Frog and Goat

This is the lamest damn thing I’ve ever heard of–leave it to the Brits to mock it though. Good beer and a cutting sense of humor–my kind of place.

When I worked in a bookstore right after graduation we used to sneer (yes, we were book snobs) at kids who would come in and head straight for the Cliff Notes. We sold those because the owner/manager was an idiot and he was in the family business because it was a family business not because he actually opened a book. Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah, making up some cock and bull about reading too much. That’s just great–make reading scary. It is scary because you may actually find yourself smart enough to figure out that you should question authority sometimes…heaven forbid should we do that.

I know Virginia weather is weird sometimes but give me a freakin’ break…

So much for breaking out the sweaters and hearty soups.

We went to the Mary-Chapin Carpenter/Shawn Colvin/Dar Williams/Patty Griffin concert and it was cool. They sat on stage in a row and went round and round playing songs–some were their own compositions and some were covers. Mary-Chapin’s dog Mona was on stage for most of the show. Mary-Chapin opened with Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone”. It was quite moving. Some of their songs were quite poignant and others were pretty darn funny. One of the encore songs was a duet of Mary-Chapin and Shawn Colvin doing a BackStreet Boys song. Since I’m not a fan of the boy band I don’t know which song it was (something about loving deep) but we were laughing and the women on stage were laughing.

I was fairly pleased with the crowd. As you may know, the folks of this fair city get all liquored up at shows and then proceed to shout through concerts. This really wasn’t the case last night. One person’s cell went off and Mary-Chapin asked them to give themselves a thrill and put it on vibrate. One person told them to just play (there was quite a bit of chatter on the stage throughout–all of it entertaining) and the 4 of them got a little uppity on that yokel.

Patty Griffin plays a mean guitar.

For dinner we had planned on getting pizza at Piccola’s but it was crammed so we walked down the street and found Cafe Mandolin. It was expensive. I got the grilled shrimp wrapped in pancetta and it was $20. There were 4 shrimp on the plate. I’m all for little restaurants with big flavors charging me for their creativity in the kitchen. 4 shrimp does not equal $20. The better-half wanted to get the pork tenderloin but the waiter asked the chef if that could be done in the time we had and instead he got the salmon-which he said was pretty yummy. We both had the potato and leek soup which was excellent. The chef came out after our dinner and apologized for saying we shouldn’t order the pork. She said she could have done it in time had she realized what time it was (doesn’t wear a watch). She gets points for that. We told her everything we had was delicious.

We got home around 11:30 and I stood on the front steps for about 10 minutes looking for the aurora to no avail.

I had to come back into this entry to add this little piece of information. The people in front of us at the concert last night brought their infant. Their child was a fairly recent addition to the planet so luckily it was asleep for most of the show. Hey, Mom & Dad, taking brand-new Jr. to a concert isn’t such a good idea.

The Einsteins at MSN have outdone themselves.

For those of you who know me know that I’m a fairly private person. And, that begs the question why I have a blog. Is it so I can share all manner of the boring and the superficial? If that’s true then what will make people come back to read? Am I really all that funny or am I only funny because the handful of people who actually read this blog on a regular basis are people I’ve known for awhile? Ok, who am I trying to fool, “handful” seems like a lot of people and I know that’s not true.

I read why, jerry, why and dooce today and both of them share things that are meaningful. why, jerry, why talked today about coming out to his friend and then having his friend come out to him. dooce talked about her life-long bout with depression a week or so ago. What do I talk about…cleaning out my closet.

So, my friends (all 3 of you), here we go with an attempt to not be so private.

For almost a year, my father has not spoken more than 10 words to me. I’m having a hard time with the shut-out but I’m learning to deal with it. I’m 35 years old and I’m done with bending over or bowing down. And, frankly, there’s been a power-struggle my whole life and I’ve finally found a foothold and I’m not taking the crap any more.

When I was 10 my mother died and prior to that she was sick for about 8 years. Sick–like I knew how to take care of bed sores when most kids were learning how to put baseball cards in their bike spokes. When she died, my father went somewhere else (emotionally) and we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him since. He remarried less than 5 months later to someone he met right after my mother died. They are still married. And, I’m happy and grateful that I have both my step-mother and step-sister in my life. In fact I prickle when people ask me which sister is my real sister. They are both real.

Growing up was similar to being in a prison. For some stretches of time it was like being in the exercise yard—all sunny and relaxed. But a lot of times it was not so hot. The foot was on our necks a lot and for little reason. We didn’t skip school, we didn’t smoke pot, we didn’t wreck cars on a regular basis, we didn’t stay out too late, etc. In fact we hardly had any friends because we didn’t want to bring them home. I spent most of my teen-age years pissed off and I totally hated high school because I was different than the other kids. I’m not saying I was smarter than most of them, although I probably was, but I saw everything through a jaundiced eye. The best thing that happened to me was to graduate and go away to college. I finally came out of my shell. I blame my parents (I know we all blame our parents for something). I blame them for creating an environment that was totally devoid of emotion and the only camaraderie was the kind that kept us so insular.

