Category: Friends

Busy Stay-Cation

~ riggledo ~ 5 Comments

I usually make the excuse that I write at work because I’m there so much and I have no time for writing at home…  That sounds nice, but since I’ve been off work since December 23rd and I didn’t write a thing between December 22nd and really, yesterday, that’s not much of an excuse.  You’d think there would have been many blog posts during this stay-cation.

This has been one of the best vacations I’ve had in a while, I mean, you know, for not having gone anywhere.  I received an infusion of cash (insurance reimbursement for my therapy bills) just as this stay-cation was beginning which enabled me to comfortably purchase Christmas gifts for all the people on my list to buy gifts for; fancy coffee for my mother, A GPS for Michelle, an Afterglow PS3 controller for Lil’B as well as art supplies for his birthday (which is 12/31), a cordless drill for my oldest niece (this is what she wanted.  Don’t judge me.), a horse game for my second niece and a little plush, radio control fire truck for my nephew.  Everything arrived on time and was properly distributed.  As far as I know everyone appreciated their gifts.  I was concerned that the art supplies would pale in Lil’B’s eyes compared to the controller, but he said he was excited about the art supplies.

I have spent a lot of time at home during this stay-cation, which is fine ’cause it was kind of the plan.  Stay home, clean, organize, generally get things in better shape.  I haven’t accomplished nearly as much as I had hoped I would, but I’ve gotten a lot done and I’m quite happy about hat.  One of my Christmas gifts to myself is something I’ve wanted for a long time but just didn’t convince myself to spend the money on.  I decided recently that I was determined to get the item and so when I got the cash infusion, I took my 20% off coupon and headed right out to Bed, Bath and Beyond where I bought a Roomba, robot vacuum cleaner.

You guys! I’m so glad I bought this thing and I wish I had gotten it a long time ago!  It’s awesome!  It does a very effective job and it requires almost no effort on my part.  I say almost, because I do have to empty the little bin pretty much every day and I do have to push the button to turn it on…  Well I don’t have to.  There is an auto start feature, I just haven’t enabled it.  I also have to make sure there is nothing on the floor to get in its way.  This thing is surprisingly assertive and I have found that I have to make sure that all cords and cables are well out of the way or it will run over them and cause problems.  Though it is smart enough to stop running before it gets too tangled up in something, it will try a bit to vacuum the thing up, before it gives up.  My biggest fear was that it would not be able to get over the lip into the kitchen, which is the messiest room because that’s where the cat litter is, but the Roomba jumps the curb like it’s no big deal.  The other concern I had was how Mischa would react to it.  He has always been afraid of vacuum cleaners and whenever I would turn one on, he would run and hide behind a chair or something.  He doesn’t seem overly concerned about the Roomba which is louder than I had hoped, but far and away quieter than any manual powered vacuum I’ve ever owned.  What’s really funny is that the Roomba, which has a built-in extra-dirt-detection sensor, seems to identify Mischa as a pile of extra dirt and it routinely targets him and heads straight toward him.  Mischa, being the mental giant that he is, just stands there until the Roomba actually bumps into him and then he acts indignant that it came after him.  Roomba has a little side brush which is designed to brush debris away from walls and out into it’s path.  Sometimes this side brush will bump against Mischa’s feet and then he tries to pounce on the brushes.  It’s really quite funny.  But I can run the Roomba everyday without causing any great turmoil for Mischa and that’s what I wanted, so I’m really quite thrilled with my purchase and wish I had done it long ago!  Now I really want a Scooba.  It’s made by the same people and it’s designed to wash hard floors.  The problem is, it says it’s safe on “sealed hardwood floors” and I’m sure mine is not sealed.  Bummer!

