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Posts for the date of Saturday, May 11, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 7:46 AM |
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Families of 11 dead illegals to sue U.S. for Not Putting Water in the Desert.
Other things the government should do:
*Put firewood in the tundra.
*Provide swimmers with armor against sharks.
*Stop bees from stinging people.
*Get rid of cancer.
*Reduce the grease in McDonalds Burgers.
*Put safety harneses in trees in case people fall out.
*Use softer bullets because when I'm trying to rob a bank while brandishing a weapon, those hard bullets could hurt somebody.
*Put a warning on coffee because it might be hot.
No offense to the families or their tragically departed loved ones but . . .
It's the desert. There is no water. That's why they call it the desert. I wonder if we'll ever be sued by the families of people who drown for not putting enough air in the water?
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Posts for the date of Friday, May 10, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 3:32 PM |
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Is it possible for a child to be obsessive-compulsive? I wonder. Is it possible that my lovely six-year-old has OCD?
It all began when she was four, when we moved into what we know refer to as Stately Pain Manor, though we could easily call it The Crack House. Our front door has some nice concrete steps that lead down to the sidewalk. Next to the stairs there is a small one by one foot area. My lovely daughter began collecting rocks and placing them in that small space.
It was cute at first. She’d find a new treasure and show it to us, describing how pretty it was and why she liked it. She named the rocks, called them her friends and used them for various states of play. She would even periodically wash them. After all, what good is a dirty rock?
After a brief stint in dealing with only rocks, she decided to diversify and add sticks to the bargain. Again, it seemed harmless. She’d arrange the rocks and sticks on the steps in patterns that only she understood. Sadly, she’d also leave them out overnight, looking to the neighbors as if the Blair Witch had paid us a visit in the night. This was only compounded by our Red Headed Family Friend (a.k.a. P Tiddy) who would be walking to his car late at night yelling, “Josh? Josh! Oh my God are those teeth????”
Sadly, those rocks and sticks would also be there early in the morning when I’d go out, barefoot, to pick up the paper.
Slowly she expanded beyond rocks and added the common detritus one finds below the surface of topsoil, or hiding among grass that has long needed a good mowing. Broken toys, bottle caps . . . anything that looked interesting became part of the collection. I was thankful that her treasure never included broken syringes and used condoms. But, then, we don’t live in California . . .
The collection began to grow until it looked like the tide had come in to deposit the ocean’s refuse. It was unsightly. I informed the little one that she would have to sort out her favorite rocks and place them in a box that we’d keep just inside the door. The collection could never grow beyond that box until she came up with a reasonable system for a reasonably sized collection. Then she’d have to return her little igneous friends to their natural habitat, preferably an area that posed no danger to life, limb or vehicle.
She did sort them out. She even stopped adding to the outside collection. Well, she stopped adding rocks. Sticks were another matter. And she never did put the rocks back.
The sticks came in all sizes, from tiny twigs to actual lumber. I have no idea where she would find them. I asked her to stop that, as well, because people were beginning to mistake our steps for a compost heap. She told me that sticks were part of trees and trees were alive and you can’t throw away living things. I explained that once the stick falls from the tree, it is no longer alive. “Blasphemer,” she cried, “wait until Greenpeace hears about this!”
I thought she had . . . until I found the collection newly located under a bush. Hundreds of little sticks. At first I thought a colony of frontier Smurfs were building their settlement there.
I got lazy and stopped reminding her to get rid of the rocks. I knew it was hard for her and, to be honest, I hate living here so if it makes her happy, then so be it.
But, I realized we had a problem a few weeks ago when we were cleaning out and rearranging her room. Hidden throughout her room were enclaves of rocks. One, I kid you not, weighed at least five pounds. She admitted to carefully sneaking it up to her room one day after school when I wasn’t looking.
It was time for an intervention. I began nagging her to get rid of the rocks. I even set up times. But nature was on her side. It rained, it stormed, we always had something more important to do.
Today I was finally fed up when I found what I think may be a support beam for someone else’s home piled out there. Once that home collapses, I’ll know where to return it. At the bus stop I informed her that she couldn’t leave sticks there anymore. She’s welcome to play with them, but leave them to nature. Sticks go back into the soil and provide nutrients for the trees, I said.
The looks she gave me can only be summed up as, “Whatever.”
So, I decided that the Stone Age was over. I cleaned out the whole area. It took four full plastic shopping bags to return the rocks to their proper place. I also found roughly 214 sticks strewn about. I think one may have been a chair leg once.
I prepared my speech when I got home. I knew she’d be upset. After all, this had been her collection. But I had given her so many chances. To many. I drafted what I’d say in my head and went out the wait for the bus.
When she arrived home she exclaimed, excitedly, “Daddy!” (Uh oh. Here it comes, prepare for tears.) “You cleaned out my rock collection. Cool.” Then she ran off with her friends.
