The last couple months we have been preparing for a new arrival. No, not that kind, er, well, we’re getting an exchange student from Germany. She is the granddaughter of Jen’s host family from almost 15 years ago, and will be with us for the entire school year. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that Jennifer and I rattled around our in our spacious house, each having out own office and with a guest room to boot. Getting permission from the school district to even have the student was a minor miracle, but that’s a different story. Suffice it to say that we’re looking forward to the experience, but it promises to be challenging what with everything else we have going on.

After a thirteen-year relationship, I broke up with my cable company. I really never had any problem with them other than I thought they were too expensive, but when AT&T U-Verse came along I had to switch. So far it has gone very well. The HDTV quality isn’t quite as good as Time Warner, and the download speed isn’t as good (with the cheaper internet package I bought), but everything else is WAY better. The DVR, on-screen guide, and internet upload speed, and total cost are substantially better. The funny thing is that I discovered when I canceled my cable service that Alanis Morissette¹² has apparently fallen on hard times and is now working in their customer retention department. She seemed to be personally upset by the fact that I was leaving so suddenly, she pointed out every possible flaw in AT&T’s service, tried to convince me that the problems I had with TW were temporary, that the cost could be negotiated and finally warned that I’d be back. I actually felt emotionally drained after I hung up.

¹ Older readers: replace Alanis Morissette with Glenn Close from “Fatal Attraction.”

² Younger readers: get off my lawn.

It’s time for another post because I just now have a free half-hour for the first time since (reading my own blog…) June 2nd.

I’m trying to think now of all the things that happened in May that I never got around to blogging about. The only thing I can think of is the fact that I’ve been thinking about discontinuing the blog entirely, because I have a hard time letting go of useless obligations. Blogging is one of those things that I consider a “useless obligation” because the most interested readers of it are either a) people I’ve never met or b) people I talk to on a regular basis anyway. The people I talk to regularly mostly know stuff before I post it, and the people I never met probably wouldn’t be interested if I didn’t post on a regular basis¹ or wrote my posts in a humorous manner². Quite often I wonder what’s the point. For the people who have never met me, it’s a mostly anonymous forum in which I could post my every innermost thought, though I can’t because of all the people who do know me. I’m sure a lot of bloggers fall into this dilemma, and probably have discussed the topic but I haven’t seen it because I don’t have time to read their blog.

I feel like I should stop talking about being busy, because at this point it’s like pointing out that I’ve been breathing in and out all day long. Everyone just assumes it. Everyone is busy. Everyone is multitasking. Everyone has divided attention. Everyone has a lot of balls in the air.

So take out the busy and what is new? Jennifer and Anna are out of town, which leaves me and Tara at home. I am surprised how different it feels to be focused on one child at a time. Tara is three years old and her needs are very basic at this point. She basically wants food and attention. She would drink milk for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack if we let her, and she wants eyes on her all the time. She wants to be played with and she wants an audience when she’s acting like a big girl. She wants her sister and her mom to come back home but mostly she wants food and attention. I’m trying to remember back to a time when that’s all I needed. Food and attention.

My birthday is coming up and for some reason I feel as though it’s some sort of milestone. I don’t feel any older than I used to, and I don’t feel like like I’m having a midlife crisis (or a midyouth crisis, as Jennifer insists I had when I turned 19), but 37 seems to be a number of significance. Somehow the number thirty-seven seems to me to be a number where I can’t deny that I’m old-ish. It’s not mid-thirties. It’s so close to forty. Not that forty is bad, I know many of very active, attractive people who are over forty and could out-run and out-drink me any night of the week and who actually do that on a regular basis. There’s nothing wrong with forty.

If seventeen-year-old me met thirty-seven-year-old me, I don’t think seventeen-year-old me would be disappointed. I’ve made some money. I have a terrific family. I have the freedom to pursue my interests. My name can be found on the hard drives of something like 30 million computers running at this moment. I’ve been to Europe, Asia, and the Playboy Mansion. Each of the last five years I’ve looked at one of my photos and said, “this is the best image I’ve ever made.” I don’t have a good life–I have a great life.

At this point, this pseudo-milestone, this passive flop from one demographic bucket to another, the most significant question I can think to ask is, “when will it be enough?” When will it be enough to be satisfied with simplest pleasures? When can I get by on food and attention?

¹ This is less true than it used to be, because RSS aggregators make it easy to keep up to date on a bunch of different blogs regardless of the frequency of posts.

² Being funny takes a lot of time, for me at least.

I really hate buying gas, and not for the usual reasons, like because it’s expensive or funds evil or because it’s bad for the environment. I hate buying gas because the place where I fill up has TV screens that play ads while you pump. And even that wouldn’t bother me if the ads weren’t for gas, which–now don’t get ahead of me–I am already buying. Occasionally there is a weather report in between the commercials. A report. Of the weather. Which I am already standing in. Outside.

