sneaking a smoke

the step daughter smokes cigarettes. marlboro lights, hard pack to be specific. shell smoke one first thing in the morning. then later in the day if life provides one ounce of stress. then if she needs to make a private call to her boyfriend or father. then after dinner. honestly weve long since given up trying to stop her. she may croak of lung cancer one day. her choice.

anywho, theyre same brand i used to smoke back in the day. i would smoke em when i went to a bar or nightcliub. they seemed to go well with drinking beer and chasing women. the other day im on the porch and the step daughter had left her pack and lighter on the porch table.

i look at the cigarettes for a few seconds.

i go back to typing on my computer.

i look at them once again.

i go back to typing.

look again.

i type.

look.

i grab em, pop one in my mouth and light er up.


the first puff brought be back to those days, back in my twenties, hitting the clubs, getting drunk smoking, hitting on girls, going home alone. ahhhh the good ole days. it was interesting how it brought back memories. smoking a cigarette. maybe i'll start smoking a pipe. you know to embed some new memories in my olfactory part of the brain.

wake up...you have work to do!!!

thats what my brain has been telling me lately. sometimes at 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning. a few nights ago i woke up extremely worried that i hadnt done enough for my internship applications. it was true. i wrote my essays, tweaked my cv, but hadnt made specified coverletters for each of the sites i wanted to attend. so at about 3AM i snuck out of bed plugged in the computer and typed them up.

last night, i awoke in a panic that i hadnt done my session notes. i knew i hadnt, but figured id do them in the morning. so my 4AM morning brain insisted that i do them pronto. so i did. its like ive trained myself to have an alarm clock keeping me on task at all times. kinda cool & kinda sucks.

inpatient book-club

i was conducting group therapy at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. after wrapping up a session a patient says to me, "you ought to read blue like jazz, i think youd like it". i asked him what it was and he says, "its a book about Christianity, but not like a religious book." i thought it a little strange, since i never mentioned God or my religious beliefs. hmmm.

that stuck in my head. but i didnt rush out and buy it. rather about a year and a half later i sees it at the barnes and noble, and the memory flashes back to me, so i buys it.

i just finished reading it last night. it was in my opinion, amazing. the author, don miller, writes in a similar format to how i think. in a quirky, odd, and funny way, he basically writes about his life and relationship with God. several stories were similar to my own life. it is definitely one of my top 5 books that ive ever read.

so there i was a year and a half ago, studying patients, trying to show empathy and get into their perspective when one of said patients was somehow able to get into my perspective. i dont even remember the guys name and barely what he looked like.

"better than" tally

things my brother does better:

writing
throwing horseshoes
throwing darts
throwing a ball like a boy
spiraling a football
playing risk
playing clay warriors
outdoor grilling
camping
making salsa
teaching
running
small talking
being friendly
hackey sacking
throwing tree ears at human ears
forgiving
speaking in public
living the dream


things i do better:

drawing
painting
making clay warriors
holding a handfuls of fire-ants longer

shhh...be vewy quite...i'm texting wabbits!

people love their texting.

its kind of scary. the other day i observed this couple sitting across from each other in a restaurant; each was furiously texting rather than engaging each other in conversation. occasionally theyd pick up a morsel of food with one hand and put it in their mouth, never taking their eyes of their texting machine.

ive seen students texting with their one hand just behind the desk and out of view of the professor, who probably put hours into the lecture. i have friends who will text me rather than talking to me on the phone. people get into accidents and killed because they just had to text while driving. hell, theres probably people out there who text while love-making.

are we so afraid of isolation and quiet?...so afraid or disenchanted with the real world?

well maybe we are. or maybe it just feels right to our souls to be instantly connected to something other than ourselves. perhaps it just feels natural to voice our random thoughts to something we can't even see. to be heard.

4 deaths examined.

death one
i was about 3 or 4 years old and playing outside near a large tree. somehow i used a styro-foam cup to trap a grasshopper. later i was climbing in the tree and i saw the cup below. i remember thinking, "what if i jump on the cup?" the veiled answer was of course that it would kill the grasshopper. i jumped. when i pulled the crushed cup back, it indeed killed the grasshopper. i remember being appalled at the wicked thing i had just done and i ran into the house crying and confessed to my mom.

death two
as a teenager, we found a baby bird that fell from its nest. we put it in the yard in a brown paper bag (shaped like a nest) hoping the mama bird would come and take care of it. watching from the window we someone noticed a cat approaching the baby bird. i ran outside to chase it away from the bird. when returning from the chase i looked back at the window and noticed my mother looking at the ground behind me with an alarmed look on her face. I looked back. apparently i had stepped on the baby bird in its man-made nest and killed it. i was sick with my own stupidity. i dont recall if i cried or just felt like crying.

death three
recently, in a hotel i noticed a mouse stuck to a sticky tape trap. it was still alive squirming and trying to get off. there was feces there too so he must have been there for a while. i picked it up and went to the bathroom so my wife would not see. examining it closely, i noticed it was stuck hard to the tape. i tried to pull him lose but it appeared that any effort by me to remove him would tear him apart or at least skin him alive. i decided to kill the mouse to prevent its prolonged suffering. i decided to quickly drown him in the sink which i did. he heaved a couple of times bringing water into his lungs then he stopped moving.

death four
a few weeks ago, I looked in the garage noticed a black snake coiled up and resting just outside the door near our flip-flops. he was about 1 foot long. i decided to remove him rather than killing him. i put on a pair of leather work gloves and pinned him. unfortunately the thickness of the gloves prevented me from then picking him up as i adjusted my position to leverage picking him up, he was freed enough to strike which he tried to do. mouth open and fangs bared he went to latch on to my gloved thumb. before he could though i used the thumb to crush his head against the wall.

so which is the most contemptable killing and which is the least?

struggle versus comfort

the other day i was riding bikes with my wife. i directed our course to a more difficult, more harrowing path than what we normally take. immediately i could sense her frustration. it was an unknown path (to her) she did not fancy the uncertainty. it was also more dangerous, with intersection crossings, car traffic and twists and turns. eventually she says, "i dont like this path. its no fun. why would you go this way where its more dangerous and trafficy [sic] than the path we take around our neighborhood?" i thought about it and she is right. the neighborhood path is a breeze. very comfortable routine and safe.

i came to figure after this incident that women, by and large, prefer the comfortable, safe, routine path while men often prefer the struggle on the dangerous and unknown path. its like God put these opposing forces together to keep balance in the world. women keep us from reaching too far, while we pull them to reach further.