I walked inside, confident that I had done the right thing. Right? I had triumphed on the side of non-clutter. Right?
Or had I? She was outside playing while I cleaned out the dirt from beneath my fingernails.
That little weasel had beaten me. She just learned a valuable lesson. If she procrastinates long enough, with a sweet demeanor, I will eventually do the work for her.
I fear the next time I look in the mirror I will find, neatly stamped to my forehead, the word “Sucker.”
And I am. I am. But it’s comfortable wrapped around her little finger. She even gives me a sense of power now and then.
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 1:21 PM |
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I see you. I see you peeking in here trying to see if I've actually gotten off my lazy butt and written something today. Well I have, but it's not done yet. I have to finish today's work first. Which, when working alone, is often difficult because I get lonely. The cat has stopped speaking with me. We're all lucky I don't don spandex and proclaim myself a superhero.
Oh wait, I have that penciled in for three.
I do have an update. My complex (such an apt word for them) is sending someone out on Thursday to check my crack. I hope it's dry by then.
I'm referring to my home's foundation. What were you thinking?
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Posts for the date of Thursday, May 09, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 1:09 PM |
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Removed Bloglet. That sucker rarely worked. Didn't want to waste anyone's time.
The guys came to suck the water out of the carpet. After playing with my model Monorail (which speaks), the guy looked at the wet spot, the quickly expanding crack and said, "I swear, this place is going to put my kids through college."
Yet another person who sees that the people who run this joint are morons.
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:38 AM |
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There is water in my basement. It’s coming from a crack in the foundation. Hmm. No one seems to care.
I’m a renter, which, in the social hierarchy of the world, places me just above the level of a syphilitic leper with a social disease contracted from a used car salesman from Jersey. For the past six months, I’ve been going back and forth with the management about how many maintenance requests I’ve submitted that have been lost. Each time I finally get action, they do something ludicrous like put a piece of plastic under gravel outside. That should stop it!
That’s like putting a Teletubbies Band-Aid on an arterial laceration and saying, “Just rest up. You’ll feel better.”
It’s rained a lot in the last few days. Guess what? We have friggin’ water in our carpet. Water in a basement plus carpet plus padding plus not having it taken care of equals mold and mildew. Yum!
I’ve done everything I can to take care of it, but now I’m washing my hands of it. These moronic ass-monkey bastards need to take care of it.
“We have five hundred units. We can’t possibly keep track of all of our residents.”
Yes you can! It’s your JOB. Quit writing the requests on post-it notes and use those stupid circa 1990 386 computers to make a damn spreadsheet. IT will tell you all you need to know. And guess what? You can make changes to it. Gasp!
Doesn’t matter. This isn’t the first problem we’ve had, isn’t the first problem that doesn’t get fixed and it probably won’t be the last. We have a neighbor whose floor is rotting out. The complex acknowledges this but has done nothing. Have I mentioned that I live in a rather high-end suburb? Have I mentioned that the houses surrounding this rattrap are expensive?
When I spoke with Christy, the dim-witted assistant property manager today, I unloaded. I told her how this was bad business, their record with the BBB, the fact that losing or ignoring requests is endemic across the company and has nothing to do with 500 units. I told her that the behavior of their staff was bad business. Her response.
“Yeah. Do you want me to check on the status of your request now?”
“Sure,” I said. “And I’ll check the status of my complaint with your parent company.”
Sigh. All this rage and aggression towards a bunch of morons who spend most of their time baking cookies to eat in the office and worrying about a goose that laid eggs near the pool.
And when they finally take care of my issue, they’ll send one of the toothless, in-bred, backward moron “Dirty Brothers.” These guys don’t know squat about maintenance. They couldn’t fix a sandwich, or bathe, for that matter, much less know how to install a damn doorknob that actually opens the door.
So what’s my recourse? What do I do? I don’t know. Lodge a complaint? Alert the Chamber of Commerce? Alert the BBB? Picket? These Neanderthals are so dense none of that would work.
I’ll tell you what I may do. I may eat that friggin’ goose with a nice orange glaze. Heck, we may make it a block party. I know my neighbors would love to imbibe.
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Posts for the date of Wednesday, May 08, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 7:59 AM |
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Gertrude’s on the cusp of crawling. She’ll get up on all fours, rock back and forth until one of her limbs is compelled to move. She’ll thrust and arm forward and . . . fall flat on her face.
Watching a child gain mobility is an odd experience. When she was a newborn, I’d watch her as she began to notice that things like hands and feet were actually attached. It was like watching Jell-O learn to jiggle itself. Well, that Jell-O can move around a room now. It’s fast, it’s unpredictable and it’s dangerous. It’s the Blob.
I imagine being a baby must become extremely frustrating at times. We often look at a child and think, “Oh, if it were only that simple again.”
