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Morning confessions, afternoon daydreams, and evening wind-downs. |
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This is dedicated to my daughter, Azalea Paige Kraynak. You're half the cause of some of these entries, but that's why I love you. There's rarely a day that you don't surprise me with the things you do and say. I've changed since the start of this, of course I think that's to be expected - I'm not an overworked pessimist anymore. I'm and adequately worked, for the most part happy idealist who holds the occasional cynical view of someone whose done seen some @$*#. That said, these are the new and improved ramblings of a guy who lives a life that I find to be occasionally comical. |
| I think there's a guy at everyone's work this fits this bill. The guy who can't do anything with an inside voice. He can't do anything at all, ever, quietly. Never. Power tools, hammers, talking, even welding. He's just loud. I don't know how someone can make something as a loud as a sledge hammer, and make it even louder. It's almost a gift. Our guy even does a thing with the overhead cranes. He somehow has developed a pattern of the off and on button to make almost a song out of the startup alarm. Yeah... imagine working with that all night. Everything is accented and demonstrative. Getting out of a chair requires a barbaric yawp. Swinging a hammer requires a viking warcry. Walking up the stairs has to sound like that scene in Jurassic Park when the T-Rex first appears. Its just every single thing is louder. The dude probably screams himself to sleep. Yet somehow, he's one of the better guys in the workplace. He gets his work done almost every day. He shows up every day. He complains a little, and offers anecdotes on why he's complaining, and for some reason those are quiet. But the dude is a stellar worker. I will say though, the thought of the guy eating a bowl of cereal really scrapes the back of my neck. I bet his cereal tries to crawl out of the bowl while he's eating it because of how loud it must be.   Thank God for earplugs. |
| Every workplace has a sleepy guy. Some have more than one, but everywhere has at least one. The sleepy guy will never-ever sign up for overtime. Ever. Now, there's a difference between a sleepy guy, and a guy who's always asleep at work. The sleepy guy has 2 states of matter, working to the bone, and sleeping, that's it. There's no in between. The sleepy guy will outwork everyone on the floor when it's time to work, but as soon as the work is done, they go into hibernation. The sleepy guy almost always has a hoodie so they can curl it down over their eyes like a night-mask. It's really ingenious when you think about it. When they sleep in the corner with their hoodie like that, they end up sharing a striking similarity to the emperor in Star Wars. Almost nothing will wake the hibernating hoodie wearer except the sounds of work. Any other sound, whether it be guys talking, a phone ringing, something dropping on the floor, nothing disturbs their slumber. However, once they hear a crane turn on, or a fork-lift beeper, or perhaps an impact wrench they shoot up and plop the hardhat on their head like they just heard an air raid siren. The sleepy guy also likes to do test trigger pulls of the impact wrench when they're holding it. Similar to the dad in the kitchen, test clicking tongs when they're flipping steak, the sleepy guy tests every tool before they use it. Ratchets get a test spin, impacts get a test trigger, hammers get a test whack. Everything gets tested at least once. I assume it's a ritual call to arms, but no one really knows. The sleepy guy almost always subsists solely on a diet of Red Bull, 5 Hour Energy, and Newports, with an occasional small bag of Doritos. It makes you wonder what they eat at home, and how they are even alive. The sleepy guy can carry on an entire conversation with a cigarette hanging out of their mouth. All of the English language is squeezed through the corner of their mouth while they slap each pocket looking for their lighter. When they are in their pre-hibernation nest we call, the smoking area, they never sit on the picnic bench, and instead elect to sit on top of the table and scan the workplace horizon for imminent threats. You and I call these Supervisors, or Foremen. They are the predators of the sleepy guy's world, despite the foremen really not caring that the sleepy guy is dozing off in the corner. They know he did his job, being awake in between tasks is a formality for higher ups, and so generally tip-toe in the break rooms to get their coffee or lunch box for fear of waking him. No one really knows if the sleepy guy actually sleeps at home. It is a matter of debate, but it is widely agreed that they only go there to eat and work on their car or truck. To all the sleepy guys at every workplace, if it weren't for your effort, hardly anything would get done. Thank you for your service. |
