Dream A Little Dream

I have written about unrealized dreams but this time I want to share with you one of my dreams for the future that will never happen the way I hoped. Have you ever had this fantasy about the way things we going to turn out? It is right there in your mind’s eye as clear as crystal. And then you realize it was about as clear as Disney glass you got by buying a Happy Meal at McDonalds and you are Goofy. That is how this dream feels to me right now.

Picture it if you will. There I am looking good for an old man. I have retired after a successful career of making people’s lives better. Even though I never got rich I made enough to have a comfortable retirement. The retirement home sits in the hill country around Austin, Texas overlooking Lake Travis. A xeriscaped yard makes the need to mow something that my grandkids will not be able to use to get some cash out of this old dude. They will have to get it the old fashioned way: emotional blackmail. A little trail leads down to a nice little dock where my pontoon boat sits waiting to be taken out. The house is small but comfy. It is nothing to get excited about. It is just big enough without being too much work. And the back deck is the place where the morning cup of coffee is enjoyed with the woman I have loved since I was young. Sadly that dream is gone.

Don’t get me wrong. The house on the lake with the view and the boat and the emotional blackmailing lawn are still part of my dream. For me the best part was going to be retiring there with the love of my life. That love has gone. It is sad for me to think about what might have been. I had that in my head for years and now I have to clean the glass. The crystal cracked. What am I saying? It shattered! That really hurts more than I thought. It wasn’t until very recently that I starting thinking about that. Loosing someone you once cared about has so many levels of loss that it is hard to find the words to describe it all. That is one of the reasons I write. It is to exorcise those demons like Richard Simmons on meth. (And yes that image scares me as much as it does you.)

But just because that dream has died it doesn’t mean a new one can’t take its place. My life is taking so many new directions that I can’t even imagine where it is going to take me. There is one thing I do know: it will be something new that I can’t even dream about yet.

I Don’t Know

Don’t you hate those three words? “I don’t know” really bugs me. Not knowing really messes with my mind. There are all kinds of things about which I know next to nothing. Stellar physics, subatomic particle characteristics, medieval French literature, knitting, fine china and the mysterious ways of the female mind. Well, to be honest “next to nothing” is not a fair assessment of my knowledge of the female psyche. Absolutely nothing is a better description. And I know the females of the world like it that way!

Those things don’t disturb my mediocre mind as much as some of the other things I don’t know.

• I don’t know why it only snows on days that I really need to get out of the house.
• I don’t know why laundry can multiply faster than rabbits on Viagra.
• I don’t know why there is no season for hunting dust bunnies.
• I don’t know why my dog sheds year round.
• I don’t know why I feel guilty walking past a Salvation Army kettle even though I have put money in the last 38,274 times I have walked past one.
• I don’t know why the people I care about are the most likely to make me mad.
• I don’t know why there are dents in my walls.
• I don’t know why I get headaches.
• I don’t know why I bang my head against walls.
• I don’t know where all that lint in the dryer filter comes from.
• I don’t know why I always seem to lose one sock.
• I don’t know what is wrong with politics.
• I don’t know why the word poly means many.
• I don’t know why we chose the word ticks for small blood sucking insects.
• I don’t know why so many people don’t get my sense of humor.
• I don’t know why some of the most obvious answers elude me so often.

This Old House

Have you ever been in a position that you know what you need to do but also are afraid of doing it? Now I could make some crude, sexual innuendo at this point and my friends know that I’m not above that. (Once again there is another opportunity.) But this time I believe I’ll just tell you what I’m really thinking. It is all about my home. My house is ready to go on the market and I am both hating and loving this.

The hating comes from a couple areas. First off this is the longest I have lived in one place since I left home in 1986. Living here for seven years may not seem like that much to you; but it is something special to me. I remember when the house was first purchased. We were unpacking the bounty of boxes that moving makes us maneuver. Walking down the stairs I had a vision for my hopes and I looked around and saw what could be. Furniture featured in this future. Decorations and décor in this domicile were displayed. The warmth of a fire and the warmth of a loving family featured in this fantasy. And now it is going away.

