I have always had an aversion to holidays that “celebrate” feelings for a particular person.  Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, the whole lot!   I’ve never understood the drive to pick a day to show your love to someone.  If you love someone why not show them that love everyday?  It is for this reason that I find gift giving so difficult for occasions like Mother’s Day.  I usually do if the money is there but it is often with some bregrudgement.

When I was in high school, my junior and senior years my school choir went on a week-end trip to a choral competition the week-end of mother’s day and so in order to make up for my absence (which was usually a relief) I sent flowers to my mother.  After I graduated I felt like I had to continue the tradition, mostly because it had been established and I had to continue it, right?

Over the years, I have usually been the only of my mother’s children to acknowledge Mother’s Day.  It’s only been the last year or two (or three) that I’ve been unable, financially speaking, to keep up my streak.  It’s also been the last several years that my  relationship with my mother has changed.  You see, a few years ago my mother and I had a bit of a falling out.  I love my mother, and that will never change, but the closeness we once had, no longer exists.  The details are a story for another time, but suffice it to say that I do not feel the obligation, or the gratitude that I once did and it is for this reason that I became angry when I received the following two e-mails from my mother’s boss/close friend.  The first arrived yesterday afternoon:

Dear Kevin,

Hope you are doing well.  I think of you so often and call you blessed!  We will always be glad to have you back here in Tulsa if you get tired of San Francisco.

I am writing to you and your siblings to ask each of you to send flowers and a loving card to your Mom for Mothers Day next Sunday.  I know this would really minister to her.  She does not know I am writing to you.

I think you usually do anyway, but if all of you made an extra effort this year it would really uplift her.  She stuck by all of you no matter how tough it got and raised you to know Jesus and the Word.  That was a supreme effort and she loves you all so much.

Thanks!  Love,

[Name removed]

Next Sunday is Mother’s Day

That annoyed me enough on its own, but then today I received this:

Dear Kevin,

Hope you are doing well.  Think of you so often and declare you blessed!

Next Sunday is Mothers Day, I am asking you to send flowers and a loving, appreciative card to your Mom.  She could really use that reminder this year that she is loved and remembered.

She is the one that stuck with all of you no matter how tough things were and taught you the Word.  Sometimes we all need to go
all out to express our love and thanks.

Love you,

[Name Removed]

This woman doesn’t know half of the real truth about our lives growing up with this woman for our mother, and it is for this reason that I don’t appreciate the final sentences in both e-mails, which, I think, steps beyond a recommendation or encouragement and into the realm of pure and simple guilt tactics.  This is having the opposite of the desired effect and is instead making me want to refuse to do anything at all.

The truth is I don’t think my mother would be particularly pleased to know that her friend had done this, and if I were just a little more evil, I would forward the e-mails to my mother so that she would find out and be angry at her friend.  Fortunately, I am not actually that vindictive.  So instead, I’m going to sit here like an impotent jerk and fume about the whole blasted thing on my own and have no idea what to do for a gift.

I guess the moral of this lame story is to say that if you have people in your life that you love, don’t wait for a special day to let them know it and don’t make a big deal out of the commercial days designed, in theory, to show your love and appreciation for the person, but mostly just to sell cards and gifts.

Oh! And also?  Stay out of other people’s business!  It doesn’t endear you to them in anyway.  Just sayin’!

This has seemed at once the longest, and the shortest week-end in quite some time.  I stayed up Friday night till nearly 2:00 in the morning watching television only to sleep till about noon-thirty on Saturday.  I hate sleeping late on the week-ends because the day goes by so quickly when I do, but I also love sleeping late on the week-ends because it just feels so damn good!  Also because I slept so late, I didn’t do anything of any value whatsoever yesterday and I definitely don’t like that.

I was determined that today would be more productive and so even though I stayed up till nearly 1:30 in the morning again last night and even though I really didn’t feel like doing anything of any value again today, I forced myself out of bed at 10:30 this morning (still later than I would have preferred to have slept) and I took a shower and headed out.

