Pestilence Descends

When I get a fever, I usually lay in bed and shake uncontrollably for a day or so, and it always makes me think of a Little House on the Prairie episode where Almanzo gets sick and they pack him in ice to get his fever down.  I remember him in a bathtub of ice, but in this picture I found online, he appears to be in bed.  

Such an event happened on Friday when I was struck down by The Covids.  Woke up feeling poorly, tested positive, then got worse as the day unfolded.  It was a really bad time to get sick because there's a ton of work to do on the next set before we tech this weekend.  So I ended up recuperating on Friday and Saturday and then heading into work on Sunday night despite being a sicky sick-o.  And working a crappy day on Monday, doing crappy work, wearing a crappy mask, and feeling crappy.  Then on Tuesday I was feeling a little better.  Then today I'm doing OK.  

And that is the story of me being sick.  

NOTE TO SELF!!

Last night we met A-Train for a dinner and stroll in search of ice cream in Pittsburgh.  I haven't been to Pittsburgh since I was a wee lad, and the rest of the fam has never been, and holy crap it was gorgeous!  Granted, we were walking along the water and it was the type of cool summer evening that would be gorgeous no matter where we were walking along the water, but Pittsburgh last night seemed especially gorgeous.  The moon, the lights, the bridges, the sounds of a baseball game coming out of the stadium, the people streaming out of the stadium when the game was over, the restaurants with serving windows that opened up to the street in front, the buildings all involving some version of the name HEINZ, the creepy Mr. Rogers statue that was larger than life and looked like it was crafted from turds (and its beautiful setting), the good company.  

On the drive from St. Louis we'd been listening to Matthew McConoughhey's (sp?) audiobook GREENLIGHTS.  It was entertaining, but we all agreed that his particular brand of whackness is a bit more whack than our particular brand of whackness.  

dear birds and snooks

I am currently sitting in an Urgent Care facility in Oakville, MO.  Jeannie dropped me off awhile ago, a little early for my appointment, but then after she dropped me off we realized that we were looking at the clock in the car, which was still on Baltimore time, so I was a LOT early.  Oh well.  

I have a low fever and am feeling achy.  Tested negative for Covid this morning, but I'm at Urgent Care because Jeannie and I went backpacking last week as part of our vacation, and we got covered in ticks.  So I want to get this fevery achiness checked out to see if it's tick-related or just regular old fevery achiness.  

It's been an interesting trip.  It has involved a lot of driving, tick infestation, chigger infestation, a trip to the ER with a nearly unconscious vomiting J-Dog, and an amazing story from my neice that is absolutely the best/worst Bristol 7 story I've ever heard.  Amongst all of that, we've visited a lot of people, had a little bit of relaxation, and seriously trashed our car.  

I'm a little worried about getting back to work and real life next week.  We've been gone awhile and have lots of responsibilities waiting for us when we get back.  

I'm hungry.  

Olipoop

I've never done a product endorsement before, but here goes:  

If you've ever read this blog, you probably know that I'm very interested by poop and the fine art of pooping.  

My kids and I were doing our weekly grocery-shopping a few weeks ago, and in a local Mom's Organic Market I came across a brand of soda called Olipop, which was marketing itself as a soda that aided with digestion and contained a whopping 32% of a person's daily recommended dietary fiber requirement.  I've been eating a fairly high-protein diet lately and one of the side effects I've noticed is that it makes my poop a little on the firm side (think Bristol 1-3), so I decided to give it a try and bought a 12oz can despite its daddy warbucks price of $2+ per.  And damn if my poop the next day wasn't a textbook Bristol 4.  Perfection, beautiful in every way.  So the next week I bought a 4 pack and sure enough, each day that I drank an Olipop, the next day I was blessed with a sausage turd of perfection in the tarlet area.  And the streak has continued ever since.  And speaking of streaks, another added bonus is that butt-wiping has ceased being a laborious affair (as it so often is for those of us who are gluteally hirsuit) and is now quick and simple.  

