Tagged: life
That’s Not Exactly How I’d Put It
So my mother-in-law is back with us for a short time before her return to Ethiopia. I believe I have mentioned to someone, maybe not as a post, that her stay with us is not as bad as I had imagined it could be. In truth, it gives my wife someone to talk to, and Ethiopians (or “abasha” if you want to appear “in the know” to them) seem to need people to be happy, far more than I do at least.
At dinner the other night sat my wife, her mother, my step-son, A-, and the two toddlers and I. Whatever caused the moment to develop, the toddlers were declaring that A- was the source of the problem. To hear this gives me great pleasure and my laughter indicated as much.
My mother-in-law asked her daughter, my wife, what was so funny and my wife tried to explain, but even a dummy like me knows this “joke” is very hard to translate. I gave my wife the tip, “Tell your mom that I have trained the two younger ones to always blame A-.”
My wife, generally one to laugh thoughtlessly when anyone laughs, stopped smiling as she realized that her mom might not like to know this fact. Her mom, point of fact, raised A- in the homeland from 1-8 until his father allowed him to join his mom (now my wife) back in 2018. Sensing this, I added, “Tell her that it’s because A- had it so easy for his first 8 years.”
A- surprisingly, and unsurprisingly, clarified, “9 years,” I think because he didn’t officially move in with me until 2019.
The mother-in-law didn’t appear to think it was as funny as I did and to boot she told my wife that, “A- did not have it very easy and he was a very good boy.”
This of course made me laugh even harder because it is patently untrue as measured by his habits/character etc. and the fact that it was now clear to me that “easy” and “hard” were not being translated accurately.
As you know, dear furinj (that’s the name for white folks), by “easy” I meant things like “A-went through life unmolested to the point of living a perfectly terrible balance of getting everything he desired, having no understandable cause-and-effect relationship to his life choices, and being emotionally and mentally neglected.”
My mother-in-law, of course, meant, “He was beaten, with implements sometimes, and while I regret that, he is clearly better for it.”
The next day, he and I had to get some of his grandma’s stuff out of our shed and you can imagine the picture. I would climb over things, begin to lift them or push them and expect that the boy would take note of his necessary role and “put in his oar” as it were. Instead, he moved out of the way every time, as if he was just there to watch. (Bear in mind, it has been four years of this. This includes when I get in the car and hand the pizza boxes to him in the passenger seat only to watch as he squishes back into the seat thinking that the boxes are going to accidentally bump him otherwise.)
We find everything; the grandma’s bags are now in the house. Now they need to be carried to upstairs. He grabs two of them as she watches. I know their language enough to count to ten and hear the number “hulet” which is “two”. So I put together that ol’ grandma is suggesting that he doesn’t need to carry two at a time—and I can attest that they were heavy. A- boldly insists that he can do it—a fact to be decided in real time.
I can’t help but chide him and comment, “Oh, I see. When grandma’s watching you turn into a strongman. Nice.”
A- responds in kind, “I was a good boy for nine years…”
That’s not exactly how I’d put it.
To “Anyone Who Would Listen”
I’m so fucking strong. That’s why Life can’t ever get to me. But as I drove home—daughterless—from the court-ordered, though in the main respect unsuccessful, transfer of child for Christmas (odd years are mine), I couldn’t help but think, “Man. I can handle these things because I’m so strong. But imagine if every, or even just a few, of these other schmucks behind the wheel were dealing with this blow. Surely it would destroy them.”
Good thing I’m strong. That’s all I have to say.
My ex actually answered the door. That was a surprise. I think it’s been over 5 years since I have seen her. I wasn’t sure if her father would make the protective trip like he did last time when she first revealed her desire to kidnap my daughter. H- was still innocent those few years ago and believed the lies they told her about his visit. Ah, the good ol’ days.
Let me just say, for the record, my ex looked terrible. She looked like she had lost her entire sense of humor. The years have not been good to her.
I, if I do say so myself, looked as good as I can get. I had a suit on. Blue, with brown belt and shoes. Grey polo underneath. My nice gold-colored watch. I was going for the “I choose the wrench” look. You know the one, right? End of “Good Will Hunting”? Matt Damon is explaining how his step-dad used to layout the tools from which he, as the step-son, could choose to get beat with? A hose, a stick, a wrench (or similar). Good ol’ loveable Will says, “No, I chose the wrench. ‘Cuz, ‘Fuck him.’” Yup, I want my gold-digging ex to see that she has more to take from me, that is, if she was only smart enough to figure out how.
