Conversations I've Overheard, 3rd Edition

This one's not really so much of a conversation as it was hearing two preschool aged kids (a girl and a boy) recite (over and over) the following:

Little Girl: "Alright, alright, alright!"
Little Boy: "You gone' learn today!"

Now if you are a fan of stand-up comedy, you may recognize what the little girl and boy were reciting as signature lines in Kevin Hart's hit comedy tour/movie, "Laugh At My Pain". And if you've actually seen the movie (and judging from how many adults I've heard spitting out the lines in question, I would say a whole lot of you have), you would realize that these might not be the appropriate lines for preschool-aged children to be loudly repeating to any and everyone that passed by them, with the mother just moseying along in complete oblivion (or as that noted statesman Mike Tyson would say, "Bolivian").

The more I crossed paths with these kids and their mother - I was shopping in Target  -and the more I heard them repeat these lines, the more pissed I became. How did they learn this stuff? I wondered. Were they sitting and watching Kevin Hart with their mother/father/grandma? Did they learn it from hearing the adults say it over and over? Surely, at that age, they couldn't have understood the context in which those lines were spoken in Kevin Hart's standup routine, whether or not they actually witnessed it, but still...

Oh well, I guess it could've been worse; at least they weren't yelling "Pineapples!"

Back to Work

   Well, after being off from work for almost two weeks, I'm baaaack! Although I like my job, I relished having that time off to recharge the batteries, so to speak, and to enjoy myself. And even though doing last minute Christmas shopping was no fun,  and I didn't exactly paint the town red during the time between Christmas and New Year's Day, I was blessed to direct my choirs to a fine Christmas Eve service perfomance; I still, as always, had a fun Christmas day; and my "staycation" the week after Christmas was just what I needed to get mind and body right for 2012.

   That being said, it's good to get out of the house and back into action! My choirs have all got the month of January off, so I'm not rolling into the new year at the same breakneck pace as I reached towards the end of 2011 (although it won't be long before that workload is back upon me). Even better, I'm going into my 5th year at this job, meaning I've got a third week of vacation time to play with  right from the start (a fact which I confirmed with HR shortly after getting settled in this morning). Which means, even though I look forward to a great year at work, I have a little more time to get away from it when it isn't...

The Resolution Will Not Be Televised...

For 2012, I was going to resolve to not procrastinate so much, but I decided to wait till next year to do that...
While that statement may seem humorous, it probably isn't that far off from how people routinely go about making and then breaking the New Year's resolutions. It certainly has been that way for me. In the past, my resolutions have either been (a)these generic, vague, non-specific, too-half-hearted-to-be-considered-resolute dimly breaking through the fog of depression and self-pitying that often hang over me around the arrival of new years and birthday, almost always indicative of the fact that I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life in the coming year and beyond; or (b)some highly-specific (with dates attached) declarations without any thought on how to achieve it, and thus doomed from the start for failure and disappointment (or to just be forgotten long before I ever reached the deadline).

With my past endeavors into this area in mind, I had not intended on making any resolution at all for 2012, until I spotted the following as a friend's facebook status:

Since complicating life is something I do exceedingly well, and since speaking up about what I want and feel is something I barely do at all, then the above is as a good a resolution for me as any. No deadlines attached, no generic platitudes without any specific special meaning to me, just a reminder that although no one gets everything they want, it's very hard to get anything you want if no one but you ever knows about it...

"You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need" 

-The Rolling Stones




Happy Birthday to My #2 Grandson

   My lil' homie, my middle grandson, Darius, turned two years old yesterday! Yes, he was a New Year's Eve baby. Actually, he was due before Christmas of 2009. After a week of being overdue, my daughter headed to the hospital with contractions. Fifty-six hours after my daughter arrived at the hospital, Mr. Darius finally made his appearance, at about 3:30 in the morning on New Year's Eve 2009 (just couldn't make things convenient, could you?). Seems like he came out with his head up and eyes wide open and he hasn't missed a trick since!

