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Greatness: The Dream House

A Postmodern Short Story

Facebook has recently put me back in touch with an old high school friend, G–. He was never a close companion on the scale of D– or Brad or Mike, but we shared classes and we shared conversations for most of six years, so I was glad to see his name and face show up under the enigmatic, “People you might know.”

I added him to my friends list right away, and when he confirmed he immediately followed up with an email offering a quick summation of his lifestate, and I responded with one of my own. Then he wrote back, saying, “Man it’s good to hear from you! I’d completely lost track, but I’ve never forgotten all the crazy conversations we used to have. Are you still playing part-time philosopher, or have you finally joined the flock?”

I hesitated over my answer, and finally wrote back, “Still just as crazy, but I hide it better. My big obsession since college is radical social constructionism, which suggests we collectively shape our reality by our expectations. It goes deeper than that, but that’s a good snapshot.”

I sent that off and put the ball in his court. If he wanted to ask me for more clarification, he could. In the process he would bring down an avalanche of information from me, but at least that way it would be on his hands. If he wanted to let it go, safe in the knowledge that I still had some weird notions ready to hand, he could. He surprised me, though. He wrote back and said, “No way! That is a good summary, but I know all about it. Weird that we would still end up talking about the same ideas after all this time….”

So it turned out I was the one who couldn’t leave it at that. I’ve known a lot of people who get social constructionism when I explain it to them, but never one yet who was already familiar with it. And I sure didn’t expect G– to be the first one! He’d always been willing to listen, stupefied, while I rambled on, but he was never the real philosopher himself. So I asked him for his story, and it was a good one.

He graduated with me in the spring of ninety-eight, and while I went off to Little Rock for the summer and then to Oklahoma for college, he stayed in Wichita and spent a few months working on a roofing crew to save up his tuition. When he got into WSU in the fall, he held onto that job. It paid well, and he liked the work.

So one weekend he was working on this rotted out roof over on the West Side, tearing out ruined plywood and rebuilding the frame while the irritated homeowner tapped his foot down in the front lawn, wanting them to be done. It was a big job, though, and they ended up working until well after midnight, tacking down new shingles by the light of flood lamps so they could do another job the next day. Sunday morning he got up, went to work, and showed up at a home halfway across town to find the same homeowner standing by the curb talking to his boss.

G– pondered on that while he worked, and when his first break rolled around he struck up a conversation with the client. Turned out the guy flipped houses for a living, and both of these were projects he hoped to clear in a couple weeks. That piqued G–‘s curiosity, and I guess the fellow liked G– because he gave him a business card and told him to keep in touch. G– did, and at the older man’s direction he spent all his free time that fall going to seminars, reading books on the topic, listening to tapes, and checking out videos that all promised the guaranteed secret to financial independence through home sales. By the end of his first semester he was ready to give up roofing and studying and become a real estate man.

By that point he really felt like he knew what he was doing. Nineteen, with no money, no degree, and still working his high school job, he was sure he was ready to make the investment. So he did his research, and over finals week, between tests, he closed on a 2/1/1 FSBO west of Tyler that he knew was worth a twelve percent profit. It cost him sixty thousand dollars and he had the whole Christmas break to get it fixed up and listed.

So he drove out on a Sunday morning in his crappy little pickup, armed with nothing but a little toolchest he could carry easily with one hand. There may have been a power drill, too, but that would be pushing it. He eyed the dead lawn critically, the gutter hanging loose over the front porch, as he approached up the walk and turned his sixty thousand-dollar key in the twelve-dollar Wal-Mart lock. Then he pushed the door open, but it caught fast at three inches. The chain was on. Not only that, but he could smell incense burning in the house, and a moment later he heard someone moving around inside. He took a step back, checked the address, but this was the right place. He’d been here before after all, for the inspections, and the house had been empty then.

He probably should have been afraid, but young men are fools. He pounded on the open door, loud as he could, and called out, “Hey! Hey! Who’s there?”

A woman’s voice answered him indistinctly, and a moment later she floated into view. Her haid was black, pulled up on one side in a complicated braid. Her eyes were green, and she was wearing nothing but a threadbare white towel. That stopped him short.

She didn’t show any sign of embarrassment or remorse. She just smiled politely and said, “Well? What’s all the fuss?”

“This is my house,” he stammered, his anger coming back a bit. “I came out here to do some work on it–“

“Good,” she said. “You need a new water heater.”

“I need to know what you’re doing here,” he said. “This is my house.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s mine.”

He frowned, and his heart started pounding. He knew all about liens and he’d spent a week reading about squatters’ rights, but he hadn’t really expected problems at this place. He’d cleared the title two days ago. His stomach knotted at the thought of the legal expenses it would take to get this sorted out. He shook his head, trying not to think about it, and said, “How do you figure?”

She just smiled and said, “Magic.” He stared, blank, and she slipped the chain off the door and withdrew into the room. He pushed in and found a beanbag chair and a tiny, ancient black and white TV plugged in by the front door. A spill of worn paperbacks lined the wall — the tattered carpet their only bookshelf — and a stick of incense burned in its holder atop a battered minifridge on the far wall. He took it all in at a glance, and felt his rage rise up again.

“What is all this?”

She shrugged one shoulder without losing the towel and said, “My stuff.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why this house?” He felt a desperate fear, and wondered if his dad could help him out of it.

