This may be local lore.  I haven’t researched it.  We have black squirrels in North East Ohio.  They are smaller, faster and more aggressive than your normal gray or red squirrel.  It is said that these squirrels are the result of an escaped science experiment at Kent State University.  As in,

“Whoops, where did our genetically altered squirrel collection run off to?”

I was hanging some drywall, when I saw this little fellow through the window.

He is a fancy black squirrel, not uncommon, with a long, skinny red tail; this is odd.

Two things came to mind:

1. I am not a black squirrel with a red tail, and that is awesome.  Imagine all of the explanations you’d have to provide at parties and such.
2. Neither are you.

Insert Letterman squirrel joke here.

Gnarly things this week

Last Sunday night I read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, which proved to be the smartest decision I made all week, all Summer, all of 2010.  If I were the sort of person who passed around MUST-reads, this would be a mustmustmustmust.  A 4-must read.  (Pic is an affiliate link.)

My truck broke down.

I fixed it.  This is an accomplishment since I only have one hand.  Technically I have two hands, but the left one is only useful for tapping keys, waving and head-scratching.
The pick up broke down on the way to register for some classes.  Is this a cosmic sign?  My wife says yes.  She says that difficulty is a sign that you MUST do a thing. This is why we’ve managed to stay married for almost 14 years.

Attended my nephew’s graduation party.

Ate the best sandwich of my entire life!  Thanks for graduating, Rem.

I wrote a thing that I fear.

I wrote a thing that I enjoy.

For money.  Yay, money.  FYI: RoP does not love money, but he does need to make a little to buy bacon.

I read Seth Godin’s post this morning.

Here is a quote from it:

“…you can’t take things at face value, even things that you might be more comfortable leaving unexamined, as truths. Theologians wrestle with this dilemma all the time. How can you study an idea or a trend or a belief system if you also accept it as a universal, unquestionable fact?”

If you ever do any God-type thinking, you should read it too.

If you’ve ever spent any time in the figurative desert, you may have seen me there over the past three weeks.  I am trying not to hate the environment in the desert.  A friend of mine just asked me a cacophony of “why” questions.  I told him, “I don’t know and neither does anyone else.  Chill, bro, and try to smile a little.”  That’s the way of the desert.  Have a cool beverage.  No one knows the answer to the “why’s”.  Smile.

One more week of stay-at-home-dadding until I can be p-p-p-productive in the real world.

Coaching a baseball game later in the morning.

Life is beautiful.

I got a gig writing some things for a group of people who need some things written.  So far, my work is good, I think.  My ego says, “Add the words ‘I think,’ because what if it turns out to be not-so-great.”

Ah, the ego.  It will keep you so very safe and completely average.

I didn’t know that traffic on the Indiana Turnpike ever slowed to a stop.  I had the van pointed east in park, sitting, inching, waiting.  My son is twitching and rocking.  We had just passed a sign that said it was a mere two miles until he could pee, and then we reached the long line of stopped vehicles.

Phone rings.  My wife.  Drawing deep breaths, a whine, “Someone’s been in our house.  I just called the cops.”

It hadn’t been the best vacation.  There was a head lice incident.   There was not enough time for the people I wanted to see.  Temperatures were in the nineties; humidity between seventy and ninety percent.  Heat index over one hundred.  There were days of fishing, not much catching.  My three children were subject to only their father for nine whole days.  We had the dogs.  The dogs.

And then we were robbed.  I’ve had my car broken into a few times, never the house.  Never while I was sitting in a forever line of semi trucks in Indiana.

My son is listening to our conversation.  He is exhaling hard, making a hissing sound, the rocking has stopped.  Wife is telling me what has been moved, lots of things.  The only thing missing is my son’s laptop, a used Apple he bought with birthday money and some sweat.  He is staring straight ahead eavesdropping, whispering, “Why my computer?”

It has been a year and a half since we visited Minnesota.  Every year we say, “Next year we’ll take more time.  We’ll spend more time with my dad or with my cousins.  We’ll go to the beach for an extra day.  We’ll fish more.”  Every year we visit we say these things, and we never do them.  Being here alone is even worse; I can only imagine all of the promises I’ll make on my way out of town, back to Cleveland.  All the promises I’ll have broken on this trip.  These are frustrating thoughts and they make me miss Molly.  She was not able to get time off, so I am vacationing alone with the kids and the dogs.  Vacation.  No tweeting, no blogging, minimal phone calls, texts only from my wife and a few local buddies, so in that regard it has been vacation-esque.

Without Molly everything smells different.  The dogs smell like dogs.  The boys smell like dogs.  Iris smells like a boy.  I’m pretty sure I smell great.

This is my first visit to my mom’s new house.  My mom and step-dad bought a great house with a yard set up for business.  The whole thing is a garden.  They sell hostas; over a thousand varieties.  Very impressive.

So I am busy trying to be fun without my favorite person, my better half.  It’s hard.  The trip itself was easier and faster without her and her incessant water-drinking.  “I need you to pull over at the next exit.  I’m not kidding.”  Easier without that.  We’re more efficient.  But efficiency is only so valuable.  She would really like the garden.  She’s never seen it in person, only in pictures.

I am going to go sit in the garden for a minute and think of something fun to do for the rest of the day.  Then I might do it.  Enjoy the photos; sorry about the quality.  I took them with my phone.  (Yeah, my wife is usually responsible for the camera stuff.  Whoops!  I suck again.)

I have at least two posts lined up for the rest of the week, including a guest post for writers with blogs.

Last night 13 boys slept in tents in my backyard.  “Slept” has a vague definition.  The boys laughed all night.  It rained this morning.  This did not bother the boys; it only caused them to start playing and laughing earlier.

Two nights ago I slept in my own bed.  “Slept” has a vague definition.  I worried all night.  It rained yesterday morning too.  This bothered me; the rain was a complete nuisance to my task list; it caused me to worry about timeliness and, unrelated to the rain, I fretted some about money.

Someone is doing something wrong.  I wish those kids would grow up and be more serious.

Minnesota is home; not where I live.  It is unlikely I will ever live their again, but it is that fantasy land of childhood where play and responsibility hold hands and memories grow stronger.  There are four seasons in Minnesota, except many years spring and fall are seen only by those who choose to believe they exist.  It is the farmers who remind the rest of us that spring has indeed sprung.

I used to think that Groundhog’s Day was poorly positioned in the calendar year.  To believe that spring is approaching in a Minnesota February is a terrible waste of hope.  Yet every February Second the news would report that spring was upon us, or we’d have just two more weeks of winter.  Teachers would report to their students, “Two more weeks!” but we knew by the time we had reached school-age that winter lasted forever.  Teachers could not fool us.

These eternal winters train a person to accept the death of all things.  The end of January, forty-below.  Sun rays like cannon-fire through picture windows; you know it’s all a ruse.