| Every workplace has got one. The one guy who always has a knife right when you need one. The guy who could shave a sleeping wolf without waking it up. Every single heavy industry place has that guy. Usually, he's one of the most reliable guys on the job, maybe not for attendance but he's still for the most part there every day. When it comes to problem solving though, or just solid know-how, there's almost no one more revered than the guy with the knife. They've just been around. Our guy with a knife just retired. 25 years. There was no one in my career that I could say had more of tenure among the workers than that guy. Rock solid guy he was. 20 years as a Boilermaker, then he went into the steel industry. He was a great welder, a solid crane operator, and he always had a knife. I appreciate the guy with a knife for a bunch of reasons. One of the biggest ones is his knife is never a ridiculous Crocodile Dundee 'That's a knife' kind of knife. It's a little thing, with hardly more than a few inches of blade. Some pocket knife they've had since forever ago, but its more than enough knife to a guy with skills. I appreciate that out of the knife guy, it's not pretentious, it's just right. Usually the knife guy has the most creative solutions to uncommon problems. Creative in their simplicity. Something that when you hear the idea, it sounds insane because it's just too simple for it to work. Time and time again, they prove simple is always ALWAYS better. He's the one guy on the crew who is little more than a grunt, but has so much experience and know-how that he's the de facto guy in charge despite what the managers and foremen think. Generally, unlike most managers and foremen, he also has a lot more tact in dealing with the guys he works with. A leader never given or never desiring the reins, but the most important part of it, is they are not bitter about not being in charge. They simply come to work, and just do, without stirring the pot and without stepping on toes. It's a shame there's not more knife guys. I'll say, if there's one pair of shoes that's the hardest to fill on a crew, it's the guy with a knife. |
| I hate overtime. Really, I hate overtime. I hate thinking about overtime, but yet, when it's offered, I don't say no because I'm an idiot. I'm a 40 hours a week kind of guy, and my paycheck is just fine without all the extra stuff. That said, I'm also the lowest seniority guy on my crew so when no one else wants it, it's mine. Welp, no one else wants it. So here I am. Tired as hell after doing a 12 hour stretch yesterday on the welders. I'm gonna say this, 12 hours of welding probably sounds easy, maybe in the right shop it is, but what we do, 12 hours is like 12 rounds with Tyson in the early 90s. I feel like I went to the gym and did arm day, leg day, back day, and cardio all on the one day. Granted I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I'm a summer chicken now, so 12 and 16 hour shifts hit a little harder than they used to. I'm gonna keep complaining about welding for a minute. I have 2 pairs of welding gloves, and both of have holes in them in perfect spots. One is in the left hand thumb. The other is in the left hand index finger. I'm a righty so that probably sounds good. It isn't. It seems like every last bit of dross happens to find those holes, so my left hand is always burnt up. And now we arrive at the present state of things this morning. A tired guy with a burnt up left hand, who's sore all over, and having to give myself a pep talk just to get off the couch and get ready for work this morning to do another 12 or 16. I'm not one for complaining, but, dude, I really hate overtime. My wife really hates overtime. My kids hate overtime. Not because I'm not home, I am after all making a good bit of extra money from it, it's because I become a diva. I come home with every stick up the butt you could imagine the likes of which that not even a Snicker's bar can fix. Now this minute or so of self-pity has got me thinking. Not so long ago, I was in the nuclear field, traveling the world and doing 84 hour (or more) weeks in some middle of nowhere place in a foreign country. Hated it then too, but there was a time when I loved all the hours. That I would say was in my 20s when I had a better back and better knees. Now I just want an 8 hour day and a beer while my daughter uses me as a jungle gym. Seriously, 1 year olds really enjoy climbing on people, I don't know why. All of this has really got me thinking though. At a steel mill or really anywhere where there's a team of guys working on things, construction sites, fabrication shops, custom garages, forges, foundries, they have a different kind of society than you'd see anywhere else. Certain classes of workers that simply aren't in the other places, other than the one who lived at work - everywhere has that person. I think over the next few blog posts, I'm going to explore the caste system in heavy industry and talk about some of the guys that really deserve a shout out. The unseen heroes of making the world go 'round. |
