Catching Up 1: I, me, mine

It's been so long since I've really posted anything here that I thought I'd begin with a quick "okay, since this is a personal blog I should probably add some personal information." 

Okay, no. I'm just a fucking egotist, so it's all about meeeeee!!!.

Kidding aside, well. Here's the basics.

I'm just a couple or three months away from my 69th birthday so, yeah, fuck, I'm old.

Throw in the whole "multiple joint replacements and Parkinson's" things and I'm not exactly heading into old age physically robust. That kinda sucks, given that I've tried to do all the "right things"; exercised, watched my diet, kept active and intellectually curious and engaged.

It seems pretty ungrateful for me to have taken at-least-decent care of my mind and body for them to decide now that I'm old to turn on me. C'mon, guys! All this time and finally you just give me the I'm-gonna-stop-making-dopamine finger?

Ingrates.

The other ugly reality is that I'm about two years into the post-second-marriage phase of my life, and that sucks on multiple levels.

On the obvious, social one, it's lonely. I've gone from being part of a family; wife, kids, a cat, loving and living together in a cute little house I had spent twenty years loving and working to make cuter and better.

So that whole two decades now feels like a lost sunk cost. All those years and work and love and caring...vanished as though they had never been.

 
On the physical level, well, I'm alone in a small apartment.

That turns back to the social-suck, because for twenty years my best friend, my companion at home and abroad, the person I liked and cared for the most, who shared our adventures together and apart was Mojo. She was my "working week and my Sunday rest".

And now she's gone. Not just physically, but emotionally; she's made it clear that she doesn't want anything to do with me. Not even the slightest, most casual contact. That hurts, a lot. I'd hoped we could at least remain friends, but Mojo has made it clear that she will not tolerate that.

Ouch. 

And the hard truth is that no other friends, as dear as they may be, can replace a best-friend spouse. For one thing, they have their own lives to live. I'm a third wheel, at best, emotionally, and distant physically; it's not like I or they can just stroll around corner or up the road to say hello and pass the time.

I do try; try and get out, try and go to places to meet with friends, or people I share something with.

I've even tried one of those on-line matching things, and met some good people there.

But, still, the bottom line is, well, what I've just detailed. 

 
What remains?

Well, the essence of my heart and mind. Me, who I am, for better or worse.

Retired now for almost four years I'm finding a lot of pleasure in having the time to myself, to exercise, or travel (locally, for the most part - I have time but not money), or just read or screen (and thank you, the shade of Ted Turner, for the TCM old-movie channel!).

I've been keeping my hand in the soils game until this last year. It's been good to use the skills I spent much of my life honing, and the income didn't hurt, either.

The last engineer I know who still called me in for that contract work is sliding into a different track in the geotechnical business and one that doesn't really require a field guy, though, so it looks increasingly likely that this will be the first real year of "retirement", the last soils work I will ever put my name to.

That's fine. I had a good run, did some good work, and I'm ready to hang 'em up. 

My children are almost man-and-woman-grown, and are a lot of fun for it. The big dude who is the Former Peep is in his third year at university here in Portland, studying geology, of all things. Missy is downstate, planning to be some form of botanist or agronomist. I try and see them as often as their time permits...which isn't the same as living with them.

That's probably the hardest part of post-divorce parenting, not being physically close, missing those little daily collisions, the small change of domestic life. Instead I've become the cliche' "divorced dad", seeing his kids every so often, unaware of and uninformed by the day-to-day happenings that make up their lives.

Still, they're good people and I love them to pieces. 

I still enjoy a lot of the activities I did in the Before Times.

Writing? Sure; not here much, though I'm thinking I want to change that, but quite a bit over at my soccer site. 

Soccer; indeed, it's been an intriguing year for pro footy here in Portland. The Timbers, having struggled through several difficult seasons, finally canned the manager that proved incapable of solving the troubles therein and are using the current World Cup hiatus to hire a replacement. The Thorns are playing surprisingly well, having also shed their gaffer at the end of the previous season.

Reading and thinking about the world around us has become a huge time- and energy-suck, given how appallingly ridiculous and idiotic (and dangerous) the current MAGA Regime has become. I agree with those whose loathing of Trump comes as much for the degree to which his freakishly bloated public presence doesn't permit me and anyone else who bothers to pay attention to public life to ignore his ignorance, stupidity, venality, and cupidity.

