Monday, December 27, 2010

Just one of those days…

It is just one of those days where nothing goes right. Our house is completely trashed from Christmas. We had 3 Christmas’s in the last two days, so there is just a ton of toys and boxes of toy parts and cardboard strewn about the house. So the house being an absolute mess is driving me crazy, but every time I start to clean up A Bird comes behind me and opens a new toy or is asking me for help with this or that, or my personal favorite, I’ll start stacking toy boxes to put them away and just as I’m about to put the last box on so I can pick it up and put it away A Bird comes screaming in on her new tricycle and plows into the pile knocking toys everywhere, so what’s the point?

Then this morning L Bird comes in and tells me that the shower drain is plugged. Man, she wasn’t kidding it is about ankle deep in water from her shower. Great, so no shower for me, now I feel nasty. But hey I can still brush my teeth and shave, well at least I thought so. I start brushing my teeth at the sink and I notice that all of the water running down the sink is starting to make the tub fill up more. Awesome, so I guess shaving is out. So now I have to go to walmart dirty and unshaven, but what the hell I figure I’ll at least fit in with the other woodchucks now. So I get what we need and Draino Max for clogged drains, “cuts through standing water” it says on the box. Perfect I think and I rush home and pour the whole bottle into the tub, well it does cut through standing water to the bottom of the tub where it proceeded to spread out and go every where but the drain. So now I have to go back out to buy more draino, then bail out the tub so there is no standing water and try it again.

While I’m dealing with this debacle, Linus decides it would be a great idea to eat an entire container of A Bird’s new Moon Dough. So I frantically search the internet for an MSDS on Moon Dough or some sort of safety information and I get a whole lot of dimp. Well, it didn’t kill poor Linus but it did give him a fantastic case of multicolored shits, which he has left for me in just about every room of the house. It’s my own private demented game of find the smell. First, A Bird smells it and says “Dad I smell poop” then I go around sniffing the air like I have a coke habit until I happen to stumble across a brilliantly aquamarine colored piece of poop that has the same consistency of Moon Dough mixed with poop. Funny how that works.

So that has been my day so far, if I don’t freak out and have my head explode I may post more later…

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Future Must Be A Woman!!

Aaaaaaaaaah, the future. Man, the future can be so full of hope and completely terrifying at the same time, can’t it? I picture the future as a beautiful woman, she is amazingly beautiful and you can see all that you want in her eyes, but she has a side that is unknown and completely terrifying to a man. I have been sitting here thinking about my life and I am completely baffled. I am a bit of a control freak, I rarely lose control of anything in my life and I have come an infinite amount of miles from where my temper used to be, but the fact that I don’t know what’s going to happen drives me crazy. I don’t like not knowing what is coming, I like to see what’s up ahead so I can plan for it and be ready to defend against it if need be.


The not knowing often leads to me laying in bed at night worrying about countless things. I think up crazy situations based on my worries and try to form plans to prevent or reduce anything bad that can happen. I know it sounds crazy, but that is what helps me get through. My plans may be absurd to you, but just the simple fact that I have a plan, a starting point, to some made up situation helps to ease my mind and allows me to get some sleep. I lay there in the dark, listening to all of the little noises. Linus and Roxy snoring, L Bird’s deep breathing and A Bird turning over in her bed over the monitor and the whole time my mind is racing. I know everybody worries and its natural and I’m sure that a lot of people share the same worries.

 I worry about when A Bird goes to school, is she going to be scared on the bus? Will she fit in? Will she make friends? Will we find a good day care in our school district that is as good or better than the one she goes to now? Then day care tosses me into a tizzy. I make plans to talk to people I know and call this office or that office and start checking out daycares now, even though A Bird is two years away from school.

