so a blog a day can be just a link or two right? nothing to say but you want to enjoy some free fun games?

http://www.freeonlinegames.com/

http://www.physicsgames.net/

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/

the two part blog.

I am home now, a night later, and since I have nothing pertinent to talk about from today I can continue with yesterday's journey. And I guess this month of blogging might be less of an inventory than it first seemed. But like I said, they are all individual and who knows where this turns out in three more weeks.

Connor did a great job in class yesterday. I was surprised and impressed and honestly a bit shocked. it was a Monday even, and Monday is usually much worse than Wednesday, getting a long weekend to do no exercises in. Because we made a deal, Connor and myself, to exercise daily, or at least every other day, until he got his yellow belt. My thought was that by that point he will start to see some results, start to feel the difference, and not struggle so much and be willing to continue.

I talked a whole paragraph about his respect for the class, his teacher in there, and I guess I should throw myself into that mix as well. I see it in his eyes, his desire to please me, and I went through some similar feeling this morning that just hit me now. Well I guess it was a gentle slap and not a full fist, because I remember so little of it. But I was just getting off the Truman Parkway at Diamond Causeway. My mind wanders during the ride to work in the morning, and this morning I had Lex and Terry on the radio. I gave up on them a month or two ago, it got repetitive and boring, so I switched it to the rap station, sort of heard it all in the background. And I am typing this out trying to lead up to whatever my mind was going on about, and I haven't placed it yet. By the time I got here they were heading into a commercial and it was 'Ladies day' meaning they weren't taking calls from guys and the one they had just hung up with was a self-proclaimed hot chick who was worried about her husband wanting someone weirder than her. And I have no idea what was going on in my mind, I am forgetting something. Because this was all in the background, and there was a commercial, some sort of feel good inspirational mumble jumble as well and I was thinking about my dad and needing his approval and not spending enough time with him. But again, I cannot tell you exactly why the thought was there, where it germinated from.

And that was much too long of a side note there. Like reading a book with major footnotes that are a page and a half long, and they might as well be part of the book because the only difference is that the font is smaller and more annoying to read, for those of us who need glasses at least and refuse to get them.

He hangs on my words sometimes. Connor, not my dad. He seeks approval and I am glad that for the most part I don't make him seek it, I don't punish him I don't ask much of him. I don't make my own bed and disagree all you want but I don't make him make his bed either. He does what he wants. The cost is that he is kind of selfish. I forget that he doesn't have the world experience to go along with his book smarts. I don't make my bed but I try to do right by my fellow human beings. I try to discuss this with him, and he is smart and he gets it I think, but not in a practical way. It was a week ago Monday he asked me, after taekwondo, if I was mad at him. He did his Army crawl horribly. He stopped in the middle. I had to call out his name (once) and tell him not to stop. The not even trying thing is what bugs me. "I am too weak" he cries and I tell him it's the stopping and rolling over onto his back and quitting halfway across the room that is wrong. He could take twenty minutes and I would not be upset as long as he kept trying. 

That conversation was a few weeks ago. He said he was going to die and I told him that was okay. I told him that we would bring flowers to the taekwondo class every Monday to celebrate his life and to memorialize him. We then got into a conversation about how he did not want people praying for him after he died, and about what to do with his body. That was where I told him I wanted to be buried in the dirt like a tree (and the lead in for that blog the other night!). We got into a conversation as well that same week about living in layers and him being on a different plane of existence sometimes and that I totally related to it.

So Monday after Monday we struggle and I try to yield to his teacher. I don't watch and he doesn't bother trying (I walk to the store and such). So I stay and watch and he just looks over at me and waves instead of trying to hustle. I talk to him about how the other kids get upset at him, how they would have more time for forms if they finished the exercises quicker (they are always waiting for him). I try to be firm without berating and I try to embarrass him (if that little girl is doing it without dying, I don't think you will die from it Connor), and it is a slight struggle, especially on Mondays.

So, getting back to the point, we made a deal to exercise. There were no actual terms, no stick and no carrot (who the hell wants a carrot anyway, that is a reward?), we just agreed to do it until he tested for his yellow belt. And then we don't actually do it. Too busy, or he rushed through them or I don't see hima  few days and he doesn't bother, and I have been texting his mom trying to get more help. And she isn't at home or he just makes excuses, and she is pretty sure he is embarrassed to do them in front of them. And the night, two Mondays past, when he asked again if I was mad at him, I wasn't. He stalled, and I snapped his name at him, and he tried. And the next run, the crab walk I think, he sort of stalled but he was trying, so I wasn't mad. I told him though that he needs to keep trying, try harder, and if he keeps stopping I would be mad.

And this past Monday, yesterday, after not doing any activity all weekend, not since the Wednesday before really, I picked him up and brought him to class and the kid found some sort of inner strength. He was still the slowest Army crawl, but barely. And I watched him go non stop from one side of the gym to the other. He did twenty push ups and he ran, and he did the crab walks and he hit the ball with the paddle and actually did  an outstanding job being a goalie against the kids hitting the ball toward him. And they got to do tumbles, which he loved doing and for some reason knew to land with his hands not his head. Master Jenny came up to us after class, asked us if we were still doing daily exercises. I was honest and said it was all her doing, we barely did any at all after the first few days of our deal. He is getting stronger now, he is trying harder now and it is impressive, and we still have a month before testing.