Having not eaten since about 7:30 last night I went first to Arby’s, where I got a Medium roast beef and a Jamocha shake.  When I was young I used to love Arby’s and as I’ve aged that hasn’t changed, only they’re harder and harder to come by anymore.  There is one not far from the Target where I generally shop and I go there periodically when doing my Target shopping but lately their shake machine has been out of service.  Today I walked in and there the nefarious machine sat in all its functional glory!  After chowing down on my sandwich and shake I went on to Target to do my shopping, went on to CostCo for gas, and then to Lucky’s for some groceries.

It was at Lukcy’s that I saw something which, in my mind, defies explanation.  I came out of the produce section ready to go check out when a woman stepped, and I use that term loosely, into my path causing me to have to stop short.  Having stopped short I also had an opportunity to observe her.

This woman stood, or should I say, wobbled, in front of me as she looked at the aisle signs trying to determine where to find whatever item she was looking for.  She stood there wearing a dress with diagonal stripes of the brown family, each stripe about four inches wide and meeting at points before diagonally striping back down the other side.  The dress was reminiscent in my eyes of something from the 70’s (I imagine) and might have looked lovely on the right woman, with the right amount and placement of curves, but this woman had too many and in the wrong places and the dress did nothing to conceal or augment them.

But what really caught my attention was the boots.  This was not a woman of the vertically challenged variety to begin with but she was wearing pirates boots, with four inch heals that looked as if they were made of swizzle sticks.  She was in a state of perpetual motion as she didn’t seem capable of standing up-right and still on these heals.  As I walked past her I looked down to see that she was at no time standing directly on the heals but rather was constantly trying to regain her balance as the heals tilted to one side or the other.

I walked away, went to the self-check out where I proceeded to pay for my items and went out to my car to unload my cart and drive home.  As I was climbing into the driver’s seat of my SUV I looked up to see the same woman walking across in front of me to her own vehicle and I noticed that she was unable to walk normally and unable to take full strides but rather was stepping about 18 inches at a time and I just thought to myself, “I hope it was worth it!”

Now don’t misunderstand me.  I am absolutely a guy who wants to look the best I can, given what I have to work with, at all times.  I get that.  But what I do not understand is the female proclivity for “cuteness”.  Placing a higher priority on looking cute than being comfortable no matter what the cost is a concept that is lost on me.  I have gotten completely dressed for work and been on my way out the door when I realized something wasn’t comfortable enough to wear the whole day and therefore turned around and changed my clothes.

Watching this woman, it was clear that she was in pain.  It was obvious she was unable to stand up and walk like a normal person in these boots, so why, I ask you, WHY would she wear them?  I simply cannot understand the cute over comfort, style over substance philosophy by which so many women make their wardrobe choices.

I have to admit though, the sadistic part of me laughed the hardest when I realized that the car she was short-stepping her way to, was already occupied.  A man, I presume to be her husband, was in the driver’s side of the car waiting for her and I couldn’t help wonder how that conversation went down.  On what planet did it make sense to either one of them that he should sit outside in the car while she hobbled her way into and through the store to get the items they needed?

I feel silly. I feel silly because it amuses me when he is silly. But with each passing day I am more and more aware that his days are numbered and so any time he acts healthy and happy is a good day.

He seems weaker and his balance seems to be waning and now I realize that despite his moments of apparent youthful exuberance, I may be looking at weeks or months rather than months or years that I have left with him.

His death will take a tremendous, indefinable toll on me, but tonight, while he chases one of his bell stuffed toy balls around the house, I laugh! It makes me feel silly… And it feels good!

It’s a bad time to be sick.  It really is.  This country, especially these days, is so prone to buying into any little piece of bad news and making a mountains out of molehills.  Things have been so bad for so long that any little hint of bad news simply must be viable and therefore we must buy into it.

With the announcement that we are experiencing a “near pandemic” threat of Swine Flu (which is sounding an awful lot like regular flu, but with more fear) everywhere you look, people are cowering in corners with an inch thick layer of sanitizing gel smeared all over there bodies, surgical masks covering every orifice and “Beware of Dog” signs between them and you.  OK perhaps that’s an exaggeration, but it’s true that everywhere you look people are living in fear of walking away from any and every situation with a deadly virus that they’re sure can’t be treated.