   Two years later, Mr. Darius is a bundle of energy, a perpetual motion machine, yet one who will during the course of all that movement will some how manage to simultaneously observe and study what is around him while buzzing and bouncing about. He will slow down long enough at times to inspect, poke, pull apart, push buttons on (or study his mother or me doing so), or otherwise investigate various items in the house (who needs toys?) until he figures out how to operate them as well as (or occasionally better than) we can. Mr. Darius is also very particular (and animated) about his likes and (especially) his dislikes. And most of all, Mr. Darius is thoroughly convinced that he runs stuff  up in this camp...and that I am his right-hand man...

   All of this means that when my daughter and Mr. Darius come through the door, there is an immediate one-boy, laughing, screeching stampede to wherever I happen to be (here comes trouble!).
He'll come charging at me full speed ahead, crashing into one of my arthritic knees and wrapping them in an embrace, accompanied by a high-pitched, drawn out "HI!", then just as quickly, he sprouts an extra pair of arms and legs and heads off into what seems like every direction at once as we begin our battle/dance of him turning on / playing with every object in the room that he can get his hands on, while I chase around fussing and smacking his hands (which turns out not to be a particularly effective deterrent for him)and turning the stuff off. If he's in my bedroom, he will invariably pull up a chair to my music keyboard, and sit there awhile playing the keys, and scrolling through the different sounds. I generally allow him to play with the keyboard without interruption (although we frequently battle over control of the volume), mainly to encourage his love of music and wanting to play the instrument, and also out of fascination (jealousy?) that he can navigate his way through all the buttons to find favorite sounds and beats better than I can, and more importantly that he, without any hands on teaching from me, has some pretty good form in his hand position, and even in trying to do stuff like glissandos and arpeggios. How does he know how to do this? Did it come naturally? Did he learn it from watching me? I don't know, but it endlessly fascinates me, and he can't even play a song yet.

   At some point, Mr. Darius will tire of the surroundings of whatever room we're in, and decides he wants to move on to another room. And when Mr. Darius wants to go, that means I'm going too...he really thinks he is running the show; and since I inevitably end up stopping whatever I've been doing (or trying to do) to be led by the hand to the next destination, I guess maybe he is, sort of...A few weeks ago, an interesting thing happened: after grabbing my hand to lead me out of my bedroom to go downstairs, Mr. Darius first led me to everything in the room that was turned on or pulled out and proceeded to either turn it off or put it away. Then he dragged towards the door, stopped at the light switch, and pointed up to it for me to turn off. Ever since then, he's been very insistent on being energy conscious and cleaning up whatever havoc he had brought into a room (a lesson I wish his mother would learn). So it's gratifying to know he's paying attention to what I do...

   Finally, after a few hours of playing musical rooms with Mr. Darius, he (and I) will inevitably start to tire. The countdown to bed time can go one of three ways: 1) he will go into "obnoxious sleepy" mode (you parents of young children know just what I'm talking about), where nothing will console him, and he just has to cry and fight that sleep monster until it takes him out; 2) he will get so tired, he won't either bother with a fight, but just grab a stuffed doll and/or play radio and head straight for his bedroom without resistance; or 3) won't fight sleep, but require entertainment of some sort before dozing off (like reading a book to him).

   When he got sleepy on his birthday night, Mr. Darius led me by the hand into the living room, turned on the TV, then led me over to the switch for the ceiling fan. When I turned it on, he protested until only the fan was running and the light was out. When he was satisfied with that, he pulled me over to the sofa, and after we sat down, he grabbed a pillow and put it against my side, then yanked the afghan off of the back of the sofa and wrapped himself in it as he laid his head on the pillow and snuggled up against me. And while I watched TV, he stared up at the rotating ceiling fan with a sense of calm and fascination...

   Mr. Darius didn't quite make it to midnight to ring the new year in before he drifted off to sleep. After I watched the big ball drop to bring in 2012, I stared up at the fan for a moment, and tried to see what it was that my grandson sees up there that capture his undivided attention and help put him peacefully to sleep. And although I didn't come up with an answer, I set aside for a moment the sometime aggravation of being led about by a toddler all over the house, and forgot for a moment about the two wine glasses he had broken, or about the mess he had made when he climbed onto my bed with a half-eaten frosted cherry Pop Tart in his hand, and instead celebrated the joy and energy Mr. Darius has brought into my life, and said a little prayer that he never loses that sense of fascination and wonder as he grows up in life taking apart his world piece by piece and mastering how it all works. Happy Birthday, Mr. Darius!

