A life divided

My day is divided into three parts.  (A) calling on, applying and looking up jobs.  (B) applying for school, looking up possible scholarships, preparing essays and other needed materials for the scholarships.  (C) studying for the State CNA Skills test.

I officially applied for enrollment at UVU today.  Next is to visit the school education and pre-nursing councilors.  School starts on January 5th.

Heidi helped by quizzing me for my skills test today.  I then ruined her circulation by trying to practice taking  blood pressures on her arms.  Didn't get either one and made her arms ache.  What a wonderful nurse!  I will have to turn in my little white dress and the little tri-fold hat.

No luck on the job front yet.  I will be a sqeaky wheel tomorrow at Costco to see if I can get on there.

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My dryer is working!!!

No more wet clothes hanging from my lights over the dining room table!  Collect the boys underware from the door knobs.  We have heat!!!!

Blessings come in various sizes, shapes and temperatures!!!!

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Fired!

Family First decided (let's clarify here, NCUA decided, since they are the devil or, I mean, the controlling party) to "abolish" my position at the credit union.  They released me 2 days before the end of September so that my insurance would end then instead of the credit union paying for another month of insurance.  May they all burn in the tiny recesses of ...... sorry, where was I?  Work, and house seem to be crumbling around my ears.  No strong prospects for new employment yet.  Neither of the two dryers in my home works so I have wet clothes hanging from every surface, hook and ledge.  I am smacked in the face with the stark realization of how poorly I am providing for my family.  This is a bad day.

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Loaves and fishes

Enjoyed a shortened day at work, thanks to my immediate boss allowing me to take a few personal hours in the afternoon.  I met Heidi at the grocery store where we worked between the "rock" of having no money for anything including groceries and the "hard place" of needing to feed the childrem something.  Heidi has been a magician in the kitchen, creating wonderful meals out of the garden and the last few items of a quickly depleating food storage.  The fridge has even been free of condiments the last week or two.  It would have looked like we were cleaning the fridge except for the fact that there was nothing to put back in it.  Now I see how Christ worked the loaves and fishes.  Heidi is working the zucchini and cucumbers.

We walked over to the school and picked up the girls.  This is the third straight day that I have been able to get the kids from school or have lunch with them.

We have a get-together BBQ with 3 neighbors this evening.  We are making a few things to share.  I just took out my second set of loaves of zucchini bread from the oven.  I have also finished simmering a pot of brazilian beans on the stove.  I still need to make some rice.  We have the chicken breasts marinating in the fridge and a package of hot dogs waiting for their turn on the grill when we get over there.

Heidi's sister had a few free passes to the pool this afternoon so Heidi to the C and two older girls and invited one of BG's and C's friends to go too.  M and BR stayed with me.  The kitcken smells like Cinnamin and Garlic.

Friday night!  I'm glad for the weekend.

Maybe I will make some rice pudding tomorrow.  I have a great baked custard style rice pudding recipe  and if I add raisins I will be able to eat it all myself!!

M is getting into the shredded paper again.

Chau

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New addition

New addition to my dream instrument collection. 
It is a relatively cheap bass respectively, a Squire, the little brother to Fender Guitars Co.  It is a beautiful bass with a maple neck and pearl block inlays, modeled after the vintage 1977 Fender jazz bass.  I was 5 years old when it was originally released!  The following is the company write up on it.

Vintage Modified Jazz Bass® ‘77

The Vintage Modified Jazz Bass ’77 evokes the age of funk and the dawn of punk. It’s a retro-inspired gloss black beauty with Duncan Designed™ Jazz Bass pickups, black plastic Stratocaster® knobs, one-piece maple neck with white binding and white pearl block inlays, 20-fret maple fingerboard, and a three-ply black/white/black pickguard.

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Good Reads!

Following Mer's example, I will represent the other half of the library with my "Good Reads"

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My personal goals

This is a list of long term personal goals that I want to accomplish.  They will be posted by my bed.  They are personal goals that deal with personal interests and desires and do not reflect any of my other family or spiritual goals.

