Tuesday, April 27, 2010

My Garage Is Protected and Served




Okay, so I haven't been sleeping. Mostly due to Sam not sleeping (he's the 2 year old), but lately because everyone else in the house is sick. Not pukey sick, but coughing sick. The kind of coughing that keeps me awake.

I'm a light sleeper anyway...a few years back I heard a mouse walking on our carpet that woke me...so all of this hacking was absolutely heavenly. It's been going on for what feels like a few months, but in reality is only about a week or two.

Last night, though? Things looked incredibly promising! Ethan (he's the 6 year old) only coughed himself and me awake once, at around 1, but then a glass of water later, he was soundly sleeping. No sound from Sam's room, and everyone else was breathing softly. I ACTUALLY thought that I'd get a good 5 hours in.

The fuzz had other plans.

At 3 in the morning, I was dragged from the blackness of my sleep to the sound of hammering. No, that's not quite right...pounding, but on our front door. Someone was pounding on our front door.

I looked out our window to see a police cruiser (no lights on) parked on the street in front of our house. The police! I shook my head clear enough to realize that I was in my underwear (which is fine for the trailer park scene in COPS, but not for me) so I tiptoed as fast as I could to the closet, grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a shirt, and threw them on.

In retrospect, why I was tiptoeing was beyond me, because I knew that the policeman's banging on the front door was going to wake everyone up anyway.

I took the stairs two and a time from the 2nd story to the first, and flipped on the exterior light. A policeman stepped back from the door, and I opened it cautiously.

I've seen 24. Terrorists impersonate cops all the time.

I open the door, squinting half from the "adrenaline vs. sleep" battle royal going on in my chest and half from the light outside; and I looked to the policeman, who only said one thing.

"You left your garage door open."

...

I blinked.

...

I opened my mouth to say something, and he turned around, walked away, got into his squad car, and left.

I stood there with the door (and my mouth) open the whole time, watched him walk away, get into his car, and drive down the block.

I had, in fact, left my garage door open; and as I shut the door in a dazed stupor, my first instinct was to look for a camera to see if I was getting Punk'd. It felt like the middle of the night college phone call:

"Is your fridge running?"

sleepy..."Is my..my what?"

"Is your fridge running?"

"Umm..yeah, is it."

"YOU BETTER GO CATCH IT!"

click.

I mean, really? REALLY? Did you have to wake me up at 3 in the morning to simply tell me that my garage was open? No "sorry to wake you", no "I saw that you have a minivan, numerous brightly colored plastic Little Tyke toddler bikes, so you MUST have kids, so I apologize for the inconvenience", no note under my wiper blades in the morning that said "Hey, patrolling the area, saw that your garage was open, checked it out, no burglars (although you might want to organize your lawn equipment) but I took it upon myself to open your car door which was unlocked and hit the garage button to close it for you. Here is my badge number and name, just looking out for you".

NO, there was NONE of THAT. There was just WAKING ME UP at 3 in the morning to tell me that I was too stupid to close my garage door.

Thanks, Officer. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. To know that there are men and women in uniform watching out for open garage doors, and those same tried and true officers in blue willing to make a sacrifice to LET ME KNOW that it's open, I am incredible grateful.

Not only did you succeed in cancelling my appointment with Dreamy Fun Time Land, where I'm noticeably taller and able to fly, you also made me feel like a squinty idiot in the process.

Bravo.

I'm blowing a stop sign in protest today. You'll never take me alive.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Steve Guttenberg

One of my favorite bands, if not my all time favorite, is No More Kings.

I was turned on to them by our sound guy at church (who I think spends the service looking online for out of the way, out of the box music) and since I first heard "Sweep The Leg", I'm totally hooked.



Hilarious, funky, tight, driven rock. It's a thing of beauty. They'll sing about becoming zombies (Now I slide down the streeet, with no shoes on my feet, lookin' for brains to eat...), they'll sing about the geeks in their basements playing D & D (you keep on dissin' me, my low dexterity...wait until you hear the chorus..oh, yeah, it's a critical hit, my main man did double damage with it), or one of my latest joys, Robots Don't Cry.

It's a tribute to Number 5, the beloved robot from the movie Short Circuit, starring a feather haired Ally Sheedy, a young Fisher Stevens (that's your George Minkowski on LOST, btw) and a grinning man among men, Steve Guttenberg. Here are some lyrics, and you can listen to it HERE...

