not-so-sticky

Bob's most quiet time of the day is the morning. While words often escape him in the evening, the morning is relatively coherent, when a dialogue is still possible. The panic does not settle into Dad's eyes until the sun begins to set on the day. This morning, his head was resting on the back of the couch, and his eyes were closed. He was quiet. The couch pillows were arranged so that the ones which were supposed to go behind him were instead piled up on top of him. He clutched the over-sized pillow close to his body, hugging it tightly to his chest. Only his glasses peeked out over the top, the rest of his face hidden by the pillow. Dana and I were sitting on the other side of the room on the love seat, engrossed by our digital devices. The morning show was droning on in the background but none of us were minding it. The children had already been shuffled off to school so the house was unusually peaceful. With his eyes still closed, Bob said dreamily, "When I close my eye...

It's early-ish in the night on the 4th of July. I'm really beat but I don't want to give up to slumber yet. I've been pushing myself a bit lately, trying to challenge my personal limits. I'm not sure to what ends I am hoping this will prove... But I'm sick like this. Anyway, my head is killing me. I'm kind of squinting as I type now because the light of the screen is making my head ache. I am wondering if I should post this tonight or wait until morning to make sure it still makes sense? No sleep = delirium. So everyone is asleep now except me and Seth. We're sitting in the dark living room, basking in the glow of our electronics - me with my laptop and Seth with the Xbox on the TV. There's a nice breeze in here and the crickets are chirping outside. Digital country charm. I knew he was downstairs so I was trying to get the kids to sleep and trick Dana into falling asleep so I could sneak back downstairs to hang out with him. It's so rare we get ...

Alright, so, perhaps I've given my old best friend, Brian, some undue press . We spent this afternoon goofing off, drinking coffee, listening to music, and being lazy. Brian and I reminded each other of some things we had forgotten. Me, the blueberry beer from the Gilded Otter in New Paltz. Brian, sitting together in the Hobbes class with Heath - but in all due fairness, Brian pointed out that we took a lot of classes together, so how could he recall which ones I was there for, and which ones I was not? We both remembered the time we got the ticket in the old car, and we both agreed it had been a great day. I said to Brian, " I wish you still had your old car...where is it, anyway? Is your brother-in-law still driving it around? " "No," he laughed, "No, it dropped two cylinders and was beyond repair. It would have cost a couple thousand to fix it. It's probably been turned into scrap metal." " Your old car was turned into scrap metal?! Oh no! ...

At the end of a day, for all intents and purposes, I'm done. Mentally sucked. Physically drained. Tired. Done. I tend to retire early. But I don't fall asleep right away. Don't let me confuse you. I adore sleep. I love everything about sleep. I love my bed, I love my high thread count cotton sheets, I love my reversible down comforter. Flannel sheets are nice, too. Fuzzy. Sleep conducive accessories are a passion of mine. Fans are a necessity. Multiple fans, even, for the white noise. Lately, I've been sleeping with both a rather loud air purifier as well as an air conditioner. I don't even think the air purifier 'purifies' that well, if at all. You know how stores market "low noise" fans as something good? Yeah. To me, that is a negative, not a selling point. In the winter, I turn a mini box fan against the wall, just for the whirring noise. Obviously, I love sleep. But I have a fear about falling asleep. It's completely irrational. I've ...

The last time I recall playing a board game was the last time we lost electricity. I think it was Payday ? There's something about a storm that brings all of the family out of their corners and into one room together. Without anything digital. While Seth is far past any childhood fear of storms, the thought of being de-digitalized makes him tremble. The storm didn't blow in until after dinner. And so even Seth, who rarely leaves the sanctuary of his bedroom after the dinner hour, made his way downstairs to wait for the storm. There's nothing like a good storm to bring a family together. We could hear the thunder in the distance but no one seemed impressed by it. It was clearly too dark for 6:30. There was a wind picking up so I thought I'd take the plants off the porch. I thought twice after I opened the door and caught glimpse of the sky. I rather it be my dahlias (which appear to be duds anyway) than me. My obsessive compulsive nature led me to The Weather Channel . I...

