24 posts tagged “life”

Here is my dog Chichi, moments after trying -- and failing -- to chew through the middle of a 3ft long dog treat I gave him.  You can see the confusion in his eyes, he's never seen anything like that in his life.  He wasn't even sure whether or not it was his, when I tossed it onto the floor next to him.  He spent the first few seconds looking back and forth between it and me as if silently asking, "For me, really!?".

The funny thing about it, I didn't intend to buy that at all.  I stopped at the pet store on the way home from work with the intention of buying a new dog bed.  Ten minutes later I'm driving away with a smile on my face, anticipating the excitement my dog will have when he sees his new treat.  It wasn't till I got home that I remembered the bed -- and the fact that I didn't buy it.

Darn 3ft dog treat.  It just boggled my mind.

The same thing always happens to me at the grocery store.  I arrive intending to do the weekly shopping, and I get home later with 20 frozen pizzas and a deli sandwich.

In a few hours I'm probably going to be getting a call confirming my upcoming flight down to Minnesota.  It's going to be a week long trip, and depending on whether or not I have wifi access at the hotel will determine if I'll be blogging at all till about the end of the month .  Lets just say that I'm not looking forward to this trip.  At all.  I have no interest in Minnesota (no offense to anyone living there) and I really am not happy about the changes that will likely be happening to my work schedule (and thus my life) during the days after I get back home.

But that is life, as they say.  All I know is that I have at the very most two more years in Alaska.  As soon as my little brother graduates high school, I'm gone.  The time for me to have moved on is way overdue.  Alaska is beautiful, probably the most beautiful place I've ever lived, but it just isn't where I want to be.  So as much as I know I'll be disliking my job for...  awhile, it's not going to be forever.

I have places to go and people to see, and those places and people are most definitely not here in the Last Frontier.

I've had an interesting week.  First of all, today was my birthday.  The big 28.  But more of that later.  Today also was the day that my Alaska drivers license expired, so being the procrastinating fellow that I am, I waited until yesterday to go to the DMV and renew it.  I fill out the paperwork, wait, and wait, and wait, and then finally it's my turn -- and I fail my vision test.

Yeah, failed it miserably.  I failed it so badly that the lady couldn't even give me a little wink and say "Well, that was close enough so I'll let it slide!"  Nope, nowhere near it.  She just stood up and said "Time to get those eyes checked", which she could just as well said "You are so blind it would be dangerous to let you loose on the roads with people who have working eyes..."

So after I crawled away in embarassment, instantly off I went to Lenscrafter to get my eyes checked.  The same exact store I went to last time, but oddly enough, they couldn't find my records.  Unusual, they said, because they had records dating back to 2002.  Which led me to the horrible realization that I haven't had my eyes checked, or my prescription updated, since before 2002.  In fact -- after some thought -- I figured out I was still wearing the same glasses I had originally purchased in '99.

Yeah, imagine that.  I've known for the last year or so that I needed new glasses, but I sure didn't think it had been that long.  Or that my eyes had gotten that bad.  That means the last time I had new glasses, I was graduating high school.  Til' now.  Not good.  On the other hand, I sure do know how to get my monies worth out of things!

Anyway, got new glasses.  I like them.  I retook the test.  I passed it.  I have a brand shiny new license.  I'm now 28.  Didn't have a party or buy anything special, but my boss did give me the afternoon off, so I got to spend a few extra hours with the lovely miss Victoria -- and that makes for a good day.

And that is all for now.

Love this time of the year!  Things are finally starting to grow here in Alaska.  I have an 18ft flowerbed in my backyard that has hundreds of little wildflowers already sprouting (thanks for the seeds Niknik!), my flowers in my front yard are coming back (I had no idea they were annuals), and I've now transplanted a few of the tropical plants to my indoor pots.

I do love growing stuff.  It's a really good thing I'm not into drugs... that would be very, very bad for me lol.

Expect a lot more photos in the coming weeks.

Well this week was one that could have proven to be difficult for me.  There was someone in town that I haven't seen in years. 