| So, my wife has been told by the pediatrician that our daughter needs more fibrous fruit. Ok, fair enough. Now we have a fridge full of it. That was a quick story, thanks for coming by today. No really though, my wife went out and bought a crazy amount of fruit. She was also good enough to note that it might help me trim a bit of fat off. Yeah, you know, subtlety. Now I don't mind a bit of honesty, and she ain't wrong, my gut has been getting a little bigger since switching departments at work. I really would like to get back down to a better size, so sure, I'll go along with this. My rant here isn't that my wife told me I'm getting fat. Nah, I don't let that sort of thing upset me. I'm a beer drinker who works a swing shift, I know I'm getting fat. My rant here is I can't flip the table on this, and one day mention with some subtlety that she's getting a little thick around the waist. Granted, she's not. She's a pencil. Like, I can lift her with one arm. But still, if I said something like that she wouldn't talk to me for 2 days, and I'd have to buy some flowers that will sit on the table and die, make a nice supper, do a powerpoint presentation as to the many reasons that I'm sorry, and then change the oil in her car, and maybe JUST MAYBE she won't be mad at me. None of that is likely true, this is just the scenario I've concluded is the most likely in my head should the situation ever arise. Now, all that behind me. The guys at work know me for an avid outdoorsman. Almost my entire diet consists of things I got out in nature, from wild plants like Chenopodium Album (Lamb's Quarters) and Prunus Virginiana (Chokecherry) to wild mushrooms like Tylopilus Alboater (Black Velvet Bolete) or Cantherellus Laeteritius (Smooth Chanterelle), to wild venison, to whistle pig (Groundhog), Porcupine, Walleye, Largemouth Bass, Smallmouth Bass, Northern Pike, Crappie, and Sunfish. Basically, I'm that guy in the woods with a knife, a beard, a beanie, and a gun or bow. Minus the beard because I have to wear a respirator at work. I have adopted a very live off the land lifestyle. With that lifestyle comes a certain expectation from the guys I work with. I always have some sort of meat or fish, and some crazy plant they've never heard of that literally grows 2 feet out their back door in the yard. Now I have fruit salads. And now the ridiculing starts, and let me tell you, I'm a thick-skinned guy. Ive spent my entire career in the working world in heavy industry wearing a hard hat and hanging out with guys that spit Copenhagen everywhere while wearing those stupid and uncomfortable slip-on cowboy steel-toe boots. That environment toughens the hide quite a bit. But man they are just merciless with fruit salad. Like I'm now a fruit loop. Granted I like a good bit of chirping back and forth so I'm a good sport. Especially considering that one of them walks like an oompa loompa, and another looks like Shrek. Like dudes, you're opening a big BIG can of worms that you won't be able to close. The trick to a good chirp though, and this is for real, the trick is to time it right. These guys suck at it. They only do it on break when they see me there eating my fruit salad, which I don't care if you think its lame, it's delicious. The real art behind it, is to get them with one when they're mad, thereby amplifying the mad to another level. I'm a master of this. "What's the matter, you welded that whole ingot with the wrong wire? I wouldn't expect anything less from someone that looks like Shrek." You plant the seed, and you watch it grow. Now they have to air arc their weld off all mad, swearing under their breath. What really gets them going, is when you help them set it back up. Get the right wire, set the welder to the right volts and wire speed, help them line it up and then just walk away and say something like, "There ya go buddy." That's like a thermonuclear detonation. All because you were foolish enough to make fun of fruit salad. Remember guys, someone who's worn a hard hat for over 20 years is way WAY better at getting under your skin than you are. |
| Couple of curse words in this one guys, sorry. Been a couple of days, I'm back on a day shift schedule, so naturally, I'm waking up at 9:30 PM because going from nights to days is pretty much impossible for me to get right. Friday was our first day back on day shift. I work in a steel mill, and we're a union shop. I'm not a member of the union officers but I get pretty involved with it. I hardly ever miss a union meeting, go to the scheduled events and appearances outside of work, and work to support all the members of the local rather than just our shop. That said, I'm pretty familiar with our most recent union contract. I keep a copy of it with me at all times at work, not to be a shit stirrer, that's not my thing. I keep it to make sure that policy, management, and S.O.P. keep in line with what was negotiated. Most of the time when someone has a problem with something, I can refer to the contract. 9 times out of 10 they're wrong. This time, however, was my first grievance I've had to file. To put some context on this, I spearheaded a grievance due to a pay dispute with my entire crew. Our department generally shuts down at least for 24 hours on a holiday. This particular day in question was New Year's day. Sadly, we were on an 11-7 shift for that. How the company normally operates is holding startup time back an hour to avoid paying the 2.5x pay rate for the holiday. Fair enough, I'd rather be home anyway. This time however, we were scheduled to go in at 11 on January 1st. There are some on my crew that think we should be entitled to 8 hours of 2.5x pay, I'm not quite that zealous but I do believe we are entitled to the 1 hour of holiday pay. Which was not on our paycheck. I called payroll about the issue and was told there was nothing they could find wrong with the paycheck. Welp, wrong. Took it to a griever, and the union president after going hour for hour what our pay should have been, it was determined we were shorted 1 hour at 2.5 times pay, as stipulated in the contract. I really didn't think it would have had to go that far, but it did. So here we