11 July 2010

Today we spent cleaning our home. We finished up the bedroom and one of the bathrooms. They’re spotless and all ready for the baby. We even took two bags of stuff to the goodwill. I always like doing that as it means more room in the house.

I’m pleased that the house is in such good shape and that we’ve finished everything we needed to finish before the baby arrives.

This evening, after paying a visit to the goodwill, we ate dinner at Old Chicago. Have you ever had a pizzini? I think tonight was a first for me. For $9.99 I got a salad, a pizzini, and a dessert. Pretty good price, pretty good food and all vegetarian. I’ve become a vegetarian by virtue of living with a vegetarian. If I have an appreciable amount of any meat, red meat in particular, I nearly feel like doubling over in pain, so I guess I won’t be eating too much meat. Fish seems to be okay, so maybe I’ll go buy some goldfish from the pet store and keep them on hand for when I need protein.

12 July 2010

I was going to begin this post by saying: “Today, for the first time since early 1986, I don’t own any birds.” But that’s not exactly true. I guess I’ll just give you a brief history of birds in my life:

On March 1, 1986, we bought a pet parakeet from a private breeder. His name was Beaker. He was basically my sister’s bird. A few weeks later, on April 4, we returned to the same breeder and bought a bird for me, named Peppy. Peppy died about a year later and so my parents bought me a new bird, whom I named Ruffles. Beaker and Ruffles got along so well, they shared a cage. Soon they had babies. We gave one baby to my grandparents, and we kept the other one (named Squeaky).

In 1991, Ruffles died, and so we were left with Beaker and Squeaky. Shortly after Jennifer and I got married (in 1996), my parents gave me the birds. Jennifer and I supplemented our bird collection by buying a third parakeet named Dotti. Then we bought a cockatiel named Cosmo. Since Cosmo was extremely needy and wanted constant companionship, we went to another private breeder’s place and bought him a friend, named Anni.

Then here’s where things got weird: the same day we bought Anni, we also bought a lovebird named Tango. Why did I do that? I don’t know. See, lovebirds, despite their name, aren’t very friendly. We couldn’t let Tango out of her cage to fly around with the other birds, because she would attack them. And she didn’t like us, she only bit us. So we had to buy her a friend so that she had at least some companionship. That bird was named Tequila.

So then these breeders had to get out of the bird business for one reason or another, and they asked us if we wanted their breeding lovebirds. Insanely, we said yes, and so, in one day, we became the proud owners of four more lovebirds. Only one pair of them ever produced any eggs, though. The first egg that hatched – the second of four in that clutch – we called “2 of 4”. Get it?

We had fed that bird. We had to bring her with us on a vacation. I even had to stop home after my sister’s wedding (on my way to her reception) so as to feed 2 of 4. Our idea was to sell her to make money but, guess what? Any money we made would’ve only reimbursed us for the money we spent on the birds in the first place. She was such a cute baby bird. She often went under my shirt and sat on my shoulder, falling asleep, sometimes for hours as I watched a movie or read a book. One time, when my friend Ryan came over, he saw how adorable she was towards me, and he said: “Oh, you can’t get rid of cute little ‘two-y.'” I cringed when he said that, because I knew giving her a real name (Twoey) meant I couldn’t get rid of her.

And I couldn’t.

In 1998, when Twoey was only a couple of months old, 12 and-a-half year old Beaker finally died. Cosmo, the cockatiel, died in 1999, and we gave his mate Anni to an avian rescue sanctuary. Squeaky died in 2002, and we bought Dotti a replacement friend (Heidi), who then died in 2006. My sister took Dotti soon after.

As for the lovebirds, we pawned off those breeding pairs and, in 1998, when Tango died unexpectedly, we saw that both Tequila and Twoey were alone. In no time at all, they became friends, and they lived happily together in a single cage until 2007, when Twoey evidently killed Tequila. From December 2007 until today, we’ve owned just one single lovebird…Twoey.

