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Six Years of Marriage - today!

Monday, June 16, 2008

 

 

It ain’t what we thought it would be:

  • Austin, Kenya, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Fayetteville, Seattle – that’s 6 moves in 6 years!
  • Closing the Baraka School, just when we were hitting our stride. And we missed the wildebeest migration in the Serengeti.
  • No jobs in Milwaukee, the city we loved.
  • Down to Fayetteville to teach at a university and, surprise! start a family!  All changed when, 16 weeks later, a tiny heart stopped beating.  Would have been a great place to raise kids, but what’s the point now?
  • We fled to Seattle – big, exciting city, new start, great jobs.  Right when we arrived, another chance at parenthood!  And this time it lasts!  3 months, 4 months, 5 months.  With conscious effort, we meet other couples, lifelong friends who would have kids the same age.  You glowed.  6 months, then 7! And then, the unspeakable, the impossible, again.
  • 10 months later, almost to the day.  How are you coping?  Is our marriage still strong?

 

It’s so much more than we thought it could be!

  • Our best memories, the same: weekends in Samarkand, cherries at the Registan, beer at Praga, unforgettable nights at the Zarafshon.  The gravity conference!  Your big smile, your blue dress.
  • So much laughter as we’ve bumbled around the world, through life.
  • Basement dance parties, your social calendar, the hiking, the biking.
  • Mexico, Ecuador, Panama, Canada, and Eastern Europe, soon enough!
  • Our house and our yard, bright and beautiful.
  • Wednesday nights at the 5th!  James goes straight to the White Zin.
  • Now we have Tebow!  Unimaginable delight from such a small being – energy unleashed!  “I like my kids, but I love my dog.”  Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be.

 

I needed you, I looked forward to you during those long, lonely times in Uzbekistan.  You were there when you said you’d be, always.  I’m still looking forward to you still.  And I’m counting on you to be there to cry, share, comfort, laugh, dance, travel, cope and live, always. 

 

 

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Upcoming Events, Mid-June, 2008

Monday, June 16, 2008

 

 

 

School’s out for summer!  Woo-hoo!…um, for Monica, at least.

 

So, for the next week, she’ll be working on her own writing projects, enjoying the 50-degree, overcast, so-called-summer drizzle and, I’m sure, organizing social events for the whole city of Seattle.  Over the weekend of June 21st and 22nd, she’ll attend a conference for women who have recently experienced stillbirth or the loss of a young infant.  I’m glad it’s for women only, because I don’t feel like immersing myself in thoughts of what could have been.  Although she’s handled the past 2 years’ losses amazingly, I think it’ll be a cathartic experience, and I’m happy that she’s doing it.  The other women in attendance will be lucky for her perspective.

 

I have another week before being released from prison until mid-September. While Monica is at her conference, I hope to be driving to Bend with the dog for some roadside camping and as much mountain biking as Tebow can handle.  (Yes, I do feel like a schmuck burning a tank of gas in order to ride by bike.)  My plan is to bring the mini-laptop and relay my experiences and musings here, juvenile as they will probably be.

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Ode to Neck Hair

Monday, June 16, 2008

 

Neck hair, how I love thee!  Let me count the ways.

Thou growest faster than the hair on my head,

Becoming bushy in just a few days.

I try to hide thee behind my collar, but instead

Thou shinest through, thick and striking.

If thou continuest thine regular pattern of growth,

I know that I’ll never go bald.

I can grow thee out to my liking

And snip thee!  I would swear under oath

That no one will know it’s thee, on the top of my head, installed.

 

Neck hair, thou strengthenest the bond between me and my wife.

I need her to shave thee clean.

But thou returneth, continuing the circle of life

Like a forest that returns from a fire, lush and green.

But that is not all!

The barber is enamored too

As she trims lower and lower.

Now she’s completely enthralled.

How far will she go?  Down my back?  To my shoes?

Neck hair, thou art wonderful! Do not grow any slower!

 

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What is “the fuck”?

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Here’s the first grammar point up for debate!  The last line of the last post (’Blasphemous Rumors’ in the Dealing with Pregnancy Loss category) ends in “…cracking, the fuck, up.”  In this sentence, what part of speech is the phrase “the fuck”?  Though I haven’t done any research, I would guess that it’s an adverb phrase.  Am I wrong?

The real question is this:  should these two words be offset by commas?  I think the commas indicate pauses and make my meaning clearer.  If there were no commas, it could be read as, “cracking the fuck-up”, which would be a different subject altogether.  Monica disagrees.

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Blasphemous Rumors

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Heard a song on the radio yesterday that transported me back in time.  I also realized that, as a teenager, I had had no life experiences that allowed me to really relate.  I have now.

 

“…I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors, but I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor, and when I die, I expect to find him laughing….” - Depeche Mode (Depa-chè Mood, as pronounced by my dad.)

