I'm sitting here at my 'pad', sweating profusely and smiling in the Nevada-esque summertime heat. Compounding the outdoor temp, I've decided to cook some chicken and pasta to pump more BTU's into my surroundings. Clever.
I've no shirt on. Who cares, I am male right? Well, I'm modest to the extent that I don't usually sleep with less than a T-shirt and boxers on, so you know it's got to be warm for me to bare it in broad daylight. Of course, the crisp-clean tanlines I sport on my arms gives the illusion of a white tee; my lack of chest hair amplifies the illusion.
Life is challenging right now. Five days ago, in the midst of terrible dissapointment and frustration at the Cascade Cycling Classic in Bend, Oregon, life was the proverbial bitch. A fitting paraphrase: went expecting the best form of my life, immediately experienced the worst form of my life, quit the race early and drove home contemplating my wacked out season, training, and ambitions. Thursday afternoon, now.
9.08.2012
These are the days of our lives
Sha la la la. Someone turned the speed way up on this ride... I don't necessarily want off, I just want it to slow down a few notches. Life is busy. Hey, that seems to be a common theme for these last few entries. I've managed to back my workload down to the standard 40-45 hours per week, but am still mentally processing work-related items for the additional 15 hours as before. Does that make sense? Oh dear, I picked a bad day to quit caffeinating.
Lauren I and celebrated three years together this week (THREE!). I figure I might ask her to marry me in another three, perhaps four years. Just kidding. Such an event is emminent and, without letting the cat out of the bag, my heart is racing just typing it out. The night of our anniversary was booked with other activities, but on Tuesday evening we strutted down to Mortimers and treated ourselves to the finest (THE finest) experience I've ever, well, experienced. Seven course meal, each one better than the next and some tasty wine to wash it down with.
Lauren I and celebrated three years together this week (THREE!). I figure I might ask her to marry me in another three, perhaps four years. Just kidding. Such an event is emminent and, without letting the cat out of the bag, my heart is racing just typing it out. The night of our anniversary was booked with other activities, but on Tuesday evening we strutted down to Mortimers and treated ourselves to the finest (THE finest) experience I've ever, well, experienced. Seven course meal, each one better than the next and some tasty wine to wash it down with.
Found a few minutes.
Crikey (sp?), it's almost Christmas. More mind-blowingly, it's almost the end of 2011. I once heard that kids are "time accelerators" for their parents. Understatement of the year. Sometime, somehow, we've rounded the one-year mark as California residents and the two-year anniversary is just a few months away.
Life is good. You can always find things to pick apart (and if you read this much you know that I am the KING of picking things apart) but all is truly wonderful. Lauren is an awesome mom, more incredibly nurturing, generous, loving, selfless, and creative than I could have imagined. I like to think I'm a pretty good dad myself; surprisingly being an engaged father takes zero effort, it's simply something I can't wait to do every day. As I've mentioned before it kills me to have to work and be gone so much during the day, but it distills the time with Emma into high octane (say 180-proof) quality dad-n-daughter time. Makes you appreciate it.
Lauren is awesome, did I mention that? On numerous levels. Example: she has chosen to pursue a post-graduate degree, once again driving towards her dream of teaching. This may mean big changes for us, more importantly this represents a big moment in our relationship. Lauren made some huge sacrifices in supporting this move to California, and it's nice (and validating for her) to let her grab the wheel, hit the gas, and drive this shuttle to our next adventure. Plans and details are still preliminary, but it's in the works.
Gotta run. Emma has yet to fall asleep for her afternoon nap and is starting to wig out. More to follow.
Life is good. You can always find things to pick apart (and if you read this much you know that I am the KING of picking things apart) but all is truly wonderful. Lauren is an awesome mom, more incredibly nurturing, generous, loving, selfless, and creative than I could have imagined. I like to think I'm a pretty good dad myself; surprisingly being an engaged father takes zero effort, it's simply something I can't wait to do every day. As I've mentioned before it kills me to have to work and be gone so much during the day, but it distills the time with Emma into high octane (say 180-proof) quality dad-n-daughter time. Makes you appreciate it.
Lauren is awesome, did I mention that? On numerous levels. Example: she has chosen to pursue a post-graduate degree, once again driving towards her dream of teaching. This may mean big changes for us, more importantly this represents a big moment in our relationship. Lauren made some huge sacrifices in supporting this move to California, and it's nice (and validating for her) to let her grab the wheel, hit the gas, and drive this shuttle to our next adventure. Plans and details are still preliminary, but it's in the works.
