The pod person still occupies my body.

I was seeing a client last night at 7:30 p.m.

I’m not just working, not just working overtime and after hours, I’m enjoying the work.

I’m intent on not overanalyzing it, and just going with it because I need the work/money.

It’s wierd, though.

Because baby sister is in town, I missed my exercise hour yesterday and it bothered me and I WANTED it.

I give up.

Another day with no red meat or yellow cheese.

Who,  me?

I did get an uptick on my libido last night and that calms me down a little.

It’s one thing to have your body occupied by a working, exercising, eating healthy pod person, but I was afraid that the adolescent in me had also gone.  Thank God sex is more powerful than pod people.

tonight is Paseo dinner night and with any luck, my baby sister will regale and charm the group.  I’m really hoping she can be there for part of the festivities.

Sinatra is hobbled AGAIN.  I don’t know what to do with the boy.  I can’t tell yet how serious it is, but he doesn’t want to put any weight on his back paw and screams at me when I try to pet his haunch.  I’m afraid to take him to the vet (I can’t afford it) and I’m scared not to.  Being a father of such a wayward child is a lesson in life.  I can barely take care of myself and here I am trying to caretake another being.  Buddha forgive me.

A former Bush administration aide, the top procurement official for the feds, was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in the Abramoff Affair.  You read it here first some months ago:  this is a big deal and it’s only going to get bigger.

Let there be light in your life.

See Skip’s wonderful work here:

http://www.thepaseo.com/

And, while I’m at it, here’s a pic from Ed and Mandy’s “sauced” homepage of someone I used to know:

The woman smoking told me the following joke:

How many sopranos does it take to change a light bulb?

One to get on the ladder and 99 to say: “Isn’t that a little high for you, dear?”

My baby sister is cominng to town.

YIPPEEE!!!

MindoverMary, linked at right, will be here late tonight, courtesy Continental Airlines.

I just can’t hardly wait.  I’m like a kid before Christmas wanting to tear open the packages.

Mary taught my whole family to hug.  I mean that.  She was the one who insisted on physical affection in a family that wasn’t physically affectionate.

If she did nothing else in her life, that one loving decision would make her a saint in my eyes.

She’s the baby, but she wasn’t spoiled.  She faced her own hard knocks and problems, no doubt about it.

When Mom told her that it was as easy to fall in love with a rich guy as a poor guy, she took that seriously and married two guys with money.

It’s not how well you marry, it’s how well you divorce, they say. 

Mary’s daughter, her oldest child, will be getting married in December and we’re all going to Charleston to see the nuptials.  That will be so much fun.

If I seem to drag a little tomorrow, it’s because Mary and I couldn’t go to sleep tonight doing the sleepover talk and laugh thing.

OH I JUST CAN’T WAIT!!!

The Post Secret page has never been more poignant for me:

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

My relationship with my own father was very problematic, but at the last I was horrified by his suffering and alienation.  His senile dementia and hearing loss left him completely alone and he’d been a traveling salesman never-meet-a-stranger kind of guy who was extremely social.  He was hurting and curled into a fetal position after breaking his hip/leg in a fall.  He was clearly afraid and did not understand what was happening to him.  Death came as a blessing in my mind.  Yet, I could not mourn.  For years, he had not only lost his own humanity, but my mother had also become withdrawn and isolated by her stubborn resolve to take care of him at home until it simply became impossible.

I left my father’s house pretty young — not yet 18 — and my guilt about my father’s death is not close to my guilt about leaving my sisters behind.  My father was physical with them and increasingly so.  I felt the most guilty about my middle sister and even though she and I are estranged, I still understand many of her problems when I remember how he resolved the issues between them with his physical prowess — the back of his hand ended many “discussions”.

Like any child, I wanted my father to love me, approve of me and be proud of me.  It never happened. 

Dad didn’t hug us, he “wrestled” or “tussled” with us and every time one of the children ended up hurt and crying.  I have a portrait of “Daddy” on my studio wall:  it’s a watercolor of the brown belt that sent us to bed weeping almost every night.

By contrast, Dad had many, many friends who adored him, found him funny and warm.  When I say Dad never met a stranger, I mean he would kid and chat with every service station attendant and store clerk he encountered.  He could be loving:  I prayed and wished and hoped that someday he would treat me as well as he did the family dog.

