Category: Random Semicoherent Thoughts

I’m sick today. I woke up in the middle of the night nauseous as hell with a splitting headache on top of the rashes that I’ve had for days. When my 5:15 alarm went off this morning, I knew that I was a hard ‘no’ for getting up that early. It only took me a couple of more minutes to decide that I wasn’t going to work that day – my first sick day from work in at least seven years. I was fairly convinced that COVID had finally found me, but a rapid test told me otherwise. Ms. Boss (again, much smarter than I) clued me in that medicines existed to at least knock the edge off of my symptoms and help me recover. I forgot I was an ‘ignorant male’ for a few minutes and agreed to take them. By mid-morning, I was convinced that taking a sick day was stupid, but then the Benadryl kicked in and I spent the next five hours sleeping. I feel better, not great, but at least better.

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As I mentioned in RST 36, I have psoriasis. My mother drove me over an hour away to a dermatologist to get this diagnosis when I was about eight years old. I’ve done very little to mitigate the problem since then outside of applying cortisone cream when things start to hurt and applying a band-aid when things are really bad. I’ve been in ‘remission’ (if there is such a thing) for several years where I only get occasional reminders that I suffer from this. The ‘good times’ ended for me a couple of weeks ago when I started getting a spot on my left thumb followed by other places. It was soon followed by rashes all over my body which may be either directly or circumstantially related. If you listen to the marketing hype of the pharmaceutical companies, I should be ashamed of this and should take their drugs so that I don’t look like I have grotesque deformities. Then they go through the possible side effects of the medication that they’re shilling. I don’t care if the chances that I will get anything on that list is tremendously remote, I’m still a hard ‘no’.

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I mentioned in RST 55 that ginger ale is the drink of choice when I don’t feel well. Regrettably, not a drop of ginger ale exists in the house today. Since I’m not nauseous and have eaten quite a bit today, I think I’m okay. Besides, I have grape fizzy water to drink.

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The last time I itched as bad as I have over the past couple of days is when I got poison ivy in my forties (I’m not all that convinced that is what I have at the moment). Before that? Chicken pox when I was in second grade. While I remember very little about my bout with the chicken pox, I do retain one memory that is crystal clear. I had a pock on my right butt cheek that was right where I sat on the toilet. Whenever I sat down, it hurt like hell. My mom did something to help me through this episode, but I can’t remember what it was. It’s funny how things like that get seared into your brain. I forget so many important things these days, why in the hell can’t I get rid of that memory and use the space for something more important and meaningful.

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It’s back to work tomorrow for me no matter what. I cannot stand to miss work because, at least to me, it seems like things get out of control when I miss. Despite my ‘day off’ status, I’ve probably put in a good hour of work for my employer this morning. I woke after my five-hour nap and checked my email almost first thing. You know what? The world went on without me and things got handled. I guess this fact brings about a slight existential crisis for me. Am I as important as I think I am? Do I need to let things go? Should I be okay with just stepping away when I need to? Should I allow myself to take a sick day more often? Will it, in the end, be better if I get the rest I need? I guess we’ll just have to see the next time 5:15 rolls around and I don’t want to get out of bed.

Arbitrary geographical boundaries fascinate me. I’m not talking boundaries established on a river or mountain or even a tree that may not even exist anymore. I’m referring to boundaries where you start at a line and a certain amount of miles later draw another without the least bit of concern about what lies in between. It’s not so much the drawing of the boundary that I find so intriguing, but the decisions that are made and/or the circumstances that evolve because of that line.

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When I was growing up, there was a bar on the side of the road in the middle of a swamp five miles from the nearest town and within walking distance of maybe ten people – it was the text book definition of the middle of nowhere. Why? It sat just past the county line. The nearby town was dry and the bar – called The Swamps – was the closest place to legally drink.

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I once rode my bike over twenty miles to The Swamps and back. Why? To paraphrase Sir Edmund Hillary (who himself borrowed the phrase from George Mallory), “Because it was there.”

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Four Corners? Yup, I’ve been there. Put an appendage in each state at the same time? Absolutely!

