She's leaving home (bye, bye)

The day we brought her home from the hospital. 

Renaissance festival, October, 2000. 

Airborne, 2003

All American Girl, Summer, 2009

Horseshoe Bend, Glenn Canyon, AZ, March, 2010. 

Drum Major, 2015

Senior in High School, February, 2016

High school graduate, 2016.

 About three weeks ago, my 18 year old daughter borrowed my pickup. We loaded her bed and her dresser and a bunch of clothes and other odds and ends into it, and she drove it away, with her boyfriend in the front seat. She had spent her last night in her room, and was moving into an apartment with one of her best friends and a friend from work.

She's not ready. Financially, I don't really believe that she's making enough to cover school expenses (though she has a pretty decent scholarship), car, rent, utilities, food, and sundry. She is taking on a good $5000+ in new expenses per year, just for the ability to say that she's moved out, even though her commute to college has only shrunk from 12 to 3 miles, and about the same for work.

I know-- kids want to feel grown up.  And she has a full-time job, and she pulled off a 4.0 GPA in her honors program at university this semester. She's a sophomore. She just bought her own Honda CRV. She's a great kid, and left the house with no animosity for her parents.

So why was I sobbing in my living room for five minutes after she left? Is this what I've become?

Okay, maybe I was the one who wasn't ready.


________________
For what it's worth, the recently remastered release of the Beatles' _Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ album is absolutely worth a listen. Particularly have I been listening to "She's Leaving Home." (The hotlinked version isn't the remastered one; you'll have to get the album or find it on Spotify or Google Play Music.)

The opportunity

I was on patrol, and saw a little car pull through the parking lot of the convenience store to avoid the stop sign. I shrugged, and pulled it over at the next intersection. The driver dutifully pulled off the state farm highway, and onto a residential surface street. I approached from the driver's side, and introduced myself and explained why the driver had been stopped. He began to contest it, but I told him that I would need his driver's license and insurance. He handed over the insurance right away. Huh-- that's what most people have to look for. I asked him for a driver license. He hemmed and hawed a bit, and I asked him if he possessed one. With his palms up, he admitted that his was under suspension.

"Go ahead and step out, Jerry," I told him, as I stepped back from his door.

I could see it dawning on him: I had never asked his name, and he had never given it during this interaction. Yet I knew who he was.

I could hardly mistake those prison tats, and his scars and marks. I had been a jailer who had hated him, once.

"Hate" is a strong word. I don't use it a lot. But I had felt that emotion for this man, whom I had served many a breakfast in his solitary cell. Jerry couldn't be with other inmates, because he stirred up too much trouble. Maybe that was just the way he liked it, and something that he had figured out in the 22 prior stints that he had done at our jail. Jerry was an equal-opportunity criminal, who, in addition to dealing drugs, seemed to be working his way through the index crimes, though he hadn't yet committed murder, to my knowledge. Bored and in a cell all day, George would figure ways to screw with the jailers. Noisy arguments, spreading rumors to other cells (they could talk to each other), false reports about other inmates, false written complaints about jailers-- he did it all and more. And he had focused on being a particular ass to me.

I will tell you that I never retaliated. Not once. Not after having to explain away BS complaints about me (thank GAWD for CCTV and stored video) by Jerry. Not after having been made late going home to write him up (at my sergeant's direction) for starting another disturbance.

So, when I came across him on this traffic stop, I thought, "Huh. This feels like one of those tests which we sometimes have to give ourselves."

I decided not to arrest him for his suspended license. I issued him a citation for Failure To Present Driver License. I did not impound his vehicle. I asked him about drugs in the car, which he denied having. He offered to let me search his car, and I did. He then shook my hand, thanked me, and drove away.

I thought: man, there was your opportunity for a little payback. John Van Maanen might have been a bit disappointed with me; I had not kept "The Asshole" in check.

At some points, though, you just have to let a thing go, and I guess that I had. I'm a little embarrassed that it even occurred to me to turn the screws on old Jerry, just because of how he had been.

Finding Peace.

I am an atheist. I don't say that much, because of the negative reactions and connotations that seem to come from saying it.  This may be the first time that I've said it public. I think that it is. It's something that I've recently come to grips with.


I don't draw my peace from a higher power. For me, it has to come from within.


You may have noticed that the URL for this blog is MayPeaceBeWithYou [dot] BlogSpot [dot] com.