And I am excited to be a parent right now, even if it is part time. I hope to earn that respect that he shows me, I really do.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

So I am sitting here (starting an imaginary blog with the word 'so' again!) wondering what I was going to write about earlier. Well that's not completely true, I had a weird dream last night, the start of one, early this morning, but I lost too much of it to remember it. We had a redhead, nude in bed, and a time traveler. And a brother. And that's all I have left over. That and the weird sense of deja vu I am going through now.

The other thing I wanted to write about occurred while reading the Grapevine this afternoon. I was reminded that I am okay again, regardless of how different they do things in Savannah here. I can't really blog about it here and now because I don't have the referencing article in front of me and that would be unfair to the original atheist author.

So instead I am  watching the tai kwon do class, where Connor did an awesome Army crawl even though he has made no effort to exercise since the last time he was in class on Wednesday. And my child continues to amaze me. Master Jenny came up after class, asking if he and I were still exercising every day. We made sort of a deal, Connor and I, about exercising consistently until he gets his yellow belt. I am tired of that "I am too weak I will never be strong why even bother" attitude of his. He is lazy, and I take much of the credit for that, letting him play constantly online instead of being physically active. I was secretly very glad he wanted to learn taekwondo. I knew the physical activity he would be learning along with the forms. two or three weeks into it, and he was still incredibly eager to keep going and I knew, even though he was slow at the running and not strong at the push ups, that he would continue to improve and he knew the work involved and he was still committed to the class.

I remember texting his mom at about this time that he showed a lot of respect for his teacher in here. This was a text conversation mostly about getting him into some sort of real gifted program. Connor could be genius smart, and I want him to really really push it before the other smart kids start catching up to him. Okay, maybe not genius smart. I see the genius kids (that girl who came up with some real breakthrough discoveries last year regarding cancer cells, won a real grant at twelve.Yeah, she is genius and thank god for people like her) and I know my child's limitations. But he can be incredibly smart and I think already he has maxed out what he can learn in Georgia's public school system. I think he knows that he is smarter than his teachers, and that he cannot learn much more from them. And I don't want to refer to it as a lack of respect, but he can be slightly condescending to them, even if they do not realize it.

So I had this almost exact text conversation with Connor's mom two months ago and realized that he had a lot of respect, not only for his master Jenny, but for the students ahead of him in class as well. My big deal about keeping him in public school (and I do LOVE JG Smith, by the way, I think they have done a remarkable job with Connor and his entire class the past five years) was his learning to be social. I am starting to believe again that it is overrated. I am believing again that he can be more social after he learns physics. But I keep getting off track. I realized he had respect for the martial arts, his sensei and his peers in the classes. So I knew he would improve.

Then at some point he started really slacking in the physical parts of it. It was right after he tested for his yellow tip. He was nervous, i think he actually considered that he might fail a test, and he aced it, forms and instruction, and he even broke a board with his elbow. So like every other test he takes, I think after he passed he figured he could slide until the week before his next test (which will be in May) and then study and ace that one as well. But you can't do that with kicking heights. You can't do that with push ups and sit ups and Army crawls. You have to practice practice practice and get stronger at them.

Anyway, part two tomorrow. I got to stretch out this blogging every day thing and this seems like a godd two part ramble.

An other evening of empty thoughts. There is a damn good reason to not blog every day. Hell we don't even have to go to work every single day, and Connor is out of school the entire week. Yet I am trying to come up with fanciful thoughts and recreations and proverbial verbiage (I wrote that only because it sounded good in my head. 

And all I can think about is bowling shoes. I don't know why or what for, but I am trying to create a story about bowling shoes in my head for some reason. And if we continue with the idea of this being a hidden fourth step, I am thrown for an even farther loop, as I have no idea at all what they are supposed to represent.

If I saw bowling shoes as part of a writing prompt, I don't know. I would wonder who left them behind, in a gutter outside of a New York city loft. I would have some homeless dude pick them up and wear them, then set them aside that night while he sleeps in Central Park only to be chased out by Murphy, the balding overweight beat cop from all those Early silent Charlie Chaplin films. The shoes would end up in a goodwill store and picked up by some Argentine immigrant who is reminded of the tango he used to dance before leaving for America. He would ship them home to his children as proof of the opportunities here in the new world, dancing shoes for practically nothing in this land of plenty. His oldest son, Enrique, would wear them to school that next day, a Tuesday, the same unfortunate day that the Colombian cartels invaded their country and indentured all the male children aged twelve to seventeen. Enrique would go off wearing those shoes, trading them with a Panamanian hooker for a pair of combat boots, two sizes too small for his feet. The Panamanian street walker, Rosalita, would then trade those shoes to a Moroccan  gentleman in exchange for a young Thai boy she could send out to work for her. The Moroccan, a secret British spy working undercover as an arms dealer would wear them on his next purchase, which happens aboard a Concorde SST, it's last flight for Virgin Airway, as the Queen decreed that all spies were to be brought in for debriefing immediately and when his buyer, an American doing business as a Russian double agent, got word about the Queen's declaration, took it upon himself to hijack the Moroccan British agent and jumped out of the emergency exit, two individuals with one parachute. When the men were found, floating in the middle of the Black Sea, barely alive after a week of being stranded they were stripped down and sent to Guantanamo Bay to be processed as terrorists until the upcoming American elections were decided by a flip of a coin and the rioting prisoners were all executed and all their shoes were sent back to China where they were manufactured and on this day, every year for the twenty five years since it happened, they still celebrate when Xian Cho bowled four perfect games in a row at Hong Kong Super Lanes wearing that same pair of bowling shoes.