 

A quick estimation suggests that 50% of my students have kids.  Some have multiple kids and multiple baby mamas.  I know this because they proudly show me pictures of their healthy-, well-adjusted-seeming children (sometimes photographed right there in the visiting room!), or they eagerly await their transcripts each quarter so they can mail them off to their offspring in California or Florida or Oklahoma, trying hard to send the message, “I’m working hard in prison, earning good grades.  Surely, you can do the same out there in Junior High.  Stay in school!”  Honorable, but much too feeble, and much too late.  My students’ kids are not completely normal or well-adjusted.  How can they be when their fathers have done something terrible enough to be locked up for 5, 10, 30, 200 years?  What do they tell the other kids at school?

 

And Monica and I, who have no anti-social or violent tendencies, and who would raise the next brilliant leaders of the free world, have had two boys die in utero.

 

Yep.  God’s up there.  He’s an absolute sicko.  And he’s cracking, the fuck, up.

 

 

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Cock-blocked by a 20-pound WestiePoo

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Sex is best performed in the morning time,

Before rising, before coffee or food.

Amorousness leads to that horny crime,

And she makes the best of his morning wood.

 

In our bedroom, Sundays were best, but now

We have a dog, and other things to do.

Permit me here to espouse upon how

I’m cock-blocked by a 20-pound WestiePoo.

 

As soon as we wake, he whines, pleads, and howls.

Monica, who should be nibbling at me!

Can’t resist, “Let’s bring Tebow in!”…I scowl

When will the next opportunity be?

 

Or she rises early.  Now in the past

She would make it a point to return nude.

Today, when I awake, I get no ass.

She’s on a walk with her new doggy dude.

 

My advice?  Do not spend five hundred bucks

On a cute little dog, or BEWARE, no more fucks!

 

 

Thanks to Tom for the perfect verbiage and to Corinne for relaying it to me.  And of course, thanks to Monica for laughing.

 

 

 

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The Jones Bistro - 8824 Roosevelt Way

Friday, June 13, 2008

 

The Jones Bistro has rotating plates.

Impressive food, but slightly high rates.

We waited forever

Complaining together,

But the burger was well worth the wait.

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Excitement in Prison

Friday, June 13, 2008

  

 

OK.  Here’s the thing about hanging out in a prison all day, teaching basic skills and computer applications to convicted felons:  It’s not that exciting.

 

I could write about passing through eight locked doors and gates to get to my classroom every day. 

 

I could describe, in detail, the time when I walked out of the education building into the courtyard, alone, heard two objects pelt the ground nearby in quick succession, looked around thinking, “What the hell…?, heard cackling akin to the Wicked Witch of the West, then heard a voice gloating, “Hey, check him out!  He lookin’ around like, ‘What the hell?!”  I couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from, so I went about my business.  Only later did I hear that an inmate had broken the glass in his glass-and-bars window and tried to hit anyone he could with whatever projectiles he could find. 

 

Finally, I could describe what it’s like to be mistakenly locked inside one wing of the education building alone and at night, and the panic that ensued when I realized that I didn’t have the right key to let myself out.  That panic quickly subsided, though, when I stopped to think and realized that I did have the key to get to a phone.  The whole episode lasted less than three minutes.

 

So there it is.  I’ve described everything exciting that’s happened in the past year and a half.

 

Yet, because so many people are curious about what it’s like to have personal contact, on a daily basis, with a few of the millions presently incarcerated, I’ll give a general overview:

 

My students have committed murder with a gun, murder with a car, and murder with a hammer.  They’ve raped and molested and engaged in unspecified acts of “sexual deviancy”.  They’ve sold and consumed massive amounts of mind-altering, personality-changing drugs – meth, ecstasy, crack, heroin – all the bad shit.

 

But from my perspective – and this may hurt the sensibilities of crime victims everywhere – they’re pretty normal dudes.  Pleasant, even.  They work hard and pose no behavioral problems; I mean that unequivocally.  They have hopes and dreams about their future lives “on the streets,” and I can’t bring myself to tell them just how hard I think it’s going to be.

 

Who’s going to take a chance on a guy who went to jail when he was 17, learned to make kick-ass Excel spreadsheets at 25, and is released at 29?  When he applies for a job as an Office Assistant, he’ll probably be homeless and dirty, and he won’t know how to feed himself, much less take the bus to an interview.  If he gets there, he has to explain why he fell off the planet for the last 12 years.  I see it all unfolding very clearly.  The quick realization of what he’s facing, the crushing disappointment, and the return to jail.  How can it be any other way?

 

In this blog, I’ll relay the news right away if anything exciting happens.  More often, I’ll post a profile of a student, leaving out names, of course.  It’ll be in my own words and probably sorely incomplete.  But the stories are interesting, mostly because of how fucked-up they are. 

 

I’ll start soon with a guy I’ll call Chris….

 

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Why Kev-lar?

Thursday, June 12, 2008

 

 

Because Kevlar© is taken.

Because there aren’t many nicknames for Kevins, and none roll off the tongue quite as well as Kev-lar.

Because that nickname was bestowed upon me by my best female friend in college, and every time I mention her name, Monica seems slightly irked.  The fact that I can still elicit jealousy makes me smile.  This is a way to get her back for all the considerable (if petty) jealousy I’ve felt, and still do feel, toward her past and present male confidants and pals.

