F is for Fat, Fitbit, and Fitness

I’ve tried hard to not become “that guy.”

But, yes, I’ve had to cancel crap with the term, “I have to go to the gym.”

Grant you, I hang out with zero people that would actually use that term in any way, shape, or form. Seriously. That’s why I hang out with them. But, when I go to the gym, deep down, I do feel a smidgen of a connection with those muscleheads. I can’t truly explain it. I look nothing like them.

NOTHING like them.

But I am fascinated with them and their dedication to their art. Yes, exercise and fitness, is, technically, an art. Think about it. There’s a piece of a creation, a pathway to success and then the fine modifications to approach to achieve those ends.

Here's the thing. I'm not necessarily attracted to them. Most of them have personalities that are fairly focused-and focused on things I have little or no interest in. Conversations start with what you have in common. But their commitment to the gym is something of envy. The results are evident. But when holidays roll around and I see them in the morning and again at night...still there, a few things become evident. They are unemployed, most likely, something I have a hard time looking politely upon. Or they are an athlete, and this is their job. Cool, cool.

Or Mom's paying. The evidence is there. If I wish to be like them, I have to eat two teaspoons of food and stay at the gym for 48 hours at a time.

Now, I’ve been going to the gym for years, believe it or not. Not because of any true wish to get bigger. I will admit, having a massively fit partner does motivate one to get into the weight room. But there was something satisfying by doing the exercise and my emotional state, even if the workout session was terrible or not productive. I had friends there.

Then I moved here. I went to the gym, but didn’t do much beyond that. I wanted to reclaim that feeling, to connect again in my new adopted community, but it wasn’t happening. With a beach so near, fitness takes on a new, wonderfully horrid demand.

And I didn’t have the abs or biceps to support it.

Dammit.

The body wars against myself began.

I’ve always been fat. Quit smoking, that was difficult. But eating? That’s all I have. It’s my drug. I don’t even drink. So, when the husOtter gave me a Fitbit, I took it seriously. So seriously, I didn’t rush into it. Every week was a micro goal to just ease me into the lifestyle change. LIke...wear it for 48 hours. Next week? 72 hours. Slowly but surely.

A Digital Reminder that You're Still Kinda Going To Need to Do Some Work

Eventually, I started walking more. Then I started to count calories.

And the fat melted off. I didn’t realize that the simple decision to pour one measurement of food into a cup was a way to melt a pound off a week, as opposed to sitting and just clearing a bag of chips. Getting ready to see a movie, knowing I’d have popcorn and cutting down on lunch. Knowing visitors were coming and saving up calories.

And I dropped fifty pounds.

But I still hated myself in profile.

It's a profile. It's not mine. Cause then I'd hate it.

I know, I know, of all things.

So I started to go the gym. ALOT.

I even hurt myself, like, numerous times.

And, after a year, I realized--

I still hated my profile.

But?

I was much more okay with it than I was before that point. Because, in the end, I was still a work in progress. I think it’s, like, called competitive theory or something like that? Where you know you put in the work, and the work causes the pride?

Yeah. That.

So, here’s to the continuing war on fat. We are, at least, doing SOMETHING. Wear that fitbit. Be self-aware. And the fitness will help.

E is Education

Before everyone jumps up and down, hear me out.

Education was not broken before George Dubya accepted fistfuls of cash to start the No Child Left Behind Act. An unpopular puppet of the Far Right, he needed someone in  the nation to listen to him.

He later would try to invade the wrong country. Yet, somehow, we let him make some major decisions about education.

Ironic given that he failed out several schools or just passed.

Education was in a sorry state, but it was not broken. Take a look at it. Education, when it became compulsory, needed teachers. We’re talking the dawn of time here, people. And it needed caring people. Prior to that point, it was the few educated men in the nation who would teach in the one room school houses, for those kids who couldn’t be made useful in the fields. This made sense for the time. Then unions came around, and, because they’re awesome, asked that companies stop looking that their bottom lines and stop employing children. Corporate America shivered and was pissed. These kids, now, needed to be part of the new workforce. They needed basic skills. And American education was born. Those kids could learn to read and write and do math-and really help business and economy thrive. Made sense. Worked over in Europe. So we followed the Eastern European model and things got underway.