are at a grievance meeting over 1 hour missing from our pay. How stupid is that? That's really the simplicity of this grievance. It's not entirely a breach of contract (it kind of is just because of how they disperse holiday pay) but I'm not splitting hairs with that. As long as mathematically it adds up, I don't care how it's done. That said, its 1 hour. 5 guys - 1 hour. The company had an explosion a couple weeks ago at a different plant. Sadly, we lost a guy. Third generation steelworker, 20 years old. Absolute tragedy. Same plant 2 weeks later, oil spill into the Allegheny River. As you can imagine, it's been a bad couple weeks for management. While they could have been better spending their time sorting that mess out (and really the way the whole company came together for the young man that lost his life was heartwarming) instead, we're getting fought about an hour of pay. That little tangent aside, our griever for this was new, as a matter of fact it's his first grievance since being sworn in. That's fine with me, so far of my representatives he's been the most active. That said, by about 5 minutes into our meeting, I didn't know what we were talking about anymore. The argument between him and H.R. involved Overtime pay paid at 2.5 times rate... I don't even know where that came from. Really, that was from left field. All we want is for our paycheck to reflect the 1 hour we worked on the holiday. H.R.'s words: "You were paid 8 hours straight time for the holiday, and an hour of overtime on top of that for the hour worked, that equals 2.5 times for the hour" Granted he's not wrong and I didn't argue that mathematically that is correct. The argument is: Where's the 1 hour of overtime? It's not there. That's the argument. Regardless of how you pay it, we didn't get it... that's all. At this point, our griever and the HR manager are basically yelling at each other about going to arbitration. This really baffles me, because we're now talking about litigation with lawyer's that probably cost a few thousand dollars, for a dispute that totals about 300 bucks. (TOTAL among 5 guys) The absurdity of this really spins my head, and they were both all for it. I think our company V.P. kind of settled things down, despite what everyone feels about the guy, he is kind of a more level-headed individual than some others we got. Not calling anyone out mind you, after all its a steel mill. Working around 3000+ degree metal all day long tends to instill a certain overzealous demeanor in people. That on top of the accident at our sister plant, there's gonna be some emotion. You short guys on their paycheck there's gonna be a lot of emotion, just how it is in the blue-collar world, losing your shit is part of the process of making shit. All that now out in the open, I actually considered becoming a griever during the last election. I was even kind of pushed that way from the former union president and board members. After this nonsense, I'm kind of glad I didn't do it. I'm still glad to help the union whenever I can because we are still all on the same team. It's weird thinking about that. When I worked in the nuclear industry, I was about as anti-union as it came. Nowadays I'm 100% for collective bargaining. We live in a world that sadly has outpaced the workers' ability to provide for their family, now we have this mentality of side-hustles, and second jobs, uber eats, ridesharing, dog walking on top of the 8 hour day we do at our jobs. Not bragging here, but it is really a lot of peace of mind knowing I can do a 40 hour week and not scrape to get by. Around here, the shop I work at is probably the highest or 2nd highest paying place around everywhere else is at least $10.00/hour less. It's not a perfect job. Seriously just ask anyone that works there, they'll tell you its the worst place they've ever worked because they're divas. That said, it's a good job, and I couldn't even imagine it without the USW presence it has. It would quite honestly, be a shit show more than it already is. I know they get a bad reputation sometimes, and sometimes that reputation isn't wrong. But damn I'm glad I'm in one. |
| Strange as it might sound, Wednesday marks the start of my weekend going from nightshift to dayshift. In that case, I had 1 beer in the fridge. Now I have none, I'm drinking it right now. Yes, at 8:00 in the morning, I'm drinking a beer, I worked all night in a steel mill, it takes something cold to get the heat of a steel mill out of you, seriously, you have no idea. 3000 degrees burning in your face for 8 hours tends to warm you up. At this point, with all the talk of alcohol I do, I'm guessing it probably seems like I'm in cups when I'm not at work. I'm not. I do however like the taste, strange as that may seem to some people, I appreciate the subtle bitterness of beer and the gentle burn of a good whiskey. It has the ability to remove this stupid and annoying draft coming from somewhere behind me. I've looked for the source of this draft for 2 years, can't find it. That's the problem with living in a house over 100 years old its drafty as hell and everything in it breaks, all the time. ALL THE TIME. I really mean that. It's like a weekly occurrence that something in this place needs some attention. This time, it's the bathroom. Whole remodel needs to be done at this point, which I'm going to welcome and curse at the same time. Anyone who's ever been around a husband in the middle of fixing something understands. (I apologize for the curse word here but there's no other way to say this) Losing your shit is just part of the process. Really, it is. House work, remodeling, and most especially working on the car or the truck. I tend to lose my temper, swear words fly like a gaggle of geese, and occasionally something might go sailing behind it. That's how I fix things. I lose my shit. They get fixed though. It's strange when I think about it, I'm for the most part a pretty even keeled individual. 