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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. |
| Today ends another week in my department at work, at least on my shift. Next week we go to the graveyard shift, but for the next two days, I can relax, enjoy a beer or whiskey or both, and maybe put pen to paper at some point. Before I do all that, I need to get something off my chest here. I'm not the guy that stresses about things at work, especially when I'm not there, but by God do I work on a crew full of those guys. I'm the 2nd oldest on my crew, granted I'm not old - only 39, but the others are a good bit younger than me and the other fella. That said, you couldn't tell. Stress beats you up. I don't share the opinions of some of the guys I work with about our company, but if you ask them, this place has beaten them into the dirt. That's the killer there. I try to say there's way more important things to worry about than how good your weld looks. You welders out there, I know I just triggered you - believe me, we don't weld for beauty contests in my department, and I've seen some damn fine looking welds fail, and absolute ugly beads hold like a champ. With that out there, the youngest guy on my crew is 21. I swear in another year this man is going to have gray hair, if he has any left. This kid is a straight worry stone like I've never seen; welds, electrical cords, cranes, fork-lifts, paperwork... this kid just stresses about all of it. On top of it all, he's a single guy who desperately wants to not be single. I'm rooting for him. Really, he needs it. Two days ago, he called off after a lot of urging from me and the other older fella on the crew, to meet a girl from his days in weld school. It took us an entire shift to convince him that he's got nothing to worry about here at work, and to go enjoy his self. Today he apologized to me like I was mad at him. Buddy, I'm not mad at you. Gotta enjoy life a little bit. 21 years old is way too young to be worrying all the time. He's a happy-ish guy, but by God I want to see that potential really get tapped when he gets himself a lady friend. It sounds cave-man I know, but you'd have to meet him. I can attest that a good partner really can bring a lot of harmony to your life even if it was nothing but stress before. That's what my awesome wife did for me. I was that kid once when I traveled for a living. If i'd have stayed with that company, I'd have given myself maybe 20 years and stress would have killed me. She brought me back down to earth. Really, she did, I don't even know if she realizes it. I'd love to see the same happen to this guy. It bugs me seeing someone put on a happy face when they're not happy. It's a tough-guy thing to do, and in our line of work, that's just kind of the prescribed method, but why be happy-ish when you can actually be happy? |
| Let me start this by saying, I've been gone a while - a long while. I haven't written in this blog in something like 8 years or so. A lot has changed since then. This blog was originally called 'Ramblings of an Overworked Pessimist,' yeah i'm not that guy anymore. I mean, I guess I'm still a bit of a pessimist kind of but not nearly the diva that I was. Work had a lot to do with that. Let me just say for anyone whose ever wondered about traveling the world, do it - if you can afford it that is. It ain't cheap. Nothing gives you perspective like seeing a different country with a different culture. Granted - I didn't do this for leisure, work told me to go so I went. After 11 years of living out of a suitcase, I don't want to look back nor do I want to really leave my little corner of the Appalachian Mountains. With that said, I'm not in that line of work anymore. I don't miss it, and I don't like wasting thoughts on it, and here I am talking about it like an idiot. I get to go home every night now. The home dynamic has changed of course. 8 years ago, I had a fiance and 2 kids. Well that didn't work out, she's now an ex-fiance. While traveling in Australia, fate decided to gift me an encounter with a beauty that is either blind to my strange ugliness, or oblivious to my eccentricities or both. One thing led to another and so-on and so forth, that beauty is now my wife. I still think she's a psycho for marrying me though. A few years passed, now we're parents - me again, her for a first time. It's weird being the one who knows what they're doing this time. I'm loath to admit it, but I sucked at babies the first and second times. So here we are in the present. We've got a baby that wants to walk but can't, so she gets mad that her balance sucks. She crawls at warp speed and has the courtesy to close the baby gate behind her which is kind of odd in 2 senses: the first being that I could have sworn I closed it, and second - it's just weird that she turns around and purposefully closes the baby gate. It's like that guy who always pushes his chair in even though he's going to sit back down in it in a minute or two. Those nuances just kind of strike me in a way that make me laugh. I legit have a daughter whose favorite hot dog topping is sour cream - SOUR CREAM. I'm not an expert but that's got to be on like an 'Am I a Serial Killer' checklist. It's funny, but it's just weird. I've got another that eats almost nothing but likes watching food getting prepared. Her diet consists of chicken nuggets and boiled eggs, but she likes watching my wife and I make something we know damn well she's not going to eat like she's studying to be a michelin chef. Now with all this in mind, they're all girls. All 3 of them. I live in a mire of "Frozen" and "Animal Crossing" theme songs, and the occasional minefield of Legos. Mixed in with all that, I'm a working class guy with a working class vocabulary that married someone who speaks metric and eats veggiemite. If you haven't tried it, don't. It's disgusting. Seriously I don't know how Australians can eat it with a straight face. It's like if salt was condensed into a black paste and then dropped outside on the ground and put into a jar. I was told once that I was eating it wrong. Yeah, like it was my fault that it tasted like crap. I was told that you have to put butter and jam on it. So the logic in the end is: Take something that tastes like pureed anchovies turned into a pudding, and cover with stuff that actually tastes good. No. That's just a lot of extra steps. This viewpoint annoys my wife, and really she's a saint for putting up with me and my idiocy, but seriously Australia, what the hell were you thinking with Veggiemite? |
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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.