There are those who would argue it is an understatement to say that I am an emotionally reserved guy. And there would be others who would say, "He has emotions?!?" In truth, yes, I seldom show much in the way of emotional range beyond annoyed, really annoyed, and (occasionally) mild indifference. Why is this? Who's to say? Perhaps it comes from a childhood devoid of hugs, maybe it's simply the result of a cynical mind probing the harsh realities of this thing we call life.
Or I'm a jerk. I guess we'll never know.
Anyway... Something is happening. Something so weird and foreign to me that I'm not even sure how to describe it. I seem to be developing some sort of "condition", I think. I have no idea what kind of condition, only that it comes with a very disturbing symptom. Get a load of this...
I came across a YouTube video today of a little girl playing the Star Wars theme music (rather brilliantly, I might add) on her synthesizer. I thought it was pretty cool, shared it on Google+, and then showed it to my daughter when I got home from work. After only a few bars, as I was trying to point out how technically challenging the piece was to a teenager who probably has no capacity for understanding this, I felt my vision begin to swim. I blinked a few times, then continued my pointless commentary, only to find that my voice was cracking. For a second, I couldn't figure out what was happening, but it quickly dawned on me that, Holy Crap, I might be starting to cry!
Seriously, Star Wars has a special place in that organ of mine that moves blood around my body, but come on! It's music, for crying out loud (pun not intended)...
Needless to say, I made an excuse about the video being to long to watch right now, hit the power switch on my phone, and hurriedly found something else to do in another part of the house. Close call!
Later, as I was watching TV with Lisa, I received a notification on my phone about something shared with me on Google+ about Parks Canada making their Park Passes free in 2017 in honor of the 150th anniversary of the National Parks system. Definitely not emotionally-charged material, as I'm sure we can all agree. Or so you'd think.
As I was trying to tell Lisa about it, since we love going to Banff as often as possible but don't really look forward to the $20 fee that only seems to be enforced on the honor system, I felt the tremble creeping back into my throat and the heat rising in my ocular cavities. Again! It was going to happen again, dammit! Only a quickly-feigned coughing attack (convenient in light of my recent chest cold) saved me from having to explain how I can be stone-hearted and immovable during a fight that renders my girlfriend to a sopping mass of sniffles and tears but get all blubbery myself when I find out how great this country we live in is. Just because we have many amazing things to be proud of as a nation, not the least of which is our generosity toward our fellow man...
Uh oh... I think... I think it might be happening again...
Am I dying?
Monday, January 4, 2016
Sunday, January 3, 2016
So. Damn. Frustrating.
One thing. I only had one thing to do, and I couldn't. A simple blog post, that's all. A couple paragraphs, a few sentences... anything. Just to live up to the "write every day" promise I made to myself, only to see it blown on Day 2.
I woke up with a cold. And not just any old cold, folks... One of those deep-down-in-your-chest kinda colds that makes it feel like your lungs are filled with rancid honey, gurgling with every breath and rattling wetly with every cough. And cough I did. Lots. Before long, I could have sworn I had taken a sledgehammer to the chest but blacked out the event.
And let's not forget the aches (as if I could). Persistent and relentless, forcing me to constantly roll over to a more comfortable position, a position that I would never be allowed to find. The mattress was at once a back-bending valley and a mountainous range of sharpened peaks. No amount of squirming or contorting could make my body conform to its demonic landscape. My pillow was but a cinder block, whose sole-purpose was to slowly merge with my head, grinding through my skull and, finally, squeezing my brain into a white-hot diamond of pain.
And so, this was the way I spent my day, whether it be in the bed, on the couch, or pacing the floor... A constant struggle to simply endure and, hopefully, come out on the other side.
At one point, I pulled out the big guns and went with my tried and true method for beating a cold... a swelteringly hot bath. So hot that I had to raise the temperature while I was in the water, or I'd never be able bear it. With a Stephen King novel in hand and sweat pouring from my face, I let the heat do it's magic. Like the Gunslinger obliterating the town of Tull, I pictured the heat killing every last virus cowering deep inside my aching muscles.
It was then the words started to form in my head. A brilliant, witty, insightful collection of thoughts that I would craft into a magnificent blog post. Inspiration seemed to be practically flowing through every fibre of my being and my brain was afire with creativity. One more chapter of the book, two more long pulls on the bottle of Gatorade, and I was ready to leave the heat behind and commence putting brilliance to paper, as it were.