At one point in time, for many many years, he was my best friend.  We were as close as brothers.  Of course we got in fights and had our rivalries, but that is pretty common for brothers anyway, right?  It didn't really matter though.  No matter what we fought about, we were always best friends again within a couple days.  We got to spend that formative point of our lives together, where kids can just be kids and not have to worry about anything else.  He had a pretty horrible family life though.  His parents rode him like a horse.  If there was any little thing they didn't want to do themselves, that was his job.  I remember being amazed that at 9 years old he was responsible for the cooking every night, the laundry, the mowing, the cleaning.  I know kids should have some chores, but they shouldn't be responsible for everything.

If their place wasn't flawless when his parents got home, if dinner wasn't set on the table hot and ready, if all his homework and chores weren't finished -- he got whipped.  If each of those things weren't done up to his dads exacting standards, he got whipped.  If he was outside playing, and didn't check in every half hour, he got whipped.  Honestly... I don't think there was a day that went by that he didn't get whipped for something.

I was two years older, and I think he looked up to me.  As much as I was his friend, I think I was also his escape.  When he came to my place, he could finally get away from all the crap he had to deal with at home.  I thought for a while he wanted to be just like me.  He took cues from me that influenced everything he did.  If I had a new coat, he had to have the same coat.  If I liked a sports team, he had to cheer for that team as well.  The same for shoes, bikes, hats.  He even wore his hair exactly the same way I did.

I have to admit that, after awhile, it used to really wear heavy on me.

A little imitation is flattering, I suppose, but when taken to the level he took it -- it was just annoying.  Why couldn't he just have his own style without copying every single thing I did?  I remember shouting that to my mom, many times, in frustration.  I wanted a friend, not a clone.  I think a lot of the fights we ended up having, deep down, I just wanted to get away from him for awhile.  As close as we were, we were already growing apart even back then.  More years passed by.  We both had our first girlfriends around the same time.  We both went on our first dates around the same time.  We went to the same school, played the same sports.  Instead of things getting better, and him growing to be his own person, things just kept getting worse.  I think I was starting to realize that he sort of wanted to be me, or perhaps less dramatically, he wanted everything I had.  He had to have everything I had.

I remember when his family finally moved to Alaska, leaving me in Arizona, I was relieved.  And ashamed I felt that way.  What sort of friend was I, I wondered, to feel happy about my closest friend moving away?

I think I needed the freedom though.  I needed the chance to walk around without a constant shadow.  I wanted the chance to finally be able to go do things with other friends without him feeling bad that he didn't get invited.  I wanted to be able to buy something and not have to think about seeing him with the exact same thing a week later.  We had spent over 10 years together, and I think I was ready for it to just be over.  I was ready for my own life.

And as sad as it is to say, when he was gone, I thrived.  I was never again stressed by any of my friends.  We went and did things just for the pure enjoyment of doing them.  I never had to worry about ulterior motives;  if they had something just like mine, it was just because they loved it too, not because they needed it simply because I had it first.  It was a good time in my life, a great few years.  Slowly we all drifted apart though, as military families always do.  By the time my dad decided to retire from the army, I was the last of my childhood friends still in Arizona.  I had my school friends of course, but they weren't the people I had grown up with.  I think I was a little happy at the chance to go somewhere new.

Until I found out we were moving to Alaska.

I don't know if I had a sense of premonition of the years to come, but I just didn't want to come to Alaska.  At all.  Yet we came anyway, and aside from the weather things weren't so bad.  It had been a few years since I had seen my friend, and it seemed time had been good for him.  He had his own friends now, his own sense of self.  I thought things would finally be different, that those stressful times of the past could be left behind and forgotten.

And then one night it all came shattering down.  He took from me the one thing that he never had, the one thing in life I had that he was never able to share.  Of course him and her both blamed it on the booze.  They wouldn't have ever done anything like that sober, they said.  It was a mistake, she pleaded.  It took such a horrible thing to make me realize that he hadn't changed.  He hadn't grown into his own person.  He was still the same little kid who had wanted all my toys, and clothes, and was always jealous of my other friends.  He was still the same boy, but instead of a coat or hat, he had had his sights aimed higher this time.

In one fell swoop I lost a best friend, a girlfriend, and most of the thoughts from my childhood would be forever tainted. 

Once again, years later, and this was the guy who was back in town.

I'm not that same person I was though.  He wanted to talk to me this week, but I didn't have anything to say to him.  I don't hate him, and I don't hate her, but I don't want anything to do with either.  That was a time of my life that is now over, and I have no intention of ever going back to it.  I had always wondered what I would do if he came back to town, now I know that I simply didn't have to do anything.