So anyway, #Olipop if you're listening, thank you.  And I'm free for an endorsement deal and happy to share my poop stories on a national level.  

Stevia Wonder

Over the last week or so, I've been working on an idea for a sugar-free soft drink that would be endorsed by Stevie Wonder and would be called...wait for it...STEVIA WONDER.  So far, the idea hasn't progressed much farther than that (except for some vague images in my head about what the commercials might look like and some rejected taglines ("blindingly delicious", "I just called to say I love sugar-free beverages") but really, I'm not sure the idea NEEDS to develop any more than that.  

Work, kids, gym, various therapies.  That's life.  Trying to recognize all the good around me and enjoy it.  

Maybe going to start doing some backpacking.  Just bought an ultra-light tent.  One step closer to my lifelong dream of being a bum.  

Finding it harder and harder lately to feign appropriateness.  Still making the effort.  

Attachment Theory

 My biggest pasttime right now seems to be doing some type of therapy.  I'm getting a little tired of it, but only because my brain soaks that shit up like a sponge and then doesn't want to let go of it.  The latest thing I've been working on is digging into attachment theory -- looking at why I have what seems to be a fairly fucked-up mix of desperately needing validation from an intimate relationship AND perfect comfort with the idea of never seeing another human being again.  And yet it all seems to feel perfectly normal to me.  

Currently sitting contentedly on the couch listening to mostly soft tunes, reading ol' Jacky Kerouacky, while Jeanners and the kids are out at a kid birthday party, nary an illuminated overhead light in sight, lamplight only please.  

Ah, but who cares?  As each day passes, I'm less convinced that this all means anything, and I wasn't particularly convinced before anyway.  

I think I'm just feeling a little bleak today.  There's been some death and illness around me lately, and it's got my outlook a little bit on the gloomy side.  

Raw Fat

 Over the summer, I came up with my new stripper name:  Raw Fat.  

Waylon J

I been on a big-ass Waylon Jennings kick lately.  The production on some of his mid-70's albums is so simple and so god-damned stellar.  

Colon "Oscopy" Powell

 Well, I had my first colonoscopy this morning, and I loved it.  For real.  I loved the prep and its corresponding hours of diarrhea, I loved the procedure, I loved the anesthesia, and I love having a day off work.  The only two things I did not like were the taste of the prep medicine and the feeling of the IV in my hand.  Maybe it was the lack of food in my system or maybe it was because I had very low expectations for the whole thing but I was in a slight state of euphoria for the entire time.  

Also, I would like to give a big shout out to (sorry MJ) propofol.  Damn, I was asleep.  I wouldn't think that I would sleep through someone jamming a camera into my poop shoot, but I sure enough did.  My first time on anesthesia and I give it two solid thumbs up.  

I've had a bag of ravioli in the freezer downstairs for many months now and I've been waiting for the right time to enjoy it, and I have chosen right now as that time and it is G  O  O  D.  

I debated posting some colon pictures, but I'm not sure if there's any demand out there for them.  So I've decided not to.  But if anybody wants to see some pictures of (the inside of) my colon, please leave a comment and I'll get them right up in the next post.  And yes, the "retroflexed view in the rectum" is included.  

Kids, if you're reading this....

 When I started writing this blog, it was for two reasons:  

1.  My memory is crap and I'm sure that one day in the hopefully distant future it will be entirely gone and maybe reading these witty and hilarious episodes from my life will help me hold on to some semblance of "self," and

2.  So that if I died prematurely my future children (when I started I had no actual children yet) might get a sense of what I was like, and, more importantly, what my poop was like.  

Well, yesterday one of those future children started reading some of these old blog posts over my shoulder and discovered that I have been not-so-secretly recording my thoughts, feelings, and poopings online for the last 20-ish years or so.  He immediately wanted to read the harrowing account of his birth (and has subsequently concluded that his life is not worth the ordeal that Jeannie went through [which is untrue], he then wanted to see if I had written anything about his conception (I had not), and he laughed pretty hard at the MOO PANTS post.  