Women. We needed teachers and there was this vast untapped workforce during those times after the Civil War. Women started to also retrieve higher degrees of all subjects and could become teachers. And it was awesome. They now had viable income and could support the family by going with children to their schools.

Understand, I’m not trying to make sexist comments. These are the broad strokes of history being painted for you, so I can make a point. Woman have run education. To this day, it has been one of the few places where women have made the wonderful strides in equality. Kids were being educated by women and seeing them as leaders and the power of such perception will march onwards. They were principals. They were the teachers. They were the aides.

And, because of the idiot men who run this country, the culture still saw them as second class. The glass ceiling still applied to those female teachers and their budgets. Even the men who got into teaching. Nope. Teachers were paid squat, because, in the eyes of the culture, they were the wives of men who had jobs. In many regions, the concept of a ‘living wage,’ is not even a teacher’s pay.

Then? Everyone turns and says education is a mess. The culture has done little to support it. And, since everyone has gone through some school and pretty much rejected it (if they didn’t, yahoos like Trump wouldn’t even be considered to be president) and then started nodding that education was rotten.

Literally, out of nowhere. Reading scores? Fifth highest in the WORLD. However, yes, kids scored lower than other counties on the other counts. And the gap was widening.

Because, as we know, America isn’t too keen on change. When farming became an industry? And students didn’t need to stay home over the summer? Did they go to year round? Nope. Why? Not really sure. When the rest of the world lengthed their school year, week, and day, to encompass all the more information in the world? Nope.

And politics would then blame the usual suspects. Unions. Bad teachers they can’t fire. And to fix it?

They recommended testing.

Testing.

Huh?

Not only testing, but compulsory, 5 weeks worth of testing. No longer school year. No knowledge of what is on the test. The argument, Dubya put forth, was that they could see what the kids were doing wrong and we could fix it. Now, there are THOUSANDS of tests out there. But the lobbying for these tests came from a group called Pearson.

Yeap, a publishing corp. Now their tests were required, annually, and they had to print and support ALL of the tests.

And teachers, reeling, had to comply.

Or be fired.

The humor of this, of course, is evident.

They don’t care about education.

They care about money. Follow the money. In fact, it’s now down to a poorly written, unresearched curriculum. So now? Teachers can’t adapt for their own microcosm of a classroom. They have to use the words the print provides.

The money comes from the districts to the publisher and the government. And then the government can fire teachers, since the kids are failing. Failing a test no one has seen and no one actually sees results for. Tests that aren’t normed: as in, a fourth grader should have a basic dolch vocabulary of X amount of words.

None are included on the exam.

Instead, the test is written on a fifth grade level.

‘Cause that’s where they can fail.

And no one is saying A THING.

It’s frustrating.

It can be fixed. The drawback of that is...we need some cultural changes.

*)  Attract people (of either gender), with a basic living wage that is supported by the averages of the community they live in or move to.  Now, here’s the tidbit. You’ll attract teachers to better paying areas. A teacher who might be willing to drive to Orlando from the farms to get better pay. That happens with any job and shouldn’t necessarily be put down.

*)  Administrators and board members shouldn’t get more that five times the teachers they work with. Why? That way, if they want to raise their pay scales, they have to do the same of those they work with!

*)  Do not base teacher pay on poor tests.

*)  Use normative tests like the IOWA Basic and give them yearly. Yes, you heard me. Get a record of how students are doing. That part is totally okay. But don't start from scratch. Don't make it auditory. Don't put in movies. Make it plain old reading, carrying vocabulary from the level of the student, the length of the student's attention span. Not three pages of reading. One.