1) Finish my CNA certification.
2) Lose weight until I weigh 215 lbs and maintain the weight.
3) Start a business.
4) Pay off the house.
5) Have Life Insurance on myself.
6) Have $250,000.00 in savings.
7) Create and write in a journal everyday.
8) Write at least 10 full stories and have them published.
9) Own a Fender Jazz Bass, an acoustic bass and a Fender Stratocaster guitar.
10) Learn to play the bass proficiently enough to play in community theater.
11) Learn to play the guitar proficiently for fun.
12) Compose and write a hymn.
13) Properly manage my diabetes.
14) See a Dallas Cowboys game in Cowboys stadium with my sons. (both of them)
15) Take my wife on a second honeymoon without worrying about the cost.

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To Richard

There are moments in life that resonate with you, fleeting experiences that have a profound affect on critical points of your life. Some may only take on profundity with the aid of time and perspective as the act crystallizes its impact as a bridge over life’s severe chasms. The act, motivated by simple love and moved upon without complex or manipulative forethought, carries with it the power to soothe, to act as a balm to a fearful and mournful heart. I have experienced such moments. I was the recipient of such an act seven years ago and have never fully realized the impact nor have I expressed the gratitude that I have felt for that expression of love. It came unrequested and unexpected. It was truly a response from a loving Heavenly Father to an unspoken prayer, to a need unrealized by the recipient.

Background:

When my daughter was born, life started to rotate a little slower. The hospital seemed to be chaos to a parent unprepared. The baby was taken from us moments after she was born. She was placed in an ICU unit with little explanation. Her care started with the nurse assigned to the ICU and continued to a supervisor and then to a team of individuals attempting to get my little new born daughter to breathe and retain oxygen. There was, as of yet, no mention of the pending diagnosis that would scare, frighten and throw me abruptly into a hitherto fore unimaginable changing of life’s paradigm. She was stabilized with the use of 4 liters of oxygen pumped into a tiny tent.

I left the hospital and my wife that night, who had yet to see her new daughter or to receive any explanation to her condition, and went to bed at mom’s house. I was awakened by a sobbing wife, requesting that I come meet with the doctors in the ICU. I rushed to my baby’s bedside. A very cold and clinical specialist asked if I was the father and then abruptly began explaining how my daughter was different, what challenges she would face and what to expect for her life. A tender family physician attempted to temper the analytical daggers cutting on my heart but by then the room was spinning and all I could do was mumble to them that we needed to go explain this to my wife, who still had not yet seen nor held her baby.

Life altered on that day. Like the grind of changing gears on a bike, the picture and vision of life cracked. I didn’t know how to put that picture back together because I didn’t know how the new picture was supposed to look. For a few days, all I had was the empty picture frame from where life had once been held.

Not knowing or having a concept of the future but only knowing that my vision of life for my newest daughter had changed abruptly and that she might not experience life, in the way that I expected or understood it, caused me to mourn for her and for myself.

I was still in mourning the next evening. My other children were back home now with me. Heidi was with my daughter in the hospital. I had put the other three children in bed when the doorbell rang unexpectedly. Richard was at the door by himself, holding a Tupperware bowl. I invited him in and he went to the kitchen and dished me up a meal that he had made, under the guise of “wanting me to try it.” When it was ready, he asked me about my baby and how I was feeling. He then sat down next to me, let me eat, and proceeded to allow me to talk, cry and unload for the best part of an hour. He comforted me and gave me the shoulder that I didn’t know that I needed. He listened without judgment and let me mourn. He helped me get it out, to breathe and refocus. When I was done, he left quietly, in Richard’s unassuming way, as if he had done nothing. But for a few moments he carried me when I was afraid of moving forward. He was sensitive to a need and I am forever grateful.

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Beginnings - The Elwood Dead End

The rain fell in waves across the dirty streets, washing the surface filth and decay into the overflowing sewers. Abandoned and condemned, the apartment buildings at the end of Elwood Avenue, named after the late Mayor Durwin C. Elwood, rose into the soggy night sky like tombstones. Elwood Avenue ended abruptly ten feet beyond the last empty building. A forty foot high cement wall, covered in the colors and images of street youth expression, hid the Fourteenth Street off ramp to the freeway, effectively cutting off any through traffic and creating the Elwood dead end.