 

Michelle had a “lounge” party, on Christmas Eve at her apartment.  She insists it was always a lounge party (wear lounge pants and t-shirts) but her sister kept calling it a pajama party and I swear Michelle called it a pajama party the first time she mentioned it to me.  I pointed out that I don’t wear pajamas and that no one wants to see that, and that’s when she started calling it a “lounge” party.  It was a nice time.  Her three-year-old great-nephew was there and Michelle handed him my Christmas present and asked him to bring it to me.  Somehow, between that time and the time he handed it to me, the paper… ahem… fell off the gift.  She gave me a heated mattress pad, which is something I had been wanting for a while, only, you know how when you build something up in your mind and it’s going to be so wonderful and then you actually get the thing and it can’t live up to the expectations you built…  Yeah, that.  I felt badly ’cause I want to take it back, but I didn’t want to hurt Michelle’s feelings.  When I got over to her house this past Friday to do my laundry (since Saturday was New Year’s Eve) she was in the process of repackaging the one she had bought for herself to take it back.  She didn’t like it.  She let me off the hook and told me that I could return the one she got me if I wanted.  I told her I would probably do that and that I’d bring it back to her (since she had the receipt) and she could take it back and get me something else and wrap it up for me, and then maybe I’ll get to open MY OWN Christmas present.

 

I took Lil’B to Benihana for his Birthday dinner…  Actually it was kind of confusing. I took him, on December 26th and I told him, this is a special dinner to celebrate his Birthday, where he will get his Christmas present, and then at the next dinner on January 2nd, he would get his Birthday present.  I hadn’t been to  a Benihana in many years and while I knew it was a lot of fun, I also thought I remembered that it was a long and drawn out affair so I made reservations for 5:00.  He was out of school so it wasn’t a school night, but I figured we shouldn’t be out too late.  Dinner was over at 6:50 and Lil’B didn’t want to go home yet.  I called his mother and got her blessing and we went to a movie after dinner.  I got to take him to one of my favorite Movie Theaters.  It’s just and AMC theater, but it’s in the middle of San Francisco and it’s in an old building they renovated.  It’s a 12 screen cinema, but there are only four theaters to a floor, and there are three levels of theaters.  Since they are stadium seating, each theater is two stories, so this building is about 8 stories tall and I just find it fascinating.

We saw Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.  This movie was horrendous!  I mean, truly, truly, terrible!  Now I know, this movie is not geared toward my age group, but I thoroughly enjoyed the first two so it was sadly disappointing to me that I didn’t like this one as much, but on the plus side, there was a moment in this wretched movie that actually made Lil’B laugh out loud and if you’ve been coming around here long, you know what an accomplishment that is.  I’d sit through it again just to hear that!

The next day, I went to therapy, did a little shopping and went over to hang out with my friend Karin and her two kids.  I ended up staying through dinner and had a nice time.  She introduced me to some fancy operations that my iPhone is capable of and I wasn’t even aware… Giving me pause to consider the value in some new equipment purchases.  I’ll have to give that some thought.

 

Friday I went to Michelle’s house to do my laundry and hang out.  I got there early and after I started my first load, she and her great-nephew and I went to breakfast.  The boy was quite rambunctious and energetic.  It was fun though.  He runs kind of hot and cold when it comes to me, well, anyway, hot and luke warm.  Apparently, since he was a baby baby, I’m the only male, outside his immediate family that he would let hold him.  Other men would pick him up and he’d immediately squirm and cry and want to get away and with me, he was fine.  Now that he’s a little older and has a personality, he doesn’t dislike me, but he often doesn’t want to engage with me.  But this day, as soon as I walked in he was all over me, asking me questions and talking to me and wanting to sit with me.  It was almost too much, but it was still nice to see.

 

I’ve mentioned in the past how I do not want to be home on New Year’s Eve.  My mother never went anywhere or did anything and all we ever did was sat in the living room and watch TV.  Theoretically, watching “the ball drop” only my mother was forever surfing channels trying to get away from all that horrible secular music that was always on the network shows.  We would watch something from Washington, DC on PBS, which was always live and therefore an hour early, plus fireworks on TV just do not have the same effect.  From 11:00 to 11:58:30 she would surf around trying to find something that wasn’t rock and roll music and then at the last second (sometimes after the last second) turn the TV to one of the networks.  We’d say “happy new year” and then go to bed.  I swore that when I had it in my own power I was not just going to sit around at home on New Year’s Eve.  This has proven to be problematic from time to time because I hate crowds too, but I make the best of it.