There was nothing that needed to be done.

Well me and brother spent nearly 4 hours this evening -- and probably 20 bucks worth of gas -- driving all around Anchorage on a completely aggravating quest to get end-of-the-year party supplies for school.  His Spanish teacher has this habit of sending the kids home with a list of 'needed' items that are so impossible to find that the only place I would think to look for them is in a small town in Mexico.

She's all about bringing the 'authentic' Spanish experience into the school.  Is she crazy?  We're in Alaska, the most authentic experience we are going to get around here is donning a Conquistador costume and driving to Taco Bell.

I'm all for making school interesting for the kids, but come on, at least make sure the stuff you want the kids to buy is actually sold somewhere within a thousand mile radius.  Why can't he get a teacher that wants him to bring in authentic Alaskan snow?  Now that would be easy.

My mom used to tell me these stories about how I had this habit of chewing on my bottom lip when I was thinking about things, when I was a kid.  I never really believed her, till now.  I found this photo of me at a tender young age, and as you can see -- that lip was most definitely getting chewed on.  She also told me that I couldn't pronounce any words that began with the letter "L".  My mom apparently thought my lack of "L's" was so amusing she would mock-scold me and say "Stop chewing on your fingernails!".  To which she told me I would always reply, "I'm not chewing my nails, I'm chewing my 'Yips!'".  You see, I pronounced all "L" words instead with a "Y".  My mom just loved that, thought it was so cute.  Moms.

So it's rather ironic that a few years later I actually did develop a horrible 'nail biting' habit.  Suddenly joking around about it wasn't so cute anymore.  It eventually got to a point where my fingertips used to get infected from how badly I'd gnaw on them.  It was an addition to me, something I couldn't stop.  Or more like an addictive habit, something akin to cracking your knuckles, only more destructive.

My mom hated it.  She used to go to some pretty crazy lengths to try and break me of it;  taping gloves onto my hands, and even going so far -- once upon a time -- as to buy a special 'non-harmful' chemical to coat my fingertips with.  It was actually designed for this purpose, so don't think she was dunking my hands in bleach or anything.  This stuff though was supposed to be so foul tasting, that simply having it all over your fingers would stop cold the nail biting problem.  They guaranteed success.  The only hiccup in that plan was the fact that I was so accustomed to biting and chewing on my fingers that I'd just stick them into my mouth without thought.

Of course the taste was every bit as bad as advertised, and it did cause me to immediately gag in disgust and yank my fingers away.  That only lasted till my next unconscious urge to chew my nails, where I'd again gasp in horror and avoid my fingers for awhile.  This went back and forth, and back and forth, till eventually I was so used to the taste of that chemical that it no longer bothered me -- and I'd just chew my nails as if nothing was on them.

My mom gave up at that point.  She recognized a hopeless battle when she saw one.

Amusingly I broke myself of the habit not much later.  I just -- I suppose -- decided enough was enough and stopped.  Cold turkey, like a smoker.  From one day to the next my nail biting issues were over.  My mom was stunned, after her years of trying to get me to stop.  I wonder now if perhaps I had an unconscious rebel urge to keep on biting my nails simply because my mom so relentlessly was trying to stop me.  Food for thought!

It was still years down the road before I broke myself of my knuckle-cracking addiction though.  Man, it's amazing how hard habits like that are to quit.

I saw a funny little quote today that said "I wish life came with a health-bar, so I knew how much longer I had left to live".  You would probably have to be a video game player to appreciate or find anything amusing about that statement, but it is pretty interesting to think about nonetheless.  Imagine if we really did have some sort of publicly recognizable 'meter' that showed the relative span of our lives.  I saw a video once -- I'm not sure if it was a commercial or a music video -- but the basic 'theme' was the fact that every single person had a number floating in the air above their heads.  This number was relentlessly counting down, and it was implied that it was the exact time that that person had left to live.

