Life sometimes gets in the way of blogging. Like tonight, I fully planned to shirk this thing, didn’t get home until 11pm and was tired. Then I remembered I had the binned paragraph about babies/cardboard/consumerism and I thought about going in and filling in around it – I again decided no. Then, laying down, I had the walking though, figured it was good for a paragraph, and went with it. So here I am then, listening to “Disco 2000” from Pulp’s absolute classic Different Class, literally one of my favorite albums of all time. Highschool all over when I hear it. Today was Keaton’s real first birthday, as measured by the sun and moon and tides, and wouldn’t you know it – she’s sick with a runny nose, puffy eyes, and a rattley cough. Poor birthday girl.
I think I’d like to try an experiment, wear a pedometer for a week and see how far I walk, on average, each day. I would expect the results to be nothing less of pitiful. I think of all the walking the human race must have had to endure to get where we are now. Walking through deserts, across ice-bridges, over perilous mountains – all with nothing more than two feet and a hunger. It shames me that me, some long-downline descendant of the great walkers of human history, walks so little in any given day. I can probably count the instances in which I’m required to walk: around my house in the morning after waking up; from the car into work and up to my desk; maybe a restroom break before lunch; lunch; to the car on the way home; and finally around the house again before retiring at night. It’s gotta be staggeringly low, and that’s the sum total of my daily “activity.” It’s shameful, it’s disgusting. Looks like the alliterative “Synthia” was onto something…
Ever since having a baby, our status as “consumers” has risen alarmingly. I’m weekly toting empty cardboard boxes out to the recycle bin, and even with all the “break down boxes” training from my days in fast food I still get lazy and try to stuff them in just as they are. Sometimes, when the bin is full, 90% air and 10% fully-assembled cardboard boxes, I’ll just pile up the new boxes on the bricks outside. Often hoping for rain so it’ll turn into a mush that’s easier to squish into the bin. But, they still come, box after box after box of diapers, wipes, toys, whatever. Week after week we consume, more and more and more. Keaton flies through diapers. We put one on her, she pees in it or poops in it and we take it off. It goes in the trash, the trash goes to the curb, and Keaton’s pee and poops end up in the landfill that’s about 10mi from here, a stinky hump on the flat horizon, flocks of seagulls hanging around the line of trees planted as cover. Sometimes I think there’s got to be a better way.
Quick check: Looks like I didn’t win the lottery. Back to work tomorrow it is then. Today’s piece of flashback humor: mistaken identity II. Goodnight.
Also written on this day...
- smooth sailing - 2019
- can't really avoid airplanes - 2011
- they weren't that far off - 2008
- feeding the PR monster - 2006
- home again - 2005
that “synthia” sounds like a harpy hag. i wish she wasn’t right.