May 5, 2013
Birthday Boy turned 10
It's a quiet May morning and the birds
are just beginning to chirp. Love those mockingbirds and the quiet of
this neighborhood high on the flanks of Mt. Lukens. We're close
enough to the Angeles Forest that a mountain lion was found a half
mile away a couple weeks ago. Close enough, too, that we need a fire
plan in the event of a brush fire. What would I take? What IS
irreplaceable? Do I keep photos and passports in a separate spot so I
can grab and run? I don't think our house is in that much danger,
but still, it's good to think ahead.
This house is great, but it has
consumed me and a good portion of my personal life and relationships.
And money. There is no other way to put it. I know so many wonderful
people, and yet it has been months and months since I've seen them. I
do love people and love to socialize, yet things seem to take
priority, the things needing doing on this house to complete it. My
“To Do” list shrinks ever so slowly. I has 53 items on it a few
months ago, and that was without even looking outside. I've knocked
off ten or so, but there's a few things I missed. I laughed when
watching a show on HGTV in bed the other night: the husband of a
couple selling their house confessed that he had not finished the
molding on a room he'd remodeled 16 years previous. I got another
laugh when relating this story to a friend I ran into at a school
dinner. She said her father hadn't finished the molding on a house he
built 30 years ago!
Well. It will happen. I will
finish the molding by Christmas or sooner. Part of the problem is
that I'm fussy about it, and haven't seen exactly what I want at Home
Depot or the molding shop, so I'll have to make it myself. Or maybe
the molding shop had it, but I didn't want to pay $500. I guess I'm
cheap. Cheap one minute and generous the next. Social one day and
hermit-like the next. And on and on.
One barrier to finishing the house has
dropped considerably. My headaches. Anyone who knows me well knows
how often I have had them in the past. And it's hard to take up a
hammer or tools and work when you don't feel well. I've had a
headache breakthrough, though. It's been amazing, even if I feel like
an idiot that it took so long to figure this out. I got so fed up
with headaches that I resolved to live on bread and water until I
could figure out what food item(s) was causing me so many headaches.
I have a bread machine and often made bread, often twice a week or
more because I love fresh bread so much. Well, even bread and water
didn't do it. Bread turned out to be a big part of the problem. More
specifically, yeast. If I have any product containing live yeast
(fresh bread, fresh pizza, fresh bagels, fresh raised donuts, etc) I
get a headache. After the item cools off or is refrigerated, no
problem. Once I figured that out, I added rice to my diet. Plain
white rice. No problem. I started branching out, making rice pilaf in
various forms. Headaches came back. Hunh? All I did was add a little
onion and a touch of some spices. Could onion be causing me
headaches? I was skeptical, but the answer is a very definite “Yes”.
Doing a little research on the internet I found that info on the
website of an English pain reliever. Onions are definitely a headache
trigger for some people. I was dubious, but tried onions again and
again and got headaches again and again. Damn!
Okay, so then I made a nice vegetable
soup without onion. All organic; organic beef, organic veggies and
Better Than Bullion beef bullion. Headache. What? How could this be?
Well, it turns out that a major ingredient of the beef bullion is
yeast extract. It's in most chicken bullion and stock, too.
So my headaches are much better. I
still get them from too much fruit or veggies, believe it or not, and
a long list of other things (the usual nuts, chocolate, alcohol, aged
anything, buttermilk and a dozen other things). I hate that I have
this awful body makeup that doesn't allow me to eat so many things,
but I am happy to feel better now. Very happy.
Back to the house, briefly. Maybe I
can pass off part of the blame to not being further along on
girlfriend Judy (Caldeira). She never freaked over the dust and
chaos. That was always a plus. Maybe if she'd been more fussy and
demanding I'd be a little quicker to do things or pay to have them
done. But then we might not have fit so well overall. Who knows? In
any event, Judy moved in 3 months ago and it's been great. Easier for
me than her, probably. She had to get rid of a lot of things and
conform her life to mine, tossing a lot of things along the way. I
got told off a time or two when suggesting that certain things could
be disposed off. Oops. The most conflict yet in our relationship.