In years past I’ve gone out of town for New Year’s Eve spending a few days in another place away from home and with more excitement than I’ve got here.  Most of the time, New Year’s Eve was just the excuse I needed to go on a trip, but I still enjoyed myself.  I’ve been to Las Vegas a couple of times, Los Angeles a couple of times, Reno a couple of times.  Last year we got a room a the Embarcadero Hilton in San Francisco and had a really lovely evening, but it ended up costing as much as a three night trip out of town.  This year, Michelle and I had 10:00 reservations at a restaurant called Skates on the Bay, which is, as you might imagine, on the San Francisco Bay.  I had never been, though Michelle had a couple of times.  The plan was to have dinner and then stroll out side to the water front where we would watch the fireworks from San Francisco at midnight.  In an all too familiar scene, Michelle was in the bathroom at midnight and I stood by the windows of the restaurant where we had JUST gotten our check and watched the fireworks by myself (le sigh).  It’s okay.  This is kind of terrible for me to say, but I feel like midnight on New Year’s Eve is a moment that, ideally should be shared romantically and I don’t have any romantic feelings for Michelle, maybe being alone at that moment was better.  The fire works display was nice, though I feel like it looses some of its splendor when you can’t hear, and just as importantly, feel them.  The display was the same one we watched last year, which means it was shot off from a barge outside the San Francisco Ferry Building, about six and a half miles away.  I’m always caught a little by surprise at how small they are from what seems like such a short distance.

After dinner, I took Michelle back to her sister’s house, dropped her off and came home.  I would have liked to have been somewhere else for a little vacation and I got a wild idea that may not really be financially feasible that I’d really like to go to Australia for next New Year’s Eve, but as long as my 19 1/2 year old cat is with me, that can’t happen.

Last night was another dinner with Lil’B.  We went to a local place I’d never been to called The South Shore Cafe.  It was very ordinary, but it was something new for both of us and I’m trying to expose him to new things, so it was fun.  We talked a little bit about his birthday.  He said he couldn’t remember what kind of cake he had but that it had Oreos on it.  I asked him if they had ice cream and he said no, so I had to rectify the no birthday ice cream problem.  We went to a local ice cream shop called Loard’s (I learned it is supposed to be pronounced “Lo-ard’s” as it is a compilation of the two founders last names.)  Loard’s is a 100% local company that makes its own ice cream in a local factory and it was really quite good.  When I was looking at the flavors on the board I was caught by surprise and was a little grossed out by “Avocado flavor” but I had to taste it.  It was surprisingly good, although, honestly, it tasted mostly like Vanilla.

 

This morning I had an orthodontist appointment, I wasn’t holding my breath, though I was hoping today would be the big day.  No such luck.  In fact based on the conversation I had today with “Dr. Jeff”, (I always wondered how the staff differentiated between the father and the son, now I know) it looks like two to three more months.  The day Dr. Jeff put them on he told me 12-18 months, this is the 13th month.  On the plus side though, I paid my final payment today and have one few debts hanging over my head! Yay!

 

Tonight I have dinner with an old friend of mine, and tomorrow Michelle and I are going, over-night, to Cache Creek Casino and Resort.  It’s an Indian run casino about 90 minutes north of here.  We’ll go and play for the afternoon, then spend the night in a hotel room, have breakfast and head back.  That’s about as long as I can leave Mischa on his own since he’s confined to the cage and he eats canned food, but it’ll be nice to get a little tiny break anyway.

 

*Oh by the way, I guess I’m supposed to say that despite my glowing report (and despite the two additional people I’ve about talked into it – my mother says I should get a commisison) I am not being compensated in anyway by Roomba, or Bed Bath and Beyond or any other products or merchants I may have mentioned here…  Dammit.

On Being Published

~ riggledo ~ 6 Comments

Speaking of sentimental and thoughtful gifts…

Karin walked into my office today and handed me a small blue tube-box with sparkly blue ribbon tied around it and said, “I wanted your book to be published.”

Karin is one of my biggest supporters, as far as my writing is concerned.  We’ve talked at length about my book, tentatively titled, “The Teacher”.  She’s only seen what I’ve posted here on this blog, plus one additional chapter.  She’s chomping at the bit to read more and I get no small amount of pleasure out of tormenting her by dangling tidbits in front of her but not letting her see the rest.

It is thanks to Karin and people she knows, who know people, that I am going to be attending he writers workshop/class/group/thingy in February that I hope will give me greater insight into my writing ability, this book and the industry in general.  I’m treating this workshop (or whatever it is) as a step in the process to publication.  I hope that turns out to be true.

Anyway, Karin is a huge supporter and she wants to see my book published, which led her here.

