hello, good night

Vince Lombardi said that "fatigue makes cowards of us all..." and I could not agree more. I am tired, but tired is transient, and everyone gets tired. There's nothing worse than being wore out and drained on a Monday with the whole week stretching out before me, taunting me...

I didn't sleep well at all last night... apparently I was not the only one so bedeviled... but I managed to stay in bed, keep the TV off, lest I get caught up in the endless cacophony regarding the health care bill... I consciously stayed awake, did not read, and just laid on my back and told myself it was OK to rest, and not to sleep. I wish that I would have believed me.

My daughter was home for the weekend, but we are no closer to solving her situation regarding her college future... I tried to keep it civil and conversational and supportive, but I am the dad, and so much of what I am saying sounds like, well, the "wah wah wah" that you hear when an adult speaks in the Charlie Brown cartoons on TV. I can even hear it myself when I talk. I love her, want only the best for her, and really have no agenda to force upon her, but she keeps tossing aside anything that I say... Frustrating, draining... perplexing...

My new job is good, I still love it... Today was one of those days that makes me feel like an old dog who will never learn all the new tricks necessary to perform up to their expectations... I was competent, but slow, I felt, tedious, and asked entirely too many questions. I try to keep my attitude positive at all costs, and show that sense of urgency that demonstrates that I am not just wandering around putting in my time.

I texted my daughter at lunch today, and told her that I love her and just want to do what is best for her. She texted back "ok." My ass is tired. Some days I can buck up and give myself the old "every day is a good day, some days are just better," mantra that is one of my dad's favorite lines. Most days it works. On a day like today when the coward in me is too tired to accept any kind of positive... I shall raise the white flag and head off to bed, to try to grab some z's that eluded me last night. I could call one of my brothers and he could hit me with his usual prescription - "you just need to get laid..." but now having thought it, wrote it and read it... I guess I can skip the call...

I shall sally forth  to the bedroom and watch CSI Miami until the eyelids get too heavy... and when 5:30 AM arrives and the alarm clock summons...  maybe I will find that this wallowing has at least cleared my brain of some of the issues. Tomorrow is another day, maybe a better one.

another night with my best girl...

I do some of my best thinking with Maggie. She is an almost 8 year old black lab, and her and I have been pals since she came here to live in 2002. Since I had to get rid of my hot tub last year, one of my most favorite things to do is sit on the deck with her and ponder the night sky. I find myself out there when I feel down, or can't figure something out or if I just feel that I need to spend some time alone, with my best girl leaning against me... Sometimes I just need to be, to think, and to watch the night sky.

Yesterday at work I got a call from my daughter. She is a junior in college, studying to be a nurse. She has always wanted to be a nurse. From the age of four or five, she talked about being a nurse. It was the only thing that she checked into in high school. She is the hardest working student that I have ever seen. I had it easy, as does her brother, things make sense nearly right away, and reading something is pretty much all I need to understand a concept. Zack and I are alike in that we can nail a B+ or better average with little or no effort. Mel, on the other hand, busts her tail, reads and reads re-reads and continually writes notes and digests everything that she can get her hands on, and most times, if things fall into place, she can get a B... My heart breaks to see how she drives herself, not sleeping, trying to pour every single ounce of herself into her studies.

Now, her dreams have to be re-calibrated. At age 21, almost three years into college, one of her professors has urged her to drop one of her core nursing classes, because she failed a test on Monday. She will not be a nurse. We have to pick up the pieces and find what she can do. She is a talented artist, and can draw most any kind of object. Maybe there is something for her there. She is a passionate, loving, wonderful soul. She has accumulated some courses toward a psychology major. All she feels right now is that she has failed and let everyone down. She feels that all of her work and toil and effort has come to naught. And I hurt the hurt of a parent who knows that this too shall pass, but cannot find the words to give her comfort and hope. Or make meaning out of shattered dreams.

And Maggie sensed my sadness, my pain, my inability to console myself with any kind of thought or one line or small token of wisdom that I like to dole out... She licked the tears off my face, but they kept coming... I don't have the answers. Life is supposed to be that you work hard, you get rewarded. A lot of time, thought and effort went into picking this school - they want you to graduate in four years, they want you to succeed, they have a vested interest in your success. And she has professors that tell students to drop their courses... this particular one started with an enrollment of 25, there are now 10 students left. We don't want our nurses to be substandard, by any means... we just want them to be good, professional, competent... I get all that.

