for about three weeks I've been telling people when they ask about my social schedule (cause ohhhh, I get soooooo many offers to do shit) that we're babysitting on the 16th of August, and we're supposed to go to a wedding that day too - but oddly enough we didn't get an invite to that wedding, the one where we saw the bride at the Bavarian Festival and she BEGGED my sister and I to come to it.

um, well, yesterday mom and dad had a message on their answering machine when they got home from the camp-fest (mom and dad stayed in a Bed-and-Breakfast hence did not camp but that's not relevant here) that the wedding was off, the bride's ex-fiance' had canceled it, the shower gifts were coming back but they were locked in a house and lawyers were fighting over them.  the end of the message was that it was all "a big mess" - yes, I can see how that situation would be construed as a big mess.

the thing that really touches me though is how this guy we met and shook hands with and talked to about the wedding, how he apparently just up and left.  obviously something must have been going on for him to just up and leave, but he's gone-daddy-gone, from everything I can tell. 

but my poor cousin (2nd cousin, I think, but I've never understood lineage like I should) is without a fiance' now.  I feel very bad for this girl that I only see at family reunions, funerals, weddings, and the occasional happy run-in about town.  I'm not sure what one says to a 2nd cousin at a time like this, but I have a really bad habit about not shutting up when I should.  so I'll say something, and probably soon.  but I have no idea what.

lots of stuff happened this weekend.  but i'm too tired to blog about it now

I'm dirty - the kind of dirty you get when you've been around a campfire for two days, and haven't changed your pants since friday (I have NOW but hadn't an hour ago when I got home) and you feel so heavily the weight of a hat on your head, yet the hat isn't there anymore and you keep grabbing for it wondering where the hell the phantom hat has gone.

tired and dirty is a good thing to be, if you know there's a bed waiting for you and a shower in the morning.

if only I wouldn't have turned toward home when we saw the sign beckoning us to Traverse City and more cherry-filled days of fun, then I wouldn't have to get up tomorrow and go to work - and THAT would be something to blog about

I complain a lot about living in a tiny town (www.frankenmuth.com - sigh) - things are just different here

today the wife and girls went to go hang out at little daughter's teacher's house - the kindergarden teacher who taught her all last school year.  in my day and age this would be almost unheard of - students' families fraternizing with teachers' families. but here it's cool, apparently.  and the teacher even came to big daughter's softball game, just because we're pals.  and the night of the festival I drunkenly talked to her a lot (I made sure first that if I did manage to say something totally asinine that she couldn't retro-actively flunk my daughter) - and even took one of my coolest digital cam-pictures ever of her waving at me when I was on top of the Ferris Wheel.

and big daughter's 2nd grade teacher came to the First Communion party at our house.  and hung out and talked with us!  I even hugged her goodbye and shook her son's hand as they left.  it's not bad per se, but it's a smaller town mentality than I'm used to.

so, as little daughter and I sat there chatting up her ex-teacher at the baseball diamond situated picturesquely behind the middle school amonst the other baseball diamonds, I thought maybe it wasn't really such a bad thing that we live in littletown, USA, where my wife went to high school with seemingly everyone and they all know us.  my moment of zen, however, was somewhat ruined by the smell of horse shit from the corn field 500 feet from us.

today will not go down in history as a day of accomplishments.  we did get the gym reserved for the Lego Competition though, whooo!

I'm off to bed, my tribe.  to dream of wolves and lost opportunities.

how is it that I can sit and look at myself in the mirror as I get out of the shower and not know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing?  the same routine that I've engaged in 250 times a year over the last eight years, it's not any sort of science, just mind-numbing robotic repetition.

but this morning as I looked at this guy who I don't understand anymore combing his way-too-fucking-long-to-be-me hair, and tan like he doesn't have any business being, I asked myself what to do next.  get my socks?  underwear?  shirt?  I didn't really know, so I just sat there and looked. 

what a wanker of a fella, I wanted to say.  really, what I wanted to say was "dude, where's my car?" but he didn't look like the sort that would think it was funny.  or maybe he did, I don't really know.

now TODAY if I had a point, it would be that you can't sleep in if you want to get to work on time, OR if you budget your time you can either have one more SNOOZE for nine minutes or jack off in the shower, but you can't do both or you'll be late.  however, if you do end up doing both and end up late, you get to come downstairs and spew some moronity onto xanga before you go to work

the end.