February 01
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February 01
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"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time, it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable." Sydney Harris. Well they approved that guy... Ashcroft... hope they (Congress) know what they are doing... don't know the fella personally but I can honestly say I never heard a kind word about him... and I disagree with most everything he stands for... but... I'm just an old Hippy wannabe... what do I know. I had trouble with FrontPage last night, couldn't get it to load (FTP) to the WEB... really made me nuts...I figured out what the problem was this morning... somehow the file I use to access GeoCities got blown away and it defaulted to the site name... I suspect the culprit was Norton CleanSweep... if so it is the third time it has damaged my computer my deleting stuff I didn't want deleted... Irksome... so CleanSweep is history.
I took Cindy with me and we went shopping all over Palmdale... she behaved quite well, I was impressed. We stopped at the Acton Market last because I had forgotten cream cheese for the bagels... As I was paying at the counter five or six teenaged girls came in wearing strapless gowns and tiara's in their hair... they were very excited about something and seemed pretty uncomfortable in their high heals and the dresses were making them nervous too, they were tugging at the bodices as though they were not so sure that the engineering was capable of sustaining their modesty... they were snapping gum and talking like...Like.... you know? and I was struck by the incongruity of it all... it was sort of surreal, what I was seeing and what I was hearing were not meshing well in my mind. Beautiful young women, uncomfortable girls... trying to act like they looked and failing almost comically... delightful... incongruous... ominous... Calie will be one of those girls one day but Cindy... Monica... Autumn... I wonder... this Daddy business is fraught with questions that are painful to contemplate for any length of time. Friday February 2, 2001 Got another walk in today, I twisted my ankle and knee a bit yesterday and paid for it today... but, two days in a row... pretty good for me... Went on another shopping tour of Antelope Valley... this time with Calie and Monica... Hardware, Shoes, Food... they were a little rambunctious but were pretty good overall. I picked up Mike at his friend's house... he was all jazzed about fixing up a Go-Cart, and restoring a motorcycle... he has no clue what he is getting into. His excitement is encouraging though, it is good to see him get energized about something tangible and positive. I worry about him a lot... I worry about all of them. A person I communicate with regularly sent me this; "Just thought you'd like to know, you have just lost a friend" out of the blue... We have been communicating through E-mail and on MSN Messenger for several years, we have never met... 10 years ago I would have been desperate to know what I did wrong but today, the bottom line is, I have never lost a friend, friends have chosen other paths and left me behind... but I have never lost a friend. The trouble with E-mail is no one really knows how you are saying what your saying. A smile, a wink, a downward glance are hard to communicate in the Cyber World, friends usually write back for a clarification if they detect something wrong... "friends", one of those words that has different meaning to different people... I guess. I guess I wasn't very much of a friend in her mind, at least I wasn't worth any effort to try and keep, she didn't try very hard to save the relationship. I guess I was wrong... I really am very curious about what I have done to alienate her... ( I guess I have been a husband too long, we always assume we guilty until proven innocent) Saturday February 3, 2001 I slept poorly last night... It's quarter to midnight, I am listening to some old John Prine music... I love John Prine... in a way he is my inspiration for this (My Journal)... John Prine has been around since about 1971, to my mind he is a National Treasure, he said "I have good days and I have bad days... I try to make good songs out of all of them... " and "Writing is about a blank piece of paper and leaving out what's not supposed to be there." John Prine writes about... the way things are... no pretense... his songs are always true to who he is. Some are funny: Send my stomach to Milwaukee if they run out of beer ... send my mouth way down south and kiss my ass goodbye" She would if she could/And she should but nobody will. Oh my stars, my Linda's gone to Mars, wish she wouldn't me here alone... People putt'n people down ... It's the only defense mechanism some people have. As long as you have somebody to look down on you ain't at the bottom... so cold. John wrote "Angel from Montgomery"" "How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening and have nothing to say"
He tried everything his 13 year old brain could think of to convince himself he had a good deal... trust me, there is no "up side" to that bike... I took him over to Onsevio (sp) house he and Mike are disassembling an old Honda four wheeler ATV... it's a lost cause too but they are confronting a bit of reality and dreaming together... that's something I don't want to mess with. I did my taxes tonight... I am waiting for a 1099 from College of the Canyons... one plus to having so may kids is getting a significant refund... found out I can download all the forms from Smith Barney into Turbo Tax... pretty slick... it didn't work perfectly but it saved a lot of typing... It didn't enter what was paid in Federal Taxes and told the program I lived in New York... finding the trouble on that erased all the time I saved doing the import but I finally figured it out... Sunday February 4, 2001"Oh My Gosh... I'm melting like a pig" Mokie Quote... she was wrestling with Calie this evening. So, today was just another day... we started cleaning the house because Jeff was coming over with Keagan... It was about 0945... I went around the house emptying the trash bins so we would have some place to put all the refuse and met Jeff coming up the driveway... so much for cleaning. Christy and Jeff visited, we gave Keagan his Christmas present... Mike, Christian and Shon, (Christian's friend who had spent the night) worked on disassembling the motorcycle, I figured it would take them a couple days... they had it sown to the frame and engine by about noon... amazing... it really is junk now... Jeff and Keagan left at about 1500... after Jeff had his appendix removed he had to spend a week recuperating... he was fired from one of the jobs he had... he was laying fiber-optic cable... pretty callus. ...Christian and Shon were in the back yard "working" driving a 3/4 inch piece of re-bar into the ground with a sledge hammer, Shon apparently said "wait a sec" while he adjusted his grip and Christian was already in mid swing... Shon has a very painful cut and blood blister on the inside of the index-finger of his left hand... I have never heard a kid scream like that before... I was expecting to see his hand cut off... he scared the B'jesus out of me... he had calmed down a bit and I was about to call his mom when she pulled into the driveway... he started wailing again as soon as he saw her... poor kid... it hurt like blazes.
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Got Autumn to school, went for a walk... (Picture is taken looking South from Meadowlark School) 
I have been stalling Mike for about two months, he wants to go get a motorcycle a friend of his is giving away... he told me it was a 1991 Suzuki... all it needed was an exhaust pipe... well... it was a Suzuki a 1975 Suzuki 90cc Enduro... absolutely trashed... totally worthless... It has an exhaust pipe, as a matter of fact if you took the pipe off and threw the bike away you'd have salvaged the only thing of value on the whole bike... don't tell him that... there is absolutely no way it will ever run... I will take a picture in the morning... (Note: By the time I got out there he and Christian had pretty much stripped it bare.) I felt so sorry for him... expectations are a painful thing to deal with when reality smashes your dreams. We spent the morning together... it was nice... he is such a sweet kid in his heart, he has so many dreams, he is optimistic about his future and his abilities, he is a total pessimist when it comes to some aspects of his life. Reality
bites... 
