December Week 2
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December Week 2
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"Drugs are bad, 'cause if you do drugs you're a hippie...and hippie's suck!!" Eric Cartman Monday December, 10 2001 Counting down to Christmas... this part is a pain... I love the Morning of Christmas... all the stuff leading up to it is tedious... I took Christian to the dentist... plenty of cavities but all in baby teeth... According to the Dentist he is holding onto his baby teeth a long time. Trust Lumpy to be the exception to the rule... Christy went to a funeral today... someone from her church... I stopped by Cost-Co for some essentials... I have got to start Christmas Shopping soon, Christy has done the kids up pretty good we want to take the kids out to buy us some stuff, get them initiated so to speak. Animal Control Officers came up the driveway and talked to Mike, they wanted to know if we knew any relatives or friends of Mike Plier (sp) he is my neighbor, Mike asked "Why", they said he was killed in a automobile accident on Sunday and they needed someone to take care of his animals. I talked to Mike many times, he is the guy that was dating and then had a falling out with the lady that lives behind me... it was getting to be real nasty. If you have been reading this you may remember that I drove some of his "Period Cars" in two movies... He was not your average run of the mill Actonite, as a matter of fact in some respects he was pretty odd but I liked him a lot, this is sad... Oh... I found out about the helicopter circling a spot in the valley below me last Wednesday, it was a drug bust... apparently millions of dollars of property was confiscated. That's a pretty big deal for this neck of the woods... I burned my first music CD today, it's music Mike downloaded off the net, not really my cup-o-tea but still not bad, he surprised me with some of the songs he selected... I enjoyed making it, I even put some Celtic Music on my hard drive so I can make an all instrumental CD... "B" is going to need a little more attention, he is getting pretty down in the dumps... "Nobody likes me." He treats everyone like crap and wonders why the dump on him... poor boy has some growing up to do...
Tuesday December, 11 2001 Men are like Slinky's.......not really good for anything but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs. ... I was gone almost all day, same old Tuesday grind but I had to go to Home Depot to pick up an new fluorescent lighting fixture for the "office", Calie and "B" working independently of one another and with no malice of for thought managed to destroy the overhead light. It was tough to do, but they found a way... Christy went to Burbank with Bonnie, she got back about 1300 and studied for her Algebra final tomorrow, she is still a little sick too... I am still feeling punky, I probably have a touch of some sort of flu, Christy was sick last Friday and down in bed all day (most all day) Saturday... Hope I can avoid that part... tomorrow is Autumn's therapy. Wednesday December, 12 2001 A full cup must be carried steadily. -English proverb ... Today is Autumn's therapy day Here is something I learned today: heteronym (HET-uhr-uh-nim) noun A word that has the same spelling as another word but with a different pronunciation and meaning.In the following poem, each end-word is heteronymic: Listen, readers, toward me bow. Be friendly; do not draw the bow. Please don't try to start a row. Sit peacefully, all in a row. Don't act like a big, fat sow. Do not the seeds of discord sow. In a pure heteronymic pair, the two words must be etymologically unrelated, as in bass, buffet, deserts, dove, entrance, lead, moped, unionized, wind, and wound.Words... English is exasperating and so much fun... it amuses me to know that people can make a living just studying words. Thursday December, 13 2001 I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self. Aristotle, philosopher - 384-322 BCE Last night I read the life story of a cousin I have never met... I took a long time to write back to him. I am going to plug some of what I wrote in here, partly because hardly any one reads this and partly because I want to remember what I wrote... And….Well,
the next time I start to whine about my lot in life and the petty irritants of
my existence I will re-read this and kick my sorry ass back to reality. Miscellaneous thoughts, fuzzy concepts and digressions to follow;
My
Bio is far less interesting and much shorter… after reading yours I am
resolved to go back and elaborate on my reminiscences. Your
Dad retired from WECo four years before I started with Pacific Bell, I have a
hard time wrapping my brain around that bit of information for some reason. He
probably installed the SxS (Step by Step) and AMA (Automatic Message Accounting)
machines I helped take out of the Central Offices I worked in, I worked on SxS
in El Monte from 1966 till they took it out in 1978… He sounds like a pretty
cool dad to have… built your own TV…damn… I am impressed… WECo guys were
my idols…they were some of the best technicians I ever worked with in my 30
years with Pac Bell, they saved my ass so many time I lost count… (Note:
His father turned 100 last November) The
trouble with e-mail and all other long-distance communication is that you
can’t hear inflections in voices, expressions on faces, and postures of
bodies. What you are reading reflects my education and ability to communicate
with the written word and your interpretation of what I have written filtered
through your biases and preconceptions and other sensibilities garnered over 61
years. I am always very tentative about opening up my ‘soul’ in e-mail
especially when I have some passion or emotion to impart. That said, I am very
moved (moved isn’t right, either is gratified, touched is wrong too, maybe
there isn’t an English word for it… the right word is probably stuck
somewhere behind a faulty synapse) by your ‘life review’, to be honest, less