I opened the blue tube-box with sparkly blue ribbon tied around it and turned it on end.  It’s contents slid into the palm of my hand, wrapped in simple tissue.

Karin found a store on Etsy.com that makes these:

20111222-151144.jpg

It’s a Christmas tree decoration, about the size of a matchbook, with a cover page (I guess it has to be titled The Teacher, now!) and the first sentence of my book printed inside, and it is bound, hard cover.  I love it!

And it gave us an idea.  Somewhat accidentally, I began work on my second novel, (I know, go figure!) yesterday.  Perhaps, I can get one of these ornaments made for every book I write.

What do you think?  Will “The Man With Too Many Names” fit on one of those teeny tiny pages?  🙂

The Reason For the Season?

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Like pretty much everyone else lately, I’ve been thinking about Christmas and holiday spirit and gifts and so on.

Growing up in a Christian family, I was always tought that Christmas is about celebrating Jesus; “Jesus is the reason for the season” and all that.  I don’t exactly dispute that, it’s just that, growing up in a Christian family, I always felt like Jesus should be celebrated all the time and “Jesus is the reason for every season”.  I don’t need a special day to remember Jesus.  I remember Jesus every day.

Christmas was usually a bad holiday for my family.  My parents split up when I was two yeas old and when I was a really little kid, everybody thought I was lucky – and I kind of did too – because I got to have two Christmases.  I remember huge holiday events at my dad’s house in Cincinnati, Ohio where I lived until just before my 9th birthday (in Cincinnati, not my dad’s house.)  My brother and sister and I would go to my father’s house for the week leading up to Christmas.  My father’s wife’s oldest son worked for a local establishment called Swallen’s.  Swallen’s was a “department store” of sorts though it was more along the lines of a Walmart Superstore.  Their tag line was “Anything you want, everything you need, you’ll find it at Swallen’s” and it was pretty much true.  The location where this pseudo relative worked had everything I could think of (except automobiles) right down to a boat dealership and a lumber yard across the street from the main store that had housewares, electronics, clothes, groceries, you name it.  The store offered employees and their “families” a 20% discount so we did all our Christmas shopping there.

On Christmas Eve, we would have a big gifting extravaganza.  I remember one year specifically.  My father was renting this enormous house on hundreds of acres of land.  The living room was on the back corner of the house, with a screened in porch off the back.  On the inside wall of the room was an enormous fireplace and on the outside wall was a gigantic bay window-type floor to ceiling protrusion where the Christmas Tree was set up.  Santa had been very generous that year and there were so many presents under and around and behind and for several feet in front of that tree, I, at about six years old, was beside myself with anticipation.

The Swallen’s employed pseudo sibling was fond of trick gift wrapping and I remember that year he gave two gifts that completely stumped the crowd.  He gave my sister a small stuffed bear, but to wrap it, he bought a large flat box of Puff’s tissues and carefully opened the end, removed most of the tissues, and stuffed the bear in underneath the top layer before sealing the end with glue so it looked unopened.  My sister later admitted that she was almost in tears at the idea that this person had given her a box of tissues for Christmas until he told her to open it and she discovered the real gift inside.

He had also given my father an axe for Christmas, but the way it was wrapped it seemed certain he had gifted my father with a guitar.  It was only after the outer layer of paper was removed and my father discovered a layer of cardboard and another layer of paper that we realized he was up to his tricks again.

Ironically, I do not remember a single gift that I received that year at my father’s house.  I suspect it was a lot of clothes, mostly second-hand and garage sale purchases, I’m sure, and all to be kept at my father’s house (my mother wouldn’t let us bring clothes to my dad’s house because they always came back dirty, she said.)

There were seven of us in this party and by the time we finished unwrapping all the gifts, we were swimming in a waist-high sea of wrapping paper.  I have vivid memories, which I’m certain in my older and wiser years are not real, of us shuffling that sea of paper, with our feet, into the now roaring fireplace.  Surely that would have resulted in burning the house down, but that’s how I remember it nonetheless.

With all the paper burned and all our gifts put away it was off to bed and up early for the long, cold drive back to my mother’s house on the other side of town.

