Post #725

Yeah... it's been 6 weeks since my last post and I should really get back to this blogging thing.

What gets me tonight is a startling revelation: Something changed.

I gave up any and all pain medication about 10 weeks ago (Except of course Tylenol or Motrin which seems to help a little at night).

I just freaking stopped. Or if prescriptions ran out... I just didn't refill them. I just quit. I was tired. Done.

Where am I at?

I hurt like a son of a bitch, yet feel sort of empowered but in an almost remorseful way. Like I feel an episode ended, I don't know what really happened and well... something changed.

How did I come up with this one?

Well... I was playing my guitar the other night and staring at my daughter Scarlett. Reactions from her and my guitar playing seem different and new. And I saw something in my playing I hadn't seen in probably 16 years; I saw invincible enjoyment. Like hey, "I am doing something and you fuckers can't take it away from me."

I have wandered a lot the past 3 or 4 years. I get pure enjoyment from finding something that makes my ass laugh senseless but I do so in my own private way by myself. I love staring out at the oak tree that is on my property that I bought recently. It's all gnarly, crooked and old and probably one of the most ugly things you have ever seen but I feel like I see past it and it is usually the sky that I see. The leaves some comeback on it in a few weeks now so I wonder...

So what are you saying?

Perhaps I finally see the dawn of a new day on the horizon. Perhaps I was or am sick and crazy with some ailment but my body is teaching me how to deal with it. Or have I come up for air and now want to stick my head out and enjoy the sunshine...

I don't know.

I painted my dining room this weekend. It is weird moving into a new place. The look of it is never yours no matter how you fill it with your things from your past life. It is a different place. But putting a new coat of paint, simple just changes the game or the mood or the ambiance or perhaps where you are at in your mind.

I've got a tough road ahead of me still.

There are now 5 individuals counting on me on a daily basis. I aim to be there but sometimes I just miss. I have important roles with each one of them and I need to balance. I also need to spend a couple of hours a week killing computer images on my XBox. Along with getting a decent amount of practice time.

My iPod has been shut off for 4 months.

I packed my apple computer in November and have yet to unpack it. I need a new one but all my music is on it. I have not bought a new piece of music since November. Probably the longest period in my life I have not bought music. I want the new Johnny Cash album, American Recordings: VI. I got some catching up to do... but I am making my own music too. Recalling a song I heard on the radio. We have XM in the Jetta and it is awesome.

My garage is a mess.

I love cars a lot. And I want another one. I need a kid hauler. We need to take four kids out somewhere for fun once in a while. And that's just it, once in a while. But I cannot and will not do it in a mini van. It's gotta be big or it's gotta be able to haul other shit... like a trip to Ikea or gravel.

My new neighbor annoys the shit out of me.

I can't stand this mother fucker. He likes to physically show me where the property line is with strings, stakes, utility markers... All kinds of SHIT. Let's think about this:

We live in the country and we have 1/3 acre to 1/2 acre parcels. Okay, that is a big piece of residential land yes, but the neighborhood is built like your standard cookie cutter suburb. We just have deer and snakes prancing around. And the soil is so GOD Damned hard most people just use rocks.

Between my house and the neighbors house is basically a sharp ravine. My property ends midway down the ravine and this fucker owns the rest of it.

I put my mailbox about 4 inches too far on his side. I shit you not I got pics. And it was a fucking accident.

Instead of telling me to move the box, he gets his Tommy Junior Surveyors kit or what have you and goes exploring for the property markers. And then has the utilities paint all these markers.

And shit... there are no sidewalks and technically where I put the box is not under our control anyway.

So... This jack ass never specifically tells me why he is drawing the lines either. He actually never asks me to move the box. He just sat out there like a jack ass "showing me the line".

I actually had to call him an idiot.

Where was I going with this?

I am still the same angry white dude...(lol) but man, I sure feel different lately. I cannot put my finger on it.

A Quickie

Okay... I fly a lot.

I can recite a hybrid version of Southwest's, Delta's, Alaskan's and Frontier's safety speech at the beginning of each flight. How they verify the ages of people in exit rows.

