Life Fact #419: Mentor is a Temp Job

For once, I'm hesitant to project my own feelings or actions upon you the audience or reader of this humble musing. During your perusal of this missive should you find yourself slighted by my archetype, chalk it up to my own mental peculiarities and feel assured it was never my intention to include you in my projection and you have my apologies. For those of us who make it until the end, may we find that grain upon which another pearl will be created.

Mentors play a key role in all of our lives. I imagine the mentor is an off-shoot of a natural behavior we learn as children. The process whereby we ask one parent a question and get an answer that doesn't satisfy us and we seek out the other parent or grand parent, aunt, uncle, etc. The basic second opinion. Just to be clear, I'm not speaking of a child asking permission and using parents against each other to get what they want. Rather, something along the lines of, "Mom, why is the sky blue?" "Honey, the sky is blue because God made it that way." For my own part, this is where i went and asked my grandfather. "Papa, why is the sky blue?" Ever the photographer, he spoke of the sun being a yellow light and the atmosphere of the earth acting as a light filter, filtering out harmful solar rays leaving the sky the color we perceive to be blue. The real answer is a little more complicated, but it was on my level and a very satisfactory answer at the time. He was one of my first Mentors. Here is where the hyperbolic side of me wants to proclaim him the greatest, but i think that would only cheapen all of them. They each fulfilled as they did and that isn't something to be measured.
As time ticks away in life mentors come and go. Some we move away from , some move away from us and others leave this world behind for the next. My best visual analogy would be something along the lines of; our mentors place the cobblestones along our byway.
Now that I've reached what some like to call middle age and my children are all grown and gone, I like to think of myself as being the mentor. I'd like to think I'm handing out sage advice in the grand tradition of it all. I have arrived. Well, that's what I had thought until recently.
I had a nice phone call with my Dad in which he said something very puzzling. I'd rather fall on my sword than misquote him, just know it went something like this. One of his friends whom he'd known for many years died recently and he referred to this man, who is only a few years older than he, as a Mentor. My brain was spinning so fast after he said that i nearly got a nose bleed when it stopped and stopped it did. It was a jarring sudden train wreck kind of stop. What happened you ask?? Well, it absolutely turned everything I knew or believed i knew about mentoring on its head. How could someone in their seventies have a mentor? It's really quite simple, there's always a bigger fish.
With this revelation, I sat back and reevaluated what I knew a mentor to be. After days of reflection, the answer became so painfully obvious I had to give myself a timeout.
The first thing I needed to do was to come up with a better, more complete definition for mentor. I checked the American Heritage Dictionary and a couple of others. Their collective idea of mentor was as woefully incomplete as my own. After days of reflection, i have settled on a mentor as anyone or anything which lends sound advice either through words or actions. Yes! This does sound like everyone is a mentor at one time or another and to that I say, "Aren't they?" Though for the purposes of this I have amended my definition to include the phrase, "and those you seek out for same."
At my present age of Fifty Three-ish, the cast of characters I call on for advice is limited to about three. My best friend, a well grounded and very conservative man of comparable age has yet to fail to show me the other side of whatever it is I naturally see. An old friend, Rob, (I'm pretty sure he's the first Vulcan on Earth) has a innate talent for logical thought and seeing situations in the abstract. Then there is the first mentor, my mother. She had the ability to organically change peoples perception of their work and ultimately change their point of view. In effect, she'd get you to see your work with two sets of eyes. It's a tremendous skill to master. One, as yet, I have not. Unfortunately, she has joined those who've left this world behind. As with all mentors, some of her remains perpetuated by those previously advised.
I got a call from a young man whom I've known for some time. He needed to talk for a while. I could hear the distress in his voice when he said something very peculiar, "...at my age I should have all the answers." I told him that was just silly as I'm twice his age and don't have all the answers. I had him take a couple of deep breaths before I asked what the biggest problem was for which his answer was simple, "My bills," he said. I asked him if he could pay them today and the answer was no. He said with his new job, he should be able to make all of his bills just fine, but it's taking too long. I offered that he might set that feeling aside until payday and take his bills one at a time and not stress over them between this day and that.  He reminded me the bills would still be there and I asked him if he wanted to make everyone else in his house feel the way he does. His answer was, "of course not." This is when I let him on to that little secret, when you are grumpy, you'll make everyone you are around grumpy also. Well, either that or the others will choose to stay away from you. I had him give me a few examples where his reaction to things had affected others in a similar way to his: both positive and negative. He did. Then he told me he never realized his irritation with the progress in his life would affect his home life. He thanked me and had to leave for work. His spirits were better, but I told him it would take lots of practice before his demeanor would automatically lay down his irritations.
I have to thank my dad for opening me up to the possibility that you never outgrow the need for a mentor. Our mentors tend to be those closest to us. and in closing, they can be of any age. The day after I discovered my dad had a mentor in his eighties, I discovered I have a mentor under the age of....well let's just say she's not old enough to drive. She taught me the importance of putting your M and M's in alphabetical order. This is more important than you know. I miss my mom, am thankful for my dad, and love my niece.

