Date night with the wife. My sister is watching the kids. We were going to see a movie tonight but this italian food is taking a while to get to the table. We'll go for a movie tomorrow so we don't have to eat out food fast. That would ruin the dining out experience, and what would the point of dining out be?

New year's tomorrow. I'd like a decade calendar, not a decade planner, but an actual calendar you can hang on the wall. I've seen some pretty cool ones. They're pretty expensive though.

I like the idea of saving calendars as a way to chronicle what the family's done. Maybe keep em in a box in the attic along with an address book.

I should call this customer that test drove a car yesterday with some figures for a price. What price should I give her? I'll ask my manager and see what he says, but I always feel like I should know how much to discount already. I don't want to make a suggestion for a discount because what if it's way off base and I look stupid? Maybe we shouldn't discount this car at all. I'm not looking forward to feeling stupid.

Today I'm just already feeling anxious in general from a hangover. It's not an intense hangover, I'm not nauseous and I don't have a headache, my hands aren't shaking, but I'm still feeling keyed up. This is great when I don't have to work, but I'm at work, and the general work anxiety that I usually feel is intensified.

A rep for one of the insurance companies that my workplace provides came in today for enrollment. I was pretty sure I had everything covered, but I'm not absolutely sure. I've got to get all my insurance stuff together for health and disability and auto and renter's and see if there's any gaps in coverage or if I'm paying too much. I have no idea what I'm paying.

The kids went in for a checkup yesterday. They suggested an assessment for early intervention for developmental delays for the girl because she doesn't talk much. I think she's just naturally quiet and there's nothing wrong with that. She doesn't seem as precocious as her brother but that's okay too. But what if she's got a genuine disability? I'm worried about that too.

I'm slipping. I'm drinking again, I'm eating too much again. The house needs cleaning, my truck needs work. It keeps pulling to the side worse and worse. I don't want to take it in through our service area because the techs might look at it and go 'Wow, he let it get this bad? What an irresponsible loser'. I don't want them to know I just didn't have the money to get it done, because what kind of irresponsible loser doesn't have money? I'll change the oil myself I guess, but I can't work on the suspension myself. I've got to get new tires too, those are expensive. I'll take it somewhere else.

I need a plan, something I can stick to. I used to teach swimming over the summer. Jumping into the cold water every morning was easy. I just had to exert enough willpower to get myself out over the water and gravity did the rest. It's not so easy now. Fighting my way through a bramble of setbacks, new things that need doing cropping up all the time. I want a job where I know what's coming down the pike every day. As it is, our front door is unlocked and people can walk in just whenever.

Looks like I'm stuck here, though.

I need a plan.

I've been waking up at 3 in the morning and going to work at McDonald's at four and then going to my main job and working til 4:30. I am not sure how long I can keep this up.

Rupert Murdoch hated welfare, and then he left his vast Fortune to his son, which isn't entirely like welfare but there's some similarities.

I now work at McDonald's, early in the morning for a few hours before my main job. It's ok. Not super busy, but I think today will be different because of black Friday, which is a concept I hate. We go from a day that's literally named for being grateful for what we have, and then we go out and try to grab more, because what we have isn't enough. Someone up there has to be laughing.

I haven't seen my friends in a while. One works two week rotations a few states east, one moved to the big city (I wish I had gas to run down there, but gas is expensive and I'm poor), and one just got a girlfriend so who the hell knows when I'll see him again.

Tomorrow morning I'm going in to see the manager of a local fast food restaurant that I used to work at. I'll ask her about maybe picking up some night shifts to help make ends meet.

I've written a big whole post out and when I was about finished my phone died. There was no backup and when I got it charged again I really wasn't in the mood to write.

We've got another kid on the way, due in February. That'll make three. We'll be a single income family then. The budget is going to get right, even tighter than it already is.

If I knew all the elements of it, I could ask someone to create a Fourier transform of the War on Terror.

I thought about walking to work this morning. The wife and kids are out of the house early most mornings, I get about an hour of quiet before I have to get going to work. I realized that if I walk to work, I have to walk back home, and I've got to get to the bank on lunch, and I wouldn't have time to do that without my truck.