Which brings me to why I even continue to breathe in air. It’s for moments of pure clarity that the clear mountain air brings to us on mornings like this one. Moments like I had on the drive home.
The Deputy I spoke to when I called in this “incident” told me she (lady cop) didn’t have to come out if I didn’t want her to. I told her I wanted as little drama as possible, but I did want a formal record of the non-transfer-event. The deputy continued to explain that the incident is recorded and she can text me an “incident number” that I can use should I file a motion for contempt of court etc.
Hahahahahaha. Ah, bliss.
If you missed it, that was the moment of pure clarity.
Imagine it. Me, a divorced dad, American citizen, filing a motion of contempt of court against my ex. Hahahahaha. Like that would do anything.
I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. While being terrifically strong, sometimes I think I am not that smart.
There is no enforcement! What is the judge, the Court, going to do? Slap her wrist? Lecture her? Make her pay a fine? I should be a freakin’ attorney for women. “Ahem… Pardon me. Here’s all you need to do. Nothing. You just do nothing. Don’t do a thing. Just think ‘rock on a flatland’ anytime you begin to stress. Don’t move. Not one inch. Got it? Good. Total for today’s chat will be $12,786.42–but don’t worry. He’ll happily pay.”
Now here is the interesting, truly fascinating, part. I used to know this! I did. In fact, I distinctly recall writing, and could probably search for, a blog post about the complete impotence of divorced dads in America. It was like 3 years ago, I think.
But then something odd happened. Hope was kindled. But apparently my iceberg of penguins is so full, that when Hope appeared, the Facts of Life had to drop off the edge, if there was to be room.
That, and the fact that, as a strong mother-effer, I have to say that I love proving it. I love flaunting it. Right next to “pure being”, I live to flex. And I love—I think this is why I married two weak women—I love getting punched in the face by puny little children. I feel like Tyler Durden must have when persuading Lou in “Fight Club”. I love it.
So I drove the hour to visit my longest-standing ward. Again, she looked terrible. But me? I drove home unruffled—unlike all the other folks on the road. God help them this Christmas.
Foucault’s Pendulum and Spheres and Earth and Friends and More!
Careful readers noticed yesterday that I used the words “pope” and “Copernicus” when dismantling Tesla-lovers’ desire to save the planet while they commute alongside me. I did this because my guided reading through the Great Books of the Western World has landed me in Ptolemy and Copernicus (and now Kepler).
I told a co-worker that I feel like I’m reading sacred scripture when I read these guys’ words. I mean they are it. These are the ones who tackled the big problems and won (and lost). I cannot emphasize enough how interesting and provocative the writings are—especially the ones that have been disproved. Just fascinating. For example, did you know that folks knew Earth was a sphere over 2000 years ago? They knew. And they knew through easy methods that even you and I can understand, the most simple being that during lunar eclipses, the shadow on the moon is always circular. And only a sphere object can do that.
Anyhow, in short, (because I know you aren’t going to rush out and get the set) Ptolemy (and many in his day, circa 100-200AD) thought the Earth was an unmoving sphere inside a larger rotating sphere which was lined with the stars and the other lights of the sky. To be clear, this is a ball within a ball scenario. Like if we go to a planetarium and lay back in the dome structure to “ooh and ahh” the night sky as projected digitally, that’s pretty much what they thought. I mean to emphasize that they did not see the night sky (or day sky for that matter) as “deep”. Had they thought to travel out to the lights, they apparently thought they would hit a wall/boundary. (Keep in mind, they didn’t conceive of traveling off earth.) This, of course, stands against everything we moderns believe, which includes that we can and will journey further and further and further away from the Sun/Earth or really anything out there.
With me?
Next, it was Copernicus who went through the Pope (and had to in 1543–life is so different today—so very different) to correct Ptolemy’s errant belief that Earth was the center of the larger sphere. The Sun was the center—and, put simply, for the reason that it makes the math simpler. Note here that Copernicus still did not believe that space went out and out and out. (He also showed other things, such as the Earth itself moves and this what makes the stars appears to move, not the other way around.)
In the guided reader, they make mention of the types of proofs that Ptolemy and Copernicus were concerned with and this is where it is mentioned that the Foucault Pendulum was finally invented and put to use in 1851. You can look it up yourself; I still don’t fully understand how it works. Maybe you will. But when you look it up, you’ll discover that these pendulums are all over the globe now at various science museums, and they report in to each other. It is this comparison of observations that is truly the mechanical proof of the rotational movement of the sphere earth.
