Okee, so like I turn 41 today. Nifty. *yawn*

Unsurprisingly, it’s just another work day, and I say that with no chagrin whatsoever. I’ve allowed myself to get too far behind this autumn, so I’m going to be playing “catch-up” for another couple of weeks at least.

Sherri admonished me this morning: “…as you take time today to reflect back (and I know you will) on the many, many years you have spent on this earth, try NOT kicking your own ass for a change. Try acknowledging all that you have accomplished and all the good things in your life.” Easy enough for her to say, since she turns forty in five days and thus is 370 days shy of my ability to screw things up. But, I’ll try to give it a whirl while I’m letting a batch of photos run here.

Things I have accomplished in life:

1. I have managed to live significantly past my 25th birthday, and not even in a wheel-chair or mental institution. Let me tell you, as I contemplated this fact on my 25th birthday, it was such an intellectual surprise that it became one of those “pivotal moments”.
2. I have, for the most part, managed not to emulate my adoptive parents in the rearing of my own children. I haven’t chased my kids around the house with a belt yet, threatened them with relatively implausible bodily harm for disobedience, or attempted to shame them into compliance to such a degree that their self-esteem evaporated.
3. I have not kicked, drowned, strangled, tossed off a balcony, dumped in the forest, or otherwise rid myself of the charming-but-annoying felines in my life who insist upon climbing up my leg to greet me, walking across the keyboard in the middle of a PhotoShop batch and stalling several hundred photos in process, sitting on my face in the middle of the night, randomly attacking my toes as I’m walking by, attempting to lay upon my feet while I’m walking (especially at the head of the stairs), bringing half-dead animals and insects into the house, shitting on the bed after we’ve been gone on vacation, peeing on our luggage before we leave for vacation, and playing war games across the entire house at full speed and volume in the middle of the night.
4. I have remained faithful to my wife, but that’s less of an accomplishment as it is an acknowledgment that most other females in my life have had a better sense of discretion than she has, and I felt so lucky when she chose me that there was no way I was going to screw that up.
5. I have tried new foods throughout my life. Some of them, I even liked.
6. I quit smoking over a decade ago.
7. My kids still think I’m relatively cool. I know it won’t last, but it’s still kind of neat if you ask me.

So there. That’s seven accomplishments I can at least be proud of. I had thought of a couple of others, but there was this g@dd@mn3d kitten crawling up my leg and it kind of distracted me. Besides that, I’m actually a bit sick today. Me and the Amoxicyllin are trying to kick a throat infection. Germs are bastards. Hence the wording of the title of this post. That’s about what I sound like right now.

…you know her name, I cannot keep you from reading it, although it is obviously intended for her and not you, but i mention it because i know some of you are incessantly curious, and one of you could infer from this post a desire that you share the permalink with her.

for those of you wondering, no, she didn’t, and i in no way expected her to, and the admitted anticipation of it will simply remain until it happens, after which, a part of me will no doubt miss the anticipation, of course. so much of my life has been spent waiting and hoping, i never really know what to do with fulfillment anyway.

you can shut the hell up with your double-entendres by the way.

my love to you all. the world revolves. carry on.

ponder the categories, and this will make more sense.

if you use the word disappointed, i’ll slap you. i’m not disappointed, and no, i do not protest too much. in fact, i’m quite pleased that she apparently had better things to do (as i hoped for her on the 15th as a matter of fact), and that if she is considering making contact with me, that she is doing so at a measured gait.

~d~

I have several important things to do today, but when I woke up this morning and realized it’s the fifteenth of October, my stomach lurched a bit. That was a surprisingly fast eighteen days since I last noted the date on the calendar in relation to tomorrow’s date and the importance of it, so here I am the day before the Elder and Unknown’s eighteenth birthday and I am, in several ways, unprepared for it. The story of my life, I suppose. I have this wondrous capacity for being able to WAY overthink a situation for days, weeks, months or years on end, only to be frightfully unprepared for it when it finally happens.