*)  In this immediate reward world, the rhetoric needs to change. When a student forgets their homework at home, it’s late. Don’t run it in to them. They suffer those consequences. WHen a student is failing, the question isn’t to the teacher as in why--ask the student. Let’s make Americans responsible again. Then ask the teacher, “what can we do, together?”

*)  WHen a student fails, have consequences. No extra credit.  If they fail the test? No worries. If it’s being used to diagnose ability level, failure is always an option. But it shouldn’t be punitive.

*)  Start to encourage schools to employ multiple intelligences. Arts, math, sciences, more arts and such should be made good again. People, as usual, yell at school for not having these things any more, but, since they have to pay money in a district to buy tests, guess what gets cut? Encourage performing arts schools.

*)  No vouchers. No government money to private schools that pick and choose their populace. I do not want my taxes going to faith based programs that I do not wholly approve of.

*)  Keep open Deaf schools.

*)  Encourage huge lunch programs. Make only good food, even the bad food. A nation marches on its stomach.

That’s just my view.

D is for Dogs and Dying

I held her as she passed on. I made sure of it. I had heard that dogs smell stuff more than they see and hear. So I made sure that pulse point, my wrist, was right before her nostrils.

I am surprised that I even had a pulse still.

Because my heart was stopping.

Rarely can I say this, and, yes, as a writer I always have to say something, but this is the hardest thing I ever had to do. She had been suffering for months, really.

And that sentence causes an extra twinge in my heart when I typed that.

She was diagnosed with intermittent lameness this past summer, the victim of untreated Lyme disease. She had been bitten by a tick over the previous summer, on a road trip to Wisconsin, and since we didn’t know, it went untreated. Her legs stopped working. She started to just drag her fluffy butt around the house. This, strangely, did not alarm us too much.

Really, Pops? Another photo? Humans with babies don't take this many pict....oh, they do. 

She was living. She was barking. She had a new, younger pup of a sister and the two played and played, all the wonders of being a dog splattered out all over the house. She would occasionally feel her age with the legs bit. A baby aspirin would return her somewhat, but too excitable a moment, she would lose control of her tinkles. And then she would cry.

Cause she had an accident.

With me working as a special education teacher as I am. I slowly made the necessary adaptations needed for her to continue a life that was not like her sister’s. Floors were covered. Afternoon meetings were shifted to the morning so I could get home on time, so she didn’t have to hold her bladder too long. Slings were purchases to hold her hunches up a bit more so she could try to walk. We started to consider getting her a wheelie bit, but then we realized….she’s really, really old.

She not only couldn’t get up, she wasn’t particularly in the mood to do so. Sleeping became paramount. We’d shift her throughout the day. From the bed to the living room. To her food. Back to the bathroom, then to our bathroom so we could watch her. THen back.

No, really, I'm good, right here. Smoosh-face and all.

We lied to ourselves, saying it was because she wanted to see us. Okay, while not a total lie--we slowly realized, she was only living to make sure we wouldn’t be sad.

That’s a damn good friend.

We tracked her time. Before bed, we’d put a check if the day was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for her and for us. And then the moments piled up. The bad started to outweigh the good. She couldn’t seem to stop urinating on herself and the tears, hers and my own piled up.

Here’s the thing, I’d put down family dogs before.

Why was this one so dang difficult.

It’s because I’m one half of a male couple. We could adopt, but we had elected not to. And the weight of that meant that our dogs took a certain, increased, importance. She didn’t deserve that much stress, honestly. She deserved to continue to be a dog until the day she passed.

But, also, as part of that composite that defined our wee family, she had the right to be loved up until the very end and know she was safe. And I was going to escort her across that bridge. I miss my grandparents. I know I’ll my parents. I’m curious to see if I’ll miss my brother, but that might be a different novel.

This, this was something I really had to have inner strength for.

If you’ve been following this blog, I went from a very religious man, to a non-religious man, to sorta religious. Agnosticism seems to play with my fancy. I know there’s more. I hope there’s more.

But not for me.