The second part of the sadness comes from the loss of family that I feel. The marriage that was such a part of this house malfunctioned. The sons who shined here are only here half time. The dream of the white picket fence has become a nightmare. (And I never wanted a white picket fence anyway. Chartreuse perhaps…) My house is haunted not my ghosts and goblins but by the ghost of relationships past. What was once a sanctuary has now become a sanatorium for a touch of insanity. There are things that touch me in ways that are not good for me. It is a shock when you realize that you don’t even like your bedroom anymore. It is time to make a break and this is a healthy one!

That brings up to the loving part. It is time to close the door on this house in my life. That is part of my past. Now it is time for my future. I may not ever have a 2100 square foot house again. In fact I don’t really want one that big. The boys are growing up and will soon be only coming back for visits. It has been a long time since I had an apartment but I think I remember how they work. You have neighbors who make nasty noise at odd hours. A garage for your car is a luxury. There is always that one person who creeps you out. Sounds like fun!

Well one thing is for sure. There is a time for everything and season for everything under the sun. The season for this house is the season of selling. Wish me luck! Anybody looking for a nice, seven-year-old, two story, one-owner house?

Unrealized Dreams

We all have hopes and dreams of what may be for each of us. Many people even take the time to write out their hopes and dreams in order to develop a well-reasoned, orderly plan to achieve these lofty goals and have the fame, fortune, and future they desire. Then there is the other 99.999999999% of us who like to dream for the sake of dreaming without any hopes of actually achieving these fantasies. So many of us have either consciously or unconsciously adopted the philosophy: “If at first you don’t succeed, lower your expectations until you do.” Why do we give up on our dreams of bigger and better things and settle for the status quo, average lives that seem so mundane and minuscule?

There is a theory presented by a fine mind (modesty forbids me from telling you it’s me) that our unrealized dreams are not merely unfulfilled disasters; but are really a means to give us hope. Think about it. Let’s say you are forty-two and have not accomplished everything I..I mean YOU planned. You had such dreams of things you wanted to accomplish during the first half of your life and now you can see the big FOUR-OH has come and gone. As you take a figurative look at the list of dreams that you have never written down and wonder why you haven’t accomplished hardly anything on that list, it occurs to you: Maybe I should have written them down. After you laugh at the nonsense of the written word and impossibility of its impact on your mental state, it then crosses your mind that life is not over yet.

They say that forty is the new twenty. Of course “they” are people in their forties so there may be just an insignificant possibility of a slight bias on their reasoning. Meanwhile, the twenty-somethings are sitting there thinking, “Yeah. Right. Keep deluding yourself there grandpa.” But I digress.

If forty is middle aged, then we can consider that the dreams we had as teens and tweens are not out of reach. If (and this is a very big IF) forty is the new twenty, then there is still hope for all those unrealized dreams. But, (and this is a big BUT that may have something to do with the forties – let’s not go there today) if our dreams are not just unrealized but unattainable, I don’t think I want to know. I’m happier living in an Egyptian river than knowing that my hopes of being the bass player for the coolest rock band on the planet may be beyond my reach as a 42-year-old father.

Sweet dreams.

Old and Shoddy

When I was a teenager the words that would catch my attention in advertising were “new and improved!” Those were the siren song for a young man who thought that new was always better. Who wouldn’t want something that was improved? O.K. Maybe my Mom and Dad liked the “old fashioned” things; but not me! No sir! Old fashioned in my eyes was… well… hmmmm… OLD. Who wanted that?! Youth was king and I wanted to part of that royalty. What did parents know anyway? They could settle for old and shoddy of they wanted to be that uncool. I was going for new and improved.

In my twenties I discovered that there might be a possible and potentially costly aspect to those new improvements. This was the time when I was in college and paying for my own stuff. Did you know that the textbook you bought used for $22.83 that was supposed to be good for this and the next three classes in business administration was often replaced with a new and improved edition the semester after you spent that money? Surely the prof would use both books so those who had worked 4 hours at minimum wage to pay for the first book would not have to work 34 more hours to buy the new and improved edition that costs $167.21 thanks to the improvements made to page 385 where they had used the word “there” instead of “their.” Then again, the professor wrote the book and the revision. Perhaps new and improved is not always a step up (especially when you think of all the Milwaukee’s Best that could have been bought with $167.21. Of course you did not have the discerning beer palate back in college days that you do now and need to have a PBR to have a fulfilling adult beverage experience.)

