Practice Tomorrow

Band practice is on for 10:00am tomorrow. Morning practice is weird, but it will work. Hopefully the bass player’s family will all be awake before all the noise starts (eek!).

I told the other guys that I put it on my Google Calendar so there’s no backing out now. We’ll see. Lucy still has about 26 hours to pull the football away from Charlie Brown (me).

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I’m rewatching the three new episodes of Andor right now. I’m up to the third episode with that scene with Bix. It is fucking disturbing and really hard to watch. Star Wars for adults is a pretty accurate description of this show.

What else… I don’t know. One work day to survive before the weekend arrives. It’s going to be a long day, I fear. I haven’t taken any pictures of cats yet. I’m sure the opportunity will arise eventually.

I also haven’t looked at the news yet today. I’m always afraid to do so. I’m always in a borderline state of panic to learn about what fresh nazi hell was unleashed overnight. I’m so tired of living in “interesting times.” Fuck this. I want my country back. Failing that, I want my state to just leave and start over. 249 years was a good run, I guess.

What else… I don’t know. Here’s hoping for a nice easy work day followed by a nice and calm weekend… that includes my cousin’s husbands wake… fuck. The universe is just piling on. Hopefully there are brighter, less depressing, less fascist days ahead. Now, where did I put those two cats?

Happy Birthday, Dad

Today is my father’s birthday. The first since he passed away last summer. I’m going to be sad today. I think that’s a given. When I was really little we used to watch reruns of Star Trek together (even though it often gave me nightmares). I’m watching Star Trek right now. Just because.

It’s also tax day in the united states. Your income tax return forms are due today. My father had a tax prep business. Tax day falling on his birthday was a sign somehow. These days my brother is a CPA so tax day is a big deal for him too. In that spirit, allow me to wish all accountants and bookkeepers a Happy Tax Day in honor of my father and my brother and also my mother who used to help with Dad’s tax business. Get through today and then you’re free until January. Sort of. I know you’re never truly finished with tax season. There’s always something more to work on.

Nothing to Say

I feel like I should be saying something tonight but I really have nothing to say.

Between the executive branch deporting innocent people to foreign prisons and ignoring supreme court orders to return them to the bullshit save act passing the house to the blatant insider trading that tanked the US economy in order to help a few billionaires steal money from random americans… yeah… things absolutely suck right now.

My wife and I had some discussion on things for the future today that felt like the opposite of what’s going on outside of the house. As awful as the world is, our talk was positive. No spoilers though. You’re going to have to wait to hear about this stuff, if you ever hear about this stuff. You’ll probably never hear about this stuff. Suffice to say, optimism abounds.

What else… the third season of Yellowjackets wrapped up today. As always, no spoilers. I will say that at the end of the episode the adult version of Shauna can be seen wearing a Throwing Muses t-shirt. Hell yes. Great show.

What else… what else… nothing. I think that’s it for now. Maybe I’ll write something else before bed tonight, but probably not.

Coming to the Close

The work day is almost over. About 10 minutes from now there will be another Monday in the books. Also, I will be 50% of the way through my 40% in the office mandate for this week. That’s nice. It’s also probably confusing if you don’t know what I am talking about but I do know what I am talking about so it is not confusing to me which is why I wrote this epic run on sentence about it.

Here is a picture of a cat that I took this morning before I left for work. She was confused and upset because I made the bed and messed up her hiding/napping spot/plans. Sorry, cat.

What else can I write about before the work day ends? A Red Sox win tonight and a Yankees loss will move the Red Sox into first place in the AL East. Yes it is only the 11th game of the season, but after the last few years of baseball futility combined with the Bruins suck fest of late, I will take a first place moment with a smile on my face. The Yankees and Tigers are playing right now. In the bottom of the eighth inning in Detroit, the Tiggers are up 6-2. Thanks, Detroit.

What else… I haven’t worked on anything musical since the RPM Challenge wrapped up at the end of February. I am a failure at musical life. Just saying.

Okay, I got distracted by something at work and now the 10 minutes have passed and it’s quitting time. Wish me luck on my evening commute home. Jen picked up something nice for dinner tonight. We have dinner together whenever humanly possible and I always love it. I love her, I can’t help it. The heart wants what the heart wants and my heart wants silly little domestic time with the woman of my dreams. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Civilization coming to a crashing, idiotic, tariffed end doesn’t change the way I feel.

Rain

The kids are at a concert with their father and their step mother. Jen is working. I’m sitting in the living room typing this and looking at a sleeping cat or two.

