It is 8:00 AM on Wednesday September 13th, 2017. Fall doesn’t officially arrive until the 22nd but with the arrival of an actual thunder storm and rain as well as the cooling of the temperature and well into the routine of school it feels as though it is already here. And so I’ve put on George Winston’s ‘Autumn’ and thought I’d get a blog post down before I start the day.
I couldn’t sleep until midnight last night. I think this happens when I don’t workout as my body just feels like it wants to be active. And so I’m out of my routine this morning and didn’t actually get out of bed until 6:30 which is much later than usual.
Perhaps it was also due to a spike in anxiety from work and actually being followed by a police car yesterday. As for work, I have a few outstanding renewals that I haven’t heard back yet on. My ‘awake mind’ tells me not to worry but at night the thoughts begin to race and I have a hard time expelling them from my head.
As for the police car I went to Walgreens to pick up a video I had transferred from VHS to CD and on Fassler I passed a patrol car who was hidden in the apartment complex. I slowed down gradually but he pulled out and tailgated me down Fassler, I thought I was going to get a speeding ticket for sure. It is not that I speed but Fassler is on a very big hill and I might have been going perhaps 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. I turned right on Highway 1 and he turned right. I got off on Manor and he got off on Manor. By this time I didn’t feel like he was scanning my plate or going to pull me over but then I turned left to go to Walgreens and pulled into park and so did he. I then went to the photo desk and so did he. I got my order and then he asked for surveillance video going back to June. It was only then that I actually breathed a sigh of relief.
It is hard to go the speed limit on Fassler because the 25 limit is much too slow for that part of the hill. Combine that with the fact that people will tailgate you and then speed around you if you are going the speed limit makes it a drive with some anxiety, especially if you’re going uphill. The other problem is turning left from Crespi on to Fassler in the mornings. There is always a lot of traffic and the drivers on Terra Nova which is parallel to Crespi never stop fully at their stop sign creating a very small gap between cars. When there is a gap you can really only safely get in if you run the stop sign a bit as well. Then coming up the hill is a train of cars going to Terra Nova high school which limits the gap in which you can pull on to Fassler even shorter. I hope my son will be able to switch schools soon so we can avoid that traffic all together.
In other news, our compost bin got maggots last week. There were some very hot days and one day I opened the lid to find it crawling with those disgusting things. After trash day I rinsed it out but they reappeared. Yesterday I fed three of them to my fish using pliers which it looks like my fish thoroughly enjoyed. I then rinsed it out once again but this time put in bleach. I’m hoping that will solve the problem but those things are pretty persistent.
As for other household news we are finally getting the house power washed and the trim painted. The house really doesn’t need an entire painting which would be much too expensive. It really just needs a nice wash and that trim painted. Some roof shingles also came off last winter and as a quick fix I just nailed some down which you’re really not supposed to do. The first company I got a quote from wants $3,000 just to repair and over $8,000 to redo the entire top portion which is their recommendation (of course!). However, I found another guy who will just do the repair for $400 so I think I’ll go that route.
And finally, our neighbors want to do a lot of landscaping and replace their fence. We’ll go along with it as it would be nice to have a higher fence which will afford more privacy on that side. That will be more money I have to shell out along with property tax, insurance and plane tickets to Japan next year. Just when I’m getting very far ahead in reserves the money seems to just fly out of the wallet. You don’t have this problem when you’re a kid: any money received goes 100% to something that will give you a lot of joy. Painting the trim, paying for insurance and fixing the roof don’t bring the same type of joy, however it does put my mind at ease when winter starts up and we get some pretty ferocious storms.
In karate we haven’t gotten back into our old routine yet. As a green belt things it is a bit more intense and the fighting harder. Kai really doesn’t like the fighting part and tells me so. And so I’m trying to find the right mix of classes so he will still enjoy it. It looks like Monday class and weapons are good and the Friday kids class (only on occasion with the fighting afterwards) is good. The question is if we do the Tuesday kids class or do another green belt and up class (with weapons after) on Wednesday. Whichever has the easiest fighting is probably the path I’ll take because again, I don’t want Kai to hate going to karate. Slow and steady is the preferred path I think at least until he is older.
As for being 40, I feel as though my mind has changed. I am older and feel like more of a parent. Being in my late 30s and having only one could still consider themselves reasonably young. However, after 40, with two kids who are growing up quickly and the fact that the high school, university and now even employees at various companies are getting younger and younger it tends to make you feel old. I am still amazed at how quickly time passes and how it can be that I’m already 40. Time speeds up greatly after having kids and shows no signs of slowing down at all. We’re now so busy and wrapped up with the kids lives that the days just fly by.
I used to be so into reconnecting on Facebook with old friends that I created class pages, commented on their posts and so on. Now, I’ve deleted Facebook from my phone, haven’t posted in a long while and seem to have completely lost interest. As for computers and the internet in general I still haven’t stopped playing Warcraft but will soon. I need to get back into the routine of working out at 4:00 AM, reading more and generally being more productive. It is hard to break out of routines.
Speaking of routines sometimes it just happens as things occur to you. Something as simple as making a full pot of coffee or realizing that the wife can have her ‘travel size’ only and I can make my green tea or just drink my fruit vegetable juice never really crossed my mind. I would always make the full pot and have some with her because there wasn’t an option to only do a ‘travel size’ on our old coffee brewer. It was a habit, a routine. Well, now I’ve had green tea for the past two days: an article in Men’s Health which I’m getting for free thanks to T-Mobile Tuesdays mentioned green tea as very healthy in an article and so now I’ll mix up my breakfast with usually wheatgrass then vegetable juice or coffee or green tea depending on my mood.
The time is now 8:30 and my steaming just stopped which tells me my wife is using our account. And so I’ll take it as a good time to stop this post and get busy with the day.
But before I do I have to say how much I like my little office out here in the shed. It is my own little clubhouse, my get away and I’ve found that even with nobody home I prefer to be out here in my clubhouse than in my main office inside. It is my very own space and I can get a lot done out here. I think this will also be a great place to do homework when the kids are older. I can see them using it in high school but as for the wife, she has her own place at the island bar in the kitchen where she can usually be found.
