Well, let's see....  It's been a long time since I've written, and I must say there've been a few changes.  Oh, not on this web site; I haven't done much of anything with that. 

When last I wrote, we were approaching the summer of 1998.  Like an idiot, I decided to run for union office in my local (CSEA Local 615; there's a link to the web site I've put up for it over there on the right).  As luck would have it, I barely scraped by and won by ten votes out of 500 or so cast.   That was in the beginning of June.

The next event was my stepdaughter Emilie’s high school graduation.  Only she wasn’t technically my stepdaughter yet.  Anyhow, the graduation was made interesting by the fact that Emilie was graduating from the same high school I went to (J-D, in case you’re interested), and exactly 20 years after I graduated (me being the class of ’78, and she being the class of ’98).  My class was the first to graduate not at the high school football field (or gymnasium, in the event of rain), but instead at the Onondaga County Civic Center. 

It was kind of like being in the Twilight Zone, sitting out there in the audience, looking at things from the other side.  I wasn’t exactly misty-eyed or anything; I had no intention of attending our 20^th reunion which was coming up later on that year, and it’s not like I feel any great affinity to the “old school.”  Still, sitting there, looking up at that stupid “red ram” head on the podium, and looking at those crappy robes, it felt weird.

I remembered us trying to keep those ridiculous mortar board hats on our heads.  I remember having to sit through all those long-winded speeches (the worst at my own graduation was given by one of my classmates, who droned on for what seemed like forever).  I tried not to snicker at the serious speeches these kids were giving, about how they’d look back on these wonderful years with joy and all that other happy horseshit.   Wait ‘til they get crappy jobs they can’t stand, and find themselves part of the swarming collective, heading mindlessly to and from their little good-citizen-taxpayer jobs and being the good little automatons society wants us to be.

They’ll be lucky if they can remember ten names of the kids they graduate with, much less stay in touch with more than a couple.  If high school is the time they treasure most in their lives, then they’re in for some pretty shitty lives.  Oh well, far be it for me to disillusion anybody.

Summer is the time when we are descended upon for a month by my wife’s two kids from Minnesota.  It’s odd for a lifelong bachelor such as myself to suddenly find himself surrounded by twice as many kids in the house.  The kids came earlier than they did last year, in order to catch the graduation festivities.  When we went to a movie together, I felt a bit like a mother duck with four kids, my wife, and my mother trailing along behind me.

Quickly following graduation was the second (and biggest) even of my summer.  On July 11^th, I finally was able to drag my wife to the altar, and she made an honest man of me.  The wedding took place in my in-laws back yard, and all week long we worried about the weather, since it was cold and did nothing but rain all week long.  When the 11^th came, and the day was sunny, we were all greatly pleased.

We went to my in-law’s house early that morning for breakfast, and in what was perhaps an omen of things to come, my soon-to-be stepson puked all over the kitchen floor.  It was a rather impressive projectile stream, which I give high marks to both in terms of distance and force, as well as the graceful arc it made as it sailed through the air.  Nothing like the sight of masticated blintzes sailing by your head on your wedding day.

My wife had decided on a candle ceremony, and while I wasn’t yet married, I knew enough to say,

  “Yes dear.”

She mapped out the whole thing, whereby my brother and her father would light candles, and then light our candles, and then we’d light another big candle (or something like that; as always, I was relying on somebody to tell me what to do).  My in-laws had purchased an arbor, which (as it turned out, fortunately) my father-in-law had fortified with carriage bolts and extra supports.  To light the original candles, we had an oil lamp placed on a table before the altar, which was covered by a very nice cloth.

The yard was decorated with balloons and wreaths, and a big white tent was set up under the trees.  After being sent back to our house several times to get things that other people had forgotten, we were finally ready to begin.

It was then that the wind started.

The wind was perhaps not hurricane force, but what it lacked in intensity (which wasn’t much), it made up for in persistence.  It didn’t stop.  The wind grabbed hold of the oil lamp flame and set the nice, fancy, lacy, tablecloth on fire.  The flames were rather impressive, from what I gather (I was waiting for my cue, inside the house).  No doubt, they were fanned by the wind.  Ida, my mother-in-law, managed to stamp it out before the whole yard went up in flames.  From my vantagepoint, I was able to see the next part.

Since this arbor wasn’t really meant to be permanently installed in the yard, and since we’d really only been worried about rain, nobody had bothered to bury the thing five feet into the ground, or attach stabilizers or anything.  It certainly looked nice with the flowers all over it, and with the German inscription etched into the front.  A nice, strong gust of wind picked up our arbor, wiggled it around for a few seconds, and then picked it up and slammed it into the ground.  It bounced twice.

The men folk ran out to right it and Ida raced out to restore the flowers, and soon we were ready to begin.  It was fortunate, I think, that I was waiting alone on my side of the house, since my wife might not have seen exactly the same level of humor in the situation that I, personally, did.  It was all I could do to stop laughing long enough to pick myself up off the floor.