The hard reality is that these incredible snippets of prose were nothing more than fever-dream, carried swirling down the drain with the now-salty bathwater, leaving me emptied of both inspiration and the will to stay awake. And leaving you, dear reader, with this post; a day late and brilliance-free.
I woke up with a cold. And not just any old cold, folks... One of those deep-down-in-your-chest kinda colds that makes it feel like your lungs are filled with rancid honey, gurgling with every breath and rattling wetly with every cough. And cough I did. Lots. Before long, I could have sworn I had taken a sledgehammer to the chest but blacked out the event.
And let's not forget the aches (as if I could). Persistent and relentless, forcing me to constantly roll over to a more comfortable position, a position that I would never be allowed to find. The mattress was at once a back-bending valley and a mountainous range of sharpened peaks. No amount of squirming or contorting could make my body conform to its demonic landscape. My pillow was but a cinder block, whose sole-purpose was to slowly merge with my head, grinding through my skull and, finally, squeezing my brain into a white-hot diamond of pain.
And so, this was the way I spent my day, whether it be in the bed, on the couch, or pacing the floor... A constant struggle to simply endure and, hopefully, come out on the other side.
At one point, I pulled out the big guns and went with my tried and true method for beating a cold... a swelteringly hot bath. So hot that I had to raise the temperature while I was in the water, or I'd never be able bear it. With a Stephen King novel in hand and sweat pouring from my face, I let the heat do it's magic. Like the Gunslinger obliterating the town of Tull, I pictured the heat killing every last virus cowering deep inside my aching muscles.
It was then the words started to form in my head. A brilliant, witty, insightful collection of thoughts that I would craft into a magnificent blog post. Inspiration seemed to be practically flowing through every fibre of my being and my brain was afire with creativity. One more chapter of the book, two more long pulls on the bottle of Gatorade, and I was ready to leave the heat behind and commence putting brilliance to paper, as it were.
The hard reality is that these incredible snippets of prose were nothing more than fever-dream, carried swirling down the drain with the now-salty bathwater, leaving me emptied of both inspiration and the will to stay awake. And leaving you, dear reader, with this post; a day late and brilliance-free.
Friday, January 1, 2016
New Year, New(ish) Blog
It's time. Time to knock the dust off this old blog and get back into writing. This particular corner of the Internet has been a ghost town for so long now... too long, really.
The last few years have been dominated by short "thought bursts" on various social media platforms, and I just haven't been able to bring myself to string together more than a couple of sentences at a time. Granted, it's fun to let all the trivial drivel just spill out of my brain as it will, but I'm beginning to miss the satisfaction of a well-crafted (insofar as I am able) post.
So, here we are. The calendar has turned, the turmoil of the holidays is over, and I have no excuse to avoid writing. Not that I'm one for resolutions, but I'm seriously going to try to write every day.
Yeah. Every. Day.
Will every post be a gem? If course not. Will I miss a day here and there? Most likely. But I'm determined to try.
The flip-side to all this is you. In the past, this blog has been used for rants, satire, photography, and a showcase for my boring childhood stories. I'm quite sure those will all still play a part, but a little input from you guys will go a long way toward making this blog something you actually want to read.
And let me know what works or doesn't work with the layout of the blog, too (font, colors, background... you get the idea). It's a work in progress and I'm open to suggestions, so let 'em fly.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Good Job My Ass
Truth be told, it's the sheer pointlessness of these groups. More specifically, it's the page after page of "Great shot!", "Love the DoF!", and "Brilliant!" comments on what are (I'm sorry to break it to you) mundane photos, 90% of the time. It quickly becomes clear that A) These people have very low standards, or B) This is just one big Flickr Circle Jerk designed to get as many "good" comments as possible for everybody involved. ("I'll say something nice about your run-of-the-mill, last-ditch, end-of-the-day effort, if you'll do the same for mine.")
I'm pretty sure it's the latter.
I know that I have a long way to go before I'll be truly happy with the photos I'm producing. As such, I want inspiration. I want motivation. And, most importantly, I want real feedback. I'm only going to get better if I'm forced to try new things and forced to stop doing "wrong things".
Sadly, I no longer think Flickr can give me this.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
With Regards to Manfred Mann
There's something I've been meaning to rant about for quite some time. Sadly, I'm at an age now where, when this certain something occurs, I instinctively say to myself, "I'm going to rant about this!" but then forget about it completely once it passes. Well, for some strange reason, I was reminded of this certain something today while not experiencing it and while in the vicinity of my laptop.
Lucky you.
