Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Painting

I’ve been doing some painting in the garage. The cabinetmaker built us a cabinet, but I have to paint it before it can be installed in the kitchen. Painting’s not as simple as it sounds. A cabinet has lots of edges and angles and corners, and on every one you have to make sure you don’t leave a little bead or rim of paint. No bulges or drops. Paint is supposed to be smooooooth.

We’re going to have to find a butcher-block surface to put on top of it.

The lulu.com self-published poetry collection is coming along. I paid a graphic designer to do the cover, and guess what, it’s much better than I would have done. A friend now living overseas is going to send some copies of poems I wrote over twenty years ago. Found in a box in the back of a closet. So I’ll wait for those to come in the mail, and decide if I want to include any of them in the collection.

I found an ominous note in the section about ISBN services and getting on to Amazon and Barnes & Noble:

Typically this service gets your book listed in the major online booksellers inventory, such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble; however each bookseller has the final say as to the inventory that gets selected for selling.

The fact that I don’t recall seeing it before now may indicate that it is new, and that my dollars spent buying this service will go (hah hah, sucker!) to waste. A pity to flush dollars, but it would still be possible to buy the book via lulu.com itself. It just feels more cool to say it’s on Barnes & Noble.

Bedtime has already occurred. But things are not quiet. The baby girl is sick and crying. My wife took over for me when the girl was having trouble coming in for a landing, and for that, among many other things, I am grateful. The boy, having not napped at preschool (he always skips it, and we always pay the price when he comes home), is staging a rebellion.

My lovely wife cut my hair today, a first for her. Usually I cut it myself.

The baby girl is so good at using the ------. She said she needed to --- and ----, and she did. Just as promised. We had a good conversation.

I'm going to file for Social Security disability benefits. Amazing how long you can put off something like that. It's not denial (I hope), I just had a choice today: Paint the cabinets, or work on the forms. My hope is that by blogging about it, I'll follow through soon.

My son has developed this act of singing ... a song that we all know ... in the worst possible way. He deliberately awkwardifies it. He's imitating a friend of his who, out of nervousness I guess, decided to sing this song as loud and macho as he could, at a preschool show. But since this other boy flubbed it just a bit and it sounded so awkward anyway, my son has been riffing on that, singing it worse and worse each time. I cringe. He loves it. It gives him power.

I don't know if I have subjected you to it yet, but I have a theory and lecture about how most of the kid agenda, after the age of three, is about Being Significant. They need to be important. And if that sometimes means being annoying, so be it.

In the past few days my son has let down his guard and just plain had fun and been nice, for hours at a time, and I found myself being really pleased to be with him, and several times just told him how much I loved him and appreciated him.

To some friends I have sent the draft of my long and gassy, dry essay on the state of the world. They have made useful comments. Once I incorporate those, I'll subject you to it.






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