I’m A Ramblin’ Guy

Winter is now behind us, Spring is nearly halfway through, and I'm finding it hard to stay awake long enough to post a blog. My problem is that I'm an early riser. Somewhere between 5:20 and 6:00am my internal clock goes off and it wasn't built with a snooze alarm. I show up for work around 6:30, 7am at the latest. I really hate the internal alarm clock on Saturday. 7am comes and I'm wide awake trying to find something to do around the house that isn't noisy so that I don't wake the sleepers in the house.

As for writing the blog I have a number of ideas that I believe have some validity but again, spending hours on a pc at work don't motivate me to come home and do the same. It was during one of my many trips to the men's room at work, a side effect of blood pressure medication that I'm on, that I had a moment of revelation.

Why not take a number of the random thoughts and put them on paper, or the screen. Fair warning, I'm not going to make much of an effort to censor my thoughts.

• Our cat died the other day, last Friday to be exact. And we're sad around our house and no one wants to talk about it. It was sudden and unexpected. Well, not really. Truth is I took her to the vet and they put her down. She was old, maybe 16-18 years old. We had named her Drooler because she drooled. I was surprised at the options given me by the vet. Did I want to spend time with her before they put her down? Did I want her cremated and put in a special urn that I could display at my house? I'll tell you what I wanted, I wanted her to quit peeing and pooping all over my family room. Any compassion and love I felt for the cat went right out the window the first time I found that where I put my feet while sitting at the pc was her choice of a new litter box. Besides, there is a point that you have to make these tough decisions. I reassured my wife that if my mother-in-law showed the same symptoms that I would be happy to put her down too.
  
• I was in a rather unusual conversation with someone the other day and at the end of the conversation I walked away and started thinking about sperm. The conversation had nothing to do with sperm; I just wondered after finishing the conversation about what would I be like if a different little swimmer of my dad's got to the egg instead of the one that did. I mean one little swimmer basically was in the swim meet of his life, odds of winning the race anywhere from 50 to 500 million to 1 and all of a sudden my dad's 23 chromosomes and my mom's 23 chromosomes collided and I'm here years later wondering what would have happened had a different sperm won. Nobel Prize, serial killer? Who knows?
  
• I'm thinking about selling my truck. I have a 1996 Ford F150 that I have owned since 1999. It has been a good truck considering that except for regular oil changes I have done nothing for maintenance over the past 10 years. Yes, I replaced the u-joints a few years ago, new brakes, tires, minimal stuff but nothing major. Now my "Check Engine" light comes on and I'm feeling betrayed. And the guys at Ford, the engineers, they are sadistic evil men and women. Both of my oxygen sensors went bad. The engineers put the first sensor in an easily accessible area of the engine, easy to access, easy to replace. I was singing their praises! Then the slime sucking pig dogs placed the second one in a place right near the catalytic converter that was as easy to replace as say shoving a baby back into the birth canal. And that's what's got me thinking about selling the truck. I replaced the sensors and figured that I spend most of my time driving the bed of the truck around town so it might be time for a change. Besides, I don't have a dog anymore so what's the need for a truck.
  
• Mothers Day. To honor mothers our church congregation decided to serve the women in our congregation cake and ice cream during the third hour of our meeting schedule. The men would cover the responsibilities that the women had for that hour. I was asked to do "Sharing Time" in Primary, 15 minutes with about 20-25 kids ages 7-11. Plus I had to conduct the meeting. Oh my gosh! I think that I would rather put my private parts in a vise and deal with the pain than do that again. If I had to do that more than three weeks in a row I might kill a few of them or at the very least myself. Kudos's to all of you that teach children and have compassion to do it week in and week out. I felt like I was herding cats.
  
• I finally broke down and hired a company to take over the lawn fertilizing chores. What a great feeling to see someone else take care of those responsibilities. And I feel really good about the decision to fertilize. Until now. I don't know what I've been doing all of these years because it hasn't been fertilizing. Yes my grass is greener now, yes, the unwanted weeds are going away, but DANG! I didn't think that lawn would grow like it has been. Now I'm going to have to mow twice a week. Maybe there is something to that brown and rough look in a lawn.
  

So this is just some of what's going on in my head. Thinking out loud can be therapeutic.