And so it feels a little weird to know that my kids may actually read some of this stuff while I'm still around.  

I have, for the last year or so, tried to censor myself less when I'm around them, and to be my complete, vulgar, confused, imperfect self when I'm with them, and to tell them what I really think and what I really feel about things, so I'm not necessarily worried about them reading that sort of stuff in here, but I worry a little bit about the sort of thing that has already happened:  if they read about how difficult their birth was that they might conclude that they were not worth it.  Or when they read about how much I just wanted to sleep when they were babies, they might think that I wasn't also 100% completely in love with being a new dad.  That's the thing about parenting -- it is 90% shitty and 100% wonderful at the same time.  And I worry that maybe I only wrote about the shittiness.  Or wrote more about the shittiness than the wonderfulness.  

And so, kiddos, if you ever are feeling like you're alone in this world, or that your existence has caused more difficulties than joy, or that you contain only shittiness and no wonderfulness, please allow me to tell you, once and for all, permanently (because things on the internet live forever):  the amount of pride, love, and joy I feel whenever I think of you is immeasurable, and your company has brought me more excitement and joy than anything else I've experienced in my time on Earth.  

Alright, now that that's out of the way, let me tell you about my poop lately:  it's been pretty damned good.  There was a stretch there where the consistency was good but it was requiring A LOT of wiping (which is never fun and makes me want to swear off pooping entirely), but then the family and I went to the HIBACHI GRILL AND BUFFET for Father's Day (my choice) and I had a supremely greasy assortment of foods, and things are sliding out pretty cleanly.  

$$$$$$$

Million dollar idea:  a New Order tribute band called New Odor.  

Ok, maybe not a million dollar idea, but def a hundred dollar idea.

Russell pt ii

It is 3:46 in the morning, and I'm wide awake, thinking about my friend Russell who died late Tuesday or early Wednesday.  What a friend he was.  In the last 10 years, I've spoken more to Russell than to anybody else, with the exception of Jeannie, maybe.  Russell was truly a brother from another mother.  My mind has just been swimming for the last couple of days, and it's complicated because we were friends and coworkers.  I'm grieving his loss as a friend while at the same time worrying about how to replace him as an employee.  Ugh. The thought of doing this job without Russell seems 1000 times less appealing.  The thought of not having Russell to talk to, of not having his care and his warm smile be a nearly daily part of my life, seems cold and flat and scary.  I am so grateful for the time that he was a part of my life and I am going to miss him terribly.  Also, I'm going to be speaking at the funeral and I'm worried about that.  Probably going to lose it.  Or spew banalities like the ones I've written here.  Or both.  But really, I'm just trying to get shit out so I can sleep.  Ugh ugh ugh.  

Gillizen's Island

 Today I saw a stupid internet article about Gilligan's Island, and how they never got off the island, and it made me realize that Gilligan's Island could be useful in explaining zen/taoism -- they spent the whole time trying to get off the island, how much better would their lives have been if they just enjoyed the island and didn't try to get off (it)?  

Beyond Happiness

 Lots of weirdness happening!  

Jeannie is in NY for a conference this weekend.  

Samuel spent the morning puking.  

Anna is singing to herself in the bathtub.

I've been happy for months now.  Happier than I've been in a long time.  

My parents' 60th wedding anniversary is coming up in a few weeks.  The fam and I will be traveling in to St. Louis for a quick trip to celebrate.  

Went to a kid's birthday party yesterday.  

Anna wants me to write about Jeannie's upcoming jury duty.  She is sitting here next to me now in her PJ's.  We look like this:

Anna is telling me to label this picture "Anna and Dad."

Who's the Boss?

 Last night's dream:  Jeannie and I hired Bruce Springsteen to de-clutter our house. 

Bristol 7

 Tonight, a new expression was created, one that I will pass down to my children and that they, in turn, will pass on to their children.  And that expression is "Bristol 7."  And it means diarrhea.  

You see, like many families, we keep a copy of the Bristol Stool Chart on our refrigerator.