I composed that address one night after a decent beer or two, when I tried to decide what this web log, or 'blog, was to be about. I thought about writing about my experiences as a peace officer, but realized that most people don't tune into police stories for the "Peace" part of the officer's trade. They want to hear about the drama that accompanies discord.  I knew that I was mostly going to let people down if I promised them such things. If I had a counter on the number of times that I've drawn my gun with real concern that I was going to fire it, it would be in the double digits, and not really threatening the century mark.


When I suit up every day for work, I try to remember what my job is. I am employed to keep the peace.  The best way to do that is to show respect to the people that I come in contact with. And to be honest, I fail, occasionally. That respect thing works in a lot of other areas of life, too, for finding peace. Be it your neighbor, your wife, your daughter, your son, your work partner, your political adversary, or the saber-rattling nation a half-world away-- showing respect is a decent way to keep the peace.


That's hard to do, when we're irritated with someone. But if your goal, (having been established after contemplation in quiet times) is peace, then it is probably when we're irritated with someone that we most owe it to ourselves to display constant respect.

Emotionally draining, that.

I didn't want a cat. Really, with kids already, and a house to take care of and grad school and a full time gig as a cop, I didn't want any pets. The thing about pets is that they are a responsibility. They are a monetary drain. They are a time drain. They are an emotional drain, eventually, when they die or get sick.. And they add an extra mess to my cluttered life.

I didn't want one, but my wife did. She took the kids, and they picked out a kitten from a litter of barn cats, and brought him home. He was too small even to step down into the living room. I tried to hate him. My theory wasn't working.

Cat & Mouse Games.

Even when he interfered with my laundry chores, I couldn't really hate the stand-offish cat that seemed to get along with me better than anyone.


He got fat. We made names about it. FatWad, Butterball, etc. But his given name was Oliver.

I cut a door to the garage, and from the garage to the outside world, because I will not put up with a box of crap in my house.

And he lived with us, getting fatter and only affectionate when he wanted things, for about 3.5 years.

And one day, he got sick. Urinating blood. Having trouble passing water. I dutifully took him to the vet, and spent a LOT more money than I would think possible for me to spend on a cat. A month later, I did it again.

He got sick again this week. He went missing. When we found him 2 days later, he was stove up, off his feed, not drinking. I locked him in the bathroom, and tried to bring him back to health. No good. My wife and I talked. We made a decision. His kidney problems had gotten too far. He was clearly suffering.

I explained to my almost-14 year-old and 10-year-old daughters that we were putting him down. The elder daughter held it together. The younger one lost it, bad. She sprinted out of the room, tripped, fell, sobbed hysterically. She plans  to be a vet. I think that she'll make a good one. She loves animals. She asked me some hard questions about killing a family member. These are not happy questions, but they were fair ones for her to ask, even if the answers were unfair. I somehow held it together. Mostly.

I called the vet to see when I could bring him in. Yes, I could do it myself, but I wanted to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he simply went to sleep. I may have broken down just a bit on the phone.  It was 11:00 AM.  The vet could see me at 2:30PM.

We watched a movie. Rubber, about a sociopathic serial killer tire. I thought that a humorous flick would be good. Look, it wasn't my best decision. When they got to where people died in a lengthy scene by poisoning, I realized my incredible error. My conversation with my 10 year-old resumed.

I got a pick and a shovel. and ran water to break up the hard pan, and dug a grave in the back yard. I put the cat into a carrier, and got a box and put a towel in it. And then it was time to go to the vet. The girls said goodbye to the cat. Goodbye to Oliver.

Mom drove me there, because my car was in the shop. What with construction delays, we arrived late. About 2:40PM. I went in, and the receptionist greeted me cheerfully, until he saw what I was there for. He showed me to an exam room, and asked me if I needed some time with the cat. I started to reassure him that, no-- I was already late, and had held them up enough, and... and.. and I broke down into a sobbing, blubbering fit, the likes of which I haven't committed in years and years. He left me alone for a bit.

The doc came in. She looked at me, and immediately began examining the cat. "Look," she said, "he's got an abscess on his heel, here." I had seen it (he must have gotten into some kind of a fight with another cat or some critter), but mentioned that it was only the latest in his problems, but his recurring kidney problems were what made me come to this decision. She quickly took his temperature. "106. (They run about 101 or so anyway, but that's still a bad fever.) That abscess was infected. Not eating or drinking? Consistent with fever. Dehydrated? Consistent with not eating or drinking. Shaky, weak? Consistent with infection. "I think I can fix this guy. I know you're on a budget, but let me X-ray him on my  bill, to see if that leg is broken." She took him and did so, and returned. "It's not broken. I gave him a heavy duty shot of antibiotic, on me. Let me put in some sub-cutaneous fluids, pushed." She and her assistant did so. She gave me some instructions for care. She gave me some additional oral antibiotics. She accepted my hug.