Until I write again, Peace Be With You,
Dave

The Mosque, The Wall, and what the Faux News Saw.

I have yet again found myself in, i would say Dutch, but that might raise some one's ire, trouble with a few of my contemporaries over my political views. Let me preface this by saying that i would never assume the position of being any better than they, nor am i any less. The current offense is somewhat connected to an aging one; The Mosque that is going to be built near the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks that took place in New York and the fence or wall to be or being built to separate the United States from Mexico. Lovingly referred to as "The Tortilla Curtain".
I have been branded a Liberal. A bleeding heart, commie loving, anti-American sap that is enabling those who drain the life force out of our country one entitlement at a time. Here, i will attempt to explain why i am not a bleeding heart Liberal and i'm not a Democrat and i'm not a Republican, nor am i aligned in a straight party manner with anyone. I am, however, a free thinker and i believe as i believe. I am a Christian, though i'm a Catholic and there are those that just don't see the two as being connected. As far as being a Catholic, no, i don't uphold all of the beliefs the church would have me to. Finally, Yes, i am a man. I know i don't have cocktails with the guys at topless bars or watch sports or never let anyone see me cry. If that's what it takes to be a man, i wouldn't want to be.
So, let's get to it:
Death Penalty: There are some people in this world that probably should be put to death, but that job was filled well before any of us got here.
Abortion: The argument over this only concerns the two people involved and the person providing the service. Imposing your beliefs on someone in the name of God, negates the very thing you profess.
Governmental Size: Yes, i would like the size of the government to be scaled back. A bunch.
Right to Bear Arms: Unless the Constitution has changed recently, it's the right to bear arms in a militia. I don't see anything wrong with Deer Rifles, Shotguns, even most pistols, but who needs a weapon designed to kill people en masse to go hunting.
Gays in the Military: It's an all volunteer military. If they are willing and do their job, then that is all that should matter. (side note: women in combat rolls. Same rule, if they are willing and they can do the job, Hell Yes!!! see also: Lyudmila Pavlichenko)
Gay Marriage/Civil Unions: Here again, this only concerns the people involved and the person officiating.
okay, so you have an idea of where i'm coming from. Now for the official reason behind my opinion on the tortilla curtain and the NYC ground zero mosque.
The Chinese built a wall to keep the hordes out. While it makes really nice post cards, the invading hordes got over the wall. OH Wait, correction, they didn't make it over the wall, they walked in through the gate. Don't believe me though, google it. Okay, so how will they walk through the tortilla curtain?? Yeah, like none of us ever drank before we turned 21. The prevalence of false entry documents will go up to a point where they (the U.S. Government) will more than likely issue us citizenship cards. You know the kind with biometric information or DNA or at the very least something trackable. Okay, now i'm a nut, a conspiracy theorist of the first order. They have tried before to give us citizenship cards, but don't believe me; google it.
As for the Mosque, is it better to not build it so close to where so many died at the hands of Muslim Extremists? Is it really a slap in the face to all those people that died that day? On the other hand, is it a much larger statement to the world by building it? Would we not be showing those extremist factions that our core belief in the Freedom of Religion has not been corrupted by them. That our resolve to live in a free society can not be brought down by zealotry and murder?
Maybe now is the time to remember to turn the other cheek and one of my favorites, Luke 23:34 Judge not...
It's for the record, i'm just sayin.
Be good to each other even when you don't understand what the other person's problem is. Dave