Other than that though, I have no idea what to think about with bowling shoes.

A list of sorts.

When I am older and greyer and no longer about my wits please remember that I asked these things of you.

I wish to be buried ankle deep in the front yard, standing there like a tree. Petrified and stiff the insects can burrow into my body and feast and the woodpeckers may dine of their plump juicy bodies and eventually my remains will be dissipated into the earth. This will be my way of returning to nature what she gave freely of to me.

If I am so feeble minded as to not know how to work the latest computer or television or other technological device that our children conceive of, just tell me know. As if I were four and wanting to cook my parents a steak. Just. Say. No. But if I can figure it out for myself, and I want to watch porn all afternoon naked on the front lawn, you damn well better let me.

Do not let me wear black socks and shorts. How does this even happen? I am guessing that when I am ninety five there will be a bunch of old guys in baggy shorts and crocs running around the neighborhood looking ridiculous.

There was something in particular I was going for in here, but I think I kind of freaked myself out a bit and lost it.

I begin to wonder if I have already blogged everything about myself. I am typing here with a band aid on my finger, and not the one I sliced. It's the one beside it, which has had some cracking going on for months now. It starts to heal but I press garlic or chop onions and those acids get in there and tear it up again. Then the cold weather today makes it crack and freeze and really burn. So I have the band aid on it, my index finger on the left hand. I have the razor slice on the tip of the middle finger, same hand, and typing now is a pain in the ass.

That is all something I haven't blogged about before. I think not anyway. On a related story, one that I was sharing with Kristi actually, last week some time, is about a job I ha once for a short while. I was a short order cook. I guess it was short order. It wasn't really a restaurant and it wasn't completely a bar. Charlie was the owner. He was my boss anyway, and maybe it wasn't Charlie, but that's what I remember. And I sort of remember he had a brother, but that might be a guy Lyle I am thinking about. Lyle was the owner of Little Ceasar's where I worked for a while, and he owned it with a brother. He owned about five of them in the area, and this was when Little Ceasar's was new on the scene. New to southern Cali at least. And that was near the end when I was working there, my last year or so of drinking. Deidre occurred during those Little Ceasar's year. And Olivia and the tarot card reading and the loss of a major amount of cocaine and pot, and a hundred other stories from that last year of social drinking.

Two years earlier though I was cooking for this not restaurant not bar place. It was located in the industrial parks of Huntington Beach. I cannot picture something equivalent here in Savannah except maybe parts of highway 17, but nothing there is totally industrial, it's more of a mish mash. This place I cooked for was mostly a bar, sawdust on the floor a big mounted TV (many years prior to flat screen, so don't get an image of anything too big here) and a couple of pool tables. And they served these four dollar steaks and these seven dollar lobster dinners, on paper plates with corn and potatoes. Somewhat like a crab boil, now that I have been exposed to some of them here in the south. Charlie had a dad who probably owned the place by the way, if I remember it any clearer now that I am typing about the moment. And I would cook up these lobster dinners and I would work Sunday mornings cooking eggs and bacon and the cook's line was in front of the cashier line, so they would come in the door and shuffle in front of me, chatting a bit and what not to me until they paid for their meal, got a ticket number and sat down. So not quite fast food maybe, not really a restaurant, who the hell knows how to describe something like this?

Maybe a writer would! Again, coming to terms with my limitations here!

And can I detour yet again, anyway? Because I had an image of another line, one that maybe I typed bout somewhere already. This line was on the fourth of July and the year would have been eighty-four, outside Frisco after the Democratic convention there. I worked for the carnival that summer and a biker sold me acid, gave it to me and said he would come back for the money if I liked it. I loved it, and the line for the Zipper, one of those caged flip you over and spin you around rides passed right in front of my dart booth. And if I was a real carny instead of an eighteen year old kid on acid I would have made money with all those bored fair goers in front of me. I did however make enough to pay for the acid and then some and had a wonderful rip roaring time for a few days until we were just burned out on the acid and Ron (weird the names I remember sometimes, isn't it?), all three hundred pounds of him, beat up his girlfriend and destroyed the hotel room and we all kinda backed off of each other for a bit.

Which brings us I guess a year or two later when I am a sort of short order cook for this sort of not restaurant bar in this sort of industrial area of a sort of beach town. And I am drinking daily and expected to show up on Sunday mornings to cook eggs and I don't think this went on for two weekends before I started not showing up. I was an assistant  for a few months. I guess I was in training to replace the guy who was cooking. I wish I knew his name for you, or the story as to why he was leaving, and I haven't a clue right now. Except I think he reminds me of that actor. You know the one? He was in Con Air, the second in command to Ed Harris. That guy, for whatever reason, reminds me of a cook I used to work with.