Simple? This kid is stuck on the floor and she sees a toy a mere four feet away. This pisses her off. She wants that toy. She wants it bad. But she can’t get it. She can’t!
So, she hops up on all fours and start to rock. You can almost hear Mission Control ticking off it’s checklist.
“Baby’s body, this is the Cortex. Are we go or no go for launch? Left leg?”
“Go brain!”
“Right leg?”
“Go brain!”
“Left arm?”
“Go!”
“Right arm?”
“We’re go brain!”
“Tummy padding?”
“Go!”
“Face braking?”
“Reluctantly go brain.”
The countdown begins. Rocking faster now. She’s ready for launch. This isn’t a test; she’s really going to do it. 5. Arms twitching. 4. The legs are beginning to shuffle. 3. The toes are wiggling. 2. Look of stern determination. 1. Launch.
The entire body lunges forward. The arms know what to do, but the legs are pushing off with too much uncontrolled power. Abort! Abort! Ready the face brake!
And she slides on her face. But she won’t give up. She’ll try one or two more times. Either each lunge will get her close enough that eventually she’ll be able to reach it, or she’ll investigate alternate routes.
She has two alternate forms of mobility. The first is to roll in a great circle until she eventually reaches the toy. This takes a long time. The other is to plant her face on the floor, arching her butt straight up in the air and, using her forehead as a fulcrum, rotating her body into position and then backing in.
I encourage her mobility. I look forward to it. I sit on the sidelines rooting for her to go, as if she’s in the pole position for the Baby 500.
She’s going to get it soon. Perhaps within the next few days. And when she does, I’ll cheer. I’ll pick her up, hug her, kiss her and make her do it again.
Then I’ll show my friends. The neighbors. And strangers.
And Gertrude’s confidence will be sapped. She’ll wonder if she’s nothing more than a novelty. She’ll begin to wonder if there’s more to life than crawling. She’ll look around her and notice that, minus her arch-nemesis The Cat, everyone is a biped.
Walking!
And then we’re all screwed . . .
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Posts for the date of Monday, May 06, 2002
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 11:00 AM |
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I’m sitting here with the rain pounding the windows. The clouds rolled in, dark and ominous. When the rain finally broke free, it was like a release and the darkness subsided, giving way to the usual dingy gray that accompanies a spring rainstorm.
As I sit here, waiting for questions regarding work to be answered, I can’t help but think of my Uncle Jim Deasey. Jim has been diagnosed with cancer. A word no one wants to hear. It’s a word that has weight and a sense of doom attached to it. No matter the outcome, since people these days can come out with minimal scars, cancer leaves scars that can’t be seen.
We don’t yet know the prognosis. He’ll be going through more tests, getting second opinions and generally putting all his hopes in the hands of strangers.
I remember this. I remember all of this so clearly.
Perhaps this is hitting me harder than it may hit my other siblings (except one). Maybe it’s my perspective. But, knowing that Uncle Jim is ill gives me this feeling of helplessness.
After my dad died, most of us wondered what we’d do. Of course my mom had to figure out how to raise seven kids (one was married and living on his own), get kids through college and on and on. Most of my brothers and sisters were in high school and college. They were beginning to forge their own lives and discover themselves.
Then there was my brother Bob and me. We’d all been hit hard by Dad’s death but, to the two of us, we had yet to discover that the mythical hero we called Dad was human. To us he could still leap buildings in a single bound. He was the man who was a Cowboy Soldier and could beat Tarzan in a swimming race through a river infested with crocodiles.
Imagine someone told you there was the most amazing sight behind a really tall fence. They give you a ladder and you climb up and get a glimpse of some of the most amazing things you’ve ever seen. You can’t describe them, you don’t understand them. Just as you are about to ask about them the ladder is kicked out from beneath you and you tumble to the ground.
That’s how it felt to me to lose Dad. Except it wasn’t a ladder I was perched on. I was sitting on his shoulders. Now I’d have to figure out another way to learn about all those things.
The summers after Dad died, we spent on vacation with Uncle Jim, his wife Trudy, who was my Dad’s sister and my Mom’s best friend, and some of their kids. We went to this little trailer park in the Ozarks off Table Rock Lake called Lazy Lee’s. It was magical. Green fields, pools, shimmering lakes and a clubhouse with a rickety player piano. Tradition stated that I fall in the lake at least once a trip. I never missed that tradition.
Uncle Jim taught me how to fish with a real fishing pole. Not the bamboo-training pole I had been using. He was patient as I sat bleary-eyed in the boat, trying to ignore the early morning sun. He never complained that I was terrified of worms and baited my hook for me. Jim, Bob and I would sit and that boat and wait for the fish to bite.