A couple years ago, the city I live in joined a growing movement to reduce "light pollution". As such, the majority of all street lights have now been changed to cast only a small amount of light directly downward, instead of spilling it frivolously in large pools. The effect is such that we no longer have to worry about about our sidewalks, pathways, and roads being safely illuminated. Instead, we can rest assured that the deep, penetrating darkness of night is only marred by near-illumination every hundred feet or so. The "light pollution" that so threatened us in the past is, well... a thing of the past.
Or is it?
Another trend of late is the ever-increasing brightness of car headlights. It would seem that automobile manufacturers have determined that safety is best provided by bathing an area 50 feet wide and 100 feet deep in front of the vehicle with a blue-white light of an intensity normally reserved for police helicopter spotlights. Headlights operating in the normal mode are now brighter than "hi-beams" used on highways and rural roads as recently as 15 years ago, allowing drivers to make out every crack in the asphalt, every blade of grass alongside the road, and every pore on the face of the oncoming driver.
Perhaps this shift is in response to the change in the street lights. Possibly, auto manufacturers are simply helping to compensate for the reduced lighting. Regardless, it is having another, far more negative, effect.
You see, the human eye is a marvel of evolution with its ability to adjust to different light levels by widening or constricting the opening of the pupil. In darkness, it dilates to allow more light to pass through to the retina. In bright situations it contracts, restricting the amount of light and preventing our optic nerve from being "over-loaded". Yet, as amazing as this organ is, it still has its limitations.
One of these limitations is never more obvious than when I am driving at night.
Our less-than-adequately-lit streets cause my pupils to dilate enough to allow me to see where I am driving. No problem so far. Let's add an oncoming Porsche SUV with high-intensity, broad-angle, halogen headlights and see what happens, though. Instantly my pupils contract and all I can see are the headlights. The rest of my world is a blackened void, into which I am driving at 50 km/hr, hoping the clear stretch of road I remember seeing before being blinded remains that way long enough for the SUV to pass and my sight to be restored.
Heaven help the black-clad jaywalking jogger that gets in my way.
In a by-gone era where the amount of light provided by street lights and headlights was not so vastly different, my eyes would never have had to make such radical adjustments and neither the safety of myself nor that of the fashion-conscious jogger would have been jeopardized. In that same by-gone era, however, we wouldn't have traded safely-lit streets for less "light pollution" (for which I will continue to use quotes until I'm convinced it's a real thing) and we wouldn't have believed that a car driving 50km/hr in the city requires headlights strong enough for one doing 110km/hr on a pitch-black highway.
But what did we know?
Lucky you.
A couple years ago, the city I live in joined a growing movement to reduce "light pollution". As such, the majority of all street lights have now been changed to cast only a small amount of light directly downward, instead of spilling it frivolously in large pools. The effect is such that we no longer have to worry about about our sidewalks, pathways, and roads being safely illuminated. Instead, we can rest assured that the deep, penetrating darkness of night is only marred by near-illumination every hundred feet or so. The "light pollution" that so threatened us in the past is, well... a thing of the past.
Or is it?
Another trend of late is the ever-increasing brightness of car headlights. It would seem that automobile manufacturers have determined that safety is best provided by bathing an area 50 feet wide and 100 feet deep in front of the vehicle with a blue-white light of an intensity normally reserved for police helicopter spotlights. Headlights operating in the normal mode are now brighter than "hi-beams" used on highways and rural roads as recently as 15 years ago, allowing drivers to make out every crack in the asphalt, every blade of grass alongside the road, and every pore on the face of the oncoming driver.
Perhaps this shift is in response to the change in the street lights. Possibly, auto manufacturers are simply helping to compensate for the reduced lighting. Regardless, it is having another, far more negative, effect.
You see, the human eye is a marvel of evolution with its ability to adjust to different light levels by widening or constricting the opening of the pupil. In darkness, it dilates to allow more light to pass through to the retina. In bright situations it contracts, restricting the amount of light and preventing our optic nerve from being "over-loaded". Yet, as amazing as this organ is, it still has its limitations.
One of these limitations is never more obvious than when I am driving at night.
Our less-than-adequately-lit streets cause my pupils to dilate enough to allow me to see where I am driving. No problem so far. Let's add an oncoming Porsche SUV with high-intensity, broad-angle, halogen headlights and see what happens, though. Instantly my pupils contract and all I can see are the headlights. The rest of my world is a blackened void, into which I am driving at 50 km/hr, hoping the clear stretch of road I remember seeing before being blinded remains that way long enough for the SUV to pass and my sight to be restored.
Heaven help the black-clad jaywalking jogger that gets in my way.