Then I worry about work, I think about all of the changes that have happened in the last 3 years of my career, I got a new winemaking position and was being groomed for a promotion within winemaking, then the company changed its plans and I wasn’t finished in my training so the position I was being groomed for needed to be filled immediately and it went to a co-worker which turned out to be its own debacle. Then they consolidate my winery and I moved back to my original facility but with no clear development path. Now I have been told off the record that there is room to climb in my department, but I’m not so sure because I learned a valuable lesson from the grooming/promotion thing, nothing is certain. So I worry about where am I going in the company? Am I doing enough to get where I want to go? Am I being recognized for my efforts or is it all politics? What happens if I get stepped over again or I lose my job? How am I going to take care of my family? What would I do? I’m pretty specialized in my career and training and I would be hard pressed to find something else that would be comparable in benefits and pay. My mind whirls and I think about how I present myself and what courses I can take to show my willingness to succeed and do a quality job. I make plans to talk to my boss, and I develop my own 3 and 5 year plans, and how I’m going to get there.

Those are just the two that jumped into my head, there are hundreds of others that I worry about. Little things like, how am I going to come up with money to do the necessary projects that need to be done around the house? If I put off fixing that small leak in the roof until spring, is the roof going to fall in? (I know that it won’t, but that’s where my mind goes), and big things like are we ever going to be able to have another child? We had a hard time with A Bird, is it all my fault? Is there something I’m not doing that I could be doing that I don’t know about? Am I being punished for my past sins? Why is that every scumbag out there that doesn’t deserve kids has a pack of them while willing and decent people can’t have one? Why is it so difficult and expensive to try? These are the things that I have no idea how to plan for and produce many restless nights of me tossing and turning.

But eventually I fall asleep and peace comes to me during the night. I wake up, go to the shower and my mind replays my “plans” as the hot water pours over my head. I lean forward and let my forehead rest against the cold wall, I close my eyes and I say the same prayer. I thank God for the gifts that I do have in my life, L Bird, A Bird, a job, and all of the little things, then I ask for strength to make my plans work if I need them and for patience and peace. I open my eyes, turn off the water and face the future.

I know things have a way of eventually working themselves out and I know I have a plan or starting place for just about anything this world throws at me. My future is bright, scary as shit, but bright and I’ll face it head on, leave my mark and be better for it.

The future is both a beautiful and a terrifying mistress, just great, isn’t it?

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Courtesy of Uncle Chuck

Well, we had our first Christmas of the season and like any family gathering with extended family there are the normal conversations and family members who are a big hit. Normally it’s the Uncle who’s a little off or has different humor. Well for my Nephew Justin he has a whole family of these uncles, between my Brothers in-laws David, Chuck, myself and his own father. But today was Uncle Chuck’s time to shine, so please enjoy the following joke courtesy of Uncle Chuck.

****Note**** I am trying to tell this from memory and it will lose something in the translation, but what the hell here we go.

There is a class room full of kids and the teacher calls a little girl up to the black board to draw a picture and the little girl draws this:

SANY0763

She says it’s the ocean and goes and sits down. The teacher says what a good job it is and calls a little boy up to draw something. He goes up to the black board and draws:

SANY0769

It’s a mountain to climb up and see the ocean.  Very good the teacher says and she calls the next little girl up to draw something on the board.

SANY0771

The little girl saw that mountains have snow on the top. The teacher tells her what a good job she did and calls the next little boy up to the board to continue the picture.

SANY0776

The little boy said that above the mountains, there is the sun and the sun shines bright on everything below. The teacher says that’s true and it a very good sun. Now she is down to her last student, Dirty Little Johnny. The teacher calls Dirty Little Johnny to the board and he goes up and draws this:

SANY0777

The teacher stares at it for a minute and then asks Dirty Little Johnny what he drew and he replies, “That’s my Daddy looking for the soap he dropped in the bathtub”

I know, that’s a classic. Thank you Uncle Chuck!!!