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Wagah, Pakistan is on my bucket list. Why? This. If you’re going to have an arbitrary line, you might as well make a big deal out of it. Please remember as you watch it that these are two of the largest countries in the world, both of whom have nuclear weapons to defend themselves against the other. You’ll notice a shaking of hands during the ceremony, that nicety came only after years of posturing and gesticulating in an aggressive manner that wasn’t just for show. Yes, Partition and all that has come after it have been terrible, but it makes this boundary no less fascinating. According to Wikipedia, we’ll never know why this boundary was drawn where it was because the papers were intentionally destroyed.

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The 38th Parallel? North and South Korea? You bet I’m fascinated with that whole part of the world. Unlike Partition where you draw a line where Muslims go here and Hindus go there, two ‘allies’ pick this arbitrary line to divide control of a country and basically end up splitting one people and one culture into two. Yes, I’d visit the DMZ given half a chance just to try and appreciate the true scope of the difference made by this decision.

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My subdivision is in one law enforcement jurisdiction. If I leave my subdivision, take a left, and drive my car into a ditch on the right side of the road, I’m in another jurisdiction. If I get myself out of the ditch, continue driving straight and stop at the police station a quarter mile away on the left side of the road, they will tell me they can’t help me because they cover yet another jurisdiction. Want to see grown men with guns have a squabble? Get into an accident where two or more jurisdictions come together and ask them to write a report.

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Firefighters possess almost the opposite mentality as their public safety brethren. Until recently, the full-time firefighters at one department could sit and watch a parade of five fire trucks passing in front of their stations with lights and sirens for a fire before being asked if they’d like to come along and help. That fire department protected that side of the line and just could not be trusted to fight fires on this side of it. This changed recently when the firehouse was shut down and moved… even closer to where to the area on the wrong side of the line… where they’re still not invited to the party, but at least don’t have to watch the parade.

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My bucket list of geographic oddities grows as I get older. National Geographic raised my curiosity regarding Point Roberts, Washington many years ago. On the opposite end of the line that creates this oddity is another one I’d love to visit – the Northwest Angle of Minnesota. While I would enjoy a drive through the Saatse Boot – the only place you can enter Russia without a visa – I’m definitely NOT interested in stopping. It’s sad to say, but Whiteclay, Nebraska is another place I’m fascinated with despite the very sad social dynamic it used to represent. Bir Tawil would be a hard ask, but you just have to wonder what makes a place so that no country wants to claim it.

Ms. Boss and I recently took one of those personality tests from a website that we recently discovered on a podcast. My test revealed that I am a ‘maven’ – defined as someone who love learning for the sake of learning. My secondary trait is ‘scientist’ – defined as a person who lives to solve problems. Adequately intrigued with subject matter, Ms. Boss bought the book (Sparked – Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive by Jonathan Fields) to take a deeper drive. She discovered that mavens can get ‘lost in learning’, a phrase she – and me – found to be a very apt description of me. (For the record she is an ‘adviser’ and a ‘sage’ – no wonder I lean on her so often for good advice.)

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As you might expect, the internet will consume a significant portion of my day if I let it. I clicked my way into deep, deep rabbit holes more times than I could ever possibly count even before smartphones rolled around making it so much easier. Just today I ended up clicking my way towards ever increasing knowledge about how air traffic controllers work. Even doing dishes today didn’t stop me. The miracle that is the internet brought audio from planes and controllers near my house right into my ear as I was scrubbing the mashed potato pot.

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It should surprise no one that I took an interest today in listening to air traffic controllers do their work. As a radio system manager (among other things), I spend lots of time listening to the radio and always dissecting how people communicate. My father was also a pilot in the military and spent quite a bit of time flying when I was growing up. I guess you would call it a flare up of intersecting past interests.

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The process of becoming a Bhuddist monk was a rabbit hole I explored earlier this week. For one particular sect that thoroughly outlined the process, I have just missed the cut off of fifty years of age. Apparently, the physical rigors are more than a man my age can handle. It’s yet another thing that I have ‘aged out’ of in my adult life. The first thing I discovered I aged out of? Being an air traffic controller – you have to be thirty or younger to start that process to guarantee mental sharpness. It was slightly soul crushing when I first found that out.

