The World According to Chuck

Definitely getting a little coot-like here. I take an unusual amount of pride in my rose bushes. I watch my neighbors and comment on what they’re doing. I talk to complete strangers and tell them about my day without being asked.

I found myself yesterday driving around a parking lot to get a spot that was perhaps 10 feet closer than another one. I’m starting to reminisce fondly about the ’80s (”I don’t care what you say, they don’t make shows like ‘ALF’ anymore…”).

And I rejoice in our rain.

The combination of our perfectly seasonable warm weather and some unstable whippersnapper weather produced thunder and lightning last evening, a rarity up here, and now we’re wet and drippy and I’m loving it.

Because I live in an unincorporated part of the county. Not for long; shortly I will become an official resident of Mukilteo, but in the meantime this is frontier country, where anarchy reigns and the sheriff stays busy. And we’ve got a bunch of yahoos in my neighborhood; I see and hear them, and I guarantee they’ll be lighting off fireworks tomorrow. This is the place. Lawless country, the perfect opportunity to blow stuff up legally.

And it’ll be raining big time. Heh. Good luck with that, yahoos.

Whether you called it hot depended upon how willing you were to share all your hot experiences, but yesterday was warm. I walked into the grocery store yesterday and made a little bet with myself, and sure enough, standing in line, the guy in front of me was going on about how, by God, he’d lived in hot places before and this was NOTHING. Everybody has a story.

It was beautiful, though, and I spent it inside for the most part, fan blaring and tied to the computer for income reasons, and at the end of the day I wanted some more heat.

Habanero heat. Just a little pepper goodness, after a long day. Nothing heavy; a little generic salsa dosed with red magic, a few chips, that oughta do it.

So I took down my food scale, measured out salsa in 30-gram increments, then did the same with the chips. A little mental calculation and I had myself a 350-calorie snack.

Not that it mattered. I was going to eat all the damn tortilla chips I wanted. I just needed to know what I was getting, because I’m all over the numbers thing now.

Not just with food; that’s a remnant of an autumn of weight loss, is all. And this is nothing new for me; all of my life I’ve loved adding up numbers, seeing what they told me and where they were taking me. The spreadsheet was invented for me. Math any higher than basic algebra is a mystery to me, but I like my arithmetic.

It’s become more of a tool lately, though, a little trick in an undisciplined life. If, at the end of the day, I can add up the calories and the miles and the dollars and the words and the laundry and the hours, I can somehow see where I managed to slap together a day that wasn’t wasted.

A philosophical issue, then. Wasted. You might scoff. I have memories of such days. And now Freddy Fender. Damn.

So July is hereby Numbers Month on this blog. It is my favorite month, and this year a couple of notable numbers come to pass toward the end — I have the Big Five-Oh, and on the 30th is our 25th wedding anniversary. How that happened is a mystery and a miracle, but I’m feeling very sentimental these days.

So I’ve decided to make lists. Fifty this and fifty that. Maybe a few 25s. Fifty Favorite Films. Twenty-Five Times My Wife Should Have Divorced Me. It’ll be fun. Suggestions are welcome. Tipping is, of course, discretionary.

High pressure.
Cloudless.
85 degrees.
Flowers.
Lawn.
Weeds.
Walk.
Watermelon.
Wimbledon.
Fans.
Iced tea.
Strawberries.
Neighbors.
Water.
Sunshine.
Blogging.

Finally.

Sorry. I was building a den.

Since we shooed John down to the basement, with 1200 square feet to trash, I finally got around to sterilizing his room and taking it over. This wasn’t as hard as I imagined. Turns out you can rent HazMat suits at Safeway (right next to the Rug Doctor).

After that, though, I moved some bookcases in there (also on my to-do list) and suddenly the room got all library-ish. And since I’ve been working late nights recently, and working in the bedroom, where Julie theoretically likes to sleep, I decided to move my stuff in there.

So I did. Moved all my stuff.

Normally I could persuade John to do the serious work. Usually I just go all Laura Petrie on him, whining about how weak and old and helpless I am, and he’ll do the heavy lifting, but yesterday apparently there was either a World of Warcraft crisis or else he had me figured out. No problem, though. I can walk funny for a few days.

So now I have a space of my own, still among the living but just off the hallway, where I can click-clack late at night and laugh out loud at videos and fart and everything.

It’s not perfect, though. Since I had some issues with muscle spasms 18 months or so ago, I’ve been doing computer work from the comfort of a recliner, leaning back, keyboard on my lap, monitor on an extendable arm, striving to get as close to a gravity-free environment as possible. It works, but there’s room for improvement.

And I so be wanting this.

(Link)

NOTES TO BE MADE: Chuck’s 50th birthday in exactly one month.