Friday, December 17, 2010

The Simple Pleasures of Being Young

I have never been asked the question “Dad, do you need a little light?” more times than I have today. It all starts with a lousy $5 dollar flashlight. I was doing an insane amount of last minute Christmas shopping, you know because I’m a man I tend to wait until the last minute, but anyway I was in Lowe’s and I see this old guy fiddling with a flashlight in the checkout. Apparently it was a 3-in-1 flashlight, it was a regular flashlight, then it has a plastic tube that lights up blue like some sort of awesome mini Star Wars light saber, then finally the light saber flashes. As this old guy was going through all of the motions I was laughing to myself because I knew I was going to buy A Bird one.

**Ever since she was old enough to crawl she has been finding flashlights and carrying them every where. She has this weird attraction to flashlights, she carries them every where, there are two under her pillow so she “can read her stories in the dark”, and if my big flash light is out she is grabbing that and chasing the dogs and cats with it. I personally think it all comes from Grandpa Da, he has the same affinity for flash lights, I seriously think he owns like 5,000 flash lights. It is such a thing that one year for his birthday as a joke, we all got him flash lights, and I honestly think that is the happiest birthday I’ve seen him have.

So anyway I bought it and gave it to her on the way home from daycare, then it was “Hey Dad do you need a little light to shift?” and she would flash it blue, then I was changing CD’s and I opened to the glove box and it was “Hey Dad do you need a little light to find my CD?”. Then we got home and it just kept going,  “Hey Dad do you need a little light to hang up your coat? Do you need a little light to let Linus out of the kennel? Do you need a little light to see the dog food?” and my all time personal favorite, “Hey Dad, I pooped do you need a little light to come and wipe me?”

She is still carrying it as we speak, she is not even putting it down to eat. I miss being young and being able to take the smallest thing and have the best time with it. Now it seems like everyone is so caught up with keepin’ up with the Jones’ that everything has to have a huge price attached to it and when you do get you not happy with it or able to enjoy it because its either not better than the neighbors or you spent too much on it and your broke and feeling guilty.

Oh well, but what I failed to mention in this post is that I bought myself a matching Green flashlight, so whatever suckas I’m off to sword fight with flashlights and forget about the world for awhile.

SANY0753

Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Long Line To Linus

So it’s been almost two months since we lost Opie. It has definitely been a rough stretch for all of us, especially for L Bird. I think it hurt so much more because Opie was so young, he was only a year old. It wasn’t like it was with Frisco. We had Frisco for 11 years and he had lived a long good life and it was a  bit of mercy to have him put down because he was really starting to suffer from cancer and his quality of life was definitely impacted. So we knew we made the right decision, we were very upset and sad but it was different than Opie who had a long life in front of him and had it cut short in such a devastating way.

I have always been a two dog type of guy which means we are a two dog family. It really is all my Mom’s fault in a way, she said “When you have your own house you can have as many animals as you want!” Well, I definitely listened. As soon as I moved out I got a black lab mix, TJ. Then about a year later I got Roxy, my pitbull/american bulldog mix and I was happy, it was just me and my two dogs, then through a twist of fate I lost TJ to a girl I was dating.

***I originally got TJ for this girl I was dating, he turned out to be closer to me than her and in essence was really my dog. Long story short we broke up, she moved out and I got TJ because she couldn’t take him. I had him for about 6 months on my own when she called me out of the blue and asked if she could take TJ, she had a place that she could have him. After a long talk I agreed with the exception that if she couldn’t keep him for any reason I wanted him back. Well, it lasted about two weeks before I found out that she had given him away to a farmer. I personally think that the miserable bitch just took TJ out of spite and to cut the final tie to me she had. I actually tracked TJ down and went out to the farm to get him back, but as I was talking to the farmer his two boys were in the pasture playing and running with TJ. I didn’t have the heart to do to them what she had done to me, so I lost TJ.

