The Joel Train

I'm not sure this is going to be a productive post.  I've been treating these daily entries as a way to organize the chaos in my head.  Which I love.  It's bit of therapy to get to take a feeling or memory from the vault and consider it semi thoughtfully.  Even if I don't actually get to writing it down, I've been thinking about it.  Looking forward to how I might write about it.

The problems I've noticed so far are time management, planning and technical skill.  I don't have really any of those tools yet.  I'll say yet.  Life is long.  And boring.  And maybe my brain hasn't yet calcified, so I could accidentally learn something if I keep at it.  But at the moment: Time Management, Planning, Technical Skill.

By the time I get to sit down here to write, I have about 45 minutes before I begin to worry about work.  I work from home.  My computer is wedged into a corner of our little sunken living room at the back of the house.  I am scheduled to begin work at 9am, and I get started on these things at about 8:45.  So you can do the math.

Nothing really happens when the clock rolls over to 9.  No whistles blow, I don't literally punch in anywhere.  But I know I'm supposed to be working.  It helps that I can visualize my coworkers pulling into the parking lot, turning on their computers, getting coffee, talking about Game of Thrones.  Settling in.  I suppose that takes 20 minutes.  So if I'm lucky, nobody notices that I've disappeared down this rabbit hole.  But still I worry.

For some reason, writing the phrase rabbit hole made me think of farts.  Two farts specifically.  My grandfather farted in front of me once when I was 10, and then there's my wife Ana and the glorious fart of 2009.  Now how do I tell these fart stories?  Here planning and technical skill come into play.  Do I try and tell them both at the same time?  Are there common themes or ways to tie them together beyond their surface likeness?  How do I lay it out?  Also, what's the tone of a fart story?  I know.  

When my grandfather farted it was loud and surprising.  It seemed like the kind of thing you'd address after the fact.  But he didn't.  We both knew he'd farted.  I knew it.  He knew it.  Everybody in that house knew it.  No one said a word.  If there's a way to communicate how terrifying my grandfather could be, how all powerful he was, trumpeting out a fart in front of a 10 year old and still commanding silence has to be it.  Right?    

I didn't know Ana was going to fart until it was too late.  We were visiting new friends.  Ana kept giving me the signal to wrap it up.  I couldn't see the bead of sweat forming on her brow.  I didn't know the stress she was under.  She had to get out of that house.

We turned to leave and a tiny squeak of a fart escaped.  Ana made a little "Ooo" sound to cover but it was too late.  She shuffled quickly to the door and with every step a toot.  And with every toot an "Ooo" or an "OH!" and an embarrassed grimace of apology.  Our friends and I watched her kabuki dance of shame unfold in slow motion,.  I'd never seen anything like it.  It will forever be one of my favorite things.   

And that's all I have for you today.