My father, at that time, drove a beat up old Ford Maverick he didn’t even own, comprised of spare parts from two different Maverick’s left on the property he rented.  It was an ugly amalgamation of baby blue and lime green side panels with rusted out floor boards and it ran on scavenged parts held together with chewing gum and desperation.  There were holes in the floor we had to actively keep our feet out of as we watched the roadway fly by beneath us.

That Christmas morning was bitterly cold, the temperatures having dropped to below zero, and an ice storm had passed through overnight.  After 14 years in California, I can’t even conceive of sub-zero temperatures and ice storms anymore.  I remember sitting in the back seat of that beat up old Maverick with my sister, huddled together and teeth chattering like…  Well, like this:

My oder brother sat in the front passenger seat next to my dad, and at some point I remember my father becoming concerned about my sister’s and my feet becoming frost-bitten and so he told my brother to wrap his scarf around our feet and rub them to keep them warm…  Well warm enough.  I didn’t really feel like we were that bad off, but my brother, who I sort of hated and who resented if not hated me, was being forced to do something nice for me so I wasn’t about to speak up.

Eventually, we were back at my mother’s house and we walked in to another bright Christmas Tree, overflowing with gifts.  It was the early 80’s and my mother worked for a tech company that still gave out Christmas bonuses.  While we were at our dad’s house she had been out shopping up a storm making it a very exciting Christmas for us kids.  I remember anxiously looking through all the gifts, wondering which ones had my name on them and my mother telling us we couldn’t open any presents until after we ate the big breakfast she had prepared for us.

I don’t particularly remember any of the presents she got for us either, interestingly.

A couple of years later, my mother and siblings and I moved from Cincinnati to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where we never had another good Christmas, ever.  My parents unofficial custody agreement when we moved was different, depending on who did the telling.  They began to fight over who we should spend the holidays with.  My father felt that he should get us for Christmas, since we lived 900 miles away and he hardly ever got to see us (he had a point.)  My mother felt like it wasn’t fair to her that he should get us for every holiday (she had a point.)  At some point they decided that we should decide… We, their 9, 12 and 14-year-old children, should decide who we were going to spend our Christmases with, placing us in the unenviable position of having to disappoint and hurt one of our parents.

We always stayed with our mother, quite possibly for no reason other than the fact that if we chose our father we would be subjected to her pouting and guilt tripping for the weeks leading up to his arrival to whisk us away and if we chose our mother, we’d never see his pouting and feeling sorry for himself.  This is just one of many examples of us being responsible for our mother’s feelings and behavior.

I don’t know when Christmas bonuses went out of style, but my mother never received one after we moved to Oklahoma (and I’ve never received one at all.)  Christmas became harder as she had three teenage children to support and no extra money to spend on gifts.  Before long, we had chosen to stay home with our mother who couldn’t afford to do anything for us and so, in spite of having chosen to stay with her so that she wouldn’t pout and guilt trip us for leaving, she pouted anyway, because she couldn’t afford to do anything special.

Come to think of it, it wasn’t until this time that my mother really started pushing the “celebrating Jesus’s birthday” angle.  I think I always resented it because it felt more like a justification, or at least an excuse for why it was okay that we didn’t have gifts at Christmas.  It felt disingenuous because it was new and contrived, just something to soothe the ache; whether it was her ache or our own, I do not know.

I grew to hate Christmas.  All the holly jolly and the cheer, the incessant Christmas music everywhere you go, the pressure to be happy and “feel the holiday spirit”, all the togetherness and FUCKING HAPPY PEOPLE!!!  And most of those fucking happy people?  Aren’t!!  They just act like they are because it’s what people expect of them.  I hated the season, the build up, the antics and attitudes, and I just couldn’t wait for it to all be over!  My mother took to calling me Scrooge, because she thought it was funny to make a literary reference and a dig at her most sensitive child, all at the same time.

So naturally, I worked for three years in retail, because where else should a Scrooge work during the holidays, than AT THE MALL!!!

I had enough.  Not just of the holidays but of the family togetherness and the expectations and demands and general atmosphere of my life.  I moved away… As far away as I could get, without crossing a body of water.  I spent my first Christmas with another family, because that’s what you’re supposed to do… apparently.  Because being alone on Christmas is somehow shameful and pathetic.  I spent the afternoon with a family I didn’t really know, in an environment I didn’t really enjoy and watching as they all exchanged gifts and I had nothing to give and received nothing in return.  They were perfectly lovely to me and I’m still friendly with that family today, but I came to realize that Christmas is a time for family togetherness.