The bill was just $53. I think it's $35 or something for putting one down. Maybe more; I  didn't check. She had given me about $250 worth of service for free, to save the cat's life.

I took him home and put him into my bathroom. The kids were deliriously happy.

He's sick. Very sick. Even after we fix this, he's got issues. So I still have to worry about a damned cat that I didn't want in the first place. But I'm glad we refilled that summer garden grave with dirt and nothing else. 

The kids are making the thank-you cards. I'll sign 'em, too.

__________________________________________
*EDIT (07/14/2012): Oliver was up and around this afternoon. He sneaked out of the bathroom and was roaming the house. We put him back up, because the doc wants me to monitor his ins and outs. We bathed him last night, and he looks good. The vet had given him a shot of something like Tylenol for the fever, too. He's going to be okay, I think. Stupid cat.


**EDIT (02/25/2014): Oliver is a very healthy, fat cat. I tell everyone how much I hate him. Nobody believes me.

***EDIT (04/05/2016): The damned cat will outlive us all. He is healthy, and insistent that we feed him more.

****EDIT (07/11/2017): Oliver is still healthy, happy, fat, and self-serving. It is still acknowledged that he likes me best.

Proving his point, exactly.

I've always prided myself on being able to look at and try to understand the opposing viewpoint, even when I don't agree with it. Sometimes it's admittedly for irritainment, but often I'll review a viewpoint that I may believe is largely biased, in search of actual content. For the last 18 years, I've listened to a lot of National Psocialist Radio. I can't help it-- the stories are longer, the soundbites are longer, and sometimes the stuff in insightful. Other times while shouting at my windshield, I would have to call it incite-ful.

While Nina Totenberg and the rest can drive me nuts with their bias on occasions, I've generally been pretty impressed with one of their news commentators, Juan Williams. Don't misunderstand me-- I disagree with his views a lot. But I've respectfully disagreed with the man. He's not an idiot. He doesn't just parrot PC speech. But he's by no means on any particular wing of the political spectrum.

I was a bit surprised to learn that Fox News had him as a political contributor, but apparently, they hired him before they had decided to become The Voice Of The New Conservative. (Yes, I'm just as irritated at Fox as I am at NPR. Maybe more so, because Fox doesn't even hide that they're bending their broadcasts right, apparently in an attempt to straighten out the left-biased other reporting.)

It didn't surprise me at all that Juan Williams would be on as a guest on "The O'Reilly Factor." After all, Bill O'Reilly routinely takes on guests that he disagrees with, lets them say something that he finds discordant, and then talks over them, drowning them out to the glee of his followers. It's so common, it's hardly even an ambush anymore, as anyone that he interviews that has even seen his show knows that he's going to do it.

I suppose that Juan Williams thought that, given his other status as a paid commentator for Fox News, he would get a little professional courtesy out of Bill O'Reilly, and would be allowed to finish his point before being interrupted in a discussion about whether it was correct to generalize all Muslims as dangerous. Williams, who was making the point that it was wrong to make such sweeping generalizations, opened a comment with a disclosure of how he personally had a long way to go before he could drop his own stereotypes, citing an example of how he had felt uncomfortable on an airplane with several traditionally-dressed Muslim persons. He was then cut off, and that comment was left to hang, out of context.

Today, NPR has fired Juan Williams, saying remarks "were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."

Apparently, the Council on American-Islamic Relations had complained.

I'm confused. The NRA has complained about how Nina Totenberg has shown blatant anti-2nd Amendment bias in her statements, but she hasn't been fired. (For that matter, the only time she has been fired was when she got caught plagiarizing, back in the '70s.) So you can rail against a constitutionally-guaranteed right on-air, but not candidly admit elsewhere (in a non-journalistic capacity) that you are overcoming personal biases that you find distasteful?

The meat of what Juan Williams was arguing with Bill O'Reilly about, at the time of the discussion at issue, was political correctness. And as Alan said to me this morning, "of course, NPR proves his point about paralyzing political correctness."

And so it goes.

I'm going to have to face it: I like people.

Look, I know that I'm supposed to be bogged down by the crushing weight of my knowledge of how sucky humanity is. I know that I'm expected to be all cynical, especially because I'm a cop, and know the evil that men and women do.