by what you have written than by the fact that you were willing to share it with
me… thank you. You
talked about courage, and your discomfort with the use of that word to describe
what you have been dealing with… I hear it too when people hear that I have
adopted 10 children over the years… it’s bullshit of course… courage had
nothing to do with it. I had choices I suppose, but the truth is that the
choices were not really options they were something else… statements
perhaps… evolutions… I was just taking the next logical step. My kids are
what I am all about now, but they are not me, sometimes it is hard to find
myself under all the turmoil and chaos. The frustration and resentment I feel
for ‘what might have been’ is all there fermenting somewhere under the
surface, repressed somewhat but there. I feel them when I am with friends my age
who are doing the things I expected to be doing, trips, motorcycle rides,
movies, dinners, blah, blah, blah. I hate admitting how shallow I am… but
hey… I can evolve… ya never know Empathy,
sympathy, compassion, sorrow, grief and all the other words we use to describe
our attempts to reach out and touch someone else’s life are by necessity real
and hollow at the same time… there is no reality outside our own perception of
it is there… the Buddhists have come close to being able to describe how it
all fits together, the transience of life and the permanence of the structure of
it being one and the same… trying to make sense of any part distorts the
whole, like taking a handful of sand home to your kitchen table in the hope that
you will be able to learn what a desert is all about, or that a glass of water
will tell you anything about a river. I wish I understood it all… and at the
same time, I am glad I don’t. Life is the quest… God is the mystery. Or is
it the other way around? I still feel punky... going to go to bed... I will try and
edit this later... (12/14/01 all my typing is gone, I am too mad now...) (12.15/01 I will try to remember) Mikes IEP was at 0730 so Christy took Mike and Cindy to the Junior High. I got a call from Jamie at CCS (Autumn's Therapy), she says she was "coming down with something, she said she just want to cal and offer me an opportunity to back out of today's therapy, I said naw, I would be in... then I called her back and said I wouldn't, (fickle old fart aren't I) that would give me a chance to attend Mike's IEP. I arrived at the IEP at about 0845, they were nearing the end.. Steve Muggio, County Psychotherapist, Jeff Tome School Psychologist, Jan Luxmore teacher, Mrs Serbia Special Ed teacher, and Mr. Watkins Principal... they are all trying like hell to get Mike in school... somewhere... anywhere. I took Mike home and about 45 minutes later Therapy in Saugus, Not much transpired I understand... I went to IHOP and was thoroughly disappointed... how can a place go from being a top end chain restaurant to such a sorry state they screw up a BLT... I picked up Mike and went home, the phone rang and it was Christy asking me if I was on the way to Cindy's IEP at 1300, It was 1255, I stormed down there and found out it's scheduled for 1330... I was relieved and ... irked... I went out and killed 25 minutes getting mail, coffee and a newspaper... Cindy's IEP was with pretty much the same cast, No Steve Muggio this time we had her speech teacher, she was goint top boot Cindy but we asked her to keep her in her group... Cindy needs the one on one socialization and to be in a place where she is comfortable...Everyone is trying hard to help Cindy, she is the proverbial "deer in headlights" all the time... she gets lost going from class to class, she can't assimilate change at all, multiple instructions confuse her, changes in routine confuse her, she can tolerate kick-ball but basketball may as well be Quantum Physics... poor baby... the older she gets the more pronounced her shortcomings are, the harder it is for her to fit in. I am very concerned about her being the brunt of cruel jokes, or the victim od some other sort of predator. If you tell Cindy you are her friend she would do anything for you. I left the IEP to go get Autumn and the other kids then I went home to get ready for the ROF... I got to the ROF a little late because I had planned to get something to contribute to the "Pot-Luck" at the liquor store a block from Lois's house... the Liquor Store is now part of an HMO... It took me 20 minutes to find something and another 20 minutes to get to the house... pretty good turn out... considering... I had sent out an e-mail to what I thought was the entire 80 person ROF list but it was the wrong list... it was an abbreviated list that I created two years ago for something else... I feel like a real idiot... Oh well...
Friday December, 14 2001 Christy left at 0730
with Cindy and went off to teach a class at COC... He reloaded Morpheus... all the track titles I stayed up till 1330 entering two nights ago are gone too...shit!!! I can't remember what I wrote... ... CompuPic Pro came in the mail... I really like it, it is the best picture managing/editing software I have seen so far. I watched a very bad Giant vs Cardinal game for a little while and I saw the poor Chargers self destruct again... damn Raiders have clinched again... they are a tough team this year. I don't think they are as good as their record suggests, they win because they want to win more than the other teams do... they work harder. Junior Seau of the Chargers is the most amazing player I have seen in a long time... he is the Pete Rose of Football... He tries so hard... if he had been on any other team... Same with Plummer on the Cardinals great player... mediocre team Christy went to church with Calie and Autumn, then she went on a 2.5 mile walk, then she came home and went to bed...2.5 miles is too far for her to walk... especially pushing Autumn in a jogger. Sunday December, 16 2001 ... I got donuts with Calie and DaMoke... watched three pretty poor games...
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