Charlie Brown

I knew a guy once, he went by the name Charlie Brown.

He was a hood rat, the kind of guy that would tell you his down and out story while chomping on an eight dollar cigar. He preferred Micky's Malt Alcohol to most any kind of drink, but that was probably because it was more punk rock than PBR at the time.

Charlie knew a lot of people. He went to the right shows, made the right kind of friends, knew the right things to say. He had an easy laugh and a sharing smile. Charlie never ratted to the cops. He didn't share secrets. He probably knew more secrets than anyone.

I met Charlie Brown at a local coffee shop back in the nineties, during a time that I was doing a lot of the same stuff; I went to shows and made friends and tried to say the right things. He told me he was on the street, and I kinda took pity on him. At the time I was still living at home with my parents. They trusted the people I trusted, since they knew I knew how to read people pretty well.

I knew Charlie Brown wasn't really down on his luck. I knew he could go home any time he wanted. I knew he could make a phone call and get a few hundred bucks from an uncle or other family member. I knew he wasn't the kind of guy that didn't have nothing to lose. I knew I could probably trust Charlie Brown, but I didn't know how far I could trust him, if that makes sense.

So anyway, I took Charlie home, gave him some good meals, had some good parties. Back then, I knew how to throw a party: invite the right people together and everyone shares a little of what they have, be it smoke, drink, or whatever. And as long as nobody acted like a dick, everyone had a good time. Reflected well on me, and on everyone involved. It was what I did.

Charlie stayed with us about two months. He did dishes. He swept up the floor. He folded his clothes and didn't steal the bait money we would leave on cabinets and tables. He did all the right things.

One day Charlie decided he had fattened up enough. His winter with us was over, so he had me drop him off at a restaurant where a girl worked and said goodbye. I saw him a couple times after that, but it wasn't like seeing an old friend, more like seeing someone you went to school with a decade ago.

Sometimes I think about Charlie Brown, you know, I wonder what he's up to. Maybe he's got a beer belly and three kids and a dog that won't shut the fuck up. Maybe he's got a mortgage and a rich wife and he spends his days waxing their four cars in the garage.

I think he came up with his own street name. I think he did it because of the old saying, "You're a good man, Charlie Brown." But I don't really know if he was a good man. Or is. I think he was a way for us good men to realize we were really the good men. Not that he's a bad man, you know. He never took the twenty from the kitchen table, never stole from us. He knew we were open and honest with him, and I'm pretty sure he was smart enough to know you don't fuck with those kind of people.

Sometimes you have to roll-start

There's an odd feeling that I've done all this before. Sometimes I focus on the thing I'm doing and it feels fresh, new, inviting, and requiring bravery. Other times it feels like I'm adding another mark to the list, but it's the same mark as so many other days.

I think I get this feeling the day after payday every time. Usually it's when most of the money is accounted for and is already allocated to bills and food and etc. Truth be told, I make enough money to have shelter and food to eat and even some fun stuff on the side, but it's always so close.

I guess this is what it's like to be in near-poverty? Or maybe what it's like to just not be really rich?

We attended a wedding this weekend, sans children. It was a nice, humble, quick, non-religious wedding with a full open bar at the reception. The food was good, the people were nice, and everything felt right about it. WHY CAN'T MORE WEDDINGS BE LIKE THIS?

After the wedding we hung around for a while, listened to the toasts, ate some dinner, then rushed out to go to a drag pageant our friend was competing in. He didn't win, but was very delightful.

We pretty much slept in all Sunday, didn't get anything done that we needed to do, and now it's Monday!

Maybe that's why I feel so shitty: I didn't get to finish anything on my internal list. No check marks. And now it's back to the grind-stone and doing the same shit I always do.

A recurring check-mark that is always a positive is the kids. I think people have kids just so that they can keep track of the passage of time. Both are getting so big, so wise even though they're still so young. They say things some times that just... weird me out they're so precocious. One will be talking to the other and (in a way of teaching the other something that neither really knows about, like how the brain works) will say something so profound it just makes me wonder. But then they'll turn around and just be kids again.