Time Is On My Side (eh, not so much)...

   Every year, my company gives its salaried employees (of which I am one) a paid holiday break around Christmas time. My last day of work for this year was Wednesday the 21st, and I'm off until January 3. As my last day of work approached, I made big plans for being productive during my time off, and getting caught up on some things I had neglected. I wanted to get some work done around the house, work on some music and try to learn the ins and outs of my new keyboard, get back into a workout routine, break out this yoga DVD I ordered months ago but never watched, and go out a time or two to get some bowling practice, and of course write at least one blog entry a day. The first few days would be filled with last minute shopping, choir rehearsals, and a Christmas Eve concert; then after Christmas dinner, I'd spend a day relaxing with my three girlfriends (that would be my laptop, my cell phone and my remote control) on Monday, and then get to work  on all of my plans for the rest of the week.

   So how's that worked out for me? Well, the Monday after Christmas went about as expected, as I spent the day in bed with the three aforementioned girlfriends watching television and movies, getting up only to eat, go to the bathroom, or put another DVD in the player. Then came Tuesday...and Wednesday...and Thursday -- and now Friday -- and it was like "Groundhog Day", just replaying the same inactivity from Monday all over again. Well, now wait, that's not entirely true: I played around on the keyboard for about 15-20 minutes on Tuesday, took a shower and went out to buy a few groceries on Wednesday, did some pushups and crunches yesterday morning and this morning (I even looked for the yoga DVD yesterday, but gave up after 10 minutes and got back in bed). Aside from that, however, it's been a week spent in bed, lollygagging with my three electronic girlfriends.

   I'm still off until Tuesday, so I have a few days yet to try to accomplish something. In the meantime, I've got my Friday night bowling league, so that will mark my second time leaving the house this week. I guess I should take another shower before I go...

Angry Nerd Family Christmas Dinners

   Christmas dinner in the Angry Nerd family is, like with many families, a time-honored tradition. Growing up, we used to have dinner at Grandma's, with plenty of down-home meals, music, and occasionally a lively spat as entertainment. After I got married and had kids, my new family would rotate where we ate Christmas dinners; the plan was always to eat dinner with one family, and then just stop by to see the other. The invariable annual consequence to this plan, however, was tension over how much time we spent at each place. At some point, we solved this problem by hosting both sides of our family at our house for dinner - which freed us up to have other things to argue about...

   Nowadays, Christmas dinner is much more harmonious. For the last several years we have gathered at my sister and brother-in-law's place, and without my babymama's combative, slightly crazy family dynamic in the mix, things go much more smoothly (not that we don't have some of our elements of craziness and combativeness in our midst, but, for those folks in was an in-bred thing, kind of like with Native Americans and the alcoholism gene).

   Actually, for us, Christmas begins at Thanksgiving. Several years ago, we decided that the adults in the family would do a Secret Santa-thingy so that we would only need buy a gift for one other adult in the family. My mother is in charge of this whole operation, and with her, it is a matter a national importance that those names get drawn out of the hat post-Thanksgiving meal. Remember Rev. Harold Camping, the nut that predicted not one, but two incorrect dates for the end of the world this year? Well, I knew he had it wrong all along; the end of the world will come the day after someone in the family leaves Thanksgiving dinner without picking a name for Secret Santa...now that doesn't mean that we won't try to leave without picking a name - or at least pretend to, mainly since getting my mother annoyed and flustered is a favorite pasttime for my siblings and I (and to be honest, it's kind of a cheap thrill, since she's so easy to fluster and so prone to falling for the same stuff no matter how many times we try it).