“I had a lovely dream that took place here,” she said. “Well, not exactly this house, but one close enough. And I was driving down the road last week and saw the sign out front and I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s my house.'”

“But it’s not yours,” he wailed. “It’s mine. I saw the sign, and then I bought the freaking house.”

She smiled and turned away. “That’s a kind of magic,” she said. “Money. But mine’s better.”

“And what’s yours?” he said, as he dug the cell phone out of his pocket.

“Desire,” she purred, turning back to him. “Anticipation. Faith.” She gestured to the room around her with a long, slender arm. “This is going to be my house. I can make it mine by sheer force of will.”

She caught his hand and dragged him back toward the hall. “This will be my room,” she said, opening the door on the smaller of the two. “Just enough room for a twin bed and four bookcases.” Then she turned him around and pushed open the door to the master bedroom with one toe.

The walls in there were angry red, the wookwork stained almost black. Bringing that room to a neutral color was a chore G– was dreading, but it had a dreadfully oppressive feel as it was. It didn’t seem to get through to her, though, because the girl danced into the room and said, “This will be the kids’ room. Lots of space to play. Can’t you just imagine?”

“Listen,” he said, “if you want to buy it, I’ll have the house on the market soon–“

She shook her head. “No you won’t,” she said. “Not this house. Besides, I don’t have any money.”

“You don’t need any,” he said. “I’ve got a great guy. I’ll give you his number.”

She just shook her head again. “I’m not interested.”

“Then you have to get out.” It was hard to be stern with her, but he had work to do. “Today. Now. Or I’ll call the cops.” He wasn’t entirely sure he could do that, but she didn’t call his bluff.

She sighed, and her shoulders fell, and she said, “Fine. I’ll go. Can I use your phone? I need my dad to bring his truck if I’m going to get all this stuff out.”

He grumbled about that, too, but if it got her gone he could spare the minutes. He waited there with her while she made the call, heard her ask the man on the other end to bring the truck, and then he got his phone back. “Good,” he said. “Umm…thanks. Now you can get dressed or whatever. I’m just going to get started–“

“Fine,” she said, and disappeared into the guest bedroom. He just stood for a moment, stunned, staring at the closed door. He thought about calling his dad, but decided to wait. He didn’t want her to overhear any part of that conversation.

Instead he went to the front door and got his tools. He had a handful of little projects from the inspectors, and he had planned to knock those out quickly and then spend the rest of the day planning his big renovation. He pulled the list from his back pocket, unfolded it, and picked the first item: busted faceplates in kitchen and laundry room. He had a couple cheap tan light switch and outlet covers in his tool chest, so he grabbed those and a flat-head screwdriver and got to work.

Thirty minutes later he was out front with his pickup pulled up in the yard so he could stand on the hood to reach the gutter. He had three long gutter spikes between his teeth and a hammer on his belt, but all his attention was on the warped bit of sharp-edged sheet metal in his hands. He couldn’t get the dangling section to match back up to the piece still on the wall.

Below him the screen door screamed open before it banged against the wall, and G– mentally added two items to his list: oil the hinges, and reattach the hydraulic arm. Then he glanced down at the pretty trespasser. She was wearing patched jeans and a worn brown sweater now, with flip-flops for shoes in spite of the cold. He growled, “You still here?” but the nails between his teeth garbled his words. She giggled and held up a thick paper cup. Sweet-smelling steam curled off the top of it.

“He’ll be here any minute now,” she said. “Hot tea?”

He just shook his head, amazed at her aplomb, but after a moment he relented. He climbed down off the hood of his truck and let go the dangling gutter. It creaked ominously, but it didn’t fall. He took the offered cup, then sank down on the front steps. “Thanks,” he said.

She moved around in front of him, fists on her hips, and waited until he looked up to meet his eyes. “I’m not a bad person,” she said softly.

“No,” he said, biting off the words. “You’re just crazy.”

She took a step back as though he’d hit her. For the first time since he’d shown up she looked upset. “I’m not crazy!”

“You can’t just move into someone else’s house because you want to.”

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “But I didn’t. I moved into my house–“

“This is not your house!”

“As you see it,” she said, then held up a hand to forestall his argument. “Okay, and the cops, too. I can’t suppress that kind of authority.”

He took a slow sip of his tea, then set the cup aside. He leaned back and looked up at her, finally curious. “What are you talking about?”

She frowned, as though she didn’t understand the question, and he shook his head. “You were talking about magic earlier,” he said. “Now it’s ‘suppressing authority.’ You don’t look a crazy person–“

She stomped her foot. “I’m not crazy!”

“Then what are you talking about?” He glanced up at the dangling gutter and knew he’d rather hear her story than get back to that. “Spill it.”

“Have you ever heard of Phenomenology?” she asked. “Brain in a vat?” He shook his head and she sank down on her heels in front of him. “Your whole universe is a model built inside your head, using your experiences, your expectations, and tiny electrical pulses from your nerves to populate it. Everything you see is just a message from your eyes to your brain, and based on that little spark of lighting your brain adds to the model however it sees fit. Everything you touch, every word you hear me saying–“

“Okay,” he said. “What’s the point?”