At any rate, things were ready, the signal was given, and two of my soon-to-be stepdaughters began playing taco bell’s march, or Pacabel’s or somebody’s.  I hated to appear ignorant, and it seemed I was supposed to know this piece of music, so I continue to pretend that I do.  Anyhow, that’s when all air traffic in the greater Syracuse area was directed over my in-laws house.

Airplane after airplane began to fly over.  It sounded a lot like the deck of an aircraft carrier.  Between the roar of the wind, and the roar of the jet engines, nobody could hear a thing.  The video looks like Mel Brooks’ silent wedding.

Well, to make a long story short, nobody heard the really nice ceremony my wife had written or the very nice Apache wedding prayer the preacher-dude read.  But we did manage to get the candles lit long enough to get the ceremony accomplished (the wind hid the smell of burning flesh and hand-hair), and we were married shortly before the wind picked up our arbor and smashed it into little pieces on the ground.

As soon as the ceremony was over, the wind calmed down and the air traffic was diverted to a different route.  One of the neighbors told me that he’d seen less than ten airplanes fly over in the 25 years he’d lived there (and we’d had about fifty in twenty minutes).

Eventually, we managed to get away, and after my stepson, Reuben, puked a few more times, my bride and I were on our way to a very nice B&B for an all-too brief evening away.  I won’t get into all the details of our overnight trip, except to mention that the next day we got to see a monkey wearing a dress, which is an omen of a prosperous union in many parts of the world.  

The next couple of weeks went by quickly, and then all four kids left us to bless their father with their presence for a month in Minnesota (and suddenly, the house became quiet).

We took our real honeymoon in the month of August by driving across the country (in a Chevy Celebrity station wagon with no spare tire, no A/C, and one door duct-taped shut) to Montana to take part in a Native American ceremony known as a Ghost Dance (which coincided with my wife’s Birthday, not to mention the full moon).

“Yes, dear.”

The story of our trip, and the Ghost Dance, is way too long to tell here.   Suffice it to say, it changed my way of looking at the world, if only for a little while.  Unfortunately, the rest of life has a way of creeping back in.

Speaking of creeps, I made the mistake of running for (and winning) union office with my local.  There’s a link to the web page that I maintain for it (www.csea615.org) over there on the right.  I’d thought that 90% of my time would be spent dealing with people who deserved the trouble they got into, but soon came to realize that 95+% of my time is spent trying to help out good people that are getting screwed by what I can only refer to as incompetent, evil, nazi bastards who are sucking the public tit dry.  These people are making two, three, or more times what working people make, and are, truly, evil and incompetent.  Ignorance and arrogance are a dangerous combination, and it runs rampant where I work.  I won’t belabor the point here (but perhaps elsewhere, if I can find the time), but I’m at the point where I find myself disgusted and ashamed to be affiliated with what purports to be a healthcare facility run by these people.

Fall came and went.  The SU football team fucked up, righted itself, and then fucked up again.  They wasted Donovan McNabb’s final season.  Winter rolled in, and my mother wound up in the hospital a couple more times.   My hospital, I’m afraid.  She waited both times in the ER for some 24 hours before getting a bed, and twice more, I found myself disgusted by Western Medicine and medical/pharmaceutical/insurance industry.

The “Adult Residence” where my mother was living was slowly killing her from neglect and broken promises, and it became apparent that we needed to make a change.  This is how my mother came to live with us.  She was discharged from the hospital to our custody, and after paying off the shit hole where she’d been one last time, my wife went to work on her.

In a month or so, my mother’s BP is so improved that her doctor has dropped one of her meds.  She’s lost some 30 pounds—enough to reduce her diuretics, and her blood sugar is low enough to have reduced her insulin requirements substantially.  The Gingko and Vitamin E we’re dosing her with has improved her to the point where she’s once again her old, pain-in-the-ass, self.  I, however, am about to have my head explode.

About a week or so before my mother headed for the hospital, she hooked us up with a puppy (the cook where she’d been living had a litter of eight—well, his dog did, that is).  He’s a Shepherd/Retriever mix, and the most beautiful puppy on the face of the earth.  The smartest, too.

It wasn’t long after the puppy came that our cat, Cappy, finally got too old (she was, by all accounts, some 20 years old), and died.  I’m not a cat person, but Cappy was one of the best animals I’ve ever known.  It broke our hearts when she died, and she’s buried out back under the trees with the mice and birds to keep her company.  It’s what my wife promised her before she (the cat) died.

Otherwise, life goes on in our odd little house.  Reuben still pukes now and again, but he’s a freshman in high school, and on the track team this spring.  My stepdaughter, Emilie, is attending massage school, and having a great time working at the neighborhood Friendly’s.  My wife has gone through five or six jobs, and continues to scour the want ads (and the funnies) each week.  We have one neurotic cat, one adorable puppy, a bird clock that makes bird noises every hour (wedding present), my mother, and the oddest of us all, me.

One person has signed my guest book, since last I wrote, bringing the total to nine.  I don’t know what’ll happen in the coming year, or when I’ll next update this page.  Odds are, it won’t be anytime soon.  Until then, thanks for stopping by, and will you PLEASE sign the goddamn Guestbook?

See ya,