I’m Sane Now, Butt It Hurts

I realize it was awfully, awfully rude for me not to check back with you guys sooner, but I took a little sanity break, and then life decided that I hadn’t had my butt kicked in a while, so it obliged.

My children both went through growth spurts recently, each crossed the 5 feet tall mark, and it has really hit me hard.  Two thirds of the time they’ll be under my care … is gone.  I’ve been “here”, but at the same time I feel as if I’ve missed it, being so focused on other things.  I am in somewhat of a panic and trying to refocus my life so I don’t miss these last, important years.

I recently took a really nice fall down the steps.  My feet came out from under me, and I bounced on my butt down several steps.  I busted my tailbone up pretty good.  The X-rays were inconclusive.  For all you 10 year old boys out there, apparently being a DES baby meant that I have,amongst all the other weird body oddities I have, a tiny coccyx.  [Insert giggle here...].  But, size doesn’t matter…

So, the x-rays had to be sent away, because the urgent care facility didn’t quite know what they were looking at.  But, I have some nice drugs.  It only hurts today when I go from sitting to standing.  But man, oh man, does it hurt!

For those of you who I speak to regularly in person, I’ve been asked not to blog about “that other thing” until we know more.  Should be within the next couple of days, I hope.

For the rest of you, “that other thing”  sounds ominous, I know.  All I can say is that it COULD be a huge, scary thing, or it could be a small thing.  We’ll see.

Sorry I was away for too long - I’ll try to do better in the coming weeks.

What A Lovely Ride

The antidote for a rough day or week is a lullaby by James Taylor.  Last night, we let James sing us to sleep with his signature “Sweet Baby James”.  I think I like the idea so much, I’m going to move it to late Friday nights and do it weekly - a different Taylor copyright violation to help us wash away the cares of the week.  When I’ve run out of Taylor tunes, we’ll find another artist for our weekly lullaby.  For now, enjoy Secret O’ Life, the mellow exploration of metaphysics and deep philosophy, made into sweet poetry.

 

 

“Any fool can do it, there ain’t nothin’ to it.”

“It’s OK to feel afraid, but don’t let it stand in your way”

Although this song could have easily slipped into nihilism (it is existential at its core), instead, Taylor turns it into “a lovely ride”.  And that’s just what we need at the end of a hard week.

Goodnight, my friends.

Hope in the Bridge

During the short time I was in college (majoring in beer), my circle of friends thought I was the most brilliant songwriter they had ever heard.  They puffed me up all the time, listening to my oh-so angsty songs of loneliness and social inequity.  I bought into it, and mentally prepared myself to be the next Dylan.

One of the people in this circle of friends (at the time a roommate of a longtime friend of mine, annechen ) was a Recording Industry Management major, and pitched my songs to a publisher in Nashville as part of a project.  I was secretly hoping for validation of my brilliance, maybe even a publishing deal.

What I got, instead, was a harsh mirror showing just what a mess my songs were.

Forget the sloppy phrasing, the broken narrative, the forced rhyming, the unimaginative chord structure.  Yes, the executive let me know about all of these things.  But what stuck with me, what sticks with me to this day, was the criticism that my songs didn’t let people up for air.  I held the listener underwater until they drowned, emotionally.

Ouch.

There is a rule (or at least there was) in Nashville songwriting that goes like this: it doesn’t matter how down you take them in the verses and the chorus, but you’ve got to give them hope in the bridge.  It doesn’t matter if it’s one line, or part of a line, an effective song never, ever goes without giving at least a glimmer of hope.

So, I started listening to songs on the radio, and in my album collection, and there it was,plain as day.  Sure, there were exceptions (He Stopped Loving Her Today comes to mind), but I was amazed at how many successful songs followed this formula.  And how songs I hated did not (Eve of Destruction - has there ever been a more stupid song?  I’d rather listen to Macarena).

Being angst ridden, one of my favorite songs at the time was the old Carpenters hit, “Goodbye to Love”.  Check out the opening lyrics:

I’ll say goodbye to love
No one ever cared if I should live or die
Time and time again the chance for love has passed me by
And all I know of love is how to live without it
I just can’t seem to find it.

The song goes on like that for 3 minutes. But, check out the bridge:

What lies in the future is a mystery to us all
No one can predict the wheel of fortune as it falls
There may come a time when I will see that I’ve been wrong
But for now this is my song.

I knew that the publisher was right, even though I refused to accept it because my ego had been so bruised.  When I finally did start writing again, I incorporated this rule, not just into songs, but into sermons, short stories, blog posts (for the most part).

