It's been over 2 months since my last confession...

I've been very negligent in my blogging confessional. Neither ranting nor raving nor just being me and making no sense whatsoever.

So why now? Who knows. I was dinking around on my laptop and realized I hadn't written in a while. So, here I am.

I recently finished installing a new sink in our guest bathroom. Granted it took me long enough, but I was gone for two weeks there in the middle of it. It's a lovely sink. But not sure how well it fits in with the overall decor...you know...80s blue. Anyway, my wife and I let our 13 year old son pick it out because he uses that bathroom as his own. I was expecting something like the Garfield toilet seat he picked out a few years ago when it needed replacing (that has since been replaced again by a run-of-the-mill seat). But he picked out a nice looking sink, if not a little ornate. His main thing was picking out the hardware. He wanted two water control knobs instead of the one we had previously. That's excitement in his world!

Anyway...I just felt like writing something ordinary here today. And I guess that's about as ordinary as it gets. It's easy to find joy in ordinary things when you're 13. I wonder what happened along the way that made me take all that for granted? Taking pleasure in the little things...maybe that's part of what having children means. They remind you of all the things you used to do. Of all those feelings you used to feel. What it's like to be free to enjoy the small, but meaningful things in life.

It really makes me love him all the more...and I don't see how that is possible...but I take great joy in it...

ROAD TRIP???

I’m getting ready for a road trip.  Usually I enjoy a family vacation with huge amounts of driving…you know half-way across the US to enjoy a nice museum honoring Greyhounds, or to take in the magnificence of the Grand Canyon (then a side trip to gamble in Vegas).  There is fun at the end of those “rainbows”.  

The trip I’m about to embark on is for work.  It’s a long story and I won’t bore you with the details, but we have to drive…a co-worker and I.  17 hours.  Stay a week and then 17 hours home again home again jiggedy jig.  It just kind of depresses me…to have to drive all that way to work.  It only used to take me 20 minutes to drive to work…but a 17 hour commute?  ACK!

When I get back from that, I’m going to have to make a day trip to the north.  The office wants me to drive there, work, then drive home again in the same day.  If the work takes too long, they agree I can spend the night in a hotel.  I guess that’s only a six hour (round trip) commute, so what am I complaining about?

I long for the day when I don’t have to travel to work on any kind of basis.  When I can just go on a nice, long, leisurely vacation trip with the misses…maybe in an RV, but more than likely in a car with hotels along the way.  

Airport days...

I travel for my job.  Yesterday I spent the day in the airport.  Alaska Airlines (well technically Horizon Air) cancelled my 10am flight.  Their next-best solution for me was a 1:45pm flight.  I had to get to the airport early because my ride had to go to work afterward.  So, I was there from about 8:30am until 9:45 when they cancelled my flight.  Then I waited until 1:15 to board when a message went up that it wouldn’t board until 2:00.  So, I spent five and a half hours at the airport for my 2 hour flight to Burbank.  Fun, huh?  

They did give me $12 for lunch.  I blew that and more on sushi.  I made a pig of myself.  

The guy right after me asked for access to Alaska’s Board Room.  I got back in line and asked for that too, but they said they had already reached the access limit for the Board Room for the day.  Damn…cushy seats…super-fast Internet access…free drinks…free muffins!  Muffins!  Missed out again…

I checked the Board Room out online.  It’s $300 a year for free muffins while you travel.  What a bargain!

Oh my dearie me...

Why am I blogging when I could be sleeping? Who knows. I thought I'd check a couple blogs I like to read before sleeping...since I don't exercise, sheer boredom takes a front seat. Here they are:

http://www.wibsite.com/wiblog/dull/

http://secondmostboring.blogspot.com/

Okay, that's out of the way. Sweet sleep take me in your burgeoning arms and waft me to thy ample bosom.