“It’s all a dream,” she said. “Your reality is a dream. Your brain is making it up, all the time, and you just go along with it. If you wanted to, though, you could change it. Take control of the dream. Put your mind to work for you and start producing reality instead of just consuming it.” She was breathing faster now, and her eyes were wide. He couldn’t help smiling at her enthusiasm.

“See,” he said, “that’s where you start to sound crazy.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s the hard part,” she said. “When dreams overlap. When my world and your world come into contact, and they’re not the same, we have to negotiate a common ground.”

“And how would you do that?”

“Talking,” she said. “That’s the purest magic, rhetoric. Money works, too, like you said. And force.” She turned up her nose. “You invoked force, and I retreated, and your dream won out over mine.” She rose back to her feet, unfolding gracefully, and reached out to touch the fallen gutter with a tender hand. There was sadness in her eyes. “I lose my dream house,” she said, “and you get this dump. Congratulations.” As she said it her dad pulled up to the curb behind her. He honked the horn once and she glanced back over her shoulder. “I’ll be gone in a minute,” she said, and disappeared into the house.

After that there wasn’t much excitement to the project. G– got down to work. He fixed the easy stuff quickly, but after that things ground to a halt. He got into the attic to examine the ductwork and found termites in the ceiling. He pulled up carpet to check out the hardwoods and found water damage down to the subfloor. Christmas break came and went. When the lease on his apartment expired in the spring, he moved into the house so he could work on it full-time over the summer.

In spite of his difficulties, he kept an eye on the real estate market, still committed to his plan. In June he bought another place and sold it in July. In August he bought and sold two places, one of them in the same neighborhood as his starter house. He finally settled into a rhythm, learned the eccentricities of the local market, and got pretty good at what he did. He never could sell that first 2/1/1, though.

Then on a Thursday night, two years later, he was at Barnes and Noble grabbing a book on plumbing when he spotted her in one of the comfy chairs reading a trashy fantasy novel. He fell down into the chair next to her and when she didn’t look up he said, “Hey, squatter.”

That got her attention. She blinked at him for a moment, then grinned sarcastically and answered, “Hey there, cops.”

“That’s me,” he said. “What’s happening?”

“The kingdom’s crumbling and the lord goes off to war,” she said. “You?”

“Better than that.” He grinned. “Want to know something funny? I never did sell that house.”

She tilted her head, considering him, and said, “If you’re looking to unload it, I still don’t have any money.” She opened the book back up, ready to forget him.

He blinked, and coughed an awkward laugh. “Umm…no,” he said. “That’s not what I…. Listen, do you think you’d want to go out to dinner?’

Again he got that long, quiet stare, but then she nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Where did you have in mind?” They did Mexican, and then the Olive Garden on Saturday, and burgers next Friday before they went bowling. And then in April they got married. He finished college, and two years after that they started a family with twins on the first try. He spent a weekend moving furniture, painting, getting the kids’ room ready. And as he put the finishing touches on the new nursery — their old master bedroom, but they would need the extra space for two cribs, two dressers, and oh, the mountain of toys — he laughed out loud and went to find her in the living room, curled up with a book.

“It’s about done,” he told her.

She looked up at him absently, then saw the look on his face and her eyes narrowed. “Why are you smiling?”

“Remember the day we met?” he said, sinking down next to her on the couch. “Here?” She nodded, and he went on. “You said the master bedroom would be your kids’ room. Standing there in a towel, you told me that with a straight face.” She nodded again and he smiled. “Well, it’s done,” he said. “It came out just like said. Isn’t that crazy?”

But she just smiled, and laughed, and told him, “No. It’s just as it should be.”

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Journal Entry: June 8, 2009

Thursday
Last Thursday night we had D– over to babysit AB so T– and I could go out on a date. When we started trying to decide where to go for dinner, though, we both thought pizza sounded best, so we just ordered in and shared with D– and AB. Then he took her outside to play and we went shopping.

I’ve been looking for new short sleeve dress shirts to wear to work, and T– has been looking for maternity dresses for the summer. We hit Old Navy, then Gordman’s, then Best Buy (which was a total bust), and then Wal-Mart where T– finally found some stuff she liked. I also hit the snowcone stand for a Tiger’s Blood, and filled up the car for T–.

We got home after nine, but AB was still awake and in crisis mode. She couldn’t find her white pacifier. She had the orange one, but she needed the white one, too. We had no luck finding it, but I got her distracted enough that she finally forgot about it and fell asleep.

Friday
Friday morning I stuck around the house long enough to have breakfast with T– and AB before they got on the road. They spent the weekend down in Texas, going to my aunt’s birthday party in Houston (with a scheduled stop in Dallas to spend some time with my grandma. I stayed home and went to work.

I met D– for lunch, then in the afternoon I got a haircut, grabbed some snacks and drinks for our party, and even got started wiring the new office. We had put in network and cable connections in the old office closet to set up a distribution point for our router and cable modem. When we switched AB’s room and the office, though, it became inconvenient to have to go in there to deal with networking issues.

So my project for the weekend was to move the two existing network connections and the cable connection from the old office closet to the new one, and add a new network and cable connection on the wall in the new office. I also decided to install a new electrical outlet in the new closet, because I had much easier access to the wall in this closet than I’d had in the other one.

