Send A Heart To All My Dearies

Slice 31

I’ve been so lucky, blessed, some might say, to meet and collect over my time in this simulation or dream or actual existence, so many people who care. And I tell you what, I’ve given lots of them ample reasons to give up. And some have, and I am grateful they stuck it out as long as they did and understand why my load, at times, has been too heavy to bear. Especially when it was mine, of my making, and I was ignoring all the advice and effort being given in the name of goodness and friendship and kindness and love. 

While there are times in my past that, had I just snapped out of my myopic self-involved melodrama and went total soldier neutral, allowing others to steer me away from the rocks I loved to bash myself upon, only so I could blame the blood I left on said rocks, on said rocks (rocks which mostly, in retrospect, wanted nothing to do with me), I probably could have emerged from all my trauma, trauma-free. There have been cages I’ve sprinted into, locked behind me, and almost choked swallowing the key for that I remember thinking I would never get out of. Listing those who put me there before the key even started being digested. 

Here I am. Now. So much behind me that took me getting out of my own way to put there. 

I’ve learned a lot. First and foremost being that I still have a lot to learn. Day 31 is about looking back. Something I’ve put the time into to become an expert, but the time I’ve put in has been so tainted by false emotion that I am but a flailing novice. Knowing that is a gift. That awareness was missing for so long and is the main why behind the crippling flail. 

Forgiveness goes hand in hand with allowing yourself to believe in the power of people to change. To grow. People I’ve been lucky enough to brush off well-meaning advice from and keep them around tried to tell me otherwise. In the name of protecting me. To tear me from my mantra and philosophy that patience and dedication would always win. My very Idealiotic-seeming belief that love that was pure and non transactional would bring even the most broken of souls around to the light. But it wasn’t that way of thinking that they were trying to shield me from. I wasn’t always patient. I wasn’t always dedicated. I was too often consumed by vengeance to be anything worth anything that said it walked in the name of love, or anything pure for that matter.

I upset and frustrated people. I couldn’t verbalize reasoning for them. I wore the darkness I felt I earned like an invisibility cloak I’d won for being the most unfairly hurt so I would have a place to hide after all the terrible tragedies I’d been inflicted with. I was always way too old to behave so unbelievably childishly. 

Eleven months to the next slice check in. I am putting into writing that I still believe in patience and dedication. I hope this evolves in those 11 months. But now I believe in doing it right. There are people from my past who have things in their past that enabled them to alter my life in some way. In the dark days I would have omitted the understanding of those peoples’ pasts and I would have blamed them and I would have highlighted that the way my life was altered by their actions was negative. But my life was altered because I allowed it to be. I know that now. 

I also know that there are some people from my past who have not grown. Who have changed in ways that only, sadly, kept them down the paths they were on when ours crossed and I got damaged. For them I still have hope. But for my own sake and the sake of those who stuck around I now know I must hope from afar and help when I can.

Because I also know that there are some people from my past who have grown. Who I didn’t give up on even though I was told to. Who I watched others give up on. I was lucky enough to have so many people stay by my side. If you are lucky enough to be in a similar situation, I urge you to practice the same when you can. How lucky it is to watch a flower, absolutely bloom, in a place where everyone, including you, thought nothing of the sort was possible. To miss such an experience, out of spite or pride? Well, I’m not really sure why else we’re here. Here’s to the continued, dumb idealiotic belief in human possibilty, love, patience, and dedication until next March. 

I’ll leave you with what I tell my kids with fist bumps at the end of each day of the school year. Be good, be kind, be safe, and remember that you are loved.

True Superstars

Slice 30

The one thing I try to do during each slicing year is let the kids I talk so much about have their turn. A check in for the year. I give them a prompt and get what I get. I feel like one day I’ll like to look back at my blog the way I’ve used Facebook for years – as a scrapbook. It’s a range of emotions and I try and capture as much as possible. I might get a little more personal on these things than you’re supposed to, but in the end it’s writing. And as much as we might usually teach our kids otherwise, there are no real rules in writing as art. And when I write and it’s not specifically for a project or work, I see even blog writing as a form of art. Just as my kids, those I helped make and those in my classroom everyday, are art.

This year’s prompt: Ok, it’s time for you guys to write me your yearly post for my annual blogging. Here is your writing prompt for this year: This year we finally moved into our own place. How has that been for you and also, how has your year been since last time you wrote for my blog? Think about when we go see grandma at the cemetery every year and you give her the highlights of your year.

