Mrs. Ditchman has not had a full night's sleep since before we were married, six and a half years ago. I know this for a fact, since we've not been apart more than a month's time, total, in all those collected nights. I treasure them.

I don't think it's what she agreed to, when she said yes to me seven years ago today on the edge of that Grand Canyon, both literal and otherwise. For that matter, I'm not sure I knew what I was asking. If we knew then what we know now, would she still have said yes? Would I still have asked?

And the answer is a resounding Yes. For all those sleepless nights are the price you pay for those full days -that full life, brimming with the joy that only such precious, dedicated, familial camaraderie can bring. Our cup overflows. It's how we asked the angels to fill it, (hoped they would, anyway.) Later that night it snowed, and some would say, expectedly so. She thought we were going camping in it, and she still said yes! It was a cold, wet snow, but the sun came out the next morning. And I was quietly prepared for bad weather: I'd reserved the best room in the lodge.

She was itching to get out to exercise this morning, even though she's sick, and after being up all night. At 5:30AM she was holding the baby in the dark, in the hall, and I got up because I couldn't stand the thought of her standing out there any longer. When she saw me, she turned her back to me so I could see the kid, and she asked in a whisper if I could see whether the Little Digger's eyes were closed. They were, finally, and she exhaled. A few hours later she was angling for the front door for her workout, but she stopped, and then encouraged me to get my run in first. She knows it's important to me, which is what made me move fast to get back home, so she could get out there, too. For me, the day was a mess, but she managed to get groceries. She knows just what thing will occupy the children for the ten minutes she needs to make that business call. She let me complain about every useless thing, and responded by asking if I needed my laundry done. She made dinner. She did the dishes. She looked good. She bathed one kid and I bathed the other. She fell asleep on the couch towards the end of House, but she woke up and leaned over and puckered up to kiss me before she went off to bed tonight. When she does that, it doesn't matter what happened, or didn't, today. Everything's going to be fine tomorrow.

Somehow, seven years back, I made the right call.

And I'm taking credit for it. I own all the love I have for her, but it's hers for the taking at any given moment.




~

Thanksgiving accomplished. We won.

The slump is history. Now we shall slink into December with all its shimmering promises of a celestial wintertime beauty. Okay, it's Southern California. Let's not overstate things. I'm dreaming of a brown Christmas.

But we're feeling good, now. Nothing like piling on the relatives in close quarters and jamming food and wine down their throats to upturn recent melancholies and kickstart the prevailing mood. Seriously now, pull all the big tables together and throw a large sheet over it. Light some candles. Make the kids sit somewhere else. It's Thanksgiving.

One of my nephews, who is eight, announced that he would like to start a family Thanksgiving tradition. Hooray! we all said, and the new tradition was that we should go around and each state what we were thankful for. Brilliant! So we did. But everyone said essentially the same thing: that we were thankful for each other, that we were thankful for family, and that we were thankful that my mom was there and feeling better and looking good. (Also, it was mentioned, immense spontaneous gratitude for not having any homework this weekend. Praise be.)

I would have thanked my mom for having six kids so that we could all have so much family to enjoy and be grateful for, but then I realized that that might put a certain undue pressure on my wife and I -a pressure we could never withstand. And then it made me want to thank my mom all the more.

There were the usual two turkeys cooked by the usual two turkeys, my brothers-in-law. One bird was fried, one roasted, and the two turkeys cooking them remained mostly sober. They were, all of them, excellent company, and the tasty meat was just left out on two platters where, like some sort of strange, holiday vultures, we picked at it until midnight and then again this morning over coffee.

The women are out shopping now, and the men are down at the park playing ball. I am here alone with the baby, who sleeps, which is a good and necessary thing, though it is a sickly kind of sleep. I have a laptop out on the patio, and I am sipping a "Bud Lime" before noon, trying to think up a clever retort when someone calls me on it. Hey, I'm relaxing -let's all try it! Anyway, Mrs. Ditchman (and I, by extension) were up all night with that sick crying kid. It feels like 5PM on a Saturday, so a Bud Lime is in order. Why Bud Lime? Don't know. It was here, in a cooler, a few feet from me. Why not?

