Tuesday, January 30, 2007 | by nathan

Why I Shouldn’t Be Trusted Around Babies

Ever since we got Sam he has lived in my office at home. He’s such a great dog in so many ways; he came into our home and instantly knew better than to climb the stairs to the bedroom, or down into the den, where Brian’s music things – and now, my piano – are. He doesn’t go in the bathroom. So, he has the office, the living room, the dining room and the kitchen to wander around in when we’re not walking him, and he’s adjusted pretty well.

We shut him up in the office when we’re away, because of that thing where we just bought a new leather sofa and don’t want him up on it. He has food and water in there, a big of space to chill in, some toys. He has full privileges to get up on the office love seat whenever he wants. Not a lot of dogs get that. He doesn’t always love it when we put him in there, but once he gets inside and starts gnawing on his green chew toy or his bone – up on the love seat – he seems to enjoy it just fine. At night, we turn the lights out and tell him good night, and after a few minutes we can hear – plop – the sound of our dog falling asleep.

Except the past two nights, when he has kept us up whining – loudly – after we put him to bed. We’ll be in bed, asleep, then it’ll start, the sound like he’s being physically tortured or has to go to the bathroom right now – even though he just went. Brian has been the one to get out of bed, go downstairs and say, "Sam, shut up!" and he does.

Should I be worried? Should I phone the guys at Calling All Pets? Or is my dog just attention-hungry?

Monday, January 29, 2007 | by nathan

Endorphins

This morning: got up early, worked out, made a good breakfast. Egg white omelet, an orange, fat-free yogurt.

Rode my bike to work.

Now: endorphins firing. I feel great. It’s going to be a good day. 

Sunday, January 21, 2007 | by nathan

I Just Don’t Want Coffee

Can you believe it? I’m getting one of the things on my Uberlist done today – I’m reorganizing the closet in my office. This is a work of major scope, as there is a bunch of crap in my office closet, a lot of it boxes of things to which I am too attached to trash, such as concert tickets, a bottle of Ale 8 One that Woody and I got on one of our trips to his parents’ farm in Kentucky, letters from friends as far back as high school.

The best thing I’ve found are all my old journals, poetry books, and photo albums from high school and college. I flip through them and can.NOT.BELIEVE I was once this person. I can’t believe that as early as 10th grade I was writing about having crushes on boys and decorating my journal pages with ink stamps. I mean, Jesus. I can’t believe how much I used to cling to people who made me feel like shit about myself, or that I wrote one or two lines that I read now and think, "You know, it sucks balls, but for a fifteen year old it doesn’t suck as bad as it could."

I am nonplussed to think how much I’ve changed in the last ten, fifteen – shit, the last three years. Reading back through all the words of the people I’ve been – it’s weird. I find myself mourning some friendships that went sour, or faded quietly, or that I finally wised up and got out of. I find myself wondering where those people are now. Some, I know, and I wish I didn’t. Others, I’d give anything to sit with them for an hour.

What I wouldn’t do is go back to any days past. Sitting on my floor is a pile of cardboard, paper, gold leaf, leather and upholstery that tells the story of where I’ve been. I had a moment where I was terrified and told Brian he should burn all these if I die, but then I thought, "I’m going to be dead. Who cares?" So I told him not to publish them. He pointed out that, if I die a famous author, those journals could be a valued literary relic.

Oh, yeah, okay, well, then you can publish them.

In the meantime, I’m giving serious consideration to finding some particularly damning passages and submitting them to The Cringe Book, which is a collection that Sarah Brown is putting together of teenage journal entries. Here’s what Sarah herself has to say about it:

We’re looking for brave souls willing to share their old diaries, journals, letters, notes, songs, poems… anything you wrote during the crushing misery of adolescence and then saved in a hidden box at your parents’ house all these years. Top secret no more.

The more dramatic, embarrassing or excruciating the writing, the better. A good test to determine whether or not your material is Cringe-worthy: when you read it to yourself, do you physically cringe? Then for the love of god, it needs to be in this book. Seriously. You are going to be so glad you did this. Cheaper and better than therapy.

I might regret doing it, but in the midst of this cleaning-out, it might be good. I find myself mourning the person I was a bit. Not that I would change anything about him, because I think that what he (I) went through got me here, which is exactly where I want to be. But also, I got hurt along the way – everyone does – and I think a part of that hurt always stays with you. I’m starting to think it’s something about trying to heal as much as you can, and to not let the hurt make you afraid, or mean.

So, yeah, there’s a bit of sadness in looking back over all this stuff, from when I was 11 and getting bullied at school, to high school, where, oddly, I was basically happy if not incredibly lame and clingy. The journals follow me to North Carolina, to Ireland and Italy, to Connecticut and back here, through all those years of pain and long, drunken nights, and I would not trade one damn word of any of it, which also hurts like hell. The thing is, the story is mine, it belongs to me. I’m luckier than most in that I can pile my story up on the floor, or, in this case, arrange it neatly in my closet, where it can sit, reminding me where I’ve been and maybe point a little of the way to where I’m going.