In a by-gone era where the amount of light provided by street lights and headlights was not so vastly different, my eyes would never have had to make such radical adjustments and neither the safety of myself nor that of the fashion-conscious jogger would have been jeopardized. In that same by-gone era, however, we wouldn't have traded safely-lit streets for less "light pollution" (for which I will continue to use quotes until I'm convinced it's a real thing) and we wouldn't have believed that a car driving 50km/hr in the city requires headlights strong enough for one doing 110km/hr on a pitch-black highway.
But what did we know?
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
It Makes for a Long Night
By and large, parenting is a pretty easy gig, if you ask me. Sure, the first few months are an evil experiment in sleep deprivation, potty training can test the patience of a Tibetan monk, and puberty turns your sweet, innocent offspring into something out of a Roman Polanski film, but the rest is a cake walk. True, there are exceptions, and it's these exceptions that keep it all so... interesting.
For example...
Quite possibly three of the most fearsome words any parent will have the misfortune of hearing their child utter are, "My head itches." For those without kids, that phrase probably carries no more power than, say, "The sky is blue" or, "I'm hungry". Any parent, however, who has heard their 5 year old son or daughter say it, is likely already experiencing an elevated heart rate and their own phantom scalp itches, just from reading it here. That's right, I'm talking about the most disruptive force from the smallest source...
Lice.
Although I'm a bit of a veteran in this area, having battled the micro-invaders twice before in the past 10 years of being a single father, I was still taken off-guard when my daughter complained of an itchy head last night, right before bed. I was optimistic, however, as I went to the bathroom to retrieve a comb, thinking she was probably just suffering from some minor dandruff now that the drier winter weather is upon us.
I could only be so lucky.
About 3 minutes into searching her scalp by running a comb through line after line of fine, blonde hair, I spotted the tiniest of black spots... and it was moving. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, or that it was a piece of dirt. A couple seconds of, "Hold still!" and holding my breath proved me wrong. Somehow, my daughter had contracted lice and I was about to enter the battlefield for a third time.
I wasted no time in getting to the pharmacist which, luckily, was still open. I asked the man in the crisp, white lab coat for a lice treatment kit I could use on a 12 year old girl, knowing that the stuff that works best is always kept behind the counter. He was quick to get me the product that, in his opinion, has the highest success rate (probably based on who returns to buy a second kit and who doesn't, I guess) and to give me a tip that was new to me.
You see, the normal procedure goes something like this: You wash and dry your child's hair. You apply the treatment, which is usually a creme rinse type solution that smells of chemicals. After the creme rinse has been in the hair for 10 minutes, you rinse it out and dry the hair. Then you settle in for a long session of hunting down dead (hopefully) lice and lice eggs (called nits) with a fine-toothed metal comb. It takes forever because you have to inspect every row of hair on your child's head, and the nits are attached to the hair with a sort of cement that makes them difficult to remove.
The pharmacist told me, though, to try something different before I started the store-bought treatment. He told me to soak my daughter's hair with a solution of 50% water and 50% white vinegar, to loosen the nits' bonds on the hair, remove as many lice and nits as I could with the metal comb, then wash and dry her hair in preparation for the treatment. I have to say, although going through her hair twice with the comb (once before treatment and once after) seemed to take longer, I think it actually worked better. Following the treatment, I only found a couple of dead lice nymphs in my daughter's hair, and they were super easy to remove.
However, we were far from finished.
The delousing took us until after midnight, at which point the rest of the work had to be done. Bedding, towels, clothes, and jackets all had to be collected and washed in hot water (four loads of laundry in all). Combs, brushes, and lice removal tools needed to be sterilized in boiling water. Stuffed animals, pillows, and whatever else couldn't be washed in hot water had to be put in a black garbage bags, where they will stay for the next three weeks to ensure any lice or nits that may have transferred are dead.
It's a stressful ordeal, to say the least. It is important, though, for every parent that finds themselves faced with this scenario to remember it is even more stressful for their child. The lice brings with it not only feelings of shame and embarrassment, but also a lot of unwarranted guilt. It is important to let your son or daughter know that getting lice doesn't mean they are "dirty", because it has nothing at all to do with hygiene, and that none of the work that goes into getting rid of the infestation is their fault.
It's all just a part of growing up and, subsequently, a part of helping someone grow up.
For example...
Quite possibly three of the most fearsome words any parent will have the misfortune of hearing their child utter are, "My head itches." For those without kids, that phrase probably carries no more power than, say, "The sky is blue" or, "I'm hungry". Any parent, however, who has heard their 5 year old son or daughter say it, is likely already experiencing an elevated heart rate and their own phantom scalp itches, just from reading it here. That's right, I'm talking about the most disruptive force from the smallest source...
