Aloha!
I’m writing from the Baltimore-New London train. We’re about 2 hours away still. Tamika has her feet across my lap, and Nya is tucked in at my feet sleeping soundly in her car seat.
I love train rides.
The fascination was born into me early; I still remember glimpses of riding with my parents on the Chicago elevated trains when I was little. We lived on Magnet Avenue in Chicago. I recently found out they had made a Google Maps Street View of it and went to take a look; but I wasn’t able to match any of the houses with the faded photograph of me and my dad sitting on the porch.
I remember a lot of when I was little. Comparatively, anyhow… Most people don’t seem to be able to remember much past 3 years old. Some particularly close-minded people don’t remember anything past their 20’s… 🙂 I remember a thunderstorm and my mom & dad bringing me out on the porch to watch. I remember going to a pumpkin field for Halloween. It was sunset, and all the pumpkins were the same colour as the sun… I remember my parents drawing faces on three pumpkins with a Sharpie, (mine was the smallest; the size of an apple) and then scooping out their guts and setting them aglow atop our mantle (or was it an upright piano?)
Certain things escape me. A lot, actually. I remember us living at some pastor’s house at one point. All the “kids stuff” that the house had was a tire swing on a big tree out front.
I remember discovering that not only did the faded green and brick coloured tiles at the top of the creaky wooden stairs on the second floor come up when you picked at them, but they also had about 50 years worth of dust underneath them that was fun to drive my toy cars through.
But I have no idea why we lived there, or when, or for how long.
I think that’s why I like to write journals, so that when I’m 60 or 70 I’ll be able to read them and find out what life was like and remember.
I have a pretty bad memory. If you know me at all, I’ve probably forgotten your birthday. And I’ve probably forgotten it more than once. I’m not a pompous prick, I promise. I actually feel so bad when I forget something; that it completely wrecks whatever mood I’m in when I find out. I feel really awful. I’ve been trying really hard to figure out what to do to help myself out.
I used to be bad at remembering where I put things. My glasses were constantly lost; my keys, my wallet… Anything not permanently attached to my body got lost. So, I started to develop a system. Wallet in left pocket. Glasses case on right. Keys on left belt loop. Change goes on the right. Camera bag goes over left shoulder and sits on right side. Always.
These things keep me from loosing them, because otherwise they’re really gone. I feel like there is something wrong with me mentally when I do it, but I feel like I have no choice.
It’s the same when I come home. If I don’t put my bag, shoes and coat in the exact same place each time, I loose those too.
For birthdays and such, I’ve started to put them in an online calendar. It lets me know when people’s birthdays are, and if I do it right, it alerts me a couple days in advance.
But then… sometimes I forget the alert…
My long term memory is really strong, though. I remember a lot of details about past events.
Journals help with this too.
So; back to today.
We were late for our train. We were initially supposed to take the 10:10am train from Baltimore. But, because of a number of things; we got there at 10:11. I literally was running along side the train as it pulled off; shouting at the conductor to let us on.
He was right; it was safer to wait for the next train with me carrying Nya in her car seat, but it still made me mad. He had signaled to the engineer to pull off even though we were on the platform.
Ah well.
Tamika got us Business Class tickets for the 4:47pm train (the last ones available), and we went back home for a while. It ended up being a good thing, because Tamika had forgotten her phone, and we got to pay Talisha for watching Nya for the past two weeks.
Not only that, but a couple ads in the Philadelphia City Paper I had done for Chosen Dance Company had needed to be resized (or they would have missed the publication deadline), so I was able to do those too.
I’ve been doing a lot of work lately. I’ve been working on a bunch of small projects for the CCFOF, designing a whole new site for Barak Drama, putting the final touches on Brian Mengini’s site, and Chosen Dance Company brought me a new client that they’re doing a program with up in Philly.
Zerflin is growing fast. In a post or two I’m going announce a new employee! We finished up the negotiations and he’s accepted the position; I just have to get his bio from him to put up on the Staff page. Tamika has also been taking on a larger role with managing the projects as well as doing some coding and design work as well.
I am looking forward to this break, though. The most I plan on doing these next 4 days is finishing up a logo, writing some quotes, and a few odds and ends. I just want to sleep. 🙂
Pray that I keep my wits about me through all this, and that I’m able to delegate and hire out to others when I can. It’s hard for me, because I want to both keep doing quality work and also be able to do the occasional pro-bono job (Mixed Chick’s Chat Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival has been the latest), but still make enough money to help my family out and let the business grow. The quality part is the hard part; making sure that the people I hire do good work. I’ve been burned a couple times in the past; where people have done work for me and did a shoddy job… and I had to go in a do the whole thing all over again.
Time is the one thing I DON’T have, so to go in and clean something up after you trusted someone to handle it is really hard. But that’s growing pains I guess…
Nya is doing wonderfully. She loves being tickled now, and has the cutest laugh known to man. She also likes it when I make funny faces. She is still sleeping through the night, but we’ve been noticing she wakes up early sometimes.
Tamika and I have begun a schedule to help us not feel so frantic in the mornings. Nya goes to bed at 8:30, and we’ve started off by cutting off electronics (me on my computer and her on the TV) at 9:30. By 10 we’re in bed, though we can read and talk until we fall asleep. Then, at 6:00am, we both wake up, help each other out of bed, and then one of us gets to take a shower first, and the other takes care of Nya and fixes breakfast. At 6:30, we switch, and the one not taking a shower gets to eat and clean up, and gets to clean up something (like the pots and pans or empty the dishwasher. Then at 7 Talisha takes over for Nya and we’re out the door; Tamika drives me to the train station and she drives to work.
It helps us both get sleep and breakfast, which has been great for us; and keeps us from rushing too much.
Plus, since Nya wakes up by 6 anyway, it makes sure she gets fed and changed first thing.
Huh. Another ritual. 😀
Funny, though, all this ritual doesn’t keep me from still being a Savage. I still do wild and crazy things like jump off buildings and go exploring in the woods. I think the rituals help me be able to do that stuff, because everything else I’m sure is taken care of.
Who knows.
I’m weird. 🙂