Less Than Magical Mystery Tour

Hadn't really intended to write tonight, so I'm not sure where or how this will go. Come on in, the water's fine!

I told y'all that I screwed up Mother's Day, but left it hanging. I got some very helpful comments in that regard. I did purchase flowers the next day, but the apology was not forthcoming. Our schedule issues made an intimate conversation impossible. I didn't want to wake her when I came home from work, as that is unfair to make her lose sleep (something I don't want done to me!), and she is busy home schooling my daughter when I get up.

I arranged for us to go out to dinner as a family on Saturday. She was being very difficult about this. She complained that she had managed to lose a couple pounds in the last week, and didn't want to put it back on. She finally agreed to go somewhere and get a salad. Oy! I thought it went really well. Au contraire!

Later that evening, in the wee hours, after she got home from work, she told me that she had written down some stuff. It seems that the dinner was not a success. There were some silences that she found very awkward, ones that she felt I should have filled. She told me that she feels alone most of the time, unconnected emotionally to me. Like a single parent, she said. *sigh* She didn't say these things in anger, and she managed to hold back the tears.

I let her have her say, and I gave her a sincere apology for my shortcomings on Mother's Day, and as a husband in general. I know that I suck. I know that I am not a raconteur. Truly, the interesting things in my head that I might share with her are the things you read here in my blog, or in those of my friends. She does NOT want me to start talking up this stuff in order to mask the silences. Truly, though, those are the anecdotes that are in my head, and they crowd out other things that might be of interest to her. Maybe it just isn't meant to be.

After she made her points, I did tell her that I had something to share. I told her that I am trying to connect with her, trying to build bridges. I start feeling like we are getting somewhere, and she informs me of the shortfalls, and reminds me that she isn't feeling it. I can't build a bridge in one evening. I am way out of practice in playing the loving husband role. I may need some remediation before I can play it well. Burning the bridges as I build them does not help. If she wants this to work (and she says she does), she will have to start accentuating the positive. I suspect that her stated desire to work things out are merely lip service. Time will tell.

Life on the Sidelines

When Sylvia and I were taking one another's pictures at our Saturday meeting, I had a tiny epiphany.

Syl was suggesting that outdoors had nice light, and she wanted some shots of herself out there. Now, I step outside a couple times each meeting, as I store my boy things in the car during the meeting. I don't think much about those trips out to the car. Yet, when it came time to pose, I felt very conscious of my presentation, and how I might be noticed by passing motorists.

I bit the bullet and went out, but as you see, I stayed in the shadows, away from prying eyes. Sylvia, on the other hand, wanted to pose on the hood of her car out near the road. I managed to stay out of sight next to a van, and zoom way in to take the pic. I hope that the result was okay for her, because I feel rather silly today.

I have two real public outings in my history, the most recent being in November of '09. I am suddenly very aware of just how far removed I am from that date, and how much I've lost in the way of confidence. All modesty aside, I am much more polished in my presentation today, and should have the commensurate confidence that would naturally follow. Alas, I do not. Going out with my girlfriends is an impossibility at present, so practice is out of the question. Even as my skills improve, my social capacity is withering. I don't see a solution, but I am now conscious of the problem, and I will try to walk freely in the parking lot at the very least.

I made a muck of Mother's Day in my house. I failed to rise in a timely fashion to help the kids make breakfast for their mother. I failed to make sure they had signed their cards. I failed to make any sort of plan to take my wife out and celebrate her maternal accomplishments. In short, I failed. She let me have it, too, when she came home from her work in the wee hours. Some tears, a raised voice, deep disappointment, feeling unappreciated. I am not good at this sort of thing, especially making plans. I'm not sure how to make it up to her, either. Anything I do now will seem to be in answer to her outburst, and will be perceived as insincere. I have created a no-win situation. Now I have to find my way out of the minefield.

Bringin da Noise, Bringin da Funk

I have brought the funk with me, in the form of a nasty cold. Took the day off work Friday, felt worse on Saturday. Yet, I mowed my yard that day, because it was the second of two predicted sunny days after the ten day deluge, and before the next one. It needed to be done, but I was weak as a kitten by the time I was done. Now I'm dealing with a very runny nose and periodic coughing spasms. Welcome to my world.

