Yeah, I know the time, but I am up. One of my oldest friends just called me. Oldest is not the right term, but we don't seem to have a good description for this kind of thing in the English language. Essentially, he has been my friend longer than virtually anyone else; he and his wife. Before I rant, a Brad Paisley song seems to be on topic:

If Love were a Plane - Brad Paisley

She’s 98 lbs. workin down at the Dairy Queen
with an Ogilvie home perm and braces.
And he’s long haired, no job and just 19
they’ve got a baby on the way and
they’re off to the races

in love, look at em go
now what in the world
could go wrong?
don’t tell them the odds
its best they don’t know.
If love was a plane, nobody’d get on.

at the ivy at lunchtime in Beverly Hills
the popparazi are gathered outside
cuz an actor and an actress are havin lunch
and according to Extra and Entertainment Tonight

they’re in love look at em go
now what in the world could go wrong?

don’t tell them the odds,
its best they don’t know,
if love was a plane nobody’d get on

imagine now the pilot's voice on the intercom
right before we leave the ground
saying folks thanks for flying with us
but theres a six in ten chance we’re goin down
but that’s the strangest thing about this emotion,
even knowng our chances are small,
we line up at the gate with our tickets
thiknkig somehow were different

I mean after all
we're in love look at us go
now what in the world could go wrong?
to hell with the odds we'd rather not know
if love was a plane, nobody'd get on
ya, if love was a plane nobody'd get on

I can't go into it deeply, but my friend's wife has shown evidence of infidelity. He is a wonderful, dedicated, and hard working person, and now has no idea how his life is going to progress. What the crap is wrong with people that they can not deal with their issues without screwing other people over?

Pissed.

We had a fun morning. I decided I could spare an hour today, and I went to Annie's classroom to teach them how to play chess. Her teacher had requested this, and I thought I would have time this morning. As it turned out, they had a substitute this morning, but she looked at her list of tasks and decided that we could do this. Much to my pleasure, Annie was not the only one that had been introduced to the game. In fact, I was surprised by one boy in particular. I love kids at this age. Granted, they are starting to show the influence of parents more prominently (both good and bad), and it makes me realize that every one of them has significant potential. They just need some guidance. There is a boy in the class that has been a pain in the rump on field trips as well as when I visit the class. He doesn't do as he is asked, shows up for picture day with a mohawk, doesn't turn in his homework, and yet we seem to connect sometimes. He was unruly as usual today, but what amazed me was that he already knew the game. Given that half of the class had never seen the game, I was trying to limit the number or game rules that I was relaying. I was grinning broadly as the kids that knew the game informed me that I had forgotten to tell the students something, and I asked them to inform the class what I had missed. This boy did it several times. I had asked them to find the queen in their pieces, and as I walked around to check (no pun intended) that they had found the queen, he said to me, "the queen goes on her own color." I hadn't arrived at that point, yet, and asked him to tell the class. He did so very proudly.

We got a lot farther than I had anticipated, covering all the movements of the pieces, how captures are made, and how to win the game. I had no expectation of getting all that done today. I can't wait to go in again and actually have them play the game with each other.

I decided to wrap some drywall mudding tips into this post because I am too lazy to write a separate one... So, here are my tips:

o Do not overfill the tray. It will start to dry and the clumps will streak.
o Keep the sides of the tray clean. Thin layers will dry quickly and create clumps in the mud.
o Check your drywall knives for burrs that will also create streaks.
o Less is more. Do not get carried away with the application or you will be sanding forever.
o When you are done for the day, clean the inner sides of the bucket with water, smooth the surface, and add a half inch of water to keep the surface from drying.
o Clean the tray and knives every time you are ready to reload the tray.
o Always remember that every mistake can be fixed with mud and tape.
o Do not sand exposed tape or the drywall paper. It is a pain to fix the roughed surface, and will take longer.
o Pick one wall, mud and tape it. Go ahead and go through all the layers necessary. After you have cussed and fretted over it for several days, call a professional.