Friday afternoon I didn’t get much of it done, but I did find the locations for the two junction boxes in the closet and cut the holes in the wall. I also got in the attic for a few minutes to scout out the setup up there, and that was awful. I hate working in the attic.

After that I had to call it quits and get cleaned up because we had our June Poker Night scheduled to take advantage of the wives and kids being out of town (my sister took her family down to the same birthday party). We met at their house, and K–, D–, and B– joined us. N– came over for dinner, too, and they brought us Steve’s Rib, which is currently my favorite barbecue. It was awesome.

We watched some Simpsons and Family Guy, and then most of the original Batman movie, and then more Family Guy. Oh, and we played some Texas Hold ‘Em. I won out, but then B– beat me when we switched to Blackjack. Ah well. It was a fun night.

Saturday
Saturday I got up around eight because I knew my plans for the day involved attic time and I wanted to get to it before it got really hot. K– came over to help out while N– went shopping for baby clothes nearby, so I put him to work on the electrical outlets while I finished setting up the network connections, then finally (and reluctantly) went up into the attic to drill a hole and feed the two new connections down the wall.

Turns out our air conditioner is situated directly over the office wall. It took me about half an hour to figure that out, searching with my fingertips under the mountains of insulation to try to find the top cap — trying to guess distances based on the paltry landmarks up there — K– finally had to come up to help and we found a spot about eight inches long in which I could place the drop. Anything to the north of that would have been in the living room, and anything to the south was trapped under hundreds of pounds of sheet metal and blower fans.

Then I finally got to do the actual work, and that only took a few minutes. I put the hole through the cap, K– went down and cut the square out of the drywall (and I could immediately see the light from the room below), and then I fed the cables down until he could pull them through into the office.

All told I spent more than an hour up in the attic, crouched and supporting my weight on the narrow edges of two-by-fours. Once I got back down into the office, it was just a matter of terminating ends, plugging them into faceplates, and cleaning up. We did about half of that, tested out all the connections we’d made (except the cable modem connection, it turned out), and then ran up to Panera to meet D– for lunch. That was about noon, and I was completely exhausted.

After lunch, though, I had plans. I’d been supposed to meet Toby for some programming last Saturday afternoon, while I was in charge of AB, but I’d postponed that because I thought she was sick and didn’t want to fight with her all afternoon. So this Saturday I got home from lunch, grabbed my laptop, and then jumped in the car to head to Norman.

It was fun. We spent the afternoon modeling furniture for a game we’re going to make AB, and while we were at it he turned on Madagascar II for the kids. I’d never seen it, so I paid about as much attention to that as to the work he was doing. Both were pretty entertaining. His wife got home around five and we had an Asian pot roast for supper that was awesome, and then Toby and I went to see Star Trek, which she’d gone to see without him earlier in the week.

It was great on a second viewing. Definitely one worth watching on the big screen. Toby really enjoyed it, too. We got back to his house around nine and spent a few more minutes talking before I headed home. I got in at about ten, totally exhausted and quite ready for bed.

Then I spent six hours playing computer games.

That wasn’t actually as accidental as it sounds. On the drive home I called D– and invited him over for some multiplayer Civ, deciding in a casual, off-hand way that I could sleep for half the day Sunday, skipping church in the process. So D– met me at the house, and we took three tries to get a game set up right, and then we were off and running.

I did discover, while I was waiting for him to prosecute a war against the Incas, that my internet connection was down. Our network connection was fine, but there was no link to the outside world. I restarted the cable modem, and then got back to the game. An hour later it finally had a connection, and that one stayed live (but weak) for the rest of the night.

I finally went to bed a little after four, looking forward to a really, really late morning.

Sunday
So T– called me five hours later, discovered I was asleep, and graciously agreed to call back later. I couldn’t get back to sleep after that, though, so I got up, cleaned up, and went to church after all. The sermon was a pretty good one, and I got some writing done on the next Ghost Targets book, so in the end I’m glad of the way the morning turned out. I was really dragging all day, though.

After church K– and N– invited us over for a cookout (specifically hot dogs and brats), and that was delicious. Then D– and I went back to the house to finish our game of Civ. I took a stab at fixing my internet connection first, by reterminating the input cable. When I hooked it back up it wouldn’t connect, though, same as the night before. We went ahead and started playing our game.

Half an hour later I checked on it again and it finally had a connection, and this time it was fantastic. We played all day, stopping only to order a pizza around six, and at about eleven we found ourselves master of half the world, with three nations our vassals and modern armies capable of annihilating any opposition already in transports headed for the other hemisphere, when England suddenly and unexpectedly won a cultural victory. Lame!

We left it at that, though. D– headed home, and I spent a little while getting the house cleaned up for T–‘s return. I finished off the network connection in the office, vaccuumed up all the drywall dust from all the wall-carving we’d done, cleaned out the trash, loaded and ran the dishwasher, dragged the garbage out to the curb for an early pickup, and then finally crashed in bed after midnight.

The weekend was equal parts productive and awesome. There’s very little overlap between those two, but the total is one I’m pretty happy with. I’m looking forward to T– and AB getting home this afternoon, though. Even busy as I was, I found plenty of time to miss them.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: June 4, 2009

Last night after work I got a Father’s Day present — T– picked up a couple new shirts for me from Kohl’s. They were really nice, and I immediately changed into the blue one. (Yes, blue.) Then I ran up to Lowe’s to buy a couple bags of play sand for T–‘s safari-themed Wednesday night Bible class. I met her at the church, we dumped the sand, and then raced over to Arby’s to meet everyone for dinner.