Ugly Blog

It's been a few days since my last post and it feels like a year. I swear, so much has gone on in the last couple of weeks that i'm not sure where my mind was when i left off. We had a full week of family vacation, a vehicle failure, a date, another car failure, and a whole pile of memo boards and bread. I will try to explain some of this, though if you don't understand take comfort in knowing i was present for these events and i don't understand either.

I should preface this paragraph with the declaration that; i love my wife. Yes, of course, there is a but coming, so please try to be patient. Donna K and i have been together for many years. Some of them have been good and some have been less than ideal, but most have been horribly comfortable. She gets up and goes to work and is a brilliant tyrant all day. I am acclimated to this arrangement and definitely have my own routine. Okay, get ready for that But. BUT, when she goes on vacation and we are all together for a week, our world is total chaos. She doesn't know what to do with herself all day and my routine is just blown. There's simply no hope for me doing any of my normal things when she's home. This year was made worse by her car deciding to go on holiday as well. So, as far as our going to New Braunfels or Alpine went; it didn't. We did some stuff locally, but i really wanted to get away to a place where i could no longer see concrete and asphalt. Football starts for the guys next week, so this summer is gone. So much for i'm going to make it to San Jacinto this summer if it kills them all.

At some point here in the last week or so, i decided i needed a memo board to hang in my kitchen that i could put my master bread recipe on and shopping notes and stuff like that. Well, i found one of those memo boards and couldn't believe what they cost. The other thing is that they are so plain. It's like you have two choices, black or white. If you are lucky, you might find one that's more of an ecru. ACKKK!!! I took a good look at the damn thing and said thirty bucks my ass. Instantly, i could see it. Foam core, cotton batting, half yard of fabric, ribbon to match and some buttons, oh and that all too important appliance, the hot glue gun. The first one took me about two hours to make. I no sooner finished it and Donna K had to have one, then we added one more for "The Ridley" and i was done. Okay, so maybe not quite. Her boss saw them and had to have one for her daughter. Okay, so that's four. Well, i turned my sewing room around so make that five. They really are pretty easy to make, they just take some time.

Our fifteen year old son went out on his first date last Friday. Oh he's been out before, but it's always been for an occassion like a quinceanera, or a party or something like that. This time it was just him and this nice little girl. I guess this ushers in a new era in our house. I hope i'm prepared for this one. I know one thing is for sure, he better keep making his grades if he wants to keep going out.

The other thing i did besides give the mechanic all of my money was to pull "The Bachelor's Guide" out of moth balls. TBG is a cookbook i have been working on for years. It's not your typical recipe book like so many others, but instead it's more of a reference for the kitchen. Ideally, it's most applicable for people with marginal to adequate skills in the kitchen. It shows you how to save time, money, face (in some instances), while improving your overall skill set with confidence. It's not finished, so that's not a plug!!!

I've been teaching my boys how to do some cooking using the book as a guide. It's hard for me to stand by and watch someone do something, i do regularly, struggle at it. I know they can't learn if i don't let them struggle along the way. It's just one of those things that's hard to do.