So, maybe, if I die, you should all sit around with my ashes on the coffee table and laugh your asses off that, in the ninth grade, I was feeling particularly angsty and copied the lyrics to "We Don’t Need Another Hero" into my journal. For some reason. 

Still – that’s miles away from the most cringe-worthy thing in there. 

Thursday, January 18, 2007 | by nathan

Winter Weather Alert

To the two Universities where I currently hold gainful employment/enrollment:

Driving has gotten worse in Oklahoma the past week, not better. Yes, the main roads are clear but I am taking my life in my hands every time I drive through my neighborhood, as evidenced by today, when my car skidded out of control, up the steep embankment into my neighbor’s yard, then back out onto the street and straight through the stop sign. Luckily the sheet of ice over the grass was so thick that I am sure I did not disturb any vegetation that might still be alive under there.

The local public schools have had the presence of mind to stay closed all week, and yet you, universities, remain open. Do you not understand that people have to walk all around your campuses to get where they are going? I recently found out that one of your professors is having to have steel rods put in his leg because he fell on the ice. Just now, I busted my ass on the way into the office. If the public schools, who ship kids by bus and then leave them in the same building all day, think it’s too dangerous, shouldn’t you, whose employees and students have to drive themselves to campus and then walk from building to building, be closed too? Isn’t that just safer?

I almost dislocated my hip getting out of the car this morning. I want you to know that if I had, I’d be taking your entire endowment.

Sincerely,

Nate 

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 | by nathan

Sunrays and Saturdays

Yeah, so -

    running into your douche-bag of a former boss, the man who, by sheer force of his way of being in the world, made you want to bring a gun to work every day, not to hurt him or anyone else, but so that he could watch as the hollowed-out shell you once were committed suicide in front of him, but you figured he’s such a self-involved piece of shit that he probably would just get annoyed that you got gray matter all over his favorite Bill Cosby sweater and Ned Flanders mustache, and he gives you that look like, ‘Yeah, I know you asked to be moved to a different department because of how shitty I treated you, and I have nothing to say, except I sincerely believe that Jesus told me to behave like such a douche-bag, so I can’t really reconcile how much you hate me, and how badly I know I treated you, with the fact that, as a heterosexual white male, I can do no wrong,’ and so you just say a quick hello to each other, then keep walking past, and then later he PUSHES RIGHT PAST YOU to get out the door as quickly as possible to avoid having the whole thing happen again?

                          – awkward.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007 | by nathan

WTMF?

So. We all know about the ice storm by now, right? And, if you live in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area you probably know that the kids are out of school today. My memories of high school – which I have mostly repressed – are that school was only canceled if, say, a meteor struck the superintendent’s house, or if the snow was piled up higher than the school buses. The rule, I was told back then, was "If the buses can make it, we stay open."

Which is dumb, because there are a lot of people who don’t take the bus. So I guess either the rule has changed or the buses can’t make it today, because all the public schools in the area have called off class. Methinks this is a wise decision.

But is MY work canceled? No. Fine, whatever; it’s a college campus, everyone walks, blah blah blah. It’s fine; I’m not too lazy to go to work. What I don’t like is that when I get there, all the spaces on the side of the building have campus police safety cones in them so no one can park there. SO, not only do we make everyone risk life, limb, and car to get to work, but then we make sure that everyone has to park far, far away from their office, ensuring that they fall not once, but TWICE on the three-block walk from the closest parking lot? Where they will probably get a ticket for not having a campus parking sticker, because they don’t want to pay $200 of their hard-earned money every semester for the privilege of parking in a lot right next to the baseball field, where baseballs regularly rain down on their poor, unsuspecting cars?

No, no on icy days we’ll block off the free parking next to the building, ensuring that NO ONE CAN PARK THERE and that you will bust your ass trying to get to your office. I left my house at 7:45 and got to the office at 8:15. It takes me 12 minutes or so to ride that distance on my bike. That’ll teach me.

We shouldn’t even be here today. 

Monday, January 15, 2007 | by nathan

“We Gots To Get Out Of This House”

So the minor ice storm that people freaked out about all weekend – it seems to have trapped us in our house since Friday. We went to the corner grocery store Friday afternoon and stocked up on food a little, not because we were scared that we were going to be trapped in our house, but because the only things we had in the house were one can of clam chowder, a tupperware thing full of Hershey’s cherry cordial kisses left over from Christmas, and some powdered sugar. Yum.

So we stocked up, and Jaye and Laurie came over on Friday night for a sleepover. What I remember of it was hella-fun, though I did decide the next day that drinking is just not as much fun for me as it used to be, not in the least part because I can NOT play board games while drunk. But, that’s a story for my own secret shame.

Still, it rained ice and snowed all day Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday, and we thought it would be better not to go anywhere if we didn’t have to. Brian fired up our kerosene heater to keep our heating bill down, and we spent a lot of time reading, playing video games, and I got caught up on Heroes. 

That’s better than my mom, who was trapped in Chickasha all weekend. 