When a young person walked by, the number was huge.  Seemingly limitless.  When it showed an elderly man being carted into a waiting ambulance, his number was counting down rapidly towards zero.  It makes me wonder how differently we would think about life if we knew exactly, down to the second, how much longer we have left.  Would we be less willing to squander time on useless pursuits?  Would we avoid those people with lesser numbers, not wanting to be near someone at the twilight of their life?  Would we also avoid falling in love with someone simply because of the discrepancies in the visible length of life...  would we perhaps forgo a chance at a relationship with someone if we could clearly see that we would outlive them by 10 or 15 years.

And what of others things.

Would the decisions we make alter our totals?  If I started eating fast food for 3 meals a day, would my # start to rapidly diminish?  Would our (the United States) concept of an 'all volunteer' Army dwindle away if the young man or women signing up looked above their head and saw they now only had weeks to live instead of another fifty years?  Would we just curl up and all but give up when our personal span was nearing it's end, or would be live every last moment to the fullest, more than willing to die near those we love, doing what we love...

It's almost too bizarre a concept to even think about.  I think the world would be a very different thing, it would almost have to be.  We all like to imagine we have a long, long life still ahead of us.  I think it would be almost too disturbing to walk around daily seeing evidence to the contrary.

I had a very rare chance to go into work a little later than usual this morning.  So I slept in a bit, then got up to take a shower.  As I turned off the water all I hear is yelling and screaming from outside the door.  I live with my brother of course, but I'm usually off to work well before he wakes up for school in the morning.  Needless to say I'm used to very quiet mornings, so the commotion going on freaked me out a little bit, even though it sounded more 'surprised' than 'terrified'.

I started getting dressed quick, while standing near my bathroom door trying to hear what was going on.  I suddenly realize I hear my moms voice, as well as my brothers.

My Mom:  *screams* "Help me with this, get out here!"
My Brother: "Why do I have to do it?"
My Mom:  "Because usually this is something the man does!"  *screams again*  "The man takes care of this stuff while the woman stays clear!"
My Brother:  "Well that's something we are going to need to change, isn't it!"

I still had no idea what was going on at this point.

My Mom:  "Grab it, grab it!  Throw that bag on it!"
My Brother:  "I'm not getting near it!"
My Mom:  "I can't believe you won't help me with this!  I'm going to get Josh..."
My Brother:  "He's still in the shower..."
My Mom:  "I don't careeee!"

Just then someone is pounding on the bathroom door.

My Mom:  "Josh!  Are you dressed?  Come out here and help me with this!  Please!"

I tossed on my shirt quick, and my shoes and then stepped out into the hall.  I hear my mom screaming again and talking from out in the garage, so I turned towards my brother with a curious look.

Me:  "Who is she talking to?"
My brother:  "Herself... I guess..."

I open the door and step into my garage to see my mom standing up in the open door of my jeep, wildly pointing towards the other side of the room.  I look over and see a blue canvas bag moving around in little hops, each movement accompanied by another scream from my mom.

My Mom:  "It's a mouse, it's a mouse!  Oh God...  Ahh!  Ahhh!  Get it, Oh my God!"
Me:  "It's in the bag?  Why didn't you just take it outside?"
My Mom:  "It's NOT in the bag!  The bag is just on top of it...  Oh my God, do something!"

At this point I walk over and lift off the bag, doing my best to ignore my moms sudden ear piercing screaming.  I see a very tiny gray mouse (it was a shrew, actually) and it was locked between the black suction cups of a Gopher Grip.

Me:  "What the..."
My Mom:  "I thought it was dead!  I was going to toss it in the trashcan, but oh God, it's not dead!  Hurry and kill it!"
Me:  "I'm not going to kill it, are you crazy?"
My Mom:  "Well do SOMETHING with it!"

I reach down and grab the bag, and the poor trapped mouse and I start to walk towards my mom.  Of course I wasn't really walking towards her, I was walking outside.  She just happened to be between me and the door.  She screamed in horror and jumped down off my jeep and ran outside, backwards.  Yeah, she was running backwards.  I think she was too scared to take her eyes off the mouse...  I just simply walked down my driveway, bent down and let the mouse go free.  The poor thing was screaming about as much as my mom was.  It ran across the street, up over the snow hill and vanished.

My Mom:  "I can't believe you just did that!"
Me:  "Why, I'm not scared of mice..."
My Mom:  "But... he could come back now!"
Me:  "He was just trying to get warm.  I have a few that live in the backyard every winter."
My Mom:  "Oh God..."