UUUGH, i'm hating blogger today.................... I want to use word and have my pictures migrate too. Someone pleez, tell me how you get everything to sit the way you want it to. I'm posting this and i am only doing it to get out of this endless loop of fix a problem and get two more.

I'm going to post that promised recipe next, so stick around. D

Chasin' the Dogs Off with a Stick

I am sure there are many of you that at one time or another have uttered the phrase, "when it rains, it pours." You are not alone. Though, i can't really say it's pouring here, rather it's more like i have a pack of Chihuahua sized Hell Hounds nipping at my heels. After battling these little buggers, some of them for years, i made a concerted effort this week to chase a great many of them off with a broom.

As you can see in the picture on the right, i haven't shaved in weeks. No, i can't grow a beard and yes i should resign myself to that fact and just shave like the rest of the world. Fair enough, i'm going to make a regular practice of shaving at least once every other week or so.

It has been my experience that familial ties are strongest when you are needed the most. This of course is trumped by relatives that live two blocks away from you. In all actuality i guess it does seem logical to expect a person eight hours away to be more available than the idiot down the street. Maybe in your world, but until Captain Kirk gives me transporter privileges you'll just have to settle for what you can get. Unfortunately, that includes the idiot down the street being too tired to help.

After weeks of hemming and hawing, my smart ultra flabby child went to his first day of football practice. The king of the half pushup had a load of fun and is looking forward to going again tomorrow. Kudos little man for not quitting. I was hoping not to have to whack you with the tenderizing mallet. I have hopes he finds his place and i won't end up bashing him with it in the near future.

My best good girlfriend with the twin girls brought up the notion of participating in that two thousand year tradition of Baptism for her girls and naturally i will be making the sweetest little gowns for this. She also brought up the Godfather thing. Initially i was a little hesitant. Well that's not entirely true, i was pretty much mortified by something that is an honor to be a part of. I have agonized over this and have come to the following conclusion. I would indeed be honored to be "The Godfather" and i promise to do whatever Dave would do in whatever capacity when called upon.

As for going to Alpine this summer for a visit, it's still up in the air. I have to tell you, i'm just not into going. I love the country and i have several friends there including one that's been gone for fifteen years and is now back, that i'd love to see. There are a couple in particular that i'd like to sit down with, split a beer, and talk treason till the wee hours of the morning, but it never works out that way. So the best i can muster on that subject is, i'll either do that or pull out my fingernail with pliers. It's a coin toss at this point.

One final thought, I have an oil leak on my Trooper. It's a '91 and as far as i'm concerned it's a classic. I LOVE IT!!!!! Be that as it may, the oil cooler adapter thing that bolts to the engine has a super weirdo gasket on it and i can't seem to find one. This due to Isuzu not selling the Trooper in the US anymore. Though, one of the dealers i called told me there is good news on the horizon, Isuzu will start selling the Trooper again in the US in 2012. Just how in the hell is that good news. I asked the guy to put a finger in his ear that he wasn't using for the phone so that i could ask my question again. He asked me why and i told him i didn't want the question slipping out the other ear again. He hung up. Some people's children. Interesting twist though with the other dealer i called, he asked if i had a Chevy engine and i do so he told me to go get one for an old S-10 pickup. I'll let ya know how that one turns out.