“Everyone” in this case was D– and K– and N–. We had our sandwiches, then we took advantage of the Pick 5 menu to get a round of turnovers for dessert. Delicious!

Then most of us went to church, while D– took me back to my house and dropped me off. He went home to sleep, having spent an exhausting night the evening previous chasing down problems for work.

I got my bad hard drive ready to send back to NewEgg, cleaned up the office and AB’s room a little bit, and then just had time to sit down for a minute before T– got home from church, followed shortly by K– and N– who wanted to check out the new nursery and office.

They were appropriately admiring, and then after they left we put AB to bed, then sat down in the living room to some Conan and Fallon. Both were good, although both were plagued with connectivity issues. I think Cox might be lashing out at me for threatening to cancel my account last week.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: June 3, 2009

Yesterday after work I hung new curtains in AB’s room and spent about forty minutes cursing at the register and vent covers I had to hang in the ceiling. I hate those things. Finally got it done, though, and most of my pending work for the nursery is done now.

T– grilled up some hot dogs for dinner and D– came over to join in. Then I spent some time getting the HTPC set up with the new Hulu Desktop software, which is pretty slick. It took a while to get it programmed to respond properly to my Harmony remote, but now that it does it’s awesome.

Then we watched some Conan and some Jimmy Fallon while I played Civ and T– and D– both worked on work stuff. Then it was midnight.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: June 2, 2009

It always surprises me to get that email from Facebook saying “Such-and-such confirmed you as a friend.” Usually that’s because of the “such-and-such” in question — mostly people I vaguely remember from high school who apparently remember me well enough to confirm. Weird.

I spent the weekend watching AB while T– was out of town, so you can anticipate a long and detailed blog post.

Thursday
Thursday afternoon I got home from work a little early so that I could say goodbye to T– before she headed to Little Rock for a weekend scrapbooking with my mom and sisters. We got the car loaded, and then she tearfully took to the road.

I played with AB for half an hour or so, until she started claiming she was hungry, and then I made us dinner — PB and J for her, and PF and Changs for me (leftovers, that is). Then we were heading back to her room to play some more when she asked if we could go in the office (like the cats, she loves it simply because the door is always closed).

So I dragged T–‘s desk chair in there, squeezed it in next to mine at the desk, and put VeggieTales on the new big monitor. AB watched TV while I played Civ on the laptop. It was a fun hour and a half. After I put her to bed, I played some more Civ, and then went to bed at a reasonable hour (something I have difficulty remembering to do when I’m home alone).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep. I was awake until about 2:00 before I finally drifted off.

Friday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through work on Friday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door, loudly and insistently, while politely asking to be released. I could barely hear her through the banging, saying, “Let me out, please.”

I went to her door and told her she didn’t have to go to back to bed, but she had to stay in her room until 7:00. She didn’t like that information, but there’s not a lot she can do about it until she figures out child-proof doorknob covers.

So I hurried to get dressed and ready for work before 7:00, and then got AB fed before the babysitter showed up. Once she was there I rushed out the door and headed to work.

I got home a little after 5:00, and on the drive there I called up D– and K– and N–, as well as my brother-in-law who had his own two little bundles of joy in his sole care. In an effort to pool resources, we all met at McDonalds in Edmond and let the kids unleash their havoc on the play equipment there.

At one point AB and her cousin Sophy were fighting over a toy steering wheel and AB bit her hard, right on the chest (bizarre, I know). Jeff retrieved Sophy to comfort her and I got AB to chastise her, and as I was carrying her to a corner AB said, “Sophy’s crying.”

In my sternest dad voice I said, “She is. Do you know why?”

And AB nodded and said, “Annabelle tried to eat her.”

I didn’t laugh. Not at the time anyway.

We were there for an hour or so, then fled the noise of the place to regroup at my sister’s place for another half hour or so. I finally left at 8:00 so I could get home in time to put AB down to bed. D– came over, too.

Once she was in bed, D– made me watch King of Kong on Netflix while we played games in the office. When it was over, I retaliated by making him watch about three hours of Comedy Central Presents. It was 2:00 when he finally left and I went to bed.

Saturday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through the morning Saturday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.

We had breakfast and played some games in the living room, but she mostly divided her time between throwing weird little tantrums (falling on the ground wherever she was and crying softly), and crawling into my lap and cuddling up against me like she does when she’s scared. Or, more precisely, she spent the morning acting like she was sick. She’d spent the week playing with her cousin who we found out on Thursday probably had strep, so I was more and more certain as the morning wore on that AB had finally come down with it.

I had some errands that needed run, though, so I went up to Wal-Mart and AB perked up a little bit when she saw the fish in the tanks. She fought me a lot over who got to push the cart, though, and I learned the low-grade terror that is trying to keep track of a toddler at a busy Wal-Mart — especially with the sure knowledge that, if she decides to run, she can outrun you. She never actually bolted, but there were a couple of close calls.

