Bikram Construction

Losing weight and getting into…or should I say…getting back into shape seems a goal that we all to often need to attain. Reaching 65 the other day had me looking at myself in the mirror and wondering how I got those little bumps on my waist. And how my muscles seem to have disappeared from my body. How the years and youth have flown. I guess that I do have the answer to that question, as Jimmy Buffett would say, “it’s truly my own damn fault.” I guess I should make some attempt in getting my running physic back. My wife feels I should and not only encourages me to do it but decides that I am unable to do it myself…where has all that knowledge and maturity of 65 years gone? But now that I have said it and she has agreed,she… as she periodically does… decides that she also must get back into shape and that she…as she always does…has the perfect routine for us to follow and that we must do it NOW. It seems that whenever she gets into the mood to recapture the tone of her youth that I also am in the mood. AND when she gets into that mood she doesn’t do it half ass she goes for broke…no matter how bad the shape we are in is. So, to keep peace in the war zone of exercise, I usually go along with her determination that I am so out of shape I need a personal trainer…that being her…to get back into the same shape I was when I was running 6 to 10 miles a night. That is back when she felt her daily exercise consisted of chasing two exuberant children around all day. Yeah you’re right, I had it too easy.

Back to the present and my self acclaimed state of disrepair.

Over time Angela has tried to get me interested in a myriad of exotic types of exercises which are supposed to get me back into shape quicker than you can figure out when and where she ran across these exercises with names I dare not even try to pronounce let alone put to paper. Her latest, and previously visited, is yoga. Now I have nothing against stretching and twisting my body into previously…and still… unattainable positions, but holding them for a given period of time and them moving ever so painfully to another is not what I call exercise. I have followed her into her desire to bike ride, both stationary and street, walking, usually at a speed I might as well be jogging, swimming, and well you get the picture. I wish she would decide to go scuba diving in Tahiti…that I could get into.

I have belabored the point. So on to her latest craze…Bikram Yoga. Like I said yoga in and of itself is nowhere near my idea of exercise…it is a preliminary event into the main event of joint pain and back spasms. Like I said before, not for me. But now she is taking it to the n’th degree.

Let me set the stage for you. Some one, who ever the leader is, prepares the room where the victims, err participants, are to enjoy this delightful means of self induce torture by cleaning the floor, least one gets an infection from smashing ones nose into the floor while doing the ‘downward’ dog. (I have never seen a dog in this position at anytime, thus I question where they got this name for this so called move of so called relaxation and enlightenment.) And long before the participants have even entered the room the leader raises the temperature to a level one might expect to encounter on the surface of the sun and blissfully await the victims…excuse me…willing participants to arrive. When everyone has arrived and is so informed of all legal information excluding the leader and owners of the building and heating equipment from all legal law suits which may arise from injuries incurred while performing the ‘downward dog’, or any other weirdly named position of self abuse, the ‘class’ begins its incantations and self torture.

Now bear in mind that I tried Yoga…at my wife’s urging, or should I say insistence, “You’ll love it.” NOT… so I was totally secure in my belief that doing yoga at the gates of hell was not going to be any where close to enjoyable. I there for decided to do something more relaxing for my ‘get back into shape and loose some of the excess poundage that has found it way to the vacation spot that in my waistline’ and go to my daughters in Sacramento during the middle of summer and enjoy the heat of the Sacramento valley, twist and contort my body into impossible positions, such as the ‘old stud removal’ or the ‘under the floor plumbing replacement’ and of course the popular ‘balance on the unstable ladder and replace the bad roof joist’ all in the heat of the attic. A much more enjoyable state of self torture…and something gets accomplished before I drag my body into the final ‘drive yourself to emergency room’ position.

My daughter now has a remodeled house in which to entertain and if she so desires do Yoga and achieve bliss and I lost 12 pounds and all desire to ever, ever do Bikram anything except, possibly another stint of ‘Bikram Construction.’b

TO Young To Be Old

I recently read an article where the author was complaining that he was given a senior discount at…well where doesn’t really matter…he was just complaining that he should have been asked if he was OLD ENOUGH to be the recipient of a senior discount, an honor to a senior citizen.

