Next Friday

Dear J-

We’re giong on vacation again tomorrow and I’m interested to see how figgy deals with it tonight. If the past is any indication of the future we’ll be packing and moving stuff into the car at the same time that she keeps popping out of bed, too wired and excited about the trip to sleep and too exhausted to venture much further. At this point we’ve only taken the one trip with Calcifer so he has no idea what’s in store except that he’s going to be strapped to the seat for a few hours and that’s going to make him crabby during, but at least he won’t have any anticipation of the trip. We’ve tried to keep it quiet so figgy doesn’t ramp up but she’s been telling the other kids at daycare so that particular secret is out of the bag.

In fact every other line on Tuesday must have been about the trip, since the teachers all came up to me and said that she’d been talking about the trip all day. I understand her obsessive nature, as I see it in myself, but this forward kid who’s not afraid to let her emotions out bare is someone I don’t recognize. Last night was a bit of a struggle, as lack of sleep made us both crabby: the less inclined she was to do something the stricter I got and instead of bending gracefully we both snapped. I’d take stuff away for crying, which made the crying worse, but there I was trying to make a point and … y’know what, after the night’s sleep it seems so petty and ill-advised given that neither of us is taking any lessons away from that. You want to make the point that crying isn’t going to garner the sympathy that it did when you were four months old but at the same time you have to pick your battles carefully.

I’m looking forward to getting enough sleep on this trip. Between a forced lack of connectivity (i.e. no Google Reader with its hours-long obligation to read me, read me, read me some more and no tumblr to consume the remaining scraps of free time) and the obligation as guests to conform to our host’s bedtimes, I think I’ll get more rest than I bargain for. Not a bad choice, certainly. Plus it’ll hopefully give me the strength to fight off this first achy cold of the season, which has felled three members of our family in quick succession (figgy, Calcifer, and now me). Drive on; I’ll see you tomorrow.

Mike

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What’s Entertainment

Dear J-

While Caltrans is working on the freeway (they’re widening I-5 where it passes over I-805) they have K-rails put up as a barrier in the center divider, squeezing the shoulder down from the typical eight feet to eight inches or less. I love it. People who used to blow by you in the left (number one) lane are now nervous about their own control and no longer hover with impunity on the left edge of that lane, running nervously somewhere in the middle and trying to make sure they don’t scrape off their rear-view mirror. I suppose they feel squeezed between the people traveling in the number two lane and the K-rails: the gap looks impossibly narrow even though the lanes are twelve feet wide and the typical car is six feet wide or so: plenty of wiggle room on either side.

You take someone and squeeze them, they get uncomfortable and rightly so. Accusatory questions will garner hostile, defensive answers. There are a lot of competititve, antagonistic relationships and interactions we could engage in. If I ride on the left edge of the number two lane I’m daring the guy in number one to pass: maybe you can, maybe you can’t, but the best you can hope is to feel really awkward and uncomfortable. That’s a big burden to put on someone you probably don’t know and whose only sin is wanting to go faster than you. Yesterday morning I engaged in a stoplight derby with an anonymous silver Honda Civic: you know how you’ll pull up to a red light. And there’s someone in the next lane you know is going to jackrabbit off just so they can cut you off? I followed him onto the freeway and at one point nearly kissed bumpers on the on-ramp. Just because I could, why do you ask?

I reasoned that hey, it’s either him or me, and why should I make his life easier? If you arrive at the conclusion that you’re there to make someone else’s life miserable — rephrase that, if what you do increases someone’s misery quotient, maybe you need to rethink your choices. I’m all for entertainment and adventure but seriously, at the expense of others? There are a lot of different ways to get cheap thrills without resorting to the kind of anonymous trolling that would earn you a bulletin board ban online or even arrested should someone see what you’re doing. Keep yourself honest out there and make up an amusing story for yourself: look, he’s rushing off to the rutabaga festival; you know how quickly fresh rutabagas go bad. And his pet wildebeest has been craving rutabagas all summer, so you know that he needs them. Now that’s entertainment.