Maggie and I just have to figure out how to help Mel be the best that she can be... to see that this detour will really take her to a destination that was meant for her, and she will be much happier with the result. I know that, we will get her there. Right now, I just have the pieces of a shattered dream lying all about me, and I am sad. Her boyfriend of almost two years, someone whom I dearly love, has been great for her, and has been such a joy and inspiration to her... seems to be charting his own path. I believe that they will ultimately end up together... but he graduates in May, and will leave in August to spend a year in China teaching. This weighs on her too, but she wants to support him, and not hold him back... and itt hurts her, and I hurt for her. In the long run, it may ultimately be the best thing for them, and for both of them individually and as a couple. But I am tired of the long run... so tired of waiting for things to work out... of having to hold everything far off so that the big picture reveals itself.


Maggie is somewhat pleased, in that she will benefit from more nights out on the deck with me, as we face the future together. I know, I know, it will all work out in the long run.

In the event of a daydream...

I return now to my life... head cold, tired from the play, but well satisfied with all things and quite happy. It was a tremendous bonding time for Zack and I. He got to see why I like community theater, he got to meet some of my very good friends, and best of all we got to spend some quality time together. The play went really well, was well received, well attended, considering... and we have pictures and a DVD of it for our memories. Also, friendships were made and renewed, and we reinforced our theater group's standing as a provider of high quality productions, and we had a blast doing it... it's all good. My exhaustion and lack of bouncing back from this cold is really, really worth it.

As I drove home from work today and bounced some thoughts around in my head to share today, I could not stay on task. Here is what filled my head, and shall serve as the entre in today's verbal smorgasbord...

Sleeping in is one of life's real pleasures. If you think of an instance when time has stopped, it is on some morning when nothing is planned, and nothing takes you from that bed until you are positively ready...

Think of this - of the grand gift of spooning until you are done, done spooning. If it leads to intimacy, of another round of delicious insertional therapy, or just nuzzling, cuddling, or seeing how much skin to skin contact you can create. I want to be the sheet draped across you, the comforter keeping you warm, the mattress pad whose bumps make you shiver... We don't have to be doing anything, nothing at all, maybe synchronizing our breathing... playing Morse code with our chest cavities... recreating, reliving, retracing, retrying feats of the recent past... giggling over fun noises, goofy positions, wondering how we got tangled up this way, and not giving a thimble of warm spit over whose side of the bed we are on...

Can you feel how I wrap around you so completely that we aren't sure of whose legs are whose and which arm to move because one of mine is falling asleep? Can you feel, the swollen lump of hot blooded appreciation parked at the small of your back, the not quite reluctant shaft swelling again as it tries to fill that lovely parking groove you have provided just below your spine... not for anything other than the joy of feeling you all about me... my mouth lazily meanders around your ear, your neck... as I try to decide if I want to taste you or just continue to breathe you in... my senses are all clamoring to be overstimulated... and luckily, you fill me with such urgency, that none are left wanting...

There is no hurry, no timeline, no need for anything other than what moves us right now... thank you for allowing my hands to do the lifting and separating and clutching and holding of your breasts... the complete sharing of all things us is just the most bestest, is it not? Warm, content, complete... the biggest project before us rehydrating, and trying to decide is it really worth it to leave the confines of this horizontal heaven? Besides, can we even break the bonds that hold us together right now? You know what I mean - that glazed doughnut feeling of being stuck together because we were either too lazy, too satiated, too fond of feeling what we were feeling to properly separate, so here we are... is this what Lionel Ritchie meant about being "Stuck on You?" 

To be totally sharing in a way that leaves no doubt... that this is where I belong... that we have no aspirations for anywhere, certainly no desire to be, to do, to think, or to even consider any of the any other things that can gnaw, distract and pull us in other directions at other times. This is it, this is where we are, and time can go how and where it wants to, because right now, I am where I need to be, want to be, have to be... and the only place that I might go, is in again... with you again, or we might do nothing at all, but lie here and spoon the day away... come what may. Yes, even that again... until we are done...