So he left and I took over and I was fine working weekend nights and drinking during and after, but I was a mess trying to show up Sunday mornings. And after once or twice of that the boss asked me what was going on and I told him I was allergic to the tomatoes. That they make my skin break out. And I assume now that they must have, at least partially. I can't imagine just making something up like that on the spot. Then again, my knack for story telling my way out of a jam could become legendary if I shared them all with you here. I don't remember if it was true or not, but I do remember that it was my drinking causing the problem, and the tomatoes were the perfect excuse.

Charlie bought me gloves the next day. You have to remember, by the way, that 1985, maybe 86, was pre-HIV. Or at least early on enough that it was before all the hysteria about catching it by being breathed on. So gloves were used in food handling back then, but not for cutting tomatoes. Anyway he did this for me. I was a good worker and he wanted to keep me and he accommodated my needs immediately and asked me if I was showing up or not Sunday morning. I said I was. He said don't screw him, to be honest with him. I committed to being there and thanked him for the gloves and he said that if I didn't show up Sunday morning to never come there again, ever. And I didn't show up on that Sunday and it was much much later, still in my drinking years, that I dared show up again. I remember he was there, he drank a lot on the weekends as well, socializing with the regulars, and he almost recognized me but couldn't place it and I avoided him and left as soon as I could.

And now we come full circle and to the real reason I love blogging. Because I had nothing to write about half an hour ago, and no idea where I wanted to go in here. Except that I had a band aid on and my fingers hurt. And they break out like crazy now, especially with garlic (and I am finally avoiding it and letting Kristi chop that up for me now), but lately with the onions as well. Every time. And I love cooking with both those things and I wonder if it is karma for that day I didn't show up to work when he bought me the gloves.

Still we aren't there. Because we know this leads deeper as well, and ties in nicely with my frustrations lately at work. I am a good worker, and there are times (which I don't tend to blog about) where my bosses put ti out there for me and I fail them anyway. But let's even go one layer deeper and realize that I only need to blog about maybe taking an inventory, and god provides the mental direction to type one thing that leads to another which in turn leads to me examining my repeated behaviors. And non e of it is there when I set my fingers on the keyboard. There is sometimes a thought of what i will write, and sometimes an image and many days nothing. And regardless of how I approach it, there always appears to be some sort of purpose unbeknownst to myself as to what I am typing.

And as a final note on these layers I just want to point out the idea I had about my life being layered as well, through the liquid shimmering looking glass of pool water. And I wonder where we will finally get to with that train of thought by the first of May.

No Joke, I am drawing a complete blank here. Even more of a blank than the past four days. In regards to the last blog, I hope that did not leave a bad taste in your mouth. Frustration more than anger. You would think that I knew how to deal with this crap by now but I don't.

So anyways and all that, I think I am going to try to throw together a haiku or two at you here. it's ten thirty, I put a little slice on the tip of my finger while carving earlier, trying to type and avoid it, and since I have not yet come up with a topic for tonight's discussion, I will revert to entry level poetry class. It's already after ten thirty.

Yonder, on the hill

Easter approaching this week

Don't kill the bunny.

Camping next weekend

fresh air and mosquito bites

Chili con carne

Haiku poetry

counting with your fingertips

rather than rhyming.

But I do wonder

where the capital letters

go on a new Line.

Yeah they are getting progressively worse rather than improving.

Good night dear friends.

Tonight is the night I realize how difficult it is to start a post without the word so. This was the third attempt before I got it right. Anyway, it is difficult to write tonight because all of a sudden I feel like I have an audience. Doesn't that suck? That whole 'look at me look at me look at me. shit, what am I supposed to do now?' attitude that overcomes us? Well, it overcomes me at least, I cannot speak in all honesty for you. I hate my job. i dislike certain people and others are complete idiots and you know what, they might be reading this and I don't want it  to get back to me somehow. Not because I love my job beyond the ability to leave every day at four thirty. But because I don't want to seek out another job that most likely will not have these hours.

So Amanda, if you are here some place, I love my job and all. Just saying.

For the rest of you, I grow weary there. I know myself, and since this is officially my pseudo bi-decade fourth step, let me just let you in on a secret about myself; I stir the pot sometimes. When I get bored or complacent or possibly even fearful I stir crap up for the adventure. And yet at work, it isn't completely like that. I mean, if the Executive Director read this, HR or somebody, they could easily tell me too bad so sad find another job. And I wouldn't have a case to say that my blog has nothing to do with work because I am sure they could find somebody at my place of employment who has heard me say these things on the clock.

And this is where the missing paragraphs would be found. I half typed them and erased them. I thought them out and didn't type them. Then I came close to posting half a blog and stopping here. The audience again. The one that I crave and desire and practically beg for and then turn down the closing curtain as soon as I have your attention. I do not censure myself. I can't and in general I won't. I am who I am, whether it be in the written word or the one you deal with at work, or in meetings for that matter. I have been on and offline the better part of twenty years now, and there is never any part of that online character that was different than the offline one.

Even still, there are missing paragraphs here. So is this or isn't it an inventory? I don't censure but there is also something to be said about restraint of pen and tongue. I bitched and moaned to my girlfriend about it enough. I can get and use another sponsor to vent in front of. I do not need to assassinate (boy that is an absolute fun word to type! Try it, now with me! Assassinate. That is one of those words meant to be typed by fingers. I may never have typed that out before.) anybody's character in here in order to know my part in it and discuss those aspects with you. But in a general way I can show you a piece of what I am dealing with.