With this in mind, I can only imagine what it is like for anyone who happens to be sick, experiencing an allergy attack or otherwise just snotty… Oh! No, wait– I don’t have to imagine it because I’m one of them.

A few years ago, after a prolonged period of raucous coughing jags I finally went to the doctor to see if there was something that could be done to put an end to it.  One of the first things he asked me was if I there was a history of asthma in my family, to which I replied that there was not, to my knowledge.  He then listened to my lungs for a few seconds and said, “Yep.  You’ve got ‘longwindicus termino-medicalus passthruitus,’” which loosely translated means long winded medical terminology that went in one ear and out the other, “which is akin to asthma.  Most people who have it only experience any symptoms when they’ve gotten a cold and are trying to shake the cough.”

“Akin to asthma”?  Why couldn’t he just say that?  That I can remember.  It turns out that for years, long after all the other cold symptoms have gone away, I’ve fought with the lingering cough and the reason is because of this basically nameless respiratory issue.  So he prescribed an Albuterol inhaler and told me to use it whenever I feel a cold starting to come on to try and minimize the duration of the cough.

Fast forward to about a month ago when there was a sudden and dramatic change in the weather.  It happens every year around this time.  And every year around this time I get a cold of sorts.  And every year around this time I get the lingering, hacking, reason-defying, WILL NOT GO AWAY, cough!!!  It happened again only this time I could not find my inhaler.  I let it go for a week or two hoping the cough would go on it’s own but when it was still just as strong as ever I decided I’d better get a new inhaler.

Anyway, here I am a month later and I’m still— (cough, cough)—excuse me, coughing and now everywhere I look I am inundated with scare tactics news story about how WE’RE ALL GOING DIE!!! and I’m very aware that everyone around me is freaking out because OH MY GOD HE’S GOT SWINE FLU!! and WHY IS HE CONTAMINATING MY LIVING SPACE!?!?!  Only I don’t have Swine Flu, which by the way has been renamed H1N1 flu, which is a very unfortunate new name for it because depending on what font you’re using it looks like it says HINI (HINEY) Flu and really isn’t flu in your hiney much worse than swine flu, anyway?

So, truly it is a very bad time to be sick in anyway other than with hiney flu and of course that’s worse but at least that’s what everyone is looking for these days and if you have anything else everyone will assume you have hiney flu anyway and want to stay away from you and I’d rather just stay home and not deal with it but I have to work and I don’t want to give up all my PTO time for something that won’t get any better, any faster by staying home and I don’t think there’s anything more I can say about it so I guess I’ll just end this right here.

As I type these first words it is 4:24 PM and I’ve successfully managed to avoid another day of work.  Yes, I showed up at the office.  Yes I’m collecting a pay check for this day, but have I worked?  Not so much.

The irony is not lost on me.  For a while now, I’ve been thinking that I’d like to find a way to make a living with blogging and writing.  I believe the phrase was, “I’d like to get paid to blog” to which K replied, “I think you already do.”  Well, I’d like to get paid to blog, ‘cause it’s what I’m paid to do, not ‘cause no one is paying enough attention to what’s happening to realize that I’m not being terribly productive and am, instead, spending hours upon silent hours behind my strategically positioned computer monitor.

The truth is that being paid to be a writer in any form may just be a pipe dream.  I read the writings of some of my bloggy heroes and feel like I can’t compare with their wit and depth.  Hell, some days (sometimes several consecutive ones) I can’t even think of anything to write about which is ironic to me, because last November I took part in and “won” the National Novel Writing Month challenge and managed to find something to write about, no matter how mundane, every day.

I have a very precarious list of items I try to fit into every day and sometimes (heh! Most days) I can’t fit them all in.