Life is good, though. Fall is essentially here: the windshield of the car/truck/thing is fogged up in the mornings, jackets have to be on if you're outside for more than ten minutes, and I can almost smell cinnamon everywhere. Soon it'll be time for the sweaters and then hats. And football. And snow shovels. But then later it'll be time for digging and planting and growing.

And I like that kind of cycle.

Paul Bunyanish

Our back yard is what some would describe as completely overrun by bushes, vines, and other nefarious plants and weeds. The guy that lived in the house before we did tried his best, I think he really did, but he didn't dig deep enough. He cut the vines but he didn't pull them down from the trees. He trimmed some tree limbs, but didn't do a proper job of it. Really, he just didn't really know what he was doing.

So there's a fenced-in area, about fifteen or twenty feet deep, then behind the fence there's another six feet or so and then there's a stone wall that's around four feet tall. Then behind that there's another fifteen or twenty feet, and then what's left of an alley.

The fenced-in area is pretty clear of debris and weeds, the only issue is a huge pine tree that has had free reign over the back yard. The branches were everywhere until my wife did some proper pruning, and now it's more manageable.

The area behind the fence, the little six feet section? Yeah, it's completely filled in with old brush and cuttings from whatever pruning the dude tried to do in years past. So the whole area is about two feet deep of leaves, pine needles, and otherwise carpeting filled with spiders and bugs of all varieties. Scary.

The main source of all the vines that have been strangling the trees in the back yard seems to be coming from around some honeysuckle and mulberry trees, the two species lending themselves greatly to split branches and great highways for the vines to travel up.

One of the trees we decided to cut down yesterday.

It's weird, the amount of sunlight one tree felling can grant you when the space it occupied is no longer occupied. And now we're able to see back into the back-back-back yard, and we've seen things like baseball mitts, broken TVs, old tires, big round bouy things, and all manner of other debris from years forgotten.

We've planned some of this plant removal from before moving in, noticing how completely overrun the area back there truly is. But now that we've actually taken that first step into the great beyond, it's as if the job is just too big. There are just too many vines. The honeysuckle is just too overgrown.

But there's still the remains of the mulberry in the back yard. The eight or so big branches and the hundreds of small branches that are in piles, waiting to dry so we can then burn them all.

And then, perhaps, we can start to cut down another small tree/bush and continue the process until the back-back-back yard is reclaimed.

Tides of Change

So today is the first day of school for the kids. As a parent, I'm hopeful that they make new friends, learn new things, and generally have a good year at their new school. But for us, today is a milestone that is a little more significant than typical first days of school.

Almost a year ago, both our kids kept coming home from school in a bad mood. Not a typical bad mood, but seriously depressed. We asked both of them what was going on, and their stories were almost identical: the other kids in their classes were inappropriate, and their teachers had no idea what to do to keep everyone in line.

Granted, kids are kids, and they could have been just as much of a bother to the teacher and their own peers and could have just been giving us lip service, but we investigated and found that their teachers were relatively new to the gig and basically had no idea how to handle discipline problems.

Instead of singling out a bad student and isolating them, they would punish the entire class. Instead of rewarding good behavior and performance, they would ignore the good stuff and focus on only the bad. Instead of proactively reaching out to parents or other staff for assistance and behavior modification, they went with the status quo and treated the class as if it were an army platoon. Everyone had their collective benefits taken away (no recess, no free time, constant yelling), and everyone was shifted into the guilty category instead of seeing any sort of reward for good behavior.

Both kids were exhausted by the end of the day. They got good marks on tests and homework, and both kids always got good behavioral notes, but they acted as if they were being punished all day every day.

My son's first grade class seemed to be run by a group of three children, with the teacher doing all she could just to move the class forward by inches. My daughter's fourth grade class seemed as if it were a boat left adrift with barely a paddle amongst all thirty kids.

My wife and I tried to console the kids. We tried to advise them on things to attempt to get the other kids in line. Nothing seemed to work.