Oh, well. The better part of a truckload of stuff went to Goodwill. I
think it helped a lot that I could give Judy a room for herself, an
office, and helped her paint it in a color scheme of her choosing. We
have 5 bedrooms now with the new 2nd floor, so it was an
easy call on my part. I wanted her to be comfortable here and would
do anything to achieve that.
On a personal level it's been great,
too. Judy is good with Jack and we have a lot of fun. Most of the
conflict in this house is over schoolwork. Jack is slow to start and
works slowly. In school, too. This creates problems at school because
his teacher assigns work and lets the kids work on their own during a
good part of the school day. It doesn't help that Jack is also
forgetful. He was supposed to take a test at school on books he's
read recently, a test he does on his own, but keeps forgetting. And
forgetting.
And I'm going crazy. I wonder what's
going to become of him, what career and life path he will take.
I plant seeds here and there, but who
knows if those will ever take fruit? Jack has a great disposition and
empathy. Maybe Nursing...
May 17, 5 am
I got Jack an ant farm a month ago
and he spent a lot of time watching the ants, telling me what they
were doing and sometimes why. His theories may not hold up under
professional review, but no matter. We catch quite a few bugs around
here, and each is interesting in Jack's eye. I don't tell him which
ones I kill immediately (most!). We seem to have plenty of spiders
and crickets. Even I was interested in a green spider with hairy legs
last week. Out it went, though. I've been thinking about a terrarium
lately. What do we put in it besides a turtle?
May 4th was Jack's 10th
birthday, so we celebrated by taking a couple of Jack's friends to
Universal Studios. I had never been and it had been many years since
Judy went, so we all had an interest. I bought some discount tickets
from a Universal employee, prominently stamped “Not For Resale”.
A little cheaper than the $85 the studio charges, but still not
cheap. We all had a good time, but at least two of us won't need to
go back for another ten years or so.
Ten years old. It's been 10 years
since Andrea and I drove on short notice to Daly City to pick up a
bundle with our name attached. What a bundle! I love that little guy
so much. He's almost 5 ft tall already, though. I'll have to wake him
in a few minutes for a class trip to Santa Barbara. Has to be at
school at 6:45. He's allowed to bring an electronic device today, so
I'll give him an “old” phone that has some games on it, but only
on the return trip. The camera works, too. Let's see what he sees,
what pictures he takes.
May 20, 4 am
Couldn't sleep any more today. Lots to
think about, I guess.
We went on a half-day boat trip
yesterday, from Oxnard to Anacapa island. Judy arranged the trip as
a birthday treat for Jack. We had wonderful weather: clear blue skies
and high 70's, with a gentle breeze. It was great to get back on the
ocean. Dolphin made an early appearance and reappeared several times
during the day. At one point there were dozens around the boat. I
took several photos, but the phone camera's slow reaction made
getting a decent shot difficult. One photo came out well enough to
include, although still not great. Dolphin never lose that magic...
We also saw lots of seals, a few sea
otter and a sea lion or two basking on the island. The island is very
picturesque, if you are not familiar with it. Long (just under 5
miles), narrow, rocky and steep. Uninhabited, except for a hermit 100
years ago, and a few hikers with special permits and a guide.
Jack was interested enough to ask the
volunteer guide aboard a few questions about whales, but was mostly
content to watch dolphin and hang out with other kids.
Our pool officially opened Saturday.
The water temp was only 74 degrees, but Jack and Vincent, a hardy 4th
grader from up the street wanted to swim anyway. So they did. Twice.
I want water temperature 10 degrees warmer, but lesson learned. I
shouldn't allow my own prejudices to sway them.
What other prejudices am I infecting
Jack with? Few, I hope, and good ones, at that.
I could write more, but it's almost 7
now. I slept for an hour, took a walk with Judy and now it's time to
get Jack up and get on with the day.
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