Toddlers Aren't the Only Ones

When I said toddlers are assholes, sometimes they grow into adult pricks. I suspect someone in the age range spanning adolescent to adult is the responsible party for dampening what would otherwise had been a perfectly lovely Christmas.  Coming to the realization that someone pillaged a camera and my two best lenses from my car whilst it was at my house, delivered competing emotions.  There was the sinking frosty darkness in the pit of the gut, spawned from being helpless against the violation of my sanctuary, but also there was the boiling lava of unbridled rage desperate for someone to victimize.

Fe Fi Fo Fum, Mother-fuckers!

If you were to chart the two emotions over time, they grew steadily and steeply immediately following the discovery of my loss, slowed their ascent after about an hour, then began to fade much slower than it rose, an hour after that... but anytime I talked about it the wildfire of unfocused fury spiked again, and the icy, inky gut-punch never really did.

This long removed from the initial shock of the theft, I am feeling less like a homicidal viking berserker and more like an irritated rattlesnake.  I will subsist and mayhap with the begining of a new year I will let go my anger or find a productive channel to pour it into, but tonight it lives inside of me and does nothing to improve me or my situation.

The Weasle Revelation

I had intended to begin this post talking about binge eating, being fat, some few of the trials and tribulations I have experienced and some of the things I am about to go through to bring an end to the heavy half of my life and learning to live lean...  And in preparation of this post I was foraging Google for reuse-licensed images of a literal glutton - the animal that as a child I was taught was about a picky an eater as a goat, and known to gorge itself until it was sick if enough food was available...

And I found images, indeed, but I also learned something that was revelationary.  The glutton goes by another name as well... one that has a very different reputation. Glutton is another name for a wolverine.

Yeah... the two different names for this creature invoke very distinct and dissimilar mental imagery, and suddenly, now I know that on my own weight loss journey I will be going from a glutton to a wolverine. I'll be the same me, but thought of differently.

This will not be a change in name alone. Not a re-branding or a PR shift.  Substantial and life-altering, surely, but at the core I will be the same as I have ever been... I will not, in fact, "be a new man," but rather "be a better me."

I can't wait for pants that don't have awkwardness at the pockets, being able to slip passed people in a crowd, not worrying if a chair can hold me, ache relief, energy renewal, better sleep, and greater social acceptance.

Coming soon to a body near you!

Toddlers are Assholes

It's become a mantra in our household... we try not to let the toddler hear us say that.

Crying w/o cause @ 2013 Ren-Fest

Today, my older boy shoulder rammed his mother and infant brother while she was trying to pick the little one up off the floor; told his mommy that she can not turn off the television because it is his, from his time-out spot; swiped and hid a glass ornament from mommy's nightstand, while he was supposed to be napping in his room; TPed his room, while he was supposed to be napping; and hammer-fisted the baby's face without preamble or cause.

I could tell you all about how awful my day at work was, what with this season being eight to ten fold busier than any other time of year, and myself the only veteran employee while we understaffed the department by 60 man-hours/week according to company payroll planing metrics, but it seems insignificant when compared against the struggle of surviving a malevolent, attention seeking two-and-a-half year old boy.

It is my belief that my darling angel of a child is not engaging in this rage-inducing behavior without impetus, but is rather is acting out in ways that garners our immediate attention because he is not entirely adjusted to sharing our time and energy with his baby brother.  Though I empathize with his new plight, I can neither excuse away nor condone improper behavior, especially when it is violence towards his defenseless sibling. I need to be sure he gets a fair amount of attention, with the understanding that "fair" is not defined the same as "equal;" that he learns acceptable ways to communicate when he need more attention; and how to cope with times when he will have to wait for our attention.

When you are a two-year-old you are the only important person.  You have only a vague, fuzzy concept of empathy if any at all. Hedonism is the primary mindset; if it feels good to me, it is right for me. If I want it, there is no reason I should not be able to have it, regardless of what "it" is.  Enlightenment and oneness are a long way off for a two-year-old. Until my boys learn to either respect others, or to act like they do because it makes their parents happy, my wife and I will continue our mantra: Toddlers are assholes!

Storytelling

I feel like sometime near the end of high school or maybe early in my first attempt at college, I allowed my creative storytelling muscles atrophy.  I feel confident that when properly motivated I can craft a descriptive enough sentence, or properly employ simile and metaphor, bring to bear a diverse vocabulary... but I rarely create from nothing a scene of the fantastic.  I was once a worldbuilder. In 3rd grade I purchased the rights to a concept around which I constructed a nearly rules-free role-playing game that literally entertained me and dozens of my acquaintances for about a decade.  In my mind was the universe in which they trounced about on hundreds of ad libed adventues. The price I paid for this potent seed of inspiration was a green Hotwheels car.

This one on Ebay may actually be THE car I traded him.

Gone are the days of anthropomorphic animals with comic-book super-powers, evil geniuses, pocket universes, Diamond-wing Starfighters, Spell tomes in esoteric languages, and marathons of mental chess with my friends and frienamies.

I feel like I need to be a worldbuilder again.  I need to make up flavorful characters experiencing wild scenarios in funky places.  I need some of my youthful mental energy back.

The world does not need the drivel I will spew, any more than it needs the images I capture and create, but I have a need to freeze and manipulate light, and I have a need to craft word...  I make for me.

For the love of BACON!

(cc) cyclonebill - https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyclonebill/2222309331/

It may be true that bacon makes all things better, but I submit that a true baconite might not be able to, in good conscience, add bacon to many dishes at all. Sure bacon elevates your mac-n-cheese, or your salad or what have you... but really, is the end result better-than-bacon?  In many, maybe even most, cases you are degrading bacon's perfection in order to elevate some lowly foodstuff with bacon-ness. Why soil bacon with lesser foods?