   Back to Christmas dinner - it's always a fun affair when the Angry Nerd clan gets together, especially at Christmas time. Plenty of laughter, teasing, eating, drinking (mostly non-alcoholic stuff), sports watching (with plenty of debates and trash-talking about the action), and the like. My brother, the camera buff, takes plenty of pictures - the more embarassing the better. At some point after dinner, someone will let out a rip-roaring, mouth-uncovered belch. Half of the other people will be grossed out by this; the other half will express their admiration, and hand out grades for the belch, prompting both indignation from the grossed-out crew, and attempts (on the sly) from the admiring crew to try to work up their own monster belches in an effort to beat the original monster belch (note: this activity does NOT apply to farting. You gotta fart, take it to the bathroom or an unoccupied room - or in the case of my brother - all the way outside the house).
  
   Video games are a must, especially now that there are the dance games are popular. They're a particularly effective tool for working up a sweat and for making fools of oneself! Then there's also the annual "Battle of the Sexes" game of spades featuring my sister-in-law and cousin versus my nephew and myself. Most years it works out pretty much according to script: a lot of woofing initiated by my nephew, responded to with some caterwauling from the ladies (I, of course, maintain a modicum of restraint and good sportsmanship). Then, once the game begins, the ladies employ their tortoise and hare strategy, where they place safe, wussy bids throughout, while the two of us knuckleheads inevitably do ourselves in with a series of testosterone-induced overbidding, leading to such spectacular self-destruction that the ladies barely have to break a sweat...sigh...getting trash-talked by a couple of persistent women is a hurtful thing...

   But spades humiliation aside, there's nothing quite like the Angry Nerd family Christmas dinners. They are truly what makes Christmas for me. Well, time to go; I hear my nephew woofing about spades. Hope you all are having a great Christmas!



Two Days Before Christmas

'Twas two days before Christmas and all through the house

Not a creature was stirring (well...maybe a mouse)

The 23rd of December, and I hadn't done a thing,

Had put up no tree, had done no shop-ping. 

The Christmas decor was still packed out of sight;

The wreath and the tinsel, every bulb, every light.

The garlands, the ornaments, the Santa Claus clock;

The fake tree was still all apart in a box.

I just didn't feel like unpacking that mess;
Putting that stuff up was just extra stress.
What did it matter? There's no one but me.
And I couldn't care less about watching some tree.

(For my grandson the tree would be a nice surprise;

When he came for a visit, it would light up his eyes.

No doubt, the decorations would warm his little heart;

But no doubt, his little hands would take them apart.)

That morning I dragged myself out of bed,

Tried to summon up courage for that thing that I dread:

The malls at the holiday season, I hate.

But I had to go, dammit, it was almost too late!

I thought that Christmas time was about joy, peace, and love,

But the malls are about where push comes to shove.

Rudeness and selfishness replace peace and joy,

The warmth comes from snatching a coveted toy.

Rampant consumerism is the order of the day,

Crass materialism is what really holds sway.

There are gift lists to tend to, there’s stuff to be bought,

Someone grabs what you want, then there’s a fight to be fought.

So go spend, spend, spend, spend; gotta have only the best stuff.

It’s Christmastime; too much is never enough.

And you better be careful in the parking lot;

‘Cause you just never know if your ass might get shot.

I wandered around in this chaos, this display of pure lust.

I felt a mixture of sadness, depression, and disgust.

(While the ladies in tight outfits were a welcome distraction,

Even the booties and boobies could not bring satisfaction.)

So back home I went, with not that much stuff.

My Christmas funk deepened; had I really done enough?

Christmas seemed to have lost some meaning for me;

There’s got to be more than some presents and a tree.

But then I thought, Christmas is in two days.

Tomorrow I will be in church to sing and to praise

To direct my choirs as we sing of Christ’s birth,

Of how he came down from heaven to save mankind on earth.

Then on Christmas my family will all come together,

A tradition I wouldn’t miss, no matter what the weather.

I’ll live, laugh, love, eat, maybe get slightly drunk;

And by then there’s no doubt, I’ll be rid of this funk.

For in the end, God and Family are what make Christmas Day;

All the material gifts, well, they’re only for play.

But the love of Jesus, and of family, will make your minds and heart light,

So Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!