The district as a whole seemed to be flailing in failure. Test scores were at the bottom rung of the scale. Funding was being cut right and left. The public school seemed to cost more than private schools in the area, what with the uniform costs and the fees and the supply list to purchase every year. Seriously, the cleaning supplies they wanted every kid to bring in was enough to keep a whole house clean for six months... Why ask thirty kids to each bring in four large containers of Chlorox Wipes?

But we knew the thing that would help our kids quickest was to get the fuck out of there.

Now, there were other benefits to us moving, don't get me wrong. I'm a lot closer to where I work now, so my morning and afternoon commutes are a fraction of what I once had to endure. And now we're much closer to commercial areas where my wife can hopefully find a job while the kids are in school. But I believe the main meat of the move was to get the kids in a school where they wouldn't be victims of a beaten down drill sargeant trying to corral all the kids together in a boot camp.

And I understand that by moving out of the district, we could be seen as adding to the problem. Less kids in the area means less state funding. Less state funding means less money going to the kids. But really, why continue to pay for something that just isn't working? And I'm not just talking about money, I'm also talking about the future of my children. Why pay with their time for other kids who just aren't getting it? And the whole argument about public schools being a catch-all for everyone and that everyone must share the burden is bullshit. There could be classes separated by abilities and behavior. I went to public schools almost all my life and the best schools had different tracks available for high achievement kids. That district just didn't care, or was broke, or the governing parties involved just didn't get it.

I just hope our choice of venue was good, and that the kids can find peace and enjoy their quest for knowledge in this new school. If not, we can always move again.

Scary Funnels

Sometimes I turn off the wake up alarm in the mornings and drift back to sleep. Usually when I do this, I seem to drop right back into deep sleep, the kind with weird dreams. This morning was no exception.

I don't remember much at this point, but what I do recall was that my family all lived in a very old single floor house, no basement, and everything looked brown. Sorta like a black and white movie, but brown. Not sepia tone, because people were full color, and mirrors weren't brown tinged. It was as if everything was made of wood perhaps?

Anyway, I think I was cooking? Chopping veggies? Suddenly the lights went off, and I could see through a huge window that some really serious storm clouds were rolling in fast. They were dark but had accents of a weird electric blue. Like a plane went overhead and dropped some really sharp blue dye into a big body of swampy, oily dark water, and that water became a cloud with little swirlies in it.

I see the clouds and know something bad is about to happen, so I start shouting for my family. They're not in the house, they're all hanging out in and around some weird smaller building in the back yard. It's like a garage, but without cars. There's a deck on one side with a bunch of chairs and stools and so forth.

I run outside, and as I'm running to them, I see a HUGE funnel cloud come out of nowhere and churn slowly, almost softly. There was very little noise that I could remember, maybe a low hum? The churning cloud seems to be lazily mouthing the countryside and in its wake there's nothing. It's not even like it leaves behind destruction, the ground is just completely stripped, like how a very efficient vacuum cleaner leaves behind no crumbs.

I get closer to my family and I'm shouting and pointing at the cloud (like, how the fuck can you miss a big electric churning funnel cloud the size of Oklahoma coming at you?), and they're all laughing, drinking lemonade, chillin. I believe there were snacks on a table.

In a way, looking back now, this all sounds very Black Hole Sun-ey, but at the time that wasn't the feeling. It was more like the cloud was only visible to me, and no one else cared.

At any rate, I convince everyone to huddle down inside the house. We're in there for what seems like forever, then I kinda check it out to see if it's safe to come out. I look outside and there's hundreds of these tornadoes, just like the first one but with different color swirls in the cloud. A green one comes by and scoops up the house, and me, and I wake up screaming.

I get by with a little help from my friends...

My friends are awesome.

Since we moved into the new place, the wife and I have been attempting to find a way to get some sitting furniture into our living room. Our last couch was just toast, it really had to go. So the new place didn't have crap to sit on, much less feel good on the butt.

We did get a great chair from her aunt (as payment for helping HER move a weekend after our big move), but that was really just a GREAT sitting spot for one person.

