Tag: personal (Page 3 of 10)

Trust the Process

August 28, 2018 / DB

Finally a day of calm. After about two weeks of constant activity by contractors, we have wrapped up whatever phase of the Fill the House cycle we are in. The latest projects were building a work station for S and adding a large, built-in to our main office. That involved custom cabinetry, some serious painting, and a lot of me sitting around either waiting for people to show up or monitoring them while they are here.

Other than a couple small paint touch-ups, I think we’re done. Our decorator is coming over later today to hang some lights and blinds for us. And I have someone coming to pick up an old desk we are getting rid of. After those items are checked off, we’ll be calm for awhile.

I’m excited to reclaim my office. My computer has been sitting on a table in our bedroom for two weeks, which has kept me out of any kind of music routine over that stretch. Sadly, the huge, ugly, but sweet sounding speakers I had been using will not fit the layout of the new room. I’m bummed about that because they sounded pretty awesome, and now I’ll go back to computer speakers. I think I’m going to have to upgrade those at some point, because I had become used to warm, room-filling sound since I claimed those speakers from my in laws last year.

After tonight’s final touches we will go back to waiting for furniture. We have a big shipment that should arrive in about a month now. We also just ordered some outdoor furniture that should be here in October. We have an outdoor area that needs a TV, so I’ve been reaearching the best way to get one mounted out there and then the TV itself. I’m looking forward to some cool fall evenings, sitting out there watching a game with the fireplace on. (Humble brag)

We still have a ways to go to get the house to some kind of new normal, but we’re getting there, slowly but surely.

Insomnia Notes

June 18, 2018 / DB

I had been sleeping better for the past couple weeks. Well, kind of. Instead of lying awake for hours making and remaking 1000 mental lists related to our real estate adventures, sometime about 10 days ago I began falling immediately and deeply asleep, not waking until morning, and then feeling as though I had only slept for half an hour or so. I’m not as exhausted as I had been, but neither am I feeling 100% rested like I normally would have 8–10 hours of deep sleep.

I say had been because I’m typing this at nearly 1:00 AM Monday morning. I don’t know if it is the heat or my brain getting wound-up for what promises to be a crazy-busy week, but I could not sleep tonight. So seems like the perfect moment to get all ya’ll caught up on what’s gone down over the past week and what’s on the calendar for this week.

Our main home remains unsold. Although Sunday night we heard that a potential buyer requested some more information about our house, whatever that means. We went ahead and scheduled a painter to come in next week, after we move, to make some changes that our agent believes could help us. Yay, spending money for other people to enjoy!

Thursday I went down to the lake house and met the buyers, who wanted to take the boat for a test drive before deciding whether to buy it. That went well on several levels. The test drive went well and they decided to buy the boat! Granted, we had to drop our price a bit, but we set the original price high anticipating that. Negotiating 101, fools.

The other aspect of the night that went well was learning about the family that is taking our place. Just the wife came, with two of their three kids. After we introduced ourselves and started toward the dock, she asked, “So, which one of you is the Jayhawk?” Turns out she has two degree from KU – we were on campus at the same time although she was in law school when I was an undergrad – so that gave us some immediate common ground. She had seen a couple KU things in the house and said, although she already loved everything about the house, that’s when she knew it was the house for her. Her husband went to IU. Those of you who have been to our lake house know that each weekend we spent down there, we hung IU and KU flags from our dock. With a Hoosier and Jayhawk taking our places, S and I decided to leave our flags for them. We laughed at folks who know us stopping by when they see the flags and then getting confused when there’s a completely different family there.

One bad thing happened that night: I lost my wallet. Or at least I thought I did. On my way home that night I passed an Indianapolis cop shooting radar on I–465. I was going about 77, as was the car in front of me, but the cop must have been hunting bigger game, as he didn’t even look our way. I chuckled to myself and thanked the traffic gods for their help. A couple hours later, as I was getting ready for bed, I realized I couldn’t find my wallet. I searched through S’s car, which I had driven that evening, and couldn’t find it. I looked in all the stuff I brought back from the lake house, no sign of it. I looked everywhere I had been in the house before and after my lake trip. Nothing. I went to bed for 10 minutes, got back up, searched through S’s car again. No luck.