For her. She deserves huge cornfields where the popcorn falls freely, where pizza crusts can be stolen from magical plates, and you can poop anywhere you need to go. If you can even poop at all. In a way, this is the glory of world that is multi-faithful. I also understand, too, that dogs don’t need to have such petty things as a belief system. They just need to know where the next piece of string cheese is coming from-and that, is the true Glory. A faith so internalized that it doesn’t need to be stroked by ritual and worship, but, instead, it fulfilled by daily good deeds…

….and doggie biscuits.

So, in the end, I hope she’s found the heaven she deserves for being a damn good dog. I wish I can so be richly rewarded for being a damn good, what, person?

She accepted her fate with grace, the pain finally ending. No more accidents; no more internal struggle between being a good dog without accidents and the body deciding otherwise. No more worrying if you can’t reach your food bowl before the puppy snarks down your kibble.

It is said that pets can teach us so much. Dang, I wish it was just grammar and standard calculus. About the importance of life and how everything is temporary?

Who knew a canine would be able to do it with such depth before any philosopher?

One of the few images you'll see of the author...discussing kibble with his eldest corgi daughter.

C is for Coming Out of the Comic Book Closet

In the world of social media, especially the world of Facebooking, it’s all just too easy to click. In fact, when I saw a friend post that she was interested in attending a MegaCon for comics and all-things-geeky, I lost my shit. I was like, “DUDE! You are into that kinda stuff? I’m totally and X-Man fan and love the rare Alpha Flight, heck, I even have an original…”

“Wait,” she said over the wire, “you’re into comic books?”

This led to an interesting conundrum. She elaborated that she liked the sneak peeks of movies and entertainment, but did not read comic books herself and hasn’t, ever, really. But she liked the movies!

And that’s waaaay cool.

See? I have a husOtter and he’s so awesome, he makes me proud to have him on my arm. He makes me proud to have a home. I work, daily, with making sure his comfort and joy is of the utmost importance. And that pride makes it easy to face the music with these flat-earth, Trump loving, Southerners.

“I am gay. Stop talking like that, please," I frequently have to repeat.

And they flip out. Coming out of the closet was a breeze. I worked so hard to find the dignity within myself, that I know that being who I am is the greatest of my achievements. I feel little shame in admitting that I’m gay.

But the comic book closet is a bit different.

If you squint really hard, you can see the author sitting in there, trying to hide!

I noticed something in my previous position. No one watched the television programs. They would ask what television programs I would watch in small talk; I had to invent shows instead of admit that I was running home to see the Warner Bros. Batman: The Animated Series. Part I would blame on the fact that I was the youngest person they had ever hired, at a mere twenty-two. But as the 20 years scooted forward, I noticed that my flying out to experience the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas I had to keep to myself. See, those churchies could justify my flying to the land of hookers and gambling. But to ride rides based on Paramount’s franchise?

That would be weird.

I could find kinship with others over Disney, thank goodness. Disney is a bit more universal in appeal. And movies, yes, have made it a bit easier for the comic book closet to open. Many non comic readers are seeing some excellent films, like The Watchmen and The Dark Knight and are impressed with the quality of the movie. So they go watch them and we have some commonality,

I sadly moved to a town so small that there was no comic book shop any more. Besides, with moving across the nation, I couldn’t cart all those wonderfully colored pages with me. I had to sell and downsize. Still, there’s digital readers, thank goodness, and my urges were fulfilled.

Nothing like feeling like crap after a long night and then waking up sick. You call in sick and then dig into a stack of Deadpool or Justice League: Dark.  

Nice and spooky, Justice League: Dark is....

One would think that having survived the arduous process of coming out of the closet and accepting my sexuality, I would be fine with this, would have been able to generalize this to other things about being different and unique and awesome.