Annie – Baby Girl. This year, 6th grade, really let her love of reading and writing flourish. Next year she goes to junior high and won’t be in the same building with me for school for the first time since kindergarten. 

I’ve really really liked having the new place. It gives me my own space to do what I want in private. But I also like it because it gives us our own space to do game nights and cooking nights. I’ve changed more than I thought I would since the last time we had to do this. It’s been a really good year, and I’m doing good in school. My hair changed more than I thought, I don’t really have any. I’ve also had my own place to feel my emotions. I’m really getting good at making bracelets and I have had a few crafts shows to sell them. My dad’s girlfriend has really really helped. I normally don’t have a girl around the house. Now I do which I love because I can have girl talk. Which again I can’t usually do very often so that makes me very happy. My best friend has been a lot of help. Just making me happy and keeping me busy. 

Corgan – middle guy. Sophomore year has seen him shedding some of his athletic identity while getting much better at cracking the books. I’ve been thrilled watching his exploits on fields and courts his whole life and now look forward to whatever he decides is next.

moving into our own house and having our own space is a big change thinking that we’ve never had that. It made me think of the people i have seen on the way and have been with and it has made me very grateful for them and for the person i am.  I’ve learned alot of things since the last time we did this and i have learned alot about myself. this past year was definitely a challenge for me mentally but it has made me grow large amounts in my academics.

Eddie – The Big One. 2nd year college student. He’s basically doing it all on his own, his way. I wish all my wishes he didn’t have to, but am so proud of all the things he does, school and otherwise. 

In the last year I have done a lot. my dad getting his new place is nice and i’m super happy for him. it’s definitely effected me the least just because I’m living at school 8/9 months of the year. Some constants since my last time doing this are that I am still dating the same girl I was a year or so ago which I am very happy with. I am now taking leadership roles within my fraternity and have a lot of people telling me to run for vice president and then president so that’ll be a fun little update for the next time my dad does this. I am no longer a finance major after realizing i couldn’t do math for the rest of my life so I have switched over to Marketing instead. Grades are definitely good enough I think i’m pretty much a master at the game of doing enough to keep solid grades and always having a really stressful finals week. but to me it’s worth it i’m having the time of my life these past 2 years and i hope to continue doing so the next two years to come. Some major events I have coming up this year that I know of are as follows. I have a job working for Woodridge public works coming up this summer. it’s full time seasonal which will be the most i’ve ever worked in a summer but i’m paying my own rent starting 3 days from now (April 1) so that’s fun. At the end of summer me and a few of my friends are spending a week in Croatia as this will probably be the last summer that we’ll have the ability to do a crazy trip due to internships and stuff in the future. I’m super excited for that and I expect it to be the highlight of my year. aside from that I know i’ll be starting my Junior year of college next year making me an upperclassman for the last time which is insane to me. This passage is definitely a little bit more long winded than I feel it has been in the past so I’ll wrap it up there. I’ll update everyone next year.

One more day to go. Have to say it at least one more time. For posterity. For the scrapbook of the thing. I love my kids. I’m so lucky.

With Two Cats In The Yard

Slice 29

Coming to the end of yet another round of slicing and it’s forced me to reflect on the 11 months since the last time I did this. It’s been a major year. Tomorrow is the Cubs’ opening day so I looked at my Facebook as my daughter made the poster for this year’s annual pic and I was so skinny this time a year ago. This made me realize I didn’t write one slice this year about my weight status which is a shocker since I’ve basically doubled in size in a year and it’s always on my mind and because of that, each year I have written about it. I’m not going to waste one of my last slices of 2023 doing it again. I will only reiterate what I’ve said in the past – in old pictures where I’m skinny I’m definitely either sad or just getting finished being sad. This year I undid lots of being skinny and I’m writing this instead of going to the gym and for today that’s ok. 

Toward the end of the summer before last I was invited by a friend and his girl and their 4 year old to come live in their home. He’s a major part of my core friend group. Both of them are alpha and neat freaks and have their first and only child, still very young. For almost 8 years before then I lived in my aunt’s basement. This will not be a slice about how my divorce affected my life in any way, we are all but the sum result of our choices. My friend put a 2 year limit on the living situation and I was very hesitant but they were persistent and we moved in. This slice is not about how badly that went due to clashing familial styles, but within 6 months I was looking to finally buy a place during the literal worst housing market times of my life. 