I totally tune out... I figure if the plane goes down, I am fuct any way.

So today I am glazed over listening to the safety speech on my flight to Colorado Springs... just thinking... The sooner you get this plane up, the sooner you'll out that coffee cart so I can get a cup and listen to my iPod.

So I am listening and the attendant is going through the water landing bullshit (the plane would break apart in a water landing) and she says, "Most seat cushions can be used as a flotation device."

Wait! What??? Most? Well... which seat isn't floatable? Am I in that seat? WTF? You warn us about the exits, the oxygen masks, how to evacuate but you won't tell us which seats can't be used as flotation devices?

And we all sit like she said nothing new....

Wiped!!!

I left for home at 3:30 PM EST. I walked into my home at 1:30 AM PST.

13 hours...

Shit! Southwest sucks ass!!

Feel The Pain

Sucks...

Pain has been bad the last two nights... My ring finger stopped making chords on my guitar...

Sucks...

Random Thoughts from 30,000 Feet

One of my favorite all time songs, is a song called “The Mighty KC”. It was written by this band For Squirrels. The interesting thing about it was that it was inspired by Kurt Cobain and how he died young and the dudes who wrote it, died young in a tragic accident involving their tour van.

The song popped up on random on my iPod.

The thing that always gets me is the line before the chorus in the first verse:

“Send me off to the morgue I am ready to be buried a way down in my bed…
And I’m alone without the Sun….Please just take one…”

Then the chorus…

“And by the grace of God go I, into the great unknown, things are gonna change in our favor”

“And if we gather and if we fall, over the great unknown things are gonna change in our favor”

What’s interesting is I am writing this at 36000 feet above Utah. Plane is shaking like crazy… I hardly notice because I have been busting my ass on a presentation I need to give in the morning. I also don’t notice because since I stopped my pain meds, I have had this shitty burning pain in my left arm. From what I thought was some psychological bull shit is actually physical. Burning pain is not good. I also don’t notice the shaking because I washed down a vike with a 12 oz can of Foster’s.

The next verse in the song:

“100, 200, 300, 400, 500,600 die alone from watching TV… Please don’t break me”

It’s amazing how little and/or how much we really have control over our lives. One minute we can be flying in a plane, driving a car, shopping in a mall in Omaha and some screwy thing can happen. Some faulty engine parts designed by an engineer at a heavy equipment company or some prick with a gun can blow your shit up with a bomb or gun. Or you get some genetic disease… Or you take up smoking… Visit a tanning booth daily, tight rope walk over gorges… you know ask for an early death. Or you say fuck it and go Kurt Cobain… leave a note and shit. What a freaking waste! I actually miss that guy.

I’d rather spend my time worrying about what I can control personally. I flipped my iPod onto Emmylou Harris’s Red Dirt Girl Album. I enjoy listening to The Pearl off the first song on the album. Emmylou’s voice and Hallelujah’s somehow reach your soul. Probably all think I am odd mentioning Emmylou Harris and Kurt Cobain in the same post. Maybe it is the altitude. The desolate blackness looking out the window as it is now dark. Bumping from turbulence as it tosses my laptop of the tiny table they give you to use it on these planes.

I often wonder if I am seeking everything I can out of life. I really like the beauty of this planet. I love the ocean. The mountains. The take off over the plains where I can see the snow and the separation of it as each homestead farm plows its roads. I really like Colorado. I wish I can move here. But then again, things are out of my control… Like the housing market taking a big shit in the middle of California. But then again California is a nice place to be. We got the mountains, the ocean and contrary from popular belief from one man in Peoria, Ill… We have snow.

I digressed a lot in this post but that is actually a good thing. I have been trying to balance my single serving, cracker and cheese with salami hobby kit while my single serving friend across the aisle is looking over my shoulder as I type vigorously on my computer. I wonder what she actually thinks. Can’t be more than 9. Here is dude writing this presentation with all these graphs and charts and shit, and now he is writing like mad.

Things we can control… Can we really control how we live? That is meaning of life… I have a bitchin’ retirement plan with my company but will I live to enjoy it? Who knows? I sure hope so. Elijah will I guess.

Peace!