So I stressed through the next couple days knowing we would stop at the lake house Sunday when we took C to camp. Sunday we looked all through the lake house, up and down the yard, checked every nook and cranny of the boat, and again nothing. I was deeply perturbed. We hadn’t had any strange charges on our credit cards, so I figured it was safe, but had no idea where it could be.

When we got home I took another look through S’s car. After about five minutes, wouldn’t you know it, I found a “secret” shelf in the central console that I had apparently pushed my wallet into at some point in my drives. Stupid. I say secret shelf because neither S or I knew it was there, and she’s had the car over a year and had one almost exactly like it for three years before that. Apparently the engineers at Jeep are cleverer than we are.

Dropping C off at camp went well. She was super excited to get down there. Two classmates are in her cabin and at least one other St. P’s girl is too. It looked like there was a group of 4–5 girls from another school together in her cabin as well. Hopefully they all get along. It looks like she’s going to have a hot, muggy week down there.

As we were driving down S looked at the car’s temperature display, saw it was 95 outside, and wondered, “Why does it always have to be in the 90s when we drop them off at camp?” My response was, “Well, at least it’s not pouring,” and we laughed.

So of course on a day when there was a 20% chance of rain, there was a pop-up storm that sat right on top of camp and unleashed heavy showers from the moment we parked until the moment we got C to her cabin. Seriously, it was rain stupidly hard. We were thoroughly soaked, but at least it was rain and not sweat like normal.

Oh, last Thursday we also had our home orientation. It was a two-plus hour walk-through where we learned about the home warranty program and then went room-by-room through it pointing out things that needed attention like nail pops, paint touch-ups, etc. I guess that’s the good thing about buying a brand new house: everything should be in perfect shape when we move in.

Friday L got her new bedroom furniture. She bumped up to a queen bed and added a new dresser and side table to replace the stuff we bought for her sisters when they bunked up 10 years ago. She was very excited. We haven’t gotten her a new mattress yet, so we have an air mattress on the new bed frame. I kind of think she’d be just fine if we left it like that.

We have a steady flow of other Amazon deliveries bringing various items for the new house. And we have a long list of big furniture purchases that we are actively searching the perfect piece to fill.

Now comes our big week. Wednesday two of my sisters-in-law have rented a Uhaul to come clear a bunch of stuff out of our home that they’ve either been storing here or that we are handing down to them. Thursday we have a final walk through at the house, close at 1:00, and then will start taking stuff over on our own. Friday C comes home from camp; one of her friend’s parents volunteered to bring her home so I can work on moving stuff. And Saturday the movers come to do all the big stuff. Next Saturday night we’ll be sleeping in our new home.

That Real Estate Life

June 5, 2018 / DB

The first week of summer was exhausting. Not because we did a bunch of fun stuff. Rather because it was spent putting two houses onto the market.

Our main home went on the market last Tuesday, although the sign didn’t go into the yard until Wednesday. So there was a seemingly endless list of cleaning and straightening and other tiny projects to make the house gleam as much as it can. And then the constant checking of things to make sure if we got a call about a showing we could get out of the way quickly and still have everything in order. The girls did a pretty good job with it all, although they are already beginning to chafe a bit under the restrictions we’ve put on them to keep the house in decent shape.

Then Saturday we went down to the lake house to get it ready for our realtor to come take pictures and put her signs up. That house officially went on the market this morning.

All this is new to us, as we’ve only bought houses before, never sold before.[1] As I said up top, it is exhausting. Especially with kids home from school who want nothing more than to relax and make messes and not have to worry about them for a week or two.