One reason I've blogged so little here is that grotesque presence, looming over us all like the giant stone head in the movie Zardoz, makes it damn near impossible to write about anything without having the orange (well, sort of; his face makeup seems to be more like that brownish shoe polish color "cordovan" recently) sonofabitch constantly poking his fucking nose into the story. Corpse at every funeral, by God...

I'm still hanging in at kendo, despite getting older and slower every week. I still enjoy it, and hope to postpone the day that I become too old and slow to represent my dojo honorably. I've picked up a related "sword" art, iaido, which is pure fun; a sort of "internal chanbara movie" thing, cosplaying samurai. Plus it's a way of trying to master myself; it's all about perfecting a series of forms. You're not fighting an opponent outside yourself but, rather, mastering your mind and body, a kind of meditation in motion. 

One thing retirement has gifted me is time to resume an old pastime, birdwatching, and I've been getting out as much as possible to scope the local patches. I'm not yet thinking of doing the sort of "big trip" sorts of adventures I did after my first divorce., but perhaps in a bit...

 
So I guess the final sum is that, while there's a lot about the last couple of years on me that I'd undo if I could, I'm still here. Still trying to live as full a life as I can. Still hoping that I can make of that something worth others remembering me fondly when I'm gone.

While all around me...

...well, that's for the next part of this.

 
(Next: Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?) 

Now I am become Death

...destroyer of beverage containers.

One of the more awesome things here in Portland is a place called "Trackers". It's a sort of post-hippie/pre-Apocalyptic-wasteland-skills-learning-center thing, where kids (and adults) can learn to smith blades, skin critters, build boats, track animals, and raise chickens. Plus there's live-action-roleplaying. It's damn good fun, is what it is.

There's also an indoor bow range, which is where I enjoy Saturday mornings letting the gray goose (or, in this case, the primary-colored-plastic) fly.

We used to do this as a family but, sadly, like so many of our other "family" things, the rest of the gang slipped away. The Boy never did have any interest, the Girl still goes from time to time but has little real interest, and my Bride has lost any real impetus to get out of bed early on a Saturday.

So Saturdays it's just me and Subutai. That's "Subutai" I'm firing at left. It's a Samick SKB, a modern Korean version of the northeast Asian horsebow. Very light and small but an easy draw and fires a very flat arrow. I can shoot all day without tiring, and when my eye is in and my form good I can put a dozen arrows inside a dinner plate at 15 yards.

Plus it's fun for trick shooting. This was after a series of "Parthian shots", starting with my back to the target, turning, drawing, and releasing, as a horse archer would who had drawn his enemy after him by feigning flight.

What's odd about this is the number of people I run into on the bow range who don't consider this practicing with a deadly weapon. They wouldn't touch a firearm and consider the gun-nuttery of the ammosexuals down at Tri-County distasteful, or at least faintly louche. Any yet this was the original weapon of mass destruction. While God may have made Man, and Sam Colt may have made them equal, the bow was the first tool that made men able to kill other men without all that chancy risk beating them down with a rock or stick.

It's just been so long since we commonly killed people with bows that we forget that.

People are funny that way.

Ni shagu nazad!

It's sort of sad, what happens when you a) trust someone like me with a nine-year-old who loves wargames and then b) send said nine-year-old away and leave me to my own devices. You get this;

Between refinishing the bedroom floor and hanging the gutter outside Missy's room I found the time to assemble and paint these little models; a Soviet SU-85 assault gun and a German Panzerfeldhaubitze 18M auf Geschützwagen III/IV (Sf) Sd.Kfz. 165, better known as the "Hummel".

The artillery piece has always been part of my favorite war-stories. Hummel means "bumblebee" in German. The Nazi cannon-cockers named their SP artillery after bugs; the 105mmSP was tagged "Wasp" (Wespe), the 150mm with "Bumblebee", and the 88mm SP tank destroyer with "Hornet" (Hornisse).

Well, apparently Hitler found out about this in the case of the Hornet and had an absolute hissy; Schickelgruber didn't want his all-conquering artillery named after no Götterverdämmt bugs. He ordered that the tank-destroyer be renamed the "Rhinoceros" (Nashorn).

Well, when your Leader is a carpet-chewing loony with a homicidal disposition, you pretty much do what he says. So the Hornet became the Rhino. But the other two guns were still called "Wasp" and "Bumblebee".

Just very quietly.

Anyway, it was fun channeling the 15-year-old me, the wargame nerd. I'm ready to take on the kiddo when he returns, and that can't be too soon for me.