It's been a really long time since I've had a lecture from my dear old dad. But tonight he had it stuck in his head that I needed to go to college and get my degree (which I already have). My father used to lecture me a lot as a kid, particularly in the car. And he knew every single back road in Columbia County so I heard a lot of them... We often went for a car ride for no reason other than to ride around. More often than not, playing the car radio was not permitted. Looking backwards, I suspect now that he found it distracting, although as a teenager, I would have sworn it was an act of control! Sometimes he would reminisce about how different things had looked when he was a kid, how the strip mall had once been farmland, how unfamiliar it could still seem. Other times, we said nothing at all, and drove on in the silence. Interrupting our shared silence, he would hum the beginning bars of Don McClean's  Starry, Starry Night   which at the time I didn't recognize as an...

The mailman delivered the prints from the 35 mm black and white film we sent in the mail last week. It was worth the wait. It took me 72 shots but I got a few good ones. My digital camera just isn't of the same ilk as my old 35 mm.

"Here baby! Let me help you!" Lil said to Liam. I picture her still calling him this when he's 30... It only appears here that Lil is strangling her little brother. But she was earnestly trying to assist him here. With a smile on her face, she appears to be choking him with compassion. She was trying to assist him out of his little red wagon to save him from toppling over for when he would stand up on his own. Because it is on wheels, it often starts to wiggle back and forth, easily causing the little person attempting to stand from falling over the side of it. Lily didn't realize it'd be easier - and safer - to simply hold the wagon.

Vacation is almost over and I'm already beginning to anticipate next week with a certain amount of dread... But - it's still vacation. So enough about that. I have developed a love for photographs of urban decay. I haven't fully evaluated why this is but it's a fascination I've been fostering. Last night, while poking around Flickr , I found this photo which gave me the geebies. It's this photo of an old, dilapidated brickyard in Kingston . (Since it's not a photo I actually *took*, I don't want to post it on my blog so just follow that link...) Just looking at that picture made me tremble. I like trembling. It reminds me that I am living. I got the shivers. It made your imagination run. Dana and I - all alone - for Dad was with Andrea, the babies with Evelyn and Seth at school - drove down to the Strand along the Rondout. I wanted to poke about and take some of my own photographs. Yup. Dana and I have a moment alone and we go to snap photos of decayin...

Frost Valley. I have been here about 20 minutes. I love it. Kyrce’s mum had described it as “magical” and after being here only a few minutes, I know she is right. Some places speak. I had forgotten what it is to be quiet. I know that sounds silly but I don't often get quiet. Even in the quiet of night, there is a low buzz of white noise filtered in by a fan I run all year long. If it's cold, I deflect it towards the wall. The intent of this fan does not match its purpose. I run the fan to cover the noise of quiet. I awaken at any minute noise or even a change in the room. If the electricity goes out in the middle of the night, I wake from the sudden quiet. I don't like being dependent on white noise for sleep but I confess - I am white noise dependent. There's a persistent ringing in my ears. I haven't heard it in a long time, but I'm familiar with it. It's horribly irritating. It must always irritate me, only typically, my surroundings are so loud ...

It rained today. Since it was not a good day for roofing, Dana was able to give me a ride to my doctor's office - Maverick Family Health in Woodstock. I've been trying to get to the doctor's for quite some time now. It's tricky that I actually have health insurance but no time to actually put any of it to use. Generally, I'm usually feeling like I'm about to die before I make it to the doctor's. The doctor's office is a nice one to visit, although they do have a bad habit of making you wait quite awhile. I don't typically mind because I am aware of this and my doctor spends so much one-on-one time with you, once you see her, that you appreciate why she is running behind schedule. But the one frustrating thing about waiting is that you spend most of the time in the second waiting room and the second waiting room isn't as aesthetically pleasing as the first waiting room. The office itself is nestled into the woods on Zena Road in Woodstock. The ins...