Lightning cracked, exposing the choked and cluttered alleyways like a beam from a flash light. The doors of the condemned building, once sealed shut, now swung back and forth on rusty hinges, whining and moaning, as the wind and storm played catch.

Edward McClure, or “Eddie” to his regulars, owned a tiny grocery store on the corner of Elwood and Mathis, a block from the freeway and the Elwood dead end. Eddie stood five feet six inches tall and weighed Three hundred and forty one pounds on a good day. He rarely moved from behind the coffee stained checkout counter, which ran along the front window facing Mathis Boulevard. He gave orders and directed traffic from where he sat by swinging and pointing two pudgy fingers, holding a frayed cigar which looked like it had been stopped on.

With three to four days growth across his swollen and greasy jowls and neck, Eddie sat and watched life pass through the hazy, foggy windows of his store. He wore a yellowed tank top, stretched tightly across a bulging, hairy stomach which permanently creased where it rested across the inner edge of the counter. The tank top sat untucked but without reaching the top of Eddie’s stained and weathered blue jeans, which rode low across his hips and covered little in the back where they sat perched atop of a creaky metal bar stool behind the counter.

Eddie leaned back from the counter, against a rack of adult magazines, and ran his left hand through the few remaining strands of greasy hair that spread across the top of his head. He reached for the remote control, nestled in a basket of credit card receipts, flipped on the TV to the late eleven o’clock news and turned up the volume. The store had been empty since early evening and he was bored.

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Beginnings - Banker’s Hours

The concussion of the blast shook the tiny town of Hillbrow. The grayish blue of the early morning winter sky blossomed blood red. Flames shot skyward carrying chunks of brick, charred splintered wood and plumes of smoldering paper. The wispy fingerling morning clouds brightened and then disappeared behind the large black swirling ball of smoke and gas.
The ball rose and spread throughout the sky as if it were spread with a knife. Debris from the explosion began raining from the blackened sky, hitting the ground, denting hoods and smashing windshields of parked cars, littering the narrow asphalt streets and grass, covering the area with smoldering missiles.

Fire crackled and danced throughout the remains of the jagged black smoking fangs of foundation. Dust and tiny bits of unrecognizable material covered the grass around the rectangular mass of flame and smoldering cement. The First Bank of Hillbrow was gone. What remained looked like a huge nest for a mythical bird, as if a Phoenix would rise from the smoke and ashes to claim its perch. Sleepy people began slipping into the streets to see what had shaken them from their Sunday morning slumber.

Jack awoke with a start, as if he were falling in a dream and had awakened at the final moment before impact. He lay there in the same double bed that he had slept in as a child, head up, looking at the dimpled texture of the off-white ceiling. Stretching out with his toes, he yawned and rubbed an eye with his fingers.

Something had awakened him, physically shaken him from sleep. Normally, Jack could sleep through practically anything. He wondered what had dragged him from his sweet abyss. He closed his eyes again; hmmmm, still sleepy. He curled to one side and pulled the heavy comforter up across his shoulder.

“I would awake during the best dream I’ve had all month,” he mumbled. Working his head back into the pillow, he let his breathing slow and felt himself drift away again. Back to the dimly lit bar, she was still sitting on his lap. Her long curls were pulled away from her face and clipped behind her head. She was giggling at his witty remarks. How he had convinced her to come over to his table, he had no idea, didn’t care really. Dreams didn’t have to make sense, they were dreams after all, and this certainly wasn’t realistic for Jack.

He let his eyes drift down her body, from the tight cream colored, sleeveless cotton top, pausing briefly, down her stomach to equally tight pink shorts which displayed ample amounts of perfect thigh. His mind quivered, everything quivered. He could feel his toes clench and unclench in his shoes. What should he say to move this thing along, he wondered. Fortunately, dream time seemed easier to control, strange in a way.