So anyway, I thought of that when reading this post by John Lamb at Hispanic Nashville.  He gets it. He understands how to be an effective activist, evangelist,salesman, whatever you want to call it.  Yes, he spends 80% of the post highlighting a problem:

It’s only a matter of time before the misery strategy moves the Doomsday Clock to the time when we wake up and see how awful we have become.

 but then he includes this:

If we are willing to listen, however, we can be inspired to change our laws without such suffering. From USA Today:

“The pope can’t change the laws of our country,” [Bishop Thomas] Wenski says. “Hopefully he will touch the hearts of many people in our country.”

You see what he did there?  He let us up for air.  He not only made us look at our own shame, he gave us something to aspire to.

This post would not be counted in the Schleprock Index, because he included that one line. 

Think of your readers.  We know what the problems are.  You’ve told us over and over and over again that we’re on the Eve of Destruction.  What do we do about it?  You’ve told us how things suck, now tell us how to not make them suck. 

You’ve told us ad nauseum how bad Pepsi is.  Now, we’re ready for the pitch.  Tell us how good Coke is.

Everybody remembers Frank Capra’s happy endings.  But 80% of his movies were about awful stuff happening to people.  Why, then, do we tend to think of his movies as inspiring?  Why do we, every Christmas, watch a movie about a man’s life falling apart, about his dreams never coming true, about his despair to the point of suicide? 

Answer that question, and you’ll get to the heart of what I’ve been getting at.

Wousy Wousy Woo

I’m working on an interesting project, well maybe only interesting to me, wherein I gauge pessimism and despair in the Nashville blogsphere.  Full disclosure: I’m an extreme optimist, annoyingly so.  If that isn’t already quite clear, it will be in a moment.

Now, I’ve always known that certain blogs I like to visit are downright depressing.  I knew that at these blogs there seemed to be a preponderance of “things suck” posts - either personally, nationally, or world-wide.  Some seem to border on despair.  But, it was just a feeling.

Being a numbers guy, I thought it would be cool to quantify it.

So, I’ve come up with The Schleprock Index.  Think of it as a quantification of the answer to the question, “How depressing is it to read my blog?” 

For you youngins, Schleprock was a character on the Flintstones spin-off cartoon “Pebbles and Bam-Bam” which aired in the early 1970’s.  He walked around with a cloud constantly over his head, mumbling “wousy-wousy-woo…”.  He brought bad luck to all who came in contact with him.

The formula for the Schleprock Index is simple: in a given time frame, what percentage of posts are negative descriptions of the way things are?  Examples might be a description of how one’s life personally is going through a rough patch, or societal “hell in a handbasket” posts, or lamentations of world affairs.  The scope is not important; it’s the negativity I want to measure.

So, to get the Shleprock index, you divide the number of negative posts by the total number of posts.  This gives you a percentage (which is what the index really is).  My index does NOT count purely political posts, because what I want to measure is a negative outlook on life and the world in general, not on a particular political candidate or party.

The only imperfection to the index, which I am still working on, is that it does not account for tone: “I can’t find a date” and “we’re all going to die in the impending apocalypse!” both count the same.  I need to find a way to statistically weight the results accounting for tone.

The index offers no commentary, simply holds up a mirror, and you can do with it what you will, or ignore it altogether if you enjoy spreading the misery.  Some people do; that’s your business.  I’m not saying that it isn’t important to point out societal problems.  But I also think that man was not created to live in despair.  He will not live in a place devoid of hope.

I’m compiling a list for April.  My own index at Shoot The Moose is low this month, even for my optimistic outlook.  I came in at a Schleprock index of 14.3 .  Granted, it would have been a LOT higher in December when my wife had her cancer and surgery, but I would doubt if I ever would have an index of over 50 (which is the number at which your blog is considered “depressing” according to the Schleprock Index).

(On a side note, it would be extremely unfair for me to include Kat in my published results.  There should probably be a personal tragedy exemption, I would think.)

I’ll post some numbers once I get them compiled.  But, in my research, I found something that was eyebrow raising, to say the least.

Southern Beale has a Schleprock Index of 61.5 in April.

The Homeless Guy only has a Schleprock index of 38.5.

Just sayin’.

The rest of my research should be pretty interesting, to say the least.

The Answer Is Obvious

Kevin Barbieux (aka “The Homeless Guy”) recently had his laptop stolen (sadly).  He is raising money for a new one.  As a computer professional, I can say that unless Kevin’s doing video production or algorythms on the human genome, I’d suggest one of these.  Only MACSnobs think they’re too good for Linux.  MS folks don’t know any  better.

Anyway, the question came up about security for the new laptop, once he gets it.  How does he keep the next one from being stolen?  The answer is obvious.

The man needs a pit bull.

Sorry, Kevin.  It was just too irresistable.