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I graduated in 1993 into the weakest job market (to that point) since World War II. With the prospect of moving into my parents’ basement looming very large on the horizon, my father the pilot suggested air traffic controller as my avocation. He knew I enjoyed dispatching the police and felt I might get the same amount of thrill ‘pushing tin’ for a living. I actually thought it was a great idea. When I found out the local regional airport was having and aviation career fair, I went to explore the possibility. Dressed in a brand new suit with resume in hand I went to the fair and made a beeline for the air traffic controller recruiter when arrived. I was soon told that the likelihood of embarking on that career path in 1993 was minimal. Bill Clinton had just hired back all the controllers Ronald Regan had fired. They would not be hiring for years. The only reason they were there was to fulfill an obligation. I ended up in my parent’s basement any way until my full time career in public safety communications started three months later. Other than two small stints lasting just over a year, I’ve been there ever since.

I’m flying as I write this. My employer is sending me to a conference for four days. If something is less than ten hours away, I’ll drive every time. The conference is at least a seventeen hour drive, so I’m flying… and not loving it.

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Ms. Boss played the part of chauffeur this morning driving me an hour to the airport after making sure I had everything I needed. She embraced me tightly and sent me on my way. She travels much more than I do. The Bosslets say I do nothing but mope when she’s away. They’re not wrong. Here’s hoping her moping is minimal. I look forward to the hug on the other end of the trip.

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Ms. Boss insisted I borrow her backpack for the trip saying it made carrying a laptop and tablet much easier. I, of course, agreed with the more seasoned traveler and did so, but began having doubts as I was navigating through the airport. It began to be quite a challenge keeping it on my shoulder and I kept having to readjust. I then came to a realization – I was carrying it like I did in college when two straps was dumb and one strap was cool. The second strap is there for a reason. As you might expect, putting on the second strap solved my problem. One strap is dumb, two straps are cool.

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I remember the first time I ever flew. How long ago? Let’s just say i was wearing a leisure suit at the time and leave it at that. Those were the days when traveling was an event, something you got dressed up for. The majority of the passenger manifest today lies far from that standard. Some made sartorial choices today that I would not make… on a dare… ever.

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I will say that one passenger on this flight is dressed for ‘old time travel’. Wearing a pink linen sport coat and white pants, I first noticed the older gentleman standing at the bar of a bourbon place. I instantly passed judgement that 5:15 on a Sunday morning was way too early for anyone to drink bourbon even if you needed a bit of Dutch courage to get on the plane. I then saw the bartender go over to the coffee pot and pour a cup. By going to the bar to get coffee, he managed to skip the huge lines at McDonald’s and Starbucks and get something that I did not end up getting this morning. I saw him talking with the gate attendant just before boarding. While I didn’t see him when I boarded, I suspect he landed himself in first class. Maybe instead of passing judgement, I should take a few notes.

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Take a 6’3”, 310 pound man who hasn’t flown in a bit, squeeze him into the middle seat between a woman who does not open the window to allow spatial reference causing disorientation and a man who seems to be praying every time the littlest thing happens and unsettling me just the teeniest bit. Turn off the air conditioner while waiting at the gate to make it nice and stuffy to get him good and uncomfortable. Then hurtle him down the runway. Will he survive the ordeal? Stay tuned!

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I have just popped my ears for the umpteenth time this trip.

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The beverage cart is making its way down the aisle. Today’s choice will be ginger ale. Why? My mom had me drink it during my leisure suit days. In a closely-related circumstance, a barf bag was always nearby in those days as well. Drinking ginger ale today, no barf bag necessary.

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Out of curiosity, I checked for a barf bag in the seat in front of me. It says ‘waste’, no mention of barf, vomit, puke, emesis, upcheck, hurl, or even sick – all words that might place that evil little thought into your conscious. ‘+1’ to the marketing department for that move.

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I got a whole can of ginger ale! That’s what I’m talking about! No cost-saving measures on this trip! I also got a bag of pretzels which were also pretty tasty. The best part of both? I got to take my mask off to consume both of them. I am looking forward to the same experience on my connecting flight.

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The woman next to me ordered ginger ale after I did. I’m hoping that it’s because I’m an influencer or because she also has an affinity for ginger ale and not because she needs to… waste. Perhaps she should open the window so we can orient ourselves?

