more normal than not

I have had so many weird, résumé killing jobs in my lifetime.

When you’re opportunistic and a bad planner, you can do that.

Take weird jobs, I mean.

Someone says, “Hey…I know who is hiring” and if I needed a job, off I went.

That’s how I ended up working at camps for 8 of my summers….a friend at college pulled me to an interview with the (then) director, and BAM….I WAS HIRED!!!

Good fun summers….but not a résumé builder….just another questionable blip in a sea of questionable blips.

One of the jobs that I took was to be the produce manager at a small health food store in Hendersonville.

The main business and money-maker for the owners was selling vitamins.

Of course, the owner liked to tout the benefits of taking a lot of the right vitamins.

His phrase was, “Better living through chemistry.”

I guess that he would have been a lot more UNHEALTHY if he hadn’t been taking all those vitamins.

It wasn’t just a matter of taking the right combination of vitamins, either.

There was something important in the equation about taking the right combination of EXPENSIVE vitamins.

He hated the people who came in and asked if we carried the kind of vitamins that Walmart sold.

I think that he thought they were low class….and deluded.

They weren’t going to buy his expensive vitamins.

I always thought that the “better living through chemistry” stuff was kind of weird.

He wasn’t really healthy…..just full of vitamins.

Of course, I am making fun of his “chemistry phrase” while I sit and type and try to get jacked on a french press of cheap Costco coffee.

I’ll do this after I take my cheap vitamins with half a coffee cup of orange juice.

So it would be hypocritical of me to come down too hard on an overweight guy with a funny catch phrase.

I must believe in some of the benefits of chemistry….or I wouldn’t stick to this routine so faithfully.

I’m not that lazy a creature of habit to do it otherwise.

Now, they do talk….all “them folks”…about people having chemistry together.

I think that I believe in that kind of chemistry more than the vitamins.

I know that it can make your life better to have good chemistry together.

Jenny and I spend all our time together.

I think that we have good chemistry.

I hope that she would agree.

Sometimes, I think that she’d say that I was sort of a goob….and she’d be right.

She’s younger than me….but sometimes she’s the mature one….

(“Sometimes?” she’d say….)

Did you ever see one of those old Westerns where the cowboys are working with some really old dynamite that they found somewhere….and they’re talking about how they better be careful because the dynamite is old and really unstable and one false move and it could all blow up and they’d blow up with it….if they weren’t really careful.

I think that Jenny puts up with my “old dynamite” moves pretty well.

I’m only kidding….I’m NICE….

I’m nice….and really stable.

Jenny told me early on, “You’re not that easygoing.”

I always thought that I was a pretty tolerant, mellow dude….taking life as it came, always a smile and a whistle on my lips, sitting back and watching it all go by with a bemused expression.

What I probably was….in a reality visible only to those outside of my personal circle of delusion….was a hot-headed little repressed Viking wannabe who only thought he was easygoing.

I think that a good barometer of how easygoing you are is how angry you get when someone tells you that “you’re not easygoing.”

The big computer went down again last night.

When I say “big computer” I’m speaking of the old desktop tower that I use in the morning.

I’m typing this on a laptop that Jenny has.

It’s so nice.

The big plastic box that has all my stuff in it did that “MBR” thing again.

I should have known.

And then…in a moment of panic when I was trying to fix the really slow internet connection, the router got screwed up so nobody in the house has any wireless internet today.

DANGDANGDANGDANGDANG….ADANGADANGADINGDONG.

DANGIT..

Do you know how angry it makes me to sit on the phone waiting for a help desk in India (they are GREAT….VERY PATIENT…IT’S NOT ONE OF THOSE THINGS WHERE A STUPID AMERICAN COMPLAINS THAT SOMEONE REALLY SMART AND KIND AND PATIENT HAS A DIFFERENT ACCENT THAN THEY DO) ….and the recording before the live person talks to me comes on and says, “Did you know that you can reach us on the World Wide Web at….” when I’m calling because I can’t get on the internet?

Gadssssssss…..I hate that.

