Lonesome Shaka Zulu Dove?

This is a long overdue Father's Day post. I visited my family in South Carolina for Father's Day in June, and I've been thinking a lot about my dad ever since I got in my car to drive back to Durham. This post is longer than usual (if there even is a "usual" after such a long hiatus) but he's worth every word.

I could just subject you to my original stream of consciousness, but to spare the potential reader from total glassy-eyed exhaustion I've decided to break up what would have been an even more massive post into a miniseries. You can think of this as the Lonesome Dove or Shaka Zulu of amateur Internet blogosphere musings about Southern fathers.

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

People are mean

Bear with me here. This is not a rant or a "mean people suck" diatribe.

But people are mean. Even when we're not mean spirited, we're mean.

We unknowingly say things that tear at the raw emotions of people who are struggling, and then walk away oblivious to what we've done.

And we knowingly say cutting things when we feel threatened - as if jabbing at a weak spot in someone bigger, stronger, better will make us bigger, stronger, better, too.

The ghost of diets past

My earliest memories of diets and calorie restrictions revolve around Ayds diet candies and Roman Meal bread.

Ayds (pronounced "aids") was an individually wrapped candy that was either an appetite suppressant or a placebo. It had a very strong presence in my childhood home in the early 70s. I clearly remember the chocolate and caramel flavors nibbled before meals by my mother and older sister, usually with a nice hot cup of coffee. I was a kid - somewhere in the 5 to 7 year old range - and I'd sneak in and chow down on those candies by the handful. They were tasty and, I'm sure, oh so chemical. Probably accounts for the tics and recurrent blackouts today. Ayds candies would surely have fallen out of market favor by now even if the PR disaster of having a product name pronounced the same as a dread disease hadn't driven the product off the shelves.

Resistance is futile, puny earthling.

Originally published March 13, 2013

More stress. Drama at work.

Did you think drama would end when you graduated from middle school? From high school?

Did you think it would end when you tore the pages out of that sad old diary you called a journal and trashed them because the embarrassment of reading your own histrionic words made your cheeks flush and your stomach hurt a little bit?

Ode to a Spotted Dog

In my last blog post, I said I'd post about accountability.

The very next day. Accountability, community, and competition.

It's not the next day, and I haven't held myself accountable.

But I've been human.

My dog died. That simple statement carries more depth of emotion and implication for my life than most people realize.

Unresolved resolutions

While I haven't consciously formulated a list of resolutions for 2013, I think a part of my brain has been preoccupied with plans and lists. This has been going on for the better part of the month, but I think the current trend toward mental lists is probably related to the winter cold snap as much as anything else. It's the same mechanism that makes me want to pore over seed catalogs and make garden plans that are far more ambitious than anything I will actually do.