Recent highs and lows of life (rescued from the draft pile...)

(QUICK EDITOR'S NOTE: I INTENDED TO PUBLISH THIS POST WEEKS AGO, ACTUALLY JUST A DAY SHY OF A FORTNIGHT SHY OF A MONTH AGO, TO BE KIND OF EXACT. THAT'S BECAUSE THERE ARE PICTURES I WAS HOPING TO INCLUDE, BUT WHICH I HAVE NO WAY OF GETTING OFF OF MY PHONE. SO MAYBE LATER I'LL FIND A WAY TO GET THE PICTURES ON HERE. OKAY, I'LL STOP CAPS-SHOUTING AT YOU NOW SO YOU CAN READ THE POST...)

Pre(r)amble
Well, it occurs to me that there are basically two ways to start any blog post, assuming that you're me (other than with the word "Well," which is always a good choice). It's either going to be, "Life has been crazy lately," or "Life has been boring lately" - and everyone knows, of course, that there never is an in-between option. So, without further mucking about in hyperspace...

Life has been crazy lately. I'd like to share with you, in somewhat random order, some snippets from recent Joe-history. When they finally make a movie of my life, this will be the part where you think you can get up and go get a refill on your popcorn without missing too much. But then when you get back and whisper to your movie neighbor, "What did I miss?", there's no possible way they could catch you up to speed without missing something themselves. So you'll just have to read on for now.

160/50
On a recent camping trip I took with some guys (including him and him and another, non-blogging guy) to Inks Lake State Park, we explored a swimming location called Devil's Waterhole. I think I know why it was so named. Like a casino, the place draws you in and gives you that kind of reckless confidence that nudges you towards making internal statements like, "I bet I could do more. Why the hell not?" (Such things are quite likely to be said at locations named for the devil.) Only, here it wasn't about spending money you don't have (or soon won't), but about jumping off of cliffs and rocks and risking the physical health that you soon may not have. It was awesome. In retrospect, of course.

The first challenge was about a 20-foot cliff. I don't know if you have much of a sense of distance when you hear numbers like that, but 20 feet is a long way up. Consider that, in the normal course of your life, you are not often likely to jump off of walls that are taller than your own height, or even perhaps twice that. Well, this was in the neighborhood of three Yao Ming's high. The worst part about it all was how slippery the rocks were climbing up to this height. My non-blogging friend who went has been to other places in Austin for cliff jumping that he says are much safer, and where the bottom is deeper closer to the cliffs. Here you had to be sure to jump out far enough, or else you're hitting part of the rock formation closer to the cliff. Anyways, the place is fairly crowded, and kids probably less than a quarter of my age are jumping off this thing like there is a bed of puffy marshmallows below, so I couldn't make too much of an ordeal out of my first jump. So I jumped. A little while later I did it again, if for no other reason than I found myself trying to talk me out of jumping again. At times like this I just have to "man up" and silence my inner chicken.

Okay, now for the numbers. As you'll notice in the picture (that is, if I can ever get it transferred from my phone - anyone want to loan me a laptop bluetooth adapter?), one rock is significantly higher than the cliff I first jumped from. We estimated this at about 50 feet. Ay ay ay. (sp?) Two of the guys on the trip decided they were going to jump the tall rock, since we'd seen some other people doing it and not dying or exploding or anything. So they go up and jump. Great. Here comes the inner chicken again, clucking something about how I'd already proved enough manhood for one day. Stupid chicken. Yes, eventually I make my way over the rock. I start climbing. Right before I get to the top, there it is - BAM! That's the sound of my pulse kicking into high gear. I stop to check it. It's at about 160 beats/minute. FYI, btw - I rarely get up this high when I'm jogging. I step up to the top of the rock. Did the wind just pick up? I swear it did. I look down at my legs. They're shaking uncontrollably. I realize that the longer I wait, the harder it's going to be to jump, and also the higher the possibility that I will lose my balance and blaze a new trail down towards the water. So I jumped. About a week or two later, I hit the water. As I come up, I punch both arms into the air for the whole "did that guy just win a teenage karate tournament?" effect. And then I swim gurgling and sputtering to a place where I can sit down and bask.

Joe, the (sheet)Rocker
I've also been working with a very different kind of rock at our new house. Sheet rock. I'd make some kind of official pronouncement that now I am officially handy, but in the current place we live, I've also fixed a leaky washer drain, so this is simply a status that I am renewing, not recently acquiring. Honestly, there's really not a lot to say about this, other than that I really don't enjoy screwing it in. Or cutting it. Or hanging it. Or squatting to get the really low-to-the-floor screws. I think that about covers it.

I think it's an ungrounded myth that guys like power tools. I would offer that, more accurately, guys like power in whatever form they can find it. Kind of like women with chocolate. But power tools are really just a way to do more damage, faster. Noisier. And I'm not just talking about the swearing that follows the router's excursion away from the straight line. Neither am I excluding it.