So….between the big box crashing with all my bits and bytes floating around somewhere inside….and the router thing, and being really tired, and getting ready to buy some property and spend some money….I was kind of tense.

I was trying to work towards a zen-like moment….but I was kind of tense.

So I laid there quietly in bed until my tension woke Jenny up.

She was already exhausted from being up with the little kids off and on at night for about 3 weeks….but she stayed up and visited with me some.

I don’t remember what we talked about…but I bet that it was pretty darn deep.

Before we finally fell asleep….before Nate came in after he’d had a weird dream and woke us back up…I realized that it’s a lot easier to be a misinformed zen-master when everything is rolling my way and I have nothing to be upset about.

I can be a pretty calm character when nobody’s “harshing my buzz”.

I guess that the real zen master is the one who can stay cool when the black box freezes up and the things inside are never to be seen again.

Or, when they don’t get enough sleep….whether it’s on a nice mattress or on a bed of nails is irrelevant.

I’m not a zen master.

I’m not a Viking.

I’m just a cranky Norwegian who delivers the mail….and my computer is broken.

Daaaaaaangittttttttttt.

I don’t know what it is about a movie that features a shut-down character who blossoms through travel and adventure that RESONATES so completely with me.

Who could have seen that coming?

I loved this movie.

We got our passports this past year….and we got a new baby, too.

There’s all sorts of adventures.

We’ll have to get Sparrow a passport, too, one of these days soon.

I had a surfboard that I had hung up on my wall for a long time….thinking that maybe I’d learn to surf in the early stages of my adulthood.

I never put that surfboard in the water.

I hope that these passports aren’t like that surfboard.

They need to be used.

It’s hard to get a day off in edgewise at the post office sometimes these days.

It’s hard to get away.

So I’m like the character in this movie….imagining what it would be like to be on the road….experiencing something bigger than a 67 mile loop everyday.

That’s an old story, though….the “how you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Pareeeeeeeeee” song just going through another replay.

I’ve seen things….been places.

Maybe that’s the problem? Like taking a bite of the apple….maybe I’d be better off if I didn’t know that it was possible?

This movie was a really nice surprise.

I expected something that might be kind of funny….might be a good diversion for an evening…but it was more than that.

I loved the conversation that Ben Stiller’s character has with Sean Penn’s photographer character towards the end of the movie….especially when the photographer leans back and doesn’t “take the shot”…and then explains why.

Knowing that the world is BIG shouldn’t be a measure for what a person thinks they don’t have.

I am BLESSED where I stand.

My life is a good life.

I do get myself into trouble when I imagine what it would feel like to pull over into some Idaho rest stop….make some sandwiches, look at the mountains, feel a drier breeze blow across my cheek.

I imagine what it would feel like to….feel that again.

But…you can’t spend your life feeling like you’re missing something.

That’s a crappy way to waste your time.

This is the kind of movie that helps me.

It reminds me of something that I already know.

It’s all so big….

Stay Alive-Jose Gonzalez

It feels sometimes like I spend most of my time driving these days.

I deliver the mail in the same 67 mile loop everyday….in the same direction, of course.

I do not deviate.

I am not a deviant rural carrier.

While I drive, I listen to the satellite radio I bought this year.

Yesterday, I listened to NPR all day.

I heard about diabetes in Indian tribes….about how the war/wars are going….about the financial situation….I heard about a lot of things.

One of the things that I heard is that millions of starfish are dying on the West Coast.

Apparently, it’s something that’s damaging their food supply that’s killing them all…the starfish like to eat mussels that are really efficient at storing toxins in their bodies.

That’s the hypothesis, at least….nobody really knows why they’re dying.

Dang.

Of course, in the same hour I heard that the acidity of the oceans was rising to alarming levels…and I think that I heard a little more about the polar icecaps melting, too.

I know people who might think, “Hey! Quit talking about these stupid starfish! They’re on the West Coast…they aren’t even around me!! Who cares about these stupid starfish and whether they live or die!! Quit talking about the stupid starfish already….”

I get worried when I hear about the starfish…or the honeybees…or maybe even a snail darter or some other little fish that I’ve never seen before.