Except I’m really not unprepared. I just wish I could legitimately spend the day in some level of focused concentration on it. I’ll have to put that off until tonight, though. Today, I have to straighten out an issue with my driver’s license (referred to in the previous post) and I have a doctor’s appointment early this afternoon to see if we can figure out what is going on with this insidiously pervasive tinnitus in my right ear that I can’t seem to get rid of. I would say something vapid like, “It’s driving me crazy,” but we all know that is a) a rather short drive, and b) redundant, because I’m already there. Atop that, I have a wedding to finish up, now that I have the computers and processing space back in working order so that my workflow is back on track. #1 Son and I are both supposed to referee tonight, but the seemingly incessant rain down here (most of which I missed while up in Aberdeen) will likely have the fields so soggy as to be unplayable. I have to admit that with the High School season being over, I’m about two shakes from being ready for the rec league schedule to be over as well. I very much enjoy refereeing the younger kids, but I’m tired.

Wow, how was that for a long-ass paragraph with virtually no cohesion? Sorry, Bing. I was well educated, but I get lazy.

So, tomorrow is her eighteenth birthday. A funny thing: I honestly cannot remember what I did to celebrate my eighteenth birthday, and at the time, in Texas, that was full, legal adulthood like 21 is now. But I really don’t remember doing anything special. I hope the Elder and Unknown gets to do something special and memorable on her eighteenth birthday, and I hope it’s basically meaningful for her. But I could say a hundred million other things like that, and they would be basically as personally frustrating for me. For in truth, all I really want is to be able to let her know, personally, how much she will always be such a fundamental part of me.

But, I will wait. I’ve waited this long, after all. So, what, really is the difference?

She begins her nineteenth year tomorrow, and nineteen is the number of the Sun. I wonder what her radiant light shall be, and what she shall become. Whatever the answers to those questions, I hope she knows that she is loved beyond imagining, and not just by the ones whom she currently knows.

Yesterday marked one month until I can legally talk to the Elder and Unknown, although I will ‘do the right thing’ and leave it up to her to contact me.

Only a month, already. Time has flown by this summer.

Although this is on my mind quite a bit, I haven’t written about it much in recent months, because there is, ultimately, little worth in worrying about it, obsessing about it, or in many ways even planning for it, because things rarely go as planned anyway, and I honestly possess no expectations. As far as negative potentials go, it may well be that our religious differences will limit our ability to communicate effectively, or that the distance will limit us to little more than cursory interaction. But, we’ll be here for her however she wants or needs, and even getting to know her a little bit over the past year or so has been more than I felt I had the right to hope for as it is.

We have planned for this time for several years, including making sure that #1 Daughter and #1 Son have been looking forward to it. They are excited about the prospect of meeting her, but are also aware that she has her own life and will move in her own time, and just because she turns eighteen on a certain day doesn’t mean that she’ll come flying out of the blue and plop herself in the midst of our lives. We will continue to take each day as it comes, as patiently as possible, and truly, while we are all anxious to meet her, the timeline is in the hands of the Elder and Unknown, not ours.

We have been so scattered this summer that we only just now realized that we didn’t do anything for her graduation, so the Spouse-Unit and I are trying to figure out what we can do for her eighteenth birthday. If the Elder and Unknown happens to be reading this, and has any suggestions in that regard, one hopes that she will filter such information through the Spouse-Unit or my mother. The Elder and Unknown may be intrigued to know that Internet domain names have been secured, literally, in her name in both .com and .net fashion. Such can be verified to typing the relevant domain names in her address bar. Whenever she wants to do something with them, she is most welcome to.

Ah, yes. I’m a sneaky bastard, aren’t I?

When the Elder and Unknown turns eighteen in slightly less than a month, one of the relevant factors in her life will indeed be Balance. The concept of Balance is special to me, because its number, eight, is one of my birth numbers, and it is something for which I continually strive, if not struggle from time to time. It’s one of my life-lessons, in other words. I’m trying to figure out how to put the category descriptions at the top of category pages, but in lieu of that, the description for the Balance category is this: “issues surrounding the Balance Archetype (Voyager Tarot) and its Attributes: Synthesis, Stagnation, Change, Harmony, and Guardian. also, “Justice” in traditional tarot; the general law of action and reaction; I Ching hexagram #63 ‘Chi Chi/After Completion’; the Nordic rune ‘Tiwaz’; the Kabbalah letter-word ‘Lamed’; alchemical Air; the numbers 8 and infinity; and Libra.” As you can see, Balance is a rather significant concept on many levels, and you can naturally infer a relevance far beyond the divination means I list in that description. In light of that, I sincerely hope that the upcoming year will be a good one for her. Balance is sometimes the mean of certain extremes, after all.