We got what we needed, though, and then swung by B– and E–‘s place to borrow an extension ladder. I was supposed to take AB over to Toby’s place for the afternoon, so she could play with his kids while we did some programming. When she started throwing a fit in the car, though, I called him up and told him I was worried she was sick and she wasn’t behaving, and I just didn’t have the patience to deal with that all afternoon. He seemed to understand.

D– picked up some lunch for us, and then I put her down for a nap. I got some work done in the back yard, using B–‘s ladder to repair the broken swings, and then D– and I started up a multiplayer game of Civ. Around 3:30 AB woke up and came into the office, but all she did for about forty minutes was wander around crying. She didn’t want to be comforted, she didn’t want to watch any of her favorite TV shows or movies, she didn’t want a snack or a drink…she just cried. I checked her for a fever, but there was nothing. T– had told me she’d behaved like that earlier in the week, so we just waited it out.

I did call and cancel dinner plans with K– and N–, but after AB calmed down and I started trying to figure out what to make her for dinner, I called back and uncancelled. By the time we got over there, AB was perfectly fine, and she behaved pretty well while we were there. N– tried to put on The Fox and the Hound for her, but AB was much more interested in playing with baby Jason.

We stayed a little longer than I’d thought AB would allow, so it was forty minutes past her bedtime by the time we got home. I decided to postpone her bath, and just put her to bed. Then D– and I played Civ for three more hours, and got up to Cannons. We finished one war and he wisely suggested we call it a night before starting another. Thanks to that suggestion, I made it to bed by the comparably reasonable hour of 1:00.

Sunday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through church Sunday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.

I gave her some breakfast and turned on WordWorld for her, then I got cleaned up and dressed in a hurry. Then I gave her a much needed bath, and just finished getting her dressed in time to make it to Bible class.

At first she was really clingy, and knowing she’d been through a rough weekend without her mama I stuck around until the opportunity to ring a bell and the promise of goldfish crackers finally enticed her to take her spot at the table. Then I slipped off to the auditorium class only ten or fifteen minutes late.

Jeff joined us for the service, bringing his two girls with him, and we spent a few minutes commiserating. That went like this:

Me (exhausted): They are never allowed to do this again.
Jeff (unsympathetic): You’ve only got one!

Afterward we went to Mazzio’s with K– and N– and D– joined us there. Then after lunch AB went down for a nap, I cleaned up the house a little anticipating T–‘s return, and then D– and I finished off our Civ game. We won it just before T– got home with dinner.

There were hugs all around, of course, and then while T– and AB were catching up I took a moment to finish some of the work on the nursery/office switch. Then AB went down for a nap, and T– and I spent a couple hours watching TV before heading to bed.

Monday
Monday I had to go back to work, dang it all. I even ended up staying late, so it was almost six by the time I got home, and then I spent an hour on the elliptical machine. At seven T– had dinner ready for us — barbecue sandwiches, which were fantastic. Then we took a walk up to the Bolings’ house — friends from church — and spent a while talking with them. By the time we got home it was AB’s bedtime, but she stayed up a while longer to get a bath.

After that, T– and I spent the rest of the evening watching through the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien transition episodes. That was pretty fun. Then I stayed up late playing Civ, but with T– back home and my life back in order, “late” was only 11:30.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 28, 2009

I worked a little bit late yesterday, but still got home with enough time to do a short stint on the elliptical while checking out my new monitor. I played an episode of Comedy Central Presents, and watching TV on this screen is so much better than watching it on the laptop monitor was.

Then we rushed off to meet D– for dinner at El Chico. Afterward T– took AB to church, and I headed up to Books A Million to meet my little sister for a discussion of the Ghost Targets series (which she had just finished).

It was a fantastic discussion, and took a good portion of three hours. I’ve been feeling more and more anxious to write the third book in the series lately, but I’ve been trying to fight down the urge because I just have too much to do. I don’t think my resistance will last long, though. You can probably expect a review copy by mid-July.

Anyway, I got home around ten, and ended up playing Civ for an hour or so, with more Comedy Central Presents on the second monitor. That was fun, too. I’m definitely glad of that purchase.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 27, 2009

I’ve got an eventful five-day recap, so prepare your scrolling finger!

Err….

Thursday
Last Thursday was the 21st, so I did another 24-hour fast. Much easier than the first, because I had a really good idea exactly what to expect. I’d considered going for a 36-hour this time, but decided not to because I had work to do, and going all evening without eating would have just put me in a bitter, useless mood. I guess overcoming that is really the point of the ordeal. I’ll have to work on it in the future.

I did get some work done, though. Moved all my computer stuff out of the old office and into the new one, and started working out the new layout. We also got a good start on arranging the stuff in the old office to get it ready for painting.

Friday
Friday was my RDO, and I put it to good use. I woke up early and started gathering the painting supplies. In the old office we’d painted the ceiling and doors a light grey, all the woodwork a dark, dark grey, and the walls dark green. The goal was to take the woodwork (and doors) back to the same flat white in the rest of the house, the walls to the same light green we had in AB’s nursery, and then the ceiling to the tan color on the walls in the rest of the house. For the most part, that meant taking very dark shades and painting over them with very pale shades. Luckily we’d been through that process once before, when we last got the Tulsa house ready to sell, and learned that primer really does work.

