Virtual-Doug

Living Insanity

Normal people go to the beach on nice beautiful sunny days.  They expect to get sun burnt, covered with sand, and itchy from the salt water.

I’m not about to say I’m not normal, but going to the beach during a driving rain storm says something about me.

We have a sixty six year old grandmother at our church who has four truly great grandkids.  Unfortunately, Dad did his time in prison for drugs, then skipped out afterwards to go make babies with another woman.  Mom is not really keen on kids, except as a device for getting welfare money for herself and boyfriend.  In short, Grandma is the only kin folk who seem to demonstrate any love for the kids.  She gets them on the weekends when Mom wants to go out and party.

The Mystery Guest Blogger loves those kids!  I mean, she flat out loves them.  Besides helping Grandma in anyway she can, the MGB wants to show those kids that they are to be loved as something more than just pawns for money.  So – she promised them we would go to the beach on Saturday.

Friday night, it rained like a cow peeing on a flat rock.  Saturday morning dawned wet and windy.  But, a promise is a promise, so the picnic cooler was packed, beach towels were found, and off we went to pick up four rambunctious young uns.

And it rained during the entire 1 ½ hour drive to the beach.  Hard rain.  Toad-choking rain.  But we pressed on.

We finally found a covered pavilion on South Padre Island where we could eat dry (except for the rain that was blown in under the roof). The kids had to keep towels wrapped around themselves to keep their teeth from chattering.  As you can see, I was thrilled to be there – and Grandma thought it was funny.

But – we were at the beach!

I suppose it was inevitable for the kids to figure out that as long as they were already wet from the rain, they may as well go swimming.  So swim they did, while Grandma kept watch.  She has the towel on her head to ward off the rain.

No – I don’t have any photos.  No way I’m gonna risk getting my gear wet from salt water, and the lenses gritty with blown sand.  The MGB took these photos with her camera.

You think I’m crazy?

Summer, Kids, and Swimming

June is hot in south Texas, and with school out for the summer, kids flock to the pools.  The city of Mission, Texas, runs two pools.  They work together to provide programs to teach kids how to swim and another to teach competitive swimming.

(As always, be sure to click on each photo to see a larger version.)

Way back in 1994, a recent graduate from high school was encouraged by his former swimming coach to start a summer program – and that’s what Arnold Perez did.  There were a grand total of five kids that first year.  Of those, two are now in college and they come back to help coach the little kids.  Along the way he was joined by Fabian Lara.  Though they compete against each other as high school swim coaches, they’re buddies during the summer.

I watched as over 100 kids practiced their starts before the first meet of the summer.  The two main coaches used a combination of whistles and bull horn to show the kids how it will be in an actual swim meet.  The swimmers dove in on signal, swam a short distance, then climbed out of the pool – and did it all over again.  And again.  And again.

The smaller kids were coached by the two college women.  They worked on technique as well as helping the younger swimmers understand all the signals.  They were patient, yet firm with their young charges – and they knew parents were watching.  Danielle and Sonya were very proud of the fact that they had been among the very first swimmers in the program, and even prouder to be giving back to today’s kids.  At the end of practice, they stayed with Coach Lara to be sure the little kids understood the time to be ready in the morning for their first competition of the summer.

And the older swimmers?  They kept right on practicing their starts.  They were learning more than just how to swim fast.  They were learning life lessons.

The New Toy

As most of you know, I love photography.  It is a passion that was reignited while we lived in Việt Nam in 2005-06,  the very place where I bought my very first serious camera way back when.  It was a Canon FT-QL - -and I still have the camera, along with three lenses I bought at the same time.  I learned how to develop my own pictures (still have some of those B&W 8X10 prints), and enjoyed the hobby. 

As time passed and the Mystery Guest Blogger and I went on through life paying mortgages, advancing careers, and moving across the country, the passion slowly faded.  She too played with the darkroom for awhile, and I bought a new Canon Elan IIe in the 90s, but nonetheless, I didn’t do much.  (By the way – if you clicked on the photos to see larger versions, you didn’t get anything bigger – that’s because they are small photos to begin with.)

The humidity of Việt Nam did in the electronic viewfinder of the Konica-Minolta Dimage A-2.  It still works, and in fact I used it a few times during the last month I was there.  So I splurged when we got home and bought a Canon 30D.

Photography is not for the light of wallet.  I’ve tried to compensate for that in some way by doing some freelancing for the local weekly newspaper, but that is hardly big bucks.  Maybe I can sell an occasional print to a high school kid I took a picture of during a game.  Nonetheless, I wouldn’t want to make a living this way – I just want to be able to buy more toys.

As I mentioned last week, I won an eBay auction for a new lens.  Of course, I had to see if it worked, so off I went to find a game to shoot.  I found some men’s blooper-ball games (slow pitch softball), but the diamonds were completely surrounded by chain link fences.  Bummer – that means I had to shoot through the fence.

But, I didn’t think this shot was all bad – and you can click on this one to see a larger version.

Goofin’ Off

I’m not sure how I ever found time to go to work before I retired.  I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger right now.

Yesterday – I was heading out the door on a well-planned series of errands when the phone rang.  (Remember – the Mystery Guest Blogger is visiting her mother in Ohio.)  It was the MGB’s brother.  He had been working around his house and wrenched his back so badly he could not sit or lie down – and certainly could not drive his car.  I drove to his house, and we finally got him in my car, but only after a lot of pain.  He was hurting.  After dropping him off at the clinic, I was off to do my delayed errands.  I had to get a new retiree ID card from my old employer, so I spent ½ hour at the University of Texas-Pan American.   The ID picture is ugly – a normal outcome of my portraits.

