smacky and bucky

This has been the first time I've been alone in the house for three days, ever. I've been busting my butt doing things I can't do otherwise. Like what? Like this:

This is our attic. The shiny stuff in the picture is rolls of insulation I installed with a kick-ass staple gun. The ground floor living area is already cooler because of it, which is not a moment too soon, with another weekend with temps expected over 100 degrees!

I also did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, organized the pantry, straightened the basement, cleaned the baby's room, culled junk and tossed it, filled lawn bags with dry brush, and went grocery shopping for items to bring to the river this weekend. Whew!

I also listed and sold a few things on Amazon, gave some attention to the cats (who do actually love attention, even when they act aloof), and slept... well, not like a baby, because I know how a baby sleeps, and I did not wake up every few hours crying! (Seriously, "slept like a baby" is the dumbest phrase ever. Whose baby was that based on???) No, I slept like a person with the entire bed to himself in a cool, dark room. Gotta admit, I enjoyed it. But I can't wait to see them after work and a three-hour drive this evening!

Friday we went to our place on the water, then Sunday afternoon we drove across the state to my hometown for the funeral of my great aunt on Monday. We took two cars so that this morning Laura and the baby could return to the water place while I completed the triangle and ended up back up in the DC area. I mowed a little, did some major cleaning and sorting, did some laundry, and went to the grocery store for supplies.

Now I'm watching an episode of the '60s Star Trek and having a dinner of a cold chicken breast and potato salad, followed by a cool bath and reading a little in bed before going to sleep.

I miss my wife and kid, but I am determined to make the most of these three days until I drive down to rejoin them Friday after work!

Oh, I have some music to recommend: "Barton Hollow" by the Civil Wars. If it's country, it's old country (as in, it has a little Irish in it!). The songs are love songs, and lullabies, really. Our boy is going to be hearing it soon. Check out the studio version of "To Whom It May Concern." It's my early choice for favorite song by them.



And here's a live performance of the same song.

Dog limping with leg pain of indeterminate origin.
Baby teething.
Heat index of 116 today.
Going to a funeral on Monday.

I am really making an effort to live each day in the moment... to remember what John Lennon said: "Life's what happens when you're making other plans."

I don't want to look back on this time as a series of chores, as a line of annoyances, as a constant buzzing I was trying to silence.

I want to feel this.

I want to feel.

I will.

Don't have a lot I feel like talking about, but I'm tired of seeing that damn SIGH post, so I'm writing something to replace it!

Inspired by Kate's posts about music, here's a quick funny one. The other night the little guy woke up crying (as he does) and I hopped up on autopilot to go to the kitchen to get him a small bottle. On the way I passed a digital clock, and it happened to be 12:00 exactly. As I entered the kitchen, I caught myself singing softly, "Midnight at the Oasis, send your camels to bed..." It is one goofy song, and like many songs in the mid-1970s, it's about humping! I giggled as I returned to the baby, bottle in hand.

Here's a live version:

My wife not unkindly told me on Sunday that she was having difficulty compiling much of a list for my 40th birthday coming up in October. Sigh. "No shit," I thought to myself. I keep in touch with one high school friend (whom I see about once every three months) and a handful of others only via Facebook. Ditto with college friends. Ditto with Peace Corps friends. Everyone lives multiple time zones away. I have actually have FEWER friends now than I did when I first moved to the DC area a decade ago. They all moved away. I've had the same job for 8.5 years, so I know my coworkers very well, but not for more than gossip or pop culture BS. We don't get together after work. Everybody is married and has responsibilities. I'm not on any sports teams, nor do I have any hobbies than promote social interactions. I can count the number of real friends I have on one hand. I go to Caps games, but you don't meet people at hockey games!

This usually doesn't bother me, except on rare occasions like "I wanted to invite all your friends over. Who are they?"

Yeah... about that...

Crap, I left my iPod at work. Please be there when I arrive Mr. iPod! I can't live without you!

Returned to work after a week off. Not a lot to say. Just catching up with the stuff piled on my desk in my absence.

And thank goodness for Google, because I knew the title of today's post was from a song I loved, but I couldn't think of it to save my life:

Oh, now she's gone and I'm back on the beat / A stain on my notebook says nothing to me / Oh, now she's gone and I'm out with a friend / With lips full of passion and black coffee in bed

By Squeeze!

By the way, I read somewhere that sites that say they have song lyrics are supposedly some of the worst sites for picking up computer viruses (I guess because they know mostly kids [and addled adults] will be visiting). So be warned!

Still on vacation, FYI. I've been reading a battered paperback called The Regulators by Richard Bachman (Stephen King's alter ego) that I bought for a quarter at some flea market in the middle of nowhere a few years ago and which I am only now reading because I wanted to read something I could toss down at a second's notice to grab the kid and not care if the book gets more battered.

That's a nice sentence. Long, but lean! And the book is unlikely to survive this reading, by the way.

Laura took video on her phone of last night's huge thunderstorm (the kind you hear coming 30 minutes in advance with slow rolls of thunder) then she downloaded an app that let her make a picture of a single frame. That's how she got these amazing pics with her phone!

Oddly enough, there was hardly any rain. Just wind and lightening! Vacation excitement in the middle of the night!

Got a vacation coming up. Like, coming up at 3pm today! Nine days off (including two weekends and the 4th of July)! Last year it was pics of red Crocs and fireworks. This year it will be red Crocs, fireworks, and a baby. Holy crap y'all. I have a kid. That still blows my mind sometimes to write down!

I'll post now and then while I'm out.

Things I hope to do while on vacation:

• Finally watch the BluRay of Watchmen I bought so long ago!
• Get out in the kayak.
• Read a book.
• Late afternoons in the pool with the boy.
• Drinks on the back deck while something is grilling.
• Napping when the baby naps!