Why didn’t we buy a new mate for Twoey? you ask. And why didn’t we give her to someone else? Answers:

First, I didn’t want to buy another bird. The problem with replacing a fallen mate is that soon the other bird will die. See, I figured if I bought Twoey a mate, then soon Twoey would die, and then I’d be left with her mate. It would never end. Also, lovebirds are very temperamental, so there’s no guarantee she’d get along with the new bird. Further, Twoey was already nine years old, which I thought was about the upper limit of a lovebird’s life.

Second, I tried giving Twoey to my sister, who owns about 50 animals. But she said she didn’t like the idea of me giving her all my birds who are ready to die. This isn’t exactly fair, as I only ever gave her one bird (Dotti, the parakeet), and she lived for over a year with my sister. Still, as I’ve stated above, the lovebird wouldn’t fit in nicely with her bevy of parakeets and other critters, so I couldn’t really push the issue. Instead, I just kept the bird, assuring Jennifer that Twoey would die soon, so we might as well let her stay with us.

Unfortunately, we only have a two-bedroom apartment right now. She chirps loud without any other birds around, and there’s no good place to keep her. She turned ten years old…then eleven…then twelve. I wanted to keep her, but in the last few months, especially as our human family is about to grow, I realized that the only reason I wanted to keep her was sentimental – we’d raised her from a hatchling and had her (almost) longer than any other pet. She had lived with us in four different dwellings.

Still, she’s not a photo album or a family heirloom, so sentimentality is a lousy reason to keep a living thing. I couldn’t stand her. She wasn’t attached to me anymore, having lived with another bird for so long. Even today, I tried to put my hand out to pet her, and she tried to rip a chunk out of my flesh. She’s not happy. We’re not happy.

I called the avian rescue place that took our cockatiel Anni, but they said they’re not accepting new birds right now. They did, however, refer me to PAEP. So, today, Owen and I drove to Lino Lakes and surrendered care of Twoey. We left her with her cage, stand, lots of toys, ten pounds of food and a $25 donation.

In a way, I will miss her, but I know she’ll have a better life now. And so will we.

10 July 2010

I’ve never actually written down this list, but somewhere in my brain is a list of major goals I have for my life. Most of them are private matters, what I call Sam Beckett goals. Others – such as not having an only-child – are goals I’ve made rather public. Around 1:00 this afternoon, I was able to finally accomplish one of the longest-standing goals on the list.

Today, for the first time ever, I performed a wedding ceremony. How did I find myself in this situation, you may ask, and why did I even want to do that? Those are good questions. I’ll try my best to answer them, so prepare for some back story…

Even when I was a little kid, I thought it was weird how, so often, the person officiating a wedding had no special connection to the bride or the groom. I think I saw this most often on TV: the bride and groom would invite all their closest friends and family, and then just get some judge to be there with them. At the last minute, he’d have to lean into them and say: “What are your names?”

When Jennifer and I were married, I had my grandfather perform the ceremony. Two years later, my sister was slated to get married but, alas, she did not share the same closeness with our grandfather that I did. As a marginal Witness at best, she also wasn’t close to any of the elders in our congregation, either. So, she and her fiance’ asked me to do the job. I went into the Dakota County courthouse and asked what would be required, and the old lady behind the counter said I would need either a minister’s certificate or a ‘letter in good standing’ from my religious body.

Witnesses don’t pass out certificates to their ministers, so I figured I’d have to get a good-standing letter. At the next meeting, I approached Phil, the congregation presiding overseer. He basically just said he’d get back to me on that. Over the next several weeks, I worked on the wedding talk. Witnesses have an outline for their wedding talks, and I used that to fashion a great talk. After about two months, Phil asked me one evening: “Do you still want to do your sister’s wedding?” I thought this was an odd question, because it seemed as though Phil just thought the matter would evaporate in such a way that he wouldn’t have to take care of it (yes, I think he would make a great manager, too). I said yes, my sister still did want me to perform her wedding.  I even told him I’d been working on the talk, and Phil looked at me funny, probably wondering how a non-elder had gotten his hands on the outline (oh Phil…so innocent). So Phil said we would talk about it after the next meeting. God, he was great at stalling.