No use crying over spilled coffee; no use throwing a trash can over it, either
While I'm on the topic of angst, it would be interesting to note that recently, on a frustrating morning of dealing with a handful of housing "decisions" (in quotes because they're really little stinkbombs disguised as situations that people have to deal with), I thought I'd pick up some Chick-Fil-A breakfast on my way home to pick something up before heading to the office. I arrived at home after smelling dark coffee and various forms of heated lipids wafting through the car's recirculating system, ready to chow down. As I'm adding the finishing touches to my coffee and preparing to replace the lid, one of my fingers (investigation still pending) knocks over the cup. Spilling every ounce of the coffee. Onto the table, chair, and floor. Did I mention that this morning had already been frustrating? Swearing ensued. (Some of you may be of the opinion that such action is of minimal benefit to anyone. I would disagree. In my opinion, this blog would be much less interesting if the story continued with, "and I thought to myself calmly and rationally, Self, you know, this really isn't such a bad situation at all - take inventory of how blessed you are and you'll see that this is no big deal.") I think I strung some words together that made very little sense being together, semantically speaking. I went and got a towel to mop up the mess, placing it on the floor. Feeling as though the situation was reaching a resolution too quickly, I promptly picked up our kitchen trash can and sighted in the perfect spot on the wall where I should heave it. "Yes, that's just the spot. Too far left and this might not work at all." Thankfully, at this point my hippocampus stepped in and told my amygdala that it would handle things from here.

The moral of the story? Sometimes being calm and rational will save you from having to clean up extra mess. But not being so makes for good story.

Ten things I hate about summer
1. THE HEAT.
I have an uncle who moved his family to Washington state several years ago (maybe some time while I was in college). What I heard was the reasoning at the time was perhaps he did it to help his allergies. I can't say that I don't find that kind of thing extremely appealing. I don't know whether he really moved for that reason (in a recent-esque conversation with a cousin of mine, I asked about why he had moved, and I received a rather dramatic response about how they just wanted to get away from family), but finding a climate more conducive to not sweating and sneezing sounds really good to me (I realize that there would likely be tradeoffs, but who doesn't want to live in a place where there's a drive-thru coffee shop every few hundred feet?).
2. THE ROACHES.
Seeing as the Brazos Valley only recently seems to be getting some rain after more or less months of little to no rain, perhaps only recently have the roaches been driven out of hiding on a larger scale. Bad grief, they've been crazy at our new house. I had actually forgotten how big they could get (our current property owner does a decent job of keeping the pest service coming, it seems). Silly me. Oh, and did you know that at that size, they make noise on hardwood floors and concrete (in the garage)? Sooooo creepy. Give me a 50-foot cliff I can 'man up' on (over an army of roaches) any day. But hey - roaches - don't take me for soft. Those of you I haven't already decimated, your time is coming. And you'd better beg for the spray if I have a broom within reach.
3. SWEATING.
Really, this one is pretty much a corollary of no. 1. But I didn't think it should go without mention. I'm pretty sure that, whatever my particular mix of Scottish and English and Polish (and someone told me there may be some Cherokee in there somewhere, I think), it wasn't intended for a climate like Texas. I'd go into details as to why I make this claim, but I am at least aware of this much, that certain things do not make for good blog storying.
4. THE WAY THAT THE AFOREMENTIONED THINGS MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO KEEP ACCURATE COUNTS OF THINGS, AND THINK CLEARLY IN GENERAL.
So I don't have ten things, but I do have a theory about summer. (Also winter.) Fall and Spring are my favorite times of year, being the seasons that the weather in Texas is most bearable and allows for that feeling that things are either cooling off or thawing out. It's those in-between times when the long hauls of sweating and shivering begin to fade from memory as they are eclipsed by times of refreshing, when you can walk outside and for a short time, breathe cool air and enjoy that kind of feeling that you want to make last as long as you can. I think of Fall and Spring more of transition periods. Obviously, Summer and Winter transition as well, but they feel less so since they lie in between the pendulum swings. Every second gets counted when pressure is applied. But who stares at their watch in those moments when you can simply be at ease? I think it's those moments that are like little peeks at the Kingdom. Brief glimpses of something that may not last very long now, but one day we won't have to settle for inevitable disappointment. One day, disappointment will be absolutely evitable. Come, Lord Jesus.

Reunions galore
Actually, this post is incredibly long already! I can tell by the fact that my own attention span is being stretched into some kind of funky yoga position. So this is a little taste of what I'll hopefully be posting soon. Tune in next time to hear a little about Kathryn's family reunion and my own 10-year high school reunion, both of which happened in the span of two weekends. There'll be laughs, wittiness, tangents, and of course, me taking every possible opportunity to magnify any of the stories which highlight my manliness. I can't wait, and neither can you! Blog atcha soon!