pin your wings down

And when I fell asleep it plagued my dreams,
And 30 bits of glass had become my teeth

they were breaking each and each and every time I tried to speak…

I was thinking about the common complaint in marriages “we don’t talk like we used to”. In most cases the party complaining has the dating relationship as a reference and comparison for the marriage relationship. I even remember feeling a little worried that Elaine and I had less in the way of conversation after getting married. The thing that I have realized though is that there simply is less to say. When you get to know someone pre-marriage you progress through a slow sharing of all the stories that you feel define you as a person and the conceptions you have about life. (That is if you don’t rush it.) By the time Elaine and I got married she either knew or had been around for almost all of the stories that serve as both definition of who I am and what I believe. There was no need to establish those again. She doesn’t need to ask what I think about most issues as she could just as easily as I could state my position. There can be a lack of communication in marriages and when I refer to less talking that is not what I refer to. I still tell Elaine about what is currently going on with me both internally and externally and that is important. We just don’t sit up talking for hours like we did when we were dating. I think in some relationships that change ends up being a needless and somewhat stupid source of rancor. Relationships are fluid and are always in motion it is foolish to expect a relationship to always operate the same way.
I say all this as a backdrop because Elaine and I had a good talk a couple nights ago. I told her how I wanted to just get away from here for awhile. Take a slow drive down to LA with my friends from up here and then once in LA stay with my friends down there until I felt like it was ok to head back North again. She listened and then simply pointed out that I am discontented with my life as it stands. I just think it’s cool that she can acknowledge my discontent and not take it as any reflection on herself. It somehow makes it a little better.

Every few days I look at I-5 south and debate just saying to hell with it and making the drive. It reminds me driving to school with my sister in high school. Every few days I would ask her if she would be down with just ditching school and going to the coast instead. She would always respond by pointing out that it didn’t matter as I would just drive straight to school anyway. I wish I would have in retrospect, sure I would have gotten us both a detention and caught hell from my folks, and I can’t help but feel like it would have been worth it.

I have always noted the times in my life that were the most enjoyable and seemingly worthwhile were the time that had the greatest freedom and the least responsibility.

A day in the life of a Petco employee

This couple comes into aquatics and says they want some fish. So I say ok which ones you want. They walk over to a tank that has Marble Platys and Sunset Platys. Below the tank are two huge placards with the fish’s names and pictures. Now as you would guess the Sunset Platys are red and orange and the Marble Platys are white and black. So they say that they want a Marble Platy and I point to the picture and say “ok, so one of these then.” I capture the fish and when they walk back over they take one look at it and say “Oh no, not that one. It’s not orange.” Just brilliant, eh? After that the following occurred.

Man: “Oh and we want two of these.” *Gesturing vaguely at a tank holding Neon Tetra’s and Ghost Shrimp*
Me: “Ok, so do you want two Neon Tetras or two Ghost shrimp?”
Man: “Oh I don’t know which it is. I should ask my wife” *glancing around for his wife who was wandered off*
Me: “Ok so is it one of these?” *pointing to a sign under the tank that says Neon Tetra in big letters with a picture of the fish next to it*
Man: “I don’t know. I want two of the things with blue and red on them.”
Me: “Neon Tetras then, let me get those for you.”
-What I was thinking but didn’t say-
“Good lord man! Can’t you tell the difference between a shrimp and a fish?!! One is a flipping crustacean and the other has flipping fins!!! And what type of ghost anything is decked out in bright red and blue!!?? And why can’t you see the signs, are you picture illiterate?!! How do you have a fish tank, when you seem to be fuzzy on what a fish is to begin with??!!”

Ok and customer conversation number two.

Lady: “Excuse me, where is the Chinchilla food?”
Me: “Oh, its right over here. Let me show you.”
Lady: *Looks at the picture of a chinchilla on the food package* “That’s not what I have.”
Me: *thinking to myself “fan-fricking-tabulous”*
Lady: “What’s that thing right there?” *pointing to the picture of a Gerbil*
Me: “That is a Gerbil.”
Lady: “Yeah, that’s what I have.”
Me: “Well in that case the food is right over here. Can I print you off a care sheet for Gerbils as some extra material for you?”
Lady: “No thanks, if they are anything like Hamsters I know exactly how to take care of them.”
- What I left thinking but not saying-
Ok, I’ve got an hour left on my shift and I am really tired so good luck with your pet Hambil. I could get you a care sheet or perhaps a small animal identification field guide but you seem to have it covered so carry on.

Just let me run where I want to run

At work yesterday two girls came into the store. They were around Elaine’s and or my age. I was at the register but my co-worker overheard them talking about me. They asked him to go to happy hour with them. I was not invited. Here is what they had to say about me.
They referred to me as the “all-American guy” and said that they thought I looked like I was 12.
Now any ladies out there what the hell does the idiom “all American guy” even mean?
I take it to be somewhat derogatory. It seems to me that it more or less says that I fit a stereotypical image, one that they had no interest in. After all when they came to the register they didn’t talk to me more than what was required to purchase their items. Furthermore in the present political climate, any thing all-American is generally regarded fairly poorly.
Elaine said that it probably meant that I was “attractive in a common way, lacking any distinguishing or memorable features” and thus replaceable.
I have always been replaceable and was the guy who the girls never noticed, and usually when girls were asking the guys with me to go places with them I was left out. That to say this situation is normal. I told Elaine about it and she pointed out that what would it have mattered if they asked me out to happy hour anyway. I agree I would have said that I was married and that would have been the end of it, but we all want to feel attractive.