All that physical stuff wears you down enough, and then there’s the mental side. The waiting for notifications that a showing is scheduled. Each time I get a text message there’s the hope it is from the booking agency. It could be a text with totally awesome news from a friend or relative, but I still feel a little let down if it isn’t a showing notification. Little things catch your eye as you walk through the house, “Man, we really should have had that fixed. Who’s going to buy a house that has that?!?!” The girls are clearly having some issues, too, which weighs on us. There have been emotions and some acting out which we are assuming come from the stress and uncertainty they’re feeling. Oh, and I’ve not been the best dad, snapping at them for little things.

This isn’t meant to be some “Woe Are Us” post. We are lucky that we are selling our homes because of decisions we made, not because we have to sell them. We knew what we were getting into and could have adjusted our timing if we wanted to. But now seemed like the right time to jump all the way in. I think that will prove to be true in retrospect once we get through everything. But, man, this first week was tiresome.

Now that all the prep work is done, and the first week of being on the market is out of the way, I do hope I can relax a little. We had hoped for more attention on our house in week one. As I mentioned, we have neighbors who had two offers on the first day they listed their home, and our entire area is lacking in inventory. Those unrealistic comparisons/expectations weighed us down, too. Sunday we told ourselves, “We have a great house, in a great location. Someone is going to want it.” Selling a home in a month is awesome, and there’s still plenty of time to do that. It’s going to happen, just on a more normal schedule that our neighbors.

Oh, the girls and I did go pick strawberries one day last week. Which was a lot of fun until someone – no one claimed responsibility – decided to wash all four pounds at once and then put them back into the fridge. We had to freeze them before they turned into a mushy, mess, which was kind of sad. We will have good smoothies for weeks, though!

And, of course, there are all kinds of other stresses associated with buying our new home we’re also dealing with. For example, spending roughly an hour just trying to get a mortgage statement from our current lender, who seem to operate on systems that were built in the 1970s. ↩

Holiday Weekend Wrap Up With More Big News

May 29, 2018 / DB

Our summer is off to a very hot and hectic start.

Remember back when I was bitching about how cold it was in April? Mother Nature was paying attention and has punished me, and others in Indiana, who complained about her April offerings. This month is almost certain to clinch the hottest May in Indianapolis history. Yesterday was the hottest May day here in 107 years. It’s stupid. I’m assuming June is going to be wet and in the 60s.

We began the summer as we normally do, heading down to the lake. We went Saturday, taking one of our young nephews, and were joined by other family on Sunday. So the girls were super annoying Saturday without friends to keep them entertained. They were slightly better when aunts, uncles, and other cousins showed up. We had a second birthday party for one of the cousins. The rest of the time we just sweated in the heat.

Each of the past two summers, as we’ve closed down the house for the season, S and I have had a very brief conversation about whether the lake house is worth it. We really only spend six or seven fun weekends down there every season, but we’re paying a mortgage, insurance, taxes, and utilities for 12 months. We always talk about spending a weekend down there in the fall or winter, but never do it. Each of the past two years, the answer has been yes, it is still worth it. That math has changed.

We’re getting ready to sell the lake house, too.

It’s partially because we’re getting busier and it’s going to be tougher to get down there as the girls continue to get older. But it’s also because our new home in Indy is stretching us out more on how much money we’re spending on properties each month. It’s tougher to justify the lake house when it’s no longer in the comfortable financial zone to keep it.

We told the girls a couple weeks ago, and they weren’t happy. One of them cried for an hour. Too much change at once, I think. We explained our reasoning, but also pointed out that this will free us to do other things in the summer. They can have friends over more often. We might get to take some more, bigger trips. Eventually that logic has taken hold, but I still think they are, overall, disappointed.

When they were acting like being at the lake was a chore this weekend, when I spent 90 minutes in the heat working in the yard, when I thought ahead to all the prep for lake weekends and all the clean up after, I was ready to put a sign out when we left Monday morning. I’m sure I’ll be in a better mood in two weeks when we have friends down. But after six great summers, I’m kind of done with it.

We are just full of bombshells lately, aren’t we?!?!