Enter our friends Mike and Meghan, who also moved recently. They found that they had a chaise that just didn't quite fit into their new house, as well as a very sturdy coffee table that fit great in front of the chaise, but again, not in the new place.

For about a week I was trying to coordinate the use of someone's truck to go pick up the stuff from Mike and Meghan, but every time I got close to getting transportation, something went wrong.

Lo and behold, I get a message Thursday of last week stating that Mike and another buddy Jason would be dropping by with the furniture on Saturday! They were doing some sort of epic city-wide furniture rearrangement with multiple houses, lots of big furniture, and a rental truck.

So now we have a respectable amount of sitting space in our living room. I've yet to grab a picture, but now we don't really have anything preventing a housewarming party. I'm thinking Aug 18. With the meatfest.

This is what it is to be a grown up.

Everything is in place. The owls are on the shelf, the books are up in some sort of weird order, and the yard is mostly kept clear.

The car is functioning, even though borrowed time is not even close to a good adjective to describe how long it will last.

The kids are healthy and staying peaceful. They tend to get too lodged into things that must be provided electricity, but once school starts and they make friends, things may change a little.

But the thing that isn't set up correctly, at least the thing that bugs me the most, is the living room is still in shambles.

Our television died at our old place. I tried to fix it, but I guess I wasn't good enough with the soldering stuff to make it work again. We also pitched the couch, thinking it wouldn't be very long until we got a new one.

It really isn't a big deal to not have a living room, but I find myself more and more just going up to bed to find a comfortable place to sit. And then, once on the bed, I recline and just fall asleep.

This is stupid, I know, and it's starting to make me feel like such a lazy slob.

But I've found the furniture places close to me that have what we need, and I can get them soon, I just need to be patient. I'm thinking maybe a sofa and a loveseat, because there are times when we have lots of people that come over and want some comfy place to sit.

The TV may have to wait another month, just because of all the expenses in getting moved... But I know what I'm after, and I know when to get it, it's just a matter of waiting and being patient. :D

A Rare Occurrence (hopefully)

I don't typically use this space to bitch about work, but I feel this is the most influencial thing going on in my life today, so I'll just jot down some thoughts.

It seems that there's some weird cycle of people trying to be excellent, then noticed, then appreciated, then they just don't care. At that point they become cynical, then jaded, then downright hostile, then poisonous. Then something happens where they go back to trying to be excellent...

I've tried my best to just keep an even keel. I get my stuff done when necessary, I don't try too hard and burn myself out. When an emergency comes up that I can handle/help with, I tuck my wings and divebomb all over it until the problem is resolved. Otherwise, I'm just another cook in the kitchen, and I may get in the way.

The problem is when these two ideas merge, and especially when they merge when everyone's in the poisonous part of the cycle.

When a VIP client asks for assistance, and the on-call guy doesn't drop everything and assist, it's a bad time. When the root cause of the issue is a certificate that expired days earlier but wasn't noticed, it's a badder time. And when everything gets dropped into my lap to correct, it's a really badder time.

But again, I don't try to over-extend, I just politely note the issue, find out that it was someone else's mistake that caused the cert to drop in the first place. I tell who needs to know what they need to do, and back out of it.

In years past, I would have flipped the fuck out, fixed all the things, then gone on a witch-hunt to fry those responsible. Now, it's not like I don't care, but I just don't care enough to get all finger-pointy. The cert is requested, other methods of hitting the servers are given out, and we're generally in an alright spot.

But this is just a sign of the times. Shit's about to get really bad if this is what it's gonna be like for the next few months.

Reboot

So we've moved. All our things are out of the old place, and into the new place. Our shitty, two bedroom townhouse/apartment in the middle of the woods is no longer our "home". Maybe someone else will enjoy the garden we built, or the notes I left in various places with things like instructions on how to light the furnace (seriously, it was hard for me the first time), or the other small improvements we made on the abode.

But now, now we're in a huge three bedroom house. It is fully equipped with AC, an ice maker, a dishwasher, and all sorts of things we haven't had for what seems like forever. I think we're gonna like it in our new place. It's within ten minutes to work for me. It's closer to our friends. It has a host of awesome little shops and pizza places and butchers and niche-ey things.