Returning to my hell...

Yeah, I am not kidding myself. I am going to hell. God and I haven't spoken in five years. I have tried several times, but it is a lot like calling my friends when I really need to talk. I get an answering machine, a busy signal, or "due to high call volume, we can not complete your call." I am sure that if he is really there he has better things to do than deal with me.

Unfortunately, Lucifer has a better support network. Why not? Come on, they love their jobs. I have discovered what hell will be like for me: drywall mud. I will spend an eternity mudding corners and seams. The room will be an infinitely long hall that bends and twists with no corners being at right angles. Every time that I work a seam or corner, I'll go back and check it, sand it, and get ready to do the next coat. At that point, the demons assigned to me will magically put lumps in the mud, and bumps in the walls. They will have tools that spread drywall dust around to interfere with the smooth layering of the mud, and add dust to the bucket to ensure that it is lumpy as well. I will add coat after coat, sand it, smooth it, rough up the freakin' paper, try again, and ultimately wish I could start over.

Dante obviously never tried drywall work, or he would have added a level to his description of hell.

In preparation for my eternity, I will continue to do the mud in the bathroom/closet, and given our terrestrial living environment, I'll get to a point of acceptance. Hell will be another setup.

Bring it on.

I am getting older. The two-leggeds don't know how old I am, but that's expected given their limited mental capacity. I have brought my world domination desires to a point where I need to think about Number One.

Winter is coming, and the days are getting shorter and colder.  I do consulting work for the other animals that are currently working for domination, but I spend my time looking for a warm place to lie, getting my food, and crapping when I need to. I have created a stink in the study for which I am very proud. Those plugins have met their match with me.

That said, I really do care for my two leggeds. I have to. It is apparent that no one else can. I have found that the bed of the tall two-legged is very warm, and I like to bask in the sun in the morning in his room. I spend most of my time resting in my retirement in preparation for the early morning hours. He doesn’t sleep much, and in the early morning hours I can remind him of my need for canned food. I sleep between his legs, which is very annoying, but it informs me of his waking period. His nightmares are apparently a bit frustrating, but they always have one end: he is up at four o’clock and should be ready to feed me my glorious canned food. Granted, he is a bit stupid. I mean, I remind him of it constantly. “You’re up, just do it.” I got that from a Nike commercial. Good advertising slogan.

Sometimes he wanders to the bathroom, this is great entertainment. Sometimes I open doors just to see if he will stumble into them. I encourage Tolkien to lay in the hallway (he is easily convinced to do anything) and watch Daddy trip and sometimes he whacks himself against the wall. I laugh so hard it brings tears to my eyes. Annie’s backpack is often in the way and is like watching him go through a minefield in the complete dark. Jees, that’s just good stuff.

Unfortunately, Annie is responsible for giving me the canned food. Why couldn’t I have been born with thumbs that work? Still, it is nice to have an excuse to gripe and complain, and I always get what I want. I also get a crack-up about having a “captive” audience when Daddy goes to the bathroom. I can tell him everything about my life. What is he going to do? Get up? I don’t think so. I smell what is happening, and he is going no where without an immediate shower.

All said, it is not a bad life. That’s my take. There are some things you have no control over, and you make the absolute best of what you can do. Maybe Daddy should think about that.

Lilo the Cat Retired

This morning I donned my wizard's hat and Annie I set off to school with a bag full of various objects to discuss gravity with her class. Granted, about a third of the class had seen this before in kindergarten and first grade, but they still started off saying that the heavier objects would fall faster. We had a blast while we were all dropping things and watching to see what happened. My bag of goodies included a wide range of objects from the house, and Annie was practically glowing that I was there in her class.