The first two years after my first niece was born, I went back to Tulsa for Christmas.  I stayed with my mother and visited with friends and spent time with my family… and experienced all the same old strife and resentment and pressure and bitterness and general sucky, sucky time.  The second year, my mother was completely unreasonable, and when I stood up for myself, she acted as if she was going to hit me.  I vowed then and there never to spend another Christmas with my current family again.

I realized, Christmas is a time for Family togetherness, as long as the family is your own family and you can stand to be around them.  I spend Christmas alone now and I’m content to do it.  Sure I’d like to spend it with people, but I’d like to spend it with the right people and at this point, I haven’t found the right people.  I’d like to spend my Christmases with my Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Monica and Joey.  (I left out Chandler, because several people have told me that I remind them of Chandler – or at least my sense of humor does.  Could I be any more different?)

Deb asked me at our least session how I felt going into the holidays.  Our next session won’t be until after Christmas and she just wanted to know how I was doing with the looming occasion.  I told her I’m fine.  And I meant it.  I am.  Yes, spending the holiday alone is a bummer, but I’m used to it, more importantly I’m fully aware of the fact that I choose it.  If I was going to spend my holidays with other people, I would want it to be like the friends on Friends.  A bunch of people who are like me either in that they don’t have family locally, or they do not want to spend this time with their family if they do.  Until I find those people – Deb referred to them as my “chosen family” – I will spend it on my own and be perfectly content to do so.

 

Call Me Coach

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

This week, on Glee, there was a subplot story line, in which Coach Beiste admits to having feelings for a guy who “doesn’t think of her like that.”  They then presented a montage of scenes in which the guy in question is clearly flirting with Coach Beiste or suggesting a date with Coach Beiste and in every instance she is completely oblivious to what’s really going on.

These scenes were comical, to be sure, and of course, as an outside observer, it’s easy to see what’s going on.  But I started to think about it.  I put myself in Coach Beistes cleats (which wasn’t really that hard to do) and I wondered, “If you’re someone who doesn’t fit the norm of what society thinks a person should be ; if your self-esteem is so low – at least in the area of romance – how likely would you be to be able to recognize the signs?”  I’m pretty sure that I’ve had my share of Coach Beiste moments.  I’ve been completely oblivious to signs when someone was flirting with me.  Add to that, the fact that my Gaydar is shot and I’m in a pretty bad way.

I once wrote a post about lunch with a guy, Kevin was his name – how cute would that be (barf) – who had invited me out to thank me for being such a big help to him in a work related capacity.  He worked for the local University of Phoenix campus and I had enabled him to come set up an information table in our building lobby on multiple occasions.  To this day, I do not know if that’s all that it was.  There’s a realistic possibility that I was on a date and didn’t even know it.

I’ve written more than a few times about Jesse the fire fighter who, apparently, liked my eyes and then never gave me the time of day again.

Enter Brendan.  You might notice that it’s now November and that means yet another round of emergency drills have come and gone.  At some point in the past year, I gained responsibility for the Building Emergency Response Team at an additinoal building.  It’s a small group of people.  My company has an educational theater group that travels around to schools putting on, well– educational theater.

This October, when I requested volunteers to help observe our emergency drills, a few people from the other building volunteered to help us out.  We had a pre-drill briefing at the beginning of that week and Brendan was in attendance.  He was the first person in the conference room and he was very attentive.  I admit, I thought him a little strange at first as he was completely focused on me and what I was saying, something I’m definitely not used to.  He maintained eye contact with me the entire time, something else I’m not used to.  He smiled whenever I looked at him or spoke to him.  Being from another building, he asked me if I’d show him what we’d be doing the day of the drill; take him on a miniature tour of a floor. He followed and stood close when we talked, again always maintaining eye contact.

The day of the drills he came back to the building and was very friendly.  We talked a lot during downtime, and I got a really strong sense of chemistry and connection.  I was sure he was interested in me.  And while the idea still scares the crap out of me, I was interested in him and willing to see where that could go.

We always have pizza for all the volunteers at the end of the fire drills and as I was collecting the critique sheets and letting people know when and where the food would be, he hesitated and then said he was probably not going to stay.  “I have to watch my…” his words trailed off as he gestured to indicate his general torso area, adding “I’m a man on a mission.”