Our home here officially went on the market today. We already have one showing scheduled. It’s been a hectic week or so to get the house as ready as it can be to start letting people walk through it. I believe I mentioned one of our next door neighbors had two offers the first day they put theirs on the market two weeks ago. That sets kind of a high expectation for how quickly things could happen. We also pushed our price up a decent chunk since they got more than their asking price, and we have more updates and a much bigger lot than they do. We could get an offer in a week, which would be pretty good, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be all stressed out since the neighbors were done so quickly.

We went over to meet the builder at our new house today. Even though we bought after it was 95% complete, we still had to run through some bullshit marketing surveys to satisfy their execs. They were putting in all the landscaping today, which made the house look better. Only problem is it is hot and dry, as I mentioned above, and they’re waiting on some final piece of paperwork to get the water line connected. We’re supposed to have a pretty good dose of rain over the next 36 hours as the tropical storm remnants pass us, but if the water isn’t hooked up soon, I worry we’ll have to start over in the fall. Oh well…

I hope all of you had safe and enjoyable holiday weekends free of major, life-changing decisions.

The Family Project Reveal

May 22, 2018 / DB

I have been struggling with insomnia lately. Several nights a week, despite often being absolutely, physically beat, I will go to bed, fall asleep for 30–45 minutes, and then wake up and be unable to go back to sleep for hours.

This is mostly because my brain has been working overtime of late. I’ve been teasing you with references to a big family project for a week or two. It is that project that has my brain unable to shut down at night.

At last I can reveal what it is that has been dominating my life and keeping me from sleeping.

After almost 15 years in our current home, we have purchased a new house. The B’s are moving!

It’s a long and likely funny story, but I’ll cut to the chase for most of you. We are moving ever-so-slightly south into the Nora area of Indianapolis. We purchased a spec home that was built on a 3-acre property that has been split into three parcels. Our house was built first. On the opposite side a house is currently being built and has already been sold. And in the middle is a third lot that will likely break ground any day.

Exactly a month ago we went and looked at the spec house. We loved it, but were not totally sold on the location, so we kept looking. We also had our eyes out for empty lots where we could build exactly what we wanted. The area we’re looking in is pretty much saturated. We realized that it might take us months to find a lot that both fit our budget and construction needs. So about 10 days ago we began seriously looking at the middle lot I mentioned above. We toured a model home of the design that is slated for that lot and absolutely loved everything about it.[1] So a week ago we were reasonably certain we were going to bid on the lot and build that house.

But after going over the builder’s pricing sheets, we realized that building the house of your choice is often a budget killer. The spec list they gave us was already beyond our means, although our realtor claimed we could make some easy changes to knock the price down significantly. Problem is we wanted to make some other changes that, unfortunately, would have wiped out those savings and added plenty more spending.

So last Wednesday we changed approach and decided to go after the spec home we looked at a month ago. Saturday we walked through, made a list of things we wanted to have done, and submitted a bid. The builder had an open house scheduled for Sunday, so we knew we wouldn’t hear back until after that was done. Sure enough, 15 minutes after the doors closed, we got a pretty reasonable counter. We countered right back and just after noon on Monday we received the builder’s acceptance.

We looked at our first house on April 20. We are set to close on June 21. That’s some fast real estating! We are hopeful we have the same luck with our current home as our next door neighbors just had. They listed their house on a Tuesday and had two offers that night. Our house will likely go on the market a week from today. The area we live in is super hot right now, so we’re hopeful for a quick resolution.

So that’s the big news.

Why has this been keeping me up at night? Because when I hit that magic moment after 30–45 minutes of sleep and wake up, I start running through lists. I admit I’m a little overwhelmed by all that is involved in moving. So I start running through what all needs to be done to get our current house ready to sell. I mentally pack. I mentally purge old belongings we don’t need anymore. I think of all the changes in address that need to be made to utilities, etc. Then I think of all the work that will go into setting up the new home. And so on. Next thing you know it’s 2:00 AM and I finally give up on sleeping and come downstairs to have another beer and read for a little bit to try to re-set my brain. I think I’ve been averaging 4.5 hours of sleep over the past couple weeks, with an hour or so up front, and hour in the middle, and then two-plus hours of exhausted sleep before the alarm goes off. Luckily the excitement of all this keeps me going during the day. I figure I might start relaxing and sleeping again sometime in July, assuming we get this house sold promptly. If not, I may not be able to sleep at all.