But I just can't muster the across-the-board disgust. The fact of the matter is, most people are just folks, and most of them are actually kind of interested in doing the right thing. And, without looking too very hard, you find that there are a lot of really nifty people out there.

There are area experts who are willing to share their knowledge, for free, just for the price of you asking them to.

There are bakers who will work hard to make something tasty, just to see you smile when you try their wares.

There are fellow travellers who will stop and help you when you're broken down, just because they really would want someone to help them.

There are store clerks who genuinely want to know if you're having a good day, and then hope that they can help your day get just a bit better by the time you've left.

Vine and I, while getting gasoline and soft drinks at an Omaha convenience store, found ourselves chatting with a friendly clerk. She was a middle-aged Mid-Westerner, with just a hint of Fargo in her voice, who smiled because she wanted to, not because the job made her do so. We walked out, pocketing our change, and commented on how that one person had managed to brighten our respective days. I sort of felt like this guy.

I don't expect you to become a fat, dumb, and happy person all the time. Not in the least.

But I do wish to remind you that there's a whole world full of decent, pretty awesome people, who did NOT make the news last night. People who put in an honest day's work for nothing more nor less than their pay, and go home at day's end to lead uneventful but decent lives. These people don't make the news. They're not "Everyday Heroes", because they're not heroes. They're just good people. That segment of society is under-represented onscreen, which means that people seem to forget that they are literally surrounded by good people.

This is not a rant. The day that I find that this blog has been reduced to nothing more than a vehicle for rants is the day that I close my Blogger account.

Stand at thy right hand.

To those of us who like a little classical history mixed with our modern guns and science fiction, there are few more beautiful stories than "Horatius," as told by Thomas Babbington Macaulay in Lays Of Ancient Rome. Whether or not the tale of Horatius Cocles is true, it should have been. I've always liked the concept of the valiant captain of the guard, but too have also liked the concept of his two buddies.

"Who?" you might well ask? "Horatius stood alone." Well, yeah, sort of. Actually, he stood first, and two other Roman citizens volunteered to stand with him: Titus Herminius & Spurius Lartius. You never hear their names, do you? Horatius fought with them at his side, and finally sent them away. But they also served. Their names are just not remembered.

Proud, honorable, anonymous service is a trait that I very much admire, in life as well as in literature. For the past few years, my email address has come from a line uttered by Lartius: "'Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, And keep the bridge with thee.'"

While I'm not such a geek that I sit around constructing GIF animations to show the battle at the gate, I will admit to smiling a little bit smugly that, one time in my early twenties, I seduced a chick with my reading and partial recitation of "Horatius."

And as they: Any lady who would be seduced by such a thing, is worth seducing. :)

Box-killing.

While selling the old house, we rented a storage unit to put most of stuff in while we staged, so that the house would sell faster, looking empty and clean. It worked; we sold it to the very first person who looked at it. (We had priced it low for quick sell, but good heavens! List on Tuesday night, sell on Wednesday morning?) We boxed up a lot of stuff that we could temporarily live without, and put it in a 10' x 14' storage unit.

A month or two later, when we moved out, we rented a second storage unit to put more stuff that we could "temporarily do without," while we lived in a small rent house for a month or so to look for another house to buy.

Well, "a month or so" turned into 14 months or so. Finally, we got this old house renovated, and moved in. We settled.

But those two storage units, 35 miles away, had to be unloaded. The price per month that we paid for them stuck in my craw like you couldn't believe. Stupid. I had become That Guy. The guy who pays to store junk.

How could it be anything but junk? We have successfully lived for 16 months without it.

On my day off, I rented a truck the other day at the last minute, dropped my kids off at my mother's place, and went to clean out a storage unit. My wife, surprised that I had overcome my sloth, drove out from work to help. We got one cleaned out in the dark. (Note to storage unit purveyors-- I would gladly pay $10 a month more, if you would make lights an option in your storage units.) We picked up the kids, drove home, showered off the dust, and went to bed. The next morning, my wife went to work, while the kids (off from school) and I went about unloading the truck. Surprisingly, it took LONGER to unload than to load, which is usually not the case. Part of the reason was that my wife wasn't there to help. Part of the reason was that I had to find a task for my helpful 6 year-old at all times, even though she couldn't be trusted to carry heavy things. Most of my stuff seems to be heavy things.