There's no reason to look under the hood
A slight malfunction doesn't mean I'm no good
I won't be shut down, I'm not ready to die
I said that I was sorry, but robot don't cry

(Hold on)
The very thought of losing out now
Is making me tremble
(Hold on)
I am alive, I am alive, I am alive
(Hold on)
Please just give me a chance now
No disassemble
(Hold on)
I am alive
I am alive

Hah. No Disassemble. The cherry that seals this cake of a song is the last 10 seconds, where it breaks down into a sax driven funk riff...and as if it were meant to fit perfectly in the song, the lead singer sings...

"Steve Guttenberg".

I laughed out loud, backed up the track, and laughed out loud again. I don't know what I have to do, but everyone I know HAS to experience No More Kings for themselves. Not only are they incredible musicians, not ONLY are their albums impeccable produced, NOT ONLY do they write lyrically about ridiculous things...their songs are just flat fun to listen to.

Just my two cents. Or, as Anthony would say, "I'm just sayin'."

Monday, April 19, 2010

Play-Doh Plans

It's Monday...again...and I was thinking this morning about sleep.

And how I seem to be getting none of it. And the sleep that I AM getting is in fits and starts, all due to a smaller version of me. Sam has decided that his nap is going to be from 8 to 12 in the evening, after which he really just wants to scream. For the past few nights, he's been in bed with us. Let me tell you, it doesn't matter what size your 2 year old is, he'll kick like a Brazilian soccer player.

I wanted sleep. He ruined my plans. My expectations were that I would go to bed, sleep for a good 7 hours, and wake up, refreshed, sun shining, birds singing, Courtney, in a sun dress, bringing me coffee cake, singing selections from The Sound of Music.

Okay, maybe not THAT far. But coffee cake sounds good.

It started me thinking about what I could've had. The things that I thought I was entitled to. I'm 34, I think I'm entitled to a little sleep. THEN I started wondering how shackling that thinking can be. Thinking about things that should've been, or could've been, if only things were a little different. Hopefully some of you know what I'm talking about; the women especially, if you're anything like Courtney, if you have a plan laid out for the day, heaven help the monkey that throws the wrench. At the end of the day, do you find yourself in a rotten mood because things didn't work out the way you had hoped or planned? Do you go back over your day, and think of all the times that it didn't work out, and you feel like you've wasted the day? Do you take that inventory of "unfinished business" and let that define your day? Did your plans not work out?

I have a question, then. Do they ever?

Does anything ever REALLY work out the way you had it planned in your head? I've heard people say, "Wow, that worked out better than I had hoped!" or "Man, that wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be." I have yet to hear people say, "That's exactly how I pictured it working out. Down to the last detail." It's either better, or worse, which tells me that we shouldn't hold our expectations that we have in our heads to such a high standard. The paradigm we picture cannot be chiseled out of marble.

Our plans need to be made out of Play-Doh.

So this morning? Let go of your plans. Let go of your expectations.Proverbs tells us that worry weighs a man down. Placing so high an importance on the plan restricts you from the flexibility of the Holy Spirit. Observe the plan as it fails. Make lemonade. See the beauty of the present moment instead of stressing about what did or didn't happen in the past. Step back from the plan and see the day from a bigger, wider perspective.

You just might see that you, despite the tool tossing primates, accomplished more than you thought. :)

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Pushing Creativity


As the old man (who is playing chess against himself for a fine set of teeth in Geri's Game, above) states to The Chicken Man in Toy Story 2:

"Ya CAN'T RUSH ART."

He's right, you know. You can't rush it. Sometimes it just has to come on it's own. Which is probably the most frustrating thing I can think of.

Except people who train their dogs to hold a treat on their noses without moving. How cruel is that. You know the dog is thinking of where he can poop in your house so you'll never find it.

I'm finding that, while the surrounding situation doesn't have to be ideal, it does at least have to be somewhat conducive to creativity. It doesn't have to be FAO Shwartz....but it can't be Dr. Joyner DDS either. Times of day are big for me, too. Afternoons between 2-4 may as well be siesta. Chalk up after 9 or 10 at night as well. I've learned to recognize how I start to dip, and how I start to feel, and know that it's just time to play a few games of online Scrabble, or armorgames.com and ride it out.