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The end of my first leg ended with quite the thump on landing. Had the woman next to me had the window open, I might have been a bit more prepared. I, like others, gasped a bit. After taxiing what seemed like forever, we pull into the apron and skid to a stop. The captain did not exit the cockpit and greet the passengers afterwards. It’s not hard to understand why.

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I changed planes at DFW. I had twenty minutes from the time the plane door opened until boarding was scheduled for my next flight. I was in Terminal B, my connecting flight was in Terminal D. Ms. Boss’ attempt to properly hydrate required a small stop on the way. Moving quite quickly, leaping into the SkyTrain as the doors were closing, moving quickly when the people move wasn’t, I made it in time for boarding… only to be told that the flight would be delayed.

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Second flight? No ginger ale, no pretzels. Bummer. On a positive note, I did get a window seat. That @&$#% stayed open… the entire…time…

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I made it. As soon as the wheels hit the runway, I text Ms. Boss advising that I have lived to see another day and prepared myself to tackle baggage retrieval and ground transportation to my final destination. Three things would have improved this little excursion – a car, plenty of time, and Ms. Boss – and most definitely not in that order.

I couldn’t sleep last night. Despite being quite tired at 10:00 and falling asleep right away, I woke up about 2:00 and was up for the better part of two hours. Two ‘kitty naps’ during the day made the ground fertile for insomnia, but the seeds of sleeplessness sprang forth from a litany of minor to moderate concerns. The air conditioner running on and on and on struggling to keep up with a warm humid night sprouted first, thoughts of my chartreuse green swimming pool came soon after. Work soon made an appearance in my mind courtesy of my reading emails filled with tales of woe despite the fact I’m on vacation. I got up and consumed some cookies and milk (definitely not on the diet) in an effort to put me in a food coma which started to work until the dog objected to Bosslet 3’s exercise of her newfound rights as an adult to come home at 3:00 in the morning. Sleep finally came (at least I think it came) with the recitation of random words as they came up in my mind. I’d give an example, but that’s probably too deep of a dive into my psyche.

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I was afraid of the dark when I was young. I wasn’t so much afraid of monsters, but of some nefarious person breaking into the house. I had a nightlight in my room and there was another in the hallway, but my parents always kept the hall light on in our ranch-style home until they went to bed. Bedtime was 9:00 back then. I would generally hear them watch their 9:00 show and sometimes their 10:00 show as well. When I heard the local news come on at 11:00, I started to get anxious – the hall light would be going off soon. Panic would begin to seep in when I heard the theme for the Tonight Show come from the television. As soon as Johnny’s monologue was over, the light was going off. When the light went off, I toughed it out some days. Other times, only crying for mom could make things right.

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I spent the overwhelming majority of my first twelve years of full-time employment working midnights. While I liked working at night, I did not enjoy the lifestyle of working at night. Early on, I found that one of two things happened with that schedule – I was either going to be miserable the days that I worked or the days I was off. Based on my nonexistent social life in the early days of that schedule, I chose to be miserable on my days off – sleeping during the day and finding some sort of something to do at night. In the days before widespread use of the internet, this wasn’t easiest thing to do. Sometimes I would drive around in the middle of the night for hours. Sometimes I would go to the casino and let them have all my money. More often than not, the answer was beer, lots and lots (and lots) of beer to pass the time and make myself sleepy and end up with some sort of rest through part of the night and some of the day. In hindsight, it really developed into quite a problem for me for a number of years. Perhaps I should have felt more ashamed over the looks people gave me at the convenience store when I rolled up to the cashier with a twelve-pack at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning? I happy to report that the ‘beer equals sleep’ days are behind me, it actually has the opposite effect on me these days.

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By the time Ms. Boss rolled into the picture in my eighth year of working midnights, beer alone was not getting the job done. During the summer, my ten-hour shift started before the sun went down and ended after it came back up. What had been a minor annoyance during my younger years morphed into a definite impediment to sleep. Daylight streamed into my bedroom during my entire sleep schedule. My first attempt to combat this problem was sleeping in the only windowless room of the house – the bathroom. That worked like you would expect it to. I tried my walk-in closet. It tried the hallway with all the doors closed. I finally got somewhat smart and taped garbage bags over my windows with duct tape which worked well enough, but did not impress the future Ms. Boss at all the first time she found herself in that part of the house. Somehow, room darkening shades remained beyond the grasp of my comprehension (perhaps too much beer). What finally resolved this issue? moving to day shift two years after we were married.