Finally, realizing that we were short of time if we wanted to get the truck turned in in time (after a trip to the dump) to avoid a second day's rental, we just started loading boxes in a pile in the sun room. I hate doing this, preferring to send items to the area that they will belong-- storage shed, garage, studio, kitchen-- whatever.

That pile of boxes yet looms. My family headed out of town for a huge New Year's party down in Austin, and I've been baching it. I know that I'm supposed to say that I'm lonely and miss my family and all, but for a couple of days, it's nice being alone in the house. I come in from work, drop my gun belt on the couch, have a coffee in my underwear in the sun room in the morning, and no one cares.

But that pile remains. And it's bothering me. And I know that I'll catch hell if I haven't reduced it before my wife returns. (And rightly so.)

So I engage in an activity I like to call "Box-Killing." Boxes are good for temporary storage, or for moving things, but they suck for storing things that you use. Items that get stored in cardboard boxes tend to not get used, and just gather dust, making you wonder why you keep them at all. I unload the boxes to cabinets, chests, shelves, etc, and then smash the cardboard box, a vanquished foe, to send out with the garbage. It's the only way I can make such a task fun. So far, I've found some reference books that I've really missed (Note: Matt G's house will from now on have only reference books, books currently being read, or library books in it. The occasional super-classic will be the exception that proves this rule.), and some tools that I've really wanted.

Just a little bit like a late Christmas.

Oh! So that's what y'all were talking about.

The nice thing about the world that we currently live in is that I can watch a show that everyone's been talking about at my leisure. . . in theory.

In theory, I could just set my digital video recorder to record it, and watch it later, but I haven't bought one yet. Been meaning to, but I haven't.

In theory, I just order it on DVD as soon as it comes out. But that's usually after the season's over, and the hubub about a show dies down, and I forget. Also, I'm bad about forgetting ever to visit the NetFlix queue, which for some reason my wife has control over. (You don't want to even know what assaults have been launched against my manhood by that misstep.)

So, the other day, it was a strange confluence of events when I happened to be making my wife some coffee while she was loading up more Dawson's Creek episodes (ack! Hack! Blech!) up to the queue of DVDs to be mailed to us, and she said, "Anything you'd like me to stick on here?"

I panicked. I almost never had been asked. My mind raced, and I grasped for the name of a show that I'd heard was good, but had never seen. Best make it a series... I might not get this chance for a while (I kid, I kid-- my wife is very gracious. Aren't you, my love?).

"Uh, I've heard that show Firefly was good... could we put it on?" I said as I brought her a cuppa.

Well, that sounded girlie enough, I guess. It passed muster without inspection.

Yesterday, the red envelopes came, and we watched the pilot to the science fiction western libertarian flick.

Visually rich. Nice little plot. Good characterization. Clever lines.

Well, better late than never. (Firefly was cancelled after 14 episodes in 2004, and a movie, Serenity, came out the following year.)

What fun. I'll save the movie for last. Something to look forward to.

But I ask you: in a market that can support umpteen seasons of drivel, how is it that a show with an Emmy award and two Hugo nominations couldn't seem to get a second season? Are we hurting that badly for another reality show? For another frickin' medical drama?

This is (in part) why I don't watch TV anymore.

Boring old married couple goes to big city.

Y'all know my wife's a sculptor, right? Oh, she has "real job" to pay for bills and insurance, and such, but she's classically trained and has the tools and skills to make art out of clay, glass, bronze, brick, wood, leather, and maybe even stone, for all I know. She can also make a box of acrylic paints sing.

So I decided to surprise her with a trip to CowTown for the Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival.

This is a yearly thing that Fort Worth has been putting on all my life. They close down the red brick avenue that is Main Street, and rent out stalls to artists that have to be good enough to pass a jury to get the privilege to spend a lot of money to get a 10'X10' piece of pavement. There are three or four stages for performers to put on free shows, and a very large kids' play area with lots of crafts and such for the kids to do, for free or almost free. In the past, we've brought the girls, and made a day of it.

Somehow Fort Worth knows how to make this work. If they tried it in Dallas, for all their bigger budget and larger infrastructure, they'd screw it up. Fort Worth manages to keep it clean, orderly, and clear of overly-obnoxious people. The police and security presence was obvious, but not at all intrusive. I never once saw a panhandler, even though I saw plenty of sidewalk performers with open music cases or hats on the ground. There's a distinction that I can appreciate. This event is a city-wide team effort, and the results are pleasing. There's no gated entry, and it's free.

