situations, like when she sees something new, she’s eating a food she likes, she’s trying to talk or make a point, just a lot of different things.

She’s almost always smiling and acting goofy, giggling.  She just started saying uh oh (in the proper context) – it’s her favorite word.  She likes to toss her rubber ducks over the bathtub wall when she’s in there, exclaiming “uh oh!” while smiling at me.  She also likes saying dada, daddy, mama, kitty, elmo, and duck.  Mostly she just babbles, but she obviously thinks she is making a point because she emphasizes words (well…sounds) and makes hand gestures.

One of my favorite things she’s been doing lately is how she acts when she thinks she is going to get to watch Sesame Street.  I’ll ask her if she wants to watch Sesame Street and she runs to the tv squealing, arms in the air.  As I navigate through the tivo menu to find the program (we record them so we always have some saved), she stands there bouncing up and down in anticipation with this huge grin on her face.  As soon as I hit play and Murray comes on, she squeals more while dancing around the room before glancing at me with the biggest smile ever.  Then she takes a seat on the floor with her arm wrapped around her Elmo doll, thumb in mouth.  When parts she really likes come on (songs, anything with Elmo), she turns to me, laughing.  It’s so freaking cute.   I love that kid!  🙂

After reading a fitness article in a magazine a couple of weeks ago, I learned that you’re supposed to walk 10,000 steps each day.  So out of curiosity I went on amazon and bought a nice pedometer so I could keep track of my steps.  I was a little afraid of what I would discover since I am a cube jockey and pretty much sit on my ass watching my thighs expand all day long.

I started monitoring my steps on Monday.  I was pleasantly surprised for the first few days, clocking in  an average of about 6,500 steps.  Not quite enough, but not too embarrassingly low.  But then Thursday and Friday rolled around…

Ugh.

Thursday I clocked a whopping 1594 steps, and Friday even less!  Thursday was rainy, so I was unable to take a nice stroll on my break at work, and Friday… I don’t know.  I have no excuse – I just didn’t go out.  So now I feel like a blimp just because I know I walked 10% as much as I should have.  Of course I also neglected to do anything inside either, like the bike or some cardio boxing.

On my way home from Sparrow (downtown Lansing) this evening, a woman in a dumpy looking green dodge neon pulled up beside me at a traffic light on Penn Ave.  There were a couple of disheveled young kids in the backseat, and another woman in the passenger’s seat taking a drag of her cigarette.  The light changed to green and she pulled away, her gaudily bright silver rims glinting in the sun, nearly blinding me.

This isn’t an infrequent scenario.  You’d see this sort of thing a LOT if you drove through the ghetto areas of your town, and it just makes you shake your head in bewilderment.

What I want to know is how can so many presumably poor people, possibly on public assistance if I had to guess by the looks of them (seriously, let’s be real and not PC for a few minutes here – you can tell) afford to buy RIMS ?  Rims that are most likely more valuable than the car itself!  The average price for a set of rims is approximately $2000.  An older model dodge neon, for example, might run $2000 but probably less.

This is clearly an ignorant, selfish, frivolous, narcissistic, and un-wise financial decision being made by the very people who have no discretionary income (or any actual income of their own, for that matter) to speak of.

How in the hell does one possibly justify such a reckless waste of money that they don’t even have?  Seriously – I want to know.

Today, someone at work told me to have a relaxing vacation.  I laughed and said we are facing some pretty strenuous hikes – it will be far from relaxing.  Fun,  no doubt, but exhausting.  But it made me think – when am I ever actually relaxed?  I’ve venture to say never.

First, let me explain what I think it means to be relaxed.  To be truly relaxed takes more than just lazing about on the couch watching tv or surfing the web, which is what comes to mind for many people when they think of relaxing.  Relaxation is more mental than physical, that is, you can’t be relaxed lazing about if you are mentally disconcerted.  A good example is people who play golf to relax because golf, although physical with a fair amount of walking, clears the mind of the player.

So where am I on the spectrum?  Well, on the physical side of things I’m fairly relaxed.  Hey, I sit in a cube all day.  Not too challenging physically speaking…  I do have a nightly workout to endure after putting J to bed at night, all this after chasing her around all evening.  So while there are some physical demanding parts of my average day, it ultimately can’t be considered intense overall between the cube jockey job and sleeping.

