PONDERING THE FUTURE

Something I was thinking about when I was getting up this morning.. We might have had six inches of snow this year so far. This season from the first snow until now, total accumulation of maybe six inches of snow.. Strange how dry this year has been but I remember the winter before dad passed away I rode my mountain bike almost every day through that winter.. Except for a week to ten days total..








We were taking care of the nephew again today and mom made the comment she wished he had a little brother to play with, that he just seems to be begging us to play with him.. Mom can't play with him the way he wants because she has no balance, and fears falling with every step she takes.. I can't play with him because I don't have his imagination, nobody my age has his imagination.. He is in his own world, all kids are... We get to his house and instead of having us for the next hour, his mom steps out the front door.. While we might have been able to leave right then, his grandma goes in then out to the back yard where he wanted to play in the sandbox but of course his grandma can't sit and play because of her situation.. Every time we said "well time to go" he would say not yet.. So for a half an hour we tried to leave and he heads us off at the pass.. Then we go out to the car, he has to talk his parting conversation, talking cars, car parts.. anything to keep us there.. Then we have to go and it's ok, see you later.. See you later, you little nut...

BH

JANUARY BLUES

A year ago at this time we were all thinking that this was just half over.. The ordeal that was Lucy going to Poland for a six month stint, to get her immigration status settled.. So by just about the end of January we were thinking this is finally half over.. Trouble was the first half, as bad as it was, was nothing as bad as the second half would prove to be.. First of all the greatest program on the computer and what made this event tolerable was Skype, the internet video telephone service.. We didn't even have an account set up until like a month before she left.. We didn't test it out with them being just in Sidney, so the first true test was when they were in Warsaw, three days into the ordeal.. Thinking back at just how hard that was on mom.. I was telling her about it again a few weeks ago and those same emotions were still there.. Being forced to not see her favorite "little man" right now would be unthinkable... Mom is fragile, yet tough.. I guess that can describe anyone really.. But thinking of a year ago I think that last year was just about the better or closest to perfect time for that to have happened, short of her going before she got pregnant.. Because now Ian is in preschool two days a week, learning language skills that are becoming more evident all the time.. Word phrases and expressions that are useful in everyday life.. I watched him the other day and he is so interesting in everything he does.. We went out to get ice cream and me and mom went to the booth to sit down and he stayed up at the counter, one hand on his hip the other on the counter in his "well I'm WAITING" pose.. It was a golden moment.. He looked at me and I said scowl at her.. He doesn't know what that means, best he can muster is a cute little boy stare.. Oh well live and learn...

BH

EVERYTHING'S DIFFERENT NOW

This past Thursday was a month removed from Christmas.. And everything that went down that day, strange.. I took care of the nephew again Thursday (the 26th) and took him to one of the parks there in town and watched him climb on the playground thing they have there.. I played and I watched and I had a thought go through my (lame brain) head, I wondered if my brother, the boo's father, ever takes him to the park and watches him play like that.. I watched him play, I don't have a gadget (I-anything) and so I watch him play, and I feel like if you pay more attention to the gadget than the little guy then you are cheating yourself out of watching him grow.. I like watching him play and grow his imagination is fresh.. Like watching grass grow, or the pumpkins I grew a few times before.. I do worry about a few things however. He has a tendency to not want to go home, and so when we go get his grandma and then went to the store to shop, he got yet another set of hot wheels cars, last time at Walmart he got the much "neeeed" ed guitar.. He got that set of cars and said he was so happy.. Reminds me of someone, when he got what he wanted he was so happy, and when he didn't (doesn't) he is an absolute shit bucket.. Anyway we go to the park again for a while, then head to his house all the while he says he doesn't want to go home.. We get to his house and are sitting there and mom gets the idea to go by his uncle Bob's work place, so we go there.. I'm not a big fan of bothering anyone at work, or their work site and especially his site because of how I feel about him.. But we stop by and he seems generally happy to see the little guy, and impressed with the new set of cars... WOW!!

Tuesday while I was watching the little guy we went out to get his grandma and then go get some ice cream and all through being outside he was cold, and even said as much.. He has no true coat, overcoat type of thing.. Winter coat, and after mom saw him saying he was cold she broke down and bought him one.. We had checked a few weeks ago at the local walmart and had him try one on, but he didn't want one so we put it off.. After Tuesday mom had seen enough and so she bought him one.

