28 Days of Cruelty

Editor's note: This is the latest installment in Bob's The Geek Speaks series! (In other words, I've been neglecting Unlikely Origins so it has fallen to Bob to give it some sweet blog lovin'.) At any rate, here he is! 

In "The Waste Land" T.S. Eliot calls April "the cruelest month."  I have to respectfully disagree with him and proclaim the cruelest month to be February.  February is also the most taunting month, giving us  hints and glimpses of the spring to come by bring us the sun and temperatures even into the 50s.  A scant 72 hours after that the temperatures are back down into the low double digits and we're shoveling several inches of snow beneath skies the color of a poorly maintained battleship's hull.  If these things are not cruel and taunting, I'm not sure what would fit that definition.

I have lived in Michigan for my entire life.  Every one of my life's winters from 1965 onward has been spent under those leaden skies.  Every February I gain hope and joy at seeing the sun and being able to walk around in, at worst, a light jacket.  Then the mirage falls away and we are pushed down into the depths of the winter again.  It happened again to us last week.  We enjoyed a temperature moderation into the 50s and most of the snow melted away.  We walked around in shirt sleeves outside!  Karinya contemplated going for a run! (Ed. note: contemplated!) We could smell springtime in the air!

Then came Sunday.  It was a great morning; we were able to pawn the baby off on… err… send the baby to spend some quality time with her cousins and we got up late and went to have a nice breakfast and then home to watch some Big Bang Theory (I love that show, have I mentioned?)  We were in the bedroom, which typically has the blinds closed, and eventually got a call from my sister.

"Hey, is it snowing yet down there?" she asked. 

"Of course not!" I replied.  "It's just grey out but not snowing!" 

This was before Karinya opened the blinds in the bedroom.  It was not just snowing, it was SNOWING.  Crazy snowing.  And now I had to drive in it to get K from my sister.  What a cruel month.  The storm set down about six or so inches of snow and a nice layer of glaze on top of it.  Now, four days later, we're looking at another five to seven inches in the next 36 hours.  Cruelty indeed.

But I know that these are the death throes of winter.  I know that there is far less to come than there is behind and soon it will be March.  There is talk on the radio of the Tigers in spring training and the beginnings of discussion about playoff time in hockey.  Karinya is looking through her bridal magazines and is sharing interesting web sites for invitations and save the date and thank you cards.  These are all signs that spring will, well, spring and the crocuses will bloom and winter will finally melt away -- for eight or nine months, at least.  The smells of spring will soon be on the breeze and the wedding plans will proceed at a breakneck pace until the big day.  And winter -- and February -- will be a memory.  For a while.

February may be the cruelest month by my account but the joke is on it -- it's the shortest month and the last month of the deep winter.  There can be no despair when so many wonderful things are just around the dark grey corner!

On Making Adjustments with a New Family

(This post is the latest installment in Bob's "The Geek Speaks" series.)

One of the things that I've had to get used to in sharing my home with a writer and a sometimes crazed toddler is that all of the things I used to do in my bachelorhood are now tossed out the window. I am a creature of habit and ritual; I have a way of doing things that requires time to hone the process and shape it into a lean and efficient system. In the before-time -- before K squared -- I got up at 4:44 am and got to the shower. I was done with the shower and back to my room by 5:05. I was out the door to the car by 5:30. I hit the freeway at 5:37, and knew that I would be at the parking lot at work by 6:15. I had these things down to a science.

Now, I get out of bed at 4:40 and stumble to the shower and try to wash up without falling and breaking my neck. (I have a huge somewhat irrational fear of falling in the shower.) I hopefully get out of the shower and go cuddle with Karinya for a little bit before getting ready for work. Unless toddler K has decided to join us at some point during the night and then she usually takes her half of the bed out of the middle. I'm still working on what time I need to be on the road to hit the freeway at that magical 5:37 point and in the month we've lived here, I think I've managed it twice. Still working on it but I have confidence.

Another of the adjustments that I've had to undergo is eating healthy. Karinya has this habit of wanting to make delicious dinners for me to eat, with foods that aren't filled with chemicals and other additives. I've been used to going to a variety of restaurants and plunking down my money and having someone put food of unknown origin in front of me. She insists on taking care of me!

I've been pretty self-reliant over these last many years. I mean, I know how to do my own laundry and (sort of) clean for myself and pay my own bills mostly on time. But I find myself having someone caring for me in ways that I had forgotten were possible. In that same manner, I find myself wanting to care for someone else -- two someone elses, even -- because it makes me feel good to do so. It takes time to adjust to these things that I'd forgotten existed.

Finally, instead of coming home to a basement apartment and watching TV until it was time to go to bed, I now come home to a family who looks forward to me being there and is happy to see me. When I come in, K rushes to hug daddy with a big smile on her face and Karinya smiles at me and gives me a kiss and a hug. It's like something that comes straight out of Leave it to Beaver, I know.