Maybe I give him too much credit here calling it an honor. Maybe he felt he was ‘too young to be old’. He just didn’t want to be seen as an advanced aged human being. Really! Is it such a ‘dishonor’ that someone working at a menial task job…one that took no more brain cells than it takes to tie ones shoes in the morning…to recognize that a person standing before him, with a cheap, badly self applied, no name blue hair die, guaranteed to cover the grey, comb over was old enough…at least over the age of 55 or even 65…to be qualified to receive a “Congratulations for living so long and having survived so many presidential elections that you should be nominated for sainthood’ and are deserving of a monumental 5% discount on your purchase of 5 cases of extra large adult diapers overflowing your cart…and the 3 case limit that I will over look because of your terribly died blue hair comb over.

Sorry for the run on sentence but the mood just struck me…and the obscurity of this ‘gentlemans’ reaction to an act of honor put me in the mood to ramble. I mean seriously, are we so ingrained not to honor our elderly, that when we reach our golden years we take it as an insult when some one…some YOUNG someone…decides to give us the benefit of the doubt and not embarrass us, making us of older years, beg for the discount most stores now offer. I think if the gentleman wanted so much to be asked…like a child of 12 attempting to get into a PG13 movie… “Are you old enough to receive the 5% discount we offer to seniors.” Should the honor be removed from all who appear to be over the age to which this ‘gift’ is given? Maybe the ‘gentleman’ would have felt better if the overworked underpaid cashier had not offered the discount.

And maybe the ‘gentelman’ would have been happier if when asked IF he was old enough and IF he was over the appointed age, he had been asked for three forms of government issued picture ID’s and a note from his 3 year old grandchild proving his eligibility for this honor…one, by the way not required by any law or presidential dictum.

I am an advanced aged citizen; one whose original expiration date was extended thanks to a great heart surgeon and the advances of modern medicine. And I accept the fact that my weather worn face and child induced grey hair give me that distinguished look that comes with age. (Yes darling…aged like a fine wineJ)

I am also a veteran who appreciates the companies that give price consideration and a “Thank you for your service” to us who have stood the wall for our country and it’s citizens.

So I ask those who do not want to be seen as deserving of the honor given to the older generation because it…well it makes them feel ‘OLD’ to simply say no thank you to the honor and shuffle along with your overflowing basket of adult diapers and guarantied to make you look younger blue hair die and go about your life.

I for one feel that, yes I am “To young to be old” but I am not to proud not to accept the recognition of the celebrity status given to the elderly in other countries…now being given here in the USA.

Which Came First

We all have grown up with the rhetorical question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg”. The question has been posed for a myriad of circumstances; good grades and study…or bad grades and no study, hard work and rewards…or no work and no rewards, love and returned love…or, wait that one really doesn’t apply does it. Any way you get my point.

My parents put forth a measured amount of effort and received a measured amount of rewards ,basicly a fourty hour a week job with a retirement attached; Likewise my grandparents. My four brothers are a mixed bag of hard work and not so hard work; measured amount of effort and measured amount of rewards are the result.

Myself, in all honesty have only bones for fingers…you know, work your fingers to the bone and what do you get…sing it with me “Booooney Fiiingers!” But if you do it diligently and repeatedly you do reap the rewards. Some of those rewards are yet to come, and I am still working on boney fingers. But as I look forward to turning sixty-five in ten days…May 30, 2016…I must say that I am much better off than my parents were at this stage in life, but still hope to make it to ninety as my mother will this July. I am one of those the news, the proponents and the politicians say that are the last generation that will be better off than their parents. Have to disagree with this statement.

With four brothers who are of my generation…Baby Boomers Unite!…I am definitely the only one who is better off than my parents. Don’t get me wrong, my brothers are nowhere near destitute, but we are far apart when being better than our parents.

Hard work, determination, a desire to achieve and of course a wife standing side by side with me in the struggle for “Truth, Justice and the American Way” and a correlating desire to excel, is what has given us our status of “Better Off”.

Where I am going with this is my frustration with the news people telling us that Camelot is dead. That the next generation can no longer look forward to being one of The Knights of the Round Table…or any table. Or aspire to become the King Arthur of your own realm and have more than one horse in the barn…or even own a barn.

The Millennial Generation is the only generation since…this period of time varies depending on how dismal the news wants to make the world sound…who are not going to better off than their parents…Yeah as if you should let someone else choose your future…or tell you what your chances of your definition of better off is.

But to contradict this I hear the Millennials say that they don’t WANT to be better off than their parents…as defined by the want to be news makers. As in “I really don’t want…insert desire here…a house, a car, a full time job, (just a higher minimum wage). I don’t want anything I have to worry about or take care of. I want to live in a WEE HOUSE, off the grid somewhere…I want to be mobile.