Mike

Crashing Halt

Dear J-

I see the car stopped in front of me, but too late. Slam-bang, I’m on their bumper and before I know it we’re pulling over and trading information, me more than a little sheepishly as I know I’m at fault here. Thankfully no one’s hurt and that’s the first thing they ask — are you okay — and I want to reply that I’m fine aside from being sleepy but that’s my mouth getting me in trouble so I bite down on my tongue some more. The van is amazingly undamaged — I goggle at it a bit and call the passenger out to see if he can see anything I’m not — but the Infiniti Q45 (post-94 remodel with a grille) isn’t quite so lucky — I’ve slammed into them hard enough to push their rear bumper in a little bit, and the trunk is jammed.

Strange, I’m out of sorts and jittery until I get a call from the insurance company. I may pay more for my insurance but it’s strictly for the hand-holding I get on the line, reassurance that everyone’s as foolish as I am and we could all do with a little of that after you beat yourself up like crazy over every little thing that goes wrong. And I hate being snappish: even though that’s understandable it’s stupid to take it out on people who I have yet to affect with my inattention. Or maybe I already am: what’s the point of being preoccupied when you’ve got so many other folks to help out and take care of?

It’s Monday. Is this a trend? Too soon to tell, as Zhou Enlai would put it. If you spend all day bringing your mind to a crashing halt by not doing work or slacking off maybe this is the reward you reap. On the other hand if I wasn’t so tired (and got more sleep, notch) I wouldn’t be in this predicament. Do what’s right. Change your life to fit the situation, don’t shoehorn everything in like you’re still in college, man.

Mike

Road Work

Dear J-

Although I typically spend much of the year in shorts and therefore am never at a loss for what to wear* theVet sometimes despairs of my choices with a kind of resigned sigh because compared with me she actually cares about such things as coordinating colors and matching, say, belt to shoes. Although I’m now a hopeless case and my appearance should not be considered an indictment of her efforts, she does freely edit what I’ve chosen for figgy (I suspect she actually buys clothes that are unable to be mis-coordinated — they can all match) because I don’t seem to have been born with a keen sense of color.

My favorite part of the trip north is passing through the San Luis Reservoir on California Highway 152. After coming out of the Grapevine you go through a hundred plus miles of flat flat flat land; once you hop off Interstate 5 onto CA-152 you go through hills and water that puts me in mind of the Europe I know from movies and pictures: lush peaks kissing a cloud-filled sky, winding road to delight and thrill in equal measures. I sometimes wonder if I should take this section to drive myself, as reward for slogging through the long dry straight, or turn it over as I get a chance to take pictures instead. One glance over at theVet is enough to tell me I made the right choice (no matter the choice — we have made both choices at different times).

We make for decent traveling companions when not stressed out by schedule or angry kids (they are at the moment asleep and therefore perfect), pointing out sights and spouting off obscure trivia in playful banter. The longer we spend tracing the routes laid out by the wise traffic planners I’m convinced I’m the luckiest guy in the world, surrounded by people I love and who love me enough to point out what I could be doing better and incredibly happy to do those thousand small courtesies that seem to come more naturally now than ever. The settings change and the pictures too: I could have sworn that college was five years away, not fifteen, but the feelings are constant.

Mike

* The sartorial program is absurdly simple:
If (going to work today)
  Then (khakis and polo shirt) and (stuff I didn’t wear yesterday)
Elseif (penguins show up outside)
  Then (jeans and t-shirt)
Else (shorts and t-shirt) and (sniff shirt to ensure acceptable)

New Ride

Dear J-

I got new tires just before Thanksgiving and I now feel a need to extend an apology to all the people who’ve ridden with me or driven near me in the past few years:  I hadn’t realized how out-of-balance my tires had gotten before replacing them.  I just naturally assumed that the car was getting out of alignment and the massive hopping I got around seventy was part of the punishment I get for driving such an old car.  In fact, I was so enamored of the smooth acceleration that I did all kinds of stupid passing tricks this morning driving in to work* at reckless speeds, no longer bothered by strange vibrations.

After a while, though, I realized what I was doing:  SPEEDING to get to WORK and away from the family I’ve grown fond of these past ten days.  So I backed down — the speed’s there if I need it, and the tires squeal remarkably less than the old ones in corners (to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I changed them and that’s not a good sign; new ones are Bridgestone Potenza RE960-AS and from what I can tell from this first hundred miles, are pretty great), but let’s face it, who actually wants to get to work faster?