This was a “Eureka!” moment for me.
To rehearse and summarize some of this trivia, Ptolemy really made his mark because he took into account past astronomical observations and added to them an extensive new amount of data. Then Copernicus did the same. (See the methodological trend?) By the time we get to Foucault’s Pendulum, we already have an established pattern of humans using other humans’ information, so the idea of sharing the results from these pendulums that are swinging all over the world is not entirely new.
Are you tracking yet?
(I enjoy leading folks to the conclusion rather than just bluntly stating it, but I’ll be blunt after one more clue.)
Put another way, Ptolemy alone didn’t suggest the Earth was the center and a sphere. Copernicus alone didn’t suggest the Sun was the center and the Earth rotated. Foucault alone didn’t prove that the Earth was a rotating sphere.
People need people! Get it?
We all have encountered Flat Earthers of late. Or most of us have. Guess what? They are alone. They have no friends. Even the others at the conventions aren’t friends. They don’t compare notes and use each others’ new and unique and accurate and confirmable measurable data to develop and defend their idea. They just bleat. Bah bah baaaa.
I am impassioned by this topic because a very good former friend of mine that I met at the seminary revealed his insanity when he one day decided to lob a joke about the earth being round into the fray. When I didn’t buy into his BS, he wouldn’t allow for any other topic of conversation to pass.
Keep in mind I told him, “I don’t care which mental construction of the universe you hold in your mind. I just think we should be able to talk about something else too.”
Nope. He wouldn’t move past it until I agreed with him.
I had invited him in for lunch in my seminary, Steinway-housing apartment. His wife and him (and baby) hosted H- and I for an afternoon meal and relaxing stroll at his place. We were at the seminary together. Man. It was/is frustrating. But it also proves my “newly learned” point. These folks have no friends. (Did I mention he was a green beret? Yeah. Unrelenting persistency does not always pay off.)
Anyhow. Crazy times we live in. The good part, as I have said and wrote time and time again, is we have books. I’m still with TJ, “I cannot live without books.”
Name Change Coming Soon
I’ve been thinking it’s time to more accurately entitle this blog of mine. So a name change (just superficial—website will stay the same) from Captain’s Log to something else is coming soon.
The point of this post is to say, “Don’t be alarmed. It is still me. I just feel like I need to admit that I’m hijacking the mood when I drop the lure of being an interesting pilot/Captain who can also write well and has a unique perspective, but, really, I am just a blogger who blogs fearlessly—which means writes well.”
More to follow.
Free Vacuums
Mindlessly, perhaps distractedly, I sat at a stop light, patiently waiting my turn on this December evening. My eyes fell upon a sign over to the right on a building that said, “Free Vacuums”.
Now at work, the vacuum we have is terrible. It is one of those canister kinds that lets you see the dust swirling as evidence that it is working—that is, until it isn’t working and the dust just sits and now the volume seems to loud and you wonder if it always was this loud or has it just gotten louder when it stopped working correctly? I hate the canister kind. I’ve always preferred Oreck and bagged vacuums, myself. Just keep it simple.
Back to the sign, I thought, “How could they possibly have enough vacuums for any and all comers?” I wish, for your sake, you could have seen what I imagined the inside of this store looked like. Just a smorgasbord of refurbished (that’s surely the only type that could be free) vacuums. The old chrome ones, and maybe an Oreck a day was set out for a lucky shopper.
It didn’t seem real, but then who does like vacuuming? And I have been trying to give away a washer and dryer and am resolved that it will simply cost money to have someone pick them up. Maybe the vacuum market is similar? And maybe there is a government program to help encourage clean houses? Who knows?
Let me be clear, I almost re-routed in the direction of the sign.
Then it hit me. I almost couldn’t look again for shame and embarrassment. And I have barely been able to stop laughing long enough to type this out—of which the only reason I type is because the two people I called to share a good laugh with didn’t answer.
It was a car wash! Ha. Free vacuums!
As if someone would just give away vacuums.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
The Coffee Inspires
One more note to share, while on the unending topic of men and women.
“What’s it really like to be married to a woman who barely speaks English (though she doesn’t know it) and hails from one of the least educated countries on the planet?”
In short, if you can imagine how the first conversation with an alien (on his first—and surprise, think emergency landing—visit to the planet) would go, how you would quickly learn that you could assume no shared context or meaning or any easy place to start, then you may have an idea of how every verbal utterance we have plays out.
Don’t believe me? Try this recent experience.
