random writings while waiting for the oatmeal

Oatmeal is simmering, my family is happily reading, and I'm tired of reading news of fresh disasters on my phone, so I'm going to write something. I don't know what it'll be yet, and I don't have much time.

Before I resorted to my phone (handier int he kitchen than a hard-cover book), I was reading John Le Carré's memoir The Pigeon Tunnels—which is fantastic, by the way. Specifically, a chapter about the last days of Phnom Penh before it fell to the Khmer Rouge. There was a wonderful anecdote (possibly true) about a woman who took a whole pack of orphaned children in to the American Consulate demanding passports for them all. When she was asked where their mothers were, she said "I am their mother." When further questioned about how she could be the mother of so many children roughly the same age, she said "I had a lot of quadruplets." According to the legend, the wink and nod worked and she got the children out.

Then I got to my phone and there was a story about what's happening in the Philippines right now, IS fighters taking over a city on the one majority-muslim island (or one of the few ones?) in the nation, Mindanao. It makes me want to fly over there and adopt a lot of quadruplets.

Alright, oatmeal is ready and family is hungry.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Well... the title may be a bit hyperbolic. After all, I haven't conducted an exhaustive review of all 48 previous birthdays (that count includes my 0th birthday for the math nerds out there), but today was the best I can remember. Many who are reading this know that my 48th year was not my favorite year. To those who don't know that, it may come as no surprise anyway: mid-life crisis (or mid-life change or transition or male menopause or The Change or whatever you want to call it) often hits guys around this age. So there's that. Fathers often feel a bit of the same emotional transition, too, regardless of their own age. And only a select few of you (all people I know IRW) know the full extent of how hard that has hit me this year. I'd rather not go into details now, but just rest assured it's been a helluva ride for me. Then there's my mother-in-law dying this year. That was a whopper. She passed about two weeks after my birthday last year and it hit me much harder than I gave it credit for at the time. I was expecting to need to be there to support my wife when she lost her mother. And her brother, and our son who lost his Gheegi, but I was not expecting it to hit me so hard personally. And it did. Yeah howdy, it sure did. Then there's the "enough already, 2016" phenomenon that's been so well covered by social media: the loss of seminal artists I respect deeply like David Bowie, Prince, Carrie Fisher, and so many others. I think one of the reasons this year's crop of dying celebrities hit social networks so hard is that this is really the first big wave of the seminal artists of "m-m-m-my generation, babe" to die of old age. (Hopefully Roger Daltry and Pete Townshend will still be around for awhile so we can sing that song without busting out in tears--due respect to John Entwhistle and of course Keith Moon, may they both rest in peace.)

Anyway, you get the point. My 48th year sucked. Enough said.

Today starts my 49th year, and I really hope the awesomeness of the celebration is indicative of an awesome year. Really, the celebration started last night. I was a mess yesterday. Stressed out and overwhelmed by that stress. Not a pretty picture. My most darling wife, Kathleen--my biggest supporter this year--swooped in and took care of business, getting dinner on the table (usually my "job"), taking more than her share of the responsibility getting our kid to bed, and showing me nothing but love and support the whole time. When I woke up today, the world looked brighter even before Kathleen and our son chimed in wishing me a happy birthday. Then Kathleen made me breakfast (again, usually my "job" in the mornings), which included delicious waffles, fresh strawberries, and bacon. That's right, a woman who hasn't eaten bacon since she was about 7 years old made me bacon, as she has done every year on my birthday. Cooking bacon is a full-body experience, and she is not the kind of non-pork eater who sneaks a bit of bacon now and then, she just plain doesn't like it. And yet she covers herself with bacon-grease splatters and stinks up the whole house with bacon smell for me every year. If that's not gonna make a guy feel special, I don't know what is. And that was all before 8am.

I don't always work on my birthday even when it does fall mid-week, but this year we had no choice, so we were on the Foley stage all day finishing off the footsteps and getting back into some props we didn't finish last week. Kathleen, yes the same Kathleen who cooked me bacon, walked some of the best Foley I've heard in a long time. Like probably since she did the gun sound for an actor who clearly wasn't comfortable holding a gun. I'm telling you, after she did that Foley, the guy looked badass with that gun in his hand. I still don't know how she did it, but she did. Well, today was even more impressive than that. We'll share more about the details when the movie is released (or maybe near release), but let's just say there's a prop that is generally considered an inanimate object by most people but which the director wants to come alive. Today it came alive for me. Kathleen did that. What a gift!

And then, and then! My 1st cousin had a baby today, so the latest member of our son's generation was born on my birthday. That's pretty cool. Thanks, Tova, for having your baby today!

Oh, yeah, then there's dinner. I got to make dinner tonight, and I love making dinner. I've been fine-tuning my chicken noodle soup (from scratch) recipe, and I think tonight's was the best I've made yet. And if Kathleen and Sorren disagreed with that assessment, they were kind enough to keep that to themselves. :D But AFTER dinner came the most awesome birthday cake, a gateau, beautifully designed, and presented with 4 candles to indicate decades (including BB8 and Kylo Ren candles, woah) and a big, fat 8. Such great presentation, complete with a pillow dance (from our boy) and, of course, a song (from both of them).