Well the sun is up and the sleepers awaken,

As always i wish you peace, Dave

Hotdogs and Nutella

Hello everyone,
I remember cooking dinner in my thirties and wondering what the big deal was with all of the people i heard complaining about always eating the same old things every night for supper. I thought, hell as long as i can get my hands on a chicken i'll never be one of those. Alright now, slow down a minute, you know what's coming, so wait for it. Gasp and Swoon!!! I have become one of those that i swore never to be!!!
Okay, so Thursday night the boys asked what was for supper. This question comes at me so regularly you'd swear it were an illness from elementary school in January. So, being the guy i am, i quipped back, "Hot dogs and Nutella". And a great silence fell over the land!! Well, for about five seconds anyway. Then, the little one asked me if he could toast his bread. Okay, Tilt, at that, overcome with a sudden out of body experience, i considered whether or not one should toast the bread. Now while in deep contemplative thought and with my head still spinning and my ears buzzing off of my head, the big one asked if he could still have hot sauce with that???? Holy Shit Batman, how the hell do you spell aneurysm??? Toast, nutella, hot dog and hot sauce???
Suddenly, i remembered Pizza Hut. Travesty averted. Oh, and yes, the big one did get his hot sauce. I guess it's time for me to go back to the beginning and remember how i began ruining chicken dinners in the first place. Who knows, i might even get inspired to do something radical like cut one up for myself again.
You know i am thankful for the entertainment i have surrounding me daily, but i sure do miss the wonder and mystery of cooking when it was new.
Until next time or Chicken A La Nutella, Y'all enjoy each other, Dave

Bi-Polarism and the unresolved symptoms

Hello Everyone,
I hope that y'all are doing well and you haven't had too much severe weather where you live. Save for a few fast moving storms the weather here has been pretty nice, but we haven't had the wind we look for this time of year. Ya see, when we aren't shooting up heroin or smoking crack (I'm Kidding Of Course!!!), we fly kites this time of year. This year has had the lowest average daily wind speeds, in our area, for more than twenty years. Which leads to some pretty miserable outings if you expect to fly that day. All things considered, it's probably just as well in some regards. For those of you that don't know, i have, for brevity's sake, Bi-Polar Disorder. Now, in as much as I'd love to say i have a garden variety case and it's well managed, i can't. In true Greyeyes Family style, i am so far out on that branch, treating me is an exercise in resolve, patience, and forgiveness for my doctors, close friends and family.
I have been battling, as of late, with the thought that we will never find a drug combination which will either arrest my BPD cycles or at least slow the rate of them down to a point where i will be able to return to some sense of the life i once lived. I'm reasonably sure someone reading this will tell me not to give up and advances in neuroscience happen everyday, but i have already been told twice that there are only a few meds left for me to try and i shouldn't give up hope, but i shouldn't be looking for that silver bullet either.
This subset of meds that i haven't given a try are the new anti-psychotics. I just love that term! Although, they don't call them that, they call them mood stabilizers today. Such a handy little euphemism isn't it?? Out go the anti-psychotics and enter the mood stabilizers. ACK!!! The problem with these pills, for me, are the side effects. I mean have you ever seen a commercial for a medicine and they list the side effects and while they are reading them off, do you hear yourself saying, "Geez! the side effects are worse than the disease." Well i know i have. In this, lies the problem. I need to supplement what i take now with a "mood stabilizer", but i want to avoid the major side effects and i just haven't found the right one yet.
This may seem a bit personal, but I'm pretty clear headed this morning and i thought i would put it down before i forgot what i was thinking.
You know there was a long time when i didn't put too much credence into BPD and the progression of symptoms during a lifetime. I remember a time when i went about a year without any extremes, neither up nor down. Sadly, that med combination only made it about three years before i, rather suddenly, nearly stopped responding entirely.
I have been actively treated for this for nearly fifteen years. Add to that a hit or miss, as symptoms arose dosing practice for another decade and it's little wonder why there are so few meds left to try. It's not all bad news though, as of today, i am nearly weight neutral. Trust me, that's a tremendous step. In the last fifteen years i have gained about a hundred pounds. It would make me ill if i thought about that part much. I have also managed to get my extreme depression under pretty good control. So what's left you say?? Only the anxiety, poor sleeping, and the ever present threat of losing control into a rage filled state. Okay, so i need a "mood stabilizer" that aids in control of anxiety, in sleeping, and arrests the bouts of rage with a minimum of weight gain and no link to type II Diabetes. I guess that's not hoping for too much.
I have a son going to a special high school next year and is in a program called Medical Academic, who's curriculum is specifically designed for kids who want to grow up to be doctors. Maybe one day he'll find my pill or your pill. At the very least, i would hope he never loses his kind demeanor the way so many of us have by the things that jade our lives.
I bid y'all a pleasant day filled with satisfaction and gratitude. Dave