This year, the surprise was that I ditched the girls, and reserved a hotel room at a decent old hotel that overlooks Main Street.

Because my wife and I are cheap penny-pinching money-grubbing frugal types, we tend to stay at places of the type advertised for by Tom Bodet, with lovely views of interstates, parking in front of your room (if you're lucky), and the room service consists of a guy in the parking lot who will bring you some weed to your room if you'll just front him some money, first. (Do people actually fall for that gag? I've never gotten to find out.)

This joint was swank, though. Pull up to the valet desk, leave your key in the ignition, pick up your receipt for your car, and go check in. I tipped the dude a buck, and he seemed happy for it. Later, when we came downstairs for our car, I showed my receipt, and an attendent ran into a giant elevator, only to emerge from it two minutes later in my car. He seemed happy enough with his buck, too.

We checked in, and discovered that we had two full sized beds in the room. Aw, crap. I had forgotten to specify a king. I looked at my wife, who was trying the mattress, and who looked over to me with a grin and said, "This is just fine!" See, we've been married for a decade, and the whole novelty of sleeping in the same bed is pretty well worn off, for the most part. Oh, we love each other, and are demonstrative and such, but honestly, we use separate blankets while sleeping in the same bed. She says I'm a blanket hog, and I know she's one.

That memory foam mattress rocks, by the way. You'll think it's too soft, at first. But it's not. I might just buy one.

The room overlooked the festival, and we enjoyed a drink while doing some people-watching, scoping out the street three floors below. Buildings across the way were built in the nineteen-teens through the thirties. Urban, in a charming kind of way.

We wandered the festival for some hours, and came back to the hotel for a swim and a soak before going out to dinner. We walked to Daddy Jack's, for bowls of lobster bisque. If you haven't tried it, do so.

That next morning, we broke our fast in the bakery downstairs, and wandered through the festival some more, checking out new upcoming artists and re-checking stuff we'd seen and liked the evening before, with fewer crowds. I bought a gift for a friend. The last thing that we looked at was the Best In Show winner. Lewis Tardy took that prize in a vast and highly-talented field of artists. This guy's stuff is amazing. Cyber-punk-robotic-tech kind of stuff, most of his pieces are about 3 feet tall. Lots of stainless, chromed, glass lenses, etc.

We hurried home for my wife's cake-decorating seminar, and I went to pick up the kids later.

I'm sorry to bore you with this episode of staid married life, but I gotta tell you-- it was the highlight of my month. My wife enjoyed it, too. I think we'll do it again.

That's about as fast as I get.

I'm not hopped up on caffiene or anything, but this is about my typing speed.
49 words

Speedtest

H/T to John Shirley

Deep night maunderings.

It's cold and dry and getting colder. Not a breath of wind, and the sky is not just devoid of clouds-- it appears devoid of even air. The full moon illuminates the landscape, but the air refracts so little that the stars appear in strong relief against the black sky behind them.

The porch lights of the houses out on the prairie seem each to be more significant, and promise that humanity and warmth are inside there. You can see the discrete points from a long way off, tonight.

Parked in the dark, by the road, with my lights out, I've watched cats and a ringtail from the creek scurry cross the silvered blacktop, just by light of the moon. I could easily patrol all night with my lights off, so well do my eyes gather the moon and starlight.

It's now Christmas eve.

I love it when it's like this.

I hope y'all find what you're looking for, this Christmas. And if you don't, I hope that you'll find hope and courage in the symbolic reset of the coming new year.

For the first time in my life, I don't think I want anything this Christmas. I'm married to the woman I love. I have two girls that I would love even if they weren't beautiful and smart and funny and cooler than I ever was. I have a family I love and get to see, and I have a snug place to hang my hat and lay my head. I have a job that pays the bills and feels rewarding.

I have dreams. I have aspirations. Hell, I even have gripes and find shortcomings. And of course I have yearnings for specific items.

But I think that, if I stop and think about it, I'm pretty happy. That doesn't mean inert and idle. But it means that I'm ahead of where I've been at many, many points in my life. You ever met a person who didn't know how to take a compliment? Tell them that they look nice in an outfit or with their hair just so, and they'll argue with you. I think that I, and a lot of other folk, lose track of how to see when they're happy, and accept that we are.

Maligned yet again.

Ambulance Driver questions my funk-itude whilest directing traffic.

