Living With Dad: Part Deux

My dad continues to consistently surprise me with little "dad-isms." The relationship hasn't changed much except that he is constantly trying to feed me as if I needed any more food in my overextended stomach. Last week, I was closing a Ziploc bag and unconsciously closed it in parts (squeeze the strips together in 3 steps - first part, second, etc). I should have known what was coming next because I saw him make an odd facial expression and aim in in my direction.

"You know, you actually close the bag by joining one end and sliding it closed across to the other end."

"Dad, I know how to close the bag. It's sealed, right?"

He has also decided to rebel against any adult that seems to tell him what to do. It took me weeks to get him to agree to a medical plan. Today, he doesn't like his doctor. He wants a new guy. Apparently the doctor's office sent him to take the same exam twice. A careless mistake. But the minute you realize that it is the same exam you already took, wouldn't you say something? He is usually opinionated about EVERYTHING but he one time he needed to speak up he chose silence so he could come home and be a martyr. Then he pouted like a 5 year old when I told him he should have spoken up and that it was his own fault.

Dad has also upgraded his "watching people through the window" skills with a new "scare the crap out of his son when he gets home" skill.

I will usually get home and the start changing clothes to get comfortable. Dad will wait until I think I'm alone and pop out of nowhere with a loud "HI, HOW WAS WORK" while simultaneously scaring the crap out me as he pops out of another room like the old, fat Batman in The Dark Night Returns.

The best part has to be his child-like enjoyment of WWE wrestling. He loves it. Watches it every chance he gets. One little problem - he thinks that it is real.

No, really - he does.

I once tried explaining the "heel" and "hero" thing, how many "characters" go back and forth and other stuff I had read about Vince McMahon (who is a pretty smart marketing genius). The conversation quickly turned into how this character was not friends with that one and so on. I explained that these guys work out together and they help train the newbies...blah, blah, blah. I may as well have spoken Chinese because I was instead told that he hates all the dramatic parts and that they should just wrestle...then went on to a 10 minute story about how one wrestler married this girl and so on.

What can I do? He's over 70 - there's nothing I can force him understand anymore. I'll just let him enjoy this fantasy.

Let's get ready to rumble....

Birthday Blues

So for the last 4 hours I've been trying to figure out what to write.

When I got home from work today after unsuccessfully trying to avoid the staff spy network "surprising" me with a birthday cake, I went to pick up my mail off the floor and instead found a letter from Bridget Jordan, the manager of the post office in my neighborhood. Apparently, some idiot across the street has been allowing Cujo to roam unattended and has managed to not only take down the local mail man, but also the only back up. As a result, I am supposed to physically go to the post office and pick up my mail until this matter is "resolved with the dog owner."

The letter reeks of "please go vigilante justice all over Cujo," but I also wondered that if they were able to drop off the note in my mail slot today, why didn't they at least drop off today's mail for me?

If you ask my closest friends you'll find out that I am sometimes the worst around my birthday. I get grumpy, introspective and mentally chase my tail around thoughts and problems that have no solution. That's just how my brain works.

So after a grumpy day at work and 5 hours of listening to what is now considered "oldies" music, I have mellowed out and completed most of my reflecting. Let it be noted that I had Green Day's Good Riddance -Time of your Life on repeat for half an hour...

See, I'm a practical person, so I get it. I have great friends and my immediate family is still around to nag me at my every turn. How many don't have those 2 basic things?

I'm lucky to have a great family and a great set of friends that cook and bake for my birthday then get hammered at the bar in my honor. I'm blessed to feel that at any given moment, they have "my back."

Thanks guys.
Cheers!

sensitivity and drama vs tolerance

I hope this doesn't offend some friends. I was at a bar waiting on a friend and I started typing on my phone. I typed the entire stream of thought and every link in my though chain. This is raw, uncut, unedited and merely what was going through my head at the moment.


sensitivity and drama vs tolerance. life is learning that quality is more important than quantity and the friends you have now, as dysfunctional as they may be will probably be more solid and reliable than people you have less history with.

the fact that people don't realize this is a symptom of our 'grass is always greener' mentality. What no one realizes is that all grass grows weeds. Some just grow more of them.

i feel those that sit there panicking about their lives are stuck in a lie. I'm an atheist yet I'm lost without a god? People's parents mess them up yet I haven't resolved my issues with mine-alive or gone. Why not state that you re agnostic confused and lost in the world just like everyone else. Then you can start at step one.

we've been taught that it is our 'manifest destiny' to be better. We are meant for greater than this,no?

We re told we are.

Yet we settle.

Even the most successful have a 'hole' of emptiness where something missing. The human condition? Maybe. Doesn't seem Darwinian to give a creature the power of a mind-not a brain- a non tangible mind that will always doubt and ask for more. Let's not even factor in the possibility of a soul. Is this the 'god' quotient? A lion in the African bush doesn't wonder if there is 'more out there' than hunting. Why not? Why would a human evolve to the point of "mind"ly (new word?) consciousness? It serves no purpose except to cause doubt pain and confusion.

Does that make human consciousness a genetic defect? An anomaly? An unexpected detrimental effect of evolution?