In a way that IS what they believe IS better off than their parents…happy without incumberments. Who’s to argue? It sure won’t be me.

I went my own way not trying to be better than my parents but just wanting to excel. My first business started during one recession and ended during another. My second business or incarnation started during that recession and continued during that one and though another and another and another ect. One mans downturn is another’s recession and others depression…or if viewed correctly one’s mans opportunities.

So in my and my wife’s case, hard work came before the rewards. And because we didn’t stop there more rewards are to come.

None of this is to brag just to say that I know in my case, which came first “The chicken or the egg”. And my chicken, or egg…as the case may be…may not be what someone else’s is.

So, Millinenials, don’t listen to the news (want to be makers) define to you what your chicken or egg should be or to define what better off than your parents should be. So I say “Choose your own shape and size to the table for your Knights to sit at.” But remember to feather your ‘Nest Egg’ enough so that you don’t rely on others to provide your “Better Off” in your retirement years.

It Will Be An Adventure

 

Days, weeks, months and years past rushing up forward…or backward if you consider we didn’t exist before and won’t after. Well at least here on Earth. Yes I believe in the after life but that is not where I’m going, at least not now. No I talking RETIREMENT the big R, the time of life you get to do, or not do, whatever you want. Sit on the front porch swing drinking lemonade; Maybe mint juleps, vodka tonics, cold beers, or whatever. Reading books that should have been read years before…as in the classics. Or some romance novel, Zane Grey, Tom Clancy, or the favorite novelist of the day. It just doesn’t matter.

Maybe take an ocean cruse somewhere, buy a RIG and camp the US or for the intrepid someplace far away, foreign abd exotic. Ah! All that can be done now that we have nothing to do…YEA RIGHT!

I retired, or semiretired about 9 years ago, my wife 2. We thought we would be traveling, returning to the nest and deciding where to adventure next. Most of was to be done in the lower 48 with a possible trip to Alaska…go north the rush is on! But t seems that the most of our travel has bees to family events from which we demand of ourselves some side trips but nothing of much consequence.

My sons wedding and house remodel and of course the birth of our first grand child…the most beautiful and intelligent and talented child in the world “don’t ya know”. My daughters wedding and, of course, inevitable house remodel. My nephews wedding and since I didn’t bring him into this world he can worry about remodeling his own house. My mother-in-laws 80^th birthday/family reunion and next my mothers 90 birthday in July. Ok, that about does it…no wait our niece is getting married in September in Virginia and wants us to be part of the wedding. Well maybe we’ll drive from Oregon (on the west coast of the US) to Virginia about 5000miles away (on the east coast of the US).

Now this, of course will take some planning…drive straight through and spend time exploring the east or leave early and side trip along the way exploring the flyover states . The way I see, either way we choose, I WON’T MAKE PLANS.

We all know the saying, “Man makes plans and God laughs”.

So let’s all jump in the Escalade some time in August, fill up the tank and head east…hope for the best and expect the worst. And maybe retirement will start somewhere along the way. Yeah, maybe.

But any way you look at it, it will be an adventure.

Good Stuff

I’m tired…worn down to a frazzle…exhausted…nothing more left to give to anyone…well maybe a little for myself. And no I don’t feel selfish. Its just time I took some time for myself.

During the past year…actually more than a year…I have been doing fits and starts of home remodeling for my kids and attempting to get back to doing upkeep on my own house. But the previous nine years or so of major and minor surgeries have put a damper on my stamina and abilities…hence the fits and starts. This is something I have come to be able to face…I’m not as young as I used to be. But my wife doesn’t want to hear it. Not in a mean way…she just doesn’t want to admit that my body can no longer cash the checks she wants to write. Or by continuing to write them and expecting me to cash them…well…she will keep me young. In a way I guess she does.

I keep at it because I want to please her and to be honest I enjoy creating and enjoy people enjoying what I create.

Take this Blog for example. I construct sentences, paragraphs, essays and stories that I pass on to you and all who show me the consideration of reading my words. Thank you.

After weeks of stumbling through the short hours of my construction my body allows, I am so tired that I think I could sleep for 24 hours…maybe more. Rip vanWinkel sleep…maybe the remodel would have completed itself when I woke up.

But no such luck. So I thought I would let my body rest and let my mind send electrical impulses to my fingers and put out some words.

