NOW IT IS TIME FOR SOMETING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

IT’S HALLOWEEEN



Meh. Whatever. In fact, I think the case can be made for more spirituality on Halloween than on All Saint’s Day, because the latter was developed as a recruiting tool used to ultimately convert and supplant follower from the pagan beliefs at the time. Ees true, don’t shoot me, I am just a messenger!



BREAKING NEWS


Oh all right. I am a big guy. My sister changed her profile picture on Face Book to one of us, taken who knows how many years ago. I seem to swallow her up. SD, who has been undergoing chemo for growths found in her lymph nodes, is doing find and is almost finished with her first round of treatment. She says it looks like that it will get all of it, and that is a good thing. Tee Jay is on Face Book as well. I now know this because she sent word asking if I had a profile and could we be ‘friends’. Eh, I said yes. After all, I am IN Omaha now. Besides, she may well be off on some other stuff, doing some real cougar prowling.

But the REAL breaking news can be found in two developments. Which one should I lead with? Both have immediate and future impact on me and both of them while predictable and not that surprising, still are worth journaling about.


AGAIN, SAME AS IT EVER WAS…

My wife and I essentially eloped, though there weren’t too many that thought we would make it to the altar. I think about not having a ceremony and I do think that I would have enjoyed the pageantry of the ceremony, from small details like the invitation, to finding a good caterer, which I had if Tee Jay and I had been able to survive our broadside and not break up.

Because of my disconnection between my blood relatives and me, I never considered the impact of not having my family there at my ceremony. A standard ideal when entering a relationship with a person who has strong ties to there people has been, your family will be ‘my family’, meaning that I would mirror the kind of relationship that they would have with their family members. I also understand that is not what the daguerreotype is for getting married and there is more pomp in the average shotgun wedding than was in mine. I was cool with it and felt more for my ex, who missed out on the shindig that should provide the map for the direction of the ceremony and the lives of the couple at the center of the fuss. We had discussed and figured we could have a re-commit at the five year mark and try to put bells and whistles on that. The main thing of this is that I know how it is important to SOME people but unimportant to me. It is also how I knew that I would do anything that I could, including ‘zero out’ and leave hand to mouth, in order to go to Chicago to walk my youngest sister down her aisle.

Her sisters, not so much. They both bailed on her.


I told her that I did not want to hear excuses from them because I am ONLY concentrating on MY BEING THERE. The main reason that I did not want to hear their excuses, however valid that they may have been to them, is that there is NOTHING that would have kept me from filling my duty. My angst about going and participating in her wedding when I know the expense is going to put me behind the 8-ball, with trying to settle out her and no COLA increase for next year for Social Security Benefits, has to do with the internal conflict I am going through. My self-interest v. ‘duty and obligation’ is a fight that I wish that I did not have to have with people who are part of my so-called family.  I tend to advise people to act in their own intrests first, because I have yet to master that trick and see that as the difference between the 'things I need and what I recieve'.

Yup, Captain Stupendous and I are the ones who get called on when there is no one else left to call… after all, it gets left up to us, anyway.





LIVABILITY
In Saturday’s Omaha World-Herald is an article that spoke to the attraction that Omaha has for the desired demographic of college educated people, young people, seeking work and place to raise a family. This really is a nice town but I am still a long ways from being settled enough to make a comment on. I mentioned that there seems to be a level of tolerance, but you can find that in most college town and places that have diverse employment opportunities. One way that I think it is safe to say that I will give my best effort is that numerous hills (and a lot of them are SUPER steep) don’t seem to trouble me much at all. Rode up to Target and while Nebraska saw it as ‘far’ from my home (ooh, I am going to say that again… ‘From MY HOME!’), the store did not seem far to me at all. If it were summer… maybe I will get a chance to ride north on Dodge Street as far as I dare to go, just because.






Memorial Park, across from UN-O, has a draw on me that is not too different from the pull that the city itself has on me. Each time I strike out, I continue to confirm whatever it was that made me first think there would be a reason to come and live here. I will prolly ride out and do my running there and on the river walk adjacent to the Missouri River. Normally, I simply start running from where it is am living and figure out a route, and I will do that too. But it would be such a waste not to get out and go to some of the parks here… in fact, did I mention there is a nice park and trail across the street from me? Visually, the city certainly passes the ‘eye test’.

I think that Nebraska and I climbed our first plateau Saturday as well. We had a nice conversation and some of the misunderstandings we have been going through lately began to clear. We are not at a detente as I think we are at a period of rapproachment, with the air between us having more amicablity with each other than a forced relaxation of tensions. It is about creating our own environment, and our brunch was a clear step in that direction.

Thanks for all the comments I got about what amounts to an emerging profile of my ‘sexual personnae’ (even if I am not using the term correctly, I like it and YOU prolly should do more than look… so go and read the book!). There is still more for me to say on the topic, so it will be cropping up here and there in these webpages. Apologies in advance if some of the areas are more than what you would like to hear… I think that my posts will be like a ‘Red Shoes Diary’ script, only better and more realistically written!!