“Cari,” he stammered past dry lips and throat, hoping that he had remembered her name correctly. He paused, waiting and watching her face as it reflected orange and gold from the lights above the bar. The music was loud; she might not have heard him. Boy, he needed a drink about now. He licked his lips and spoke again. “Cari?”

“Yes,” she responded softly, the words almost lost in the sea of music and chatter from the rest of the bar. She leaned into him, putting her cotton candy colored lips to his ear. He could feel her body press against his chest. She has got to be able to feel my heart thumping, Jack thought. He turned and looked up into her eyes, those twinkling, mesmerizing, man crushing eyes.

“How about us getting out of here? We could go somewhere quiet and talk or something?” He knew that it sounded stupid, he was already embarrassed, how desperate could one sound!

She smiled coyly and slid more squarely into his lap. Nibbling at his ear, she whispered, “Let’s go!”

His body was numb with excitement. This was going to be a night to be documented in the history of Hillbrow. Jack reluctantly lifted Cari off his lap, helping those long legs to their feet. He rose from the wooden chair like a drunken sailor, intoxicated with anticipation.

BBBBBRRRRRRIIINNNGGGGG!!! BBBBBRRRRRRIIINNNGGGGG!!!

The phone on the desk of Jack’s studio apartment shattered the moment! Jack nearly fell out of bed, his face damp with perspiration. “Aurggggh,” Jack clamored for the phone, squinting around the room for it in his disorientation. Locating the enemy, Jack swore at it viciously!

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Beginnings - Twilight Surf

It was dusk when Harold left the bar. The sun, a deep orange, still warmed his face as it disappeared into the ocean, reminding him of the 103 degree afternoon of which he had escaped within the darkness of the air conditioned bar “The Black Oasis.”


Two dozen games of pool and eight bottles of beer later, he reemerged into life numb and tired. He stood in the swirling dust in front of the Black Oasis, watching the waves crash across the muted yellow sand of the empty beach across the street.

Harold then turned and staggered down the side alley between the bar and the back of an old, pay by the hour, motel called “The Sea Breeze.” As he walked, Harold fumbled in his pants pockets for his keys. He stopped at the rear corner of the buildings. The alley opened into an unmarked dirt parking area which had exits through both the alley from which Harold had staggered as well as along a dirt trail through the empty, weed choked lot behind the bar. The trail emptied out onto the next block adjacent to a squatty little hardware store with bars on the windows.

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Beginnings - Love You to Death

His mouth tasted like it was full of cotton, thick and dry. His throat felt constricted and sore as if he had swallowed a large rubber ball. Strange noises bounced around his brain, noises that he couldn’t place, causing him disorientation. Grayson slowly opened his eyes and immediately squinted from the bright glare of morning sun light. He, painfully, turned his head away from the light, his neck stiff. After a few moments, his eyes adjusted to the glare and the movement and color struggled back into hazy focus.


Grayson lay, partially covered by an overturned table, in piles of squished boxes, globs of greenish muck and other assorted garbage, in what appeared to be one end of an open air Asian fish and vegetable market. From the noises and movement near what appeared to be the entrance to the market, business was beginning. Shop owners began pulling back canvas tarp coverings and setting out the days offerings for display. The acute smell of old fish suddenly overwhelmed him. He gagged and his body shook, sending waves of pain throughout, revealing numerous other potential bruises or broken bones.

He stifled the gag reflex and attempted to assess his physical state. With what felt like a potential broken ankle as well as ribs and numerous bruising across the torso and legs, Grayson felt like he had been hit by a Mack truck. Instinctively, he felt that he needed to hide. Although he couldn’t remember what had happened to him or how he had come to be there, discarded and broken, in the trash of an Asian market, his brain was now working on overdrive, sending unfamiliar survival signals. His memory was a fog. His breathing was ragged and he had little strength but he responded to the urgent warnings of self preservation.

Customers had begun exploring the market place and were slowly approaching the area where Grayson lay pinned under the table. It would only be a matter of moments before he would be noticed. With some effort, he pushed himself backwards, freeing his legs of the table. He strained and pulled to turn himself around over the piles of trash until he faced the nearest booth. He then began army crawling on his elbows toward it.