The fact is, even though I am a firm believer that coming out is much easier for people today--it is still a process. And dealing with it is still laboriously emotional.  People don’t realize that coming out of any closet, something that isn’t part of the majority’s norms is incredibly deep. One has to come out to oneself. Then accept that reality. Then consider the impact on the immediates of family and friends. And then learn to swallow hard when the extensive stupidity and ignorance rears it head in laws and offhanded comments. Good people still say stupid things.

Luckily, I learned as teacher that there’s this thing called a teachable moment. My coworkers are wicked, deep seated, most-likely, haters. Their jokes, benign in their approachability illustrated a deep frustration and critique of certain groups.

That changed when, after several lunches, I gauged that talking about spouses was completely considered in the culture of my new job. So I did the same as them.

They quickly became educated. Some were fine and realized many things. Others? They changed as recently as last week, mostly for good.

Here’s the thing. I shouldn’t have had to gauge shit. I should be able to talk about who I am and what I love, regardless. I shouldn’t have to listen to their conversations and figure out what was the social norm.

But that was then.

We have all come so far.

I heard them tease the new hire, after catching her watching Young Justice on her phone on her Netflix account. My response?

“What episode was she watching? I missed last week’s.”

And I stepped a little farther out of the closet.

B is for Blogging

This is starting to sound like a children’s ABC book, I’m starting to realize!

And it’s awesome.

Okay, we aren’t on a streak just yet, but we’ve made it to step two of this blogging bit. Time for some deeper thoughts and moments to myself that I can bare publicly.

Heh. I said, “bare.”

My point? I’m lucky. I’ve noticed that I have something that, well, it should be, cheaper than therapy. I’m a gigglesnort. I’m an optimist, regardless of what the media wishes you to think. I’m fully aware that crime, in all honesty, is on it’s way down (and that one idiot who shoots up a public location gets all the attention); that the economy is rebounding; that things are actually okay.

Yet I write about horrible, horrible things.

Monsters. Throat slits. Violence against fellows.

You know, those kinds of things. Even my sexy scenes tend to be, well, rough.

Here’s the thing. We all have dark sides. I’ve seen tykes going all out with a stomping fest on an ant’s nest, long before they are exposed to a Fox News hate-parade. It’s pretty much inante. Make sense. Primal human had to break the necks of their food as they were learning to stand upright. They needed to have a violent place to go, before they could invent drive through at the local Stuckey's.

It’s in all of our brains. It’s the reason we ride rollercoasters. It’s why we buy tickets to The Conjuring 2. To feed that part of the brain. Not to keep it fresh. But to keep it satisfied.

Does society corrupt? Well, yes, yes it does. Research shows it left and right. How does it do so?

That dark side seeks expression. When you watch a violent programme? Sure, it might be satisfied. My thing is, if media corrupts, the numbers don't add up to the profound ratio. Too many people are exposed to the angst that is Trump.

Expressions are awesome.

Wait, okay, maybe the numbers DO add up.

It’s why scary stories tend to sell better than romances.

But those have a place, too, on the other end of the spectrum.

Today, however, we’re talking about the Dark Side.

And I’m lucky, because I’m an artist. And I’m married to one, so I’m able to see this better than most. The power of the arts is expression, mild to wild. We have that outlet. So, when the blues from my everyday job flit into my skull, I’m able to kill a room full of kittens (in the literally sense, please. Nothing wrong with kittens, natch). I’m able to have that horrible date that ends up with chains and lost eyeballs. You, dear reader, just read about the eyeball. But, keep in mind, I reached said eyeball long before you did.

As such, my husOtter is very much the same. When things are going well? He paints. When things go south for a bit? He’s painting with blues and blacks and browns. It’s all equal.

And it is much cheaper than any therapy. And, in that way, I save money. I don’t need to go to a psychiatrist. Well, I don’t need to go to one right away. Nothing wrong with talking to a therapist every now and again, my friends. But, see, even this little open-ended journal entry hits me where I need it. Like keeping a diary for the open minded. Fiction or non, every bit helps the one that created it.

If you buy the book, it really does help, too, like, with the money and such.