Which is kind of the point of model homes, right? ↩

Scott

May 11, 2018 / DB

Normally on Friday mornings one of the first things I do is start combing through my playlist of newest music to put together the Friday playlist.

I can’t do that today.

News I had been fearing for several days was confirmed just moments ago: the body of Scott Hutchison, lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, was discovered in Edinburgh overnight. Hutchison sent out some cryptic Tweets Tuesday night (our time) and then disappeared. Those tweets were not unusual; Scott battled depression and would occasionally go off the rails with late night Tweets, only to apologize the next day. Wednesday did not bring apologies but rather appeals from Scott’s brother Grant, FR’s dummer, for anyone who knew of Scott’s whereabouts to ask him to contact his family.

The last two days passed with more pleas for help finding Scott from both his family and authorities. And now he is confirmed as gone.

I feel terrible for his family and loved ones. I feel terrible that Scott had so much pain that he was unable to find a way to manage.

I also feel terrible for finding so much joy in his songs about his pain. Over the last 10 years, since I first discovered Frightened Rabbit’s music, I’ve listened to and enjoyed no band more than them. I often found that a little odd, as his songs of romantic failure, depression, and internal pain came at a time in my life when I was happily married, having kids, and generally leading a placid suburban existence. What about late 30s/early 40s me connected with these songs of deeply damaged 20-somethings? Hell, even in the brief periods of my 20s when my life wasn’t going the way I wanted it to and I felt aimless and unhappy, I never reached the depths of what Scott sang about. So there was no connecting dots of my previous life with his.

I think it was always the utter, brutal honesty in his songs that kept pulling me back. Plenty of people sing of heartbreak and sadness. There was something unique to his lyrics that dove right into the uncomfortable bits, as he might call them, and made it impossible not to find some connection with them.

And there was always that glimmer of hope in even his saddest, darkest songs. There was the feeling that Scott was going to bash his way through the pain by strumming his guitar just a little harder, while his brother beat the hell out of the drums behind him, and through communion with his audience, find a way to get through another day.

All week I’ve been thinking of “Floating in the Forth,” the final full track on FR’s 2008 breakthrough album The Midnight Organ Fight. The song, which begins with a low moaning that sounds like a tug pulling from harbor, works through the process of a man stepping to the edge of a bridge – in this case the actual bridge that crosses the Firth of Forth in Edinburgh – and then deciding he’ll “save suicide for another year,” before exploding in a glorious, angelic closing sequence. “Take your life, give it a shake…” was the line I kept repeating to myself, hoping Scott had found the strength to do that one more time.

Initial reports say that Scott’s body was found near the Forth Road Bridge he sang about 10 years ago.

I was worried about Scott two years ago, as much as a fan who briefly met and shook hands with him once can be worried. The band’s 2016 tour had several “off the rails” moments, they may have broken up briefly two different times, and 2017 dawned with some real questions about their future. But they toured heavily through that year, released a fine, three-song EP in the fall, and 2018 dawned with optimism. The band did a small club tour for the 10th anniversary of The Midnight Organ Fight. Scott and Grant recorded with two other Scottish brothers as Mastersystem. Scott spoke with several publications about both where the band had been and where they were going. He seemed positive about their future, noting that several songs were already in the works for FR’s next album. Just a week ago he told a writer, when asked about his health, he said:

“Pretty fine. Middling. On a day-to-day basis, I’m a solid six out of ten. I don’t know how often I can hope for much more than that. I’m drawn to negatives in life, and I dwell on them, and they consume me. I don’t think I’m unique in that sense. I’m all right with a six. If I get a couple of days a week at seven, fuck, it’s great.”