I found a condo. It wasn’t nice but it would be ours. A starting point. A starting over point. The owners, however, were not very forthcoming about anything. The first issue cost me 2 grand above what I agreed to, the second was another 6. I agreed, signed papers, and my mom made plans to be here for moving day and closing. The 3rd issue that was brought to light would cost me another 11 grand making it 19 more grands than I initially signed on for. I was still able to walk away and did. Had to. Literally minutes after making that decision my buddy/landlord texted that they had decided I needed to find a place and move out in a month. I had nothing. Furniture, beds, kitchen stuff. Nothing but a bunch of mugs because I’m a teacher. I settled on renting an apartment one building over from my kids’ mom and moved in just before school started this year. Most of the money I had saved and been gifted went into building this little place into what is basically our first home in almost a decade. 

Financially it is brutal, as I always knew it would be. When this all started, on a first year (or 2nd, 3rd, 4th) it would have been literally impossible. Especially since things like travel ball were up to me to figure out. But we’ve been here since August and I furnished and decorated every square inch by myself and anyone who knows me and steps in can tell. I dreadfully miss my lawn and gardens and laundry room and fireplace and patio and garage. I will have them all again. My friend lives 3 minutes away and that friendship was repaired the day I moved out. They asked me to officiate their wedding next year. Living in basements for as long as I did always came with some feeling of being in hell. As generous as people were to open them up to us. I look around at the curtains my daughter and I made, and the furniture procured from thrift stores, assembled from Ikea, or donated by McMansion dwelling friends and the kitchen and walls filled by my parents and can say I am proud. I was a stay at home dad for 10 years with my kids 100% of the time and then, suddenly, I only had them every other weekend and on breaks. I didn’t even get them overnight on school nights for such a huge chunk of their childhoods. And on the nights I did have them, it was always under someone else’s rules, someone else’s roof. On day 2 I went and got a kitten and got talked into 2. When we’re all together, all of us, it’s a version of a dream come true I’m not even sure yet that I deserve. And it’s totally fine that I know most people my age, most people in general, might scoff at renting such a lowly apartment at this phase in my life being a dream come true. I never thought I’d dig myself out and, actually, I didn’t. Not by myself. 

I’m not ashamed that I was able to get help in the form of donations or even a little shove from my buddy. I’m working on not being ashamed (too much) of the extra happy pounds that have come with being able to cook in my own kitchen, too. I look back on those basement times, as near as they still are, and am shocked and amazed. Maybe one day this little stepping stone I’m slicing about will be looked back upon the same way.

Oh Brother

Slice 28

Today I’m going to write about my little brother. Until I was 12 there were 3 of us boys. Then the fourth one came. The two brothers born after me were Irish twins, so that meant two babies born in under a year. Mom was pregnant with me, the eldest, at 19. My parents, then, had 3 kids by 21. This slice is about the first baby. The 3rd baby. The one before the one that came when I was twelve who had a decade thinking he was going to be the baby of the bunch and then became something of a stretched middle kid.

He idolized me. Was weird like me. Got held back in 2nd grade and had to repeat it. Was always smaller than us two older guys and bore the brunt a runt generally does. Especially for kids born of a generation of working class parents. The ones all the stay off my lawn memes of today come from about kids who drank out of hoses and had to be home with the street lights. The blah blah rah rah we’re so much tougher than you memes. 

As we got older he followed in my footsteps, making a solid group of friends and exploring the world around him. Partying, meeting girls, pushing boundaries. Only, I was luckier than he was. I also had a sort of internal buffer he either didn’t get or accidentally smashed right through. He had trouble with the law, years of addiction, countless acts of deceit that come with addiction, rehabs, found a girl and made a baby, did a few of the other things on the list again, rehab, and found Jesus. Moved to Kentucky where his girl was keeping his baby safe and waiting for demons to be exorcized, helped open a little boutique kitchen and run it, bought a nice house on a cul de sac where the scenery is phenomenal, and became a good husband and father.

Due to sobriety. The thing with sobriety is, to those close to the addiction before, there never is a way, I don’t think, to fully trust that person again. A shield born out of “fool me 46 times shame on me” necessity. You hear someone tell you literally a hundred times in full sincerity that they are done with that stuff and just need a little something from you, only to find out things that are found out, only to have the transparency get clearer and clearer that you’re being lied to AND STILL help out, knowing you’re contributing to the bad, but have been beaten into submission and plagued by guilt. Especially when it’s the baby. Magnanimous, hilarious, adorable, charming chipmunk-cheeked baby boy.