It reminds me of figgy, who’s spent the past couple of days at full bore until mid-afternoon, when she crashes tremendously and naps for several hours; I feel the same way about the start of a day lately:  there’s so much going on, and so much to be caught up on that inevitably, my eyes start to glaze over and I shut down some hours later.  If we all hurled ourselves at our tasks as enthusiastically, though, I’m sure we’d get them all done faster and more stylishly, besides.

Mike

* This is a story of itself, but basically it boils down to this:  I reached an agreement with my boss where I go in one day a week and work the rest of the time from home for these three weeks.  The computer I signed out requires a special Virtual Private Network (VPN) program in order to log in to email and work programs; when I got it home I couldn’t find the VPN program, even though the computer techs swore that they’d installed it.  So I made the decision to go in today, which was my first day back (ostensibly) to work, headed straight over to where I picked the machine up, and the guy there was an object lesson in poor customer service (all those stories you hear about contemptuous tech support came true):  first he sighed and told me to turn on the computer to show me where the program was, asking if I’d called the help desk first — “You can’t just come over like this” even though the area was deserted.  Then, when he couldn’t find the program either he did some rapid clicking, and then, grudgingly, “We forgot to install it.  If you’d called the help desk you still would have had to come in to get us to install VPN because you don’t have admin rights.  But you still should have called them and not surprised us like this!”  Um, for what, asking you to do your job?  When you’re not busy?

Steel Tide

Dear J-

I’ll tell you a secret: I love driving in the rain. I like the way the wet pavement slips by underneath with a sussurous whispering hiss, I like the rhythmic slap of wipers, I like the way the world slides into view every few seconds and gets buried under a thousand glittering beads in the next moment. Each car trails a comet of mist, the wheels churning up a thick roiling curtain of fog and making you figuratively clutch your coat about tighter.

Today I watched someone in a BMW M5 enter the freeway and promptly start to lose it. They opened up the throttle and started immediately getting sideways, snapping back into the skid and overcompensating, making me tap the brakes to keep away; it was the first I’d seen of the BMW twitch. It’s part of rain in Southern California and its bipolar population: either you pretend that it’s not there and drive as usual, or you act like you’ve never seen rain before and gawk like yokels at moisture from the sky.

The cozy feeling inside the car — just enough heat to take the edge off the storm and maybe a fire roaring at home to look forward to. Without any leaks you’re hurtling along in a little bubble of glass and steel, watching the weather but not enslaved to it. The ebb and flow of traffic resembles a steel tide on a concrete ocean; inside your rain-slicked car you’re forced to turn your attention towards the chatter in your head, picking up all stations today.

Mike

Mountain Man

Dear J-

I had the opportunity to head out for dinner with the rest of the guys again, but I eschewed it in favor of a lonely drive up into the mountains.  Those of you who already had the opinion that I’m antisocial will nod your heads knowingly, but it’s not just wanting to be alone:  I spend time with these folks willingly, and ungrudgingly — I’d just planned that route out in my head last night and couldn’t wait to try it out (final verdict was that it was worth doing once:  north on Golden Springs Road, east on Choccolocco, continue north on Alabama 9 through the Talladega National Forest, then loop back using smaller roads — in my case I tried going down Hollingsworth, which was worth it, especially going west on Whites Gap Road).

So I end up at the mall for dinner which is a mistake:  it reminds me too much of the lost summer (2004) spent mostly alone in my room/cell in Ann Arbor, where the only entertainment to be had was cooking the same pasta night after night and walking over to the mall, alone alone alone.  And so it seems that passing up the chance at a night amongst friends has the double effect of compounding the loneliness, right?

There’s nothing quite like eating alone in a mall, I says.  The one thing I’m dead tired of is eating out alone; if you’re at the same hotel with people you know if nothing else then you should hang out a little bit.  It’s nice to have time to yourself, but the room echoes a bit too empty when it’s just your thoughts and voice breaking the silence.

Mike

Morning Drive

Dear J-

Because I had yet another doctor’s appointment today (really, is it too much to ask that I not see him every month for some random follow-up or another — I have been variously diagnosed with various anemias and other deficiencies in the last year since switching to this one, who is nice and reasonable but rather aggressive with the followups) I got to drive myself in to work again, and that always means I’m out with roving eye spotting cars as well. Some of the always-tempting RX-8s were on tap, but it was the new Hyundai Sonatas that were out in force today — I pulled in next to one at the clinic’s parking structure very carefully because I thought it was some sort of exotic European sedan-coupe hybrid (think Mercedes CLS or Volkswagen CC).

