dad

Gulp

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 23:44 on 7 June 2007

I went to dinner with Dad and Linda tonight. It's funny to watch the two of them are together. Dad is completely ornery and I can say that, Dad, because that's a Hodsden trait as much as being late or being distracted are.

We also drove to 1406, which Linda walks by on some morning walks. The house is looking way run down, which is a shame, really, because it's a lovely house: the original farm house for the area way, way, way back when.

More importantly, the first house i lived in, so it has to be important.

At one point, Linda casually mentioned that a neighbor of hers reads this site, and sometimes updates Linda on my whereabouts and events.

I think the dumb look on my face must have registered to the people I'll be visiting in Ohio tomorrow. I know my jaw took a few moments gathering dust from the restaurant floor.

The only thing I could thing of to say was something along the order of, "Uh....."

So, uh, hi, neighbor who lives next to the house where the Larsons used to live (the Larsons whose son died when I was in junior high school and Chris inherited his motorcycle, not that I can remember the Larson boy's name. Oh, and the trees have grown up a LOT in front of their old house - you can't really see the house for the trees any longer).

Linda asked if that was okay, that her neighbor reads this. I said, sure! because it is. (Did I mention? Hi, Neighbor!) I'll just pretend it's just me here. I hope you don't mind.

Hi, Megan! Hi, Mom! Hi, Roshan! Hi, Cads! Hi, Chookie! Hi, Kris! Hi, Liz!

Oh, and there's a tornado watch on right now for Northwest Indiana. Note to self: when you run downstairs after noticing the sudden drop in air pressure, run to the side with the furnace. That's the southwest side of the house, and the most likely safest spot if the house comes tumblin' down, crumblin' tumblin' dowwwwwwn.

And now, Dad is here, too!

Blog Instead of being asleep at 22:09 on 10 December 2006, kitt created this:

I spent waaaay too much time sitting on my butt, plowing through email this weekend. One of my ongoing, hits-every-tenth-card tasks is "clean out my inbox." So, I went back 140 emails in my inbox of 1642 emails, and started dealing with each one. If I needed to do a task, I did it. If I needed to respond to someone, I hit reply and wrote to the person. If I needed to archive the email, I copied the information where it needed to be, and deleted the email. If all I needed to do was read the email, I read it. One at a time, I started dealing with the emails.

After about eight hours of email processing, I came across an email from Dad, so I hit respond and answered his email. Dad and I have been talking more often than we have in years. I think we're up to four hours of phone conversation in the last two months, which is more than the previous two years total.

Needless to say, these conversations make me really, really happy.

I meant to call him today, to continue our trend, but (always the Hodsden "but"), I wanted to continue cranking through my email, I wasn't sure what his schedule was like, and at that point, I don't know why, I wasn't up for talking. Emailing, sure, talking, not really.

It's a funny "but." I want both to know what's going on in Dad's life, and for him to know what's going on in mine, but, the timing was off.

So, I told him about this site.

He replied back before I was done processing the full 140 emails, and his response:

I was reading some of your blogs. I don't see where you get the time to sit
down and do what is literally a diary of life's events, but I like it.

So, Dad, here's where I find the time: the ten minutes waiting for the train, I type notes on my phone (my phone has a full, though not full-sized thankfully, QWERTY keyboard); sometime before bed when I'm relaxing on the couch, I'll post events of the day; if I have a few minutes, I'll write something at work. When it's an important event, I'll stop what I'm doing and just start writing - because sometimes you just need to get it out, lest the thoughts consume you.

In the end, though, I write here because I want to remember what happened today. Each day, I want to remember what happened today and yesterday and the day before, how I felt, what I did about problems I've been facing, how I responded to good fortune, what made me laugh, what made me cry. Not everything is here, sure, some of it I can't write about because it's too painful, or generally socially "unacceptable" to talk about. so I write somewhere else, or post it so that you have to login to read it, or talk about it with friends, friends who know because they listened, they saved my life. For the most part, though, the important things are here. They're here because I've spent far too many years trying to forget, and I'm done trying to forget.

So, Dad, mostly, I find the time to write because remembering is important to me. I write here for me.

But if I can share it with you, too, it's worth it.

Way worth it.

QotD: You've got to blog!

Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 15:57 on 31 July 2006

If you could get someone in your life to start a blog, who would it be and why?

I've seen pictures of my mom as a child, playing under the big tree in the backyard of the house my grandfather built. Decades later, I would run through that backyard as a child myself on my way from our house to my best friends house, cutting through back yards to cut the walking time from 10 minutes to two. My mother's childhood home was long since sold, but she loved the house we moved into, the house on the hill from her childhood dreams.

What other dreams did my mother have? What hopes, and problems, and joys, and failures and victories did my mom experience? How close does my life parallel her life, and how far away from hers is mine?

I don't know.

I know her better than she knew her mother, but ultimately I don't know much of my mother's life before me. I know the highlights. I can imagine the minutae. But, I really don't know.

The saving grace to this vacuum of knowledge is that she writes. She has journals; she writes short stories, many of them based on her life experiences fictionalized. If she started a blog, a personal one of highlights of each day, her life would open up, and I'd know how much we are alike. And how much we are different, though, I know I am my mother's daughter in so many ways.

Come to think of it, I know even less about my dad. Oh, the stories he tells when he's in the mood. If he started a blog, it would have to be an audio blog to get the full side splitting life of his words. Now that would be a blog worth listening to.

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