The next occurrence in my life that made me question the wisdom of “new is better” happened on July 7, 1993. At a little over seven pounds, my son made me wonder about all those new fangled things. A simple example comes in the form of cloth diapers. I know what you are thinking. “Don’t tell me you are one of those eco-nazi-rabid-environmental-jerks who thinks that our landfills should not be cluttered with disposable diapers.” No. I’m not. And I’ll thank you not to call me names like “environmental.” I am not mental and have note from my therapist to prove it. I did use cloth diapers when my sons were born. I wore them! It’s not what you are thinking. (I tried. They didn’t fit!) They are perfect drool and spit-up catchers. You put one of those babies on your shoulder and put a baby on top of it and – PRESTO – they will immediately drool, spit, or just plain spew all over it and then proceed to make sure it gets on you, too.

The real nice thing about those diapers was how soft they were. My wife and I had no money so we enjoyed some hand-me-downs. These were handed a long way down since the last baby to use them was my wife. They were so soft that you had to wonder if they were even there. Sometimes they disintegrated from the bio-hazard that came out of the baby’s mouth so they really weren’t there. That was when we decided to take the bull by the horns (or the baby by the mouth) and buy some new and improved cloth diapers. Those suckers are hard to find!! When we did find them after traveling to 5 stores in 3 states they were not what we had hoped. Sure, they were thicker. Sure they absorbed more. Sure they didn’t have stains from strained succotash. Sure they were as soft as sand paper. Wash them as much as you want, they would still be effective at smoothing out raw cut lumber! Old and shoddy wins!

As the years have passed, I have mellowed and found that some thing old and something new can both be great. I don’t have to have the latest and greatest to be happy. I can handle not being the coolest with the newest things. (O.K. I still like new computers and gadgets.) The new mission for this recovering new-aholic is to help my sons learn from my mistakes. Old and shoddy can still be better than new and improved. If I can just get my teenager to stop laughing and referring to me as old fashioned, I think I might stand a chance.

Road Construction

 While driving this morning at an hour that is best left to milkmen and burglars who are heading home after a dishonest nights work, I came across something that amazed me. It was a construction zone. Not only was it a construction zone but it had men at work. Well, men standing around signs that said they were at work. They must have been doing some serious, strenuous supervision of the one guy who was actually holding a shovel. Of course he was just standing there looking at the 7 supervisors with a look that said, “Where is the ‘on’ switch on this thing?”

Living in Knoxville made me an expert on construction. Until very recently we had the dubious distinction of have continuous construction on the infinite interstates. You would drive down I-40; I-75; I-275; I-640; I-1,436,278; or stand at the corner of Gay and Union Streets (and no I’m not making that intersection up) and find construction. No one ever seemed to be doing anything. But the construction zones were impressive in their ability to block traffic for no apparent reason. That has changed and we now have fast flowing freeways that allow us to go wherever it is we need to go at speeds that guarantee the Knoxville police department will make their ticket quota.

Having never worked road construction I am not qualified to judge the complexities of the job. But when did I let a little thing like the facts stop me? There must be something that causes slowdowns that those of us who are not in the know must not know. I suspect that it has something to do with delivery scheduling, labor unions, the cost of living in Ecuador and the dangers of non-dairy creamer in microwave ovens. It is astonishing that it takes so long to repair a highway when I saw how fast they can be made on the Dr. Seuss cartoon “Who Lifted the Lorax?” And we all know if it is in a Dr. Seuss cartoon it’s got to be realistic and true!

It seems that there is an insidious instinct behind the timing of road work. It would be cruel to cast aspersions on those who are not to blame because who knows how much damage a spersion could cause if you cast it at someone. Those things are lethal! Nevertheless, there are a few things that need to be said. For example, why do the road crews start blocking off the lanes right at the beginning of rush hour in the mornings? Would it kill them to stand around and wait for traffic to slow down to block off the lanes and then stand around waiting for a sign to begin work? It seems like they could stand around without blocking off the lanes.

Just one last thing. Would it kill the people holding the signs to wave once in a while?

Being a friendly person I like to wave at people who are working and doing things that help me. It’s not like I want a huge grin like they are long lost friends of mine who I recognize from high school English class where they sat two seats behind me. (I’m talking to your Larry!) You don’t even have to be enthusiastic in your greeting. Just a little wave is all I’m asking. Pretend you’re on a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Just do that little wave. Come on! I’m friendly!!