The kids would hypothesize regarding what would happen each time I had a set of students up to drop items. We talked initially about Galileo and what he did at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I even had one kid that had been there! We finally agreed that everything fell at the same rate, and then I brought out the feather. They were already thinking of air resistance, and knew what was going to happen, although one girl said that she knew what would happen because she remembered when we did this in kindergarten and first grade. After that we started talking, and five minutes into that I started to lose some of them. Dropping stuff was cool, but discussing it was boring. It was ok, I still had most of them and we talked about the planets, the tides, the atmosphere, the moon and where it came from, and kept reinforcing the fact that all things fall at the same rate.

I even threw some equations on the board, some of which were way over their head. I know most people would tell me that was stupid, but I am still hoping I am not unique, and that there is some student who will look at this and say, "I don't get it, but I want to."

Next, at the teacher's request, I am going to teach them chess. Those who have played chess with me will think this is a travesty, but I know the rules and movements of chess, so I think I am qualified to teach them the game well enough that they can get started...

Never let them stop asking 'why,' and never answer with 'because that's the way it is.' - David Hockanson

It is kind of strange, really. I am normally plenty happy with my life, with slight bumps in time when I go into one of my funks. Music, and strangely, certain smells, can have a major impact on my psyche.

Today on the way to school, I turned on the new Kenny Chesney CD when I realized I had it, and still had not listened to it. Annie and I are usually fairly quiet on the way to school as we each get lost in our own thoughts as we prepare for the day. A song came on that put a lump in my throat. It is not completely accurate for my life, given that I have been blessed with Annie, but it sort of hit home. Well, it hit home if I am close to going into a funk.

Wife And Kids - Kenny Chesney

Everybody thinks I've got it all
Nobody really does, do they?
I've got more than I deserve, more than I ever dreamed
But there's always a price you pay
It's been an amazing road
I've been blessed, I know
But at the end of the day I go home alone

I still hope someday I'll have a wife and kids
Smiling faces running to the door when I walk in
Saying "Daddy's home, you were gone too long. What'd you bring me? Swing me. Let me show you what I did"
I still dream about that look on a woman's face
That says I love you through the good, the bad, the sunshine or the rain
Sometimes I wish I had someone to share my life with
Maybe I'll have a wife and kids
Maybe someday....

Maybe I could have a son
Play football in the backyard
Or take my daughter fishin', and when she turns 15 teach her how to drive a car
When I grow old and they've all left home
I want to lay beside my wife and talk about the old times, remember all the good times.

I still hope someday I'll have a wife and kids
Smiling faces running to the door when I walk in
Saying "Daddy's home, you were gone too long. What'd you bring me? Swing me. Let me show you what I did"
I still dream about that look on a woman's face
That says I love you through the good, the bad, the sunshine or the rain
Sometimes I wish I had someone to share my life with
Maybe I'll have a wife and kids
Maybe someday....

Sometimes I wish I had someone to share my life with
Maybe I'll have a wife and kids
Someday...
I'll have a wife and kids
Maybe someday...

I had my chances. I know. Sometimes the "normal" family arrangement would be nice, though.

Back to work...

Halloween was a strange event this year. We seemed to have more challenges than I was expecting for Annie's eighth Halloween. Our first challenge happened the night before, and we dealt with it fine, but I should have suspected that Murphy was gong to have his way with us.

I had gone looking for black lipstick given that we hadn't found the one we had last year. I found a special Halloween kind that also came with black fingernail polish. Perfect. That night we went to work on the tasks that needed to be done. We started with the fingernails. She wanted alternating red and black nails. The red came out beautifully. However the black just sat there in a gelatinous state, refusing to harden. After what seemed like forever for an eight-year old to sit with her fingers still, she washed her hands and half of the black came off. No problem, she said, we'll just paint them all red. Some of the black had remained, and the red on top was a fairly dark red. She said she liked, it though, because it looked like blood. Great. Dodged the bullet of an upset little girl who usually wants everything to perfectly coincide with the image in her head. Actually, she had already dealt with this a couple of weeks before... She picked out a costume at K-Mart, and was very excited. When we came home and she tried it on, it did not look like the picture on the package. It was supposed to have long sleeves, and it had, well, no sleeves. Undaunted, she went to her closet, pulled out last year's costume, and cut the sleeves off of it. She seemed happy, and claimed that that would work. She opted not to wear the sleeves to school, but wore them to trick-or-treat. Whatever made her happy was fine with me.

