Dirt, Nice to Meet You...

I guess we must share the same birthday.

I've been feeling rather old lately, and I think children are to blame for that.  They get all old and big and then I realize that they're no longer kids, and some of them even have jobs.  That makes me feel old.  It's a rather strange phenomenon, because some of these kids I see when I'm younger, and then for whatever reason I don't see them for years and that person disappears.  For example, I've seen Derrek like three times in the past couple years, and I know he's 18 and taller than me in a tophat, but if the 6 or 7 year old version of him shows him requesting no onions in his food and wanting to play Nintendo 64, It would not be weird at all.  Because 7 year old Derrek existed far longer in my memory than the 18 year old version.  Same with some other kids, like Bobbie when I did her sister's wedding and she was the little girl running around, and now she's a teenager and everything.  Recently a cousin of mine befriended me on Facebook, and I didn't really remember who he was until I asked my mother on the way back from the airport this morning.  Turns out he was my third uncle's son, a kid that I used to play with whenever I visited Malaysia.  I even remember specifically playing with mercury at his house.  Or maybe that was a faulty memory from mercury poisoning, who knows.

But no, the kids are one thing, the other being that everyone is getting old.  Movie stars I've seen are getting old.  I'm falling apart myself, fragments at a time.  All in all, I'm pretty ok with it mostly because everyone is aging too.  Even you, right now as you read this post.  

Dirt, have you met my friend?

Zoe

Zoe2

Stained glass clown at Value Village

Interesting chicken at the Value Village

$20 for this wonderful hand drawn portrait of someone's parents at Value Village

A Dubious Milestone

So today, at 34 years of age, I finally wrangled myself and my wife into a gym where I got onto a treadmill, for the first time in my life.  For the first time I was running with no particular destination in mind, other than the fact that I was trying to get some form of exercise back into my life.  I've been paying for the gym membership at my work for about a month and finally I dragged myself in there and get pretty close to convincing myself back out.  But Elaine was with me and we both needed to just get into the gym and get back into some kind of healthy form.  Even since I got myself a desk job, I've been doing even less exercise (although my previous job was more manual labor, not really exercise per se.)

It was a pretty good stride, occasionally breaking into some wimpy form of jogging whereby my arms flail about like some chicken with wing atrophy.  I'm still not a big fan of the locker room, further reinforced today when a naked man out of the shower made some eye contact with me and smiled.  It's not like I'm some complete homophobe, because it literally could some hot girl coming out of the shower naked, I would still feel completely uncomfortable.  I guess nudity weirds me out to a certain extent.  Or maybe I'm just a big fan of modesty.

Anyhow, other than extending my work hours a bit more, I think I'll enjoying this working out thing.  Especially after Zoe looked at my tummy and said, "You must be really full."  I hadn't eaten anything for hours.  Sad, sad, middle aged tales.

Ribs for Dinner!

Ribs for Dinner!

Talking Death

There was an unfortunate fire a few blocks from here, whereby a father and four children died in a New Year's morning fire, and it became a short topic this morning with the wife, and once again when we passed by the apartment complex where the Police and Fire Department were still on location, gathering their info and investigating the scene.  

One thing I've never really shied from with the kids is telling them certain truths, and this case was really no different.  I told them that the family got caught in a fire, and they died.  I know some parents really wince at the idea of this kind of honesty, that perhaps I should maybe not tell them quite everything.  A child's innocence is something to be valued, and should be shielded from the world's ugly truths as long as we can keep their world view candy coated.  

Well, I can't really subscribe to that thinking completely, I guess there's a line somewhere in there that I like to fudge around.  I try not to scare them too much of all the things that could happen to them, but I do enlighten them that if you don't watch the road, cars could hit and kill you.  If you talk to strangers, that some of them can be bad people who might hurt them and take them away.  That when Zoe sits on the banister on the top of the stairs, she could fall and break her spine and not be able to walk or could die.  And in this case, that if we're not careful with fire, people could get killed.  All that seems like a very harsh thing to tell 6 and 7 year old kids, but I feel like it's responsible for a parent to inform their children that these are truths of the world.  If I'm going to let them watch children's programs where there are bad people or adversaries, I feel that it is important for them to know the major dangers around them at least.  So

Incidentally, watching Max Fleischer's Superman cartoons right now.  The animation holds up extremely well, there's quite a level of detail especially impressive with the facial expressions and such.  There's quite a cinematic feel to the animation, although some of the stereotypes are painfully embedded into the cartoons.  Lois Lane seriously toes that line between bravery and utter idiocy as she seemingly gets herself into trouble time and again.  This version of Clark doesn't seem as goofy as the Reeve version, more of a boring straight man who happens to be Superman.  

Anyhow.  Back to Superman beating some Nazis disguised as African savages.