I also got a batch of delightful emails, too many facebook birthday greetings for me to respond to today, a balloon and edible arrangment from my mom (combine that with the gateau and our eating habits, and we've got dessert for a week!) and so very much love and goodness throughout the day.

Wow. I'm floored. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you, son. Thanks, mom and dad. Thanks to everyone.

routines

So I've recently come into a morning routine. Recently like about a week ago. I'm not a routine person, never really aspired to or desired more routine in my life.... I've always preferred to be spontaneous and to go with the flow and all that kind of thing. But every now and then I'm reminded of the value of a routine, especially in certain inherently repetitive aspects of life. Morning is going to be roughly the same thing whether I have a routine or not: there will be waking, coffee, preparing our kid's lunch, getting breakfast on the table, making sure said kid gets to school, getting my own butt to work, etc. So when someone suggested a morning routine to me, I decided to give it a try. It's nothing new, no new ideas of what to include in that routine, just plugging in a little time for meditation. In my case, some in the house and then while the oatmeal is baking (dude, haven't tried baked oatmeal yet? check it out) taking the dog for a walk around the park. I'm not very good at routine, though, because I've been so resistant to it my entire life. Last week went pretty well with it until Sunday morning when I just slept in because that's what one does on Sunday mornings. Then Monday morning went alright, but Tuesday morning I just wasn't getting out of bed yet. This morning I'm up earlier than my "official" routine starts, which is why I'm here.

And now I'm at a loss as to what to write. I think I had an idea of what I wanted to write, but now it's gone. Lost in the mire of routine.

writing just to write - 4 March 2017

I don't know what I'm going to write here. I'm just writing. I keep getting these reminders of how hard it is to write if you don't practice, and I don't practice. There are reasons. Always reasons. Excused. I'm a slave to King Busy. I'm a father, a husband, a small business owner, no one's paying me to write and I've got "better" things to do with my time. But is it "better" to stare at facebook for an extra 20 minutes? Last week, I spent 83 minutes watching the worst movie I've ever seen. Literally. What could I have written in those 83 minutes? I don't know. I'll never know, but I can find out what I'll write in the next 10 minutes right now, and that's exactly what I'm planning to do. Cave mode is on. Well, not literally, because I'm on the Foley stage computer and that control room is not cave compatible, but the browser only has one tab open (this one), the email client is quit, my phone is in silent mode (and screen-side down), and the rest of the house is still sleeping. So I've got nothing better to do than write. Just write. Not edit. Maybe I'll do that later, maybe I won't. This is full on stream of consciousness writing at the moment, though, although I can't seem to stop myself from occasionally pausing to think about what comes next and definitely can't stop my fingers from correcting typos. That's just muscle memory, I think, but the former.... is that a bad habit or a good one developing? I think it's a good one developing. I want to go back and edit that sentence, but I'm not going to. I think the pause and think where is this stream going... that's a good thing, I think, even if I don't go anywhere interesting with it. Which I'm not doing right now. Certainly not. I'm just writing. Well, listening to Beyoncé and writing. I guess that's not really cave mode compatible, is it? But it does seem to go with writing better than it does with dialog editing, and I do it with dialog editing sometimes, too (low volume comparatively, and preferably instrumental music), so I'll allow it. I'm not in airplane mode, though, which is what I usually do in cave mode on the phone. I don't think that makes a big difference, though, at least not today. Pausing to sip coffee is definitely cave mode compatible. And, now, my kid is out of bed, 4 minutes before I'd said I'd keep writing.

the creative process

Today I had the distinct pleasure of screening a short movie which has not yet been released, and while I'm dying to gush about it I don't think I'm allowed to yet. But I can and will say that my creative juices are flowing in the aftermath of watching this. I don't trust myself to say any more right now.

Yeah, well....

So much for daily writing. I have been keeping a journal on paper, but it's a week-at-a-glance calendar and I'm keeping it just to track a few details of my day, not to write. Oh, well....

daily writing

Yeah, so Virginia Woolf kept a diary. Yeah, so I used to keep one. I have at several times in my life, although I don't know that I ever did it daily or with the same diligence and discipline of Ms. Woolf, but I do think it helped me in intangible ways when I was doing it. I don't have a decent place to do it in the house right now, and I want to do it more, so until I buy a new old school one with paper and stuff, I'm just going to make an effort to write here more regularly. Again. I've made this effort before. I've set myself goals, some of which are found in the history, and some which only I know. I haven't kept those goals. I'm still not the writer I fancy myself, not even casually and certainly not in any way that's useful or productive professionally. But I'll keep trying. It's stream of consciousness right now (in case that isn't obvious) and I sat down knowing I didn't have "enough" time to devote to it tonight, so it's going to be short and disjointed. Which is interesting. More interesting, maybe, than long and disjointed, but probably not as interesting as short and concise. Perhaps. Perhaps would've been a better word than maybe, but even though I went back to correct a typo right there, I resisted the urge to edit the word. And now I'm out of time for tonight. There you have it.