Friday we come here to grandmas house and she shows him look what we got you, a new coat and he went nearly berzerk... HE DIDN'T WANT A COAT!! He started to cry and throw a fit and I tried to tell him it would help him stay warm.. Somewhere along the way someone or something has made him almost fearful of a coat.. I didn't like the way he was towards his grandma and was trying to explain why we got it for him, but he didn't want it it.. I said fine will take it back, or give it to someone who would appreciate it.. His mom comes later and she made him at least try it on.. I felt so stupid after the fact.. I'm not his dad and what was I thinking trying to make him wear that coat.. It's like when I got him at preschool one morning and earlier in the day it was like zero degrees but by the time I had picked him up it was in the twenties.. He wanted to go play in the park and truth be told I so badly wanted to say no it was too cold but he wanted to go.. So we went and he got on a swing and I pushed him.. The chain is cold to the touch and he didn't have gloves on and so he started to fold his arms around the chains and I told him to hold onto the chains and he then said it was too cold.. No shit, he said that so we went to his house.. He is a lot like his mom in that he can't be told logic, he has to experience it..

Today I wake up with yesterdays goings on fresh in my mind and, you know how you feel like something bad is going to happen?? I was so cautious yesterday, but still that was what I wasn't wanting to happen.. With the shit from Christmas still fresh on my mind I have to constantly think of not putting my feelings into watching the nephew.. Just watch him.. I have to know I'm not his parent.. I know that taking him to the park when it is obviously too cold might look like I am not really watching out for him, but I feel like whatever he wants he should get within reason of course.. When we were at the store they have a toy section there at Safeway and so he gets to start in early "how we get this?".. Walmart we know where the toy section is.. Mom has the ability to tell him no she just chooses not to.. My idea is that if he wants this toy then chose which toy you keep, just one toy not a basket full... I took him into walmart Friday to get moms prescription and he stayed right near me and didn't go to the toy section.. He wanted to get to his grandmas house, so he wasn't too interested in a detour.. So when we came here on a road he has never been on (so far as I know) he was at a loss for where we were at.. I'll never do that idea again any time soon.. Maybe when he gets to be ten or so.. Maybe...


Freda sent me an email about a week before the 25th of January and said all sorts of nothing too grand.. Yea I agree with a lot that she said, I do miss their girls but they are older now and getting into their own families BIG TIME... But at the end of the letter she said something that made me laugh.. Truth be told I wanted to write her right back and explain a few things, that I feel mostly that we are now nearly no longer in their lives at all.. I told mom while we were shopping at Christmas time that I found myself shopping for who I needed to, but ended up seeing things for Ian only.. And my reasoning is that we are around him more than any others.. And then what happened on Christmas happened and it brought everything into focus.. I started to think of the past year, then two... all the way back to what mom told me and it made sense.. It saddens me that he feels this way and that saying he hates mom is too blunt, he has a strong dislike of her. Where that originated is beyond me.. But I don't think he told his wife what he told mom, and if I would have gotten brave enough to go out there that day and he unloaded on me that way things would really be different now.. More than they are.. I would like to know where we stand though... I wanted to write Freda back but decided not to.. Not yet.. Maybe in a little while.. Or maybe never... I don't know.. Is the healing starting for mom from Christmas?? A little.. She has to measure everything she says now.. When they were down a couple weeks ago I was here on the computer and they were in the front room and I could hear them talk. There was a lot of quiet times there.. They talked about nothing important.. How's the weather? After that it was quite quiet.. To have to measure your conversation, to think about what you are about to say and hope it doesn't offend somewhere down the line... I do think the less I add to the situation the better.. One thing that has passed this year is the annual trip to view the eagles.. I thought last weekend was nice enough to go to and I missed going.. Mom is sick this weekend so even if they said hey let's go I would have said no.. So this year is already different from the past six or so... The very first chance for everyone to possibly get together might be Ian's birthday, but.. Hopefully it will snow enough so we won't be able to go.. Fingers crossed..

