Color Me Green

I live in a state of perpetual fear & anxiety. Fear at night now a days (nights) because summer's here in Houston so that means cockroaches the size of small rodents scurry about in the pitch blackness of our "new" home and anxiety in that children, whose parents are effectively living up to the lost generation's expectations because of not imposing limits on their children (no curfews), never seem to just go home and make noise elsewhere . There is a sizable hole in our roof top which means animals with wings can find shelter just above our resting heads and falling water can make way down on our heads. But this is just me venting and doing a bit of complaining I've been meaning to do. I don't like to weigh my dear Lily down with such things because together we should form our own little world of peace & serenity, not host a daily meeting of minds to bash our brains in with bad news and fustrations. I think this barrel blast of fustration does better blown out to smithereens than inside our "home".

Color me green & call me jaded because just this past month while NOT updating this blog I've also witnessed a series of unfortunate events. The family atmosphere I supposedly work for has decided to eliminate a percentage of all its workforce. I read something profound a while back that said roughly, "We should not call our workplaces family atmosphere's or even say "Here We're All Family" because when the books start looking dismal and we're not sure how we're gonna pay the bills a real family wouldn't start hacking away the family to reduce it's expenses." If a business wants to portray a sense of commaradarie in its workplace even though it's the global size of say Wal-Mart Corp., keep things realistic. Growth, growth, growth is not always a good thing. An unemployed engineer could even calculate for you that the house of cards your building on the dune of sand is not going to stand long when it rains. Instead, I would gladly work for a place that says we're not sure how long you'll have your job or even if you can depend on us to build your career but at least we'll be honest with you, plus you'll make loads of money. Trimming the fat I think would be a more suitable mission statement in todays business climate.

Fear & anxiety. How much more of this can be shoveled into our minds? I feel sometimes we're all cattle being fed from a slop trough a steady diet of propaganda aimed at making us miserablely enriched. Quite literally even, ever wonder how restaurants keep us coming back for more? Just how many calories is that meatball pasta lasagna chicken parmesian entre? Enough to last me two days? I'll have it. With your finest wine.

This reminds me of a joke Lily and I heard one evening. The comedian says, "I'm not full till I hate myself." A roar of laughter ensues. I used to eat like this. Eating or more correctly, gorging on foods that would over the course of years would entirely block an artery. Not anymore though. I try to think in terms of calories now. Even though the portions may be smaller the calories are what really fuels this fuel burning machine called my body. Therefore, to meet my daily caloric needs I stay away from useless foods that take away from my meals full potential. Vitamins, fiber, proteins etc. etc. We're learning how this works and so far, it works.

These days are much like the summer of 2005. The summer Katrina came to town and spread everything out like a shockwave traveling from it's epicenter. In the days after our evacuation we just had to take each day at a time. Worrying about anything more than a day ahead of us was useless. Our hopes were to just get through the day together as a family. Now, I feel we just need to make it through these next few months then fall is here to make everything somehow better. That is of course if another storm doesn't visit us making life similar to chapter 30 of The Stand. But seriously, if I do lose my coveted job life will not cease to exist, I will go on to live another day and in fact I will prosper in my new found expanse of free time-Serve God religously and have faith in the future.

**UPDATE 06/22/09**

Since this posted date I've taken the initiative to fix some things noted above. No longer do I have insects running amuck like viet cong guerilla men during the night or brazingly during broad daylight. Using Great Stuff I've filled in/blocked all access points from intra dry wall space to comfy stay-out-of-home-space. So far so good.