So we started Friday morning with the woodwork, got it all primed, let that dry, and then put the white on. While that was still drying, I started putting up primer on the walls, but I only got two of them done before I ran out of paint. I waited half an hour for the first wall to dry, and then got a coat of the light green up, and used up all of that that we had leftover, too.

That was most of what I hoped to accomplish on Friday anyway, and I ran out of paint at the same time I ran out of day off, which is to say about three in the afternoon. I got cleaned up and then made a trip to Byron’s Liquor Warehouse to stock up for our party that night.

Friday was our second Poker Night, and we spent it playing Heroscape instead. We had five there this time, including the same group from last time plus Toby, and I think we all had a pretty good time. B– wrote mid-week, in response to my final email saying that the party would be on Friday, to say he could come any night but Friday. We all took it for a joke, but it turned out he really meant it. Hopefully he’ll make the June meeting, though.

Anyway, we officially broke at midnight, but then a few of us stuck around talking for a bit, and after everyone cleared out I cleaned up the mess and finished off my last Tatoo and Redbull, and it was around 1:30 when I finally went to bed and realized I had just slammed half of a Tatoo and Redbull. Ugh.

Saturday
Still, Saturday came around in spite of me. I got up around 7:30 (at the insistence of my delightful little daughter) and then T– took her away for her own safety to do some garage saleing, while I got started on the room.

I was about halfway through putting primer on one of the two remaining walls when B– showed up to lend a hand. Mindful of my sore back (and my weekend’s work did nothing to help with that) he graciously offered to do the hardest work (specifically, the ceiling), so I handed over a roller to him and got to work on some edging.

I also rigged a laptop and some speakers to play King Baby, Jim Gaffigan’s latest stuff, while we worked. That was pretty awesome.

Essentially, before B– offered to come over, my goal for Saturday was to get the primer up before lunch, then do the walls in the early afternoon and hope that I still had the time and energy to do the ceiling before bed. With his help, we got it all primed and then both walls and half of the ceiling done before lunchtime. It was incredible.

I ate and then T– came in to do the trim work while I finished off the ceiling, and by mid-afternoon the painting was done. AB woke up from her nap and the two of them went out to play in the yard while I swapped out stuff from the closet. We also moved a ton of AB’s furniture from our room into AB’s new room, which was nice to get done.

Sometime in the midst of that we went out to dinner with my sister’s family at Taco Cabana, and afterward we brought her two girls back to the house to play with AB while they (my sister and her husband) went to Lowe’s. So obviously it was a busy and exhausting day.

Sunday
Sunday after church we went to K– and N–‘s for a delicious quiche lorraine sans oignons (or something like that). AB behaved really well, and it was a perfectly pleasant visit. It’s weird to think how little time we’ve spent over there since the baby was born, but that probably has as much to do with it being the football offseason as it does with parenthood. I’ll guess we’ll find out in September.

Anyway, we went home and AB went down for a nap and so did I. I actually crashed on the couch, then ended up on the floor somehow, and only really woke up when I heard T– closing the garage door on her way to Wal-Mart for groceries. I was just talking myself into getting up and going to my bed when the phone rang. It was Dad, calling about some comments I’d sent him regarding his novel. We talked for right at an hour, discussing his book in specific and writing in general.

Then he got off the phone at the same time T– got home and AB woke up from her nap. They went outside to play again, but not before T– gave me more work to do. She told me to take care of dinner.

So, an hour later, I ran up to P F Chang’s to pick up our order.

D– came over to join us for supper, and brought back a bunch of my computer games that he’d borrowed and finished a while back, so after we ate I spent the evening installing games and got caught up in a Civ game that took up a lot of my time over the next three days. It pretty much ate my whole evening, anyway, but I did take time to fix a loose hinge on one of our cabinet doors in the kitchen. So I did accomplish something on Sunday. I was up until 2:00 playing, though.

Monday
Monday morning I woke up around 9:30 and mowed the lawn, then got cleaned up in time to head over to my sister’s place with T– and AB for a Memorial Day party. A real crowd showed up in, and instead of flooding this page with even more dashes I’ll let you look at T–‘s or my sister’s blog for more details and prettier pictures.

I played a Magic game with Toby and my brother-in-law before social pressure forced us to put it away. Then I spent some time outside in the accursed sunlight until T– requested a snowcone and Toby and my brother-in-law and I all fled the party to see if we could find an open stand. We picked up seven snowcones and brought them back to much rejoicing.

I don’t really remember much else from Monday, but that’s probably because I spent the rest of the day fighting off Vikings and Frenchmen with a horde of Mechanized Infantry. I won.

Tuesday
Tuesday morning I woke up too sore to get out of bed, and eventually talked myself into skipping work. I finally got out of bed sometime between nine and ten, and watched AB while T– ran some errands. Then we had some lunch, and I went to my office to work on some of my old poetry stuff while AB took a nap. Around three she woke up and I agreed to watch her again while T– went grocery shopping.

We had some fantastic pot roast for supper, and we were just getting ready to play AB’s memory game when UPS rang the doorbell to drop off some new computer stuff. I got a couple UPSs to protect my equipment from our frequent power outages, a new hard drive for my fileserver (which seems to be dead on arrival), and a new monitor to use as a TV in my office. It’s beautiful.