Come what may, #1 Son and I are still in the midst of soccer season. If the Elder and Unknown chooses to contact me on or around her birthday, such will thankfully be a few days after the South Dakota High School soccer tournament, which this year is up in Aberdeen. With only the last few recreational games ahead of us on our schedules at that point, we may even be in a state of mind that is a bit less scattered, and more conducive to her needs. We are all looking forward to that day, regardless of whether she contacts us or not. Here is hoping you the best, Elder and Unknown. May Peace stand over you in all things.

The Moon Seven Times. “paris luna”, from the album, the moon seven times.

Take what was, no matter how long it’s been.
Some part is always floating up again.
Take my hand so I can let go of what they say.
Let the blood boil between our skin as it won’t someday.
The winds of heaven swooned so far from the way I had planned,
and as I raced around from room to room, they stayed with me, where I ran.

Once the quiet waves kept me pinned to your arm,
and they held me to a promise not to kick so hard.
Summer dies, and its passion is sneaking down the stairs.
May the blood boil between us everywhere.
The winds of heaven swooned so far from the way I had planned,
and as I raced around from room to room, I was everywhere I ran.

We are only the way we are for a while.
There is nothing to lose any time.
The winds of heaven swooned so far from the plan,
as I raced from room to room, I was everywhere I ran.

~~~~

we all have our muses

for some reason tonight (and oh how very sure i there is some reason to it), this one haunted me until i set it down. my muses do this to me from time to time, until i find a way to capture them in some form. why re-transcribing Lynn Canfield’s fine lyrics tonight was important, i’m not sure. but this album is definitely on my “it should be yours, too” list.

perhaps because so often, i feel this way. it’s one of those songs that i feel when i sing along to it. perhaps because the lyrics are so visual. there is a video to this song, but of course, that’s not how i see it in my mind. and that’s the particular beauty of the fine arts: the interpretation and internalization of a thing rarely equal the vision of its inception.

and the same is true for so many other things, the bulk of which have something or other to do with emotions, people, the world we live in, and life in general.

two points to whomever remembers the musical allusion of that last line.

Sherri (who sadly falls into the category of “old friend”) has been bugging me about how the trip went for me. sadly, i am still assimilating it. she also thinks the “installment method” sucks. oh well. there’s always a critic somewhere. responsibilities aside, the reason why i’m doing the installment thing is because one post would be terribly long, and i’m told i’m better when taken in smaller doses.

so….hrm….where to start with this one?

i guess i’ve already noted the most important part: we didn’t get to meet The Elder and Unknown after all. she won’t be getting her driver’s license until her 18th birthday, and since she is living again with her mother and step-father, her personal freedom is anything but expansive. the Spouse-Unit did call her and talk with her a bit, which i think was odd for both of them, but pleasant as well. i think it meant a lot to The Elder and Unknown that we did try to meet with her. the Spouse-Unit says she didn’t sound too terribly Texan, so i guess there’s hope for her future! (oh, me SO funny).

we stayed at the Hyatt downtown along the River Walk, as i mentioned before. it looks something like this from the River level, and this is the inside of the hotel. the last time i was there was my senior year of high school for the Texas State Choir concert. they made us all stay there, even though some of us were from San Antonio. talk about blurred memories! (in a positive way!)

our room was on the second floor (which because of two floors of conference and meetings rooms, is actually the fourth floor), but i did go up top and take some photos looking down. a little over halfway up on this photo, just right of center, one floor is jogged in a little to the right. right there was the room we stayed in.

when i have the time to get a gallery of photos from the trip up online, you’ll see that i frequently pretended #1 Daughter and #1 Son were along, and i tried to capture things i knew they’d like to see. however, when i get that gallery up, i know i’m going to be asked to get other galleries up, so i have to go carefully with these things. wedding season approacheth, and all that….