I think that guys need to feel attractive just as much as girls do; they just gain that feeling in different ways. For Elaine that fact that I think she is gorgeous is completely enough to fill her need to be beautiful. For me the fact that she thinks I am good looking is enough to make me content. But for me, and I would argue for many men, that a portion of feeling attractive is having the spousal opinion confirmed by outside sources. I don’t dress to impress anyone else and I don’t flirt or anything of that nature with anyone but my wife, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be attractive enough to be noticed by others. The thing about that feeling is it’s hard to explain to your wife without her feeling like you want the attention of other women. See it sounds paradoxical but there is a difference between attention and acknowledgement. I am happily married and love my wife and I don’t want other women trying to focus attention on me, it would just be nice to know that others find me attractive.
The reason I put so much detail into this was just that it’s hard to explain and this is the sort of conversation bull that will trample you straight to death. Caution is required.

I don’t know. For the guys reading this, was I somewhat accurate?

Oh and this is the second time a woman has believed me to be around 12 or 13.

Ladies and gentleman, submitted for your approval, a all-American guy having a all-American Christmas with his all-American family…in an all-American apron.

Work faster with templates!!

A moment of silence please, my external hard drive has died again, taking with it to the grave all my music.
In the hopes of a resurrection I turn to a file recovery service. Pray for the redemption of my music collection.

It sucks but I am ok. I am not that attached to anything I own. This mostly hurts because it is the one thing I own that I invested time and effort into. I spent one full summer loading all my music and another month recovery and backing up the files when my MP3 player went down the first time and now the external hard drive with the back ups gave me the finger. *sigh*

Cause honey it's over

Since the time I got married and got my first apartment, Elaine and I have had people living with us off and on. Greg for a little while, one of the couples in our Bible study, Elaine's parents. This summer we are taking on two new boarders, my sister Joy and Jared’s girlfriend Megan. The first thing people ask us when we tell them is, “Won’t that be hard?” I actually like having people around like that. Yeah it’s somewhat limiting and yeah, it adds complications. But there is something to be said for living in community (I would like to modify that by saying living in a community of your choosing). It wouldn’t be fun to have someone live with you that you dislike or don’t know. Maybe it’s an attempt to re-create college because I liked it so much. I really don’t know. My abilities along the lines of introspection are not as developed as I had hoped.
We all know how isolated our society is. It’s unavoidable and I do nothing to change my own role in the extending isolation. I just think its interesting how, to most people, the idea of having other people live in your house is so foreign and unthinkable. We go to our jobs where we have work “friends” and then drive home to our neighborhoods where we don’t know the neighbors. I think the idea of an existential connection between all people is somewhat funny. I think we have all felt it at one time or another, standing a large crowd and instinctually feeling the way the choices made by one affect all to some degree. The feeling that we can understand each other's pains because we all have felt similarly. (The mood is encapsulated by the song Existentialism on Prom Night by Straylight Run and the associated music video). That said though, I think that view is merely looking at things to widely. Sure there is a brotherhood of men, but nobody in that crowd you are viewing knows you and would never notice that you were gone, nor care. Thus we are as individuals fundamentally alone. These two concepts, the brotherhood of man and the isolation of the individual, are really just looking at the same thing on different levels.
Besides the fact that I like having people live with us, sharing what I have is a ministry for me. It’s my way to help people where I can. A lot of people I know feel the need to go downtown to give the homeless food, and that and if they don’t do things of that nature, they don’t feel like they are serving others. I think we all are presented daily with the opportunity to serve others, and I really don’t think the relative depth of someone’s need makes the giving more or less valuable. Besides, the thing that gets me is what could I possibly offer the homeless guy downtown? A sandwich maybe. What good is that long term? I helped him for a couple hours and the need is still there. It just seems that a lot of people’s needs are out of proportion to my limited ability to give. I am not good with people, with words, or with thinking on my feet and I never have been. Let’s put it this way, I try to be as honest as I can and I am logical to a fault, a lot of questions that would be matter of course to most, become linguistic nooses to me.

A "I know you. But how?" moment

My wife’s stepfather’s mom has moved with his sister to Oregon. The situation there is…complicated. But since that's not the point of my blog we will let that particular dog lie. The point being, I went with my wife and her parents to the airport to pick them up when they arrived from Florida. I was standing at the baggage claim when I saw this young woman who looked really familiar. Not “I think I stood in line behind you at subway last Thursday” familiar; more of the “You dated my best friend and we went to your house to give you root beer on your birthday” familiar. So it just started to drive me nuts. She was with what I assumed to be her boyfriend. Well, it was an assumption I revised when she hoisted a daughter I hadn’t seen onto her shoulders. I mean I was standing there shifting my weight thinking something like “Crystal Jordon, I swear its Crystal Jordon…either that or someone who went to Biola. But which is it?!! By all the gods the Greeks ever invented which is it!!!???” I very much wanted to grab her by the shoulders and say.
“Are you, in fact, Crystal Jordon?! No…ok. Ever go to Biola? No? Ok, good deal. Sorry, didn't mean to scare you.” And then I could let go a big sigh of relief and go about my day.
There are three reasons I didn’t:

1. Grabbing a girl by the shoulders and blurting out questions at airports gets you out of airports via law enforcement officers.

2. What was I going to say if it was Crystal Jordon? Fancy that introduction to the husband. “Yeah, my names Jeff. Your wife was my best friend's ex. We hung out a couple times and made out in her drive way for an hour once. I was so late for my curfew” *Chuckle* “Good times, good times.”

3. What would I say if she did go to Biola? “Oh ok so you did. Yeah I did too. I don’t think we ever actually met. So maybe we should just, you know, not upset the raft by changing course now eh?

Yeah but man, those moments can be intense when you just want to know something that bad.