The clan held the annual ornament exchange last night, and it was the usual Black Friday Eve riot. It must be seen to be believed, but if you haven't heard the story, my family goes all out on this event. Everyone buys and wraps an ornament -some fantastically ornate, some gaudy and obnoxious- and we put them all on a table and draw numbers out of hat. Number 1 goes first, and all successive numbers retain the option to steal any previously-opened ornament, or choose a fresh one. Sounds fun, until you realize that families work deviously together, teaming up to purloin the good ones, retreating into dimly lit corners to plan out a strategy to obtain that Tiffany icicle or that dangling seahorse -the one blown from European glass by Bavarian artisans. It gets way out of hand, which is the entire point, and everyone is a good sport about it. Ornaments are only allowed to be stolen three times before they are considered "dead", so there is a lot of horse-trading and illicit wrangling to get the good items off the market. (You should know that exceptions are made for the innocent ones. The Little Ditchman got her hands on a blinking, singing set of waxy, hanging polar bears and she held it in such high regard, with a steady gaze of such adoration, that no one would dare think to steal it. She won.)

I have left the game with good ornaments in years past, but was fully shut out this year, having had one after another stolen and killed. It was I who ended the event last night by opening the last gift. I still maintain a change in the constitutional rule, that after the last person goes the first gets a chance to steal, but none will have it. I'm not sure why no one will go for it, but I guess if you start changing the rules one year, Thanksgiving will degenerate into desultory shin-kicking within a decade, and who wants that?

There were five pies. There was A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which always feels a bit forced. There was some more wine and a lively discussion about iTunes and the fate of "the album". There was a failed attempt to Skype. Then we all fell asleep watching Elf, which is danged funny, but we'd all seen a hundred times. It was a good day.

And in that distant past of yesterday morning, a hundred miles away, I ran the Oceanside Turkey Trot 5K and came in 5th in my division! Number of runners in my division? Hmmm, I think 5. Gotta go. Bud Lime's getting warm.

Enjoy life, eat out less often!

~

"None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy. " -Fred De Witt Van Amburgh




Happy Thanksgiving!


~

The Inspector signed off on the cover yesterday -the cover with the big, deep holes filled with concrete, a ton of steel in the posts and headers, and a thousand bolts into the house- so I can finally put that all behind me. More or less. A friendly man is coming to install solar panels atop the overwrought aluminum edifice next week, so I may have to field a few questions. Otherwise, the permit is initialed and the box is checked -the one that says READY FOR OCCUPANCY. Burden lifted.

Also finished another one yesterday and signed up at least one for December. Though the year is slowing down to a close, with our income flow reduced to a trickle, I am very grateful. I need a bit of rest.

But there's no time for that! Gotta get up at daybreak for the local Turkey Trot! And then drive 125 miles to Thanksgiving, where the Little Ditchman has been promised she would get to build a gingerbread house. And then later this weekend: Christmas lights.

I actually had the foresight to purchase some lights the other day, knowing that they all sell out by Saturday, and since last year I found myself stuck mid-strand, without a workable set to move forward with. You see, our house requires a very specific type of light string with a "random twinkle" effect. This is different from the "blinking sparkle" effect, which will not do. Putting up these lights is a whole day affair, somehow, but I will blast Christmas music and pack away everything pumpkin and replace it with all things pine and winter. It's here. Time to stock up on the necessities: firewood, wrapping paper, ribbon, tape, cards, stamps, gifts, and other sundry items.