Back to the night before Halloween: she ate one course of her dinner while I got set up to color her hair. Costumes are not chosen based on the coordination with her having a different hair color. She refuses to have a costume that has any sort of head gear, no matter how small, but the hair must be dyed. We proceeded to color her hair, which went rather well. I put it in with a paint brush, and she sat in a chair watching TV while it set. She finished her dinner there, as well. Of course, temporary hair color (did you think I was crazy enough to let her do a permanent change?) does not set as well, and after rinsing, there was some black, but mostly blue and purple. Once again, she seemed ok with it. She went to bed with a towel over her pillow to keep the stains at a minimum, and we were up bright and early the next morning to finish...

After breakfast, she donned her costume, and brushed her hair... for fifteen minutes. She decided at the last minute not to go with a pony tail or any other dressing, but rather to let it go straight. It was then that she decided she didn't need the sleeves as well. I reminded her that it was generally more than ten degrees colder at school than at home, but of course, that didn't matter. Now it was time to do her face. She had assembled all the necessary tools on the table, and I grabbed the black facial pen to do her eyebrows. It had become hard over the past year in the medicine cabinet, and she was starting to get worried that things were not going to work like she wanted. I ran it under hot water for a while, and it got soft enough to do her eyebrows. She ran to the mirror, and returned to report that it was acceptable. Next came the black lipstick. I have a feeling that this crap had also been sitting in storage for a year. It had become like a crayon. It would not color, and actually broke while I was trying. The hot water trick did not work, and we spent fifteen minutes scouring the house again for the missing lipstick from last year. Finally, Annie said it didn't matter, and she was fine without it. She seemed happy, so we went off to school, where she froze until the classroom was opened.

I picked her up from school after a very busy and exciting day. She vegged for a while and I worked. Finally, we were ready to go trick-or-treating downtown, where we were meeting some of her friends. We fixed her sleeves (required for an evening downtown) so they fit well, checked her for any fixing that was necessary, and we were off. She looked awfully tired, but she said she was ready. We got there a little early so we could park, and waited on the street for her friends. Tons of people were already there, and she saw them; not her friends, but adults dressed in very scary costumes. She moved as close to me as she could given that we are not physically able to occupy the same space, and used me as a shield placed between her and scary people. We talked about them just being people in costumes, but despite her agreement, she was terrified. Her friends arrived, and we began our adventure.

After several stores, we came to one that had people with scary costumes giving out candy. “I am not stopping here.” I tried to encourage her, as her friends walked up, but to no avail. We missed a lot of stores as a result, and she hung out with her friends very little, needing me to be her barrier against the scary people. She spent most of her time scanning the sidewalk and stores to ensure she knew where the scary people were. When we went by the hardware store, she refused to go inside. They weren’t scary, and are incredible people, but somewhere in the recesses of her mind, I think she remembered that two years ago, this store was very, very scary (they had gone all out, including a Haunted House in the basement). So, she avoided that store as well, justifying it with a phrase that I had never heard uttered by a child: “I have enough candy, anyway.”

Well, we made it to the end, where her friends were going to go off to the Rec Center to see what games or whatever were going on. Given that Annie still looked like she was trying to physically merge into my body, I decided it was time for us to go. She wanted to know what her friends were going to do, but I told her it was time for us to go. She really didn’t need much convincing, and almost fell asleep on the ten minute drive home. She said she had fun, but it wasn’t the best Halloween ever. I think next year we are going to go back to Scotts Valley, where the darker street limits the ability to see the scary costumes. Strangely, that worked well last year (which might have been the best Halloween ever in her mind).