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As I mentioned previously, my twin girls turned eighteen years old this week. This means that the hardest time I ever had with sleep was eighteen years ago this week. The story of their birth is not my story to tell, but suffice it to say that the urgent situation we were face with lead to very little sleep in the forty-eight hours leading up to when they were born, four weeks before they were due. After seeing them enter this world and Ms. Boss moved to her room for the evening, I was ready to crash on the partner bed for a good night’s sleep… or so I thought. At 1:00 in the morning, the nurse rolls in with Bosslet 3 ready for feeding time (Bosslet 2, who needed some more intensive care for the evening, was handled by the nursing staff). A half and hour later, with that handled, I went back to sleep. At 4:00, Bosslet 3 returned for another feeding. At 7:00, both the twins arrived. It was a pattern that lasted for at least eight weeks – one hour of feeding, two hours of sleep, one hour of feeding, two hours of sleep. My government employer allowed me eleven weeks off, but it certainly was no vacation as I fed kids and did my best to help Ms. Boss recover. I was never so grateful as I was the first time both of them missed their early morning meal. The whole experience was exhausting. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

As I mentioned in RST 52, the area around the Red River Gorge reminds me a lot of home, especially all the backroads. A younger C.L. driving his blue 1979 Chevy Monte Carlo would have loved to tackle the highways and byways of this region. This is despite of the fact that his father disconnected the four-barrel carburetor to keep him from killing himself. He also would have loved driving the white 1984 Ford Escort – a base model with manual transmission and no air conditioning and funky paint job – because its rack-and-pinion steering loved the curves. He even would have enjoyed driving the gunmetal gray 1982 VW Rabbit Diesel – a four-speed manual transmission whose German-engineered steering made up for a lack of power. He instead, this week, must drive through the twisty-turny mountain roads with a 2019 VW Atlas. He is quite, quite sure that his much more sedate navigation of the local terrain has to do with the fact that the Atlas is top heavy and leans and has absolutely nothing to with the fact that he’s older and more aware of the potential consequences of crashing and may have lost a step or two.

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At one point in our lives, the Bosses were pretty damn poor – I’m talking feeding the family for the week on a budget that is half of what we paid for dinner last night. The low point of this time in our lives occurred when the transmission let go in our 2002 Chevy Suburban. Only the even numbered gears would work with absolutely no reverse. This vehicle was crucial to our existence because it was the only vehicle that would haul all six of us and navigate our driveway (see RST 47 for that story). A tow truck in this situation was simply out of the question. Fortunately, Ms. Boss had parked the vehicle in such a way that we could drive through our (fortunately) dirt yard and around the house. Once we got out on the road, I’d give it plenty gas so it didn’t stall out in second to get it going, then run the RPM up enough so that I could drop it into fourth. I drove backroads like this for fifteen miles to get us to the transmission shop. We defaulted on our mortgage that month to get it fixed. It was a low point in our lives together. Hard work by the two of us means these kind of things don’t happen to us anymore.

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The ‘79 Monte Carlo was loaned to me by my parents… and taken away by my parents and given to my step-brother… who promptly wrecked it. When it came to be my turn to get a ‘college car’, the ‘84 Ford Escort became my transportation for the last two years of college and for a year beyond. I was okay with driving the car known as the ‘clown car’, but that otherwise ‘jolly’ vehicle was decidedly unhappy with the road salt laid down in Northern Illinois and began rusting with great abandon. That lead me to purchase my first new car: a white 1994 Chevy S10 manual five-speed with a single cab and a 1.9 liter engine. As much as my father and my step-brother wanted me to ‘upgrade’, I bought the truck that met my needs with air conditioning and an AM/FM radio and nothing else. Confident in my purchase and after a week of visiting family and friends, I started back home towards Northern Illinois. I was driving down the road with 800 miles on the odometer when all of the sudden, the car made a terrible noise and began slowing down. I pulled over, unable to get any further and stood by the side of the road. A guy in a Ford dually pickup stopped and gave me a lift to the gas station where I called AAA and had it towed to the closest Chevy dealership. Eventually, the truck got back to the Chevy dealership who discovered they failed to dealer prep the crankcase which caused it to drop into all five gears at once. Me and Chevy transmissions, right? The biggest of the situation is that the transmission failed right in front of the Ford transmission factory.