I was impressed with myself for a few hours, having bought the lights before that inevitable crisis of '08 was repeated. I was at Lowes and found the display box of my needed lights empty and I almost ho-ho-hollered in despair -until I saw an unopened crate of them buried up and behind the rack. I got it myself. Whipped out my key chain x-acto and began stocking shelves. No one said a thing. (My contractor work shirts happen to be a Lowes blue and, as a result, customers are always asking me where things are. Unfortunately for corporate, I usually have a quicker answer than the employees. No, seriously. I was waiting at an empty checkout counter the other day and the guy behind me asked sarcastically if I was going to fire up the register or just stand there looking stupid. I almost took his money.)

So I was impressed with myself for being ahead of the game, but when I turned up my cul-de-sac at day's end I noticed that one of the Jims had his lights UP AND ON! The Monday before Thanksgiving! The bastard! And then I drove past another Jim's house and HE HAD CHRISTMAS GARLAND HUNG AROUND HIS GARAGE! This was especially intimidating because I know he happens to be in Guantanamo, but damn, he is on top of it this year! So I gave up, and decided that Saturday I would give them all hell for going at it early. Later that night I went out to fetch the mail. Another neighbor had his ladder against the house. He was hanging lights in the dark. They were already plugged in. Damn you, Rod! I shaked my fist.

But it actually makes perfect sense, since you can more easily tell which bulbs are out when you're hanging them in the dark. So that will be my weekend, amid a paltry few other chores. What am I thankful for? So many things, but my family and my country more than anything, since just about all else can be remade. Gratitude wards off ruination, and is the key to happiness. It's not a key I intend to misplace.

~

We're still in that slump slumping slumpiness, as delineated in yesterday's post. It has to do with old sicknesses and ailments segueing into new ailments and sicknesses with no remarkable transition points. Like when I was on a bus in Europe going from Paris to Amsterdam. At one point we stopped for a pee break for 5 minutes and then got back on and kept going. Someone asked me how I liked Belgium. "That was Belgium?" That was Belgium. And when people ask me if I've ever been to Belgium, I say yes and snicker to myself.

Now that I think about it, "I have to go to Belgium" is a great personal euphemism I may employ in the future.

We're getting used to the slumpiness, actually, except that I never really seemed to have gotten used to the previous overriding slumpiness of parenthood, so, oh bother. This seems a new sort of parenthood, with two kids. Parenthood redefined by simple quantity. People think that the addition of kids changes things. It doesn't. It changes you.

I know little, or nothing, of who my parents were before us kids came along. I suspect that, at least to some degree, my mother -who is in her seventies- still sees herself as that shimmering youth with her fine arts degree and on her way to ballet class. But then -poof!- six kids came along and eventually transformed her into the glowing matriarch she is now, with her back bent from picking up children her whole life and an innocent smile that belies the immense fortitude we all know she has for managing her incorrigible husband all those years. She's been battling cancer for nearly a decade, but you wouldn't guess it unless you asked her about the noticeable weight loss and gain that comes and goes between treatments. She just sucks up about it. It's what parents do, and she's gotten good at it after all these years.

I, by contrast, suck at it. I'm predisposed to complain. And I still see myself, in so many ways, as that long-haired, struggling artist, daydreaming about future travels (to Belgium!) and what I'm going to say in the next pitch session. But that horse died some time ago, and instead of letting it go, I'm prone to just changing sticks and beating it some more.

My kids don't see me that way.

One of the blessings of having children is that you get to remake yourself. It is the truest of graduations, and, really, the only time in your life that everyone you know will let you do it without hassle. It also happens to be the only time it actually matters. Here, suddenly, midstream in life, are some new people who look to you, depend on you, love you more than anyone ever has, and in ways you barely understand, and they don't care who you ever were. All that matters is who you are to them now, how you treat them today, and if you were an ass in some previous life, if you lied and cheated and hurt the myriad of strangers and so-called friends that passed through your space in some B.C. ("Before Children") well, it can all be dismissed now. Just don't do it again, Dad.