On the mental side, however, it’s a different story.  I seem to find myself constantly worried, anxious, or even just mildly troubled by …something.  What this something is varies greatly – it may be a serious problem, or it may be something trivial like trying to remember that my pants need hemmed.  But regardless, it is always SOMETHING.

Admittedly for me, it’s about 80% trivial matters on my mind, but nevertheless it is enough to prevent true relaxation.  So the question was, when do I ever feel relaxed?  Unfortunately, I really don’t know…

No, not Microsoft windows.

Our full-house window replacement job is underway.  This is a huge (and very expensive) undertaking.  It’s the biggest improvement project we’ve had done to-date, followed by the roof which we did ourselves.

Most of the new windows are already installed, with just some finishing work left.  The two largest windows are not even started.  The contractor came Monday and worked all day, getting quite a bit done for working all alone (his assistant was apparently AWOL).  He was supposed to come back this morning to finish the job.  I got a call from him at about 9am – his truck had broken down and he had it in the shop but said it should be fixed by noon, so would be here mid-day.  Well that came and went and no contractor.  He never showed up.  C and I went for a walk after dinner (around 7pm) and that’s when we finally heard back from the contractor.  Supposedly, all is well now and he will be here tomorrow morning.  I sincerely hope so because this project needs to be wrapped up by this weekend.  C goes back to work tomorrow so isn’t really going to be able to be up during the day to be available for the contractor’s access to our house.

I was scanning through radio stations on my way home from work today and somehow ended up on some religious talk channel – family life radio I think .  I don’t know exactly what kept me from flipping right through as soon as I heard the god discussions… raw curiosity I suppose.

From what I could tell from only about 10 minutes of listening, this is basically how it works.  Distraught, misguided, or confused Christians call the show seeking advice from “Doctor” Randy.  The doc basically interjects that whatever it is is God’s will, and that the caller needs to exhibit “intentional living.”

The first caller was Carrie from Michigan.  Her husband up and left about a year ago, citing a lack of love for her.  She hopes that he will change his mind and come home.  However, she’s come to the understanding that God knows what is right and that she must accept it as His will.  The doc agreed that God has His plan and that Carrie must live intentionally, being a good mother and friend.

So…  basically you just need to throw your hands up in the air, rejecting any notion of responsibility, influence, or blame for whatever situation you find yourself embroiled in.  God wants what he wants, right?  I’m not suggesting that Carrie could force her husband to come back because that’s absurd, but she could have attempted to work out the problems with him before it was too late by being proactive rather than just sitting back saying ‘oh woe is me *sigh* I guess God has his plan though…’

The next caller was Gary.  He has a porno problem and views internet porno 3-4 times a year (I’m thinking he said year but really meant hour…), despite having placed parental controls on his computer.  His wife is unhappy and he agrees that it is sinful, but hey, he’s a man and men are weak when it comes to nekked’ women!  His words, not mine.  The doc insisted that he seek the guidance of a trusted counselor in his church before it becomes a bigger issue.  Gary explained that he’s tried, but can’t shake the habit.  The conversation ended with the doc exclaiming that “God is bigger than Pornography!” and that Gary must work to overcome his indiscretions for his wife and marriage, but more importantly for God.

It was unreal, almost like a prank call.  Gary was so… um, Southern, to be p.c. about it.  The music from Deliverance popped into my head whenever he spoke.  Ultimately though, this “problem” is such a non-issue that I can’t believe someone had to call a radio talk show to seek advice, especially if he really only views porn as infrequently as 3-4 times per year.  So you look at some nude women on  the computer screen or in a magazine…wow.  That’s atrocious.

I went into our attic for the first time ever last night.  C is installing a whole house fan and needed help hanging it on the chains up there.  It’s hotter than hell up there and full of blown installation that gets in your clothes, eyes, throat, and nose, and you have to be *really* careful of where you step so you don’t fall through the drywall.

We got the fan hung though, and it is operational so all is well.  I bumped my head twice on the same board.  Now I have a scratch on my left temple and a bump on my right!