Future Author

Anna often plays by herself, playing with little animal figures and narrating stories to herself.  I just heard her playing with a toy horse and narrating the following story:

' "Excuse me," the horse said as she farted.'

pooping towards productivity

Two things that have bothered me lately:  i haven't written in the blog enough (and thus will have gaps in my memory when the memory portion of my brain inevitably craps out and I am forced to reconstruct my life by rereading this blog)

and

I spend too much time looking at stupid junk on my phone.  Much of this stupid-junk-looking is done while sitting on the toilet.  The amount of time I spend sitting on the toilet gets slowly bumped upward and upward because it is a time and space when/where my body and brain are (sometimes) free from the demands of my work or my children.  So I might tend to linger a little longer than I need to sitting on the toilet because I am relatively free to do/think what I want while I am sitting on the toilet.   And yes, I know it's bad for my butthole.  

So my solution is this:  instead of, or in addition to, looking at stupid junk while sitting on the toilet, I am going to write in my blog while sitting on the toilet.  

What I'm going to write about today is:  today I was talking with an elevator inspector about how much I enjoy being married.  It felt really good to 1) be happy about being married, and 2) share that info with someone.  

I had a dream 2 nights ago about using applesauce as mortar.  

vomit

Here's what's happening:  I'm currently sitting on the toilet, having diarrhea.  Yesterday and last night I was pukey.  

Another year of Christmas Carol is open, and my schedule has finally calmed down.  I was actually able to clean my office and the shop, which is awesome.  They've both been a wreck since May.  

We spent Thanksgiving with the Schluetermetz', which was fantastic except that Jeannie was illin' for a good chunk of it.  We rented a cabin in McHenry, MD, which was a perfect size and layout for our two families.   I had very stinky farts for most of the trip.  

The toilet paper we have in our house right now is truly sub-par.  Like, worse than gas-station-quality toilet paper.  

Belvedere Square

Owners of Belvedere Square, take note:  I have never given much thought to jingle writing, but I believe I may have just created the best corporate music since St. Louis, Missouri's Wehrenberg Theaters 1980's masterpiece.   Originally conceived as a song for my kids, this week I decided to flesh it out and commit it to tape.  And I've been listening to it non-stop FOR DAYS.  Literally thousands of times.  And now you can, too.  Listen to it HERE.

Tomorrow I leave for vacation.  I've never needed a vacation so badly in my life.  I need to Not Think About Work for awhile.  A long while.  As long a while as I possibly can. 

Jeannie and the kids left for vacation last Saturday.  So I've had a week with the house all to myself.  It's been predictably wonderful, but in unpredictable ways.  Previously, if I had an extended amount of alone time, it would be spent with G&T's and Netflix, pretty much exclusively.  This week was spent with music recordings, home projects, sauna time, and yes, Netflix, but not in an all-consuming way.   I've felt, dare I say it, semi-healthy.  I'll be coming up on one year of alcohol abstinence in September, and I'm currently debating whether I should stick with teetotaling or whether I should try and move to a more moderation-focused practice.  Not sure.  

About an hour ago I looked through a family photo album that the Jeanners gave me on Fathers Day and now I really miss the ol' wifey and kiddos.  

Jeannie totally bumped into EL ELZ in St. Louie today by complete happenstance!

Gonkity Bon Bons

For a long time now, I've wanted to record versions of the songs that I've heard sung by my family -- by my Dad, mostly, at sing-a-longs and family parties, etc., but also lullabies sung to me by my Mom that I now sing to my own kids.  Over the last few months I've been carving out time to sneak down to the basement to work on the recordings and finally got them to a point where I'm ready to be done with them.  Check out the results here.

The main reason I've wanted to do this is so I can give a copy of the songs to my parents, who love music and have long lamented the fact that I don't do a lot of singing and playing at family gatherings. (There are 2 reasons for this, by the way -- 1.  I can't remember lyrics at all.  And 2.  I would much much rather tinker around with basement recordings than play live in front of people.)