May is over and nearly so is this continuum of busyness, in which I have survived: three birthdays, one anniversary, one maternal holiday, three late-night photo shoots (two to go), a wedding shoot, a professional organizer (in progress), the usual work deadlines, layoffs, therapy, cooking, cleaning, changing diapers, and a trip to Ikea in which I think we were responsible for the razing of an entire hectare of Swedish veneer-over-particle board forest.

I have been really tired lately and I can’t decide if it’s because I have so much going on at the moment or because I’m out of shape or because I’m officially too old to be drinking beer after midnight. Probably all three. In any case, my hope is that June will be a better month, if not because Father’s Day and my birthday are coming up then because at the very least I can know that next May is eleven months away.

The last two date nights have been a little nontraditional, but in a good way. Two weeks ago we sent the kids over to a friend’s house and stayed home to do the things we can’t normally do with kids in the house: make a nice quiet dinner of food they don’t like (bacon-wrapped scallops, artichoke, and something else I forgot), watched a movie with the sound turned up, and slept in late. I had forgotten how much I miss simple things. Saturday we went out to a Padres game. This year they have the worst record in the majors but the ballpark is still beautiful. We got to see Dr. Cox from Scrubs throw out the first pitch and the Pads actually won the game, which was the 350th win for future hall-of-famer Greg Maddux, who I’ve always wanted to see pitch since he was traded to San Diego. And, of course, the company was the best part.

You’re probably getting tired of seeing photos of my thermometer, but I have to point out that the unacceptable heat has passed and it was actually cold yesterday. We went from using the air conditioning to using the heat in less than a week, probably a forty-degree swing. In most parts of the country that’s not such a big deal; in fact where we used to live that sort of variation occurred in opposite corners of the yard. Suffice it to say that I’m a little more sensitive to the weather now that I live in San Diego.

The Blackberry still rules, and Jennifer’s will arrive a the end of the week. That’s about all I need to say about that.

We’re now getting to the interesting part of May, which is to say, the part with Anna’s birthday, Mothers’ Day, our wedding anniversary, and various other birthdays within the span of about two weeks. A person with foresight and planning skills would have little to fret about, so it should go without saying that I’m completely frazzled.

Over the weekend I took Anna to the hardware store, which, as it always does, necessitates a trip to the nearby pet store. Luckily they weren’t open yet, but they did have a pen full of rabbits on the sidewalk set up for fondling. Three of them were of the mini rex breed which appears to be the cutest thing ever. Anna loved them, even though they were understandably skittish, and later, I insisted to Jennifer that she must go to the pet store and rub one about her nose and eyes so that we can see how allergic she is to them. I suspect we should notify the shopkeeper first.

Anna has been wanting a pet forever, but Jennifer is allergic to anything furrier than myself, and we suspect Anna isn’t quite up to the task of taking even partial care for a pet. She’ll be seven in a week, though, and she has been acting just a tiny bit more mature lately.

At this moment I have two other computers turned on with browsers at the ready, and yet I’m typing on this dinky little keyboard with smallest screen in the house. I can’t explain it. I’m sure the fascination will wear off soon. By the way, the last two posts were on the BB as well. You have to admit it has upped the frequency of posts for now.

It was over 90 degrees all weekend, which I consider to be completely unacceptable for the month of April. Especially considering the ridiculous property taxes I’m paying. In any case, one wouldn’t think I’d mind so much considering that I’m basically a homebody and the air conditioning is perfectly functional. However, for some reason I decided that Saturday would be a good day for errands except that while one is inside a store, one’s car is sitting in a sweltering parking lot becoming sweltering. My next car will not have a black interior. Just sayin.

In any case, I decided that my judgement on Saturday was not sufficiently bad, so I decided that on Sunday to mess around in the yard at the height of the midday sun. I dug up the garden and planted some tomato plants, then dug up the old redwood edging around our nandinas, and in the process decided to turn the little patch of yard where our sprinkler valves once lived and which has not regrown grass several years later into a little flower for the kids. It was a good idea, I thought, because the girls had started planting flowers there already. However, in the process of turning the soil I heard the distinctive snap and subsequent gurgling that marks the end of the gardening portion of the day and the beginning of the longer, more grueling sprinkler repair part. I dug enough to expose the remaining parts of the sprinkler line that I will tomorrow be cleaning, sanding, cursing, and gluing. That is, unless it’s 95 degrees again.

I have officially been inducted into the cult of Crackberry. True, someday, the iPhone and preferably Android will take over the world, but for me the Blackberry just gets it done. I have all my email and texts and IMs all integrated in one tiny little device that’s connected to the internet all the time. I loved my Nokia, but the battery life was miserable and it didn’t have enough ram to run more than a couple apps at a time and most apps took too long to launch. I haven’t gotten into all the little media features and shortcuts and what not that will only improve the experience, but for now I’m pretty darn impressed.

Also, I have to figure out sometime soon how to blog about the shoot that I did last week. It was a great on a lot of different levels, but most of all, and I’ve said this before but it bears repeating, because I am the luckiest guy in the world, and someday I hope that I can do something to deserve it.