Category Archives: Uncategorized
Those of you with young children can look forward to a milestone in their lives that comes with puberty and helps make the transition even more fun and exciting. I’m not sure who decided that the best time to put kids out on the road for the first time was when they were being driven to psychosis by the hormones raging in their bodies. Makes sense to me.
When L started learning, both of our vehicles had manual transmissions. Beck and I hate automatics and niether of us would own one. But it soon became apparent that the poor girl was just not going to be able to master the finer points of driving AND learn the trick of operating a clutch. So I found a great deal on a ’94 Buick Century, perhaps the unsexiest car ever made, but a ‘good runner’ as they say. As in, “Yah, she’s a good runner, y’know.” So that got one girl on the road. Delayed by a year but independant, no more chauffering that one around and she can take Q places as well. She bitches about the gas she has to buy though. One mystery to me is that although we paid for the car and we pay for the insurance, she refers to it as “my car.”
Q turns sixteen in May and has her permit, which in MN means she can drive with an adult. I had her drive me to the drugstore last night and then we took a loop around the burbs. She did a pretty good job, her corners and stops need some smoothing out, but she’s confident and careful and is trying to do it right. She also seems to have passed through the worst of the obnoxious stage. It happened suddenly a couple weeks ago. She actually is cheerful and fun to be with like the old Q. She actually was asking me for advice and deferring to my experience without a single eye-roll.
L won’t be taking the car to college, so Q can use it next year. That only gives us four months of fist fights over who gets to use it.
OK, I know some of you would rather have a boil lanced by a drunken friend with a rusty nail than watch sports, but….Did anyone see the NCAA commercial, one of those split screen one about student-athletes, that featured the woman softball catcher. They do this tight shot of her flashing signals, like in close on her crotch and she’s doing the 2 finger V signal. I couldn’t help but think of Kingpin. Anyway, sort of obscene.
Which reminds me. I was in the can at work washing my hands and the soap dispenser sort of exploded on me and got that creamy white soap all over my shirt. The guy standing next to me at the sink takes one look and says, “There’s Something About Mary.“
Also, that Ciaga commercial…the one with the four hour erection warning. It also says that a side effect might be “delayed back pain.” You know when you get older it’s wise not to attempt some of those more ambitious positions, I guess.
I’m going to be so late for work and I don’t care. Wait, I’m the boss, it doesn’t matter.
It Was a Day
Thanks to everyone for the kind comments. I had a couple of ideas for expanding on the ideas in the last post, but as usual, I didn’t write them down and I forgot them. Anyway, it’s not my intention to make this into a forum for the exploration of my nuerosis. As dear to my heart as they are.
Yesterday was the kind of day that makes you want to toss your meds away. It’s tough to be depressed when the sky is blue and it’s 65 degrees and you’ve got the day off work. We started the day slowly, I was blogging away and Beck was reading the paper and knocking off the crossword, and doing some remote business at the agency. Then we spent a short time working in the garden, pulling mulch off the beds of spring bulbs. I planted about 150 bulbs, maybe more last fall. I had a map going to remind me what I put in, but I didn’t finish it and I can’t find it anyway. I’ll know which ones the tulips are anyway. Then we walked to the local Caribou, which is on the far corner of the cemetary, taking the long way around and cutting diagonally through the wild part. It’s taken thirty years for them to fill up half of the land they have, I hope they don’t give in to pressure from the city to develope the wild half. It’s a nice chunk of tall grass prairie in the middle of suburban sprawl. We came home and made a Pizza on one of those “Boboli” crusts (I call them bobolooies) watched the NYPD we’d recorded while we were at the game and then headed for the Mall of America to shop and people watch while we waited for the girl’s plane to get in. I could live like that.
Have I ever told you how much I love my wife? I am so friggin’ lucky that fate brought us together and that she was somehow attracted to a loser like me and that she had the Norwegian stubborness to not give up on me when I was in the deepest of my craziness. She is beautiful and eternally youthful. She’s a great mother and a steadying influence on me. Although I chafe at her caretaking instincts, she’s saved my ass a million times with her, “have you got the (tickets, keys, money, papers, passports, gas.) When I lose stuff she generally knows where it is of finds it for me. She has been a huge help in my maintaining my sobriety and has always encouraged and supported my in my artistic endeavors. And she’s physically tough (small but from a family of wrestlers) and mentally tough in the Norwegian tradition. She is an affectionate stoic. A great companion and soulmate. God bless her.
For those who asked for a link to a larger image of the illustration below.
Check out NDM’s and then follow the link to sign the petition.
Now there’s a sign of spring!
My last post garnered some interesting comments around the issue of medicating one’s mental state. The picture on the left is a variety cover that I did for the Strib back when I was on the features design staff in 1990. It’s the only newspaper peice that’s on display in the house. There’s a reason for that. The article is about the relationship between insanity and creativity. The illustration is a self portrait, although my hair was never that red. But it gives it kind of a Vincent thing, no? I’ve always felt like I was walking the razor’s edge of sanity. And I’ve always wondered if the same engine that drove the madness drove the creativity. It took me 53 years to find out that my anxiety, anger, hypochondria and sleeplessness could be ameliorated with medication. I know some people aren’t so lucky, but it works for me. But that bring up the question, if I modify the engine to run more smoothly, will it still provide the horsepower to drive the wheels of my imagination?