BH

DON'T TURN ASSBITE er dude

Was watching the nephew yesterday and had to take him out to pick up his grandma and was driving down the street and came to a point where vehicles turn to go on another main street thing and one car turned within a hundred yards or so and then a big rig in back of him was looking like he was going to turn and I said, fairly loudly "DON'T TURN ASSBITE" , and then looked in the rear view mirror and remembered that the little guy (sponge) was with me and then said, er dude... I forget and the little guy picks up language from everyone.. My fear is he will got to preschool and tell one of his classmates or teacher not to do something and then express himself with assbite... Ooops, I can see everyone looking for where he got that one from and well I come up with some odd assed things to say...


BH

THE FEELING OF VICTORY

In late October sometime I had heard of this thing called SOPA that the congress was discussing and I looked at it a little.. I had been railing against the pipeline being put in our backyard (figurative) here in Nebraska.. One thing I didn't like about it was it was being buried in the aquifer that supplied our entire state and eight others with drinking water, and yeah if the oil were to spill everyone would have to find a new water supply.. When that got sidelined (it seemed) then this new "cause" shot up on importance.. Well it seemed not that important at the time, but I thought I'd check into it some more.. It didn't take long for me to read that this would change the internet completely and possibly even ruin it.. Why I dove head first into this I don't know, I was hoping someone would see that it was bad and do what I really don't like to which is get involved.. But get involved I did switching my vision from the pipeline to the SOPA PIPA bills which at Christmas time were about to be voted on secretly which was total crap.. There are those who watch the government very closely and on this I took those mentions and tweeted the hell out of them.. I had fewer that a hundred followers at that time but felt like, in my case I get tweets by people I don't follow, and was hoping this would be true of the tweets I was sending out.. The twitterverse is an odd thing, it is the reason things are done now.. Anyway I hope my tweets were read by more people than what I have as followers, or that everyone who cared used twitter to spread the word.. It seems the only people who knew of these bills were those on a dozen sites, of which a little known (by me) site was one of them.. When Go Daddy said they supported the SOPA bill a site called REDDIT organized a retaliation to have as many people revoke their sites and move them to a site that didn't support SOPA.. That move made Go Daddy change their stance on the support of the bill, sort of.. They told everyone that they didn't support the bill but didn't remove their name as a supporter of the bill in Washington.. That was watched by the sites that watch things like that.. So last Wednesday comes and 150,000 sites go black or partially black in support of removing these bills from consideration.. It felt so amazing to see this happen, I can only imagine what it felt like back in the sixties or something..


New Homepage set up:: Back in November around Thanksgiving I had something happen where I downloaded an update for a program and during the install I wasn't paying attention and I had my homepage switched to something I didn't want and in the process of switching back I couldn't get mine back.. I decided to search for a homepage and Googled it. I came up with four, Bing, Yahoo, MSNBC and one other i had never hear of before in I-Google.. i-Google is something completely different in that it has modules or what they call "gadgets" that you can add as many as you want.. I've written about this before, I added so many gadgets with the idea that I would cut the number down as I saw what I used and which were important.. The past nearly two months now I have been working on this, adding some and subtracting some.. I want a strong concise page, and use Yahoo as a template of sorts.. It will be an ongoing project probably indefinite... But I think that is a good thing... Betther than being stuck with what other homepages give you..

BH

WHAT THAT MEANS

Back in the early nineties my little brother went to live with his grandma for a short time.. Actually I think he was hoping to start there with his adult life or try something because he was tired of being here.. I wanted him to be able to live there and maybe I would try to move there sometime later but... As things turned out, that wasn't the plan.. He would be there for only a few short weeks as living with grandma was trickier that he was ready for.. But in the amount of time he was gone, the early part mom went with him, then dad went on that first Friday to get mom. That Friday was an odd one, after dad left I decided to drink a little, which isn't completely odd.. I didn't drink a whole lot.. While drinking I decided a little music should be playing.. I was into a rock group called the Church back then and still can listen to them even now.. The Church are a group from "down under" as they say, from Australia and I liked their different sound, a little lighter than some of the groups I was into and no they are definitely NOT religious by any stretch of the imagination.. I had gotten their latest album Priest=Aura and it was just mesmerizing.. That night would be so memorable not because of an actual event, but a dream I had..

