Notes from the Red Bird House

My dad turns ninety-three today. Yes, really. He was an "old dad" when I was born - he was forty-one - and well ahead of his time. Dads having kids in their forties is much more common today that it was in mine. Many thought he was my grandfather until they got to know us. Dad and I reveled in our age difference - about the time I was considered an "adult" at the movie theater, he was a "senior;" I don't think we ever paid two full price admissions to a movie. And we went to a lot of movies together. We can't go see a movie for his birthday, nor can I even hang out and watch one with him (though I am giving him a new blu-ray for his vast collection - "Captain America," his first Avengers movie). Covid stole all that.  I moved to this god-forsaken desert to spend time with my dad. I've only seen him a handful of times since March. Don't get me wrong. I couldn't be happier about how his assisted living facility has handled the p

"There is little besides my heart that can bring me to my knees."  ~ Stacee Ann Harris At the moment, I'm attempting to revel in my strength. It's kind of a fake it until you make it proposition because I really don't feel all that strong right now. I keep telling myself 'this' (details NOT forthcoming) will make me stronger in the long run....You have to be weak before you can be strong....Strength always starts as weakness.....Pain is just weakness leaving the body. Blah, blah, meh...... Everyone tells me I'm soooooooooooooooo strong. I'm the strongest person they know. Seriously? I'm feeling a lot right now, but "Strong" isn't on the list.  And look, I've survived far worse and I will assuredly survive this. It's just that - f*** - I didn't expect to be here. Not now, not ever again. Wishful and fanciful thinking on my part? Oh, I'll admit to that. F*** me, one of these times it has to work out. It just has to.

It's not a daily thing. Days pass and I don't even give her a thought. Then a cousin sends some old pictures and I spend a bit of time missing her. My girlfriend, when I show her the pics my cousin sent, comments on how much I look like my mom. Maybe that's because with my hair longer and shaggy like this (Mom in her 40s and 50s tended to get the same wingy sides as I do when my hair is this length), I do look a lot like her. So much that I see her every time I look in the mirror. I always knew it would happen. It means my mom is around. I guess I'm lucky that way. I get to miss her less. Still there are times...moments...when I'm taken completely by surprise...when suddenly I miss her. I remember the first time. I was walking up the main paint aisle at work, just doing my normal thing in the middle of a normal workday. It was February, I'm sure of. Mom had been gone maybe six weeks. I hadn't spent even one moment missing her. I thought I'd come to ter

"Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.  Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they are never weakness."  ~ Brene Brown "We can do hard things." ~ Glennon Doyle I was super, duper close to titling this blog/vlog "Weakness, Actually." I wanted to play on what is apparently turning into a series of blogs/vlog ending with the word "actually." I started by posting an old blog called "Courage, Actually" as a vlog a few weeks back and then followed up last week by posting a vlog of a new blog called "Ironic, Actually." The latter was intended to be a rebuttal of the former. See? I'm really not as courageous as I may have led y'all to believe. Reception to my crow-eating rebuttal was all-together positive. People get fear - they really do. By and large, they thought it took a lot of courage to write and speak openly about my fears and my battle with them. Still.......

A couple days ago, I posted my first ever vlog. It was  just me reading an old blog from December 2018 called, "Courage, Actually." I chose it specifically because it's about accepting life's challenge and fearlessly stepping outside your comfort zone. Making and posting a video of myself was a big step outside my personal comfort zone - in fact, I have long said it's something I would never do - so I felt the topic was timely and appropriate. Reception of the vlog among my Facebook friends and followers was immediately positive. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Courage for the win. I worry, though, that I have falsely painted myself as some courageous-comfort-zone-and-fear-defying crusader. In reality, that's just not me. Not these days...and I think it's time for me to come clean. It's kind of ironic, actually. And hard for me to admit. This might be the barest I have stripped myself in a long time. For the past few months, I have been mired in

The bludgeon rises Steady On knees Hands raised Weapon down I do not plead Beg Grovel Or Flinch Each blow taken Deserved Earned Harder Please harder Soul bloodied Tear-stained Unbowed Another Please another.