However! I've also found that plugging away at something (lyrics for a song, for example), plodding and pushing and poking, counting syllables and clapping rhythms, sometimes will result in exactly what you've been looking for.

In studying Stravinksy's Petrushka (in college...it's not light reading for me), widely considered one of the most popular and acclaimed musical works of the 20th century, he stated that he would force himself to work, hours at a time in some cases, on music that he would hate and later crumple up and throw out. But, after the discipline of working, the pressing of pencil to paper, the repetition of the same melodic line over and over and over...that's when it happened.

For a brief second, everything lined up, posture straightened, something clicked, eyes widened, and pencil could not keep up with the idea. It was as though inspiration came and blew away the gritty sand to reveal the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant.

I say all of this because I'm awaiting that inspirational intervention. I'm plodding..and as you can see by the time stamp (and the mere fact that I'm blogging) that it's nearly siesta time for me...but I'm pushing through.

I'll let you know how it all works out. (and some of you might hear how it works out, if you purchase some fantastic product from Group Publishing around, oh, say, Thanksgiving time).

And you people? Push through the boggy sludge...you might just find gold on the other side.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Expiration Date



Deadlines are a new thing for me. So much of my work, and consequently the deadlines, have been self-imposed up until this point. Self-imposed deadlines, self-imposed projects, self-imposed goals and vision. Hopefully I haven't become too self-important. Or self-impotent, if that's a word.

I can't think of any other way you can be impotent, other than self-impotent. You can't impose your impotency on others. You can't afflict others with impotency. It's like saying you're self-pregnant.

We'll just call it a word and leave it at that.

Anyway, I've got deadlines. Like, REAL ones. Like, "we want you to do this for us and we'll pay you but you have to get it done by THIS DATE" deadlines. Looking back, I don't think I've ever had one of those. Other than homework in college. And even that was a stretch. Never in the workplace.

Like I said, it's a new thing. And actually, I like it. I guess I didn't realize how much I would. I thought I'd react much differently. And now that I think about THAT, I wonder how I didn't know how I would react. Shouldn't I know myself better?

I should really hang out with me. I feel like my relationship with myself has suffered. I'm going to ask me out.

Hopefully I'll say yes, because THAT would be probably the most horrid thing ever, asking yourself out and having you tell you that they're busy, and they don't have time, and it probably won't work out anyway. And the you that you just asked out probably wants to see other people, because you "don't have much in common", even thought it's you, and you practically have everything in common, and then you tell yourself that "we can just be friends".

Ugh. Myself is a jerk.

At any rate, I've got deadlines. And I like it. Maybe I should stop procrastinating and get to work.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Yep.

I'm growing up. Right before your eyes. Although I'm done growing taller (much to my disdain..wish I was a baller...) and some days seem like I'm growing wider, there is one aspect that can't really be tracked, or documented with specifics.


Maturity. I think I'm maturing.


Like a cheese, or a fine wine. Jeff Dunham's puppet says that his wife is not aging like a fine wine...she's aging like milk.


I'm not aging like milk. I feel like I'm aging like a wall in a house that has gone through 8 or 9 owners; and each liked their own color.


I have come to realize that I really AM an onion.


Yes, I make people cry uncontrollably by releasing sulfenic acids, thus giving way to enzymes (that were kept separate) that mix with the sulfenic acids to produce propanethiol S-oxide, a volatile sulfur compound that wafts upward toward the eyes. This gas reacts with the water in your tears to form sulfuric acid. The sulfuric acid burns, stimulating your eyes to release more tears to wash the irritant away.


But I also have many layers. Like an onion. Many subtle layers. Like Bill Murray in Ghostbusters 2, when asked about his laundry.


"There's not just two states of laundry: clean and dirty. There are mant subtle levels...see? Take this shirt. Hang this outside the window? In 10 minutes it's perfectly fine."


That's me. Hang me outside the window and ten minutes later I'm perfectly fine.


But more than that, I find that I'm less and less reactive. Maybe that's just youth, being blown about tither and yon from field to field, trying this and crying over that. Now, however, I find that I'm a steadier person. A more thoughtful person, and also a person who is not nodding just because someone else is talking.


Ever caught yourself doing that? Lacing a conversation with "yeahs" and "uh-huhs", (really just wanting to get your two cents in), but subconsciously nodding in agreement, regardless of what the other person is saying?


