Anyone have a suspicion Meter?

As I pulled into the car port from an evening out, I saw a teenage boy moving quickly out from between my car port and my neighbors. I automatically disapproved of him, naturally, because he is a teenager and he was wearing what I think was a Blue Jays hat. By the time I had the car parked safely, he was off into the darkness.

As I got out of the car, I tried to determine how alarmed and outraged I should be. The fully paranoid option would be to assume he was about to sneak into my house and threaten my sleeping family. Objectively, that’s very unlikely. He may have been a friend and suitor to the teenage Columbian temptress who lives on the other side of us, and he was hurrying away after visiting her. A middle of the road interpretation could be that he was doing a little car hopping in hopes of finding a little car treasure (though 10:15 on a Friday is poor timing for petty larceny). We have found our messy pile of crap in the car moved about once before, so it’s plausible.

In the big picture, I wonder what the average reasonable interpretation of the situation is. Do most people assume the kid is a no-good punk, or do they just see a skinny guy who’s under-dressed and trying to get home before he gets in trouble? the more I think about it, the more I settle on the amorous suitor version. At the very least it leaves me some peace of mind.

In moustache news, we are quickly approaching the end of November, and I will not be renewing my moustache’s lip lease. The itchiness has begun in earnest, and it’s curling into my mouth. I hope you have all spent time thinking about the prostates around you because of my moustache, and maybe even donated a buck or two to the cause.

 

Whose hangup is it, anyway?

Spending day after day with anyone for 8 hours at a time, with only infrequent contact with other people, leads to a wealth of identity issues. Even if the other person is your little one, maybe especially then, you lose a sense of where ‘you’ end and ‘we’ start.  On a rough day, I may forget to eat lunch for a bit after I serve Max his food: he’s fed, so we’re fed, right?  I noticed this behaviour a while ago and I make sure to keep my own needs on the list of stuff to do.

There are times where I slip into talking about ‘us’ when I’m really talking for myself, and I admit I have done this intentionally once or twice to get out of an awful situation. Sometimes you need to get out of there, and no one can fault you if it’s your kid who needs to go. And hey, if your kids can’t act as your alibi, then who can?

The first day of preschool went fantastically, with a lack of tears at both the beginning and the end. I didn’t do very much with my free time, since I was still in the grip of an irritating cold, but it was still a welcome break. There was a little temptation to sit and worry the whole time. Historically, I refuse to celebrate how well something is going until I’m absolutely sure it can’t go wrong, but I decided to be a normal person and have some confidence that everything was going okay.  The ear to ear smile that covered his face when he saw me waiting in the doorway was the best thing I’ve seen in a long time.

Tomorrow is day two of preschool, and it’s bound to have a surprise or two.  The surprises might start early, since he fell asleep an hour and a half before his bedtime tonight. I’m glad he fell asleep, because he was in the very dangerous state of high energy but no impulse control or physical dexterity. His throttle was stuck on ‘injury speed’ and it was a battle to keep him from hurtling into one thing or another.

An ache in the brain and a gurgle in the belly

One of these is bad, one of these is good. I’m struggling beneath the totalitarian regime of a head and sinus cold, flailing about in a vain attempt to get free or at least lessen the achiness. The only balm in Gilead (ooh biblical) is the belly full of sate beef soup that I have thanks to my loving wife. The spice has warmed me and relieved some of the sinus swelling, and after a nice cup of decaf coffee I should be able to tolerate living until bedtime.

I did try to get some planning done for the next chapter I have to write and post tomorrow. I hit a point where I just could not push myself to work anymore and I slowly stormed away from my work area and pouted upstairs. I must be fantastic company today.

So far Max has shown a few mild cold symptoms, but if we’re lucky it won’t intensify like it did for me. And his teeth are almost back to normal-sporadic incisor action has taken place today and everything still looks okay in there.

Good night and good luck. I’ll be in my bunk.