Of course being connected to the Internet and so tired I’m easily distracted and I began to surf the net. You know the typical stuff; B&W photographs, other blogs, email and of course the ever interesting…Google my name. Now I can’t Google my childhood name, Dick Balzer because, even though, some body with to much time on their hands has imputed all information that has been around since “Let there be light”. Besides some with MY name has written a book on peep shows…honestly it isn’t me. And I haven’t used Richard since I began to photograph and write so my interest in my Richard self is kinda weak when I am surfing the web…and unlike my child hood name, Richard Balzer has become a popular combinations of names. So, naturally I chiseled it down to RW Balzer. Interesting stuff.

I found my photographs from my time as a college athletic photographer, a newspaper stringer photographer, some hits from my time as a contractor and quite a few about my blog. I found and find that interesting. I enjoy sending my words into the electronic world and have them return as the electronic “Good stuff. I’m following you.” These are words that all bloggers enjoy hearing. But…but, I found one hit on Google where my blog was used as an example of something in a college paper. An example of what I don’t know. And even more interesting the paper written about RW Balzer was from a college paper mill…SOMEONE IS SELLING ME!!!

Oh I feel so used, so abused…but only because they didn’t notify me or have a connection to the paper. Now I feel so much more exhausted. I don’t mind if my kids use me to remodel their houses or my wife lights a fire under my but to get up and out and complete all those delayed projects lying around the house, and yard, and, and etc.

Next time someone quotes me in print, or credits my words in their college paper, I at least expect a hug. I mean it feels great when my kids and wife pay me in “I love yous” and hugs and kisses.

Ok…maybe the plethora of you out there reading, enjoying or attributing my words could just say “Good stuff. I’m following you!”

 

 

 

Monsters Under the Bed

It doesn’t seem like it, but near a year has passed since I contributed to my own blog. Writers block extraordinaire. I have pushed myself to the extreme in attempt to find the root cause of my disinterest…no luck.

Some years ago I was at a gathering at a friends house and was in conservation with someone I had just met. We were discussing life and some of its complexities…ups, downs, sideways and the subject of the military and the problems those returning from the middle-east and their involvement in events and the results of their experiences. I said that I knew from whence they came because of the year I spent in Viet Nam. PTSD and depression became the topic of the conversation and how we, the afflicted, live with and deal with the realities of it. I mentioned my writing and that it helped but stated that I didn’t like to write in the dark times of my days. “You should,” was her answer. She pointed out that it might help some one suffering from PTSD and depression as I was to show that even though the afflicted have bad days that good days can come from doing something that helps release the thoughts and fears we are plagued with. I should “let them know that not only do I have good days but I am burdened with the bad days but find a way to cope.”

So how does one cope with something that is different for everyone afflicted with that something? The something that has varying degrees of pressure… possibly by giving it a title or a name that has more of a relationship to what we individually are feeling? Maybe by associating it with something that bothered us in our past, sometime before the affliction took hold. How about we associate it with the feelings we had as children fearing the unknown and unexplainable, like fearing the ‘monster under the bed.’ This would fit nicely because they both are something associated with the fear of the unknown and something that is ‘all in our head.’

I can’t ever remember having to have my father check for the monster under the bed because all he would have found would have been my oldest brother…well at times I could have described him as a monster but not here, not now. After all we are are being serious here.

For as long as I can remember I shared a room with my two older brothers, fraternal twins at that. My two younger brothers shared a room when they came along later. So to fit us all in a three-bedroom house we had to share and to share we needed bunk beds, which I remembered one set was a birthday present…practical parents, check. So practicality lead me to live a childhood in which I feared no monsters under the bed, real or imagined. Because for me there was no under the bed. I only grew up with a healthy dose of insecurity, topped with a healthy sense of preservation and therefore a propensity toward observation to avoid ridicule about any type of abhorrent behavior. Therefore associating my conditions with monsters under my bed seems off the mark. That is unless you take an associative look at the underlying issues of both perceived and real conditions…they are both in the mind.

From the time of the invention of the raised bed, parents have no doubt had to assure their children that there were no monsters under the bed; not realizing that the dust bunnies that escaped with every breeze fostered the notion that the parent was wrong. How the parent handled or didn’t handle the belief of an impressionable child was really what created the ability to trust and accept the belief of a habitat under the bed void of anything resembling child gobbling monster, probably was the key to self assurance and success in the ability to handle life’s ‘monsters’.