We have this card system, called SSG (See Something Good, Say Something Good) and what it actually comes down to is that I think I deserve a lot more cards than I get. I wish I didn't care, and be like Bob, who doesn't care about it, but I guess it just keeps adding up to me not being appreciated enough. Yes, I know where to find these things in the big book by the way, I will get to that part, but this is the bitch and moan and write out your resentment part of it. My supervisor gets them all the time, and I look at what they credit her for and I say to myself that I had a part in that. She planned this big thing and I did all the work. 

Selfishness, self-centeredness. All over the place! Working on it.

So there was a water leak a month ago. A pipe broke under somebody's sink in the middle of the night. Maybe four hours later security is walking rounds in the hallway and noticed the squish underfoot of a major amount of water. Enough water to flood two apartments and about thirty feet of hallway between the two. The boss gets called and my supervisor comes out and the on call tech (we rotate that duty) comes out at two am and they deal with the situation and the tech goes home at eight in the morning. 

It took a week and a half to clear this water out. Baseboards were replaced, as well as flooring and carpet and we moved both residents out while it occurred and we all, as a team, did a great job getting this back together. Personally, I was not on call, so I didn't come out in the middle of the night. But the next day I was pulling baseboards. I was helping to move furniture, locating storage areas and finding carts for the company we hired to do the moving. The rest of the week I was setting up phones and call forwarding and cable televisions in the place where one of the residents was going to stay. I was back and forth all week, and when we moved them back I was front and center in that organization as well. Some of this stuff I did alone, and much was as a team. My supervisor did the organizing, my Director did the official apologies. But for the most part I was the face to the action. I was the one who saw them crying every morning and comforted and consoled while their lives were temporarily uprooted.

I saw some of those SSG cards today. From the Executive Director. Mike got one, thanking him for his response. He was on call that night, it wasn't like he volunteered to be there. My supervisor got one for her great response. Even my Director got one for handling everything so quickly. I was out of the loop. Again. It makes me want to scream. And when I do scream it comes back to haunt me. I get passed up for things because of my attitude. So I get ticked off and hide from the politics and I just put in too many hours doing hard work while it seems like everyone else just rides around and does as little as possible. And this is the tip of an iceberg. I know, I am whining and I hate the feeling but I am really trying lately to figure out what I am doing wrong. (Duh, Robert. You're whining, and that's what you're doing wrong.

It gets frustrating. I don't want the only thank you card. But I do want to be acknowledged. I held on to this all day long. It affected the entire day. Okay I made it affect the entire day, try not to use passive verbs there, author. Then around two o clock or so, up in front of the lobby to the main building, one of the little old ladies, one of the residents that were affected by that water leak last month, pulled up in her golf cart and we stopped to say hello and she headed straight for me to hug me. She is not five foot and less than ninety pounds and it was a great feeling to be hugged by her.

And yeah, It doesn't solve all my problems, because if I were acknowledged by some of the bosses, in public and not just one on one, it would help me love being there more. But as well, you can fuck your cards because I got hugs and y'all didn't, so thank you  Mrs. R. for reminding me what god says my job really is. Yet again.

So this will be the third day in a row, and the last, that I published a blog starting with the word 'so'. Aside from that I have nothing else to talk about. But I have to blog, I made the commitment, and some of my most mediocre blogs have been written this way, under the gun or under the weather, with no particular destination. With any luck at all you might get yourself a fair to middling blog here tonight.

I even went to a meeting, and I don't have anything of note to type about here. The meeting topic came from the daily reflections, which had a little bit to do with the fourth and fifth step, and with responsibility. And for a moment here I wonder if this blogging exercise is just my latest fourth step. They all come about differently. They each have had a unique shape to them. I already did one online, but that is the only similarity to this potential inventory here. That was more of a nervous breakdown, a direct outpouring of emotion and situation. This is more reflective and deliberate in form, even if it is or isn't, or becomes or not, an actual fourth step.

And now, even without something to write about, I came to a point where I could interject with a double space and something completely off topic. Do you begin to see why I enjoy blogging so much?

I think I am going to type about a couple of television shows. Taken by themselves, or even taken together, they would not account to much authority. But I have a feeling they tie in to the subject at hand the past two days, that feeling of being separate from, even though that is a gross misinterpretation of what my brain wants to convey. I am watching Twin Peaks again. With Kristi. She is watching it for the first time. And twenty years later it still has a certain edge to it. There is a certain style to it as well that reflects the time from when it was written. In hindsight, knowing what occurs and what will happen, it is a fun experience to relive. But it is all the more charming as Kristi smiles, then breaks into a guffaw, at exactly the right moments with me. Twin Peaks was full of 'what the hell was that' moments, and Kristi is in tune with all of them. She loves the characters and overall gets it with me, and that is a wonderful thing to share with her.

Tying this in to the theme of the month though is likely a coincidence. Or as somebody somewhere used to tell me at meetings, a chance for god to remain anonymous. Because as I watch the show again and as a memory here or there is reflected upon, it is easy to think that it is a link in the chain of events that lead me to believe I am living triple or quadruple lives in the middle of Barnes and Noble on a Friday night. Layered lives is what I just now decided to refer to them as. Because it is all me, all mine, and thogh there may be variants it is more of a reflection through a deepening pool of water. A distortion of the image through a layer of filtered sunlight, if you can so imagine. 