Why, I'll have you know that, when standing in the middle of the four-way stop intersection and side-stepping between two loaded gravel trucks roaring by-- while still motioning to traffic on one side and holding it up on the other-- I was told that I looked like I had all the moves to the Souja Boy "Crank Dat" dance down, and oughta try out as a walk-on for the Longhorns football team.

So there. [Yo.]

[I'm reasonably sure that if I got a certain giant bald-headed fireman to do the dance with me, we could raise a LOT of money for the city emergency services departments. People would pay, just to laugh at us.And throw rotten fruit. (which might appear redundant.)]

But I don't direct traffic like this any more, because it gets my uniform and white gloves too dirty. Highly unprofessional, don'tcha know.

I'm sorry.

You may have noticed an absence in my posting lately.

Some of that's because I'm kind of busy in Meatspace.

But really, I'm preoccupied with guilt.

• I'm offensive.
• I'm insensitive.
• I sometimes speak without thinking.
• With some frequency, I make jokes that offend people who don't find them funny.
• I forget to say "Thank you."
• I forget to remember (redundant, but I need the redundancy) to honor people I know and respect.
• I think that I'm right, and refuse to admit that I'm wrong about things I clearly don't know very much about. Worse, I'll sometimes tell the person that does know about the subject that they're wrong.
• I get angry and say things I shouldn't and don't immediately apologize.
• I needle people sometimes, just to goad.
• I question if I'm a very good person.
• I suspect a lot of the time that I'm not a very good friend, relative, or loved one.

And I really am sorry for that.

I don't say this to ask for atonement or forgiveness or to have people tell me that it's okay or I'm a good a guy; I think I know the real score. I don't actually hate myself.

But I sure am sorry.

Prol'ly shouldn't have said that...

...'cause it felt good.

Just like LawDog, I don't like when parents point me out to their kids as the boogieman. In fact, I hate it.

Last night, having finished booking in a guy at the jail, I drove around to the front of the building and ran in to get some paperwork from the Communications office. As I walked in past a couple of kids swinging on the handicapped rail at the edge of he parking lot, an adult male was hollering to a 5 year old boy from a bench set on the wall near the door.

"Deon, get away from the street. Deon, you better get away from that street. Deon, if you don't quit, the police man's gonna get you..." All said in a sing-song "wait'll I tell on you" voice, and the man didn't so much as pitch forward from his seat like he was thinking about getting up.

I let go of the door handle, and turned to the little boy. "No, Deon, I'm not going to come get you." It was a parking lot, not a street. The boy wasn't doing anything wrong besides failing to mind the man, and the man brought that on himself. I walked over to the man.

"Why do you do that?"

"What?"

"Why do you insist on demonizing me and other police officers to your boy?" I asked. "We try very hard not to be the bad guy to kids, but when you use us to threaten the boy, you portray us as the boogeymen. Someone whom the boy should fear. Someone to run away from."

At this point, I almost said something to the extent of "don't you want him to grow up better than you have?" but that would have been overstepping things, making assumptions on the fact that the guy was waiting on a bench out front of a jail for someone to come out. Also, call me a coward, but I didn't want the race card pulled on me.

"Well," he said, "I was just trying to discipline my child, and was seeking your enforcement of my positive reinforcement, to keep my child safe."

My mind briefly wandered, bringing up the Princess Bride, in which the swordsman Montoya to the Sicilian who has once more declared that a circumstance was "inconceivable," says: "I do not that that word means what you think it means."

Positive reinforcement?

"If you want to keep your child safe, don't use the threat of my actions to make him behave-- get off your butt and go get him yourself," I said.

"If I went an' got him, he'd just jump back up again and..." but I was already walking inside.

I got my paperwork, and started to head outside. Thinking on it, though, I went out a side door to my car. It had been 3 minutes since I'd left the guy, and false pride can percolate up just that fast. I didn't figure he'd read my uniform patch to see who I was with. He could, if he thought to do it, step into the parking lot and read the side of my patrol car to find out, though.

But he was too lazy to do that.

I drove off without further confrontation.

Touchy-feelie

I came in from work, changed out of my uniform, and checked on my girls and wife. All sleeping soundly.

I found myself pacing a little, up and down the house. Something was agitating me.

I grabbed the work cell as I pulled a long neck from the 'fridge. Cracked open the Blue Moon Belgian White Wheat Ale as the phone rang to the work cell of the guy who had just relieved me a little bit earlier at work.

"You busy?" I inquired when he answered.

"No, what's up?" he sounded a little surprised, and maybe a little glad to hear my voice. Huh. I would have thought otherwise.