I Blog…Therefore I am…

I Blog…Therefore I am…

A voice in the sea of the Internet…or Internets as our President is so fond of saying. Shouting out personal information; ideas and thoughts normally left unsaid. It's cathartic, purging, to spew forth the platitudes of many, boiled down to the swamp gas of one.

I Blog, therefore I am. You hear my written voice. I must be some sort of semi-cognizant being. I get responses. I must say something worth someone’s time to read. I get satisfaction or disappointment to varying degrees from the responses or lack thereof. I have feelings…therefore I Blog. I Blog to prove I am alive; that I am capable of existence in some form or another. I Blog for acceptance most of all…to prove that someone likes me…they really like me.

So, I guess I Blog to release the inner Sally Field in me? I Blog therefore I fly on the wings of my bonnet across the Internets into your computer...into your mind...

Oh my freaking god...

I KNEW I shouldn't have posted something like that last blog...I think it was prophetic or something. Before I posted it, I had been sleeping really well for the past few months. After posting it, I'm having all sorts of odd things happening. No shrouded death people, but odd noises, flickering lights and my son shouting in his sleep, "I thought YOU were doing that!" (He has shouted that the past two nights in a row).

I used to sleep like the dead. I'd lay down, any time, any place...zonk! I'd be out. I'd often wake up in the exact same position I laid down in when I went to bed. But then something happened. My son was born. My parental sleep awareness system kicked in to high gear. Any kind of noise wakes me up now...and it's been 13 years. Hell, I wake up when someone turns a light on in another room in the house. Sometimes I feel a certain paranoia about it. I feel like people and things are plotting to stop me from getting a complete night of sleep. Of course, I realize that lack of sleep causes paranoia also...

But then, I've always been a little paranoid in the dark of night when I'm in bed. I had this dream when I was about five or six that the bedroom floor was covered with biting snakes of all kinds. I think I'd been watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom or something. Anyway, once in a while to this day--40 something years later--I still hesitate when I get out of bed in the middle of the night.

So, as you can see, I might be adversely affected by the waking dream syndrome the guy from my last post suffers from, considering my history.

I know my wife will tell me to take an Ambien to get back into the rhythm of life. But maybe this is the rhythm my life is supposed to have. God I hope not!!!!!

Bloggedy-Blog-Blog

I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I really want to blog every day, but nothing really interesting happens to me. For instance, this guy has some good stuff to write about...I saw it on the Internet and thought it was odd:

Weird things happen when I sleep. I thought this happened to other people too. Then, tonight, when I mentioned it to my mother she said, "No, that's never happened to me." What is it? Is there an explanation? I'm older, middle aged I guess. This started when I was 18 and went away to college. It actually was what started my lifelong insomnia. I would be asleep, but not. I saw people come in my room. In college, it was the cloaked death figure. He would stand at the end of my bed. I was paralyzed. I would try to scream but it could only come out as a whisper. I would fight to move, to wake up, but it was really hard. If I didn't fight this to the point of being awake and sitting up, it would recur all night long. That happened every night in college. Now, it happens much less frequently, (twice in the last week). Usually I am extremely fatigued, having missed a few nights of sleep. I feel I am awake. I feel a presence come into the room. I can never turn my head to see it as I'm paralyzed. My hair stands on end, my neck and arms gets all tingly with fear and I feel it's like, not a good presence. I feel like I have moved, or sat up, only to realize I have imagined it, that I am still half asleep/awake and I fight to waken. Then I have to sit up for a while, get my head in a different place, before I can safely fall asleep without any further sense that someone is around, watching me. I think there should be a scientific explanation for this. I know that the paralysis could very well be that I am still not awake, and whatever the brain does to prevent you from actually doing the things you are dreaming about has taken hold, paralyzing me. But, seriously, someone, I need science here. Even psychology. I don't want to get into the: It's a parallel universe, or you are communing with evil spirits. I already have insomnia! I don't need anything else that will keep me up nights!

Okay, so maybe I don't want THAT particular thing to happen to me...but something!