Unsullied forgiveness like that makes it easy to dig some trivial ditches and pour some brainless concrete and build some dopey aluminum patio covers in the sun. You do it for the money, you do it for them -and you don't mind that part about it. Just keep at it. You're allowed a few bad days.




My mom, in the middle.

~

Spent the weekend learning several new functions on Photoshop. It takes a good long time to learn new Photoshop functions, then experiment with them, and then -finally- administer them to your project. But it takes an inverse amount of time to forget said functions, and, since you won't have to use the functions again for a few months, nay, a year, you will live out that Saturday afternoon all over again some day, re-learning the same several new functions on Photoshop. Additionally, this blog will be repeated.

Also spent some time in the attic, tinkering with the furnace since I'd rather not pay the few hundred dollars to have someone come out and fix it properly. I think I got it, but an hour or so later Mrs. Ditchman came downstairs to say that it smelled like something was burning in the office and that the heater was making noises again. So I went upstairs to check it out, and detected no such thing. It could be that the burning and the noises were coming from some totally new problem for this week. Stay tuned.

I will say that I heard a noise this morning, when the furnace powered off. It sounded like the wheels of a 747 touching down on some heretofore unnoticed runway in the attic, and then, reverse thrusters, brakes applied. I'm going to ignore it for now and just go to work. The whole house is in a slump. I didn't run all last week, and this week's work is a mere continuation of last week's work. Neither is Mrs. Ditchman achieving her exercise or work-related goals. And this week: Thanksgiving, with its inevitable sequel holiday, Christmas. Reverse thrusters. Brakes applied.

Things are still growing in the garden, though it seems at a diminished autumnal rate. Temps have been in the low forties every night, and I think we're on Day 160 of "no detectable moisture", so the garden is experiencing a certain weary malaise. I think it all just wants to be pulled and composted, recycled for some future, more productive Spring. I know the feeling.

Even the tortoises are experiencing some seasonal languor, as they move unhurriedly about the pen, wondering whether hibernation arrives on its own, or if they should just settle in somewhere and will it to be so. One tortoise actually escaped yesterday. Dug his way out of the pen and made a break for the house, by way of the lavender bushes. I caught him in the nick of time -a few more days of my neglect and he might have made it all the way to the barbecue.

Fishes? Same. If they could bang on the glass and demand an immediate 10% seawater change, well, they would. You know something's up when you go to feed them and they're all giving you the middle flipper. Oh yes, we'll take the food, petty, dry human, but one of these days the ice caps will melt and aquaria everywhere will rise up and overthrow, drowning you all. Build an ark. We will scuttle it. At least they're warm, and at proper tropical temps, (the lucky bastards.) All summer they suffer in the heat, since we lack air conditioning, and it's not until the fall that I can properly manage their water temperatures. Of course, none of that matters if a stable Ph is thrown aside, the salinity is out of wack, and the protein skimmer is on the fritz. Sorry, fish friends.

The real issue around here is the Little Digger, who has not exhibited a sustained night of sleep in, I don't know, weeks. It is a matter of some concern, since none of us are sleeping much as a result. Mrs. Ditchman is bearing the brunt of it, as she fetches the little guy over and over through the night, but only after 10 minutes or so of his half-awake, anguished, half-voiced moaning. We think it's the molars, and then some added peppery sickness. There seems to be a reaction to the recent pox shot, giving him a minor set of pox symptoms. Anyway, he looks miserable, mottled, and, alternately every hour or so, cute. (But in a be-poxed sort of way.)

And the Little Ditchman. Though she is the envy of the household since she has discovered video games and has the time to play them, she has a garbled, throaty, phlegmy cough -so we've missed church and preschool and all other appointments as a result. It's hard for the mommy to be cooped up like this, and then I run off to dig ditches or pour concrete or build aluminum, or some such thing. Suffice it to say, no one is particularly happy to see each other at the ends of these days. (Bummer!)