The front display tables were draped in stained white cotton sheets which hung to within inches of the dirt floor. The display tables of this particular booth were stacked with 50lb bags of rice. Worming his body under the rice table, he shifted to his left side and wedged himself in and around additional boxes stored there. His body screamed from the movement.

With two swollen fingers, he reached forward and lifted the hem of the table drapery. A paved access road ran along the back of the market. Vender trucks were scattered in the dirt between the market and the road.

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Beginnings - Paying the Tab

The bar had its regulars, most good places do. Tucked under a twelve story, all brick office complex that had seen far better years, in the middle of the downtown walking district of Harrisburg, “Crackers” served an eclectic mixture of white collar suits and college frats, with an undercurrent of darker scowl-faced regular working crowds. The bar consisted of red brick interior walls, cracked leather bar stools and booths with coffee brown wooden tables. A smoke induced haze lingered below the water stained panel ceiling, swirling around a lazily spinning wicker fan and two sets of bare bulb light fixtures emitting a sickly yellow glow against the bar’s welcome dimness and accompanying anonymity.


Julian Dooran had owned the bar since the late fifties. He had purchased it in partnership with old Johnny Ashcroft, a childhood friend. Johnny had been good with numbers and Julian liked people so it seemed natural for Johnny to do the books and for Julian to tend bar. This arrangement seemed to fit and the bar did well.

People rarely met Johnny, who preferred the privacy of his back office, his desk, his calculator and his cigars. He liked the office’s personal exit into the alley behind the building where he and his occasional guests could come and go in secrecy. Julian became a real bar keep in every sense of the word. He kept the pretzel bowls filled, the music moderate and the rough crowds out. He became friend and councilor to thousands of faces. He knew how to listen, when to talk and when to forget.

The bar had originally been called JJ’s Pub, for Julian and Johnny, so that neither one would receive top billing. They had felt good about the name and it stuck. They worked hard and put in long hours to make JJ’s a success.

Women drifted in and out of the boys lives like they did the bar, short stints with no commitment or permanence. There were no real regrets, their bar was their mistress and a very demanding one.

Johnny’s health began failing in the mid seventies. The bouts of chronic coughing became longer and harder and the nausea was commonplace. Johnny took to nibbling on Saltine crackers, from a stash in his bottom desk drawer, to ease his stomach. It didn’t help that he had put on weight over the years which caused constant back pain. Through it all, he managed to stumble in faithfully every morning before the bar opened, ritualistically chatting at the bar with Julian about sports and politics, of which they never agreed, before scooting back to his office to work on the ordering and the bills.

Cancer had taken over Johnny’s body long before Julian could convince him to see a doctor. The diagnosis was grim and the time left was short. Johnny was gone weeks after that first visit. Julian suffered silently over the loss of his friend and business partner, leaving Johnny’s office closed and practically untouched for weeks. The bar paid for a quiet funeral for a few close friends and Johnny’s only surviving relative, an older married sister who worked as a librarian in Chicago. The coffin was laid to rest in a local cemetery, along the back corner under a tree, just as Johnny would have wanted. And with that, Johnny was gone.

In June of Seventy Eight, nine months after Johnny’s death, Julian renamed the bar. It took him a week to come up with something suitable. He wanted something that would make him remember Johnny. After a weeks worth of thought, he realized that his mind kept returning to Johnny’s constant pestering for thosr saltine crackers. It had always made Julian laugh. Johnny would go through boxes at a time, making sandwiches of everything. Julian had joked that if the two partners had ever taken bonuses, Johnny would have wanted his to be in crackers, so “Crackers” it became.

Years following the name change were solitary of Mr. Julian Dooran. The bar became even more all encompassing. He had the back office remodeled to include a bed and private bathroom. He would sleep most weeknights at the bar, returning to his small apartment to do laundry and collect any mail.

The game had begun during those years of the early eighties. Wednesdays and Fridays were poker nights. After hours in the rear game room, across the thread barren green felt of a dilapidated pool table, four to six of Julian’s bar friends would play until morning, often losing hundreds of dollars to each other.