It’s bigger than I thought, and better-looking, to boot; if I didn’t have an unreasonable bias against sedans and goofy coupe-roofline sedans in particular, it would make more sense, but it’s a sign of how far — along with the Genesis — Hyundai has come from the days of the Excel twenty years ago. Cars are funny things; you either regard them as appliances — something to get from here to there with as little drama as possible — or aspirations — extensions of who we are, two-ton glass and chrome rolling monuments to our egos. There is some middle ground, but it’s reflected in my mind — keep the one I’ve got, find an appliance, or something that makes me want to drive more.

Having gotten used to driving a car with a failing clutch means assuming no power reserves, no sudden bursts of acceleration, and jockeying for position — looking further down the road than I’m used to — it’s ultimately a humbling experience, but it’s taught me that horsepower isn’t everything for a car, expecially in our Southern California ecosystem. I watched someone bounce from lane to lane today, going progressively more slowly as their desperate maneuvers ended up costing them time — we’re our own worst enemies sometimes. It’s hard to give up excitement for numb appliances, but isn’t it more about our perceptions and assumptions?

Mike

Home Push

Dear J-

Every morning, just like that scene in Edward Scissorhands, garages open and spill people onto small streets, merging onto larger arterials until they meet the freeway and we all wait obediently for the light to change.  Green means go.  We pick our departure times based on when we want to get there, based on how long it took us before; if it’s a new place it’s not unreasonable to allow a few extra moments for orientation, unless it’s the journey we’re after.

On my bike, when it’s not majestically attempting to ingest its own chain and spill me forward, I watch it all unfold with an unmatched sense of superiority and trepidation; there is nothing so arrogant and vulnerable as the thirty-odd pounds of metal and rubber supporting a human, ego and all, in America.  It turns out a third of my daily three-hour commute is spent experiencing San Diego by bike, and much of it on the nigh-highways of Balboa or Genesee, where you may rage at the vehicles which would brush you aside as easily and carelessly as an insect, despite your gentle protestations that you’re doing your part to combat global warming.

There’s a marked contrast in the mornings, no one quite yet weaned off the coffee drip and treading lightly amongst each others enormous buffer zones, and the afternoons, where we’re all pushing each other in our haste to get there, wherever there may be.  On this Thanksgiving eve we cut out of work a little early to beat traffic and we pushed it all the way home, trickling back down the veins and freeways to the smallest capillaries, waiting to be absorbed back into our families, back into life.

Mike

Slow Lesson

Dear J-

I suppose that if I see karma as being some kind of cosmic justice system I’ve missed the point; it’s not about smiting enemies, whether those I’ve held for long years or the yahoo who just cut me off on the freeway, it’s about knowing that good deeds are their own reward. Let the other guy be the jerk; I’m not the one who has to live with them or those actions, for the most part. I just tend to forget those calm words in the heat of the moment, but it’s not my job to enforce traffic laws, just to ensure that I drive safely and don’t put anyone into jeopardy, whether they’re riding in my car or not.

Some days I feel the fatalism more than others; perhaps, I think, perhaps it’s because I didn’t do this or that, maybe if I’d done things differently. It’s an excuse, like everything else. It’s more a question of taking responsibility again — the sooner I realize the truth behind serenity (accept the things I can not change, and the courage to change those I can) the sooner I can reject the rage that runs in a steady undercurrent and threatens to flood over me as a tsunami inundates the rational land.

Slowly, figgy’s teaching me what it takes; opportunities for patience, chances to turn from anger to answers and rewards, always rewards for the right way to handle it. I keep trying to remind myself that despite John Lennon’s reassurances, karma is not instant, neither effect nor reward. We may tote her around until our bones creak and our muscles fail; she may refuse to walk, or take a nap, or sit patiently for meals. It’s part of the compact we’ve made, and it’s the agreement we’ll keep; we may have miles and years to go, but we’ll remember everything, we’ll have to remember every lesson.

Mike