Which could almost segue into the second show that we finished watching together the past year; Lost. Lost ended about two years ago, and around that time I had gone through four seasons, most of five, and failed to see the final season. Kristi saw season one with me at that time and I kept up with watching the second, then third seasons, while she began to lag behind. I also went online and read about the future episodes. i looked at maps of the island before I completely understood even what the Dharma Initiative was. I saw an episode in season six, Desmond running down Locke, and wondering what that was all about.When it finally ended, and people on the porch at the clubhouse were talking about it all being a sort of purgatory, I misunderstood what they meant.

We finally watched it all, Kristi and I. Started back again at season two and with three or four episodes a night, two or three times a week, we went through it all and even though I realized that I watched much more of season six, the final season, than I had realized, it all made more sense to me this time through. I loved how it ended. I love how when a year ago I thought they had all died on the plane crash, and that this was all just some kind of dream, how stupid that was. I know realize that it all did happen, and they all died when they died, at different times, some on the island and some after. And the idea that they all got together afterward, that time after death didn't matter until they all got there and moved forward together, is an idea I get along with.

Well, i get along with mostly, because I don't ever think of an after life. There may or may not be, or I may or may not be reincarnated, it just doesn't concern me at all. So I won't say that the idea of that kind of limbo appeals to me because that's not true. If it occurs, at all, I will most likely approach it as some adventure. Okay, here we are, in other words, let's do this thing. But watching that entire last season, where they were in some alternate reality, and they got snapped out of it and remembered the other one, that was a lot like what I feel is going on with me lately.

By lately I am pretty sure I mean the past seven or eight years at least.

I may or may not be here. You all may or may not be here for my amusement, in other words, blinking in and out of existence like another fun movie I saw a few years back. I don't know at all, but it feels like an adventure and I may or may not be along for the ride.

And this may or may not be a mediocre blog. I will post it regardless!

So this should get awful monotonous quick. Eleven o'clock in the evening and I am finally sitting down to write for the day. Don't expect much. I am already stretching for subjects (and thank you Katrina, for one suggestion, one which I glanced upon and not yet perused). Once I talk about being out of my head the other night, and tomorrow bringing up my dirty laundry with the Broad, and most likely one post about the merits of Twin Peaks, even twenty odd years later, and I should be flush out of things to talk about with you here.

This is where a side note diversion tactic would go, but alas I am even out of those this evening. I could talk about the sweaty weather, perhaps, but there are parts of the country still thawing out, so no. On with the blog.

The one about being out of my head the other night. But that isn't it, really. Of course it isn't. Long time readers of mine know full well I know what my point is and exactly when I will get there. In the mean time I like to throw in lots of not exactlys and sort ofs and such and such in for word counts and paragraph fills. This is just one example of them. 

Spaces, too. I like the double spacing here. 

So how do I describe it, then? I had this weird out of body experience once. Wrote about it a few pages back, if you feel like scrolling for it here. And I have a ton of deja vu experiences. And I tend to, come to, I guess, in these moments where I am early or late, like my mind's time is off from my body's just a hair, "bar time" Tim powers called it, and I was so glad when somebody else could describe it, in a published novel no less, because i knew exactly what he meant by it. And now I wish I could still write. i wish I had that gift of descriptive gab. Because it was none of those thins and yet I can't sit here and give you a proper simile for my experience. you have seen it written before on my face book statuses. Once in a while I give out a real glimpse of who I am on there, and a remarkedly limited number of you have run away from me because of it. 

I called this one the anti deja vu, to Kristi, a few moments after it occurred, and I guess that's the most fitting description you are going to get for it. There was a saying growing up about walking over your own gravestone, and that would give you goosebumps. Or maybe the saying was the exact opposite, and I am afraid to look it up in case my memory is skewed. But as I remember it now, when you walk over your future grave spot, you get a chill. And quite oftenin my wanderings I get these feelings, not chills, but more like glimpses. And I hate to let you think that they are regrets or anything, before I even attempt to explain them, because that is not where I mean to go. But if you know anything about me you know that I don't always fit in. And I mean that in such a more than socially manner. I mean, I am on a different plane of existence than you. Sometimes. I just sort of slip in and out and sort of shimmer on the surface and then catch up again to this reality. 

Should I mention I did a bit of acid back in the day, and a smoke or two of the PCP? Would you think any less of me? I thought not.

So I get those feelings, those moments that seem like they are deja vus, that I have experienced this before and sometimes that is because I had experienced it, a second or two ago, before my mind slipped out for a brief second and returned. Then there was the time I woke up in a woman's body. I mean literally woke up there inside of her and when she noticed (and I am thinking that she woke up in mine) we zapped back to where we belonged. Then of course there is the time or two where I reach for the phone just before it rings or I clinch my jaw right before a sudden sound. And I am guessing it would be quite cliche and downright trite to say that this one time was different. Because aren't they all different any way?

And here is where I realize that it has been half an hour, and a paragraph or two (thank god for that double spacing!) and I can finally get on with my story, before I end it abruptly again like last night's fiasco. SO on with the blog!