12 years of traveling abroad for work really used up whatever stress I had in me, and I want to enjoy the time I've got in peace and blissful empty headedness. Still, something about fixing things really lights that spark and I'm reminded that I still have that signature redhead temper buried somewhere in there. Then I'm reminded that my youngest daughter is a redhead. Then I take a swig, knowing that in about another 12 or 13 years, I'm going have a far more pronounced temper living in the house with me, losing her shit. That alone deserves a drink, but during this rant I drank my fill, and now I have an empty can. Bummer. |
| It was kind of crappy end of the day at work today. For some perspective, I'm a steelworker in a unionized shop. We don't do any finished products, only melting and pouring. My department is the remelt department. For those that don't understand the process and to be quite honest, the impressive amount of engineering and science that goes into making a particular steel alloy, it's a lot more than simply melting raw product and pouring it into a mold. One 50,000 lbs. ingot likely had the efforts of nearly 50 or 60 people to make it happen. From the furnace operators, the ladle crew, the vessel operators, the bricklayers that line the ladles, furnace, and vessels, the finishing department, heat treat, then to us, the remelt department which is another team of 22 guys. We are the last stop before it goes to shipping. Almost all of our products get melted twice. This is to remove impurities in the alloys, after us they usually go off to a forge somewhere and get hammered or rolled into billets or plates. When I say hammer, that's not some guy with a blacksmith hammer and an anvil. These hammers are several thousand tons of force per impact but that is beside the point. The remelt department is pretty involved, its basically another melt shop inside the melt shop, but with a lot less guys. Granted, we don't need bricklayers or a ladle crew. But we need some ace welders, and solid crane operators. All of us fill all the roles in the department, some better than others but we all do our part - for the most part. All that said, when things go wrong, they're usually pretty catastrophic. That was today. 44,000Lbs of ingot got stuck in a crucible. Stuck as in, no. No matter what we do it's not coming out. Our usual crew leader was in the control room tonight which I'm usually the guy that takes charge of floor operations when he's upstairs. I'm not sure how that happened, but I guess it's just my ethic or the way I carry myself and retain information, but it seems like I'm always the problem solver on the floor and everyone else just kind of follows along. That's fine with me, I don't particularly want to be a leader, did that for 12 years, and I'm done doing that. But if you think I know enough about what we do and you wanna listen to me, be it on your head because as I've said before, I'm an oaf. I just look like I'm not an oaf. O.K. that tangent now out of my system, when an ingot gets stuck in a crucible, which is for some reason, a lot more common now than it used to be, there's a bit of a process that occurs to try to get it unstuck. All of it sucks - all of it. There's nothing easy or enjoyable about it. Usually, it involves trying to knock it out with sledgehammers, to be honest I'm not even sure why we do this because I've never seen it work. The next step is to put it back into the cooling vessel and wait it out. Sometimes that works, didn't today so hey we're on to step 3. Try to use Bertha. Bertha is the name we've given our largest fork lift. Its a monstrous fork lift that can lift 80,000 Lbs. Seriously at least for me, that's a gargantuan fork lift. This thing can lift more than our biggest crane in the entire melt shop. The best part about this thing is its a pain in the butt to get it started, its worse to keep it running, and I'm one of 2 people on my crew that is certified to operate it. The other guy of course, was in the control room so yep, I'm the lucky driver today. Of course, no it didnt get the ingot out, but that's because it never made it to the ingot. Nope, got stuck on the railroad tracks in the ice pit in the parking lot. Yeah, great way to end the day. Took 2 of us, in 2 seperate front end bucket loaders to pull it out. That was probably an OSHA approved method, they wouldn't have had any problems with that I'm guessing, but that was still preferrable than CSX or whichever train company comes through slamming into our biggest fork lift, and probably derailing a few million dollars worth of locomotive, while also shutting down the main avenue into town. Ok, so that rant aside, I'm home now, sipping away my woes with a glass of my own homemade whiskey, and oddly enough, the only thing I can think of is my trips to Australia when I traveled for work. The