i think things are starting to get back to normal. i at least feel much better after a few days of routine again. i just hope this year was a fluke and that things won’t be that stressful again, but i am known to have a short memory.

i seem to constantly forget how trivial my problems are from day to day. it feels like i can’t help it, mostly because i bring it upon myself. i have to assign some importance to the things i do, and i think my brain takes things seriously automatically. i have to work to alter my viewpoint.

it’s strange. there’s alot on my mind but i don’t think any of it is worth putting down here. i think it’s because i’m in recovery mode. i’m so going running tonight. i think a lack of proper water intake, stretching, and exercise has disrupted my physical balance. this leaves my mind reeling as the tools normally used to get things done are busy trying to sock away the excessive caloric intake i’ve had for the past two weeks, with really no where to put them. my mom would tell me i need to purge some toxins.

this time, i whole-heartedly agree.

i am so drained. short short short post here i suppose. i’ve been seeing my dad everyday, and he finally got home today, but is having surgery next week sometime. i have driven out to redmond almost every morning this week to do various things for my grandparents since my dad cannot, all along with getting ready for christmas.

work has been stressful, and everything seems to be stuck in go go go. if i could rub my brain right now, it would definitely have a fuzzy texture, with a few holes in it for good measure.

it’s bad enough that i have been abusing coffee to get me through my days. i am just so frazzled. i can’t focus on anything.

4 more days, then i think i can sleep.

so my dad is good for now, which is a huge relief. i know how deadly these clots can be, and they managed to get some clot-buster covered piece of metal up into my dad’s upper arm, so they will see how that goes in the morning, and see if they need to operate from there. his hand is looking alot less corpse like though, so i think he was feeling much better about that.

some high points of the night (i can always find those silver linings):

*there was about a half hour in the waiting room talking to my mom about politics. if anyone can even make a mental picture of my mom, then you are head and shoulders above most people. i never have any serious conversations with my mom, partly because she’s so elusive. talking to her about politics was fun, even if i had to play along at times. i mean really, what are you supposed to say when your mom thinks that billy graham would be a good president?

*talking to my dad again. he seems so much more back to his usual self after a rough year. and talking to him now, i really feel like i am just looking in a mirror more and more. heather points it out to me all the time, i’m so like my dad. I am. I can see myself in that hospital bed, with a million things wrong with me, and still cracking jokes. At some points in my college career, when he was pissed with what i may have been pulling, he told me:

“I would get pissed at you for something you were doing up there, and i would think ‘that’s probably what i would do’, so i couldn’t be mad.”

and then he told me he would smoke to supplement a heart medication he thought he would need again, because the heart medication depresses him. maybe someday.

i am so my father’s child.

*driving from seattle to the eastside tonight. due to the huge storm, there is pretty much no power on the east side of lake washinigton. where i live at canyon park (between bothell and mill creek), there is an oasis of power. people have heat, tv, and charging areas for cell phones. and friends are taking advantage. i managed to find one open parking space tonight around my building after roaming for 5 minutes. i did take a break to buy Snow Plow beer though, which i highly recommend. but otherwise, around here, there is no light at all, except for cars. it’s eerie and strangely fascinating. wind owned this area.

and now i am rocking on guitar hero 2. everything is going to be alright, and i can relax for a bit. everything is alright.

it would kinda make sense that my 400th post would be a bit of a downer. i had all these thoughts for how i could make an awesome 400th post, with bells and whistles, and have it be about something stupid. maybe i can save that for my 500th post.

twice this week already my grandma has been to the hospital because of her blood pressure issues, but she seems to be good now. i spent most of yesterday trying to figure out how to get both my grandparents back from the hospital where she had been discharged, since taxi service was non-existent due to the huge storm last night. they finally got a ride home from one of the doctors in the hospital though, which was really lucky. i probably wouldn’t have been able to have picked them up until much later that night. at least she’s OK though.

my dad on the other hand probably almost threw another clot in his arm yesterday, so he went to the UW medical center a couple weeks early because it was getting too serious to wait until his appointment. he’s had a few scans now, still needs to talk to his surgeon about whether to operate or not, and is going to have more tests done tonight.

i hate to think that he’s on the precipice these days, but it’s slowly revealing itself to me. these damn blood clots. all it takes is one to break free and it’s all over. hell, the same could happen to me, but i know it’s more precarious for my dad. i don’t want to get into too many scary details though, i’m mostly just scared for him.

i know the rock of my youth isn’t invincible, but i can hope.

and….start.

get this going, in one direction or another. i got some time to kill here, and even though i came in early, it looks like i will be leaving late. no big deal though. the extent of my night is to set up my 401k, to plan for my future so that i can be one of the people that planned, the ant instead of the grasshopper. so i got a busy night ahead of me.