Associate that with how some family members and clinicians handle depression and PTSD, the ‘monsters in our head’. The ability to deal with the monsters that periodically rear their ugly heads is tough to get a handle on…sometimes the monsters are stronger than all our abilities and training to control them they just take control. Mine seems to have taken a strong lead during the past year. Regardless of how I tried to resist the impulses to feel down I have not been very successful. And just telling us that it all is just in our heads won’t get it. The in our heads observation might be a fact, but the root cause of the problem was not and the condition needs to be addressed and not ignored. We need someone to talk to who will take the time to listen and understand that PTSD is real. We don’t need to be judged, just listened too.

So yes you will be my sounding board and you will know that I can survive the outrages of the monsters that have appeared under my bed and that by listening you will help me manage to put them back in the habitat where they have less control…in the realm the dust bunnies.

Maybe Less (a short story)

“You have cancer.” He looked right through me. “You’re going to die.”
I heard nothing else, just, “You’re going to die.” Hell I didn’t even hear how long…just “…maybe less.”
The words echoed in my brain, “You’re going to die.”
With the bedside manner of a cockroach, he rambled on…chemo, radical new treatments, new studies, and on and on. All I heard, “You’re going to die.”
I wondered through the streets of New York seeing the homeless that were never there before. Bars on the windows that were never there before, windows that were now cracked. Pigeon filth covered the sidewalk below the sign, Joe’s. The stench of vomit flowed from the doorway and behind the bar condoms littered the alley.
The city that was once so bright and shiny… the city that was once my future was gone…gone along with my future…gone along with my life. I began to see and feel the cancer that was killing the city as well as the cancer that was killing me.
Why me? Shit.
Life in the city is so ugly. Someone should clean this mess up. Soap it up, wash it down…bring back the sparkle that was once the dream…chemo, radical new treatments…
Shit. Why me?
“Hey buddy, something wrong with you? Watch where you’re going.” I could smell him, without looking up I could see him, feel him, and know him. Was he there before? Or was it she?
Why not her? Shit, shit, shit.
“One year, maybe less.”
Yeah there’s something wrong with me, I’m going to die.
What was that?
“One year, maybe less. Of course we’ll do more tests…”
Yeah, thanks. Why the hell did I thank him?
So cold, where’s my coat? Need to get warm… “You’re going to die.”
Past the vomit and into Joe’s…smells just as bad inside…hose it down clean it up, chemo, radical new treatments.
“What’ll you have Mac.”
“Another thirty years.”

Bobby and Me (a short story)