one thing that is sticking in my mind is they have some of the best chocolate milk I've ever drank, seriously it's astonishing how much better it is than here in the USA. Then I realize that same country with that same great chocolate milk has this completely outlandish and just morally wrong lime flavored milk... yeah, limes. Like the green, not as good tasting cousin of the lemon. Limes. In milk. Who in the hell? And why in the hell? Of all the things I could ever think to flavor milk with, limes wouldn't ever make it to the list. Not if that was my only option... just no. You sicko Australians... why? WHY LIMES? And there you have it, this was an exceptionally long winded rant today but boy I feel better now. You all have a good Monday, at the very least have as good a Monday as mine was. Cheers. |
| I haven't updated in a few days, and for that I apologize. Writing this current novel has taken a good portion of my free time so blogging as much as I enjoy it, is a secondary endeavor. I haven't made a lot of progress in word count—well I have, but much of that tends to get thinned and moved around. I tend to get deeply philosophical when I write. I know most folks really don't enjoy the droning on and on of the inward reflections of a character, myself included but for some reason, that is often how my muse manifests itself. That said, there's nothing wrong with philosophical moments in a story. I do work them in, and sometimes pull them out, there to add a bit of reflective spice to character development that ought be driven by narrative. So, that constant droning muse winds up being a different sort of muse that I might use actions to arrive at those reflective conclusions I started with in the first place. All that said, progress on the story has been a bit of an uphill battle, one that has been well fought and enjoyable. The character is developing almost on its own, writing himself in ways I hadn't first anticipated but working well into the original narrative. I've been spending inordinate amounts of time during my other routines, thinking of ways I might develop these continuously evolving paths of the character development. The problem with that is I'm kind of an oaf. Ponderous and clumsy in absolutely no short supply. I do stupid things when people aren't looking, and sometimes when they are, which to my great expense tend to be somewhat embarrassing. I had resolved to surprise my wife over the couple days I had off, with making her an eggs benedict breakfast. It's one of her and I's favorite breakfasts, but its tedious and kind of a pain to get right, but when you do, by God is that a rewarding way to start the day! There's an old saying though: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. There's a lot of different ways I can explore this old proverb, from the metaphorical to the practical, but I'm going to look at it for what it is. Don't put all your damn eggs into one basket. Simple. I did, then I dropped it. None of this is a metaphor. I literally dropped the egg basket on the kitchen floor. I've got 5 hens, that give us usually 3 eggs a day. Over the course of a week, that's a lot of eggs. I have a little carrier for them when I go out to get them, which I then bring inside and do whatever. Well, thinking of all these neat ways to work on the story I've been so enthralled with, I dropped all the damn eggs I put into the damn basket. That was a mess to which I can't describe brought about a wave of the most unheard-of spewing of obscenities the likes of which would have impressed even Ralphie's dad from "A Christmas Story." I spoke in tongues. Seriously I think I invented words. I used 2 whole rolls of paper towels to clean up that mess, and I think there's probably still some shells laying around somewhere that I might have missed. I might add, we didn't have eggs benedict that morning. We had oatmeal. I still continuously think about this damn story and how to word certain bits, and still stupid things happen because I'm so engaged in my own thoughts. But please people, for the love of God, DON'T. EVER. PUT. ALL. YOUR. EGGS. IN. ONE. BASKET. J. M. Kraynak   The current cause of all my calamity:
Stop on by and let me know what you think. |
| It's a short one, but needs to be said. Our 1 year old daughter had a pretty bad case of constipation a couple days ago. She's been remarkably fussy because of it but has since started settling down. Then I realized leaving work this morning, the morning message from my wife was about poop. I was updated on her poop. Its unfathomable when you have a baby, how much conversation revolves around poop. Color, consistency, smell. It becomes a topic as common as the weather. Almost all subject matter in one form or another circles back to baby poop. I wonder if the baby even knows how much of the conversation is about something so stupid. We could talk about almost anything. Work, weather, politics, food, but no. It just doesn't offer the same mental stimulation as poop does. It's almost cave-man when you think about it. But we find humor in it, sadness, whatever elicits whatever emotion the baby might have felt at that time. Something so simple yet so complex. I really need something else to talk about. |
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Thanks! Life is good, frustrating, but funny. I try to find humor in my day to day world and I'm glad you enjoyed it.