I want to shoot film at sunrise but I can’t because New England in April means rain on the weekends. Not just the weekends, of course, it just seems that way. Every Thursday or Friday I start looking forward to the weekend and I check the weather forecast and it’s always the same. It is always rain. Rain and gloom. Even the Red Sox have been in a rain delay for the last hour and a half or so.

I wish I could have made it into the city to join in on the Hands Off demonstrations today, but the kids were here and I would rather be with the kids than almost anything so I happily stayed home. One of these days there will be a certain ridiculously tall old person with red hair in one of those Boston throngs, I promise.

Until then, here’s a photo of Lily that I took a few minutes before she jumped up onto the ottoman and curled herself into a ball and fell asleep.

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I think Jen and I are going to do dinner via DoorDash tonight. It’s a special day for us so we need to do something nice to celebrate. 18 years ago today, on April 5, 2007, we went on our first date. As special days go, today is a big one. I love her so much, and it all kicked off 18 years ago today. Our relationship is old enough to vote, assuming the u.s. will still have elections… you know… nazis in charge and all. Oh shit, I just brought politics into my happy first-date-aversary message. Fuck me. Sorry about that.

All Quiet… For Now

Despite the weirdness of my previous post, the potentially odd omen of the cat in the sink has not foretold of anything weird happening today… so far, at least.

It’s been a quiet day so far. I’m just getting off of my lunch break so there is still plenty of time for things to go south. I mean, the president placed tariffs on penguins yesterday so… yeah. Anything is possible at any time.

The Red Sox have won two in a row and their home opener (against the Cardinals) is about to start. The Bruins have now lost 10 in a row (one of them in overtime, the rest in regulation). I don’t know what to think. I will focus on the positive trend for the Sox and listen to today’s game while I work. They are 3-4 on the season. It’s too early to worry about things like the American League East standings, but they are currently tied for last place (with Baltimore), two games back of the first place Blue Jays. At least Geddy Lee will be happy.

The kids are coming home tonight. We thought they were coming home last night but there was some miscommunication. Last night’s loss is tonight’s gain. They will be here tonight, go to their father’s sometime tomorrow, and then I think come back here afterward. Then Sunday they will go back to Vermont. I am very happy we’ll get to see them. Very happy.

Okay, it’s 2:00pm now. Time to get back to work. Talk to you all later. Until then, remember that donald trump is a nazi who can’t do math. Loser.

Kids Weekend

Jen and the kids are texting back and forth about this weekend. They are coming home for a quick visit! I love it. I don’t have any details yet so I don’t know when or where or how or what, I just know it’s in the works.

It’s like flashing back to 2007 when we were splitting custody with the kids’ father and we had them half of the time and he had them half of the time. Literally. We alternated days. I think… and I am straining my tiny little brain to bring up these memories… we had the kids on Sundays and half of the day on Saturday… or did we have them on Fridays and then the first half of Saturday… I’m pretty sure we had them for half of every Saturday. The other six days of the week alternated between houses.

That was the schedule when I first came into the picture. The kids were age six and four at that time. I was still in my 30’s (which seems laughable for some reason… youngin’). Eventually we changed the schedule to one where they were at one house for two days, then the other for two days, and then the remaining three days would alternate. That way on any given week they would have five straight days in the same house, and each week those five days would be in a different house. It worked.

Sometimes when I think back over the years I feel sad about the time I missed. Six whole years… why couldn’t I have met Jen earlier and been around to know the kids when they were babies? Then I stop feeling like that and just feel overwhelmingly thankful for the time I have had. What a gift that time has been. What a perfect, magical, brilliant gift that Jen and Bellana and Harry have given me. They’ve let me be a small piece of their lives. I am eternally grateful for that gift. I will never be able to express how thankful I am, how honored I am, how touched I am. Really… being in their lives has been better than anything I could have ever hoped that anything could ever be. Put simply, I am just a dumb ass red head. What did I do to deserve a blessing like this? What did I do to deserve the love of three such exceptional people? I don’t know. If I did I would bottle it and sell it and be a gazillionaire. Seriously.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that I am going to see the kids this weekend and I am really happy about it.

Opening Day

Today is opening day for the Boston Red Sox. The first game is a little more than four hours away. They are on the road against the Rangers. Game time is 4:05pm Eastern time.

This is the third opening day since my mother passed away and the first since my father passed away. I am missing them both a little extra today.

Here’s hoping my Red Sox tear Texas a new one to cheer me up. After suffering through garbage hockey for nearly a full season, I am not going to take any crap from baseball. I have spoken.

Unrelated note, here’s today’s photo a day thing (day 208 of 365). I hope you’re not getting tired of the toy camera app black and white stuff because I most definitely am not tired of it. I might use black and white exclusively next month. We’ll see. I’ll probably change my mind before then, but it could happen.

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