After the next meeting, Phil asked me to join him and another elder down in the basement (never a good sign). The other elder happened to be my Uncle Jeff who, as both an elder and my Uncle, always thought it was his place to stick his nose into my business a little too much for my liking. Anyway, Phil said that the Watchtower Society really prefers if only elders perform wedding ceremonies. This was bizarre news for me to hear, as I had, of course, already looked up the Watchtower Society’s stance on the matter, and, in a Watchtower from the 1970s, they said that any baptized member of the congregation was qualified to perform weddings and funerals, as long as they had a penis.

But before I could pull out this article and share it with Phil, my Uncle Jeff jumped into the conversation. We argued for about five minutes, going in a complete logistical circle, in which Jeff asked why my sister wouldn’t want an elder to perform her wedding (I said: “‘Cause she doesn’t like them”), then said the elders from my last congregation didn’t like me and asked why that was (I wasn’t sure, but I think it’s because they were assholes), then said that he’d never heard of a non-elder performing a wedding (I reminded him of my non-elder Uncle, from my mom’s side of the family, who had performed a wedding just a few months prior – Jeff had been present at that wedding).

Phil finally cut in and basically said that if I insisted on performing the wedding, he would give me the letter I needed, but that he really felt I should consider the Society’s viewpoint. That’s a weasel phrase that elders like to use a lot. See, the beauty of that phrase is that they can’t later be accused of forcing anyone to do anything, yet if you don’t do what they want you to do, they can make things very difficult for you. It’s kind of like the Mafia.

A few days later, I told Phil that I wouldn’t do the ceremony. I told him that “if the Society doesn’t want me to do it, then I guess I shouldn’t want to do it” (notice how God isn’t even in the equation here?). Later, some of my relatives expressed dismay that I even contemplated performing the wedding and, when I asked how they knew, it turned out Uncle Jeff felt no compulsion for confidentiality. I also learned that the Society DID allow any baptized male to perform a wedding, but that they had recently changed it – via a private letter to the elders – such that only elders could perform ceremonies. Don’t ask me how I was supposed to know this.

Anyway, I didn’t perform my sister’s wedding. I did, however, get to say the prayer. From that day on I held out hope that, one day, I would get to perform a wedding. In fact, had it not been for this very incident which convinced me to never strive to be an elder, I may have tried to become an elder just so that I could perform weddings.

In 2002, my sister married for the second time. She asked if I wanted to do the officiating, seeing how she knew I no longer gave a rat’s ass about Uncle Jeff and the other elders. But without crawling to the elders for permission, I didn’t know how to go about getting a minister’s license, so I had to decline.

In 2006, one of my co-workers announced he was going to perform a wedding. In a matter of days, he became an online minister and received certification to marry in Minnesota. I was jealous of way he was able to just decide to do something and then, with relatively low hassle, actually do that thing. I repeatedly told him how I had long wished to perform a wedding one day.

Soon after, a couple of our friends planned their wedding, and I was again approached regarding doing weddings. With the internet in full force, I looked up online to see if I could get a minster’s certification without going through the Watchtower. Turns out, I could have, but doing so would have aligned me with another belief structure, an explicit no-no in the Witness cult, and I surely would have faced discipline.

Then one day, I wasn’t a Witness. This solved the problem of getting certified, but it created a new problem: everyone I knew either shunned me, or was already married.

But today, I finally achieved my goal. My sister’s husband’s younger brother married his girlfriend this afternoon and there, on a pier in the St. Croix River (but definitely on the Minnesota side of the river), I officiated. Later, during the reception, my sister said to me: “Now you have one more thing you can cross off your list.” Indeed, I do.