It Had To Happen

Stuff White People Like is now going to be a book.

BTW, for those of you who read the site, go over each entry, then tell me: who is whiter, Mack or me?  The absolute whitest person (by SWPL standards) I read is Claudia, all the way down to the love for produce co-ops.  The least would be Ivy, who is definitely a WINO.

Seriously once you figure out who the guy is talking about (Braisted), it’s VERY funny.

Hillary Is In Trouble

The over/uder in the tears pool is Thursday. I say she holds out till Friday, but she might not can wait that long.

I absolutely love the fact that Dylan’s words are now aimed specifically at the baby boomers who always tried to coopt him:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

Gentlemen

This is where I end up sounding 90 years old.  What’s really bugging me about the recent nastiness at MCB is that it really highlights the fact that there are very,very few true gentlemen left in the world.

I’ll let others handle the feminist argument about the fact that men are bringing up female hormones as a way to attack females.  I’ll just say that it’s rude, and as my grandmother used to say, “common”. 

If I have to choose between being considered rude and being considered the loser of an argument, I’ll take losing every time.  It’s just that old south raising of mine. 

If you can’t treat a woman with respect, you are no gentleman.

Of course, I say that as if these young, rude, cynical whippersnappers give a damn.

But my dad would have kicked me across the room if I had ever said anything like that.

The old south is almost dead (good riddance to much of it).  Sometimes I feel like the last Mohican in that respect.

People just don’t know how to behave anymore. 

But then again, I posted a picture of an asshat in that thread, so who am I to talk?

Update: I am speaking specifically of those jerks who brought up hormones.  Number9 is not the subject of my criticism at all (here) 

Things I’d Like To Do This Year

Happy New Year everyone!

The sun in shining, the black-eyed peas are on, and no one in our household is hung over.  That’s a good start.

I’m going to forgo resolutions this year - I like to skip years so I don’t get discouraged, but there are several things I’d like to do, if at all possible.  For instance, I’d love to learn how to sew this year.  At least good enough to be considered a beginner.  I cannot afford alterations anymore, at least for a while, and when the money ceases to be tight, it would be silly to pay someone 10 times the cost of materials, for something I could do myself.  We have an antique sewing table/machine that belonged to my mother-in-law.  I think it would be neat to learn how to use it.  I think that between Amazon and Ivy (not Ivy the Amazon), I can get good enough to not need to pay for alterations.

I’d like to make no apologies for who I am.  Even if who I am annoys people.

I’d like to get my weight back to where it was in early November.  I’ve gained about 15 lbs, after having lost 50.  Stress eating, being too busy to exercise, my mother’s cooking, the fact that Centennial Hospital’s food court is mostly junk food - all of these contributed to me getting off track.  However, for you naysayers: even though the trend was going the wrong way at the end f the year, I still had a net loss of 35 lbs last year.  15, starting today, will be a piece of cake.  The trick, I think, when you have these setbacks is to recognise what’s going on, and not deny it.  Restarting habits you dropped 2 months ago is much easier than starting them from scratch.  I expect to be back to my maintenance weight by the end of March.

I’d like to keep my house clean enough that we can have company on a moment’s notice.  I’d like to get my wife and kids to help with this.  I get tuckered out sometimes, doing it all. 

I’d like to continue NOT signing up the kids for stuff they haven’t approached us with.  We made a conscious decision when the kids were small that we would not run ourselves ragged taking the kids to activities they may or may not really want to do.  We figured, if the kid was interested enough to come to us about an activity (without any prodding from us), he was truly interested.  Our kids are downright lazy and slothful compared to their peers.  Zaphod has band, Trillian volunteers with the animal rescue organization that is at PetCo in Bellevue every Saturday.  We DO, however, make them go to Sunday school and Wednesday church activities.

It’s a little scary, holding our ground, because some of their peers are more well rounded, albeit more stressed, than our kids.  And, lets face it, my son is a little more well-rounded than his peers, in another way that isn’t so good (his midsection).  Maybe a little forced athletics would be good for him. But, our hope is that we can get him active without forcing him into organized activities.  We’ll exercise as a family this spring.  Unless he wants to join a team.

Only time will tell if we are doing the right thing.  It’s probably going to hurt them when we start applying to high schools; if it does, so be it. 

And I’ll be honest: between work, church activities, the band, and blogging activites (which bring in much-needed extra income) , there’s only so much time left to shuffle kids here and there.  I could give one of these up, but which one?  There are people who are depending on me to do these things.  Lintilla, when she gets back to work, doesn’t get home till 6, and by that time, it’s time for dinner.  After the requisite 2 hours of homework, there just isn’t time for anything else.