"People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses."  ~Brene Brown  Here is my story.... A few months ago, before my first phone date with a woman I'd met on a dating site, a good friend introduced me to vulnerability. I'd been freaking the f*** out about the upcoming call for days. Yes, it was just a phone date. I kept trying to tell myself that over and over, but the more I thought about it, the bigger it got. And the more nervous I got. You see, I hadn't dated anyone in years (YEARS) and I had never dated anyone like her. If her voice, I told myself, was half as awesome as her text messages, she'd be The One. But first I had to overcome everything I felt holding me back - nerves, fear, my past. In my mind, everything - literally the rest of my life - hinged on this phone call. After saying this probably a few too many times, my friend brought in the big gun, a Ted Talk by Brene Brown. Vulne

           My father told me long ago that I should take this story with me to my grave. He swore me to secrecy and made me promise I'd never tell anyone. The older I get, though, I wonder. I think I owe it to him. I think I owe it to Cotton. You see, the story is mine, but it's really his. Benjamin Jasper Cotton. Benjamin to his mother, BJ to his daddy, and Cotton to us boys. The day I'm fixing to tell you about was the day my life changed. I can't say it was for the better, but it did make me who I am. Even at eighty with bad eyes, bad knees, and a full life, I can only point to that day. That moment, really. The   look in his eyes, Cotton's eyes, and the nearly imperceptible shake of his head.   That's what changed my life.             Well, there I go getting ahead of myself. My daddy always said that the best place to start is at the beginning. But with Cotton, it's hard to tell the beginning. You see, I don't have a single childhood memory that

Some years ago a friend bought me a pair of cycling socks. It wasn't that I was into cycling and needed socks (We were incidentally buying bikes that day also, a bike I seldom, if ever, rode). It was more about a cute pair of socks and my love of margaritas. The socks, of the ankle high variety, have a margarita glass on the ankle and the words "It's 5:30 somewhere" on the sole. My friend thought they were perfect for me. I thought they'd be my lucky socks. You know, the socks you wear when you need little extra luck, like a big day at work or a first date. That kind of thing. I seem to recall almost immediately putting them into action. Look, I'd never been what I would call a "lucky person." I seldom won games of chance (even games involving skill are a crap shoot); I could literally scratch twenty $1 lottery tickets and win absolutely nothing; historically the pretty girl chose to sit next to someone else (I mean that only slightly figurativel

Because you gotta find the bright side, right? Look, people are sick, dying, out of work, overworked, stuck at home, stuck away from home, lonely, overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, unsure, confused, bored, broke, self-isolating, quarantined, out of TP, hoarding TP, essential, non-essential. Some are heroes; some are fuckers; still others are just trying to survive. The world, like almost literally the entire world, is closed. To say these are unprecedented times doesn't quite explain what's going on. It's not a zombie apocalypse nor an Old Testament-esque plague, but it's pretty f***ing devastating by first world twenty-first century standards. Before mid-March when just about everything in America shut down (and food delivery found a resurgence), what was the worst we dealt with on a daily basis? Traffic jams, micromanaging bosses, our kid's asshole soccer coach, the occasional internet outage, a busted washing machine? Now a month later, we're rationing toilet

I'm exhausted so I don't know how this is going to go. Normally, I wouldn't write; I'd wait until a better day, a day when I was better rested or more in the mood. It's not really that I'm not in the mood. I'm simply too tired to even have a mood. Regardless, I feel I should write. Today. Now. There's nothing else to do except sleep and read and sleep and read. And I've done far too much of that in the last week. It's been a crazy week, though in far from the traditional sense of "crazy." That's what I feel I need to at least write a few words about. Last Saturday, April 4, I finally acknowledged that my lungs were feeling "funny." I'd felt a little off - unable to take a deep breath - for a few days previous, and, while I thought maaaaybe it was the beginning of something (i.e. coronavirus), I was able to play it off as just my imagination or allergies, even though I'm not allergic to much of anything. The follo

Maybe it's because it's only 11:30am and I'm already drinking. I dunno. I don't normally day drink. Hell, I don't normally drink. I'm blaming this on the 'Rona (a.k.a. the Coronavirus; a.k.a. COVID-19). I bought a six pack of Angry Orchard on Monday afternoon and at last count, I only have two left. What's more, I had rum and coke last night. Granted compared to normal people, I'm not drinking much at all. Compared to me under normal conditions, I'm a f***ing lush. We are living in unprecedented times. I'm drinking on the regular and there's a toilet paper shortage. I'm also trying to find some humor in an otherwise humorless situation. God, I gotta find something good in all this. And humor is good. Of course, I'll probably end up crying before I hit "Publish." I cried already today. I teared up as I hung up the phone after calling in to the job I never call into. But f*** I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Be