As you know, I value reading and books. I am with TJ when he said, “Books are my friends.” I have tons and tons of books. And I recently got some great bookshelves upon which to display them in the new Colorado house.
Well, anyhow, as we recently were going through the ritual of shopping for home decor, I couldn’t help but notice they had some fake books to purchase. I dryly—too dryly it seems—picked them up and said, “These would be perfect for your new furniture. Ha.”
A week or so passes and then I see her placing a bunch of this nonsense all throughout the room and the fake books are included. When I comment with a hearty, if not literal, “WTF?,” she earnestly rebuts in kind with, “You said you would like them!”
Did I?
Keep in mind this is four years in. And it is not the first time I have pointed out or commented on the concept of fake books when shopping together.
Never assume, I guess.
Quite the life.
Two Random, Intriguing Thoughts on Friday
I realized this morning while sitting at the hotel breakfast that all the wonky Dr. Seuss characters (the Zeds, Noothgrushs, Tweetle-Beetles etx.) are actually not wonky but exact replications—in 2D—of people.
Secondly, and more importantly if you’re on a quest for meaning like me, I realized an important fact. Those of us with “guardian” personalities—I’m talking military, police, first responders etc—are frustrated and angered as a rule, almost necessarily so, because we see (from our perches as “guardians”) folks wasting our efforts. As in, “In post-armageddon dystopias, where rule-of-law is only foreign scribbles on the pages of unread books, you’d be able to dye your hair blue, but you choose to do that while I’m on shift? And in response to having to eat oatmeal instead of a smoothie for breakfast as a kid? Ahh. What am I even doing here?!”
Today’s My Birthday
My mother-in-law is currently living with us. Five days in. Hasn’t been terrible. I have chosen the strategy of pointing out every time I do something that husbands/men/fathers typically don’t do. (She doesn’t speak English, so my wife has to translate. It’s fun.)
Just now I started to wash my favorite La Creuset pan, their 11×13 attempt. I told my wife to tell her mom that on my birthday I still do the dishes. My wife responded that she had already told her mom that this was my favorite dish and that’s why she used it to make breakfast.
I said, “Ha. Probably shouldn’t tell her the real truth. The truth that I trust no one with my stuff. The truth that I have been hurt before, and so I wash my own dishes.”
I have been hurt before, and so I wash my own dishes.
Sounds like a pretty great opening line to a novel, if you ask me.
Great Comebacks, Too Late
I sometimes come up with amazing comebacks, too late to use. Oh well.
The first that comes to mind was once a scammer left a voicemail about legal action blah blah blah. Since I was divorced and always fearing some new bullshit from my ex, I called the number back. The dude proceeded to deliver the scam flawlessly but something just wasn’t right. Again, since I was divorced, I knew legal things didn’t happen quickly, or need to. So I finally just told him that I didn’t believe him. He seemed to have enjoyed being called out, just concluding, “Okay, Mr. Smart Guy, take your chances,” or some such thing.
Only later did I wish I said, “You sound black.” (He did. And I’m certain he was. But even if I’m wrong, it would’ve been hilarious.)
Tonight, another zinger came to mind only too late.
I have been sharing with folks at work (healthcare) that I am enjoying, if three years after the trend, cold showers. Well, this elicits all sorts of responses, mostly enjoyable to engage. One such response was, “I bet it opens your pores.”
My too little, too late response is, “‘Pores open?’ I was only aware of five senses.”
So funny. Or would’ve been.
I Had It All Wrong
I used to think of emotions, instincts, logic, reason, and other types of decision making as choices. I had it all wrong.
Now, I don’t know if there is a hierarchy, as in, “Reason is better than emotion,” for example. I don’t know if there is ultimate worth, as in, “At least I can say that reason guided my life.” I cannot say for sure that these traits are building blocks, as in, “Only after mastering emotion can you learn to reason.”
What I do know now, and know for certain, is that for those who do not act upon reason, it is not because they are avoiding reason. It is because they cannot reason. For these folks, using reason is as unavailable as flight is to a jack rabbit. Sure, they might end up “reasoning”, but they certainly didn’t flap their wings.
This is unfortunate.
But it is not the end of the story.
Life goes on. That’s the end of the story.
What shall be done in the time remaining? How should one communicate with those without reason? How should one live with them?
It calls to mind a line from Tolstoy. He wrote something like, “I could not follow any of the two women’s conversation. But I knew it had to be about something because it was unending.”
Next blog: What to do if your wife is happy everywhere but at home, and then invites her non-English speaking mother to stay at said home with no departure date?
Captain’s Log 