but for now, i sit here. with lots on my mind but seemingly no way to express it. there are no solid ideas, nothing to grasp, to put into words. just feelings seemingly coming from nowhere with no way to express them, because it’s mostly just general anxiety. christmas anxiety, i would mostly think. i love giving and receiving gifts, but it’s alot of work. someday, i can be that crazy uncle that shows up at christmas half-drunk, pulls out a money roll and hands out twenty bucks to everyone as a christmas gift. it’s funny to think about, but i don’t think i could ever pull that off. unless i something-something. go crazy? don’t mind if i do!

but i love this time of year, and i think becoming less involved with it would ultimately detract from all this hullabaloo. i just have the natural reaction of wanting to hide until it all blows over. which i know isn’t the best solution, but sure looks to be the easiest. i just want to go home and rock out to guitar hero. or read. or go for a walk. anything but be here, where there’s nothing to do until about 4 pm, when i get everything i need to get rolling. sometimes i enjoy the lack of busy, but at times like these, i desperately want to be. i just don’t want to resign myself to surfing, but it’s probably what’s going to happen.

so i resign.

pandemonium!

i don’t think there’s really craziness afoot, the word just popped into my head as i came to this medium. it struck me as a funny word and my brain rolls it over and over finding different stress points and inflection points to make it sound even crazier than it already may be.

my whole body just feels used and abused. i took my dog out for a run yesterday and inadvertently managed to roll my ankle. there’s another two weeks of running put on the back burner. maybe a week without climbing, but it’s been wet in that department. about 2 weeks of painful bike riding as well. i always forget how much these stupid injuries impact my active life, but at the same time, injury walks next to me as i do all these things, waiting in the fold to grab me at the most unsuspected times to sideline me. put me in coach, dammit.

over the past week i’ve been listening to NPR, and have heard 3 people say the word “dis”. as in the shorthand form of “disrespect”. it just sounds funny to hear about the iraq study group dissing GW with it’s conclusions. i don’t know if i’m ready to start hearing that word in my “adult” activities. slang is so cool though, finding stupid ass word and assigning meaning. i don’t know how, but i heard some MC hammer a couple of days ago, and i heard him use the word “proper”. i have subsequently parlayed that word for my own devices.

i think i complain about the inaccuracies that are almost impossible to avoid with spoken language, but i realize now how much i love it. the ambiguity becomes part of the language itself, to where ambiguous meanings are intentionally used, because that is what you want to express.

fractions are just as much fun as all those crazy 1’s and 0’s. my head keeps hurting lately. i wonder if it’s pushing my recent thought processes.

proper.

it’s been official since monday, but i haven’t had a chance to write it down here, that i am now an uncle. my bro had his child (cooper) on monday morning, and everything is going well. my parents just flew out tonight to go see him over in austin. i hope to be able to do the same in the next few months, at least for a three day weekend or something. those babies grow up fast.

it’s all so strange and exciting though. there’s this little kid over in austin that my brother had a hand in making, and they’re over there now, working to take care of him. i know he’s in good hands though, and he’s got a good support system with liz’s family over there to help.

and time marches on.

i had a strange experience this morning. i have been trying to meditate lately, and i’ve been getting a little better, but i took it in a completely different direction today. i was listening to charizma and peanut butter wolf while i was doing yoga, and usually i can’t even do that to hip hop, because i get distracted by the lyrics, and it distracts from my focus. but i made the lyrics my focus while i was stretching and i transported myself to a hip hop wonderland, where i spent half the time popping and locking, and another half rocking the crowd. it was a truly different experience.

but i’ve felt it this week. my brain has been going off on tangents, and instead of just naturally coming to a dead end like they normally do, they’ve kept on rolling. but it feels like there’s an element of control to it, so it’s different than i’ve ever really dealt with my subconscious. like my brain realized that both halves are too similar to let different modes of function interfere with their interaction. i think being happy is the lubricant that keeps the two from grinding on each other. but i bet i could do this now under any emotion, it’s just more pleasant when i’m fulfilled.

i feel like my brain is capable of anything these days, and the me inside of me and outside of me are at terms with each other, creating this me that is different, yet the same. in coming to terms with “accepting my fate” i in turn, came to accept myself that much more. because that fate is based off of me, and the environment i am in.

i remember writing at some point that people are different from other species due to their ability to alter their environment. also how that the environment of the mind was a different entity, something that people have to deal with. i know it sounds so “duh”, but i can look and see now that my mental environment overlays this other environment, and my mind interacts with that around me, like two halves of my brain interact with each other. an environment can go from an ecosystem to a mitochondria, from the complexities of the mind to a workplace. it’s the interaction that’s important, because that burden of choice is, i feel, in my control.

it’s weird, i re-read this and realize how pretentious this can sound. how can i help that? i keep coming up on seemingly simple explanations to my trivial thoughts, and i type them out to sort them.

depending on the environment, this could be read a million ways.