Keep in mind, if one of our kids comes to us with activity, we’ll have to fit it in, if we want to be consistent with our philosophy.  Of course, our kids enjoy their “lazy time”, so the chances of that happening are slim.

I want to keep out of bankruptcy in 2008.  It’s a heck of a lot easier to turn your financial problems over to God when you’re not the one doing the books.  But, I’ll try.  I did the budget for January this morning; we have absolutely no room for error.  The credit cards (I know, I know) will have to get minimum payments for a while.  We’ve already cancelled summer vacation*.  I’ve learned all kinds of tricks for stretching the budget from my mother, who has (so far) successfully guided herself and my father through some very lean times.  She is a money-saving genius. (Perhaps, when things aren’t so pressing, I’ll pass some of them along to you.)

Even when Lintilla gets back to work, she will be doing office work for a while, so there will be no gasoline allowance (which is substantial in her job). 

Nevertherless, it’s hard not to count our blessings in this time.  We were insured, and so far the HMO has been very un-HMO-like.  The things we are cutting back on are not necessities.  I can still feed and clothe my family on my pay alone.  Just barely.  I need to work extra-hard at my job to make sure that income continues.

In fact, it’s fascinating to me that the money I make from blogging is just enough to make us break even.  You can tell me that’s not a God thing, but you’d be wrong.  Some coincidences are just TOO coincidental.  Incredible.

Anyway, enough of my junk.  Happy New Year, everyone!

*Cancelling the vacation isn’t as bad as it sounds.  Our kids are going to visit their grandparents in FL for a couple of weeks this summer.  My parents are so excited they are about to burst, my kids are looking forward to fishing and going to the beach and being genrerally spoiled by their grandparents without those grumpy parents around, and Lintilla and I are thinking that two weeks with no kids in the house might just be an interesting way to get to know one another again .

 

There is ALWAYS a blessing.

Now, That’s What I’m Talkin’ Bout

I wanted to mention this before I forget it.  I have found the parental dining holy grail.  Let me explain.

Parents of small children are normally given a choice: if you want really good food, get a babysitter.  Otherwise, it’s either stay at home or be confine yourself to FastFoodShoney’sO’Charley’sTGIFridaysPizzaHut McFood.  If you’ve ever eaten the pizza at Chuck E Cheese, you know that it’s not exactly Valentino’s. 

Or, you could buck the conventions, and drag junior downtown and ask for a high chair and kid’s menu at Morton’s .  Even if you pass this hurdle, you must either pray that junior doesn’t get bored and loves fois gras, or endure the stares of the childless, old folks, and “those parents” (the ones that got babysitters).

Believe it or not, I’m going somewhere with this.  I’m saying this as one who recently became one of “those” parents, who has older children and is losing his aptitude for patience with the preschool set.  We accidentally stumbled upon what, for food lovers who happen to be parents of small children, might just be the perfect restaurant.

We have discovered Pie in the Sky.  Sorry I’m late to the party.

We went to the Cool Springs restaurant, but it’s my understanding that the one in Lenox Village is just as cool.  Let me say that this is one family-friendly restaurant.  So family friendly (just shy of Chuck E Cheese), we asked to be seated at one of the outside tables.  Like I said, I’m now one of “those” parents, who does not have a high tolerance for little kiddie noise anymore, and there was LOTS of it.  They have a “dough bar”, where the kiddies can make “stuff” out of pizza dough, and generally the atmosphere is one of “children should be heard, and quite well, thank you”.  I’m not complaining, I just came off of that shift.  If my kids were that age, I would have been in heaven.

Why?  Because it’s the best pizza I’ve ever had.  And I’ve had the best Nashville has to offer.  Obie’s held the title for years (you NY pizza purists, just shut up now; I prefer something between the in-need-of-Viagra NY style and the “you want toppings with your dough?” Chicago style), but this pizza at Pie in the Sky is slap-your-mama good.  The crust was absolutely perfect.  Not dough-ey, but not too thin and flabby either.  It was crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, with that sweet-and-nutty flavor all good pizza crusts have.

The sauce was flavorful but not too sweet, and the cheese was plentiful but not overpowering.  We had “The carnivore” (guess what kind of toppings those were), and a small four-cheese pizza.  OMG, they were absolutely heavenly.  They weren’t cheap, but they were worth far more than we paid for them,IMHO.  We also got the swirly breadsticks (which is really a “cheesy bread ring”) and that was delicious also.  To top it all off, it was happy hour.

We ate the leftovers for two days.

Now here we have a restaurant that caters to families and still has world-class food.  A rarity such as this deserves high praise.  I wanted to chronicle this before my transformation into a crabby old person, complete with an intolerance for little kids, is comlplete.