What to write about, today? Hmmm. What to write about.

What happened today? What did I observe? I saw some people doing stuff. Normal stuff. Just mundane, boring stuff. Nothing caught my attention as interesting or unusual.

What’s happened recently that I haven’t written about yet? Hmmm. I can’t think of anything. I can’t think of anything to write about. Oh, geez, I hate it when this happens.

Think, think, think. I’ve got to come up with something interesting to write about. My mind is blank. Damn. Come on brain, pull something from the back of the file cabinet.

I’m so tired. My brain is trying to shut down. I run my fingers through my hair in frustration. Maybe if I massage my head, it’ll get the blood flowing better. . . . Nope, it just makes me want to close my eyes and sleep.

Dammit! I hate writer’s block. I don’t want to put so much time into just trying to think of what to write for this blog. This is supposed to be something quick, easy, and fun, but right now it’s just irritating. It shouldn’t take me more than 30 minutes to write a blog post, but it’s been more than 30 minutes of just sitting and trying to think of what to write.

Nothing. I’ve got nothing. This is about the third time in six months that I’ve gone blank when trying to write this blog. This is disappointing. Crap. Cowgrit wants to talk, so maybe I need to just give up this strain of thought and go do something else.

I’ll probably think of something to write 10 minutes after posting this. I run my fingers through my hair again, but still I got nothing. I suck.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

One of Calfgrit3’s preschool classmates had her 3rd birthday party. It was held at a place called Planet Child — I don’t know if it is a chain or just a local place, but it’s very cool.

The place is a large room (the size of a large house) with big theme areas (the size of small and large rooms) throughout. There’s a fantasy castle, with a stage and faux medieval clothes to play dress up. There’s an “undersea tunnel” with an aquarium, a lighthouse with steps for the kids to climb up and look out over the whole big room. There’s a safari area, a grocery store area, a model train set up, and more. It’s really a great place for kids to play.

There were 32 kids at the party. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a kids party with that many kids. I think the largest I’ve been to was about 12 kids. The theme of the party was “princesses.” The party was fine, and I don’t think the kids noticed or cared, but it looked like having boys at the party was an after thought. It wasn’t “princesses and princes,” it was “princesses and might as well be princesses, too.”

There were 12 moms and 5 dads. This has always been the ratio of parents at kids’ birthday parties I’ve been to. It seems I’m one of only a few dads who do the birthday party gig. I like kids’ birthday parties. There’s cake!

At one point during the festivities, I overheard some mom’s laughing at one of the dads. He had apparently done something embarrassing recently, and the ladies thought it funny. The dad told me the story:

He took his son to another child’s birthday party the day before, at another kids-play location. There were two birthday parties happening that day at that location, and in a strange coincidence, the birthday girls had virtually the same name: Sophie and Sophia.

The dad walked into the business and showed the receptionist the birthday invitation. The receptionist told him where to go for the party, and he and his son went in. The dad didn’t recognize any of the parents or children, but that’s actually not that unexpected. For instance, I’ve only seen the parents and children at this latest party a couple times at school, and I only recognized one of the parents. I recognized only two of the children, and then only after being reintroduced to them.

So the dad didn’t think it too weird to not recognize anyone. And apparently his son didn’t say anything. (He probably didn’t care — meet new friends, play, and eat cake.) The dad talked with some of the parents at the party, and even spoke with the parents of the birthday girl. No one said anything to him. No one asked who he was, or what his son was doing at the party. The birthday girl even opened their gift.

He didn’t find out he was in the wrong party until afterwards when he left and saw people he recognized in the other party area.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I spent much of my Saturday taking out and putting in dishwashers for my mother-in-law. She was having a new dishwasher delivered, so she needed me to disconnect and remove the old one, and then put in and connect the new one. It took me about an hour to do the old one, and another three hours to do the new one.

On paper, connecting and disconnecting a dishwasher doesn’t look all that difficult. But in practice, good lord, it’s not easy. There’s only three connections to make: electricity, water coming in, water going out. I’ve actually installed a dishwasher before — our own, a couple of years ago. But I only vaguely remember anything about the operation other than it took about two hours.

I don’t even know where to start to explain exactly what took me so long this time. Connection bolts, nuts, and such just weren’t in accessible places; tubes and plugs just didn’t fit together easily; and the instruction booklet wasn’t clear or descriptive. Plus there was water leakage here and there, even though I had the water turned off and knew to handle the hoses properly so any water in them didn’t run out unexpectedly.

Unscrewing a single tube took me half an hour because it was in a difficult location under the washer and was too tight. I had to go through all kinds of hand and arm contortions to get a wrench on the bolt, then I could only turn it maybe 10 degrees at a time, and I couldn’t see the damn thing while my hands were under the machine.

But I eventually got everything done. I really don’t mind doing stuff like that for my mother-in-law. It actually feels good to show I can do something vaguely mechanical. I like being able to point at a machine and say, “I did that.” But it drives me crazy when something that sounds so easy and straight forward turns out to be so damn complicated and time consuming.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

At lunch I saw two women sitting together talking in sign language. I hope they didn’t notice me watching, but I found the scene fascinating. Their hands made small, subtle gestures and large, grandiose waves, but their faces were the most fun to see. They puckered their lips, rolled their eyes, raised their eyebrows, and just made every expression a face can make without actually verbalizing anything.

They could fork food into their mouth with one hand and sign with the other. But then when one looked away at something, the other one had to repeat her gestures when she looked back. They talked and talked and talked. I don’t think two seconds passed without one of them signing something.

It was the quietest gab session I’ve ever witnessed.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com