Lunch with some of the folks I used to work with.  They keep me young – they are smart, ambitious, and personable.  Just as I was eating the last crumb of food, the mobile phone rang, and I was off to pickup the brother-in-law and get him home.  He wasn’t hurting quite as bad, but the muscle relaxing drugs gave his speech a bit of a slur. 

Then, I drove to the other side of town pick up my pay check at the Progress-Times  newspaper where I do freelance sports photography.  This is a slow time for high school sports, but I still get the occasional assignment, such as covering the signing of high school athletes to college national letters of intent.  This young man’s mother and sister watch him sign to play football at Texas Lutheran University. 

I really wanted to get home to see if I won an eBay auction for a new lens I wanted for the upcoming high school football season, but I had to go see Mom first.  That is always a special time as it forces me to slow down a bit.  Her world is very very different from mine, and I have to concentrate to connect with her.  A visit usually entails talking a walk, and she often likes to go outside to the parking lot, despite the south Texas heat.  It was 97 when this shot was taken.

Remember lunch with the former colleagues?  One of the guys was a geographic bachelor like me, so we agreed to meet for dinner.  Would you believe two guys eating dinner – and we both ordered soup and salad?  Another image shattered, eh? 

I hadn’t been home since 9:30 in the morning, so then we went over to my house to continue the conversation.  We both are allergic to alcohol, so we drank St. Pauli Girl non-alcoholic brew and solved the problems of the world.

How in the world would I have found time to go to work with a day like that? 

Oh yeah – I won the auction for the new lens.

Geographic Bachelor

When an old married guy like me is without his wife for awhile, he acts differently when she’s gone.

No – I haven’t been chasing Pretty Young Things with Skirts Up to Here, nor has the corner bar acquired a new customer.  Its just that things are different.

Normally, I’m not a television sort of guy.  I just don’t care about “Grey’s Anatomy”  (or is it Gray’s).  The Mystery Guest Blogger likes to tease me and say that if the cable TV system were to go on the blink so that all we could get was CNN and The Weather Channel, I wouldn’t know the difference. 

But, it’s different when she’s not here.  So what was it I stayed up late at night to watch?  The Women’s College Softball Championship Series.  About half way through the second game, I realized I was talking to myself - - -  and telling the coach how to run her team.

Bizarre.

By the way, I don’t fart all the time either – I have some couth left.

I noticed I don’t eat “on time” either.  I just eat when I’m hungry.  I might eat breakfast at 10, or lunch at 11, and dinner at 8.  Okay – I knew that the “Sweemer’s Casserole” took longer to cook than I had expected when I ate at eight o’clock, but still . . .

Oh yeah – I talk to the cat a lot more too.  Worse, I have come to think Bao may be trying to talk back.

I hope Bao doesn’t learn to talk.  If she does, she’ll tell the MGB how I act when she’s gone.

Mr. Mom

I am a geographic bachelor now – the Mystery Guest Blogger is visiting her mother, so I have to fend for myself for a short while.  But when she comes back home, she will be going back to work for a few months.

And that means some role reversal.

She will be the breadwinner, while I take care of the home front.

How hard can that be?  I am finding out. 

Of course its great fun shmushing the hamburger together with the other ingredients to make meat loaf.  My mother always told us kids “Don’t play with your food,” but this is so much fun.  Its kinda like making mud pies, except I have to put this in the oven.  Have I ever told you I am afraid of ovens?  Afraid of getting burned, I am.  But, the MGB is a good teacher, and the meat loaf turned out pretty durned good.

(Be sure to click on each photo to see the full-sized version of the picture.)

I have to go to the store to buy stuff.  That’s harder than I thought.  I don’t know where anything is.  I don’t know what the ingredients are called before they’re cooked (“Okay, do I buy a butt or a loin?)  How much spaghetti do I need to buy – it looks a lot different on the plate than in the box.  Do I put the apples I want in one of those plastic bags (which I had to find) and if I do, how does the check out clerk know how much to charge me?  I need some rice, so I do a very unmanly thing and I ask for directions.  The clerk timidly points behind me and says “Right there on the shelf, Sir.”  So much for asking directions again – I can have my male ego punctured somewhere else.  And speaking of rice, have you ever looked to see how many kinds of rice there are?

Because I didn’t follow Mom around the house when I was a kid, I don’t know the difference between a tsp and a Tbs.  Most cook books assume the reader already knows how to separate an egg.  And, why should I “pre-heat” an oven, whatever that means.  Is that like warming up the engine of my car on a cold morning?  Recently, the MGB showed me “clabbered” milk.  Huh?  Just what is a 6-cup loaf pan anyway?

I have a secret weapon. Way back in 1994, my in-laws anticipated something like this happening, and they bought me a copy of “Dad’s Own Cook Book”  for Christmas.  Ah – what a marvelous book for the American male who never puttered around the kitchen for any other reason than to get another beer out of the refrigerator.

Stayed tuned – I probably won’t write about my new job a lot, but there are bound to be some embarrassing moments worth writing about.

Hey – if it makes you laugh, maybe I can help brighten your day once in awhile, eh?

(Secret question for Tuan.  Do you think I could become a traditional Huê girl?)