this was taken a few minutes prior to the photo i included upon my return—the bridge down there being where i took that photo from. this part of the River Walk is not a natural part of the river. i think it was made sometime during the 1970’s. just past that bridge and to the right, is the Convention Center. to the left is some sort of shopping extravaganza from hell that didn’t exist when i was growing up….er….getting older….down there. it was under construction when i briefly returned to San Antonio after Basic Training. like any mall, it has a cheap food court, so the Spouse-Unit and i ate over there a couple of times.

so, i guess that’s enough tap-dancing around impressions of the place while playing tour guide to my semi-nostalgic reminiscences.

to be honest, i could have driven around San Antonio anywhere i wantedd (traffic and reconstruction endeavors allowing, of course), but i didn’t. on the initial drive in from the airport downtown to the Hyatt, it was immediately clear that we were simply visiting some big-ass city. since in so many other interpretations i wasn’t coming home, i slipped into a comfortable tourist mode. the Spouse-Unit and i had to do the same thing over the summer when we visited Albuquerque. the River Walk was “safer” in that regard: it’s changed a bit, and a couple of the restaurants i liked back then no longer exist. but even with those changes and the construction on some parts of it, it felt a lot more homier than anywhere else i visited. plus being so picturesque, it was much more personally gratifying to hang out down there and shoot than slog around in the traffic and try to catch brief glimpses of half-remembered places.

i did go back to my old neighborhood, and will probably write about that little excursion next. like everything else, it had changed a lot. i drove by old schools and places where i used to hang out: all measurably changed, not that i expected anything else. change is always noticeable when you aren’t in the middle of it happening. but since i was pretty young when i left, and hadn’t really been driving all that long either, my memories of San Antonio are ultimately pretty confined to downtown, my old neighborhood (several square miles if you include where we lived across to where i went to school and where many of my friends lived), Loop 410, places i went to church, the Mission Trail, etc.

actually, i remember more detail about Albuquerque than i do San Antonio, and i spent barely 1/3 of the amount of time there. San Antonio has just become so huge, i wonder if, unless you live there or visit frequently, it’s really much like coming home for anyone. extrapolating from the 2000 Census, the city is pretty close to twice as populated as it was when i left back in the mid-1980’s, and it shows no signs of slowing down. ah….progress….

i used this lens a lot along the River Walk, largely because it’s representative of my memories of growing up down there. an inherent myopia and a type of fixation that was rarely exactly on center. the particular location i shot this from makes it look like i was on a boat myself, but i wasn’t, nor was i in the water (ew! yes, it really is that green without any early Saint Paddie’s Day shenanigans).

it might be fun to take the kids down there someday, but that would probably be more of a Six Flags/Sea World kind of thing—which brings to mind that those places didn’t exist while i was growing up there, either. i’m glad i went along with the Spouse-Unit on this trip, though. i seem to have finally laid to rest at least one old ghost (i’ll write about that later), and seeing the changes to some of the places that used to haunt my dreams has brought me at least a little peace.

well, it happened.

the Spouse-Unit got a response from The Elder and Unknown. and The Elder and Unknown responded quite favorably to the information about her half-siblings that the Spouse-Unit provided, and to the Spouse-Unit ’s contact in general. in fact, she says she was “amazingly happy”. from reading some of her past communications with my mom, i have a feeling she puts words together similar to the way i do. there are a lot of nuances to the word “amazingly”, and i would be surprised if the connotation of “overwhelmingly” wouldn’t be inappropriate. of course, since i throw multiple meanings into almost all of my creative stuff, i have a tendency to read more into things other people write than is actually there. so, i’ll shut up about that now.

i don’t think it’d be appropriate to reproduce The Elder and Unknown’s response here, but i will say this (and yes, i’m quite heartened by it). the Spouse-Unit ’s email to The Elder and Unknown was titled “about your dad and half-siblings”. The Elder and Unknown’s response was “about my family”.

i don’t know what all has been going on in life for her, but when she says, “I realized that what I wanted all along, was a family,” things haven’t been going quite as well as they could have been. her response has me simultaneously elated and even more saddened than before. what have they done to her?

well, i guess we’ll see how everything goes. i leave in the morning. i have to go change my login to Blogger to something i can remember on the road, just in case i have time to update on the fly.