Riding the bus hasn’t changed much since I was a kid but I don’t have to straddle the race line in the middle of the bus with my friend Bobby. People of different backgrounds, colors, personalities and gender walk through the folding doors, pay their money and take any seat in that economical ride to the next stop in their life.
The young girl sits across from me. She is pierced in numerous places on her face and ears. Her stark white skin is framed by her hair streaked in the colors of the rainbow. Arms crossed and almost asleep her head lolls from left to right and back again with the rocking of the bus as it bounces over uneven roads. She must be deep asleep because she makes no attempt to hold her head upright.
A soft conversation is being held in the back of the bus about how to sell on E bay. One of the older women in the conversation comments that this is how she stretches her Social Security check. Her friend laughs that one day she may make enough to give the damn pittance back to the government…claiming she will be rich beyond her wildest dreams. Her entrepreneurial companion joins her in the reverie and they return to the serious nature of descriptions to get the most from their E bay posts. Whoever says that the ambitious don’t ride the bus hasn’t ridden in a long time.
A woman reading a book wearing an oversize bike helmet for whatever reason rounds out those riding the bus with me; Hemingway, “Farewell to Arms”. I never could understand ‘highbrow’ books or the need for reading them but embarrassed, I tuck my detective paperback deeper into my jacket pocket. At each stop we sometimes gain new riders and sometime loose passengers to the darkness of the night and the next stop in their life.
My ride is taking me to my night security job at the shopping center…it pays the bills and keeps me off the streets. I sit with my lunch tucked close to me, my book in my jacket pocket and loose my battle against sleep as the road and bus gently rock me into unconsciousness. I join pierced girl across from me in the fog of dreams.
Bobby and I are kids again riding the bus through the streets in the ‘burbs of St Louis Mo., headed to the bridge that crosses the Mississippi. This is our favorite hangout away from the dirt and hectic life of the city. At the bridge we discuss the state of the nation, mathematics, religion, and the news in the papers. Well Bobby does. He’s the one that always has a stack of books with him. All I want to discuss is basketball and my chances of making it to the pros. I’m the one with the ball under my arm, always shooting at an imaginary hoop during the imaginary game that is taking place wherever I am. And I always…always hit the game ending, game winning shot from half court.
Sometimes Bobby gets political and talks about the injustice of having us, one black and one white having to sit in the middle of the bus, one in the “back of the bus” and one in the “front of the bus.” I say, “That’s the way it is and us talking about it ain’t gonna change it.” Bobby says, “It still isn’t fair,” and ads, “I don’t much care for the way people look at us.” It’s been years since that black lady refused to give up her seat on the bus but something’s never change is some parts of the world.
We sit on the bridge and carry on talk like this for hours on end. Me, with my second- hand shirt tucked into my too short coveralls and feet in sneakers full of holes hanging off the bridge and Bobby sitting clean and neat as the professor he hopes to be one day. Sometimes I’m blinded by the shine on his leather shoes. The fact that I’m from the projects and poor doesn’t keep him from hanging out with me. He even says that my race isn’t a problem, “we’re like brothers,” he says.
Bobby always brings lunch on our trips to the bridge and a bottle of milk, both of which he shares with me. He don’t even wipe the bottle off after I take a drink. I take a bite of the ham sandwich his ma sent along with him and start in again on how I’m going to make it to the pros. Bobby jokes with me once again, “Your color might be a problem. You know that…” and I cut him off as I always do,  “It won’t.”
The years raced by and the days at the bridge continued until we graduated from high school and he headed off to some private college up north. I feared for Bobby up there, with his smarts and all he ways, always to outspoken for his own good about prejudice in America.
Me, I went off to junior college with hopes of making the leap from there to a big college with a scholarship for basketball and on to the pros. But Bobby was right, my color made a difference. They didn’t want my type at college I went to. And now, without the proper education, the schooling I should have taken advantage of instead of dreaming about the pros, I only qualify for a night watchman’s job.
The bus hits the bump that comes before my stop to wake me from my dreams and memories. I grab my lunch, thank the driver for the ride and step into the damp, cold night, stretch to wake up and begin to think more on things and times of me and Bobby.
I wonder how he made out up north and if he had as much trouble being accepted as an intelligent black man as I did  being a white man who couldn’t jump.

Couldn’t Be Simpler

 

I had a difficult time falling, and staying, asleep the night before last. I tossed and turned attempting to shut down my mind. Reading did not help do anything except keep my mind active on something I actually wanted it to remain active on. So I put the book down and “Bang, Bang Out goes the lights!” and I settled in to once again attempt the impossible for the night.

I have idea how long I lay there practicing all the tricks I have learned and used to encourage the night to wrap me in its warmth and send be off to dream land but, self hypnosis learned in Viet Nam, deep breathing land counting backwards learned from who knows where and several other tricks must have worked because I eventually fell asleep.

Last night, determined not to repeat the night events before, thinking that exhaustion alone would not allow a restful night’s sleep, I was not going to take a chance. Even though the sheets on the bed had been changed about three days ago I striped the bed, found new sheets, stretched them military tight, spread and re-tucked the covers, changed the pillow cases and brushed my teeth, combed my hair…never know who you might meet in a dream and you only have on chance to make a first impression…climbed into bed, smoothly spread the covers over me and drifted off to sleep.

Whether or not it was all the preparations or the exhaustion of the previous sleepless night I fell fast asleep and remained there except for the occasional waking period between dreams.

The dreams came in fits and starts and this morning I began to wonder if a rest full night’s sleep will ever be in my future. Why can’t I sleep like I did when I was younger?; lack of melatonin, lack of exercise, lack of purpose in my life? This morning I began to think, what could be the problems as I use to be able actively avoid this process, and came up with a possible solution to my failed excursions into the nocturnal realm of dreams. I can control my day dreams, why not my night dreams and came up with the knowledge that I can’t. Day dreams are controlled by my conscious self and my night dream are controlled by my subconscious self. And I have a terrible time controlling my conscious self so attempting to control someone I have no hope of controlling will not grant me the serenity of pleasant dreams.

