wait a minute.

I just had a good day.  If I didn't know any better I think I might even begin to think the cold has passed.  A break in my emotional weather.  Which does make me think of this Winter.   For a season, this one did remarkably well.  Played his part.  Text book.  A winter you might expect Dostoevsky to describe.  But all seasons do pass...

dust

Life is work, filling up the tank on my way there.  Starbucks coffee.  A car that needs cleaned.  Old shoes that need new laces.  A pile of laundry that needs folded.  Recycling that should be taken out.  The need for more laundry detergent.  A dog anxious for a walk.  Bills that I pay and then just throw the thing away.  No checkbook anymore.  No filing cabinet with the title 'City Utilities' maintained meticulously.  Why bother?  Homework.  Dishes.  Taxes.  Marriage.  A calorie now and then mostly consisting of a handful of pretzels and a slice of cheese.  Dust on my running shoes. Still trying to understand iTunes.  Batteries for the Xbox remotes.  Light bulbs for the kitchen track lighting that I still fear I installed incorrectly. The ashes dangerously piled in fireplace, waiting to be cleaned.  Complete the science project, under duress.  Buy the boys another pair of shoes.  Catch their game. A good part: love them!   More laundry.  Laundry in terms of sorting into whites and darks, washing, drying, folding, delivery, repeat.  Cautious laundry:  nearly life and death laundry, if you could only image such a thing.  Pick up from school.  More coffee.  Take out the trash.  Read the paper (kind of...really skip most of it). Pick up my shoes.  Hang up my coat. Watch the world news...and drink a glass of red wine simultaneously.  It's different.  It's all of these little minor daily routine 'things'.  And not much else at this middle life stage. 

verisimilitude

I've always loved this word.  It just rolls off the tongue.  And it sounds so sophisticated.  As far as first impressions go it may be a little strong.  I mean  - you're a dork weed if you actually use the word verisimilitude.  Its pretentious.  One smart dork I guess though. 

How would you use the word?  I think I could fit in it somewhere with tooth-whitener:   "Despite the daily intake of black coffee and staggering amounts of red wine, the tooth whitening treatments gave verisimlitude to the fluorscently white smile of the beautiful woman".   I don't know.  I'm still a little unsure.  And my grammer sucks.  Cool word though.

There are many things in this word that give the appearance of being true or real.  J.D. knew it all along.   

natural progression

Eventually I did a triathlon.

A few of them.  A long time ago now it seems.  Some people have a fear of the swim.  Which is the good part for me - a boost in the beginning, a little self-talk, supporting the thought that I know I can actually do this.  I jumped off a ferry into the great San Francisco bay last year and swam like a  fishing minnow - you know, like those crowded tight in a minnow bucket.  One of those yellow ones on the bottom and white on top, with the air holes.  My dad and I used to fish, a long time ago now it seems. Swam like a minnow destined for a bicycle in San Francisco.  What a trip.  I'd like to do that one again someday.

It all started at Northampton Village.  I lived there with my mom and my sisters.  They lived there for a while I think anyway.  Off Harcourt Road in Indianapolis.  We moved all over that apartment complex for some reason.  Still all the doors were hollow I remember with cheap shiny brass hardware regardless of which unit we landed in.  Fairly generic kitchens.  Apartment living sucks.  The only thing I really found appealing about apartment decor was the large sliding glass door with access to the small patio area.

 It was from this door that I would exit in the morning with my Incredible Hulk towel around my neck.  Saddle-up on  my Free Spirit 10-speed and ride to the pool.  I spent all day at the pool.  Every day, all day. 

Occasionally the group would disperse for a round of Cops and Robbers, a game played while pedalling and shooting plastic Kmart guns at one another.  I remember once I annihilated an entire group of the older kids because my position in the trees was so good (oh yeah - occasionally we'd hop off the bikes and set-up an ambush!). The game was fairly subjective.  Usually the person that could make a machine gun sound with their mouth the fastest and the loudest was the victor. I kicked some ass in those days. 

The pool was an apartment pool. Oval.  Not a kidney shape thank God.  My stroke would probably list one way or the other if that had been the case.  It had good depth in the deep end.  I rarely used the diving board.  Once at the end of the summer the life guards coordinated a series of events.  Things like: who can hold their breathe the longest.  Who can swim the farthest under water.  Who can host the best tea party in the deep end. And - who has the biggest splash off the board.  I don't remember participating in the tea party?  Foreshadowing perhaps.  But I do remember losing at the big splash off the board contest.  I cried like a frustrated little 6-year old that usually did pretty well in the water.  Just like the Finn Brooks of today (he comes by it naturally).  In hindsight - I did have to channel future losses in the pool to a more Zen like understanding of competition.  Swimming became more of a meditation, a self induced test, searching for the nirvana of a rhythm of water, pain, breathing, and efficiency.  Eventually, what place I got didn't matter much to me.