Gotta run. Emma has yet to fall asleep for her afternoon nap and is starting to wig out. More to follow.
One Week Old in California
Today, well by about 3PM today, I'll have resided as a California resident for one week. Good lord! After seven days, I am absolutely sure of two things:
1) My job is going to rock. Yessir, despite being mired in the corporation's Human Resources (HR) Hell, I've gotten to play engineer just enough to get a taste for what's to come. And it is looking awesome. Que sobrosa!
2) I am lost without my wife. Life is empty without her, and although we chat on the phone for over an hour each day I still hate coming home alone to my humble, rented, spartan room and knowing I won't get to see her again for a few weeks. This will be hard.
I don't have too much time to expound, but here is a breakdown of my journey to date:
1) My job is going to rock. Yessir, despite being mired in the corporation's Human Resources (HR) Hell, I've gotten to play engineer just enough to get a taste for what's to come. And it is looking awesome. Que sobrosa!
2) I am lost without my wife. Life is empty without her, and although we chat on the phone for over an hour each day I still hate coming home alone to my humble, rented, spartan room and knowing I won't get to see her again for a few weeks. This will be hard.
I don't have too much time to expound, but here is a breakdown of my journey to date:
- Friday (February 26): Left Boise 5AM in newly purchased Saab. Saab drives great, but (surprise!) leaks gas when filled to full capacity. Still averaged over 33 mpg on the trip. Swung through Lake Tahoe, tried to meet up with old girlfriend to no avail, continued over Donner Summit. Note to self: Avoid Donner Summit at all costs for future trips. I'm 0/2 in terms of stress (snow/ice) - free journeys across that wretched area. Landed in Santa Rosa, met up with one and only friend here (to date), slept in his spare room on an inflatable mattress.
- Saturday: Room shopping. Of the five rooms I had lined up, I only viewed two. The other tenants either weren't around (so very professional), or I decided to drive on by after seeing the area. By 3PM I decided to rent a room from a single mom with a teenage daughter and early-20s son that live there part time. Comfortable, but most importantly uber-cheap. Went back to friend's house for the night.
- Sunday: Moved in to room. Spent the day monkeying around with habitation setup and unpacking my crap. Made it out for a two-hour bike ride in this friggin' awesome area. Beautiful. All the locals are complaining about the "terrible winter". It was 64-degrees and sunny on my ride.
- Monday: New Employee Orientation (NEO) at work. Or should I say: Intruduction to Acronym Mayhem (I-AM). Lasted all day, never met my teammates there, but managed to rendezvous for a mighty-fine dinner with my boss downtown. The fed me a 22-oz. Lagunitas Imperial Stout and a massive bowl of curried Saigon noodles. I survived, and even smiled and relaxed a bit.
- Tuesday-Thursday: Training. Paperwork. Very little practical engineering. Did I mention paperwork?
Who blogs these days, anyways?
I'm sick. Hooray for that. Started hitting me last night around the six o'clock news hour; in fact perhaps the cold is less a virus and more a virile reaction to the excessive Republican National Convention coverage. Whatever caused it, I am far from impressed at this cold's attitude and style. Sore throat, general nausea, solid headache. Minor body aches, but they're on the rise and I am not so stoked about the next 24-hours.
Little wonder I have a cold. I have averaged maybe 6.5 hours of sleep for the last, eh, five months. It's not Emma, or work stress even, just staying up too damn late then getting up early to catch up on life (gym time, Boise rental, all sorts of crap). Chronic lack of sleep fed perfectly (in a sinister sense) into a weekend blast back to Boise to host an open house and attempt to find new tenants for our home. The open house was a bust, and being back in a community of comfort flooded me with more emotional energy than my weakened immune system could handle. So, here we are. Sick.
Back in Santa Rosa now. Playing hooky from work today, sort of. There was a huge R and D function at work, where the company rented three greyhound-style buses to cart the department down to an Oakland Athletics baseball game. Sounds fun enough, but even last night, before the cold hit full-force, I was considering bowing out. Something about drinking all day, gorging on corn-dogs hot-dogs fill-in-the-blank-dogs and (above all) being surrounded by workmates for nine hours, returning home at 6PM already drunk then sober then hung over and bloated... eh, pass. Still though, awesome gesture by the company management. Pretty sure my absence will go unnoticed among the hundreds of engineers present. Hopefully...