Now it’s Monday morning. Brian’s office is closed because of the ice; mine is closed for MLK day. We’re sitting here watching the Price is Right, and I’m thinking we need to get out of here, STAT. I love him, I love Sam, I love our house, but cabin fever is seriously setting in, and if taking the chance of wrecking my car is the price, then so be it.

Friday, January 12, 2007 | by nathan

“Somebody’s Having A Flying Lesson!”

So, there’s this minor ice storm hitting Oklahoma right now. Out the window of my office it looks like the tiniest little bit of snow has fallen. No big deal, right? Right. Okay, so people are FREAKING OUT.

On the news last night they were telling people to stock up on food for three days and to make sure they had plenty of blankets, and propane, and a good generator. Like we’re going to war. My church, which I love and adore, sent an email with the subject line, "WILL WE CANCEL CHURCH?"

Calm down, Oklahoma. Just calm it on down. Yes, we’re all getting off work early and this is nice, but drive slow and don’t panic. Don’t stock up on food, because you will not be trapped in your house by two inches of ice. Don’t go outside and turn off the gas. Just calm it on down, we’re going to get through this. Step one is to breathe, and to make sure not to watch Channel 4 anymore. Or Channel 5. Or Channel 9. Just turn off the news, because they’re trying to freak you out so you’ll keep watching. Until very recently I taught broadcasting classes, so I know this to be true. We’re going to be okay. Stop being stupid; you’re making us look bad. Or rather, you’re making us look worse.

The upside of all this is that I get to go home at noon, and Brian got off already, so that’ll be nice. Drinking, playing Nintendo, and bumming around at home the rest of the day.

The downside? I have finally decided once and for all that broadcast news is one of the great evils of our time. Maybe not nationally broadcast news, though that is pretty bad, but local news? Awful. Don’t watch it.  

Monday, January 8, 2007 | by nathan

A Man Can Make A White Girl Sing The Blues

Sunday I went with Brian to our local neighborhood Border’s Books and Music. Brian’s list of things to do in 2007 includes "Buy one CD a week," which I think is just smashing. Mine includes to write a letter a week. And so, to that end – Border’s. I sat down with my notebook paper, he with some magazines and the Arctic Monkeys album. Fine.

As I got to about page 2 on my letter, to Woody, a rather large, 50-ish man came and sat down at the table adjacent to us, where he began speaking VERY LOUDLY to his two friends who were seated there. Now. I know that Border’s is nowhere near as sacred a space as, say, a library, but also, does not everyday common sense tell you that when you are surrounded by people who are either reading or working on laptop computers that a bit of decorum, a bit of volume-control, might be in order? Yes, YES IT DOES. As it was, we had to hear every last detail about the songwriter he went to hear and his funny, funny song about suicide. Finally I gave up trying to be zen about the whole issue and put on my iPod: Dismemberment Plan. Nice, loud, a little angry.

But, I could still hear him. So, I bitched about the Whole Situation in my letter to Woody and we left, your man still chatting away as pleasant as you please, despite the fact that I, and several other Border’s Books and Music patrons, spent the entirety of our visit shooting him dirty looks, WHICH I KNOW HE SAW.

Can you still be arrested for throwing boiling-hot coffee on someone? I left a bit too early to find out, but I’m thinking probably so. 

In a complete change of subject, my friend Eric and I are now thinking about doing a large coffee-table book on how to be a good guest at a party. Tips would include NOT having sex in the bed of the party host, not bringing drugs to the party unless explicitly asked, and not taking your alcohol back out with you when you leave. I have to write a nonfiction book this semester anyway, and since Eric’s such a wonderful photographer this might be the most fun way to go.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 | by nathan

wherein I did one damn thing I told myself I’d do

So.

2007’s off to a rolling start; today was my first day back at work. It was a pretty beautiful day weather-wise, so when I got to work Boss Lady and I walked over to Sonic so she could get some breakfast. I started thinking about how close to work I live, and so when I came home at lunch I left my car here and rode my bike back over to the law school. And you know what? It KICKED MY ASS.

Also, it felt wonderful; I made it over in just a few minutes more than it probably would’ve taken me to drive. After work I timed the ride; it came in right at fifteen minutes. Not too bad; the only scary part was crossing the heavy traffic on Pennsylvania Ave., but even that wasn’t too much of an ordeal. Let’s hear a round of applause for Oklahoma City – say what you will, but drivers here are pretty considerate and there’s never that much traffic.

I just finished a workout, and I’m sitting here sipping on water. I just made my third entry in my ten-year journal, which I am really enjoying so far. It’s kind of like the names project, only I get to take a tiny little snapshot of every day. There’s not much room to write a whole lot, which is really very nice. I particularly like the entry from yesterday:

Typical: I go to bed in the 4th quarter of the Fiesta Bowl, just when everything starts getting good. The Sooners lost and now I’m remembering that – oh yeah – school and work start back this week and I want to stay at home, safe with Brian and Sam.

I really like 2007 so far. I’m looking forward to seeing how much happens this year.