How do you become 'good' at something?  Practice.  Time. You have to want to be good at it.  No - you don't have to really want it.  You may not even realize your becoming good.   I became a good swimmer trying to show off, even as a little boy, for the high school female life guards.  They pushed me more than anyone.  Woman can do that to you, you know.  I was going to win the 'Who can swim the farthest under water' contest or pass out in the deep end trying.

     

What age will we be in heaven?

I was in the middle of it.  Picked the kids up from school.  Let the dog out.  Piled the books on the kitchen table, Finn to my left, Liam to my right:  homework ensued.  To the right we worked first on the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, right there between the Tigris and the Euphrates.  Oh my.  Then on my left flank we knocked out a crossword puzzle, discussed the values of the tens place compared to the hundreds, and finished by memorizing the second half of the books of the old testament.  Oh, but wait - there's the dog scratching at the door, and the oven chimed finally pre-heated for the chicken strips, and the peas are boiling over, and Liam wants a glass of apple cider, and Finn needs me to sign something from school, then a knock at the door from a neighbor with the check for the school fundraiser (to replace the check from three weeks earlier that we ran though the wash)  then Zeke snagged a piece of bread and butter from the counter top when I wasn't looking,  and, and....I thought I was going to explode. 

I did in fact explode. 

The type of parental explosion that quickly requires an apology.  So, after calming, after looking at my two sweet angels, my offspring, the product of my life....I decided to go running.  "Boys, I'm going running.  Be back in 25 minutes".  That's all it took.  I was back in the game when I returned.  And, it was then that Finn asked an interesting question. 

"Dad, what age will we be when we are in heaven?"

Really, and other words I hate.

Really.  Well, not really, but reeealy.  Or is it just a blunt matter of fact: really.  People are using the word REALLY in ways it wasn't meant to be used.  If you're shocked by something, or aghast, or taken aback, disgusted, disappointed, mad or miffed you cannot so simply express your discontent by deforming the prosody of  the word REALLY.  For that matter YEAH RIGHT is growing in popularity and grates upon me like chalk catching the board perfectly square - or better yet a finger nail.  I hear it all the time as a means of agreement, confirming that you feel the same way.  At Cross Fit, one will say "This is going to really suck", and others will chime in 'Yeah right".  Not in the bygone days where the use of  'yeah right' meant that not all was truly right.  People say "Yeah right" now and they mean it, darn it. And that's all they have to say. That's it.   No contribution to the conversation whatsoever.  I mean, really?

There's more.  I hear them.  I watch people's lips move closely and occasionally the word 'wholenother' pops out.  Gag. Or, it pains me to even write this:  'It is what it is'.  What the fuck does that contribute to anything?   Of course it is what it is.  But why?  How did it come to be in the first place?  Really, yeah right.  It is what it is.  I might as well ask "Where you at", but that's a wholenother thing. 

Stats

Blogs have this tool where you can check the STATS of the activity.  See how many page views they've gotten, which page was most popular, etc.  My stats kind of suck lately.  One must write in order to maintain readership.  My mother doesn't even read this thing (at least I don't think so). 

So, anyway.  I'm alive.  I'm getting gray.  Really bringing on the gray.  And I think my poor vision is going poorer.  I thought my eyes had fallen off the cliff a long time ago but it turns out they can get worse.  That first cliff was just a little talus field.  Didn't see the big drop coming.  Forty is kind of sucking for me in all kinds of ways.  But there is beauty even in the bad days.  There still days anyway.   

Along those lines:  I pulled my left calf in my bootcamp workout yesterday morning.  That muscle is good for nothing.  Fails me all the time.  And then I have to sit for days on end trying to rub out the pain.  An office worker shouldn't have to endure such things.  Bootcamp has been going well this year - Crossfit set me up pretty well.  I can almost slip an extra burpie between the cadence they call out whereas in years past I was praying for the count to end.   I'm probably physically stronger upper body than I have been in years.  I can kip 100 pull-ups in short order - which is really amazing to me.

My kids are super great.  They both did amazingly well in baseball and are now putting some quality time in the water swimming for the community pool near our home.  Good days for sure. I signed up for a marathon in November.  Still enjoy a ride now and then when I can find the time.  And swimming still enters my mind on a daily basis. 

There.  I wrote something.