This all happened at Barnes and Noble Friday night. i updated my status from there, that I felt like I was cheating on my kid. He always comes with us. That is our trip to the park or our weekend dessert, an hour roaming the store and finally settling on something to take with us. And he was not there, and I think that accounts for a large part of why I was feeling different about the whole evening. We also, Kristi and I, had dinner at Macaroni Grill next door. And it got me to thinking that my mom loved that place. I don't think they have one in Ocala, because we ended up at Olive Garden a couple of times on visits. But she loved her some Romanos. She met Kristi's parents here, at this one, as well, two years ago. So I was already thinking about and missing my mom as well, and my child, as noted above, and in a weird place anyway.

So logically it can make sense that my brain kinda freaks out a hair. I know the leading indicators. But that isn't it either. When I was mentally writing this blog in the shower this morning (and just now realizing how much of the good stuff washed away with the shampoo), I compared it to the drinking. Because even though I know, I understand without a doubt, that loneliness lead me to start drinking, even helped me to continue drinking, loneliness does not cause the alcoholism. It is more of an enhancer, i suppose. It is a small part of the allergy. If that makes any sense to some of you. The fact that i was already off kilter when I walked into the bookstore did not in itself cause me to shift into some other life for a moment.

And that is what happened, and the best way to describe it to you. It wasn't a feeling of being here before, and it wasn't a feeling of being gone from this physical, or even mental plane. I just had this whole experience of feeling some of what I assume were my alternate lives. You know those philosophers, or those college sophomores who think they are philosophers,who talk about how every decision leads to another alternate reality? Well on one hand they are wrong and on the other that is very similar to what I experienced. I can't for sure tell you that this decision led to that action, or that this day I instead decided to do that thing, or anything of that sort. And Like I wanted to point out to you, it wasn't a case of what if or I should have.

And it also wasn't my typical feeling. Maybe it was a more enhanced effect of my feeling. You have likely seen an update of mine, where I was 'In a moment', a neither here nor there but in a moment where something was missing or something was changed. I get them. This experience was stronger than those, but that isn't the only difference. this experience was more thorough, all encompassing than the others, but that wasn't the only change. I just got a mental whiff of things that were also happening, somewhere, sometime, to me, or different versions of me. I was walking around the bookstore, not wanting to see anybody I knew, not wanting to share the moment or to lose it. At the same time I was about in tears and afraid and not wanting anybody to catch me crying either. Nothing was wrong but nothing was right and I literally was 'lost in a moment' but unable to become lost in it. And the more I try to explain this the farther away I feel from it.

But it does give me something to blog about, and I love to blog and I miss doing it. So it is nice to be here and I wonder how I tie this into my son. It has been a while and some of you (I hope) are new readers, so you should know first and foremost I write for him. I don't think my dad was fucked up. There is no indication of it, and my mom was probably off kilter more than I admit, and she had a certain way (note to self: approach this, explore it, and see where it leads) of explaining it to me, showing me maybe, that it was okay to be screwed up. But I look and Connor, and I think I know what he is going through, and I think I understand what he is feeling. it's like I see him check out for a second, and return a second or two ahead of time, letting his body catch up to his mind.And I want him to read the words someday, to look at this printings, and know that he can run with it, not hide from it. Race up ahead and let the world catch up to him if it wants, and it's okay. 

Or not. Maybe I am on an ego trip and my kid will be mostly normal and wonder what the hell my problem was all this time. Who's to say? And to those of you still reading, you strengthen me and thank you.

So I had a conversation with Connor Monday, after his taekwondo class. It wasn't so much a conversation as it was a discovery. And instead of a real discovery about my child, it was perhaps only a realization. Even at that maybe it was simply a verification of an underlying truth. That truth being that my son holds it all together about as well as his dad does.

And I blame the woman buying the lotto tickets.

Some background, why don't we? Because Connor has been taking taekwondo for about a month now, on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Five o'clock as a matter of fact. Down in Windsor Forest. Just past that Truman Parkway construction on White Bluff. You know the area? Good. Because a half hour before class starts I am on Skidaway Island. At work. To get up to Montgomery Crossroads from the Diamond Causeway, and across to White Bluff and all the way down to Windsor, in half an hour, would be a feat in itself. But that doesn't take into account the side trip I need to take in the middle of the journey.

Connor goes to school at J Smith. It is an awesome school, a traditional program where he is learning Latin twice a week alongside cursive writing and long division. If we wish to take a mental side route here for a moment, and I do, Connor has broken all the reading records for the school now. They test on Lexile scores now, and if you have children you may be aware of the schools. It lets you know what reading range your child is in, and some appropriate books for that level. For two years now Connor has been at high school levels. The kid enjoys reading text books. History and anthropology in particular, but just about anything at all non fiction and he devours the words. What has impressed me the most the past few years is the retention level of what he is reading. He flies through books and then reads them again. I mean, a hundred words in two hours. And even though he is not the most critical reader and he does not like to review what he reads, he gets a solid understanding of the material. And this is what shows up in those Lexile scores. So he does not ever need to take another Reading test again, He skews the results, and they will keep testing him just to see how far he can go.