So, when he quit his job we silently said “uh oh”. When he drove for UPS but suddenly had lots of days off and wanted to make the 5 hour trip to Chicago for weekends to visit without his wife and kid we wondered what the angle was. What new shadows was he hiding or hiding from? And then when he began making that commute, leaving his home and his family at 2 am every Monday morning to spend the week caring for my grandparents? Eventually moving all the way in and only going home on some weekends? It was a massive help but in the back of our minds things still weren’t adding up all the way. 

Knowing and loving and being betrayed by an addict means, eventually, a loss of trust, yes. But it is not only out of self preservation. When you love that person and know that glow of their soul, when clean and free, is a wonderful, shining thing – you lose that trust as a way to protect them, too. Because you couldn’t, or at least didn’t, when they became what they did. So somewhere back there you know the other shoe will drop. Again. You just want to catch it before it goes too far this time. 

Hospital trips have been a new thing for my grandparents. We’ve watched my grandma lose driving privileges, had to call the police twice when she simply walked out of the house and began wandering, and slowly lose her mental facilities as she progresses toward where she is now: stage 6 Alzheimer’s. My grandpa stopped driving recently, years after he should have, though it’s been years since he’s left the house for anything but a quick grocery or bank run. The old ironworker has been barely walking for years as well, despite his bedroom being atop a twisty tall flight of stairs. 

My brother just moved him downstairs. He changes his catheter bag, feeds him, helps him bathe and dress. He takes the verbal abuse from my grandma that only stage 6 Alzheimer’s patients can dish out before swiftly forgetting their misplaced animosity. He only sees his girls every few weekends. If this is some addict-fueled angle I will admit that despite the reservations a loved one will always have for a person like I’ve described, I’m almost all the way fooled. But I’m OK with that. He’s doing the job I began but could never do all the way. Yes, I brought meals 3 or 4 times a week for a few years and shoveled the drive and the walk and did my best but it was never good enough. It was never what they needed. I couldn’t do what he does every single day now. I love them so it’s really hard to admit that. The guilt is heavy. 

Whether he relapses or not my brother will be loved. He was all through the darkness, though sometimes it had to be from afar. Because during that time we had the times before to remember all the smiles he generated just by being him. Should he fall back into difficulties in the future, which is always going to be a fear, this thing he’s doing now has earned him more than trust. I’m so proud of my brother. I will always worry somewhere in the back of my heart, but for now it’s just so good to watch his soul shining again.

Embracing The Situation

Slice 27

My first show was The Grateful Dead in Tampa, Florida my senior year in high school. Little did I know, standing in line for 6 hours at that little record store to buy 2 tickets, having no idea who I’d get to go with me in my new state where I knew no one who liked the music, that this would be the genesis of a lifetime love of live music. From my late teens through my twenties I went to more shows than I can even remember. Summers after moving back to the Chicago area often involved trips to the city for shows 3-4 times per week. Live shows also bolstered my deep love for the meaning in the music, which I began interlacing into my life in all aspects, but especially romantically, at a very early age. And my passion for concerts immediately leaked into my parenting world, all of my kids have been to more shows and have seen more bands than most kids their age, and it all started with my first child. I had no idea how I was going to dad, so I just chose what came naturally, and hoped who I was as a person was good enough to give him, and his siblings, decent childhoods and cool memories.

I walked into the Riviera Theater last night, knowing that it was one of the venues I’d been to dozens of times. But it wasn’t until a started down toward the pit where I’d gotten tickets for Wilco’s final night of a 3 show hometown run to kick off their tour at my son’s request, that the visceral recollections began coming in waves. The bar, the high domed ceiling hinting at the balconies with seating above us, the step down toward the stage. I still had a hard time cutting through the distortion of so many crazy beautiful youthful nights in the city in so many eclectic and wonderful venues to remember exactly who I’d seen all those times, but man, I was brought back all the way into my core. Once we settled into our spots near the stage where we’d be sealed in by hipsterish characters of all ages once the boys hit the stage, I did remember taking my son to this place later in life. I looked it up and sure enough, I was right. We’d seen The Smashing Pumpkins, the band both of us have seen the most (6 or 7 shows for him, his first being when he was 4 years old at a little theater we’d road tripped to in Iowa, upwards of 40 shows for me), at the Riv for his 8th birthday almost 13 years ago. More on him later, he was there with his girlfriend, and it was a double date.

