White Dust Table
Tuesday, Apr. 29, 2003

Rather than sit inside and type this like I have been doing, I'm out on the patio with my mom's bougainvillea. Both it, my palm and keyboard, and my cheapo digital camera are sitting on the old, rusted patio furniture from my youth. My wrists are also sitting on the table too, technically.

And if we're just naming everything that's sitting on the table, well, my wallet is there also because the chair I'm sitting at, one from inside, makes by rear hurt when I have my wallet in my back pocket.

I read recently when reading the alt.travel.backpacking.cheapos or whatever it is newsgroup that a fat wallet is harder for a pickpocket to get than a thin one. However, the same person who said that also indicated that when he had a fat wallet, it hurt his back, so he switched it to the font pocket, where, according to him, a pickpocket could get it easily.

I'm sorry, but I have been told since childhood that keeping my wallet in my front pocket is the way to thwart pickpockets. Or, another better way that has always worked for me is to just be me. I don't really inspire folks to try to take my stuff since I look like one of the "help" taking a break from moving boxes or something.

The reason I have a chair from the kitchen is because this wrought iron furniture was most recently painted white, in about 1981. The remaining paint has totally oxidized. So if you sit on it, you'll get old childhood chair prints in white titanium dioxide on your rear. It appears that they were painted a rusty tan coat under the white. I'm sure this is some rustoleum stuff as I do not remember these ever being painted that color.

They currently look like a very talented artisan spent a lot of time making them look distressed. I really like the way they look, despite their near total non-functionalness. Well, if you are in the mood that you don't care if you get white stuff all over you, they're great. Well, no, they are still uncomfortable.

Not only that, and I've never typed on this table until now, but the whole thing wiggles back and forth regardless of it's massive weight.

Before we lived in this house, the table and chairs were at my parent�s former-former house, the one on Guntersville lake. They were in the attic. When mom and dad moved to the temporary house they lived in for, I think, just under a year, the set came over here. Since then, Aisai and I have bought paint to paint it, and stored that paint in the garage for the last five years.

Ack, I'm having what I think are little bitey micro-gnats attack my juicy human hands.

The most memorable event surrounding this table has already been written about in my journal here. In fact, that story was one of the first ones written. It's in an entry called something like History of Brockman BB Guns.

The short version of the story goes like this:

I shot the glass topped table with a bb gun.

I'm sure a medium sized version of the story would include that it was actually my friend, Matt's bb gun that I had borrowed overnight since I didn't actually have one and that I was shooting either a matchbox car or a plastic army man off the top off the glass.

Kids, if you're ever tempted to shoot things off other things, don't shoot things off glass topped tables.

When we were having the individual interviews for our homestudy, one of the things that Jane wanted to know about what why, for nearly my entire life, did I owe my dad money? Well, it was because I had to learn responsibility.

Mom and dad pushed responsibility and independence quite a bit. They trained me well. Sometimes I think they wonder why I don't hang out with them much. Well, habits die hard, and class is over.

A lot of Jane's questions centered around my childhood. That kind of stuff was already included in my six page autobiography, but she wanted to know more. Now that I'm reading Parenting with Love and Logic, I'm starting to see why.

However, while I was raised to be an uber-adult, I personally don't care if my kid is a bit of a screw up as a child.

Aisai and I weren't on a walk yesterday since neither of us lost more than a pound this last week on our low carb diet. I think this is part in due to get getting a gift basket from Fudgey Nut and us eating about 600 calories each before going to be on Friday (which is within the carb-up time, so we weren't actually cheating).

Well, on this walk, we talk about Montessori Schools.

From what I can tell, a Montesorri School is a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten much like the training facilities in the Kurt Russel (bomb) movie Soldier. The main difference is that in that movie, which sucked, the kids were ruthlessly trained to kill or be killed, to be the ultimate soldiers. If you're good in class, you end up looking like Jason Scott Lee. If you slack off, I suppose you end up like Kurt Russel. At the Montessori School, however, they aren't trained to be b-movie sci-fi killers. They are trained to be mini Martha Stewarts.

Allegedly, and I'm getting this via the filter of Aisai, there are very few toys in the school. When asked about this, die kindergarten frau spreck "Ja, toys maken ze kids weak. Ve observe ze kids und when zey show unt interest...(deep breath)...ve force it upon zem until zey are experts within two veeks".

And I would be amiss if I didn't add "Nuclear Wessles" in at this time.

I did the exact opposite of what I'd like from my child. In elementary school, I busted my chops.

You know what kinds of grades you get in elementary school when you bust your chops? You get a needs improvement on social skills since the monkeys are holdin' me back, man.

Then, when I allegedly wised up since we were all getting good grades regardless of how apathetic or horrifically slow the other kids were, I started to slack off. Unfortunately, this was during high school when grades, rather than learning, meant something. (And I got little of either, really.)

My mantras that I'm thinking of, which might be the stupidest thing on earth since, oh, I don't have a kid and people who don�t' have kids assume stupid things about what it's like to have kids:

1. "I don't really care what grades you make before high school, as long as you make sure you actually learn the important stuff and don't get considered a bad element by other parents."

2. During High School, "Please, please, please. I know you can do it. If you just get good grades, you'll save Daddy lots of money by getting a scholarship."

I never mention it, but I think of my daughter who I don't have almost constantly. Oddly, mostly when I drive my work van.

This next Monday is another interview in our homestudy. I think Jane read the info that the CCAI sent her recently. When talking to Aisai, she expressed that she was surprised that they only wanted seven pages from her.

I'm hoping this interview is our final one. After all, she already did the inspection of the house and we passed.

The only things well need after that are (1) two more family pictures and another picture of Aisai and me, (2) for me to make up a formal petition for adoption, which I've been dreading, and (3) to get a stack of papers notarized, constableized, authenticated, and colsularzed. Aka, to get nickel and dimed within an inch of our lives.

I know why the govt lets you have a $10k tax credit for this kind of thing, because they get the lion's share of the money from this. Sure, the nickel and diming doesn't make up half, but they also take around half of the income of the lawyers we pay.

In an hour and a half, Aisai and I'll head over to my parent�s house. It's my mom's birthday, that's why there's a bougainvillea that belongs to her next to me. it's her gift.

I hope she likes it. It's so hard to get mom stuff.