08 July 2010

This evening, Jennifer and I had dinner over at our friends’ house. We got a baby-sitter for Owen so that we could stay out late. In fact, Owen will be sleeping there tonight. I am always of mixed mind when it comes to Owen spending the night at someone else’s house. Speaking super-selfishly, I like it, because it means I don’t have to hassle with him going to sleep and it means all evening, and the next morning, Jennifer and I can just do whatever we want to do. But, on the other hand, I do miss him, and I’m never quite sure what’s going on at someone else’s house: is he just sitting there watching TV all day? Is he eating McDonald’s “food”? Is he being talked into becoming a lawyer? All terrible scenarios.

We performed a mini plant-swap with our friends. I brought a pot with basil plants in it, and another pot with a spider-plant in it. (And don’t feel left out here – if you want a spider-plant, just say so. I have plenty.) In return, we received three tomato plants. I think I got the better end of the deal on this one, but if my friends feel cheated and extract payment consisting of another spider-plant, all they have to do is give the word.

09 July 2010

I think, what makes the baby’s arrival seem so close is not the passing of each day (which are passing just as fast or slow as they always do). , but the fact that we are constantly finishing up all sorts of things around the house.

This week, Jennifer got the birth kit all ready. The cradle is back in the house and sitting in the living room. And today I brought the scratching post and desk down to the garage.

This is a bigger to-do than you might think. We live on the third floor, so it’s not like the garage is “just off the kitchen.” Also, the scratching post is taller than my wife and quite heavy. I loaded it up onto the wagon, but even still, I had to steady it on the wagon the whole time while dodging the exit signs.

I tried cleaning the house today, but I couldn’t really stay focused. Jennifer said we can try some more on the weekend.

We wrapped up the evening by watching a Netflix of Little House on the Prairie. I suppose I should suspend the ol’ Netflix account for a couple months, too.

05 July 2010

Today is a holiday, at least as far as my job is concerned. They’re giving us the day off, which is cool, but I still went to work anyway, just for a few hours. It’s nice to get time-and-a-half on top of holiday pay. Makes me feel like I’m getting paid what I’m worth.

A few years ago, Independence Day fell on a Wednesday. I got that day off work, but that was it. It was a funny week: we all worked for two days, then got one day off, then worked for two more days. The Fourth of July will land on a Wednesday again in 2012, I wonder if they’ll give us just that Wednesday off again. Anyway, the world will be ending just a few months after that, so I probably won’t care one way or another.

Also today – during my drive to work, a DJ announced that Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer will be starting for the All-Star game “for the first time since 1968.” I’m not usually one to dwell on sports here, but I gotta say, that’s amazing! I had no idea Joe and Justin had even been playing in the major leagues for that long. Good for those old guys!

06 July 2010

A couple of months ago, my father-in-law asked how many miles my car had, and, accidentally overestimating, I said: “I think it has about 150,000 miles.” He nodded and said: “Oh, well you probably have a good 50,000 miles left on that car. Those Cavaliers last forever.”

I don’t think 50,000 miles quite counts as forever, but I see what he means. Anyway, finally, today,  my Chevy Cavalier logged its 150,000th mile. I wrote the date down in a notebook I keep in the car, and I’ll see how long it takes the car to graduate to each 1,000 mile marker. Then I’ll average out the time and extrapolate how much longer I can expect the car to run. Already, the Cavalier represents the longest I’ve ever owned a vehicle, so I feel like I’m on borrowed time already.

On a completely unrelated topic, today we had our sixth and final installment of the birthing class. My favorite suggestion in class today was when they said to stay in your pajamas when company comes over to see the baby, that way, they don’t stay too long and, like a sick person, they’ll feel the need to help you. Ha! Take that, friendly visitors!

Later, we practiced a pain coping technique featuring vocalization. I’ll skip the boring parts and go straight to this: they had us swearing while exhaling. Not yelling, as if you just hit your head with a hammer, but saying it slowly, as part of the breathing: “ffffuuuuuuck ooofffffff.” Very cathartic.

Also, my biggest contribution to the class today was informing the moms-to-be that, if they feel embarrassed or uncomfortable about nursing in public, Buca is probably the best restaurant you can go to, as there are breasts hanging out everywhere.