Early last week, when I let the dogs out in the wee hours, I started hearing short urgent yips, not the usual baying. As I got to the back door, I could hear things being knocked over in the shed, and much barking. My dogs catch small animals from time to time, but there is little commotion then. My wife and I went running down into the yard just about the time that Ruby exited the shed, holding a possum by the neck and giving it a shake. We got her to put it down, and hustled the dogs indoors. The possum lay very still, but then that's what possums do. Ruby didn't seem to have gotten any injuries. We went back out to check on the possum, but he(?) was gone. I suppose Dame Edna took care of it. I was hoping for some yummy possum stew.

I was awakened Saturday around noon by my wonderful neighbor revving his truck. It's a monster truck that has a clearance of about three feet, an early 70's vintage Ford pickup. I guess that means it has a carburetor that he was adjusting. If his goal was to make the thing louder, he was doing very well. This went on for at least two hours, gunning the engine over and over. Perhaps he was doing research for a new movie franchise about high-powered parked cars to be called The Still and the Spurious. There oughta be a law, I tell ya.

And with that, I am only minutes away from a big dose of Nyquil and a good night's sleep.

Tornadoes and Weddings

The scenes of devastation in Alabama and Mississippi are heart wrenching. We've had a fair number of twisters in Kentucky, too, this month, though not of the fatal variety. I heard on the news today that there have been around 600 tornadoes reported this month in the US. Normally there are about 150 in April.

This barrage of tornadic activity takes me back to my childhood. In 1974, there was a similar event in early April. Deadly storms in Kentucky and Ohio and all through the South. It remains a vivid memory for me. I was one day shy of my tenth birthday. I remember my father and brother and I sitting in a dark house with no power, lightning flashing incessantly, listening to a crackling AM transistor radio. The reports were continuous, the newest scarier than the last. Tornadoes were touching down all around us.

My mother had it worse. She was flying out that evening on a business trip. Her flight was canceled, but she was stuck with many others in our tiny airport terminal. There was no power there either, and everyone spent the night hunkered down against the walls. More than once, they heard the distinctive train-like roar of a twister that night. We didn't have any contact with her that night, cell phones being a bit of science fiction at the time. Dad never let on, but he must've been worried sick.

With daylight, the damage was evident. I remember that a small community called Jett was hit especially hard about 20 west of Lexington. The town was literally wiped from the map. It was never rebuilt, just gone. Tornadoes were a major source of fear for me long after that, joined by great white sharks the next year (thank you, Steven Spielberg). I've always loved a thunderstorm, just sitting at a window and watching the lightning, but talk of tornadoes was another matter. That fear is largely gone now, maybe due to the doppler radar immediacy and accuracy. I feel that a twister isn't going to sneak up on me now.

It looks like the Royal Wedding coverage has started while I've been writing. I confess to not really caring, though I could look at Kate Middleton all day long. I suppose I do want to see her in her bridal outfit, though a bridle outfit would be more exciting. I think those pics will stay a state secret. I am sure that many of my friends will be watching. I just fear that envy will hit me in a big way. Not the bride necessarily, but all the comely women in attendance, dressed to the nines. Guess I should go find a TV. Television, I mean.

Ignore That Little Voice...

...at your own peril.

My social anxiety is largely a non-factor online, especially as my space here became well-defined, fairly popular, and largely respected. I am confident in these waters. Yesterday, I ran smack into old feelings.

My primary email is on Yahoo. I decided a few days ago to try out their new mail beta version. It's a bit more versatile with a sleeker layout. After a few days, though, I was suddenly without the usual indicator of my friends' presence online. I don't chat much, but I do like to see that I have friends engaged in parallel play. And when I want to chat, they are right there. Without that graphic, I felt like one of my senses had been shut off.

Well, if Yahoo Chat is not going to be available to me, I had better get serious about Yahoo Messenger. I set about importing my contacts, a simple task. I checked off a few that I had no current relationship with. This left another twenty or so, some of which I may never chat with, but I am accustomed to seeing them in my sidebar. I hesitated. Each of these people were going to get a request from me, an opportunity for rejection. Maybe I should remove a few more names, folks that are fairly peripheral to my life. Nah, let 'er rip.

Within ten seconds, I had a rejection. This is from someone that I greatly admire, though we haven't corresponded more than a couple times. Okay, maybe she didn't recognize the user id, maybe she gets these requests all the time and rejects them out of hand.

I went off to take a shower. When I returned, I had a note from someone local, asking who I was and why I wanted to chat with her. Specifically, the absence of a profile photo was of great concern to her. Well, I have sat and spoken with her at meetings at least twice this past winter, lengthy personal conversations. My heart sunk. Was this going to me the norm? I went off to work, but this bothered me all evening. I felt stupid. I had overreached socially, crossed lines of demarcation unknowingly. This had disaster written all over it.