We're nestled away in this little part of Covington called Peaselburg. Apparently that's slang German for goose-shit, because during the initial years of existence, Peaselburg was home to immigrants that kept geese. Like, lots of them. It was food, and geese have to eat and poop.

Anyway, now the little neighborhood is quite pleasant, no goose-shit anywhere. I have noticed something, though, whenever someone who knows anything about Northern Kentucky asks me where I moved to, and I reply Peaselburg, they sorta drop their expression a bit. They seem... I dunno, saddened by this. They mutter something like, "Oh, that's nice..." and then just move on to something else.

What the fuck? The place isn't bad, really. The neighborhood is full of blue-collar workers who work every day and come home to a nice home cooked meal and then sit on their porch and smoke and think about things. That's pretty much what I like to do, so I fit right in. My car is not the nicest nor is it the non-nicest car on the block, so I fit right in.

I imagine it would be different if I had moved to some meth-production neighborhood, or if murders were an all time high just up the street, but that's not the case here. I live in a nice place, damnit. My neighbors are friendly, but they keep their respectable distance. When moving in, our truck got stuck halfway in the driveway, and several of them hopped off their porches to come investigate and offer their opinions on how to un-stick the stuck truck.

And anyway, I like it, so I don't really care what anyone else thinks.

I've got two grills now, too. Very soon I will be hosting a large meat-fest full of grilled sizzling meats fresh-cut from our local butchers. There will also be local wines from the vineyards down the street. You are welcome to come attend.

Potential Capacitance

A strange thing happened recently as we woke up and started our morning routine. Typically my alarm goes off at 6:30am, we roll out of bed and one of us starts the coffee. The other turns on the TV and gets something somewhat calm but upbeat going so that everyone wakes up and gets started on their day.

My wife had already started the coffee, so I hit the power button and thought about playing some music to get the troops at attention, but something looked... odd.

My stupid-because-I-just-woke-up-brain couldn't tell exactly what I was seeing, but the image was all wrong. After a few sips of joe and a smoke, I realized that the TV display was in negative colors. Everything was there, all the buttons responded correctly, but the colors were a weird metallic purple and green rather than normal.

Over the next few days I did some research, tried some reset options, but it sounded more and more like it was an issue I'd either need to repair, or just pitch the whole thing and buy a new one. This TV is five years old, and at the time I bought it, the price was $1k. (I had just gotten a bonus, and after paying some bills down, we decided to splurge)

So fast forward to today: my TV is on our dining table, back taken off, capacitors examined. I have a replacement kit in the mail, arriving Saturday, and I'm anxious to see if the $15 kit will bring back our sanity box.

If it fails, or if this isn't the root cause, an exact replacement for my TV is now at the low low price of $350, but it's the principle of the thing. Why buy a new set if the old one just needs some elbow grease and brow sweat?

In other news, we're trying to move. The school district we're in right now is so shitty, my kids come home depressed and angry every day. Both of them have teachers that cannot handle discipline problems in their classes, so they punish the entire class for the few issues that may come up.

I don't want my kids to lose any more of their spirit and drive. They're both good kids. They have compassion, alertness, curiosity, and drive. If they lose all that due to a shitty job (school), then I've failed as a parent.

So the area of town we're looking to move has great schools, is close to where I work (yay five minute drives!), and also has a  ton of stuff nearby for the wife to find a job. It's the right move for us right now, but I'm having doubts that we can afford the houses that are available.

Maybe my fears are unfounded. Maybe the move will be like new capacitors for the TV. Maybe I just need to pop the case and look inside for a few minutes to see what the problem is, and all will be well after shifting some things around.

Don't Fear

I'm seeing a trend lately, and I'm not sure if it's always been there, or if it's waxing and waning based on some weird criteria of the universe.

Death is an important thing. Some say it's the very thing that makes life so important; the conclusion and built-in timer creates value in the remaining seconds someone alive stays alive. Others see importance in the particulars surrounding the death experience, like the time or place or activity involved when death occurs.