So, when you create, think of the cleansing that’s happening and how vital it is, not unlike water, fiber, exercise, and a decent sneeze.

I get that now.

I bring this all up as I'm reading my book. There's angst galore, to be sure, but there's a bouncy-ness to it all. A happiness and, really, it's because things, in the end, are truly going well. A Star Wars movie, to be sure. Let's be real here, a war is raging, there's always conflict of some sort, within and without, but that omnipresent in ALL tales. How it plays out says volumes about the author, on several levels.

A is for Authoring

A waste of time.

Having gone through a bit of a funk, writing had developed into a waster of time.

Sorry about that. There’s that horrible moment, when life, the universe, and everything yanks you out of reality. In this case, a beloved dog’s passing, a heart’s breaking, and a year passing. A flu bug then took the opportunity to smuggle itself into my home, using the power of stress to lower our collective immune systems. Given my exposure to so many youth in my day job, my system bounced back; my husOtter’s still crawling back into existence.

And writing became a waste of time.

So I’m using this month, blogging from A to Z, just to catch up on authoring. Writing. Freeing my mind to those stressors and to making plain writing over a variety of topics. It’s something I’ve noticed quite some time ago.  I’m happy-go-lucky, even in the worst of times.

Even if the worst of times.

Because I write.

And when I don’t author? I suffer. It’s like, when I write a tale of monsters, that monster is really all of those annoyances that pile up into something terrible and I can slay it. When I criticize a film, I’m able to exercise that part of my psyche that breathes in the shadows and needs to take flight before it wounds my heart and soul.

But it takes energy. And when your energy is depleted from such unique experiences as the passing of your beloved eldest corgi, you pour what energy you have left into finding the will to live than to writing about witches and demons and heroes and old love anew.  So I dailed down.

My writing suffered.

So I”m back and the timing is perfect.

I’m authoring.

And this is the first entry. I’m looking to focus on the nonfiction, here on the blog, if that’s at all possible, and seeing if this writing is going to do the healing that needs to be done.

I will admit this. With the authoring, I’m also re-reading my book. This is my seventh novel, but the first one I really took my time and started composing. And I like the direction it went. It’s, to me, the most commercially viable of my creative processes, and I’m thinking I’m having there. But there’s something else I’ve noticed about myself.  The more reading I’m doing, the less writing. Frequently, I hear about how reading and writing go hand in hand, but I’ve learned from teaching that this isn’t always the case. Think about it. I know people who can read technical manuals with full memorization.

Can’t recreate a joke to save their lives.

Nor can they write fiction.

And I’ve read some of the best fiction writing from friends.

But they only read Harry Potter twenty or thirty times.

I don’t get it. So? This Blogging quest will be my goal to balance between the two. And, hopefully, I’ll be able to start my next novel at some point. I can only hope. Care to join me?

I plan on authoring some.
So I find it only fitting that I start here, with the concept of authoring. I've always approached it as an art form, instead of a form of work. Even the greatest piece of fiction is a reflection of it's writer and I think I need to point this out. All this time, when I talk to people about their work, I'm trying to look only at their own writings. But the insight is sometimes profoundly unavoidable. As a teacher of writing, numerous times, I observe parts of their life, symbolically played out. Frequently, I try to reject that as creative insight, but it does happen.
But I write. And they write. And this is where the expression happens, that magical tap to the inner feelings and emotions that escape our facial pronouncements.
Too often, as my friend who authors the technical manuals, many don't have that moment, that boulevard, to verbalize their inner feelings. This counts for all arts. Cooking. Painting. Conversation (yes, it is an art), sports (don't believe me? Watch a player angry, sad, disgusted, or content and see how they play). My art is right before you. You are walking that road to my, well, soul, I guess.
Let's start here.
It explains why we get so upset, so cranky when criticism happens. It's like kicking our children. We react. We shouldn't. Because, when we post, as I am doing right now, we are asking for that criticism. And, that, too, is part of the arts. What good is a painting never shown on the walls?
Peace.