Music and love have always been fused by magic for me. All my life I’ve fused lyrics and chord progressions with relationships and crushes and, of course, heartbreak. It is no surprise, then, that in what has become something of a mythical origin story between my partner and I, music has played a big role. No band has an earlier impact in this mythology than Wilco. Immediately after Wilco, and a song in particular, lots of other music flooded in and continues to add to the steady rushing stream, hopefully forever. I was a fan of the band and had seen them numerous times well before we’d even met. I found out later that she’d done a little internet sleuth work, as one does in these modern ages away from the days when The Riv would be filled with cigarette smoke on a night like last night, and saw a picture I’d posted in celebration of Pride Day where I was wearing a Wilco shirt upon which the logo was emblazoned with a rainbow. I had no idea she had any interest in me, and she used her love of that song, as well as her detective work knowledge of my love of the band, to create a common bond between us, thus breaking the ice that melted quickly based on that first singular spark. Heading into the final night of the run last night, we knew they hadn’t played that song yet, so there was a chance we’d get what we hoped for when we bought the tickets. This was huge because my favorite of their songs I’ve been chasing for 7 shows and 20 years and they played it the show before, so I knew going in I would still be chasing it – so it was never like a sure thing we’d get our full circle moment. Plus, Wilco has a vast catalog and this isn’t some huge radio hit. But this was a night where live music magic was in full force. They played our song. We got out moment. It was magic and it was special and will forever be near the top of my mountain of live music memories.

My first kid’s first show was also The Grateful Dead. One of those weird, quick run incarnations after Jerry died anyways. I was a band new, stay at home dad with a 7 month old baby. His mom was a new mom and she had friends going out for drinks and said she thought it was time for her to take a break and go be young and social for the first time since having a baby. I remember she left late afternoon and soon after, a buddy of mine told me that Dylan and the Dead were playing at some weird racetrack. We never went into the crush of people, we didn’t stay for the second set, but my buddies had a DD and I would forever get to say that my kid’s first show was Dylan and the Dead (despite him being to around 10 shows in utero during those 9 months where his parents went on a spree in a last gasp of freedom). Since then we’ve seen so many shows together, and even more bands since I’d taken him and his siblings to a few Lollapaloozas. So a few months ago when he reminded me that it was weird we’d never seen Wilco together, I had to get tickets. Before his brother was born, I learned to be a stay at home dad with him. Wilco was a musical centerpiece, and when they started, pretty much exactly the encore I thought they would, I remembered so vividly, for the first time in about 18 years, the way my 2 year old baby boy sand the lyrics in that tiny window wherein he still pronounced his Rs like Ws. “The gweatest singa in wock n woll, would hafta be a Womeo” – and in that moment I was again transported and it destroyed me in the best way only live music magic can. 

I didn’t use my early years to set myself up to have a lake house and serious 401K right now. And I can’t whisk my girl off to Aruba or something on a whim like she deserves. I’m also not able to support my son through college or buy him a car like I wish I could. But on a night like last night, we can disappear into the sheer exuberance of a loud sweaty dark room and some special people creating a joyful noise, and none of that seems important at all.

And These Memories Lose Their Meaning

Slice 26

Life feels long and huge because it’s literally everything. It’s different for everyone, obviously, but each life is that person’s everything. So it’s easy to overlook or forget about the importance of the small things. Details.

Like when someone is overtly passive aggressive. I understand being someone who refuses to play games like that. I’m like that. So I usually pick up on it but then play along like I don’t, which, I suppose, is a game in itself. But the person who employs passive aggressive tactics either thinks you’re too dumb to notice or doesn’t care. Notice that. It says a lot.

Like when you have someone you don’t generally butt heads with, but when you do it usually pops up over texts. The land devoid of tone. Where lack of face to face emphasizes what you are bringing into the conversation and layering on top of those characters being received from the other side, thus making it easy to bury intentions in your own mind mess, sometimes triggering misconceived antagonism that may have been dwelling in the creases on one side or both (we all have somewhat cluttered creases), but that serves no positive purpose in being unleashed. Especially via text.