At the moment I’m coming to terms with the idea that I’ve not only been depressed, but that I’ve had some form of ADD for all this time. One of things that has always gotten in the way of my career as an artist is that I have a bitch of a time sitting still for the long periods of time required to render out an idea. That’s one reason my niche as a quick spot cartoon guy was perfect. When I was one of the production folks in my current job, I was very low in the productivity measurements. Part of that was because of all the time I spent helping other people solve technical problems and investigating problems for the then managers who were clueless about graphics software. But it was mostly about being bored as hell and not being able to keep my ass in my chair. I got promoted basically on good looks and charm. But now I’m thinking of adding yet another med to my list. I have a good friend who just was diagnosed as an adult with ADD and he says that the change was miraculous when he started taking meds for it. Would I start finishing projects, instead of letting them die after the excitement of a new idea wore off? Would the meds dam up the river of imagination. And most important of all, would I still be able to get wood?
FIRST ROBIN!
I used to be a hypochondriac. A really bad one. Every little pain I had was cancer for sure. All I had to do was read about a disease and I’d have the symptoms immediately. Then I’d obsess about it. You know, plan my funeral, stuff like that. Once my tongue brushed against a lump in my mouth. “OH MY GOD! A LUMP!” I couldn’t leave it alone, it got bigger, began to hurt, the pain spread throughout my jaw. I went to the doc. It was a saliva gland and the reason it was swelling and hurting was that it had become inflamed by my constantly rubbing my tongue on it!!!!! I knew I was a hypochondriac, I used to joke about it with my doctors. But just because I’m a hypochondriac doesn’t mean I don’t have ebola.
I started seeing a therapist for it. He suggested that some anti-depressants work for hypochondria. I was reluctant to go that route, I’m not sure why. Maybe because a coworker blew his brains out while on them. But that was years ago. But I was having a horrible time at work. I would pull into my parking space and just sit there, not able to get myself to go in. I was flying off the handle at home, yelling at the girls or shutting myself up in my room, all kinds of classic symptoms. So I gave the happy pills a try. The effect was almost instantaneous. Never mind the depression, the hypochondria was gone. Immediately. Now I suppose I will get cancer and ignore the symptoms until it’s too late.
Better living through chemistry.
Looking out the back window over my computer I have to wonder, who took the color out of the world? It’s a gray day in the Twin Towns.
This is my last work day of the week. I’m taking Thursday and Friday off so Beck and I can practice being retired empty nesters. I’m hoping to get a project done, like having sex in every room in the house. Or something like that.
We went to see the Gophers move to the Sweet 16 last night. Our seats are in the second row of the upper level, right behind press row. Patrick Reusse, the columnist for the StarTribune, in the opinion of some the best sports writer in town, was sitting right in front of us. It was fascinating to watch him write his story as the game progressed. One thing I know is that he’s the fastest two finger typist I’ve ever seen. The game started late, so I’m sure that he had to get it in right after. I’m going to go read it now.
Saturday night we were invited over to one of the YaYa’s house for dinner. When we arrived they announced that they were taking us out instead. They were the ones (she was, he might have been able to give us good directions) that gave us the bad directions to the Indian market. It turns out the Indian market was not even the store they were talking about. It’s an Arab market and it’s down the street a mile or so. Every bit as cool as the Indian place, it had all kinds of imported food, including a big assortment of European chocolate and cookies. There were shelves full of things in cans with no English subtitles. I bought some hazelnut cream filled chocolate wafers and a container of what looked like assorted home made Arabic confections. I say confection instead of candy because although these were very sugary, they were primarily made from dates. A few slabs of what appeared to be nuggat filled with pistachios, otherwise dates. Dates stuffed with pistachios and rolled in sesame seeds, dates stuffed with pistachios with coatings of nuggat….
Hold the phone. I decided I was throwing that last word around without any knoweldge of what it meant other than from Milky Way commercials so I looked it up:
Main Entry: nou·gat
Pronunciation: ‘nü-g&t, esp British -“gä
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Provençal, from Old Provençal nogat, from noga nut, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin nuca, from Latin nuc-, nux — more at NUT
: a confection of nuts or fruit pieces in a sugar paste
So I guess they were nougats
…and some with dried apricots thrown in for a little extra color and flavor. These things have the density of an ex wrestler former MN gov. They’re the original energy bar. Next time I go hiking or fishing I’m bringing a pocketfull of these sugar bombs for an instant pickup.
Next it was on to the restaurant, Jerusalem. I’m not sure why the name because I’m pretty sure this was an Egyptian place. At least they had what looked like Egyptian temple art on the walls. I was reminded of the novel Palace Walk by Mafuz because of the Men’s club atmosphere. There were guys in one corner smoking these huge hookahs, I guess it was tobacco. Men playing cards. Pretty much men. There was one very western looking couple with a little girl. The woman was looking around and our eyes kept meeting. After reading Palace Walk I kept thinking her huge husband and the hookah guys were going to drag me out and make shwarma out of me. We asked the waitress what the special was and she replied, “I couldn’t pronounce it if I tried, so I’m not going to try.”
“Well what’s in it?”
“I’ll ask my uncle.”
It was baked chicken with onions and it was soooo, good.
I love a good cross cultural experience, but considering the current international situation, I felt a certain tension at both places. Maybe it was just me.
It’s four something in the morning. We’re taking the human hormone bombs to the airport so they can fly to Phoenix and torment their grandmother for a week. It will be nice to walk around the house naked again.