1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

Starting out with just a little under three hundred words to begin with, so there’s that. Don’t know if I’m going to hit my target for today regardless. I mean, I will, there’s no doubt about that, I’m just not sure any of it’s going to have anything to do with the story.

See, Mrs. Wesley and I had another chat tonight, about how I’ve shirked my responsibilities with LCT this year, because I haven’t listened to the music—which I haven’t—and haven’t gotten in touch with the others on the team I’m supposed to be leading—which I haven’t.

It wasn’t so much a discussion as her telling me what she thinks I need to do, and me understanding it, even if she sees it differently. Unfortunately nothing is ever easy. Instead of her saying her piece and letting it go—which, admittedly, she’s done several times in the past. But each time I was ready to leave, she would ask, “so what are you going to do about this… tomorrow?” That turned a five minute lecture into a 45 minute cold war. She asks questions that demand answers, and I just don’t have them in formats that I can express or that she can understand.

Even as I write this, I’ve had to stand up and pace around and vent at least three times, wasting maybe 15 minutes because I can’t concentrate.

Okay, four times now.

That’s part of the problem with how I write. I have to clear my head before I can get into the story. I’ve got to put everything in my head down on paper. And everything in my head right now is my frustration with the wife and how I feel about the whole LCT thing.

Here’s the fact of the matter. I don’t really want to do LCT anymore. It takes up too much of my energy year after year. I enjoy being a part of it… sometimes. But the truth is I don’t often enjoy being there. That’s not true. In the past, when I was a cast member, I had often thought about dropping out, and there were years I did bail out completely, or nearly so. I just wasn’t having fun in rehearsals or performances very often.

Now, I’m in charge of them. I think I can really bring something new to the process. Hopefully, at least. But now it takes up even more of my energy, and I’m not really up for it this year. I mean, I have a couple of ideas to take the burden off my shoulders. An internship program where I would pick a few people to follow me around and learn a little bit about what goes on in the making of these programs. And then I’m going to ask the high school seniors to take charge of the younger kids.

750 words and counting. I’m tired and frustrated and scared and upset.

How am I supposed to enjoy myself this weekend now? We might as well not go, because I’m not going to be able to concentrate on anything except LCT now, am I? Right now I’m thinking about how that CD with all the music on it for the program is sitting on top of my CPU, and I’m here writing about how I don’t have the time to do anything with it, because I need to get my thousand words in.

But here’s the thing: LCT doesn’t do me any good for my writing. If I’m supposed to be a writer, if I’m supposed to be writing, then any time I spend working on something other than my writing is not time spent efficiently. Therefore, any time I spend fussing about LCT is really just wasted writing time.

I’m thinking right now that I should just can this weekend and devote it to storyboarding for LCT. That would be the rational decision. I’m not going to have any fun this weekend now.

I don’t have time to read. I don’t have time to write. The only thing I’ve done for the past two nights is watch old episodes of LOST that aren’t even that good, when I should be doing something else.

…and that, dear reader, is how to finish my 1,000 words on a low, low note.

Note to Self:

My job as a father (when I become one) is not to make sure my kids have it better off than I did, but to make sure they’re better people than I am.

Meet Taylor Cheyenne Daniels… my niece

So, I met my niece tonight.

Her father didn’t, because he’s a gutless, self-obsessed asshole, but Carrie and I did.

She’s a nice girl. I see a lot of the family in her. She’s definitely got her father’s eyes and build at that age. She’s got the duckwalk from me. She’s something of a geek: likes school, likes to read, likes pop culture and music, likes comic books.

We like her. Very mature for her nine years. That partly comes from being the oldest of six. Hopefully she’ll have a good influence on Christian and Kayli. She might have an effect on Christian. Kayli’s probably far, far too gone, but one can hope, can’t one?

One the other hand, there’s my brother, who calls me to ask details about the car we drive because he’s looking at one, and calls my dad during dinner tonight to ask for a favor, but can’t be bothered to meet his own daughter. When he called me, I tried everything I could to cajole him into coming to dinner with us, short of saying, “Hey, Doucherag, don’t you think you owe it to your daughter to at least stop by and say hello before getting tanked tonight?” But I didn’t, and I regret that.

I don’t get it. I don’t get him. Dad says he might be afraid of kids, and I can dig that. Lord knows I’m not exactly comfortable around children. But these aren’t the neighbor kids. These aren’t even MY kids. They’re HIS FREAKING CHILDREN. You’d think he’d want something to do with them, but not so much.

Especially since she seems like such a good kid. I like her. She deserves better.

Taylor

So, Carrie and I get to meet our niece this Friday. Turns out that she’s nine, not 12, and the reason that the mother, Heidi didn’t come forward before was because she was married and had not reason to. But now she’s divorced, and to apply for child support, the state went after the dad… Dan.

Heidi told my parents this when she and Taylor stopped by the house earlier tonight. She called Dan to see if it would be okay for Taylor to meet her dad and grandparents. And Dan, being the man that he is, never called her back, didn’t come home tonight and didn’t tell my parents that they were coming.

Nice, right?

So my comes to the door and there’s this woman and this girl standing there, and she thinks they’re selling cookies or something. When she asks why they’re there, the woman says, “This is Taylor.” And, my mom being the woman SHE is, doesn’t get it. But when she does, there is much crying and hugging.

Carrie spoke with my mom to get the whole story. From Carrie, it sounds like Heidi is a pretty stand up woman, if not all that smart, and that Taylor is a responsible young woman, helping out with the other kids as much as she can.

Mom also said that the resemblance between Taylor and Christian is uncanny.

So Mom & Dad are picking Taylor up from school on Friday, and Carrie and I are heading down to visit Friday night.

But here’s where it gets fun: Heidi, Taylor’s mom, was two months pregnant with Taylor when Dan and Erin got married.

That’s right…

And this is even better: Heidi and Erin knew each other. Erin was there when Taylor got her ears pierced as a baby.

Uh huh. Psycho hose-beast pierce her husband’s illegitimate daughter’s ears. Spooky, huh?

Anyway, Carrie an I get to meet her on Friday. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I’ll also try to get a few pictures.