I told him we always have salad too.  “You can just have one or two small slices of pizza and then have salad,” I told him.  We always have a lot left over and if he didn’t come have some he was just going to leave us with even more after the fact.

He thought on this for a moment and then said, “Well.  I was going to skip the gym tonight, but I guess I could go on the treadmill for an hour.  And maybe I could take some home to my hubby.”

I did my best to convey no reaction to this revelation and said, “Yeah, you could do that.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  I’m not interested in getting involved with a married man.  But still…

A week later Brendan signed up for a Safety Training class I attended.  When he walked into the room where I was already seated, he made eye contact with me and smiled and then walked right past me and sat at the other end of the table.  I was disappointed.

The Educational Theater Group is celebrating its 25th anniversary and they had a reception last night.  As part of the Facility Management staff that maintains their space, and as the Emergency Response Program coordinator, I was invited to attend the reception.  There were lots of good reasons why I should go to the reception, and I’m glad I did, but the truth is, I accepted the invitation with the hope of getting to spend some time with and talk to Brendan.  I didn’t see him at all until close to the end of the event and when I did, he was guiding a costumed character around the space.  He seemed really happy to see me and gave me a hug and then…

The conversation fell flat.  I felt incredibly awkward and had no idea what to say.  Before long, they moved on and not long after that, I went home.

And then there’s Ed.  Ed is the supervisor/account manager for our Janitorial Service.  I meet with him most Thursday mornings to do an inspection.  Physically, Ed possesses many qualities I’m attracted to.  He also has a very friendly and outgoing personality.  I like talking to Ed.  I do not like doing Janitorial Inspections.  And he knows it.  But they’ve been delegated to me and so he and I walk a floor and he makes notes of things he sees that need attention, usually catching more than I do, because I don’t know what to look for in the first place.

While we walk, Ed and I talk about random things that have nothing to do with Janitorial Services, and while I do not feel like I know Ed, I feel like we’re friendly.  A month ago, due to multiple conflicts on my schedule, I e-mailed Ed and told him I was going to have to cancel our next few appointments.  He e-mailed me back saying, “Not a problem. I know you’re quite disappointed.”

“Completely crestfallen,” I replied.

Ed and I were scheduled to meet for the first time in weeks today, but he called me yesterday to verify that we were still on and then told me that he had a bid walk for a contract to do this morning and asked if it would be okay to push back our inspection.  I was fine with it.  I’m never disappointed not to have the inspection.  Ed said he’d be at my office at 10:30.

By the time my noon meeting rolled around and I hadn’t seen or heard from Ed, I figured it was a safe bet that our inspection was cancelled.  When I walked back into the office at 1:30, I was quite surprised to see Ed in John’s office.

One of the things that appeals to me about Ed is that he always wears a suit.  No one around here expects him to and he is, apparently, not required to by his employer, but he tells me he prefers to wear suits; and he wears them quite well.  When he and John came out of John’s office, I walked over and took hold of Ed’s arm, found his watch under his shirt sleeve and said, “Well, it looks like it still works.”

Today Ed is wearing a textured, light grey suit, a white shirt and a blue and gold striped bow tie; a real bow tie which he tied himself.  He looked really good.  I had to look at something at K’s desk and he had to finish his discussion with John and then he came over to the counter at K’s desk.  I told Ed he was much too late for us to do an inspection and I was about to go get some lunch.  He asked me where I was going and said he’d walk with me.  I told him I was just going to go across the street and get a sandwich to bring back to my office, and again he said he’d walk with me.

In the elevator, I reached up and moved the edge of his bow tie out of the way to see if it was tied or clipped and he said, “Oh yeah, baby, that’s tied!”  He watched four you tube videos over the weekend to learn how to do it.  I asked him if he’d been hitting the gym (this was a topic that had come up in previous conversation.)  When he said no, he asked why.  I said, “You look good.  You look fit.”  He said, “Yeah.  If you’re gonna wear a bow time you have to walk tall!” (So true.)  Being of Asian heritage, he is not a tall man, but he hides it well.

Ed walked over to the deli with me, chatted with me while I waited for my sandwich and then walked back to my office with me, for no business reason whatsoever.