Gotta tell you that I am confused about life, which I guess isn't much deviation from the norm for me. As last reported, things are working out well here in California but Lauren and I definitely feel the pangs of missing family and community in Boise. My mom drove up from Elko for the weekend in Boise, and I got some solid time in with Greg, G and T. I think sitting on G and T's back porch, sipping decaf and absorbing the sounds/smells/temperature of a typical late-summer Boise evening, G and I settling right back in to the genuine connection we've shared for the last five years... Even the morning of the (failed) open house was too much to handle. Ironic that a typical Idaho morning, 55-degrees of dry summer air, large cup of Joe from Dawson's downtown, maple-bar donut from DK's, and a dozen hot air balloons in the crisp blue sky can make you bummed out!
Still, though, there's a lot to enjoy down here, hence my total confusion and discomfort. Ambivalence, true binary this-side-that-side-of-the-fence ambivalence, is torture for me. If nothing else is gained from this period I life I think I'll be forced to let go of the obsession to have things 100% mapped out and secure. Such structure is impossible, and longing for it now is pointless.
Little wonder I have a cold. I have averaged maybe 6.5 hours of sleep for the last, eh, five months. It's not Emma, or work stress even, just staying up too damn late then getting up early to catch up on life (gym time, Boise rental, all sorts of crap). Chronic lack of sleep fed perfectly (in a sinister sense) into a weekend blast back to Boise to host an open house and attempt to find new tenants for our home. The open house was a bust, and being back in a community of comfort flooded me with more emotional energy than my weakened immune system could handle. So, here we are. Sick.
Back in Santa Rosa now. Playing hooky from work today, sort of. There was a huge R and D function at work, where the company rented three greyhound-style buses to cart the department down to an Oakland Athletics baseball game. Sounds fun enough, but even last night, before the cold hit full-force, I was considering bowing out. Something about drinking all day, gorging on corn-dogs hot-dogs fill-in-the-blank-dogs and (above all) being surrounded by workmates for nine hours, returning home at 6PM already drunk then sober then hung over and bloated... eh, pass. Still though, awesome gesture by the company management. Pretty sure my absence will go unnoticed among the hundreds of engineers present. Hopefully...
Gotta tell you that I am confused about life, which I guess isn't much deviation from the norm for me. As last reported, things are working out well here in California but Lauren and I definitely feel the pangs of missing family and community in Boise. My mom drove up from Elko for the weekend in Boise, and I got some solid time in with Greg, G and T. I think sitting on G and T's back porch, sipping decaf and absorbing the sounds/smells/temperature of a typical late-summer Boise evening, G and I settling right back in to the genuine connection we've shared for the last five years... Even the morning of the (failed) open house was too much to handle. Ironic that a typical Idaho morning, 55-degrees of dry summer air, large cup of Joe from Dawson's downtown, maple-bar donut from DK's, and a dozen hot air balloons in the crisp blue sky can make you bummed out!
Still, though, there's a lot to enjoy down here, hence my total confusion and discomfort. Ambivalence, true binary this-side-that-side-of-the-fence ambivalence, is torture for me. If nothing else is gained from this period I life I think I'll be forced to let go of the obsession to have things 100% mapped out and secure. Such structure is impossible, and longing for it now is pointless.
1.21.2012
Whoa, better publish more often
Ah jeez. I have been writing, er, typing more often than this blog reflects. And believe it or not, it's not all doom and gloom and chemical-emotional fluctuations in Calvin's world; on the contrary things are more up than down, yet somehow the words and descriptions never make it to a state worth publishing on this here blog.
February 28 2010 is the date I first rolled into Santa Rosa. Newly purchased Saab 900 packed to its two-door-gills, new job to commence in three days, Lauren almost half way through her final semester of grad school at BSU, and yours truly couch surfing and investigating rooms to rent in the Bay Area. I have a hard time accepting that nearly two years have passed since then... as cleverly stated in a song by The Shins: the years have been short but the days are long.
The situation is more or less the same as it was two years ago. I am working full time, Lauren is parenting full time, and Emma is being a baby full time and a half. We are settling into a routine, as a family. Routines may or may not lead to general contentment and satisfaction (I'll keep you posted on that one). The day, today, has been very satisfying and I am content. Despite the fact the mom and dad didn't go to sleep until about 11 last night, Emma chose to wake us up around 6:45 a.m. (we get no respect, I tell ya). Although equipped with several dozen speak-able words and several hundred words she understands (if not thousands of words), her chosen method of communication, especially at such early hours, is a mix between squawking and barking. Lauren and I both hit full-stride of sleep quality around 5a.m.-8a.m... Emma's waking hour can be a bit taxing on us.