He’s buried in Lawton next to my grandmother, Elsie, who was the one adult in my family who made me feel the most loved.  There’s so much emotion there I can hardly go to Comanche County with my mother, who still tends his grave.

I have many legacies from my father: starched shirts and shined shoes; a well-knotted necktie; great silver hair; the idea that I can’t do anything right and that I’m therefore worthless.

Now, I’m a father and grandfather myself.  My youthful contempt for the hypocrisy of the Ozzie and Harriet outside and abusive inside of my family life is now more mournful and understanding.

Now, the frustrations of not knowing how to raise a child and the temptation to take those frustrations out in anger on the child are more real to me.  My own youthful parenting is a blot on my soul and my subsequent reform is one of my most proud achievements.

I hope my children remember the hugs and not the hurts.  They cannot know how deeply they are loved.  They cannot know how deeply I regret my shortcomings as a father.

There are some situations as a parent I believe are so fraught with peril that it’s something you can’t get right:  you make a decision knowing that it’s wrong, but in hope that it’s less wrong than the alternatives.  In retrospect, you hope and pray the positive outweighs the negative.

My alcoholism while my children were under my care is a source of regret, to be sure.  As a recovering alcoholic, my hope is to live as a man they can be proud of, a man they forgive and a man who now demonstrates the unqualified love I always felt.

I’m sorry I was so self-centered and selfish, kids.  I’m sorry I followed the path I was shown and not the one I knew was right.  I hope you can love me for making a change, lowering my voice and staying my hand, giving hugs and telling you “I love you”. 

I couldn’t have done too badly, they both turned out to be perfectly lovely, wonderful adults.

I don’t take the credit, Jack and RebL.  I do deeply appreciate the love you show me throughout the year.

Happy Father’s Day

It’s Ed and Mandy’s restaurant webpage.  They’re putting in a pizzaria and juice place on the Paseo down by Blue Moon.  Here’ the link for the 411 and I’ll permalink when I get around to it.

http://www.yoursauced.com/

good luck, kids

My libido is down around my net worth, some astronomical negative figure that I don’t want to know.

I’m doing home improvement projects today.

I paid bills this morning.

I went to f’n HOME DEPOT today!

Who is this man who has occupied my body?

don’t have a date tonight and don’t want one.

not sure I even want to leave the house.

the dishes are washing and so are the clothes.

I fixed my own food in my own kitchen.

Who is this man who has occupied my body?

I don’t feel like writing or painting.

I’m thinking about a case I’m working on at the office.

It’s about a house that flooded.

I’ve never even met the client, I’m just doing a favor for another lawyer, taking the case to trial later this summer.

The top is up on the new car.

Who is this man who has occupied my body?

I noticed that I stopped eating red meat about a week ago.

It’s been mostly cold salads lately.

I’ve secretly been exercising — walking around the block and doing situps in my bedroom.

I’m prepping for a colonoscopy on the 27th and otherwise taking care of my health.

Who is this man who has occupied my body?

He wants serenity and security and solitude.

WTF???

I’m dreaming that today I’m up at 6:45 a.m. so I can be in court today.

It’s not my case: it’s my “partner”, Floyd’s, and I’m going to court because he’s taking off for a fishing trip to Canada while I stay here and be the grownup and do work.

I know how the British felt at the end of the Revolutionary War.  I can hear the band playing “The World Turned Upside Down”.

Oh. My. God.

I’m awake and this is real.

I’m practicing law today. 

I’m on the phone and drafting documents and doing that sort of thing.

When did this start?

One of the incidents that came out of my car wreck is that my cell phone pitched forward into the windshield.

It didn’t fare as well as I did.

I took it to the Cingular ER for a catscan and it was fatally wounded.

So, I talked to the Cingular people and my contract was up and I could re-up and get a good deal on a new phone and got a humdinger of a Blackberry.  It’s the newest, fastest all-blowjobs-all-the-time model.

It gets my email, has a PDA, does everything.

On the other hand, it’s so complicated I can’t figure it out.

It’s got my old SIM card, but I can’t retrieve my phone numbers.

Hell, I can hardly figure out how to make and receive phone calls.

It seems this morning like a metaphor for my entire life.

All this potential.  So many skills.  Transformative powers.

Yet, somehow a mystery to me about how to make it work in the “real world”.