The Aerie
No, not dead. Not fully employed either. Just continuing to slog along through this endless summer, trying to enjoy and appreciate my daily freedoms and the chance to spend so much time with my kids, while not fretting my brains out regarding work and income. It really has been wonderful from that point of view. Even though much of the time I spend with the kids is in simple day-to-day being-around-the-house, still its a privilege many folks would be eager to enjoy. And don't get me started about what great kids they are, because I could just go on for a whole blog entry on that alone...
Failing to blog isn't just discouraging for those who would bother to read my blog (you crazy kids!), but really it's a disservice to me, too. This is the closest thing to a diary I've ever kept, and every stroll through past entries stretching back to 2000 revives long-lost memories of things from those ancient days. I have a memory like cheesecloth anyway, so my failure to blog this summer merely means that I shortly will have no chance whatsoever of remembering what I did or said or thought during this summer. A couple of years from now the summer of 2007 will, to me, be a vague impression of endless, jobless anxiety, biking on the Greenway for exercise, teaching a few classes and maybe our brief trip to the North Shore of Lake Superior. That will be it! My spouse will remind me of things we did or said this summer, and I'll give her that frustrating blank look that says "Sorry, no recollection."
I think she at least has become resigned to it, but my threadbare memory causes me terrible anguish. I only get one very short life, and yet days and weeks of it happen and pass away and I may as well have been asleep.
And now the summer is over, and September looms large in the headlights. Likely I will pick up some work, and time will step on the gas pedal. Before I know it another year will have passed. My twins will close half the distance between now and college; my beard will double its number of gray hairs if I'm lucky; my belly will pack on a couple more pounds despite my best intentions; and the secret counter in my heart will roll back more of the remaining beats before its last.
Today I got my tetanus booster, and when the medical person filled out my form she said, "That will be good through 2017."
"2017," I said, "I wonder what the world will be like then?"
And what will I remember then? Can I remember anything of 1997 right now? I started working at Born that year, I think. Not much else, although logically I could assemble some facts together to reconstruct what I must have been doing: twins, six; youngest, two; me working on Mitlanyal... Without digging through notes, that's it.
Now 1987? Well, that was a year to remember, despite all my attempts to forget. Dumped by my Significant Other, took up with one girl, went to Europe with another, then I met my wife in November, started gaming at M.A.R. Barker's. That was a busy, stressful year.
What about 1977? About to start my sophomore year of high school, one friend had already gone crazy and been carted away to juvie by now, I'd found my theater group friends, and already started horsing around on the Teletype in the computer room, rewriting Lunar Lander to create a greater variety of disastrous crashes.
And 1967? Five years old, with a new little brother. I have no actual memoriesof the time, except, well, wait, I have one. I didn't KNOW it was 1967 per se, but I remember staying up "late" to watch 'Star Trek' with my father on the porch in our house in New York City. Yeah, I can remember that. Wow. That even predates my memory of the Mets winning the World Series in 1969, and the lunar landing...
By 2017? Well, by then my youngest should be finished with college, my twins already well into their working careers. Will I be a grandfather yet? Hard to say. But at the very least, I'll be able by then to ease back on the income-earning part of life and maybe start taking it a little easier than I have been.
Assuming that I find a job between now and then.
Wow, so much has changed, and yet so much is the same.
Last week the I35W bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed, killing a dozen people and injuring scores. I didn't blog about it. That's how sad my blogging has become while I've been unemployed. I was at the time meeting with my friend Todd, visiting from New York. Didn't blog about that. We went to our last Harry Potter book party, my kids made me very proud by taking a sailing class, and I've raised a generation of milkweed bugs. No blogging.
Today as we drove home from a visit to a friend, I saw a car. It was a Lexus GS 350. How did I know it was a Lexus GS? Well, it could have been the word "Lexus" under the left tail light, or the "GS 350" under the right tail light.
Or maybe it was the customized license plate, "LEXUS GS."
So finally I blog.
If I needed proof that Wealth and Brains do not necessarily share company, I didn't need to look any farther than this car. I mean, look, it's a Lexus, so it costs a fortune to start with. It's a car you buy when you want to show off your money, when you have more money than you apparently know what to do with. And of course, when you have that kind of money, a personalized license place is not a surprising addition, not when the plate is only an extra $100, and the South American Teak radio knobs are an extra $650.
So here you are, with too much money, and you think to yourself, "What should I put on my personalized license plate?" Something cool? "Z00M" Something clever? "2COOL4U"
And this guy, with too much money and not enough imagination, puts "LEXUS GS" on his Lexus GS.
Criminy.
How many of Sally Struthers' doe-eyed children could you feed with the money wasted on that license plate? How many heifers could you buy through the Heifer Project?
I mean, why bother with "LEXUS GS"? Why not get a license plate that said "CAR" or "RICH" or "MY WEINER IS TINY"? Why not wear an Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirt labeled "Abercrombie and Fitch"?
Oh, wait, people do that.
And I was going to say that they don't spend $100 to do it, but actually it wouldn't surprise me in the least that the damned things cost $100, too.
Okay, fine, so people are stupid and some stupid people have too much money. I guess that's no big surprise!
Sigh.
So today was otherwise interesting. We went to visit our friend L and her sister's family. L is just the sweetest person, and her daughter and her sister's family were very nice. I was supposed to be helping fix L's internet connection, but unfortunately I couldn't. By the time it was clear that the connection wasn't going to work, it was time for me to teach my online class. I would have had to take everyone home in order to teach it, but by that time I had managed to establish a connection with a neighbor's wireless. So I took the chance and taught the class over the open connection. It was a risk - the power was low, but the connection was steady - and fortunately it worked out. Ninety minutes later we hit the freeway home, where we saw the Lexus.
So that's not as interesting as the story of the bridge collapse, nor as humorous as the Harry Potter party, nor as edifying as a treatise on the raising of milkweed bugs for biology class.
But it will have to do. It's better than nothing!