"Just checking on something. Dude, when we were doing pass-on a little while ago, things seemed, uh, tense. Wanted to see if I was pissing you off somehow."

"Oh. That. Sorry, man. My wife had just chewed my hide before I came in. That's all," he said. He sounded a little embarassed.

"That's it? You sure? Anything you need me to do? I don't want stuff to fester," I pestered.

"Nope. It's not you-- I'm just an ass, is all," he responded with a chuckle. "But thanks for your concern."

"Heh. It was completely selfish, you may be certain of that, brother," I said with a smirk. "I have to sleep, sometime, and I sleep fitfully if I think that I've screwed up."

"Nope."

"Well then, be safe. G'night," I said as I hung up.

I took a swig of the Blue Moon. Yum, yum. I don't care if it is mass-produced; it's a tasty beer.

Then I thought: John Wayne never would have made that call. Ahab would be quite ashamed of me. Maybe I am getting too much soy (and its attending synthetic estrogen) in my diet...

That doesn't make me *less* of a man, does it?

To watch a chick flick (written by a well-known writer) about relationships, of all things, and to think, simultaneously:

"How depressing!"

and:

"How beautiful!"



I've not been eating too much soy (with its vegetable estrogen) lately, have I?

I swear to Gawd I spent better than a quarter hour today talking about variations in 1911's with my father. (Have y'all met my father? Interesting guy. 4 decade L.E.O., history major, old Coooper Gunsite graduate, redneck liberal, intellectual, firearms afficianado, reloader, moderator, etc.)

So Mark said, "I'll have my people call your people," and...

At midnight, between Thursday, 5 July 2007, and Friday, 6 July 2007, I'm to appear on BlogTalkRadio's internet radio news show. (Go there now to check it out.)

You will, of course, all be so kind as to tune in and ask ridiculous questions to assist me in making a fool of myself, yes?

C'mon. He'p a brutha out, please?

(Sigh.) Okay. Here goes:

If I get a good response on Friday morning/Thursday night, I will finally post the AD/Babs/MG collaboration this weekend. Okay?

But I need some input. IN. PUT.

Haiku #4 Procrastination

Putting off writing
Reports, colaboration.
Ambo Driver's peeved.

Dadgummed interior mic!

I love mobile video for cop cars. I do! Some cops complain about the Big Brother aspect of having their stops recorded, but I'm cool with it; don't say or do something that you're not supposed to be doing, and you won't get into trouble. Easy peasey. On at least two occasions, mobile video and a body microphone have cleared me of accusations. On at least a couple of other times, I wished I HAD a body mic and mobile video running. But microphone control might be nice.

A month ago, I put a guy in jail for Driving While License Suspended. Last week the case, which was written in my usual brilliant style, was declined. I was... confused. This... does not occur. What... wha' happen'?

I called the D.A.

Not to whine, mind you. Oh, no. To learn.

So I found out that the DA of our county has decided to completely change the criteria to arrest for suspended licenses, without telling us, and without notifying the State that its charges are just a bit too lax for OUR district attorney's office. I now need a roadside confession of the driver's knowledge that his license was suspended. Oh, very nice. They ALL claim "I didn't know that my license was suspended! They didn't send me nuthin'!"

To which I try to bite back: "That's because you've lived in 5 different addresses in the 3 years since you last notified the state of your current address, as is required by state law within 30 days of moving. You didn't suspect that those six No Insurance citations, 4 speeding citations, and 3 FTA's might have caused your license to be suspended? You know, it's listed in statute that two No Insurance convictions in one year results in a suspended driver license."

But no. Now I have to get them to say,"I'm sorry, Officer G. I knew that my license was suspended, and yet I drove anyway." Great.
Science fiction, in other words.

So I got on the phone with the DA, who explained all of this to my not-whining self, and who then said with a grin in her voice: "But take heart-- 'Elvis is everywhere.'"

What...?

Turns out, the tape that I sent in with the stop had two microphones recording to video: my body mic, and the interior car microphone, which records all sounds within the car. This is great when you have a prisoner in the cage. It can be embarrassing, if your radio is tuned to the wrong station. I happened to have the car good-times radio tuned in to the Sonic Burrito (hosted each Sunday Night by Weird Warren Harris on KNON, TheVoice Of The People) on which Mojo Nixon played their signature hit while I was out with the defendant, so the radio basically provided theme music for us.

"Elvis is Everywhere!"

I think it's the bosun's whistle that cracks me up the most.