A few notes on the Language

I must have been in my playpen, forty some-odd years ago, when the phrase "It's not what you said, it's the way you said it" was introduced to my lexicon. Perhaps, there are those of you that would prefer i use the term Broca's Area, but either way it's where we store our language. The interesting part of this is in the transport and delivery of language. Don't let me lose you, yet! This isn't going to be one of those dry academic things, more to the point it's going to be a quick examination of some language oddities that are on my mind. Oh Boy! I used the word quick didn't i?? Well, like the man said, "You get what you pay for." Back to, it's not what you said, it was the way you said it. Since the transport of our language is a living being, so must our language also be a living being. For instance the devolution of expletives for happiness or joy: sweet, dope, fly, awesome, cool, far out, peaches, berries, capital, and the like. Ah would a rose by any other name... Okay, so chalk that one up to generational catch phrases. How about the way technology has effected the language. if you misspell emulate (to mimic or attempt to pay homage to) you will end up with immolate (to destroy, usually by fire) another good one is rife (meaning a great amount of) and you get ripe (ready for harvest). These two can have overlapping contextual agreement. One could use either word to describe a quantity. Finally, we come to ascetic and aesthetic. The former is a person who trains in self denial and mortification and the latter is of beauty and what's pleasing to the eye. I'm not even sure i can find a parallel for those. Make no mistake, i'm not an English snob. If you look for grammatical problems in my writing, i promise you'll find them. I am the King of the Comma Splice.


All of this has been merely prologue to a few of my personal pet peeves. These are in no particular order and i hope you get some kind of giggle out of these. First off there is "alot". Alot is not a word. It is two and as two it doesn't mean many or several. However, many and several do substitute for alot just fine. Next, I want to remind y'all that y'all is spelled y'all. The argument has been made that y'all isn't a word either and the only reason it is in the dictionary is for common usage. WRONG! If you want to blame someone for y'all, then blame Queen Isabella of Spain. She needed to unite her country and commissioned a man named Nebrija to write the first Grammar. It is in this the Spanish form of the, plural and singular(in some cases) second person pronoun (you) (vosotros) was set down and hence, y'all is ours through assimilation.


Which leads me to my favorite email of the week. Yes! i'm telling secrets out of school.


I received the following:


Dude like my bff and me was hangin at the park just kickin and like her genes ript omg so funny cause her azz wuz hangin out and everything can you sew up her azz call me


In a word, WOW!!! I don't know if they need a geneticist or a seamster. So, i replied to my little friend with the following:


Dude, If she's over eighteen and has a good personality, bring her over and let me see if i can get her under the presser foot.


Remember, it's not what you say, but how you say it. I wonder if she'll want quilting stitches on her azz.......Y'all be great, D

One lit in my face and one burning in the ashtray...

Well it's three in the morning and i just cracked a Dr Pepper and choked down a couple BC Powders. I say choked down, i think I'm starting to take them for the same reason some old people eat dirt or corn starch. I'd like to say that i have a headache every time i take them, but I'm not entirely sure that would be accurate. One thing is for certain, i endure chronic headaches. Oh, and no my BP and sugar are both fine, but thanks for asking. I think it has to do with when i fell out of the sign at the Bien Venido Motel some years ago and i whacked my neck pretty good.