I got it all unboxed, then sat down at the kitchen table with T– and AB to play memory. She has a bunch of cards with Disney characters on them, and we narrowed the seventy-two cards down to a more reasonable twelve, and played the traditional memory game with AB. She’s far more interested in placing the cards in the plastic storage tray than in actually matching, probably because the motor skills present her with a real challenge. She has no trouble at all remembering where the cards are.

We went through through the six-card game several times, with slightly different sets, and then came up with a more complicated version using the storage tray and twelve cards, and she excelled at that, too. We were so impressed that T– pulled out the camcorder to get a record of AB’s ability, but by then she was tired of the game and decided to argue instead of showing off. Alas.

We put the game away, then, and I went to the office to work on my computer. I spent about an hour trying to get an old hard drive to work (only to discover it was a bad drive), and finally gave up on that and just installed my new drive (only to discover it, too, was a bad drive). When that was done, I put it back in the top of AB’s closet, and then tucked her in and wished her goodnight.

Then I spent another half hour rearranging the entertainment center in the living room to install a UPS there, and finally sat down on the couch to watch the second half of Charade with T–. That’s one weird-ass movie.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Fair Notice

To anyone who has need to call me, ever:

As a general rule, unless I have reason to suspect an emergency, I don’t answer my phone while I’m in a conversation.

That’s what caller ID is for. And voicemail. I’ll call you back when I get a chance. And if you’re the caller, just know I’ll extend you the same courtesy when I’m in a conversation with you and somebody else calls. Socializing is difficult enough without constant technological interruptions.

Stop pretending to be surprised or making jokes that I never answer my phone. It’s usually deliberate, and for good reason.

That is all.

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Journal Entry: May 21, 2009

Yesterday after work I rushed home to get started on more work.

Instead of exercising for the day, I toiled. T– had cleared off a bookcase for me during the day, so I dragged the empty bookcase from the old office into the new one, found a space for it on the wall, and then made a bunch of trips (with T–‘s help) carrying books from one of the full bookcases in there, clearing it off in the process.

That worked pretty well, and I think we moved the second bookcase in there before dinner. We got them both set up in the back corner and fully loaded. Then we darted up to McDonalds to grab something for AB before meeting my sister and her family, D–, and K– and N– at Quiznos.

I’ve never been a big fan, but I always try to get the Quiznos version of my favorite sandwiches from other places. That, or something weird. Last night we split the classic club, and that was better than anything I’ve had there. Delicious.

Afterward D– drove me back to the house, and I put him to work. We dismantled AB’s bed (in her room) and the futon (in the old office), and swapped rooms. Then, once the futon was reassembled in the new office, D– asked about my plans for the eventual layout and immediately suggested we could probably do something better with the bookcases. Turned out he was right, but to prove it we had to go ahead and move the desk, which wasn’t really ready for that.

We did it anyway, and once the desk was in place there was clearly enough room beside it to put the bookcases there (on the inside corner instead of the outside one), which freed up the back corner for just the elliptical. There’d been enough room as it was, but it was cramped. This works a lot better.

It meant clearing off the bookcases again, moving them along the wall, and then reloading them. It was also a pretty significant chore to get the elliptical taken apart and moved, and we had to find places for the rest of AB’s stuff in our bedroom, to keep the old office clean enough that we can paint it over the weekend.

Anyway, that was my whole evening. I’ve got all the furniture moved into the new office, though, and I think I’m going to take a stab at wiring it tonight. I had lots of time to think about that while I lay in bed last night, because I couldn’t sleep at all. I went to bed at 10:30 and it was after midnight before I fell asleep, and only fitful rest after that. Ugh.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 20, 2009

Is it the twentieth already? Ugh.

Yesterday after work I did forty minutes on the elliptical and finished off the first season of Dollhouse, which ended fantastically. I’m really looking forward to seeing where they go with the story (and, in the same vein, really stoked to learn that they are renewing it).

Then after that we had steaks for dinner, and then started the process of moving AB out of her room. We brought all her toys and most of her furniture out of her room and set them up in the back corner of our living room as a temporary play area.

Our goal is to swap the nursery and the library, and put both kids in the larger room. It’s a temporary fix, but it should buy us a few years.

Unfortunately, it’s no small task. In addition to all the furniture that needs to get moved, the office is done up in my personal color scheme (which is to say, dark), and T– thinks it would be bad for the children’s psyches to grow up that environment, so we get to repaint them to happy meadow green and white. I did a pretty thorough job when I painted it in the first place, so that’s a lot of work to take it back.

And, as I implied above, I figure I’ve only got a few years left of having an office at all, so I’m not going to bother repainting the smaller room. I’ll just leave it happy meadow green and hope it doesn’t get on my nerves too much when the only light in the room comes from a computer monitor.

We’ll have to move the network equipment and fileserver out of the old office closet, to protect it from curious little hands, and we’ll need to drop cable and network connections in the new office because there was no need to have them in that room when it was a nursery. That’s an unpleasant afternoon’s work, but not much more.

Anyway, last night all we did was move AB’s toys out to the living room, and then I started the process of condensing my library down from three bookcases to two, because that’s all I’ll have room for. It wasn’t quite as painful as I’d expected it to be, but it’s still a bummer.

Of course, by the time I went to bed I was still working out details and planning exactly what needed to be done, and it was hours before I actually fell asleep. That was irritating.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.