One of the songs called Ripple stands out as one of those great songs, and a haunting song as well.. I rarely care for lyrics and don't listen to the songs closely at all.. And I don't know why this song stands out for me.. I was running through the songs on the computer yesterday and this song was on the play list and the memory of that night came to mind.. : Tiny baby, so naive
I can't believe what you believe
You were once so happy here
It may not be eden or summer in greece
You may not even find the gold fleece
In the drag of this atmosphere
Now i don't want to bring up a delicate matter
No i'd much rather bribe or flatter you
'cause flattery gets me everywhere
But you punctured my tires, you crossed all my wires
I brand your acolytes as a pack of liars
And the fire's singing everywhere

Buckle like a wreck on the cold green sea
Like you were a ripple in my memory

I lent you some collateral to buy new clothes
It went out the window and up your nose
And that's the end of the honeymoon
Yeah we walked down the aisle for another mile
I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles
And you can have all the money soon

You're so deluxe, you're so divine
You're so fifty light years ahead of your time
You're a riddle, you're a ripple
You're the human sacrifice to the goddess of ice
Your hairdo is filled with diamonds and lice
And you're hardly off the nipple

Another little glitch in continuity
Like you were a ripple in my memory

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For no other reason than this song running through my head.. So later that night I put on Led Zeppelin The Song Remains The Same movie and watched at least through No Quarter, and I don't know if it was the sequence of the fantasy scenes or what but the dreams I had that night were strange at best.. : It seems we were playing tag, but with paint ball guns.. Then things got real, and the ink became real bullets.. I remember being in a precarious situation, having to hide to keep from being shot.. They had a better vantage point and I was trying to keep from being hit.. THIS IS FUN ISN'T IT??.. What it all means I don't know but when I made a break for it I ran hard and fast but not fast enough as I got shot.. Strange feeling what being hit by a bullet feels like and then I woke up in a puddle of sweat.. Like I said what it means I have no clue..


BH

HE PLAYED, WE SANG

So I was at the nephews house (Ian's house) and we go to his bedroom and he starts playing his drum set and he shows me something he has learned, the cross arms where the right hand plays the high hat set and the left hand plays the snare drum.. Still no true rhythm, but that was a start.. He starts playing a jam that is just a rock & roll dream.. Then he stops and looks at me and says, you want to try?? I say I'll give it a try.. A few days after he got the drums for Christmas we were there and his high hat cymbals came undone so I set them back up, and sat behind the set and banged them a bit, no rhythm.. This day would be different.. I sat down and started to play a rhythm.. Strait forward 4/4 rhythm, very danceable.. Them I went of track and went into some other rhythms.. All the time I'm playing his drum set I watch him and he starts tapping his foot to the BEAT I AM PLAYING... No I don't think giving him a drum set for Christmas was a waste of money at all.. He might play the drums, but he definitely has the rhythm gene no doubt about that.. Anyway,

From last Thursdays debacle at walmart:: A mistake is a mistake, we went to walmart to look for a coat for the little guy and he tried one on and he was done.. He didn't want a coat so he heads to the toy section and the first thing he picks out is a guitar.. Grandma is a sucker for letting him have at least something.. This was a toy guitar thing, presets for different sounds and such.. He then finds five other toys in succession each getting cheaper then more expensive then he stumbles across a cash register set and it runs on batteries and isn't running there in the store, that alone is a reason not to buy it in my mind.. However he REALLY NEEEEEEEDS THIS cash register.. "How we can get this?" His favorite saying.. So mom gets it for him.. We get to his house and he plays with it, gets the batteries in it and the bells and whistles work for ten minutes then it stops.. He starts in that we neeeed to go get that guitar.. Pretty soon it's a full blown crying match which tugs at the heart strings of his grandma.. we leave and thinking a night would change him with sleep and all.. The next day I get down there and sure enough first thing out of his mouth is "How we can get the guitar?"... I wasn't ready for that but I almost bet mom that he would say something about that before the day was out... I just didn't think he would say it before I got the door shut getting in Friday morning..

Fast forward to Tuesday and first thing he says to me when I pick him up at his preschool is "How we can get the guitar?".. holy shit.. So we pick up mom and I had already been to walmart earlier and saw the guitar he wanted was not there.. And so mom was trying to prepare the little nut for the possibility that it might not be there.. He looked up and down those aisles where the toys are and I did earlier try to find it but it wasn't there.. They had the "First act" guitars there which are very early model guitar for learning for four year olds.. So he picked one out and got it.. I did see a guitar toy thing that might have been what he might have wanted but I would rather he have a close to the real thing than another toy type.. Anyway long assed story short he has a guitar.. Maybe now he can sleep...

BH