Anyway, there’s a lot of history that I could go on and on with but you’re probably already asleep by now. Let’s fast forward to a year ago.

In October of 2002, my father summoned his kids to the house and ripped us a new one for not visiting him enough and not visiting his mother-in-law enough. How those two things are related I’m not sure. Of course, for some of us it had been less than a month since we’d last seen him…logic doesn’t have a role here. I plainly told him that if he wanted to have me visit him he should invite me over. I told him I needed him to do that. He blew it off. I have asked my father for exactly two things since I turned 18. One was to show up for an event when I was a junior in college (which he refused to do) and to invite me to his house (which as it turns out he has refused to do as well). It was painful that afternoon as I related the story to the better-half.

Now let’s jump to Christmas 2002. We had my family, the mother-in-law and my brother-in-law’s family over for Christmas dinner. Everything went really well and people seemed to enjoy themselves. As my father and mother were leaving, things got out of control. My father laid into one of my brothers-in-law and for what reason I’m not sure. It was an ugly scene and unnecessary. That brother-in-law has been a black sheep for my parents for years. The brother-in-law was trying to make things right before the Niece arrived and he got kicked in the teeth for his efforts. When I saw my father a couple of days later, I told him I would never discuss my sister and her husband with him again because of the scene he made in my house. I told him it was wrong and I wasn’t going to be party to it ever again. So began the silent treatment.

I have made attempts to reconcile. They may not have been huge attempts but I’ve tried. Now I must harden that part of my heart. It really bothers me, though, because I’ve always been the one to say family should work through their differences because you never know when your family will be gone. I guess I’ve had my comeuppance. I’ve had dreams where my family is together and my dad and I are talking to each other. I need to get to the place where those dreams stop and I am not obsessed with those thoughts. It is really out of my hands at this point.

In some ways, I’m stunned that no one in my family seems to want to step into the fray and make this right. I know that it isn’t their responsibility, but I’ve stepped into the fray before in situations similar to this one. I know my one sister just tries to get through family events even though she knows what my parents think of her husband. She’s had enough I’m sure and I can’t say I blame her for not wanting to be involved. My other sister has the Niece and she needs the Niece to know her grandparents. That sister is also probably, in some part of her, enjoying the spotlight. I know it can’t have been easy to be the little sister. And, finally, my mother has to live with him…he can be tyrannical so she’s in self-preservation mode.

So here I am standing on the outside because I believe it was time for someone to say “Enough, Already”. While cleaning out the closet (you know I had to bring that back up), I found two letters my father wrote to me. One was from I’m guessing the summer of 1983 when I went to UVA for a Young Writers Workshop (I’m guessing because I went twice) and the other was from the summer of 1986. The letter from 1986 was my “emancipation” letter. I was in Germany on an exchange program and about to start college. There is a mini-tradition in my father’s family that you get an “emancipation” letter when you turn 21. My dad bumped mine up to 18 since times had changed. Both letters are very heartfelt and I am keeping them in our lockbox. One of the last things he wrote in the 1986 letter was that if he needed to be kept in line that I should do it. Well, Daddy, I’m doing it and being punished for it. Funny how that works out.

Thanks to the solar flare we may get to see the Northern Lights tonight. That would be totally awesome dude since I’ve never seen them before. Tonight we’re going to the Mary-Chapin Carpenter/Shawn Colvin/Dar Williams/Patty Griffin show so we’ll be out late. How cool would that be if we see the Northern Lights on the way home?

I found this picture in the bottom of a box of old tax papers. I have no idea who it is and my parents can’t identify this person either. It is an old picture on card stock and there is nothing to identify this person. I assume he/she is a long-dead relative but I really have no idea.

What do you do with pictures like that? Keep them or throw them away?

I’ve been cleaning out closets lately and I found this penny underneath an old typewriter. I assume the weight of the old typewriter over the years finally did the penny in but I’ve never seen a penny that was damaged so much. It looks like something much worse happened to it.

I also found paystubs from when I worked in a little place I refer to as Hell. I can’t believe I stayed there as long as I did for so little dinero. I should have known not to work there because when I interviewed they were recovering from a fire. The fire probably came up from the trapdoor to Hell that the owner used to hang out with his friend Satan.

The white paint has been on the tile in the yellow bathroom for a couple of weeks now and it seems pretty sturdy. I haven’t turned on the shower in there yet because I’m a little nervous. We still need to pick a color to go on the top row of tile so that row looks pretty bad compared to the other tiles since it still just has the primer look. I wish the pictures had come out better, but if you aren’t closely examining the tile you could be fooled that it is new tile–especially if you look in the bathroom from the hallway. The painted tile is, naturally, much whiter than the tile on the floor and I’m not sure if I should paint that over or what we should do.