So much of the best music comes from pain. As a music fan, you hope that the albums you buy, the digital tunes you stream, the tickets you buy, and the positive vibes you send back to the artists you love can ease their pain and help to sustain them. I’m very sad today that all of us who loved Scott Hutchison and his music could not help him keep his demons at bay.

Twenty

February 22, 2018 / DB

After you have a parent die, you think of them in odd moments and ways.

Example: one day last fall I was shaving. As I stood there, scraping metal against skin and stubble, for some reason my brain jumped back 31 years to the night my stepdad taught me how to shave. I remembered him showing me the proper amount of pressure to use, how to avoid nicking the edges of my lips but still get the area around them cleaned up, and his amazement at my ability to shave with either hand. He kept his razor in his right hand at all times, reaching across his face to shave the left cheek. I, on the other hand, just swapped hands and used my left hand for the left side. That seemed perfectly normal to me but blew his mind a little bit.

I chuckled at this memory and then did the math trying to recall how old he was that night. Thirty-six. Which, you know, wow.

I also thought of my mom’s age at the time, 34. Then I thought ahead to her age when she died, 46. That’s when my mind was blown a little. As I stood there, shaving on a warm, late fall morning, I, too was 46. I did some more math and figured that if I made it through the upcoming weekend, I would have lived more days than she had. Which was utterly amazing.

We’re at the age now that, unfortunately and sadly, several of my loyal readers and friends have lost parents. I never pretend to have all the answers that will help ease their grief, but I also have always felt an obligation to provide some kind of comforting words based on my experience. I usually say two things:

1) There is no right or wrong way to grieve. Whatever feels right to you is the correct way. As long as you aren’t being destructive to yourself or your loved ones, never feel guilty about crying too much or not enough, being too sad or not sad enough. Do what you need to do.

2) You will think about your lost parent every day for the rest of your life. This one has always bothered me a little. I don’t mean to tell people who are in deep grief that that pain will never go away. No, the message is that every day something will remind you of your lost parent. You may be going about your day normally and hear a song they loved, come across something you have from their home, or just see a particular kind of late afternoon light that reminds you of riding to practice together and laughing at their bad jokes.

Or shaving and remembering how your stepdad, who is now two years gone, bought you your first razor and how you have almost passed your mom in total days lived.

I share this today because it is the 20th anniversary of my mom’s death. And I still, honestly, think of her every single day. The memories aren’t often sad or of her death. Just little things here and there.

Over the years I’ve had plenty of regrets of the things she missed – my marriage, being a grandmother, her not being there for my stepdad in his final years – but those, also, are fleeting. Most days it’s just a quick thought of her in the midst of other things. I keep the last picture we took together here on my desk, and although I don’t look directly at it very often, she’s always right there in my peripheral vision. Kind of like those fleeting thoughts each day: always there, but just out of focus.

There are a few days I think of her, and miss her, a little more. Mother’s Day. Her birthday. And February 22. In the first few years after her death, on Feb. 22 I would constantly check the clock and count down until the time of her death. When the time arrived, I would often go somewhere on my own, and both think about it and try not to think about it at the same time. Weird, I know.

More recently, I’ve just acknowledged the day early on and then gone about things as I would any other day.

As the 20th anniversary approached, though, I’ve been thinking more back to that day she died. I’m astounded at how strong my memories are of the first 12 hours or so after she died. Honestly, I think I remember everything about the period from the moment I got the phone call from my stepdad until I finally passed out on my grandmother’s bed early the next morning. After that, the following week is a blur.

As many of you know, S lost her mom in 1993. So we talk a lot about the Dead Moms, as we call them, in our house.[1] We often wonder how they would have changed as they aged. Would they have mellowed, become more strident in their ways, or some combination? Would they get along with each other? Would the four of us all get along? I’m pretty sure my mom would have been the one we had to tell to stop buying the girls so many presents at Christmas, for example.