And he isn't even the smartest kid in the school.
"I know Daddy. But I am the best reader."
Smartass.

But all this is in the past few months anyway. And I guess it does not have much to do with taekwondo either, or the sheer amount of time and energy my child is absorbing from my time. He has been talking about Karate for about a year, and wanting lessons. I promised and finally made good on the promise, and found an academy that seems to fit my standards, limited as y'all think those may be. But the classes are twice a week, at five o'clock, out on the edge of Windsor Forest. So I go across the drawbridge out toward the landings at four thirty one every day and fly up the parkway and across DeRenne to get to Jacob G Smith out near Red and White, shuffle him into the car where he puts his seat belt on and somehow manages to take off the school uniform, shirt and pants, and get into the taekwondo pajamas while I race back across DeRenne and do my best to sidestep the mall traffic and get down to his academy by five o'clock. We tend to be about three minutes late every day. not too bad of an effort, Dad.

And to be honest here, this has nothing at all to do with the story I am trying to tell. But, as usual, it feels good to be typing. It feels good to be organizing thoughts as my fingers move across the keyboard and a tale of adventure takes shape on the monitor. The only connecting factor to the story is that it was after this taekwondo class last Monday that we stopped at the Circle K here, up by the Food Lion across from the Red Lobster and such, if you know your way around town at all. And for another side note, if you go across Montgomery Crossroads again toward the north, turn behind that gas station on the right, and about three doors down (yes, actually, exactly three doors down and nothing at all to do with the band, except that his sister and I, when she was about seven, did this little dance singing routine to Kryptonite, but that was before this house that I am trying to refer to in here), was where we lived when Connor was born.

But again, getting back to Monday night, and that Circle K, where Connor wanted some Cheetos and I wanted an Arizona Raspberry Tea (which is still sitting in the fridge, as a matter of fact), and I was in line a long time behind someone buying lotto tickets. Somebody who I happened to let get in front of me, too, as we got there about the same time, and there were already about four people in line. Wait. Wait. Waiting. There was a police officer inside. He had pulled into traffic a few minutes earlier, in front of me traveling on White Bluff. My seat belt was unfastened at the time. It usually is. I was slowed down in order to not catch up to him, and he pulled into the gas station in front of me by about fifteen seconds. He was inside, maybe waiting for the bathroom. I was in line a full two and a half minutes, waiting, before I saw him heading nearer to the line.

You see I was in Parker's once, downtown. Okay I have been in there several times, but during this particular trip I had Connor with me. He was still in a car seat at the time so think back about six or seven years ago. I parked in front of the store, where I could see him the entire time, while I got my cup of coffee, got into line, paid for it and left the store. About the time I got into line I saw a Savannah PD officer walk up toward my car. He took the keys out of the ignition (the car was off, I just like leaving my keys where I know I will find them again) and leaned himself against my passenger door, next to my son, and waited for me to come out of the store. He very likely knew who the father was, as I was staring at him and my son the entire time. I went out and he had words for me and threatened me with child protective services and quoted some bible old testament type stuff at me for good measure. So my experience with gas stations, and Connor, and police officers, all wound up together in the same quaint little anecdote, isn't the best of times, to say the least.

And here we are, once more, on this most recent of Monday nights, with Connor hanging out in the car, the keys to the car down on the floor mat, an officer in the store, and me in line behind several people taking a good four or five minutes now instead of the one or two I had planned. Finally this lady gets her tickets and I take that half step forward when she asks for a money order. At this point even the cashier gets that look, you know the one I mean I assume, where she wonders quickly if she is in some hidden camera show and this lady will never leave even as the line to purchase goods is out the door now? Yeah, that was the look she gave while I was taking my forward half step and freezing in place while holding my balance and looking at the police officer two or three yards away, a cup of free coffee now in his hands, and wondering when he was going to get out the door and accost my now ten year old son for being unaccompanied in my car.

And before we get any further let me at least ease your fears and tell you that nothing bad happened. This is the last sighting of the police officer I have for whatever undiscovered reason found the need to so closely scrutinize. The car was fine and Connor was fine and this entire build up was only an exercise in typing, an excuse for a blog in order to talk about my conversation with Connor, and nothing more than the prequel to that conversation.

Then again, it is in reality a story about his own conversation, I guess, because that's what he was doing this whole time I was in the store, amusing himself with his own thoughts, not a concern at all for what I was going through. Selfish buggar. It has been a month now since I started this post, so the particulars are a bit lost in the translation now. In any case I do remember coming out of the store, into the car, and putting it into reverse while noticing that Connor was having said conversation, snippets of which reached my ears and spiked my curiosity. Because of the lapsed amount of time, from 'Last Monday' six weeks ago and today, I will avoid the quotation marks. his dialogue is priceless, mind you, but if I cannot remember exact specifics, i do not want to misquote my own son. But the conversation involved The Wizard of Oz. The movie. He was rewriting it, updating it, adding his own Connoresque spin to it.

The Scarecrow's head exploded. And the Lion was eating the Tinman's heart. And maybe another dozen or so scary elements to it. I should call him and ask him, i suppose. But I started this blog a month ago, already asked him about it the day after I started typing, and dinner is ready and this is April. My blog every day in April post for the first. But to return to the opening paragraph, my son holds it all together about as well as his dad does.