I don't do that anymore. I listen to what they are actually saying, and I either agree or disagree, thoughtfully and prayerfully. It's amazing to find out what people are actually saying. AND it's amazing that then you are clear on what you agree or disagree with; there's no misunderstanding.


I'm an onion. I'm an enigma. Wrapped in a paradox.


Covered in secret sauce.



Monday, April 5, 2010

Day Two Of Adam's Renaissance


Wow. Blogging again, I see.

I hope this doesn't become a thing.

I have to tell you, the last few days have been a bit rough. Sam, our 2 year old who runs our household, decided not to sleep. Like, the whole night. No sleep.

"Can't sleep..." he says. "Can't do it..." I start out soft, cooing and patting. After the 4th hour though? 2 in the morning? The patting got a bit harder. The cooing got a bit louder.

And yet he did not sleep. "Can't do it..." he says. As if it was a stubborn LEGO piece he was casually trying to unsnap.

"Sam, you have to go to sleep. Everyone else is sleeping. Mommy's sleeping. (Bit of a lie there..she was as NOT sleeping as I was) The other kids are sleeping. It's time to go to bed."

"Can't do it..." he says.

Big props to my wife who finally took him in to our bed while I slept downstairs on our couch. That is, until, the other two kids who on the first day of Spring Break decided to get up at 6:30 and turn on the TV...which is in the room with the couch.

But it got me thinking today. Can't do it. I guess I'd like to think I teach my kids to CAN DO, that can't is not in their vocabulary, that I don't want them to quit on things, or just get so frustrated that they scream I CAN'T DO IT and walk away.

But Sam wasn't saying that. He wasn't upset, frustrated or mad. It was basically like him saying, "I've thought about it, this 'sleep' that you are referring to. I see that you placed me in my bed, which is used for sleeping, so you've given me everything that I need to accomplish this goal. While it sounds nice, while it may make things easier on you...I've decided I'm going to go in another direction. I can't do that. I'm going to stay awake."

How often do we softly say that? People, good or bad, make demands on us. Demands of our time, our talent, what have you. How often do we say, "Yes, I hear what you are saying. It makes a certain amount of sense, you have set me up to accomplish what it is you want me to do...but no, thank you, I can't do that."

I'm guessing you might do what everyone does from time to time, which is capitulate, overschedule, stress out and cram, all because you feel an obligation. Well, they're ASKING me, so I can't say NO...

I'll put it to you this way. What is the worst thing that can happen, if you don't jump when other people ask you to? What is the worst thing that can happen if, after the initial "I can't do that", they take it even further, trying to guilt you into doing it? What would happen if, God forbid, the other people got upset that you won't do it?

Folks, the worst thing that can happen is they eventually find someone else to ask and leave you alone. :)

Sam didn't sleep. It was tiresome for us, but he stuck to his guns, and funny enough, was in a great mood this morning. He didn't care about our lack of sleep; Sam was fine. Regardless of how frustrating it was, Sam made a boundary and kept it.

How many of us do that?

Thursday, April 1, 2010

I'm an I.




I'm not a D. I'm not an S, nor am I a C.


I'm an I.


If you've taken these personality tests before, then you know whereof I speak. Or is it whatof I speak?


I just returned from reGroup, in Loveland, Colorado. And if God doesn't live in Colorado, after he gave Jim Carrey all His power, I'm sure that's where He vacationed. Near Estes Park. Man, what a drive. And those of you who have seen this wonder kown as "a mountain", just back off. I'm from Illinois.


We don't have mountains. We have piles. And construction.


So, I'm an I. Here's what the test says about my personality:


Social, persuasive, friendly.
Energetic, busy, optimistic, distractible.
Imaginative, focus on the new and future.
Poor time managers. Focused on people than tasks.
Tell rather than ask.
Ask 'Who?'
And you all wonder why I haven't blogged since December...:) I've been busy! (See "distracted")
At any rate, the trip was amazing, I met some incredible people, and they've inspired me to hopefully get over that hump of thinking that I can't write what I'm thinking on a blog. It's why I don't tweet. Do people really care about my trip to the store? Do they really wonder what movie I'm going to? Furthermore, do I want them to know?
I think they do. And I think I want them to know. So there.
And, chances are, since I can't change my I any more than you can change your attitude when stuck behind a 90 year old woman driving in that imaginary lane on the highway, I'll probably write for a few weeks.
Then get distrac....hey...something shiny.....