But we did catch Up! which is not the accomplishment it sounds but rather another near-perfect Pixar flick, (it was better than WALL-E, and this time Pixar was able to pull off a capable follow-through after that usual, unfathomably sublime, first 10 Pixar minutes.) And I did indulge in a tasty pinot over the weekend. And there has also been some diverting talk of getting a new coffee maker -we're just taking our time deciding on this simple purchase, examining different models and deliberating over this neat feature, or that one. The brewer we have is on its last legs, and is actually the backup coffee maker for our primary coffee maker, which recently expired and crossed The Great Divide between garage sale pile and garbage can. One should always have a backup coffee maker, for emergencies, but one should not use it too often, lest it break and whereby one must then buy two. Two coffee makers! I can't handle all that decision-making, what with the holidays on the doorstep.


~

Dear Sean,

You made some off-handed remark yesterday about not using recycled plot points, but your blog is the same whining and complaining every day about work and kids and not having money and stuff. It's the same every day! All you do is recycle plot points! Get it together! Use some effing creativity! Try writing something of substance! You're better than that. Or, at least, you were once.

Why I check in on your blog every day is symptomatic of my habitual, addictive character defects. I'm going to a doctor, so I can quit you.

WTF,

[NAME WITHHELD]

~

Dear Sean,

You are SO funny! I LOVED your video the other day with you pouring concrete! That was HILARIOUS! One question, did you tell the customer that you were making a movie at his house? I would TOTALLY hire you to build me a patio cover, except that I rent a room from my mom's trailer, and I don't think they would go for it.

And I LOVE your daily quotes, except that I don't really understand most of them. And I think lampreys are NEAT. I have never heard of those before!

*Bye*

[NAME WITHHELD]

~

Dude,

You are wrong about everything. Your ideas are thoughtless and shallow and your "facts" are clearly stripped from Wikipedia. And you drink too much. There's no way you get more than 6 hits a day. What a pretentious title. The only thing 'significant' here is that you are even able to get up and type it out every morning. What a waste of your patio-cover-building time.

And did you really run 28 miles the other day? Good for you.

[NAME WITHHELD]

~

Hey Sean!

I had no idea U had a blog! It's awesome! Do U make money from it? I just read a big article on Yahoo about how all these people are making money with their blogs. U should look into it because U R so creative.

[NAME WITHHELD]

~

From: [NAME WITHHELD]
Subject: Fwd: FW: Windfall
To: [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], [NAME WITHHELD], Sean

Good luck to us all! Here's to Your Pocketbook! The future has a way of arriving unannounced!

(Hope she works -J)

A little Angel for you......


You have just been sent a Financial Abundance angel! Pass her to two people, and be rich in four days. Pass her to six then be rich in two days. You ARE already rich!!!

I am not joking; you will find an un-expected windfall. If you delete her, you will never know how she works….. She really does work like magic! NO Pass Backs. Pay HER forward *** Pass it on.

Windows 7: It works the way you want. Learn more.

~

Honey,

I'm emailing you from downstairs because I can't get through to you. You are going to be late for work again. I am going crazy with these sick kids. I've been up all night and they'll be driving me crazy all day and you're just sitting there blogging again. Did you get the check from the XXXXX job? We're going to be late with the mortgage if we don't get that check. Don't forget you have the kids all day tomorrow because I have appointments, and also on Monday.

The heater still doesn't work. Didn't you fix it?

Love,

[NAME WITHHELD]

~

My brother, my brother,

What's your website again? I keep forgetting. Also, I lost your phone number and home address and that shirt you gave me shrunk and now it's too small. Do you have another one that's bigger?

[NAME WITHHELD]

~

Dear Sean,

Your domain name(s) will expire in 60 days. Act now to avoid any disruption to email or website services and avoid losing your chosen name(s).

The name(s) due for renewal are:

Domain Name, Expiry Date
themostsignificantthing.com, 2010-01-17

Please send payment to [NAME WITHHELD].

We thank you for your continued business.


~