It boggles my mind what she grabs as frightening, and it seems to evolve. People in costumes have almost become more scary to her, rather than less. Not knowing where I am every second can send her into a panic. Even when I tell her, if she isn’t paying complete attention, she will mumble acceptance, and then freak out later. She seems to think that someone will try to get her. This is a new fear, and I can not tell where it comes from. I have suspicions, but no real answer. I guess it is just one of those challenges we have to work on together.

Spooked

No, I am not dead, yet. The muses have just abandoned me for a while. Frankly, there have been a lot of things to write about, but I just haven't found my inspiration to write.

I am sitting on the deck watching Mother Nature paint her picture in the sky. The fog drifts lazily through the redwoods in the valley, and Venus continues to fight for some sense of dominance in the morning sky. Soon the sun will breach the ridge line, and wash the sky clean, leaving this magical time behind. Even with this beautiful view, find the words stopping before they can get to my fingers. The typical activities in my life could give birth to a variety of posts, but for some reason I just can't get them out. Oh well... Maybe later...


Preparing self for drywall mudding...

I have reached and surpassed an interesting milestone. I have lived in this house longer than I have lived anywhere in my life. Is that weird? A friend that I would like to be more than a friend suggested today that I should move when she heard about my replacing rotted footings. I can't. I love the location, and so does Annie. Here, I can give her some of the things I had as a kid. She can go play outside, and I don't have to watch her constantly. She sees so many things in the surrounding environment that I love for her to see, and she gets excited about it. She has lived here since she was only a few weeks old, and she takes great security in this familiarity. I know that certain aspects of my life would be better if I lived in a city, but I can't do it. I might be able to if I had a significant other that required it, but right now, I don't see the point.

Enough rambling... There is a Dan Brown book that is calling for me.

Also, I need food...

That's right, I have earned my Plumbers' Butt Merit Badge. I have re-routed the drains and vents for one sink and the shower, and created a whole new drain and vent for the other lavatory. That's right. I freakin' rock. Plumbing is an interesting job. If you have ever had to hire one, you probably freaked at the cost, but I believe plumbers earn it. What I like is the amount of thought and logic that comes in to play. I imagine that new construction can be done serially: one piece, and then the next. However, remodeling requires careful logical planning. Pipes seldom move in a way that allows one to insert something. The holes in the studs leave little give for movement. Sweating joints leaves a rigid fixture, and cement sets very fast. Which parts can be connected before the next step takes place? It's actually pretty cool for a geek like me.

The new wet wall was a total pain, but I think I did a good job. Diddo with the new shower drain. Well, also with the re-plumbed original drain. Everything is where it should be for my planned bathroom. I even ran the hose in and flooded the drains to check for leaks. Nothing noticeable, so I think I am good. One of those horrible things that comes with remodeling is the replacement of wood that no one will ever know about. It was while replacing a large section of sub-floor that I realized I should remove the old toilet water access and put a new pipe in so that I could flush up with the wall. It went beautifully and looks perfect. I rock. Have I said that?

While I was cutting out the 4'x7' area of subfloor (8' wouldn't meet the joist), Lilo found the hole. He spent the afternoon exploring under the house and in the yard. I chiseled out the rotted footings, replaced them, built a new support for the subfloor near the footings so that the floor wouldn't sag. I put down some Liquid Nails (love that stfuff), and nailed the new piece of subfloor in. Everything looks perfect. This stuff takes me forever, but I am pleased with how everything is coming together. It's funny, but I have always been able to visually see the goal. It is that way with everything I do. I don't look at the studs and problems and see them. I see what it will be, and that is what it will be. I know it.

Whatever. Electrical is next. That is going to be another problem, but I'll figure it out. Then comes the glass block. That has me nervous...


All is good: Annie comes home tomorrow!