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Despite inauspicious beginnings with the S10, it treated me well until we parted ways 2003. I have fond memories of that truck. It transported the soon-to-be Ms. Boss and I to Canada on our very first trip together, Not long after, it carried the two us through Colorado and Utah in search of adventure. Most notably, however, it was the reason why she knew where I lived when she placed a note about whether I would be interested in getting to know her better, but that’s a different tale for another time.

I write this from the bedroom of our lodging for the first full day of vacation. We were forced into executing ‘Plan C’ this year. Our first choice, a long-planned trip to Toronto, became yet another victim of the pandemic. ‘Revenge travel’ scuttled a fallback to our usual destination when everyone decided that the Outer Banks was the place to go for Summer 2021. We ended up in the Red River Gorge of Kentucky for a long weekend just under three hours from our house. Ms. Boss, a most excellent travel agent, booked us the second floor of a building at a remote crossroads over a ice cream/pottery/coffee shop and across the street from a bar and grill. We’ve already consumed some excellent barbecue and beverages at a very reasonable price. It doesn’t hurt that this area feels very much like where I grew up. I read and hiked yesterday afternoon and am writing this morning. It’s safe to say that all my needs are met.

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We have more than one reason to celebrate this weekend – Bosslets 2 and 3 turn eighteen today. I can scarcely wrap my mind around that. What’s even harder to comprehend is that Bosslet 3 applied for a job at the facility where I work. Her boyfriend has made the trip with us. They certainly aren’t the small babies I used to haul around two at a time in pumpkin seats anymore. I feel it necessary to point out that Ms. Boss does not look nearly old enough to have two eighteen year-old daughters, much less one that’s twenty-two. Time flies…

I’m obsessed with the Appalachian Trail. Despite the fact I’ve never backcountry camped in my life, I would love to say that I hiked at least a sizable part the trail. My plan to dip my toe in the water and test my mettle revolves around tackling the longest climb on the trail from the Nanthala Gorge to Cheoah Bald – a climb of over 3,000 feet in five miles. Yesterday’s hike here at Red River Gorge consisted of 362 of vertical without a backpack or anything else. I hit my heart rate cutoff of 150 bpm and was forced to rest twice in the 0.75 miles of our excursion. I, obviously, need more work on my fitness.

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My goals for this trip? A little bit of reading, a little bit of recreation, more than my share of eating, and a whole lot of love for the life Ms. Boss and I have built together.

While mowing the lawn this afternoon, I saw some furry thing go rolling across the front porch, then get its legs underneath itself and go running towards the house. It took me a moment to realize that it was small rabbit, definitely younger, that was running towards a small amount of shelter under the window of the front of our house. I moved towards it to get a better look, figuring it was scared from the lawn mower, when I saw another small rabbit doing the same thing about four feet away. I took a picture of the sight, send it via text to the entire Boss family, and went back to mowing. No sooner had I started mowing, then two other small rabbits came running out from under the mower. Unbeknownst to me, I had mowed over their burrow. While one of the second two rabbits escaped to somewhere I could not find them, the other stood frozen with its ears drawn all the way back so they were touching each other behind its head where it remained for several minutes. I felt really bad about the situation and I still do – the two rabbits that I saw first are huddled against one another in the corner a full three hours after this happened. I feel like a complete asshole.

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I mentioned in RST 48 that Ms. Boss purchase squirrel-proof bird feeders for my birthday. I must now revise that remark. A couple of months after I posted that, a particularly clever squirrel managed to find a way to climb the shepherd’s hook, hold on with his back legs, and get seeds from the feeder. Not satisfied with that, he graduated to hanging of the feeder with his back legs, then basically doing a sit up to grab seeds out of the feeder. Impressed, we began to start calling him Tom Cruise (as an aside, he must have killer abs). Soon enough he brought ‘assistants’ who worked towards maximum ‘seed haul”. I bought a hummingbird feeder to attract a hummingbird I’ve seen flying around the area, they knocked that over and started drinking out of that. This week, however, was the final straw. Not one, but two of my bird feeders have gone missing. We’ve not had storms this week, that isn’t the answer. I’m blaming Tom Cruise and company. Ms. Boss, who shares my disdain for squirrels, decided to take matters in her own hands. She covered the two shepherds hooks with spray olive oil. As we speak, I see them out there scheming to get up the pole. They’ve made several aborted attempts and made one nearly successful jump from a nearby tree. The battle is not yet over.