The other day I dropped my middle guy at his mom’s after the gym. He’s 15 so runs the gamut from cool silence, usually due to thumbs attached to brain attached to phone, to earnest and frantic comedian on too much ADHD meds. So on that day his silence wasn’t an indication of anything but something, his aura or some sort of mental bridge which at this age is like Indiana Jones rope bridge with a few sword slashes in it, had me pulling over in the parking lot just as he went in the door to text him asking if he was ok. He said he was, and his mom said he was for double verification, but then at 2 AM he woke up and spent the rest of the night in the bathroom, sick. 

Or like how I have two different body washes in the bathroom (still a Dove bar soap dude for life, but sometimes I like to treat myself) and just recently I noticed that I always use the Dove stuff that I buy for myself before work or other days when I won’t be near my girl, but always use the stuff she buys that she likes when I know she might be close enough to smell me. Realizing that made me smile the same way I smile when I second-naturedly go down the cookie aisle solely to look for her Pepperidge Farm cookies that haven’t been in stock for years.

In this all-encompassing everything life we definitely look back at our Eiffel Towers and Grand Canyons when we scroll through the memory books in our minds, but in the end, it really is the little things that built those monuments of memory, like the way she smirked when the first chord of that song started at that long awaited concert, or how they forgot to be cool for a second and squealed seeing the name of the destined last state on a sign toward the end of an amazing road trip, that matter most.

At Every Occasion

Slice 25

Thoughts from today’s funeral for a man who my parents were great friends with as I was growing up. They were one of the few families in our childhood tribe. From the time before you recognize your parents as people, and thus, those they surrounded you with just became part of the firmament of what would become your foundation. It made me think a lot about how my friends and I are doing the same with our kids. This man we were there for, he was their them at some point.

The man’s sister in law, who I’d forgotten had joined us back in the day on our every year camping trip we took together, called my dad “Eddie”. I felt that sound, directed at my father, in my marrow. When my parents moved to Florida 3 decades ago we lost contact with those childhood tribe members attached to them. When Facebook first reached me, the man’s two daughters were among the first to friend me. They weren’t the little girls from camping and other kid stuff, they were grown and had families as I did. I am Eddie. My son is Little Eddie despite now being the biggest Eddie. My dad, if not dad, is and always has been Ed. Except to these people. To hear him called that, so easily and naturally, by a long lost someone, brought me back in a way that elevated the emotions of the day way more than I was ready for.

I sat during the sitting part, watching men of the generation before that of my dad and the man we were there for, and couldn’t help but observe these men and see my friends and I. Spots and oxygen tubes and leather jackets and trench coats. But you could see how they were as young men just in the way they interacted with each other. I could see us in them. Someday. Far away in a distant someplace there was a point in their lives they never thought they’d reach but now are there.

The speakers were drained but still crying and it was fitting and beautiful. Toward the end the pastor relayed messages from the widow and grieving daughters we knew so well well before they were that, and a big chunk of those messages were about a family the man we were there for, who had four boys and went on annual camping trips where the man would carve trophy fish for the kids who caught the most on that year’s trip. My brother posted that he’d found his fish from the man just a few months ago on Facebook and tagged the kids in it and it was lovely and wonderful.

It’s a precious thing, life. All the cliches are true. Sometimes reminders come, though, and we can’t help but understand them again anew and on and even more profound level. Sad as they are, I’m glad when life provides them. It helps ensure we don’t take things for granted. For too long anyways.

The Drawbridge Is Closing

Slice 24

This is how the last day is supposed to feel. I know this. I realized yesterday a few of my recent slices have been about the duality or back and forth emotions of stuff. Balance. The bell just rang in our building and I’d like to say that I made it but I think my bell rang about an hour ago when a student carelessly broke a piece of my shelving unit. At dismissal when one of my over-hyped up spring newly spring broke guys laughed at a little girl who fell, making her end her day in tears. It’s probably good for him that my bell stopped blaring way before, but another teacher made sure he knew what was what before his week off. 

I don’t have any trips planned but I’m super happy for friends and colleagues who do. I do get to go see a show in a couple days as a double date with my college guy and there’s layers of importance to that night so I’m grateful. 