07 July 2010

Today, for the first time in years (excepting when I’ve been sick), I took a nap. It was pretty unintentional, and it was only as the result of a string of unusual circumstances, but I find it note-worthy nonetheless (or would that be blog-worthy?).

First, I went to work very early this morning. I had to leave work at 11:00 today, and I wanted to clock in as many hours as I could before exiting the building. So, first, I was already very tired.

Second, the midwifes came over for a home visit today. I heard the fetus’ heartbeat again. I’m kind of a pro at finding fetus heartbeats, by the way. I don’t know; maybe I could get on Oprah or something to demonstrate my talent.

Anyway, they left around 12:50 and then my wife and Owen ate a quick lunch and then sped off to a play date so Owen could play with his former preschool classmates. I, meanwhile, stayed home.

So there I was, tired and alone. It was a good time to get stuff done around the house, and I began immediately by importing a CD into my computer and making a copy of it for a friend. This takes some time, of course, and so, while waiting, I laid on the couch and continued reading By the Shores of Silver Lake. Major bummers in this book. SPOILER ALERT! Mary goes blind. And Jack dies. But Laura gets a bag of candy for Christmas and later, Mr. Edwards returns.

Where was I? Oh, yeah – so there I was, reading, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. I think it took me about five minutes to read and reread the last two paragraphs. Then I set the book down and closed my eyes – you know, just to rest until I heard the electronic PING! alerting me that the CD was done cooking. Alas, that ping must’ve came and went. Next thing I knew, and hour and a half had passed by.

04 July 2010

Here’s how oddly talented I am at remembering dates: I have to make a conscientious effort to forget the dates of bad events in my life, lest I rehash them even more than I otherwise would. For example, I honestly can’t recall on which date Beaker, my pet parakeet of 12+ years, died (though I know it was mid-July in 1998). In fact, just last week, it suddenly occurred to me, while driving to work, that it was the one year anniversary of the death of our cat Oliver. Then I had to stop and think for a minute – no, wait, the anniversary was still one day away.

As the fireworks remind me each year, today is the anniversary of Rhett’s death. It’s hard to believe he’s been gone for five years now. During his final year, we only saw each other a couple of times, but we talked on the phone a couple of dozen times. I called him, of course, to tell him Jennifer was pregnant. It was a phone call in three parts, as he had to keep calling back in between helping customers. Later, his conversations extolled the virtues of the finally-released Smile, and he kept trying to encourage me to learn guitar so that I could play on one of his songs. He wanted me to write the lyrics to a song of his, too, but I never got around to it, primarily because he never finished the music.

Anyway, here’s a video that was recorded in March, 1992. This spur of the moment bit of silliness was filmed by my Dad and stars some of my best friends ever.

It’s funny, I miss many of the people in this video. One of them, a younger kid with whom Rhett and I would study the bible, has likewise died. Another one of them was often in the car with Rhett and me as we drove around knocking on doors all day. His caustic sarcasm and brutal honesty was a great counterpoint in those car groups.  Another person in the video later went on to become my roommate for a while, then we drifted apart -or, rather, we purposely ripped apart – and then he contacted my wife and me to invite us back into his life. I’m glad we took him up on the offer. Our reunion, which lasted some six years, made for a far greater experience than the first time we were friends.

Now he shuns me.

I learned recently that he was laid off from his job and that an operation on his arm, which – surprise! – was somewhat botched, laid him up for a while, too. He’s got a lot of mouths to feed at home, more than anyone else I know, and I hope health, employment, and finances pick up for him soon. I’d like to help but, like I said, he shuns me.

Still, I hold out hope that one day again he’ll invite me back into his life. See – that’s the thing: he’s still around, waylaid a bit, but breathing and living life. So, though I miss Andy, I know there’s a chance he and I will be friends again. We parted ways and mended relationships in the past; so I am confident we can do it again one day. I miss Andy, truly. But most of all, I miss Rhett.