So now without TJ, it was me and Roxy and we were fine but I knew that I would find another dog. That’s when Frisco came into our lives. Frisco was some sort of terrier mix, and he took a lot of grief from my friends. He had a little bitty head but a big body, my friends called him all sorts of names but the one that stuck was “Shrimpboat.” So the last 11 years it has been Roxy and Frisco and they were and are great dogs. Roxy is still extremely tolerant and patient with everyone and especially close to A Bird and Frisco was the same when he was with us. Then 2  years ago Frisco was put down and we were lost with just one dog, so A Bird and I went and she picked out Opie, the beagle.

Opie was one of the most animated dogs I have ever owned, he had so much personality packed into that little body. He was glued to A Bird’s hip, when he got up in the morning or before he went to bed, he would run to A Bird’s room and check to see if she was in there. If he saw her leave with the grandparents he went nuts whining and running from the window to the door. He just was a perfect little fireball of joy, minus how long it took to housebreak him lol. Then we lost him to the road.

We waited a few weeks and L Bird saw an ad in the paper for boxer puppies. She knew that I had always wanted a boxer, and I always wanted a white boxer and the ad said they had two. So after a lot of talking and guilt that it was only a couple of weeks since Opie we decided to drive out and take a look at them. We drove out into the middle of nowhere to a Mennonite farm and there they were 8 little puppies playing with 3 little Mennonite girls. The three of us  got out and sat down in the grass and played with the pups. I talked to the Husband and Wife and they were very friendly and really nice people, I fell in love with the two pure white boxers but they were both girls and we were looking for a boy. So A Bird really took to this brindle pup and she declared that he was the one she wanted. We paid the woman, got his paperwork and started for home.

In the car, we asked A Bird what we should name her new puppy and her first choice was Sal. I know, weird right? Well, Sal was out because that’s L Bird’s father’s name so we asked to try again and she picked Linus. So now we have Linus.

IMG_2516[1] 

That’s the long line to Linus!

Friday, December 10, 2010

Man, sometimes I hate being right…

Well, all I can say is man, I hate being right sometimes. I am just defensive and suspicious by nature, I have seen enough in my short time on this earth to know that there is always a reason behind everything someone does. One of my favorite quotes is from Kevin Costner in “Open Range”, when he says “Most men will tell you their bad intentions, if you let yourself listen.” Truer words have never been spoken, but its just a real big comedy to watch how things play out when you know what’s going to happen.

I am now officially at my new winery, and things are just funny. I have a leg up on most people because I worked there for 4 1/2 years before I moved into a my current position at the sister winery. So I know everyone’s quirks and personalities and who’s allied with who, but its still interesting to see who sidles up to who. Now I had a suspicion that someone I work with has been eavesdropping on my conversations and feeding that information to other people. Now me being the suspicious prick that I am, I laid a little trap. I specifically waited for the spy to be in his office, then I struck up a conversation with another guy around the corner from his office. Now I knew that the minute I mentioned this woman’s name, his ears would perk up because he definitely trying to form an alliance with her. Sure enough, the minute I said her name, I heard his chair creak as he got up and moved to his office door. I said things that I have said to the woman in person to make sure that I wasn’t talking behind her back. I just said how I didn’t like her management style and she had some bad habits, then I left it at that and I walked towards the printer which is on the other side of the spy’s office and sure enough there he was standing in the doorway. I pretended not to notice and he was off like a bullet to this woman’s office. So I quietly followed him and sure enough there he was spilling all of his “secrets” to her, then to my surprise he embellished just enough to make her mad. Now that was a surprise, but now I see the playing field a little clearer.

Now this all played out at the end of the day, so as I was wrapping up and getting ready to the leave the woman goes into the boss’s office and closes the door. She was in there for a good fifteen minutes and when she came out her eyes looked misty. (This is no surprise, she gets weepy at the drop of a hat. I think its her way of getting sympathy and getting what she wants.) Now they could have been talking about a million other things than me and I was happy to believe that. However, I knew that was not the case, and sure enough I was right, as she walked past me she told me that I should plan on working late Monday and “wear my cleaning clothes”. (***side note*** I am going down to the sister winery Monday afternoon to finish packing up the lab and a quick clean of a few areas, and she happens to be in charge of the clean up) So just by the way she looked at me and her tone as she spoke, I knew she was pissed and had gone into the boss’s office to cry and get his approval of my “punishment”.