My 14 yr old has sprung from his chrysalis and come out the other side a social damn butterfly. Thank God we have an unlimited plan because between his one ring tone for text messages and his myriad of ring tones for his friends, I've made him set it to vibrate anytime it's within ear shot of me. Some days it's maddening!!! He has really started coming into his own in school too. Well, Football for sure, I'll know about the academics in a couple of weeks and as all of you know that's where i live. It sure isn't football. Anyway, he's gotten his permanent position as the starting center. He really didn't think he could do it because, evidently, there is a lot of responsibility in that position. However, he likes to yell and block and tell people when they aren't doing what they are supposed to. Stupid me, i thought the center just gave the quarterback the football and then blocked, but he's told me tons of other things that he has to do to make sure the play comes off the way it is designed to. I have to admit, i look at him when he starts explaining, the same way i used to look at Mrs Davis when she tried like hell to explain to me the objective and nominative cases in English in 9th grade.

OK for the next part to make any sense at all i have to preface this with a little bit of an explanation. Our boys are 15 months apart. The one mentioned above is red headed, six foot and built like Adonis. The 13yr old is 5'4", sandy blond hair and the closest he gets to sports is the chess club. Yes, the older one is a fair student and a great athlete; the younger one is totally an honor student and no athletic prowess what so ever (save possibly the remote for the TV)

I pick the little one up from school everyday and i always ask him the same thing. It's kind of like a catch phrase at this point, i say,"good day, bad day, or okay day??" He'll usually give me the old "good day". Then I'll ask him what the best and worst part is, this is where he goes into a soliloquy on par with "Song of Myself" and will talk for thirty minutes about how unrealistic it is to put kids like him into regular classes with kids that don't want to be there and only want to cause problems or tell him he's retarded and give him the finger. Here again, i digress into my own school experience and have much the same look on my face as when Mrs Morgan tried so desperately to teach me, "Order of Operations".

Then my lovely wife locks up the administration at her school around eleven most evenings and calls me. Naturally i am twenty minutes from the end of a movie i am completely buried in like Wednesday. I was watching, i really love Netflix!!!!!, this movie called "Elegy" with Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley. It was so tragically amazing. I'd say that it made me cry, but we all know guys don't do that. Just like the first time i saw the movie "Philadelphia". (Vamos Aver) I was buried in "Elegy" and there was about twenty minutes left and my phone rang, i saw it was her and i hit the end call button. See that way it could go to voice mail and she'd think i was on the phone and i could finish the movie. I'd tell you what they were doing but i won't in case the odd one of you watches it. If you liked the "Notebook" or "La Puta Y La Ballena", you'll love this. Anyway, about two minutes later she called back and i hit the end call button again. The movie is just that good! Well, then that old devil on my shoulder started talking to me about her car being broken down or of her getting mugged in their parking lot and i had to stop the movie and call her. So i did. I asked her if she was OK and she said yeah, she was on 35, blah blah blah. Here again, my face went as blank as it did every time Mrs Matley used the words several (serval) and she had another one she used to screw up too, but that used to just send me into an out of body experience.

(and Yes, i made that dress)

The wife blathered on for her entire thirty minute ride about things that happened at work that were funny and some stuff that was un-called for and the like. All the while, I'm blindly listening to these things and i don't know any of the people or anything about where she works other than it's on 35. I went there once to start her car and thus the sum total of my knowledge of the events in her world. About two hours later i restarted the movie and watched it from beginning to end and it was worth the interruption just to get to see it again. I have to admit that i, probably from being a man, needed to see it twice to understand what it meant and that was fine too.

I guess it's days like these that make me love that new Zac Brown Band song "Toes" so much. There is a verse that goes:

I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand

not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand

Life is good today, Life is good today

I have got some more of "Perfect" to put up, but i just have to get my arse in gear and do it. Plus, here a while back Paige had asked me what it is that i sew and that is such a hard question to answer this way. I don't want to put up a slide show on facebook, but if blogger will let me, I'll throw up a slide show. I just have to figure out if i can or not. If not, i may just have one huge posting of pictures. But those are the things on my horizon and i plan on doing that in the next couple of days. If it starts to look like I've gone blog happy don't worry it's only the 24hr kind.

Till i share with Y'all again, Take care of Y'all, D