Lice.
Although I'm a bit of a veteran in this area, having battled the micro-invaders twice before in the past 10 years of being a single father, I was still taken off-guard when my daughter complained of an itchy head last night, right before bed. I was optimistic, however, as I went to the bathroom to retrieve a comb, thinking she was probably just suffering from some minor dandruff now that the drier winter weather is upon us.
I could only be so lucky.
About 3 minutes into searching her scalp by running a comb through line after line of fine, blonde hair, I spotted the tiniest of black spots... and it was moving. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, or that it was a piece of dirt. A couple seconds of, "Hold still!" and holding my breath proved me wrong. Somehow, my daughter had contracted lice and I was about to enter the battlefield for a third time.
I wasted no time in getting to the pharmacist which, luckily, was still open. I asked the man in the crisp, white lab coat for a lice treatment kit I could use on a 12 year old girl, knowing that the stuff that works best is always kept behind the counter. He was quick to get me the product that, in his opinion, has the highest success rate (probably based on who returns to buy a second kit and who doesn't, I guess) and to give me a tip that was new to me.
You see, the normal procedure goes something like this: You wash and dry your child's hair. You apply the treatment, which is usually a creme rinse type solution that smells of chemicals. After the creme rinse has been in the hair for 10 minutes, you rinse it out and dry the hair. Then you settle in for a long session of hunting down dead (hopefully) lice and lice eggs (called nits) with a fine-toothed metal comb. It takes forever because you have to inspect every row of hair on your child's head, and the nits are attached to the hair with a sort of cement that makes them difficult to remove.
The pharmacist told me, though, to try something different before I started the store-bought treatment. He told me to soak my daughter's hair with a solution of 50% water and 50% white vinegar, to loosen the nits' bonds on the hair, remove as many lice and nits as I could with the metal comb, then wash and dry her hair in preparation for the treatment. I have to say, although going through her hair twice with the comb (once before treatment and once after) seemed to take longer, I think it actually worked better. Following the treatment, I only found a couple of dead lice nymphs in my daughter's hair, and they were super easy to remove.
However, we were far from finished.
The delousing took us until after midnight, at which point the rest of the work had to be done. Bedding, towels, clothes, and jackets all had to be collected and washed in hot water (four loads of laundry in all). Combs, brushes, and lice removal tools needed to be sterilized in boiling water. Stuffed animals, pillows, and whatever else couldn't be washed in hot water had to be put in a black garbage bags, where they will stay for the next three weeks to ensure any lice or nits that may have transferred are dead.
It's a stressful ordeal, to say the least. It is important, though, for every parent that finds themselves faced with this scenario to remember it is even more stressful for their child. The lice brings with it not only feelings of shame and embarrassment, but also a lot of unwarranted guilt. It is important to let your son or daughter know that getting lice doesn't mean they are "dirty", because it has nothing at all to do with hygiene, and that none of the work that goes into getting rid of the infestation is their fault.
It's all just a part of growing up and, subsequently, a part of helping someone grow up.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Still Judged
Today I happened to find myself reading the blog of an exgirlfriend, which I found in the blogroll (who knew these still existed?) of another old friend's blog because Google Reader suddenly decided to serve up some updates from 2009. I only read the first few lines of her latest entry, which was from 2010, before my finger flicked the scroll wheel and my eyes scanned across numerous entries and photos, none of which inspired me to read further. That is, until...
I saw an entry that started, "I dated this guy in college..." Well, I couldn't exactly pass that one by, could I? It turns out, I probably should have.
I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that the entire blog post was about this boyfriend of hers that was unemployed, lazy, and basically made her realize all the things she didn't want in a husband. It was pretty disparaging, not at all forgiving or understanding... and totally about me.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that I was somewhat lacking in direction when I was younger. In fact, I've used the term "lazy" myself when referring to the me from those days. I guess what really irked me was that someone (ironically, a Christian and former Bible College student) would carry around that image of me for 20 years and feel the need to base a blog post on it. Sure, I'm a different person now. Yes, it's true that it has been over 14 years since I was unemployed for even a single day. Of course I've been a responsible single father for the past 10 years, raising my 12 year old daughter without any financial assistance. Yet, it still stings to be thought of as that guy who liked to sleep in, skip classes, and play pool instead of going to work.
Next time Google Reader dishes out a serving from the past, I'm going to be a little quicker on the "Mark As Read" button.
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