As I was walking back towards my house I notice for the first time that my jeep was parked halfway outside.

Me:  "What were you doing with my jeep?  Was the mouse under there?"
My Mom:  "Uhh, no..."
Me:  "So why did you have to move it?"
My Mom:  "I was going to drag the mouse outside, and run him over."

Hearing this, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Me:  "You've got to be kidding..."
My Mom:  "I couldn't think of anything else to do!"
Me:  "The best plan you could come up with was to get in my jeep and run the mouse down?  That is gruesome..."
My Mom:  "Well I sure wasn't going to touch that thing!"

That poor woman.  I admit, I'm as scared of spiders as my mom seems to be of mice, but even I have never contemplated vehicular homicide upon one.  I left for work 15 minutes later, and the whole time I was there she kept shuddering and rubbing her arms, while her and my brother argued about who was the bigger wimp for not being able to move the mouse.  I wouldn't be surprised if she called in sick from work, claiming emotional stress.

By the way, this is the lil guy that so terrified my mom.

I've been thinking a lot lately about praise.  About how powerful it is, just the simple act of being praised by someone can not only make a day, but it can inspire the course of a persons life.  Imagine a child being praised as a 'great writer' by a teacher, and growing up to become one--and forever acknowledging the fact that it was that very praise that made him decide to take up writing as a career.  That isn't far-fetched, such things have happened and will surely happen again in many forms and ways.

As for me, I wasn't the most amazing child.  I wasn't the smartest student.  I wasn't the star athlete.  I wasn't the lead in the school play.  I never stood out in any particular area that would make someone stop and say to me, "That was brilliant!" or "That was the best I've ever seen!".  No, I didn't hear such things.  I was average.  Adequate.  I plodded my way through school in a mixture of laziness and rebellion.  That isn't to say I was the worst of students, not by far.  I just didn't have that drive in me to excel at anything so greatly that it inspired someone to praise me for it.  I was the kid who 'just got by' in a lot of areas.  I was the kid that teachers always described as 'having potential' yet never quite rising to it.

It was true, all of it.  I didn't wake up to the direction my life was taking till my senior year of high school.  It was finally then that I realized I had better shape up if I was ever going to make anything of my life.  I didn't become a perfect student, don't get me wrong.  I still skipped my share of classes, I wasn't suddenly some golden child.  But I changed.  I started applying myself and I started taking pride in my work, and most importantly I started enjoying the results that came of my hard work.  I ended up making the honor roll for the first time, and I can honestly say I was proud of myself.  But I would have given anything to hear my parents say it to me.

That is something I still regret to this day, because in all my growing years I don't recall my parents ever telling me they were proud of me.  Oh I'm sure they were proud of me for certain things, at certain times.  I wasn't such a failure as to never do anything worthy of my parents approval.  I just simply never heard them say it to me, and I realize now how much I've always craved that.  To this day I still want to hear those words.   To this day just hearing them say it to me would... well, I don't know.  It would feel really good, that's all I really know.

I know they are proud of me.  I know it.  I know my dad is proud that I walked in his footsteps and took up the same career as him.  I know my mom was probably proud when I became a homeowner early in life.  I know my little brother is proud of just about everything I do (me and him are extremely close).  I know these things, but there is a difference between knowing something is true and having someone tell you it is.  I would just like to hear my parents say it.  Is that vain of me?  Is it an unreasonable expectation?  I'm 27 years old, I suppose if it hasn't happened by now it likely isn't going to, but I still can't help hoping.

Whenever I accomplish something I consider at least partially noteworthy--or at least something I'm proud of myself--I still have this little kid in the back of my mind waiting for my parents to acknowledge it.  Just waiting for them to let me know they were proud I did it.

The one person I'm closest to in the world--Niknik--has told me on quite a few occasions that she was proud of me, for certain things I had done.  I never told her before just how much those words meant to me, how good they made--and still make--me feel.  Just knowing that someone out there in the wide world values you and isn't shy about saying it is an amazing feeling.  I might not ever hear the words from my parents, but I've heard them from someone that is even closer to me in our own way, and that is enough.

She knows the very worst there is to know about me, and is still proud of me.  I don't think there can be anything in the world better than that.  Thank you Niknik.  You make my day in a hundred little ways, and always inspire me towards being a better person.