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Haiku 47 talks about a mother cardinal who decided to make a nest in a small real Christmas tree on our front porch right outside the window. We waited for the two eggs to hatch – rejoicing when the one egg hatched and lamenting when she shoved the egg that didn’t hatch out of the nest. Over and over, we watched mother and father taking their turns feeding the young, gaping mouth. Ms. Boss just happened to be watching out the window as baby took their first flight and captured a video of their second. She, and by extension we, were fortunate, because we never knowingly saw baby again. We wish them well.

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Shortly after baby cardinal’s departure, we returned home find an old, torn soccer ball moving oddly, almost like a jumping bean. Soon enough, a birds head – probably a sparrow – comes poking out of a hole in the side. They no sooner make it out, then another head appears. Their departure from this strangest of nests was followed by a third. Just when I thought it was over, the ball keeps moving – a fourth bird that could not get out. While I know these things generally work themselves out, I couldn’t help but change the shape of the hole slightly to ease their exit. We spent the next hour watching the new family try and try their new wings in an effort to get over our privacy fence with mama bird standing watch nearby. Eventually all four made it over, never to be seen again.

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I’m back at work five days a week now. While in some ways it feels good occupationally to return to work, I miss so many things about being home. Ms. Boss, obviously, tops the list, but I miss my back yard ‘coworkers’ as well. Birds, deer, chipmunks, rabbits, foxes… and, yes… even Tom Cruise – I miss them all. It was good to catch up with all of them today.

Now that I’m back to driving into work every morning, I find myself with at least ninety minutes of time on my hands that needs to be filled with… something. It used to be NPR all the time, but I got a little tired of it just before I started working from home and switched to podcasts. Now the podcasts I’ve been listing to lately have become tedious, so I pivoted to audiobooks. I chose Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning as my starting point as a number of the books I have read have pointed back to that one. I’m still plowing through the academic discussion that makes up the second part of the book, but the first half where he talks about the psychology of surviving the concentration camp is one of the more impactful things that I have ever heard. While I’ve always known about the Holocaust generally, thinking about the impact to a whole race of people is not nearly devastating as reading one man’s detailed account about his story of survival. I’m contemplating listening to Elie Weisel’s Night next or possibly pivoting to a similar expense in the form of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s.

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I vacillated between reading and not through my entire life. I can read to distraction when I enjoy a book, but often struggle to get through those that I don’t. I would often pass over tremendously interesting books because I knew they would get me in trouble in favor of drier tomes that I didn’t mind putting down. Another part of the problem here is that I have a personal hang up over reading more than one book at a time. When I get stuck in a space where I can’t get into a book and move forward, I’m usually stuck for a good long time. Such is the case right now.

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When I was young, I used to get a World Almanac every year. It contained over a thousand pages of facts and figures and trivial items. I read it cover to cover, every year and often reread random pages as time went on. I kept all the versions on a bookshelf in my room like trophies. Reading them, I crammed my head full of knowledge because you never knew when I’d need it. As might imagine, I absolutely crushed all-comers in Trivial Pursuit. These days, you don’t have to – you carry your cell phone everywhere you go. In some ways, this make me sad.

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I read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne when I was a junior in high school. To tell the truth, I just had to look up the entry on Wikipedia to remember just exactly how the plot went, but I vividly remember how the book made me feel at the time. Discovering the notion that a man of the cloth was fallible became the first sizable crack in my naïveté.

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I’ve always wanted to write a book. I’ve even started several. I rush headlong into the project and write thirty or so pages before it all falls apart. Steven Pressfield calls this ‘the Resistance’ (note the big ‘R’). My hard drive is littered with the abandoned husks of failed attempts. It’s a miracle that this blog gets posted at times. Fortunately, the entries are short enough that my ‘Sesame Street’ attention span can occasionally make it through one.