Sleeping: Sleeping is very important and the truth is I can rarely fit in enough of it.  I’m not a morning person and getting up to go to work takes a lot of effort.  That’s been discussed and no need to rehash it now, but the point is that I need to sleep later than I am able.  I struggle to get out of bed in the morning and I drag my sad ass through my morning routine of shit, shower and shave.  Due to recent developments, one or more of those items frequently falls by the wayside in the morning.  Once I do arrive at work, I spend half the morning fighting the urge to go back to sleep.  The real irony of this is that in the evenings I am not the least bit tired and I have no inclination to go to bed before 11:00 and quite frequently later than that.

Blog reading: I’ve found a number of witty, insightful, wise and otherwise awesome blog authors.  I like to read everything they write and I am inspired to be more like them when I do.  The problem with this is that if I don’t stay on top if it these blog posts can pile up very quickly.  After a week of considerable sporacity with my attention to my blog reader, I logged in on Monday morning to find that I had 126 unread posts to get through.  I set about working on them after a slow start and spent the whole day reading.  I know that the list grew as the day progressed but I managed to get the list down to about 45 by the time I went home.  I read some at home and finished up at work on Tuesday.

Blog writing: I’d like to be doing this everyday but as I mentioned I’m not always inspired and unless I’ve got something specific in mind to write about I find it easy to postpone that task which is not a good thing if I want to “hone my craft”.  I need to make more time for this.  Occasionally, I even make the time to do this at home on my own time.  That really gets in the way of some of the other activities though.

Television: For years I’ve been trying to cut down on the amount of television I watch and for a little while that was going well.  I even had a night or two each week where there was nothing on I cared about watching.  This season though, I’ve gotten sucked into a number of new shows, dammit!  I find that by the time I’ve gotten home from work, maybe done an hour worth of Wii Fit (which usually takes closer to an hour and a half), taken a shower, and made dinner, I only have time to get two or maybe three shows in before I’ve got to go to bed so I can start the whole damn thing over again the next day.  By the time the week-end comes I’m so backed up on weekly TV shows in the DVR that I’ve got to dedicate a chunk of time to clearing that out.  I usually have just barely managed to clear the week’s worth of shows out when the Sunday night shows start.  My television consumption has just about turned into a full time job.

Exercise: This is something I know I need to do but find so distasteful it’s not even funny.  I find it very easy to put other things at a higher priority than exercising.  I wish I felt differently about this.  I want to have the physique of someone who exercises as if his life depended on it (doesn’t it really?) but I don’t want to do the work that comes with that.  I try to at least spend some time on the Wii Fit when I get home from work but I find that when I do, I don’t end up getting around to eating dinner until close to 9:00 so I can’t help but wonder if the benefit I’m getting from making the effort isn’t over shadowed by the damage I’m doing by eating so late.  These last few days my weight has been back down to below 300 pounds (barely) but that’s the first time in quite awhile (and it’s not because I’ve been exercising.)

Hmmm.  It feels like I’m leaving something out.  What could that be?  Oh yes that’s right…

Work: Occasionally, it is necessary for me to actually do my job, the one I get paid for—well the one that’s in my actual job description.  My job is not by any stretch of the imagination, engaging enough to occupy 40 hours a week and as a result things often sit and collect dust until they become urgent and then I’ll actually give them my attention.  This is a terrible way to work  and I know it, but to be perfectly honest (and why stop now), I detest everything about my job so much that I just can’t muster the energy to give it more priority than the other things I’ve listed here.

It leaves me in a real pickle.  I really, truly, desperately want to find a new job…  Well, I really, truly, desperately want to quit this job anyway.  I’m not so sure I want another job, but not being of the independently wealthy persuasion, not working is not really an option for me.  So I don’t want to work at this job any more, but I can’t afford to be unemployed, and I don’t know what I want to do instead, not to mention that at this point with the current economy, I don’t really think there’s another job out there for me to be had, so I guess I’ll just have to make the best of it for the time being.

Wow, this is quite a side track from what I was going to write…  Which was what?  I don’t remember….

Oh that’s right, me sick, Swine Flu which is now H1N1 Flu and being at work (and no I don’t have Swine flu).  Sounds like a good distraction/inspiration for tomorrow.

Until then…