Many times I have wondered if he might be gay.  Many times I’ve been sure he wasn’t.  I know nothing about his personal or romantic life.  I may be imagining it all, but sometimes when he leaves me, I think there’s some interest, some possibility.  Other times he leaves me and I’m sure it’s all in my head.

Just call me Coach.

This Is Not the Post You Are (Probably) Looking For

~ riggledo ~ 8 Comments

…Though that will come sooner or later…

This post is about hanging out with Lil’B.  I’ve amended our hanging out schedule a little bit and now, I see him every other Sunday afternoon and on the week that I don’t see him on Sunday, we’re going to have dinner on that Monday night.  I have been aware that our every other weekend schedule has been insufficient for him.  I could tell that he wanted more, I’ve just been slow in making that happen.

Last night was our first Monday dinner and I could tell when I picked him up he was excited about it.  He was all smiles and he even dressed up… in fact, I found out later, he dressed up more than I thought.  He borrowed a pair of black fabric tennis shoes from his 19-year-old sister “because all [his] shoes were dirty.”  (Fortunately, they didn’t look particularly like girls shoes.  Amazingly, they fit him perfectly, his toes right where they should have been.)

I was a little bit unprepared so we went to dinner at Applebee’s in Alameda, not too far from our houses.  I plan to take him to all kinds of fun places and explore our neighborhoods and the ones around us.  I want to try to balance exposing him to the neighborhood he lives in with lots of his own culture (he lives in what could be referred to as Little Mexico), but also get him out of the neighborhood and show him other walks of life.  Basically, I want to teach him not to be ashamed of where he comes from, but that there is more to the world and to life than what he sees now.

When I picked him up, I asked him if he had any homework we should bring with us and take a look at.  He happily pulled his math homework (something he doesn’t need any help with) out of his backpack and brought it with us.  In the car I asked him the usual questions:

“How was school?”

“Good.”

“What’d you study?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’d you have for lunch?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Did you have an afternoon snack?”

“No.”

“Hmmm.  Well, we’ll see how hungry you are when there’s a menu in front of you.”

He’d never been to an Applebees and he thought it was pretty cool.  He was especially impressed with the fact that the waitress brought him a second Pepsi when his first one was gone, even though no one asked for it.  (I think that’s pretty cool too, but probably for different reasons.)

They fold the kids menu into a little packet with four crayons inside it, which Lil’B thought was pretty cool and he enjoyed the games on it.  He ordered Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese, which was a pretty neet racket, since they charged me $4.99 for what amounted to about a quarter (if that) of a box of Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese which you can purchase at the store for about a buck fifty, but whatever.

When we finished dinner, he gathered his things so we could leave.  He had his homework packet, a pencil and his menu (which he had folded back up into a packet and tucked the crayons away).  He took about three steps and dropped his homework.  He stooped to pick it up and took a couple more steps before he dropped his pencil.  He stopped and picked it up and took a couple more steps and before he dropped the menu packet.  As he stooped and picked that up, I chucked congenially and as I joked, “got anything else you wanna drop?”, I gesticulated wildly, and a ring flew off my right ring finger and hit the wall in front of him.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t catch the irony in that, but I thought it was pretty funny!

We talked about Halloween.  He’s really looking forward to trick or treating and getting lots of candy!  He told me that this year his school instituted a rule for costumes that they can not include weapons and they can’t include blood (too scary for the kindergarteners) so that really reduces his options for costumes.  He said he thought he might be a soccer player.   I was pretty happy with that since last year he was a monster and the year before that he was the killer from Scream that had a pump that made fake blood run down the face.  (Later his older sister told me he was probably going to be a zombie soccer player.  I’m less impressed.)

In the course of that conversation he told me he had never had candy corn.  How is that possible?  At almost ten years old, he’s never had candy corn?!?  I had to correct that post haste, and fortunately, there was a Walgreens in the same parking lot with the Applebee’s.

When we walked into Walgreens they had a display of Halloween decorations, including a Scream guy with a knife in his hand.  You press a button and it lights up, makes a noise and the knife comes at you.  Lil’B pressed the button and jumped when it lurched toward him.  For all his talk about monsters and zombies and stuff, I thought that was pretty funny.

All in all, he seemed to have a really good time, as did I.  The outing seems to have been a great success, which is really good, because I just realized, this may be the most boring blog post I’ve ever written….