How will I ever adjust to all of these things happening to me? How will I figure out how many minutes it takes me to go from shower to the car? How will I ever get used to eating all of these healthy foods?

Dear readers, I cannot answer these difficult questions. But I can promise you this: I will, to the best of my ability, enjoy trying to find out the answers to these and a thousand others over the next 40 plus years of being with my family.

On this Veteran's Day...

Bob here, speaking about Veteran's Day.

I served in the Army Reserve for a little more than six years, from 1984 to 1991. It was, apart from Karinya, the best thing that's ever happened to me. I was in during a relatively quiet time for the nation's military; post-Grenada and Panama and pre-Iraq and Desert Storm. I'm so very proud to be a veteran, even though my service didn't entail any really dangerous deployments. Unless you count two weeks in the summer in western Wisconsin "dangerous."

My father was a veteran as well. He was a company clerk for a field artillery unit during World War II. While I spent my time safely in the woods of Wisconsin, he spent his in the sands of North Africa and the mud and mire of Sicily and Italy. Needless to say I honor him a great deal for his service. He never talked much in detail about what he did, though when he did it was with a sense of pride.

My dad was an immigrant. He, my uncle, and my grandparents came to the U.S. from England to seek a better life. Unfortunately, they sought that better life just in time to find The Great Depression. But that's another entry for another time. He was drafted in 1943, still a subject of His Majesty, the King. When he went to tell the draft board about this, their response was that he was an American now.

I was inspired to enlist by my dad. Not encouraged by him, mind you, because he'd seen what war really was and didn't want to take the chance of me seeing it first hand as well. But I did enlist -- as much for personal pride and patriotism as for money for college. My term was, as I mentioned, pretty quiet. But during the nearly 20 years since I left the military, my pride for having served has always remained. I place those who have served before and since my time, who went into harm's way, in Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, far above me on the ladder of honorable deeds but I take pride in being on that ladder at all. I hope that I have instilled in the generation who follows me a sense of that pride; both in their country and in themselves. My nephew and niece, Mitchell and McKenzie, have invited me over the last several years to their elementary school to take part in Veteran's Day activities. Several dozen other veterans, from all eras are also in attendance. We are all overwhelmed by the way the children there embrace us and thank us for our service. It is this, more than almost anything else, that makes everything worth it. I think in many cases we're a little embarrassed by all of the attention because we certainly didn't do any of this in expectation of adulation by seven year old kids. We did it because we felt a need to.

So today, on this Veteran's Day, thank a vet for his or her service. You never know what that service may be, whether it was in the sands of the Middle East, the jungles of Vietnam, the cold mountains of Korea, the mud of Italy, or the quiet forests of Wisconsin. But all of them were there standing at the front of the line to volunteer to go into harm's way so that one day we could sit back and smile at the children playing and laughing -- safely and securely.

The Geek Speaks

This is Bob, taking a turn posting. I'm a little intimidated writing this, since Karinya is the one who has the advanced degree in writing and actually works in a position where she evaluates other peoples' efforts doing so. However, having said that, I will press on.

Karinya is, putting it simply, the best thing that's ever happened to me. I could say so much more, fawning over her beauty and intelligence and making a case for her nomination as mother of the year. However, I'll pass on that since I may be the tiniest bit biased in my judgement.

When we talked about starting this blog, I suggested that maybe I would write a post now and again, thinking that it would be simple to knock out a few hundred words. I mean, I'm a historian by education so it's nothing for me to put together ten or fifteen (or thirty) pages on some minute aspect of history. Want to read my analysis on the rise of the film industry in Weimar (post World War I) Germany? I'll blow the dust off it and send you a copy. But writing about myself and my family takes a little more effort.

Karinya and I are in what's called an age-gap relationship. I'm 45 and she's 26 (for another week or so). But it never really makes a difference to us until we talk about something which, to her, is beyond her memory but to me is something I vividly remember. So there are times when I have to explain to her the amazing excitement about when The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, or when people really were afraid to swim after seeing Jaws in 1975. In return she explains to me the wonders of Jem and the Holograms, a cartoon series of the middle to late 80s. (I don't get it but I do smile and nod when she gets excited about it.) I've gone into the minutae of the controversies surrounding the manipulation of Star Wars' cantina scene, where originally Han shoots Greedo first. (In the remakes, the scene is digitally altered so Greedo shoots first and Han "ducks" to avoid it while also getting off a shot that kills Greedo. (Don't get me started.)) Where was I? Oh. Age-gap relationships. We're in one and while Karinya may be younger than I am by virtue of a calendar, I'm sure that all who know the both of us will agree that she's the more adult and responsible one. This is probably for the best.

So there is my introduction to readers of our little saga. Please stay with us for the ride and don't worry, Karinya will be writing the majority of these entries.

Han always shoots first.