As usual, I was overthinking things, doubting myself and my place in the community. When I got home, I wrote an explanation and apology to my acquaintance. I hope she responds and understands.

As for the rest, there are still a few outstanding requests, but it seems that everyone else has simply clicked the Accept box and gone on with their lives. Maybe it's time for me to click the Accept box and get on with life.

Wildly Out of Date

Hmmm, I'm not writing much, am I?

Not much new on the gender front. I broke out the shorts last weekend for the first time. Almost immediately, the missus whispered to me, wondering if I should be revealing my bare legs. I proceeded to show her the six weeks of growth which is quite visible on my legs (especially to me!). She said that she hadn't realized. Within five minutes, I was feeling so self-conscious that I changed into long pants. She then said that it was okay, and I didn't need to do that, but the mental ship had sailed for me.

She was actually apologetic about it at bedtime, that night and the next. She sensed that I had my feelings hurt to some degree, and she was right. If I'm going to have to grow this hair for her, she should at least notice it. It seems that she had been sensing the smoothness of my half-calf(tm) epilating. We talked some about my bald shins, bald since my teen years with no outside help. She accepted that this phenomenon must have been what she mistook for bare legs. Her apology was welcome and helpful.

On a very different front, I have been battling the urge to send a nastygram to my boy's private school. He was having a lot of trouble learning the European countries. We bought an up-to-date atlas, and found a good website that would quiz him. We worked on it for several weeks. So, he took his test last Monday, and we learned some surprising information. It seems that their materials are a bit antiquated, yet being presented as current. Yes, he was expected to know about Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and East Germany and the Soviet Union!

Some of you already know my intense interest in geography and history. To say that I was appalled would be understating it. If they had been studying the Cold War, this could have been presented as historical geography, but it has no more relevance to the present day than Prussia or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially to a twelve-year-old.

My boy would have had a much easier time memorizing the Europe of 1987, as it had about twenty fewer nations to identify. I am sorely tempted to ask for a month's tuition to be refunded. We have spent an enormous amount of money on this school over the last dozen or so years. My middle child also corroborated the story, as we learned that she had used the same materials when she was in the sixth grade. Grrrrr! The school has lost a lot of credibility with me, needless to say.

After a week of ruminating, the sarcasm has diminished. I feel that I can now write a fairly civil email to the teacher, expressing disappointment instead of outrage. I think that it does need to be said, and I need to insist that they invest some of their dollars in some modern geographic materials. I mean, really!

Swapping Stories and Clothes

Apparently, it's been awhile since I wrote anything. Oops, life happens.

I had my monthly support meeting Saturday evening, very much the highlight of my month, the one day when I am fully Lesliefied. As you can see, I wore a too-tight red sweater, a stretchy black skirt that I bought for myself at Macy's for seven bucks, semi-opaque tights to hide my leg hair, and one of my newer pairs of shoes. The outfit was a little over the top for me, I thought, but the reaction was complimentary from my audience. (Click for a larger experience. Almost actual size!))

The plan for the meeting was to have our first ever TransKentucky clothing swap. I've mentioned a desire to do this several times in the past, and we finally scheduled it. What we did not anticipate was that the Kentucky Wildcats would be playing in the Final Four during our meeting. Naturally, our event was poorly attended. I unloaded some culottes (just not my style, nor flattering), and I picked up a pink sweater and a couple other things. Mostly, I had wanted to give away three pairs of heels that don't fit me. The only girl with feet of that size did not want to be any taller than she is now, so heels were out. Back into the closet. Given the poor attendance, Syl and I decided that we would try it again soon, and hope for more people.

As it turned out, the swap was not the biggest thing going on at our meeting. A young lady (GG) attended, in the hopes of talking to some of us for a thesis she's writing. We wound up just going around the room and telling her our stories. It was really nice to share with someone that has no background on the difficult lives we lead. She asked terrific questions, and got an earful. I spoke with her afterward, and gave her my email. I think there will be some followup, and I love to share my story.

Perhaps the greatest adrenaline rush of the night came when I looked out the door of the center, and saw perhaps thirty police cars in the lot across the street. Visions of Stonewall went through my mind for a moment, but I quickly decided that they were using the lot as a staging area, anticipating some riotous action in the event of a Kentucky victory. No victory, though, and no riots. Just as well, I suppose.