Now all of this is just water off a duck’s back to me, I know what I actually said and if I have to I have a credible witness to what was said. So I really don’t even care, but just as a double check, I walked into the boss’s office and dropped off a ticket that he needed, and I said is everything good and he just rolled his eyes. So as far as I am concerned I am in the clear and a whole lot wiser for my little plan. There are politics at every work place but its nice to be able to see who’s on what side.

As soon as I can find a politically correct way to say mind your business and keep my name out of your mouth, they’ll all know how I feel and how I see them. But until then, I am fine keeping my silence and watching the rats and snakes plot and scheme.

Ahhhhhhh, ain’t work grand.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Pure randomness…

It has been an interesting week, my move to the “consolidated” winery is getting closer and closer by the minute. The woman who is retiring has been training me in Champagne production and other tasks, but her last day was yesterday and I am going to a departmental retirement party for her tonight. So the past couple of days, she has been cleaning out her office and I have been packing up my old office to get ready for the move. My first was office was a nice big, open office with nice furniture, but it had now windows as it was an inside office. Then I got as promotion and that moved me to the sister winery which was an older facility and I moved into this:

office2

Yep, those were my glorious digs. It was the size of a broom closet, the walls were paper thin so you could hear everyone’s conversations and everyone could hear yours, but hey it had a window with a nice view. Now I get to move back into a larger office but, again this new office as no windows.  It would be nice to have a big office with windows, but I’m just a small fish in a big pond so that dream will have to have wait and in the meantime I’ll sacrifice the window for space. But anyway I packed up all of my files, books, office supplies, and various other things and it amounted to this:

Photo0086

2 large boxes, and a 1 small box. It was kind of depressing. I took one more look around my office to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Then I spotted a scrap piece of paper with some writing on it in at the back of my file cabinet. **Get ready, because here comes a big right turn into randomness.**

Written on that piece of paper was the name of my paternal Grandfather, his birthdate, birthplace and possibly the name of his mother.I had apparently met him once or twice when I was a toddler, but I have no recollection of any of it. A couple of years ago I got swept up into the “family tree” craze and did a lot of searching on the internet for who my people were.  I mean have you ever wondered how you got here? I would love to actually see the line of my people back to the beginning. Were they royalty or were they thieves? Were they working class people who worked a trade, and if so what did they do? Or were they a traveling band of gypsies that turned to the darker side of life to make it through? I just found it very interesting, but what really sparked my whole interest was that about that time my paternal Grandfather Duane died. I remember my father calling me to tell me and I really wasn’t affected I never knew him other than the two times I saw him as a baby. All growing up whenever anyone brought him up it was always to say what a prick he was. I heard he was mean, he was a con artist swindler who used whatever means necessary to get what he wanted out of you. I heard he beat up my Grandmother once and walked out on my both my Grandmother and my Father when he was very young. Hearing all of this I had never wanted to meet him, as far I knew he had forgotten I even existed because my father didn’t have any contact with him either. Then apparently my father’s half sister called him to tell him that Duane had died and as they were going through his things, in his wallet he had a folded newspaper clipping of L Bird’s and my engagement announcement. So that kind of struck me really deep, I hadn’t seen this man in 28 years and for the greater part of my life I forgot he was out there, but apparently he was silently observing my life. Hearing all of the things about him I like to think that as he got older he had a change of heart and was honest and actually cared that I was who I was and that he was proud that some small part of him had actually made something of themselves. (Almost all of his other children & grandchildren ended up in jail for one reason or another because they are a bunch of nitwits.) So I still want to know where I come from, but I’m willing to put that search on hold for awhile.

But anyway, that’s the kind of week I have been having. Its funny how you find things when you aren’t really looking for them, huh?

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