Because Kev-lar is the plural of Kev in Uzbek, which I think is just very slightly cool. 

 

 

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Damage to the Pipes - Bicycling and the Perineum

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

 

 

I was riding my folding bike home from prison last Tuesday at dusk.  The ride was pretty routine – cool and cloudy Seattle weather, no headwind to speak of, rapidly diminishing light, and those unidentifiable early-summer bugs hovering above the trail as it follows the river. 

 

(aside) Those bugs turn the automatic acts of inhaling and exhaling into a very conscious, and carefully controlled, process.  Inhale through my mouth at the wrong time, and one of the flying fiends will get caught in the vacuum and shoot all the way into a lung.  Then, I cough throughout the night while Monica, in her wonderfully-concerned, but hypochondriachal way, worriedly insists that I have tuberculosis.  Inhale through my nose when I’m riding through an insect cloud, and one gets lodged in a sinus.  For the rest of the ride, I draw stares from strolling couples with my loud loogie-hocking snorts.  Eventually, I’ll be able to bring the hard little carcass (or carcasses) into my mouth where, if I’m lucky, I can spit it out.  More often, I swallow it.

 

So, I was riding with my breath held, my eyes closed most of the time.  I stood up to leverage for more speed because I can’t be passed without a challenge.  As the two hard-bodied, lycra-clad assholes pulled away, I hit a bump and heard a distinct, metallic rattle.  I looked down, doubly annoyed.

 

“Piece of shit bike,” I thought. “”Fenders must be coming loose.”

 

Then I sat down.  I put my sitz bones on the padded back end of my seat and let my scrotum and balls rest on the rocket-shaped front end – perfect positioning.  I started to relax, to allow more of my weight to rest on by butt.

 

Click!  The back end of the seat lowered ever so slightly, while the front end pushed up. 

 

Click! Click! Click!  Back of the seat: down, nose of the seat: up.  Suddenly, my weight had shifted from my sitz bones forward, toward my nutsack.

 

“Fuck! My perineum!”  I thought, before I could even debate the accuracy of that word in my head.  Do men have perineum? perineums? perinea?  

 

I couldn’t ride the remaining few miles this way.  For one, I’ve seen a real scientific study debunking the urban myth about bicycle seats causing impotence.  However, constant pressure on the perineum can really, honestly damage some of the pipes down there that are responsible for carrying healthy sperm where it needs to go. 

 

Secondly, I know what it’s like to stand up on a bike for miles at a time – (aside #2) I did it once in Toronto on a rented bike with a seat that felt like a cannonball impacting my ass at close range every time I hit a bump.  With miles to go to return the bike, and my quads and calves refusing to allow me to stand any longer, I reached my hotel, stuffed a pair of underwear down the back of my underwear, gingerly continued riding to the rental place, returned the bike, and waddled away looking like I had just dropped a load in my pants.

 

Unfortunately, padding couldn’t help in my present, pressure-on-the-perineum situation.  Over the next few miles, I learned something about myself.  I can correctly position, and hold in place, a loose, rattling bicycle seat with my butt cheeks.  It’s not easy, and it takes careful manipulation of leg and abdominal muscles as well, but I can do it if pressed.  Obviously, this is very valuable information.

 

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A Pizza Mart - 5026 University Ave.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

 

A Pizza Mart, stupid name, yes I know.

Happy hour is the time to go.

Cheap pitchers of beer

To bring on the good cheer

And great discounts on pies, that is so!

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Modern Married Man - Disclaimers

Sunday, June 8, 2008

For anyone who stumbles upon this blog while searching for compiled information, research, or academic discourse about, or even kitchy advice for, modern married men, this is what you need to know. I do not claim to epitomize, exemplify or typify married males in the 21st century United States. I am a “modern married man”, but I represent an exceedingly small proportion of this population for the following reasons:

1. I live in Seattle, pansiest of cities. It’s a city where 40-something men with full heads of gray hair push their infants around in shopping carts at Trader Joe’s on weekday mornings, speaking to them in heavily-accented French.

2. I teach in a prison, most bleeding-heart of jobs. I’m not like the real men - the Corrections Officers, or COs - who grin while putting their control tactics to use on aggressive members of the Mara Salvatrucha, using wrist locks to bring them to their knees.

3. I have no kids, though not for lack of trying. Instead of the joys associated with birth, I’ve had to endure the agony - and agony, it is - of helping my prospective baby mama get through one miscarriage and one stillbirth in the past 2 years. If I’m lucky, I’ll be one of the 40-something fathers mentioned above.

4. My wife and I are proud owners of a 20-pound Westie-Poo that cost $550. This is not a dog that you’d see in a Wrangler commercial, chasing a stick thrown by Brett Favre.

5. The internal combustion engine does not make my weenie erect. I don’t drink beer at Nascar events (sorry Shane, but I still think Nascar is the driving force behind our Middle East policy), meet with the local off-road jeep club, or watch monster trucks at the Tacoma Dome.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let the narcissistic blogger begin!

 

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