When my daughter was young she would have me kiss her goodnight on the corner of her left eye. Each kiss representing the dreams she would have during each hour of her night. If I messed up I would have to kiss the corner of her right eye, breathe deeply to remove the previously placed kisses, kiss the corner of her right eye to seal the drain hole, and repeat the kisses on the corner of her left eye. It seemed to work as she always woke happy, rubbing the sleepy bugs from her eye, smiling at the day. I don’t think I could repeat this process on myself, but I would like to replicate the blissful mornings I saw her enjoy.

Ok…what can the problem be and what can the solution be?

I have given it much more thought and have come up with the greatest possibility to the problem and the solution…it’s my pillows. When we travel my wife and I pack our pillows so that we have the comfort of home the pillows that bring a restful night. On our trip to visit her parents for Christmas, I forgot to bring my pillows home and they are giving someone else a great night of dreams at the Air B&B where we spent our vacation. It’s the only plausible explanation! They were fairly new and the dreams they held were only partially used. Dreams encased within, being slowly released through the down feathers and soft Egyptian cotton cases; the way they caressed my face in warmth and comfort…like kisses at the corner of my left eye.

I have not purchased new pillows to replace the ones lost to travel, but have replaced them with the pillows that had occupied the bed in the guest room. Down substitute pillows, filled with the used dreams of others. That has to be the dream problem. Older used pillows have lost all the happy dreams they once held! Unused dreams no longer there to comfort the sleeper, me, through the long cold restless nights. I now have the solution! Once the pillows have been replaced, no more sleepless nights…no more nights filled with incomprehensible dreams! I will have no need to self hypnotize, to endlessly count backwards, to find some way to control my uncontrollable subconscious. I need only to resume the quest…to find the Holy Grail of a good…nah…a great night’s sleep!

I’ll just go out and find down filled, dream filled replacement pillows…the solution…couldn’t be simpler!

Mischievous Spirit

Sometimes you feel that you have the whole world in you’re the palm of your hands. Nothing could be better…there is no way you could feel more like you are on top of the world more than you feel at this very moment. There is nothing that could happen that could bring you down or up higher than where you are in your emotional Nirvana…ever! Then It happens. It doesn’t have to be big, or disastrous, or even bad. Hey you could have met the one of your dreams, got a better job, a promotion, or just had someone smile at you on the street when you were having a bad day! Sometimes the smallest thing can change you day or your outlook.

My first real It came when I went to Viet Nam… hadn’t planned for that one. Once back It was over. I had survived and no Purple Heart. No lingering effects to worry about. Love and marriage were the next It and a lifetime of lingering effects…to enjoy. Five years later my wife informed me that we were pregnant…this was a big It. Life would change as I knew it forever. I was ecstatic and for the next nine months I was a pile of jitters…filled with anticipation and jitters. Worries about being a father for the first time and how I would measure up to my expectations of how I would handle all the responsibilities. According to my son Lucas, I met those expectations and then some; a truly nice compliment.

My daughter Elle produced the next big It by showing up two and one half years later, on time, and quite and a mouse…  Lucas was two weeks late and not all that quiet. The quiet as a mouse condition continued until she first rolled over…at six months…then the world, and I, had a new and highly active little girl. How was I going to deal with her? I had no idea. I was a boy, a man, with no idea what to do with a baby girl. How do you raise a fragile, tender, heart stealing, catch you off guard with a smile, bundle of female charms. I just cradled her and loved her like I thought a father should love his brand new daughter. I later learned that, although this was acceptable to her on one hand, she was, how should I put this, a wild child.

She had a mischievous streak that was adorable. Once during the search for the perfect pumpkin in the pumpkin patch, she held one up, put this crooked smile on her face, ignored the parental “Don’t you dare,” dropped the pumpkin and took off in a sprint with laughter bubbling up from deep within her chest. I caught her, but how could I punish that spirit. How could I do anything but laugh with her? How could I do anything but love that person who captured my heart the day she was born.

Many more spirited events filled our lives, some filled with laughter, some marred by tears, but none so outrageous we couldn’t get through them…I have been so blessed.

This little It in my life is now presenting me with a new It…she is getting married. He’s a wonderful guy and I am happy for them both. I guess I’ll just have to deal with, and enjoy, this new reality and wait around, prepared this time, for the possibility of a new It that may enter my life in the form a new fragile, tender, heart stealing, catch you off guard with a smile, bundle of charms…time will tell.

In the meantime, I wish Ben well in his duties of handling his chosen fragile, tender, heart stealing, catch you off guard with a smile, bundle of female charms and mischievous spirit that is my daughter.