It was a bit chilly in the living room. Drafty, you might say. I gave Dad a sweater. "Hey Dana," I called as he passed by the living room entrance. "The window isn't shut up at the top. Could you fix it?" Dana scrunched up his face as he looked up at the window. "Huh, that's weird," he said. He looked puzzled. The window was about open, about 5 inches down from the top. I didn't volunteer any information. Dana often makes fun of my lack of memory. I feel like he sometimes uses this as his only weapon against me when we're each trying to win a fight. As if anyone ever 'wins,' a fight... Since he knows that my memory is poor, he can pretty make up just about anything and say that I said or did that because he knows that I can't be certain. Of course, if I really am forgetting everything, then I'm just being paranoid! But if I'm really not forgetting anything and Dana is trying to trick me, I don't want t...

This bed meets the rigorous Alex Brown criterion for a bed. This may be the one. fairly priced so that if my kids break the slats from jumping on the bed, I won't need to strangle them (though I might, anyway). ships for $1 from Overstock.com so that Dana and I aren't cursing at each other fitting into the car. is low enough to the ground so that if the kids fall off, it won't require a trip to the ER. Tomorrow night, we go to physical stores to see if we find something we prefer to what we've found online. Honestly, I can't see going to many stores with Dad and the kids in tow...if there wasn't an internet, I think we'd all be wearing rags and furnishing the house the Bob Brown way, with Xerox boxes!

It's hard to tell when my days begin and when my days end. It's not easily divisible into two separate halves - one of day in which I work and one of night in which I sleep. Sometimes it feels like work is my solace. If you work with me, you suspect that I am exaggerating. However, if you work with me and you have been to my home (Kyrce) - you may truly understand how apt this sentiment is. * * * ~ 1:30 A.M. Liam wakes and begins to cry. Alex stumbles out of bed, waking up only after she is set in motion towards Liam's crib. Hadn't she just done this? She fetches Liam and brings him over to the bed, waking Dana. "Will you go grab the bottle?" she asks. "Uh..." Dana grunts. Alex grabs a diaper and lays Liam on the bed where she changes him. "Dana. Dana? Please. Please go grab a bottle," Alex pleads. "Uh..." He grunts again but this time he responds by getting out of bed. Dana goes downstairs to get a bottle. He meets Bob along the ...

Dana and I retire early, even on Friday nights. We're generally in our bedroom by 8 and unconscious by 9. Oh, our wild nights! I was lounging on the bed with Lily and Dana when Lily decided she wanted to climb up the walls. This was partially my fault. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but in truth, I was laying on the bed, stretching out my leg so that my foot was resting on the wall. I used to get in trouble for doing this as a kid, and as unsophisticated of a habit as it is, I can't seem to break it. "But Lily, you can't climb up the walls. You're not a spider." "Not a spider?" she repeated back to me, raising her voice to a high pitch on the word 'spider' so that it ended in a squeaking sort of noise. "No. and you're not Spiderman." "Not a spiderman?" She seemed to be thinking about this a bit. "Mommy! I'm going to be a spiderman!" With this, Lily jumped off the bed and went running over to the eas...

When Kyrce and I started out on the road this morning, Kyrce looked at me and said, "You look happy." I mulled this over in my head for a second and nodded, "Yeah, I guess I am happy!" And not just because this was Friday, though I must say that probably helped. We stopped at the Citgo and they had Kyrce's favorite Winter Blend and my favorite French Toast blend. This, too, was a good sign. The morning at work passed uneventfully for me. However, someone with a neighboring office who will remain nameless - and no, it was not Kyrce or Wayne - left his laptop at home. You may think this is a unique incident; however, someone else I know - and no, it was not Kyrce - also left his laptop at home once...This is one of those issues in the 21st century that kills me. It's like leaving your homework at home. When you are a kid, you tend to think that this is an issue relative to childhood. Parents don't forget things. Parents yell at you for forgetting things. S...