The Middle

It's the middle of the night.  Actually, it's probably closer to morning, but I am not going to worry too much about the specifics of the thing.  I have been lying awake worrying about various, low-level things for a few hours, and trying to meditate myself to sleep, or at least to sleepiness, without much success.  I feel:  wide awake, old, slightly hungry, sore, mild need-to-poop sensation (English needs a word for this), contemplative, worried, fine.  That's about it.  I'm about a week finished with a 3-week long work project that put my mind, body, and family through the ringer and has me questioning what the fuck I'm doing.  I'm 8 months into a not-drinking project that has me wondering whether life is better with or without gin n' tonics.  I've applied for a different job, had an interview, and didn't hear anything back, and that's the first time that's ever happened as far as I can remember, so that has me questioning whether I'm spinning wheels or moving forward.  (I should add that I applied for the other job not because I'm necessarily unhappy at my current job, but just to find out more about the other one).   I am having a hard time finding enjoyment in things, which is weird for me.  I've always considered myself fairly depressive, but there's always been things that I've enjoyed or looked forward to.  My current state of being is that I don't particularly feel a high (for me) level of depression or "psychic pain," but I don't feel much capacity for excitement or enjoyment, either.  I guess the best way to describe it is that on a scale of 1 to 10, nearly every minute of nearly every day feels like a 4 or 5.  And I don't know if this is a good or bad thing.  It is bad only in that I desire 8's or 10's.   My whole adult life has been driven by a practice of trying to even-out my highs and lows, to get to some Zen state of non-attachment, and while on the surface it seems like that's what's happening, if I dig a little deeper I wonder if I'm just attaching myself to the wrong things:  to work, to distractions, to the pursuit of money and security, and that these attachments are leading to fear, worry, and the weird anger that has been popping up lately, and that has never been a part of my emotional landscape before. 

Not sure. 

I do think it's funny that in my 20's I put together a collection of songs that I called "The Middle" because I felt like I was in the middle of things. 

I'm gonna try and let myself sleep, because the gears of life will begin to start grinding again in a little over an hour.

The Armchair Expert

I have been binge-ing a podcast lately called Armchair Expert.  It is a two-hour interview show where Dax Shepard interviews his friends, mostly celebrities but occasionally phD's and other experts or pseudo-experts on a particular topic.  I'm not sure why I am drawn to it, but I do find it entertaining and occasionally profound in a relatively shallow way.  Does that make sense?  Is there such a thing as shallow profundity? 

Anna turned 4 two days ago.  Read about her birth here.

Jeannie turned fortysomething ten days ago.  I don't have her birth story on here.  But for her birthday gift this year, she got what she needs most:  time to herself.  She rented a house somewhere in the country and she is there now, reading and journaling and probably meditating.  She and I are very different -- when she is left to her own devices, she gravitates towards things that actually make one a better person.  When I am left to my own devices, I usually end up in a tiny pool of alcohol, ice cream, and TV.  Although, I am proud to report, I have not had any booze since September 28th.  No big terrible problem that caused me to stop, I just found that regular drinking was really messing with my sleep.  If I had a drink I would fall asleep wonderfully 3 hours after having that drink, but then I would wake up entirely 6 hours after having the drink.  So I was getting like 3 hours of sleep a night (fast math), and was then just generally cranky and useless. 

A-train has moved back to Pittsburgh.  Happy for A-train, sad for Dan and Jeannie, but also happy because we had a really great visit with her a few weeks before she left.  Really really great.  Met at a restaurant for dinner and then instantly like 3 hours had passed.  She's pretty much the best.  I remember when I met her on the day of the Pigtown Festival...

My latest musical crush is a guy named Henry Jamison.  I think if I was a little bit better musician, and a little bit more literate, and had put more focus into music, that the music I ended up recording would sound like his songs.  For a good place to start, check out the song Through a Glass from his album The Wilds. 

Tonight I took my kids to Chuck E. Cheese's and then out to dinner at a Chinese buffet.