Once I caught a Bluegill. Probably the only worthwhile fish I had ever caught. But, it was small. Way too small. Jim explained that we couldn’t possibly eat the fish I had caught and that we should let the little guy go back to his family. So we released it from the boat dock. Then he taught me how to clean the other fish we’d caught.
Later that night, my brother Bob ate fish. He hates fish. They told him it was chicken. He still hates fish.
I learned the delights of toasting marshmallows over the orange-blue glow of a gas stove with my cousin Trina. We’d laugh and giggle and act like fools.
We’d spend the days going fishing, swimming, or at an amusement park. Once, while Bob was riding the classic Fire in the Hole, the braking system broke down. He waved as he passed us, getting an extra ride. I thought he was going to die in a fiery wreck of coaster cars and themed props. He didn’t.
In the evenings we’d go to dinner shows, hillbilly shows or the old Shepard of the Hills show. Once, Bob got to help put the fire in the barn out. That was a true honor.
Other nights, we’d sit outside in lawn chairs enjoying the crisp summer nights. The adults would “look for ‘em.” We didn’t know what that meant. “You’ll know when you see one.” I was twenty before I figured out what they were talking about. I never got the chance to properly look for ‘em with the gang.
One year my mom went to visit Trudy and Jim in Chicago. Our dog Freckles had died at the ripe age of 16. Mom came home with an extra carry-on. It was a little beagle/pointer mix puppy. Trudy and Jim couldn’t fathom “the boys” not having a dog. Their neighbor’s dog had recently had puppies. They made Mom bring one home. We named him TJ, after his surrogate parents. TJ was with us until he died twelve years later. I don’t want to brag, but he was the best dog that ever lived.
Years later, Trudy and Jim bought a lake house in northern Illinois. We spent several summers with them up there as well. This time we were older. Bob was in college. I was a brooding, lonely pre-teen obsessed with Van Halen. But Uncle Jim still had that mythical quality of a rugged teacher. He still took us out on the boat to fish. He taught me to water ski. He let me sharpen anything made of metal with his sharpening wheel in the garage. I loved sitting in the front seat of his car and watching the dashboard compass tell us which direction we were heading.
These summers, Bob was able to look for ‘em with Jim. I thought I saw one that year, but wasn’t sure. Trudy and Jim took us to a brewery for a tour (it smelled), introduced me to all you can eat cottage potatoes and what life was like in the smallest town I’ve ever seen, Durand, Illinois. It has a town square, which is, literally, a square. That’s it. They were having a lockjaw epidemic one particular summer.
We visited the homes of their friends. We biked around the lake. We wandered around and just did “stuff.” Never once, in any of these summers, was I bored.
When my Mom was sick, she had already lost her husband, Trudy had passed on . . . but Jim was eternal. As soon as he heard she was ill, he and his new wife Estelle were in a car and in St. Louis immediately to be by her side. Though nothing particular was ever said between us, his strong hand squeezing my shoulder was the comfort I needed.
My mom went to visit them that summer . . . her last summer. Though she was sick and weak, she played and swam and had a good time, just like it was any other summer.
The last time I saw Jim was at my wedding. His face lighting up with glee as our combined families acted like a bunch of little kids, dancing, talking and laughing.
I’m an adult now. I have children of my own. I haven’t been back to Lazy Lee’s. I probably never will. I’d hate to see that the memories of my youth are wrong. To me, it will always be the perfect place to take a vacation. Why ruin that?
I probably won’t ever teach my girls to clean fish. I doubt they’ll have an interest. But I’ll certainly pick up a sharpening stone for my garage. They’re welcome to sharpen whatever they find.
I don’t know how I’ll ever tell Jim what those summers meant to my brother and me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell him what he means to me. We never felt like outsiders, we never felt like we were just nephews. We were part of the family. There were no lines drawn.
Maybe Jim knew what he was doing for us those summers. Perhaps he knew that it was going to be particularly difficult for Bob and me to grow up without a father because he had been our hero.
All I know is that someone put me on their shoulders and I was looking over that fence again. I was seeing things I had never seen, doing things I had never done and learning things that only an experienced dad could teach you.
My Dad may not have been able to show me these things. But his life-long friend, my uncle, was happy to take the time to help out. Maybe he knew what he was doing. Maybe he was just being Jim. But those summers, and that time spent with him, the stories of his youth . . . and my father’s youth . . . certainly eased the pain a little.
I know I’ll never be able to find the words to express my feelings and gratefulness for Uncle Jim. Perhaps not. All I can offer are my best thoughts and wishes for his health and recovery. I just hope he knows that no matter what he’s going through, he has a family 350 miles away, hoping and praying for the best.
I hope to visit him soon. And when I do, I doubt I’ll be able to even voice Ľ of all the things I’ve said here. I don’t even know if they’d make sense to him.
But I will say this to him, as soon as I see him:
“Thank you.”
And the next time I’m out looking for ‘em, I’ll know who it was that showed me.
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