Here is where it gets wacky. You are sound, SOUND asleep. The house is that perfect ambient temperature for hibernation, you're buried under your favorite pile of textiles, you're full-stride into pleasant sorts of dreams (having survived the hallucinogenic anxiety-ridden dreams of fleeing boogeymen while running through what feels like molasses at midnight types of dreams)... BAM. You're awake. You're not happy about it. You step out of bed with an extra-audible thud on the floor, not wanting yet sort of wanting to let that little critter know that she's roused the beast from its slumber and let her fear what just what is going to fling the door open, back-lit in blinding hallway energy-efficient light and casting a malevolent penumbra over her entire body.... but instead you tread normally, maybe lightly down the hall. Between your cocoon of unequivocal comfort and her bedroom door the irritation has waned if not morphed into this overwhelming excitement and desire to see her.
You are no longer in control. You are incapable of any sort of ire-fueled door-flinging. You instead crack the door a few inches. Light is bent and funneled down from the hallway and through the door's slight opening into a rectangular block of brilliance that cuts across the pitch-black room and reveals whichever of the critter's features happen to land in the caliper of radiance. What ends up illuminated is what melts your heart: usually a bright-blue eye, a few curls of yellow-golden blonde hair, a partial pattern repeated on fleece pajamas (monkeys, flowers), and two or three baby teeth displayed by a mouth spreading impossibly wide into a smile. That's it, you are toast.
That is how it works, every morning. Then the day begins. We get up and stumble around the kitchen. I usually hold her in my arms while I make coffee, she pointing me to the next step in the process and insisting on smelling the steam as the coffee filters down through its cone. At some point she expresses the desire to get down from my arms and walks over to the door separating the kitchen from our bedroom; she will either open the door or, if it's shut, begin banging on the glass and yelling "Mama!". The timing here is interesting. She is either bored of me already, has finally figured out mom is missing, or notes that the coffee is made and prepped and ready for mom to consume. Coffee gives way to the news on TV, which Emma usually enjoys. News gives way to breakfast, to reading and playing... eventually we are all out of our pajamas and ready for departure.
I mentioned routines. Saturday's routine may as well be cast in tungsten, so seldom do we deviate. Which is a wonderful thing. We load into the car and head to the Santa Rosa farmer's market near the Fairgrounds. Rain or shine we hit the market, sometimes coming home with bags and bags of fruits and veggies, sometimes only a muffin or two. Lauren is on this huge Kale kick right now, which between the kale and cumin and even olives reinforces my theory that pregnancy somehow scrambled her brain and made her start tolerating even enjoying things she never would have touched previously. We do a big loop through the market, starting with our favorite farm-stand, heading over to the $1 bran muffins, allowing Emma to sniff the bouquets of flowers in the adjacent stand, waddling past the morning string band (and donating a buck or two depending on how much Emma decides to dance). The fish stand is located at the apex of the loop - Lauren hates it but I love it when Emma (per my goading and also holding her up to better reach) prods at the eyeballs and innumerable teeth of freshly-caught salmon, flounder, and trout. I usually grab a lower jaw and start puppeteer-ing in time with a little ditty so the fish sings to Emma. She squeals. I melt.
Eventually we make it back to the car. This morning, after the market, we jetted out to our favorite bakery in the area, Freestone's Wild Flour Bakery (http://www.wildflourbread.com/), where true to routine we each bought a large coffee and a loaf of their Superseed bread, then went outdoors to let Emma explore the garden. Thanks to the 2.75" of rainfall yesterday the garden was a sloppy mess, which in baby vocabulary sloppy mess means totally awesome. Equipped with hand-me-down yellow rubber rain boots and infinite energy she successfully stomped the water out of every puddle in Freestone. She hit all her typical must-sees at the garden: the wind chimes, the strawberry patch, the sawdust paths, the creepy Mayan-esque stone sculpture that she feeds rotten tomatoes and raspberries.
We took a few back roads on the way home, opting to drive North through Occidental and winding along Graton Road and Occidental Road heading East towards Santa Rosa. The sun was shining full-bore, punching up the contrast between crisp winter blue skies and partial cumulus cloud cover. Apple orchards, vineyards, emerald-green undergrowth... definition of bucolic beauty. We stopped to see some horses near Occidental; Emma cried when we finally had to drive away in interest of time. We are back at home now. The critter is down for a nap (and logging some good z's, thank goodness) and Lauren left to run some errands. Great chance for me to type up some thoughts and let you all know that life, for me, is effing wonderful overall and despite the trials and tribulations we're all going to be just fine.
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