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I enjoy cookbooks. This shouldn’t be surprising to someone who loves to cook almost as much as I love to eat (and I do love to eat). The cookbooks I like, however, are a bit strange. I love old compilations that people used to throw together at a church or women’s groups or similar entities. Give me a spiralbound cookbook from a Methodist church and I will read it from cover to cover and be greatly entertained while doing so. They always contain interesting recipes, things thrown together that speak of the culture of the group. I can imagine potluck dish after potluck dish coming out of these books. Perhaps the king (or perhaps ‘queen’ would be the better choice of word here) of all cookbooks of this genre is More-with-Less by Doris Janzen Longacre. This Mennonite cookbook, given to me used by my roommate from college, contains not only recipes obtained from congregations all over the world, but practical advice on how to stretch your food budget as much as possible. It did its fair share in getting the Boss family through some very lean times. A quick search of Amazon shows that I have an older version of the book. Newer versions apparently have more pictures, less wisdom, and content skewed towards modern tastes. I’ll keep my tried and true version, thank you.

My at-home workspace during these times of COVID sits right next to a floor-to-ceiling, wall to wall window that looks out over a wooded ravine at the back of our house. Early on during my time here, I would occasionally look out the window at the birds that would gather on the concrete pad outside the window. It brought me great joy to see them outside going about the birdly business. After showing her a video of some of their more captivating antics, Ms. Boss decided to lean into that notion and bought three bird feeders to place right outside the window for my recent fiftieth birthday. While my productivity has gone down slightly, my enjoyment of my home office has grown tremendously. I truly appreciate her thoughtfulness in doing so.

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If I have to name my favorite bird in my very short time of being an amateur birder, I’m going to have to go with the tufted-titmouse. I have several honorable mentions – the beautiful blue jay, the cute black-capped chickadee (Ms. Boss’ favorite), and the fashionable red-headed woodpecker – but the tufted-titmouse is the one that brings me the most joy. Why? Well, for starters, they visit my little bird cafe the most. Swooping down from the higher branches, grabbing what the need, then flying off – there’s a great likelihood that I will see one anytime I look up. Second, they’re not afraid of the window. They’ve been as close as a couple feet away from me on the opposite side of the window looking for tasty morsels giving me the opportunity to see them up close. Third, they’re just plain cute. While their feathers are a drab combination of gray and while with a little brown, their actions are quite endearing to me. It makes me smile to see them land somewhere and cock their head with what seems like the perpetual look of “what’s going on here?”. They pretty much are you plain Jane, everyday, hard-working bird and it brings me great joy to watch them.

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Nature provides other entertainments in my back yard. As one would expected in a wooded lot in this part of the world, my backyard contains more than its fair share of squirrels. To say that these guys are well-fed is a gross understatement. To be fair, however, they ‘exercise’ on the branches in the back yard all the time. Running up this trunk, jumping from tree, running across the flat roof of my house – they are almost as entertaining as the birds. To be honest, I thought my new bird feeders would turn out to feed them more than the birds despite the description on the package of ‘squirrel-proof’. They have not to date, however, been successful in their quest to help themselves. It isn’t for a lack of trying. Just yesterday, I saw one of them climb up a nearby tree to the height of the feeder and stare and scheme and scheme and stare…

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In spite of the fact that I live in a subdivision, you can find a deer in my backyard just about every day, typically in the morning. They generally run in packs of three does or a doe and her offspring, but can number as many as six as they make their way through the back yard. It can almost look like a parade at times. On occasion, a solitary buck will make his way through. Only once have I seen a buck and doe together. Just two months ago, I watched the age-old dance of courting play itself out in my back yard as the buck followed the doe back and forth then back again the doe moving slower every trip. With any luck, we’ll see their spotted offspring moving through the yard next summer.

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The sounds entertain almost as much as the sites. As I site her and write this, I hear a bird – possibly one of my titmouses – singing in the winter sun. While they never come down to visit, at least one red-tailed hawk is patrolling the area this morning made plane by his screeching call. I hear a woodpecker furtively seeking breakfast from a tree nearby… which is better than when he searches for it in my house siding. While I’ve only seen one in my backyard once, you can hear mourning doves almost any day you want. It really is a symphony, but sometimes you just need to slow down and hear it.