And the other night Samuel and I were looking at it and I asked him what his poop is like and he said 3's and 4's.  And I (jokingly) told him that mine were all 7's.  

And I don't know how it came up, but tonight at dinner we were talking about diarrhea and I referred to it as a "Bristol 7," and now I absolutely fucking love that expression.  

"I ran into the gas station and did my business and it was a straight Bristol 7."

"I missed work last week because I was stuck in Bristol 7's."

Plus, because nobody knows what it means, you can totally insult people without them knowing it:

"Damn!  You look like a Bristol 7 today, girlfriend!"

"Thanks for the lovely evening.  I haven't had a time like this since my last Bristol 7."

Anyway, I think you get the idea.  Enjoy it.  Have fun with it.  If you come up with a great Bristol 7 expression of your own, leave it in the comments!

The Daily Wiper-Diper Show

I just woke up from a dream where Jon Stewart had been hired as the new Technical Director for the theater where I work. In the dream, he was a germ- and insectophobe, so we spent the first day cleaning the hell out of the shop. He also asked if I could pick up "4 or 5 cases of those wiper-dipers" (or maybe wiper-diapers?). I wasn't 100% sure in the dream what he was talking about, so I verified with him that he meant boxes of rags.

Last Train to Kirksville

Recurring dream: looking for housing in Kirksville, MO. Sometimes I am looking for a house/apt for me and my family, sometimes I'm looking for just me. Sometimes it involves me showing up in Kirksville for classes or a job and not having anyplace to live, sometimes it involves me looking through classifieds searching for apts or houses. Rent prices usually reflect the 1995 market, I think. K-torr and/or E. L. Elz are often featured in these dreams.

Japhy/Psychology/Booze/Fish

Having trouble getting to sleep. Thinking about Gary Snyder. He's pretty much the last one left of those original Beat folks. I'm finishing up a reread of The Dharma Bums, and also reading a fabulous nonfiction book called Poets on the Peaks that I stumbled across a few years ago. I'll be sad when he passes. I guess I'm sad already, in anticipation of his passing. Maybe there being one left is just as sad as there being none left. I'm also thinking about being fucked up regarding social situations. I have a pre-placed thought in my head that I am Not Wanted Around. This applies to social situations, it applies to my marriage, it applies to work -- pretty much everywhere I find myself. I'm trying to figure out where this thought comes from, and as far as I can tell, it comes from being the youngest kid always trying to hang out with older kids and never quite being able to fit in well with whatever they happened to be doing, and it comes from being a child nerd. It manifests as me feeling uncomfortable doing anything or going anywhere that I am not specifically invited to do/go to.

Semi-related: I passed the 3 year mark with no booze the other day. I don't know how long I can go. My brain and body definitely feel like they're missing a vital piece. It's all so strange. 

 Not related, or maybe only very slightly related: I've started catching fish when I go fishing. For over a year, when the kids and I would go fishing, we would catch absolulutely nothing. Not even a nibble. Then I started using a lure that we found along the river one day and my luck has changed, proving that maybe it really has nothing to do with luck.

My PR Strategy

 This is what I wrote to some music company that commented on an Instagram post: 

"Hello, responding to a comment about my PR strategy. My PR strategy is this: I write a song and then record it. Then, I throw it up in the air, where the wind catches it and tumbles it over and around. It eventually lands amidst a small pile of rocks, or underneath one of those guardrails next to the highway, where it is found by a curious possum who picks it up and carries it back to its house in the base of a dead sycamore. After an hour, the possum eats it, and it makes the possum very, very sick. The possum starts throwing up and having diarrhea for the following 3 days. Then the possum is fine and goes back to its normal life, but the weird thing is that everywhere the possum puke and the possum shit touched - in three springs beautiful young saplings sprout and begin to grow and they end up having leaves that are the same color as my first car: a beautiful, burgandy 1992 Dodge Spirit. And everybody that walks by those trees and sees them is overwhelmed by (to be cont'd)

(cont'd from previous message) an urge to visit my Spotify page and become one of my followers. And let me tell you something: this fucking WORKS. Every time. Also, I have no money. But I have two beautiful children. And the other day, my six year old called me "Pop," right out of the blue, so I consider myself pretty lucky."

