Shoelaces

Know what I hate? When you tie one shoe just slightly tighter than the other. 'Cause then you feel like the other is too loose. Or maybe the first one's too tight, but your perception is all screwed up because comparatively it feels like the second one's about to fall off.

Consider the options:

1. You re-tie the looser shoe. By tying it as tight as the tighter shoe, do you inadvertently over-tighten both, making your feel feel cramped and sending you on a wild goose chase of tying and re-tying your shoes all day long until you give up and go barefoot?

2. You re-tie the tighter shoe. Great: now you have two loose shoes. Nice work, asshat.

3. Suffer silently, wondering when the looser shoe is going to fall off, or if your toes will shrivel and die on the tighter foot.

I've been going with Option 3 for the last 4 hours. It's misery, but I don't want to spend all day bent over my damned shoes. I bet you'd like to think velcro would make it easier, but you'd be wrong. It's infinitely more annoying with velcro, and adjusting will piss off all of your coworkers.


UPDATE: I have now re-tied the loose shoe twice, once way over-tightening it. Then I realized the whole imbalance was due to a wrinkle in my sock. I win at life.

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Hey, Leukemia, F You

So I've been thinking about what you got vs. what everybody else got.  And you know what?  You got shit.  That's right:  shit.

You got her body.  I got her love.  Alastair got her spirit.  And God got her soul.

You distracted her for a year.  I had her for 15.  God gets her for eternity.  Hell, even Alastair had her longer than you.

You got our tears, but you couldn't even fill a fucking pond with the collective tears of the hundreds who wept for her.  I could fill an ocean with my love.

You got death, where I got life.  I have a beautiful son whom you can't touch (don't test me).

And what do you have to show for it?  Nothing.  I have the memories and the joy, and Alastair looks just like her.

Amanda taught me how to reason critically, how to love, and how to be a good husband and father.  She taught you that you were a chump to be laughed at and made light of.  She taught you that you couldn't stop her.

If ever I worked so hard to gain so little, I'd be humiliated.  So yeah:  joke's on you, leukemia.  Punk.

And the best part?  She's not even sick any more.  Man, you suck.  If I were you, I'd probably go jump off a cliff or something.

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Slacker

I'm getting pretty slack with this blog thing again (but to be fair, so are most of you), but this weekend will mark 7 months, and I'm going to be in the midst of a major system migration at work, so numbing my brain in front of a computer will not be high on my priority list on Sunday.

So where am I these days?  Still struggling at times.  I've started purging again.  Last week I completely filled my dumpster with abandoned crafting materials, clothing that was inappropriate to donate, and random objects that had no particular significance.  In doing so, I stumbled upon some boxes of clothing that I didn't know about, and within one of those boxes was her scent.  Her pre-cancer scent.  Or so I believe.  Was it real, or did I just want to find it so badly that any smell reminding me of her would suffice to fool my brain?

Then a couple of days later I did it all over again, discarding a plethora of skin-care products, her nail polishes, expired medicines, and old sheets.  Once again the dumpster is pretty much full, and it looks like absolutely nothing has changed in the house.

I cry less, and Alastair has really been asking a lot of questions.  He made a new friend a couple of weeks ago and asked if Andy loves Amanda.  I told him that Andy never met Amanda, but that he loves his mommy.  It was a tough conversation to have, and more recently he's been telling me that I'm not allowed to die.  Kid's going through some pretty tough emotions right now.

I overcame one of my stupid mental blocks and decorated the house for Halloween.  Not as all-out as in some years past, but we put out a bunch of skulls, candles, and even a few lights (in his room).

Tomorrow I'm taking the day off to spend with him.  We get far too little time together, so I'm super excited about it.  Then Saturday will be hell-day at work, followed (hopefully) by heavy consumption of alcohol.

Hope everybody has a great weekend.  Go squeeze your kids, your spouses, or your favorite pet.  Except fish.

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I Understand There Was Music, Too

We went to the Folk Festival this past weekend. Alastair and I were accompanied by Beth and her boy Andy (new friends!), and we spent about 3 hours rolling down hills, eating corn-dogs & funnel cake, petting goats & bunnies, climbing all over a 32-pounder cannon, and wandering around the festival area. Saw a couple of old friends, some ultra-hippies, and Alastair even made a puppet.

I heard some music a couple of times, but we never really stopped long enough to check out any one act. The boys would get restless, and the parents would either move on or give chase. Next year I'm gonna give Alastair a backpack full of bricks to carry. That ought to slow him down a bit.

But it was fun. We came home itchy and tired, but we'd had a great time, and Alastair and Andy really seemed to hit it off quite well.

And then, there was this (oh sweet glorious boy!):


Thanks, Beth, for the awesome pictures!

The Kind of Shit That Keeps Me Up at Night

It's said that breaking a mirror brings 7 years of bad luck. Fair enough, but are there technicalities? Loop-holes? What exactly constitutes a mirror?

For instance, a mirror is generally considered to be glass with silvering affixed to one side. But what if the mirror is plastic, like on some toys, or even like those used to reflect light from a flashlight? If you smash a flashlight, is that 7 years of bad luck?

What about if you scrape the silvering off the back? Does the glass still count? Or does removing the silvering count as breaking the mirror? Does an object cease to be a mirror at some point, or is it grandfathered?

Personally, I get so wrapped up in stuff like this that I don't even like to break mirrored drives on servers. It's called a mirror, and I don't want to mess with that.