And, to be honest, we use them to make fun of some of our closest friends. When someone tells about a crazy mother or father in law they have to deal with, we will always chuckle to ourselves. Later we’ll laugh together about how we never have to worry about St. Carolyn or St. Marie pissing us off, ignoring our instructions for the kids, or meddling in our business. They are forever frozen, all their rough edges softened by grief and two decades of them being memories.

The coda of our famous First Date Story revolves around telling each other our moms were both deceased. ↩

Old Man

February 1, 2018 / DB

I have passed another milestone of the aging process: last week I picked up my new pair of glasses, my first with progressive lenses. If there was any uphill left in life it is now certainly in the rearview mirror.

My eyes are still adjusting, which is kind of always the case with me. I have a nutty prescription – both bad nearsightedness and serious astigmatism – and have weak corneas. Combine all that and even in the best of circumstances it’s tough to get perfectly corrected vision. If the angle of the lenses or the correction is off by just a hair, it can throw either part of the prescription off by enough to be noticeable to me. And my weak corneas mean my prescription is always in flux. I’ll see great for awhile then suddenly everything is out of whack for a few weeks before it returns to center.

In other words, I’m a pain in the ass. Or at least my eyes are.

Anyways…I’m still getting used to the new lenses. I will say they’ve gotten better over the past two days, so hopefully I’m getting locked in. But there is still a chance I will need to go back and have the lenses checked and, perhaps, redone.

The one big win is the whole reason you get progressive lenses: my up-close vision has improved dramatically. I had reached the point where it was impossible to read anything that was in tiny print, because that meant bringing the object near my face, where my eyes just didn’t work anymore. I had become one of those people who took a picture of, say, the directions on a bottle of medication with my phone and then looked at the image on screen to figure out the proper dosage.

Sad and pathetic.

But now I can read that shit!

For those of you not in the progressive world, it has been a little tricky getting used to the “tunnels” of vision these lenses offer. It’s frustrating to have to move my eyes or head a few degrees up or down to bring something into clear focus. That’s the one area where I worry about whether these lenses are correct, because at times it seems like I’m working too hard to find that perfect spot. And I don’t know if that’s just something I need to get used to, or only happening because the lenses are off by just a hair.

Two other downsides to the new glasses.

1) I had to go to a bigger lens/frame size to accommodate the progressive correction. I’m not wearing 1980s Phil Donahue lenses, but they are certainly bigger than what I’ve been wearing since I went to specs full time a decade ago. I’ve also been wearing Oakley frames for years and didn’t love the ones they offered that would take progressive lenses. The frames I chose are decent, but I also don’t love them like I loved my old Oakleys.

2) Holy crap these are expensive! I already had expensive glasses because of my prescription. Damn near doubled that already significant cost. And I’m going to need new sunglasses once I’m sure these lenses are correct. We could put a couple more kids into private grade school for the cost of my glasses now. I mean, I need to see, right? But that seems a little ridiculous. I do go to one of the fancier eye places in the city, only because my doc is the uncle of one of S’s best friends. But I’m starting to think I may have to go to a less fancy place that charges 15% less for my next set. I’m thinking about braving the discount glasses world for my sunglasses, although I worry about fit and getting the prescription right at those places. We’ll see.

So, nine years old = first pair of glasses. Fifteen = contacts. Thirty-seven = back to glasses only. Forty-six = progressive lenses.

Now I shall go curse whichever one of my ancestors are responsible for my terrible eyes.

Comfort Zone

November 7, 2017 / DB

I’m not the most outgoing person in the world. Particularly when it comes to strangers. I just don’t have that gene that makes it easy for me to talk to people I don’t know in non-social settings. I’m not the dude striking up a conversation with the guy next to me while we wait in line at the deli, or the mom sitting by me at a first sports practice for one of our kids. So when I do have a lengthy encounter with someone I don’t know, it always stands out.

A week or so ago I was making my normal Monday grocery run. I went to a store I don’t normally go to, wearing a generic KC hat.[1] I was heading toward the meat cooler when I noticed a woman looking at me and making a beeline in my direction. I looked away, looked back, and she was still heading right at me. My first thought was that she had her eye on a particular package of pork chops and was worried I was going to get it first. But then she broke into a smile and I began racking my brain for if I knew her from somewhere. She was probably in her early 60s, so I’m thinking grandmother from St. P’s, parent of one of S’s friends, etc.