In small moments where calmness reigns I get and keep ideas for this blog. I have a few up my sleeve that may or may not see light of day on these pages. I hope they do. But when I sit to write I make myself write what jumps first from fingers to keys. I respect the authenticity of my written words too much to not. And just now, in sitting and typing, I know my last bell rang a little early. I’m not proud of that but I’m going to let myself be proud that I made it that far. Here’s to hoping this break will give me what I need to go the distance in the homestretch.

A City Full Of Flowers

Slice 23

One more day. My parents fly in tomorrow night. My mom was always coming. She comes more often now since my grandparents’ troubles are increasing. To help, but also just to be near her parents. It’s a bonus we get her more. A close family friend died, so now my dad is coming in for the weekend for the funeral. They are not coming here for sunshiney reasons, but I’ll feel the version of whole I feel when more of us are in the same state anyways.

One more day. The kids will be off for a week for spring break. As any break nears, seemingly each student decides to begin theirs at random intervals while in school during the week. You try to fit in as much as possible as early as possible before you get to Thursday and swear there is beach sand covering the floor on your way out. Break has already broken and most little minds are elsewhere.

One more day. I’ll want to use the work stoppage to have quality time with the kids. They’ll want to be on spring break with their friends. In the Chicago area, spring break almost always means snow. I haven’t checked this year. I’ll just go ahead and be surprised. I’m broke anyways so I won’t be able to do it up for the kids the way I’d like, or whisk my girl off to some island somewhere. I hope to create some memories with everyone in whatever time we have together anyways. 

One more day and we get a week off. From work, anyways. I will get more rest. We all will. And I’ll stay up late, break my promises to get to the gym every day, eat too much. It’s all a swirl of good and bad because I’m not perfect and neither is the world. I know this and I’m still excited. I’ll be ready to jump when break-type fun looks possible, I’ll remain hopeful that the hard parts won’t be so hard. I’ll even expect to wear my sunglasses way more than my winter hat. I’m going into spring break filled with positivity, knowing that while it may not ensure complete positivity, it will give me, and all of us, the best shot at it.

One more day.

1 And One Makes 3

Slice 22

We started watching a thing on a cult on one of the streaming things. I was given viewing options, as we already have a few things going, but when given a chance to watch cult stuff I almost always push play. I will say, of all the things I am not, “follower” is toward the top of the list. I know it and so does pretty much everyone who’s ever known me a little. I’m also very not naive. But I do think the reasons behind the name of my blog here and my interest level in cults ties in with my anti-follower deal pretty well to explain this affinity and almost compulsion.

Idealiotic – is me. To nutshell it, my honest stance on the gun control issue is that guns should all just be banned. Their only purpose is to kill or hurt people or animals and, thus, should be eradicated from the planet forever and always, periodt. Idealism. I’m also not stupid and realize not only is this impossible to do for all the reasons you just thought of and more, but the fact that lots of people love guns and, are people with brains, muddies the water even further. Idiocy. My ideals are so simple and, to me, obvious, that they’re idiotic. 

I’ve watched lots of cult stuff and the admission I am making here is that when I watch these things and listen to the cult leaders who become famous enough to have documentaries made about them, I kind of get it. Their messages of self help, usually throughout the entire first episode, make me want to join. Again, I’m not stupid, but the people in these cults are usually genuinely smart. And successful.  It’s a John Galt thing. They buy into this Randian view presented to them by some hyper-intelligent master manipulator and in my Idealiotic worldview I’m pretty sure I’m just narcissistic enough to buy in.

To a point. Which, I know, the ones who survive to be interviewed for these things always say they can’t believe how blind they were. But I think my strict anti-follower 90’s mentality plus the same qualms and fears that never let me go beyond Google rabbit-holing communes (for example, I know there are some communes that would accept me in to continue being a teacher for the kids in their community and we could make candles and all eat together and I honestly think it would be a blissful life away from lots of things I am not a fan of in our current world) would let me dream these cult leader missives are great and cool, but I’m pretty sure I’d never follow through. I need a mid cult leader. Someone brilliant enough to ensnare me, but kind and altruistic enough to not be plying people with radical new thought processes and ways of living without the sycophantic ulterior motives these raging deviants always have. 

I have kids and a job and a life and I promise you, legions of Idealiotic fans who swarm, sometimes upward of a dozen-strong, to my daily musings: I am not self-involved or narcissistic enough to step up and become that leader. I know, I know – that’s what they all say. Just…if I start asking you for money or to dress a certain way, maybe unfollow. The cult of Idealiotic is not something I’d wish on anyone, hahaha.