I wonder if they'll write back?

Correspondence

 From an email to Eric:

"Life here is going along nicely.  I'm balls deep in HVAC repair and replacement at the theater.  We joined a neighborhood pool which has been lovely (although I might have broken their diving board).  We are planning a trip to the Lou (and Denver) in mid-August.  We have some baby chickens in a cage in our yard.  We have blackberry and raspberry bushes in the yard, and when I cut the grass I always stop for a few minutes and try to find some ripe berries to eat right off the fuckin' vine.   The kids are wonderful and terrible.   It's been hot and humid and some of my shirts have a stink that laundering doesn't seem to take away, and because most of my shirts are some shade of blue I can never tell which ones are gonna have the pre-loaded stink that activates as soon as I start sweating (I'm wearing one of them now, which is what makes me think of it).   I just lost a $5 bet with a co-worker who seems to be taking advantage of my terrible memory.   I'm rewatching Arrested Development.  I just finished a 3rd or 4th reread of One Hundred Years of Solitude.   I've been not running because it's been too hot but I need to get back into it."

The End of the Strange Times?

 Well, it was seeming like this whole pandemic thing was receding in the rear-view mirror -- we opened a show last Friday, we've basically stopped wearing masks except when we're indoors someplace that's not home (which is rare), we joined a pool and we've been mingling outdoors with maskless greasy people -- but then I just read something about the Delta Variant that will apparently overrun the world now.  Hmmm.  

I have mixed emotions about things going back to normal, but I definitely don't feel like doing the whole lockdown thing again.  I want my kids to be out of this damned house.  I want to not be wearing a mask all the time.  

I discovered the other day while cussing at people in traffic that I can do a not-too-shabby Al Pacino impression.  So far, my favorite thing to say in his voice is, "Step on the gas, you fucking cocksucker."  Which is offensive, I know, but ever since I watched DEADWOOD, "cocksucker" has been a cussword of choice for me.  I apologize for my use of the word.  

Deep thoughts

 Samuel turns 9 today.  

My phone fell in a river so I'm pooping with a laptop on my lap.  

I was carrying it (my phone) in my shirt pocket.  Nothing good ever happens to my phone when I carry it in my shirt pocket.  Shirt pockets are just for cigarettes, silly.  

Jabbed and rubbed

 Vaccine shot #1 complete as of an hour ago.  Hair has started growing from my palms.  I'm sure that's normal.  

Also, I've discovered (or rediscovered, maybe) that the key to my happiness lies in running at the beginning of the day and having my head rubbed at the end of the day.  Everything that happens in between then does not seem to matter very much.  

life rolls on

Well, we're pretty close to a year into this coronavirus thing.  Still doing virtual school, still working part time, trying to get some spontaneity into our routine.  

In the last week I've come to realize how important running is to maintaining my happiness.  Gotta do it, even though I never want to.  Gotta do it. 

I took out a Facebook ad to try and get people to my Spotify page.  To early to tell if the results will actually be useful.  

The most boring post in the world.  

Bad News

 I just did a little research and discovered that the million dollar idea I had in this post is not original to me.  Back to the drawing board.  There is nothing new under the sun.  

TV Star

 I didn't sleep well last night.  Woke up around 2am after having a weird dream in which I was driving cross-country, solo, and stopping at every river I crossed to float down the river a little bit in a little inflatable boat that I had with me.  Anyway, woke up in the middle of the night and it seemed like every thought I could possibly ever think decided to flow my brain during the next 3 hours or so.  I am trying to figure out why my brain decides to do this.  :Last night I decided it was because I ate rice for dinner.  Remind me to remember to test that hypothesis the next time I eat rice.  

There are leaks at work that are making me absolutely bonkers.  