I've met people who were denialists of death, thinking that they'd never have to deal with anyone close to them dying, like a pet or older friend. Usually there's just something else more important to deal with, or something more up front and center to occupy their thoughts. There's dinner plans to make, or school, or work, or kids, or entertainment, or whatever. These kinds of people are usually the ones most shocked when someone close to them does meet with destiny and dies.

The other extreme isn't any healthier, of course, those who brood on death and all the implications therein have similarly bad reactions to oblivion. I fit into this category, I fear, in that I tend to see things as being temporary. The building across the street will one day be torn down to allow another building to go up. The old hobo begging for change on the corner will soon expire, probably unseen and unknown. Technically one day our sun will explode into something none of us could ever escape, and therefore most of what we do is essentially without meaning since there is no permenance.

But the trend I was speaking of earlier: I have seen more and more people dip and stay into this latter group. We tend to be romantic (but not in the good way), shy (since we usually don't see a reason in making new friends if they're just gonna die anyway), and introspective (maybe there is life after death, right? well, maybe not...). I know rationally acting this way is silly, since I may as well make the most of my very short lifespan, but there are times when things just get so _heavy_, ya know?

The other day I was at a wedding, which should be a very uplifting and momentous occasion. During the reception and drinking time afterwards, a group of friends were standing around talking, and one mentioned to another how they were upset every time they catch themselves doing a physical action like their father, such as crossing their arms a certain way, or saying a phrase in the same voice. They were really mad about it, and it became the topic for a few minutes.

I couldn't help it, I got a little choked up and walked away.

I wanted to yell at them. I wanted to point out that their fathers' time is limited, that they should cherish every second they still have with them. Well, maybe not seconds, but you know, they shouldn't look crossly at the connection they have with their parents.

But then I remembered how morose I am at times, and I also remembered that some people just don't like their parents. I also remembered that my Dad passed only recently, and the wound is still fresh. I didn't want to be that guy.

But sometimes I am that guy.

It's hell getting old

I decided recently that my car just isn't going to last me long enough to get to the farm. The front end is shaking badly, the tires are nearly bald, brakes need replaced, etc etc etc etc etc.

So I went to my friendly neighborhood car dealership, the kind that lets you borrow money if you're a poor bastard like me, you know, the buy here pay here kind... Anyway, we looked at my credit report, looked at some cars, and they were really willing to work with me. It was surprising, considering how really shitty my credit is and always has been. I don't know if it would have really gone all the way to a scene of me driving something off the lot, but it was something I needed to experience.

I needed to know if all hope was lost yet. I needed to know if they would have just laughed me out of the building. There was a time when I had no credit (which they say is worse than having bad credit, but we all know that's a load of bull), and I had to use a co-signer for a car. Technically, my dad was the initial loanee and I was his cosigner (made the interest rate on the loan better), but I made all the payments. That was my first real newer car, and I loved it. Then Dad filed bankruptcy and the car got repo'd as if I was just a side-show fool.

So now I'm working through all my debt, awakened by the idea that someone may one day actually let me buy a car that doesn't shimmy down the road. I might one day drive a car that has a radio that wasn't stolen, windshield wipers that actually move, and the car may also be eerily silent (the one I have now always sounds like a big bird fight is happening in the back seat). I've got repayment plans all happening at once, we're eating less expensive food (hence the lack of anything cool on my food blog), and we're trying to make it to July.

July will be the last payment to the company who now owns the loan on the Saab. The Saab was the car that decided to have a cracked head gasket after a long trip to Tennessee. It still ran, but smoked terribly. No one wanted to touch it or even look at it for less than $2k. So I let them take it back.

The car I'm driving now is a lot like me. It has parts that are loose and things that are broken and neglected. It makes weird noises, but still gets to work every day. It never fails to start, but it's hard to steer. It's getting older, and the frame is all but rusted away completely. One day (hopefully in August!) it'll be replaced by something smaller and faster and cleaner and consumes less fuel, but until then it dutifully clangs down the road.