Anyway, she rolls up on me and kind of nervously says, “Is that for Kansas City?”

It took me a moment to realize she was asking about my hat.

“Oh, yeah, it is. Are you from there?”

“I thought so! No, but we just had some very good friends move there.”

Thus kicked off a roughly 10-minute conversation. And by conversation I mean she stood there and told me all about her friends who moved to KC, what their jobs were, how this woman and her husband used to have dinner with them, what each one of the four would make for their dinners, etc. The man who moved to KC made really good lasagna and his wife made the most wonderful salad to go along with it.

So, you know, I was totally comfortable with all of this.

Eventually she asked me what I did and what my wife did. When I told her, she mentioned that she had a friend who was in medicine. Then segued into telling me about her daughter who lives in North Carolina for about five minutes.

I kept waiting for some kind of pitch to come. The question of whether I’ve accepted Jesus. Or if I’ve heard of Amway. Or even about how she was down on her luck and could just use a few bucks to buy some groceries for the week.

None of that ever came, though. I think she was just a lonely lady looking to talk to someone, and my KC hat was just the opening she needed to corner me.

After several awkward pauses and me saying, “Well…” she finally wished me a good day and left me to finish my shopping. Which I did nervously, hoping I wouldn’t get cornered by someone else.

Needless to say I’ve not been back to that store or worn that hat while doing my shopping since.

It is royal blue with gold, block KC on the front. So vaguely Royal-esque in a late 1970s way. I got it off an ad on Instagram. It’s kinda dope. ↩

46

June 21, 2017 / DB

Anyway, I’m now officially closer to 50 than 40, which sucks big time. I know, I know, 50 is the new 30, blah blah blah. And most folks of our generation look a lot younger than I remember our grandparents looking when they were in their 50s. But, man, the body just keeps rebelling. It feels like I’ve aged more in the past five years than I did from 30 to 35, or 35 to 40. I think it’s because aging in your 30s is more subtle, where the changes are more dramatic in your 40s.

There are all the lingering aches and pains. The back that is always one wrong movement from seizing up. My right hip has gone a little wacky over the past couple years. Knees that creak. You know, all the typical joint and muscle stuff.

But then there’s my hearing, which was always kind of shitty in crowded, loud environments and seems to have gotten a lot worse. On my last visit to my eye doctor, he said I was a year away from bifocals. I swear as soon as I got home that day my close vision went to shit. When we first moved here, I laughed at how my father-in-law got pissed when they dimmed the lights at a restaurant and he couldn’t read his menu. He was in his early 60s at the time. Now I’m doing the back-and-forth, try to get the menu under the right light and at the right distance, dance at restaurants. And I’m only 46!

Good grief.

And then there’s the medical stuff. As I shared, I got my first colonoscopy a month ago. That was the result of about a year of varying stomach issues. Fortunately, the scope was clean aside from one small polyp that they took out. But I’ve had to make a dramatic change in diet – completely cutting out caffeine – to try to get my stomach to work right again. My symptoms have finally slackened off a bit. But I know if they bubble up again, I may have to adjust my diet in more ways.

When you’re 25 and your stomach hurts, or you have a bad knee, or your muscles are just a little sore for a couple days, you don’t really sweat it. When you reach this stage in life, you start getting a little more worried when your body tells you something isn’t right.

I don’t mean this to be a bummer of a post. I have a couple close friends who are going through much more difficult medical issues than anything I’ve ever experienced. I really shouldn’t complain, and I’m not. But I do admit I’m starting to understand the wave of movies and TV shows in the 80s and 90s by Baby Boomers who were lamenting the carefree days of their early adulthood.

Anyway, thanks to all who checked in yesterday. I appreciate the words. And I’ll try to keep the complaining about my age off these pages until my next birthday!