I've been working on music, somewhat steadily, for the last few months.  Things could possibly turn into something short-album-length.  I've got about 6 or so songs right now.  There's one song that I did as a collaboration with a woman that I met on the interwebs who liked some of my instrumentals, and she apparently has binders of lyrics sitting around and asked if she could send me some of the lyrics.  So I said what the hell and she sent me the lyrics and I worked up a song for some of them and the song turned out pretty good.  Probably some of the best recording I've done, anyway.  Good vocals, clean guitars, bass-y bass, simple melody, backing vox, decent ambient-y sounds.  All the hallmarks of a quality Dan O'Brien jam.  

I've been doing live streams of random moments in my life on Instagram.  It's fun.  It feels like an extension of my solo-performance piece in college, but in reality it's probably more closely related to stuff I've written in here in the past.  Basically, I'm trying to recapture the notion that I have something worthwhile to say, or at least that the fact that I don't have anything worthwhile to say should not serve as a command to not speak.  Basically, I feel myself feeling less and less inclined to speak, and I worry that one day soon I will literally blow away and disappear forever.  So I am attempting to not let myself blow away by making videos of boiling hotdogs and telling people my thoughts.  

Balance in the Force

 I hate to jinx shit, but I will go ahead and sayd that life feels pretty danged good right now (with the exception, of course, of everything that's going on in the world around me, which feels as though things are on the brink of complete collapse).  But in terms of work/life balance, the developmental stages of our children, the relationship of Danners/Jeanners, my relationship to stress, my relationship with eating/drinking/exercising/my body, progress in our house and yard --- it all feels weirdly.....fine.  Great, even.  

We are in the midst of PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2020 and it seems to be following the course of all other events of 2020 - in other words, it's a bit of a shitshow.  

Speaking of shitshow, I really need to go to the bathroom.    

Monkey Dick

Me:  "Hey, Monkey Dick."

Jeannie:  "Don't call me a Monkey Dick"

Me:  "Monkey's actually have very beautiful dicks.  It's a compliment."

BABY WE WERE BORN TO RUN

 tomorrow morning I'm leaving for a whirlwind solo trip to St. Louis for my Mom's 80th birthday.  14 hours of driving on Friday and then 14 back on Sunday.  Woo-Hoo!  I can't fucking wait.  3 days of not really thinking about anything sounds 1000% fabulous.  

The 3 things I'm looking forward to not thinking about the most:

schooling

CCC

Minecraft

Sammers has become basically obsessed with Minecraft, despite the fact that he's played it about 4 times in his life.  It's all he talks about from the moment he wakes up at 6:30am until he goes to bed at 8pm.  And it's making me want to stick pens and screwdrivers in my eyes and ears.  

Schooling is meh.  We've been talking about making a change, which would be a big fucking leap into the unknown.  But I'm to the point where my fear of leaping into the unknown is outweighed by my fear of becoming a stodgy, conservative, scared, boring, bored, stick in the mud.  

Jeannie took a picture of me and Anna the other day that I think looks cute.  I think it looks cute because Anna looks cute and because it's one of maybe 3 pictures where I look as cool as I secretly hope that I look in real life (but never do).  

 Secret confession:  sometimes the stock market affects my mood.  

Today I gave my kids (mostly Samuel) a stellar lesson about Capitalism and Communism using an example of a job we did at our house rolling pennies.  I told Samuel that he and Anna could roll the pennies and keep whatever they rolled, but that we would be totaling the amount and then splitting it evenly between them.  He argued that he should get more because he rolled more.  I told him that he was describing a Capitalist system, and that the system I was describing was basically a Communist system.  I told him that people who prefer Capitalist systems do so because they generally feel that not receiving more reward if you do more work feels unfair, but I asked him to consider how he would feel if it were he and I rolling pennies instead of he and Anna, and I would roll more than him, and he would end up getting less.  And I said that the nice thing about a Communist system is that (theoretically) everyone is taken care of or at least feels equal.  Anyway, I tried not to pitch one system over the other but pointed out arguments for and against each system.  

What a boring story.