Then I thought about taking a jog before heading out. But I'd need to lock the door behind me, and my only running shorts don't have pockets to hold a key. Kind of a cop-out excuse. I ended up frittering away the entire hour in bed.

Work was busy. Checking in rental trucks, showing cars to people, hoping they liked them. I rescued some kind of yellow jacket that was trapped in the showroom, flying against the windows trying to get out. I put a styrofoam cup over it and slid a folder underneath, and let it go outside. I threw away the cup, because who wants to drink out of a yellow jacket cup. Then I wondered if the act of saving the yellow jacket balanced out me throwing out the cup. Ecologically, I mean. That's math I don't have the time to do.

I read a little bit about Rachel Carson and Silent Spring, and how the agrochemical companies of the time reacted to the publication. They didn't like it much. A lot of people said it was needless fearmongering, lacking scientific detachment. They said it ignored the huge advances in agriculture and disease prevention that pesticides had given us.

The book being written the way that it was caught the public's attention and saved our world as we know it.

I have a moment of peace right now. My wife is making stir fry for herself and the kids. They're both in high chairs snacking on something to keep them quiet until dinner's ready. I won't get any, way too many carbs and sodium.

I eat breakfast only on Sundays, that's my cheat day. She makes an omelette with all peppers and onions and tomato chunks mixed in. I hear it's better for you if you take the yolks out, but I wouldn't go for that. Is that even a real omelette anymore? I don't want imitations, if it's not the real deal then I just won't eat it.

Mostly, anyways. I'm not about to turn down a good veggie burger.

For Sunday lunch we go to her parent's house, they've recently picked up a sous vide warmer thing and have been going to town with it, sous vide-ing every imaginable meat. Her dad is a great griller and he'll occasionally smoke some brats. Her mom makes the best cheesy potato casserole I have tasted in my life.

My wife just tried to give me a small bowl of stir fry, it smells delicious. I'm going to stick to the leftover seasoned carrot sticks from last night.



It's a couple hours later now, I went for a run and then we put the kids to bed. I ran 4 kilometers, which is a personal best. I've been running with the Zombies, Run! app. I play the Zombie EP by The Devil Wears Prada in the background and it's been working pretty well for me.

I was recently considering my mortality and decided I should do something that might outlast me besides having kids. I haven't decided what it should be, as I have no appreciable skills besides being able to smile and lift things, but I'm working on that. I thought it might be nice to get at least some imprint of my soul into a semi-durable format in case I bite the dust earlier than planned, so now I'm writing this.

I don't think that Blogger, which is what I'm going to post this on, is going to last amount of time that's relevant in the long run, so I'm thinking that I should print this off and keep it in a safe later. I'd also like to figure out how to host a website independently, because lately I've been feeling antipathy towards most platforms that offer easy content publishing and a chance to go viral. I'd like my own little corner of the web, and I don't care who sees it.

That's all for later. Right now I'm feeling time slip through my fingers, so I'm throwing this all out there in a panic, because I know I'm going to die and I want to do a lot more before that happens. I figure that 60 years is a decent goal for a life that can be well lived, before my body's broken down too much to do what I want to. I hear that starts at 40, though, so I don't have a lot of time.

Right now, there are two things that I really want to do: get back in shape and stay that way, and to learn how to play the guitar. I've been pretty non-committal on the latter, and completely negligent of the former, but I think with an appropriate amount of existential panic I can make it happen.

I also want to be financially stable, but who doesn't. Honestly that'd go on the same list as "have oxygen to breathe". Which reminds me of another thing I've been meaning to do, which is to find a way to live that doesn't destroy that planet that my kids are living on.

I am now 27 and a half-ish. I will turn 30 and then I will have another 30 years to go. I have a house, I have a wife, I have kids, I have a job. I worried about all these thing for my entire life so far, but now I have them. Financially, we are on the back foot, but I'm not worried. A few changes will have to be made, but we're ready to make them.

I want to hit thirty already heading full speed for my goals. I already have some. I might figure out other on the way, but it's time to start planning on the fly.

This is the run up.