I get worried a little because I think that we really are connected to everything.

Maybe (probably) on a cellular level.

The air that I breathe out is breathed in by someone in China…maybe years later.

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is pretty important advice…when you imagine that there’s not that much that really separates you.

And, if you’re doing that “good”, and really loving yourself ….then the rest of the world is going to be in great shape when you try and take care of them, too….right?

There’s not that much that’s different about us….any of us….any of the living things that we are surrounded by.

“Hey!!! I ain’t no cat!! I’s different from a darned cat!!!”

Yeah….different….but kind of the same, too.

So when I hear about something that doesn’t really affect me directly…like a starfish out West dying…it makes me kind of nervous.

It’s a tiny little world….after all.

After all, the world is small and the breeze is strong and what doesn’t work for you 3,000 miles away is a whole lot closer than I’d like to believe.

We are affected by everything that happens.

Sometimes it just takes a little while to come back around again….so we don’t really have a chance to notice it immediately.

If someone punches us in the face, we feel it right away…but what led up to the punch might be years in the making.

We used to read to the kids on the backpacking trips that I led when I worked at summer camps.

One of the stories that I liked to read was called “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury.

The story talks about how a small change can set future events off on weird and horrible tangents.

In the story, it’s a single moth that’s damaged/killed during a time travel “safari” that sets off catastrophic events.

Sounds pretty darn plausible to me….

Here’s a movie that was made of the story……

It’s not a really good movie. The story is great, the movie….not so great…but it’ll give you an idea of what the whole deal is about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG7-iFy9QME

I should probably just change the station…there’s so much weirdness in the world.

I woke up early this morning, turned on the computer, and got a screen that said “MBR error 2”.

And then it suggested that I hit any key to load from the floppy.

Now, I understand that “the floppy” is the DVD-ROM now.  There’s no such thing as a floppy drive anymore. Those days have passed.

And…what floppy disc? Load what? What?

It was a panicky feeling.

I had really important work to do.

I had a blog to write…and coffee to drink.

This “MBR” (master boot record) was really messing me up.

It was pretty darned serious.

And then I stepped back and took a quick reality check.

I don’t have to have this thing that I type on.

I don’t have to…but I will have it…and I’ll probably like it.

What the heck was I feeling so frantic about at 5:15 in the morning?

It was like I had a basketball size hole in my imaginary boat and I was trying to stem the flow with a large cotton blend T-shirt.

But I didn’t have a boat and I wasn’t in the water and I didn’t have some distant shore that I had to arrive at.

I was sitting in front of a black box that I connect to a screen and hit little plastic keys on a keyboard….and the plastic thing wasn’t working and I was frantically trying to fix the computer when all I had to do was take a breath and put things back into the proper perspective.

This plastic box doesn’t run me.

It ain’t the boss of me.

It’s no lifeline….

It’s like that funny commercial where the girl is making fun of her parents who only have “17 Facebook friends” (!!!)….

I don’t live for this thing called a computer.

Of course, I’m trying to do a system restore as I type this….so I’m not completely cured.

I love to surf….I love to read about what the people I care about are up to….I like the internet.

There’s a lot of cool stuff on the internet.

It’s a big, big library and I love libraries.

OH, MY GOSH!!! I THINK THAT THE SYSTEM RESTORE IS WORKING!!! MY PRECIOUS!!! MY PRECIOUS!!!!

MY PRECIOUS!!!

My boat floats.

All kidding aside…I think that I’m back in business with the computer that I must love a little shy of life itself.

That’s pretty pathetic.

What would it be like to have an actual smartphone?

Would I sit at the dinner table sending important texts (after I learned how to text) to people? Would I send texts to people who weren’t sitting at the table with me?

You know, though…this backup laptop that I’m typing on is pretty cool. I can sit and watch TV and type at the same time. It’s a good thing.

What’s the emergency? So one thing breaks and I pick up the slack with some other electronic device.

I’ve got this “electronic distraction” thing covered.

I am well distracted.

There is no hole in the boat. The computer is fixed and everything is the same again.

I almost didn’t miss it for a minute.