I went to the Office of Vital Records to get a copy of my birth certificate. The building is several stories high and about half a city block, but the records office is just a very tiny area. The entrance and waiting area is about the size of a large living room, and there’s smaller room around the corner with a pair of “teller” windows.

The security guard behind the desk is probably in his 70s, and he was well rehearsed in his instructions. A young guy, probably a college kid, walked in right before me. When he stepped up to the desk, the security guard told him, politely, “Sign in on this clipboard. . . . One forty-seven. . . . What are you here for? . . . Just write ‘birth certificate.’ . . . Right behind you, on the table, take one of those clipboards and fill out the form. . . . Take one of those numbers off the rack to your left. Just give me the form when you’re finished, and they’ll call you back.”

When the young guy stepped away from the reception desk and to the table behind him, following the directions of the guard, I stepped up.

“Sign in on this clipboard,” he directed me. I wrote my name, then before I could check my watch for the “Time” column, he said, “One forty-eight.” I wrote the time.

“What are you here for? Just write ‘birth certificate.'” I noticed every sign in before mine, probably 20 names, were all for birth certificates. I wrote as instructed.

He continued, “Right behind you, on the table, take one of those clipboards and fill out the form. Take one of those numbers off the rack to your left. Just give me the form when you’re finished and they’ll call you back.”

The old guy was polite, but he spoke in a flat monotone that showed he has said these exact words all day long, every day, probably for years. The only thing that changed was the time.

I filled out my form and handed it to him. Then I sat down in the old steel chairs and waited my call. I read some of my book and played with my new cell phone. I took a couple pictures to “document” the place.

During a lull in people and call backs, the guard sat down behind the desk and closed his eyes. He could doze only a minute before someone new came in the door or the woman in the back called the next person.

Eventually, I was called back, paid my thirty bucks and received my birth certificate. It’s an interesting thing, a birth certificate.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

There just isn’t enough sleep in my weeks. Calfgrit3 has been waking up before 6:00 each morning for about two weeks, now. At first he was getting up at 5:50 to 5:55 — just close enough to 6:00 to not try to put him back down. But each morning he’s gotten up just a few minutes earlier, until yesterday morning, he got up at 5:20. This is maddening.

When he gets up too early, like before 5:50, we’ve tried to put him back in his bed, but he knows how to blackmail us. He knows we don’t want him waking up Calfgrit7, so he has a fit and cries loudly. That’s hard to handle in the 5:00 hour in the morning. We don’t want to give in to the blackmail, but we also want Calfgrit7 to get enough sleep (and we’d like more sleep, too).

If we put him to bed later in the evenings, he wakes up earlier in the mornings. That makes no sense to me at all, but that’s how it works. We’ve tried making sure he gets plenty of physical activity so he’s really tired at night, but that hasn’t helped. He’s not hungry when he wakes up, he’s not wet, he’s just a natural early riser. God help us.

By the time we get the boys in bed around 7:00 each night, Cowgrit and I are so tired we pretty much want to go right to bed, ourselves. It’s hard to get any work done in the evenings when the day started 14 hours ago. And then when I do stay up to get work (writing) done, and I get to bed at 10 or 11:00, or later, 5:00 the next morning is just so brutally early.

I want to sleep for 24 hours straight. I’m willing to give up a full day of activity to just be able to catch up on sleep, and maybe build up a surplus.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

My dad and his wife came up to visit and watch the boys for Cowgrit and me. (His wife is technically my step-mother, but that sounds weird in this case — they got married well into my adulthood. I’ll have to ask her how she’d prefer to be referenced in my blog.) When I got home from work, we only had about an hour before they would need to leave, so I talked a hundred miles an hour, trying to tell them stuff, show them stuff, and just generally catch them up on weeks of my life in the one hour.

This happens every time I visit or am visited by my mom or dad. We usually talk on the phone at least once a week, and I see them at least once every couple or three months, and they both read my blog. But still, there is so much going on that I want them to know about. I’m not usually all that hypersocial with anyone, but with my parents, I want to tell them everything, and I usually only have a short amount of time to tell it.

For instance, I have my new cell phone with all kinds of cool features that I’ve been learning about over the past week. I think it’s an awesome thing, and I want to show them all I’ve discovered I can do with it. So I end up speed-telling them everything about it, and showing them all the bells and whistles. All sons want to share their cool new gadgets with their dad, but I only have a limited amount of time to share it all.

Even if my dad and mom lived next door, I’ve got so much going on that I probably couldn’t keep them up to date on everything in my life. I need to ease up on the “this has been the past six weeks of my life” in one hour storytelling. I should just enjoy the company, and give up on trying to keep them totally updated on everything.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I’ll be going on a trip to Sweden soon, and I’m doing the paperwork for getting a passport. For the past few days, it looked like I’d be going mid-February, but that may be too soon for the legal paperwork, so now it looks like the trip will be in late March or early April. I’ll definitely be going, whenever, and I’m a bit excited by the idea.

I’ve travelled some: several of the Southern states, as far north as New York and Illinois, and as far west as Texas, Arizona, and California. But I’ve never gone out of the country. Foreign travel is one of those things that I think could be interesting, but I’ve not had the urge, really, to go. There’s still many places in the US I’d like to see if I felt like travelling. And I’m a homebody by nature.

So, I’ve never had a need for a passport. I’m surprised by how expensive it is. I expected some fairly complicated paperwork, but the cost takes me aback. It’s going to be several hundred dollars, all told, with getting it expedited. Had I given it any thought, I’d have guessed less than a hundred bucks.

Today I’m running the errands for the prep-work for getting the passport. I’ve got to pick up a certified birth certificate, get photos taken, go to the post office, etc. It’s not like getting a driver’s license.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com