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Beginnings - Missing Hearts

He slowly and deliberately turned the last page of the book with one of the three remaining fingers on his right hand. Feasting upon the final few lines of text, he closed the book with a sigh, sandwiching it between his two palms. A good story was very satisfying. Sliding from the maroon leather recliner positioned next to a tall, narrow twin-paned window pressed between bookcases, Ruben began swinging the book back and forth, pinching it between thumb and forefinger.


With broad strides from his tall, bony frame, Ruben crossed the thick multicolored rugs covering the polished hardwood floors of his personal study. Returning the book to its place, Ruben looped a finger over the binding of a first addition “Moby Dick”, above his head on an upper shelf, and pulled outward slightly until it clicked. A low yet audible humming came from behind the bookshelves on the far wall. Slowly the shelves split in half lengthwise, one side sliding open smoothly, like an enormous walk-in freezer door. The darkness beyond revealed the top in a series of wooden steps leading downward into an abyss.

Ruben slid Moby Dick back into place and stepped over to and through the bookshelves. A black panel of colored buttons and two small computer screens were recessed into the wall next to the stairs. One screen displayed a wide angle view of the study. Ruben glanced at the screen. He could see himself standing in the doorway of the open bookshelf. Ruben pressed a blue button located along the top of the panel. The humming sound returned, more pronounced within the stairwell, and the shelf slid back into place. As the door closed, a series of overhead lights flickered to life, lighting the stairs.

Ruben took the stairs two and three at a time, letting his three fingers slide down the polished wood of the narrow handrail bolted to the wall. The steps seemed to lead deep into the belly of Telston Manor. Ruben finally hit the bottom step and stopped abruptly. Touching a red button on a similar computer panel, the lights in the stairway faded to black. Ruben then pushed open the thick insulated metal door with a forearm and stepped into his playroom.

Rows of florescent lights illuminated the long egg-shaped room. With stark white walls and a light cream colored tile floor, the room held a cold, sterile quality. An expansive bare stainless steel table sat in the middle of the otherwise empty room, a solitary, malignant sentry guarding the hell that dwelt within.

“Is everyone awake?” Ruben called out, in an exaggerated sweet sing-song tone. Low moans began answering his call with a solitary sob piercing the moans.

“Let me go, please!” came a pleading yet terrified whisper.

Ruben’s laugh rolled and echoed around the room. “Just wait my darlings,” he cooed, “soon you will be free to fly away!” He was very pleased with himself and allowed a grin to spread across his gaunt features. How clever he could be with wordplay, too bad that it was wasted on these creatures. He strolled across the playroom to the first of a series of small open rectangular windows imbedded in the walls.

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Beginnings - And then there were none…

The candle light flickered and danced with the shadows across the walls of books and around the ghostly sheet covered arm chairs of the late Dr. Bekker’s study. The air in the room lay thick and musty.
Young Charlie Bass, backup forward for the Warner Heights high school galloping gophers, walked slowly across the bare hardwood floor toward the center of the room, holding the candle out away from his skinny 6’3” frame. His eyes darted back and forth apprehensively, his mouth curled in a grin of fearful excitement.

The old mansion was cold, a stark contrast to the bathwater warm August night outside. Charlie shivered beneath his short sleeved cotton tee shirt. With his free hand, he adjusted the blue KC Royals ball cap that sat perched atop his smooth bald head. Leaning down, he balanced the lit candle upright on the dusty hard wood floor. He then hustled back across the room to an open corner window from where he had found initial entrance, the candle light throwing his elongated shadow against the book shelves.

He reached the window and, with a few hard thumps of his open palm, began clearing away the few remaining boards that had sealed the window. Sticking his head out of the square hole in the side of the Bekker mansion, he looked out at the estate covered in mature oaks and maples. Looking down, he could see the four others huddle around the base of the ladder, chattering and giggling in the darkness.

“Hurry up, get in here! This is so wild.” Charlie hissed.

“So what’s it like in there Q-ball?” Andy shouted. “Have you seen Bekker’s ghost yet?”

“Shhhhhush! You are going to wake both the dead and the living if you don’t keep quiet Andy! Get everyone up here.”

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