Shoe Event Horizon?

I don't know that it's a good thing when life reminds me of Douglas Adams. His worldview tends a bit toward the cynical. Unfortunately, he also seems to have been disturbingly prescient.

In this case, I was struck this morning by how bewildering I find so-called beauty products. I just don't really get it. Maybe it's a girl thing, but I just find the endless masses of bottles and tubes and tubs a bit on the far side of ridiculous. There's a strange fascination with foodstuffs as well. Everything is honey-oat this and cucumber-that. What about the combination of rose petals and yogurt says 'yes, I want to wash myself in that'? I can't imagine that those buying such flavored body wash would actually consider soaping themselves in foodstuffs as a way to get clean. Very odd.

Meanwhile, it is becoming really quite difficult to find just plain products without extra gratuitous extra stuff added. Try finding a hair conditioner that isn't heavily perfumed in the sea of fruit flavors. Or consider the reasoning behind vitamin fortified Coke. All of this, it seems to me, speaks of overactive product tinkering and marketing strategy, which has divorced the product makers from the needs of the product user. It smells of marketing for marketing sake. It seems to me that we have a lot more to buy, but a lot less that is useful. We seem to be heading toward a situation where we will only be able to buy what market analysis says will sell, but it will come in dozens of meaningless varieties.

Still Point

It's been a bit of a hectic day. Laz woke up at 5 AM this morning. His teeth had been hurting him during the night. So we got up for about 3 hours in the early morning until he could get back to sleep. Even then he was pretty fragile for much of the rest of the day as well. Easily distressed and just generally having a rough time of it. Sigh.

It's very quiet now. Everyone has gone to sleep and I'm just sitting on the bed in relative silence. It's good to find a still point. My attempt to meditate today was aborted pretty quickly. I was just too tired, so instead of drifting in and out of sleep on my cushion, I just crawled into bed and napped with Laz. In this case it was probably more productive.

It's a bit weird here surrounded by 'inlaws', those people who are family and yet I don't really know them all that well. I know them a bit, but not that much. Slowly I get integrated, but the process is certainly not fast. It's not helped by the fact that for many years I've had job commitments which have kept me from visiting when Sunshine did. Now, with Laz, it's a bit harder. Often I need to support Laz so Sunshine can get things done here. (Particularly this time with all this wedding stuff going on as well!). Ah well, patience. Meanwhile, I can continue being the polite alien.

The moon is pretty out the window.
Laz is stirring.
I should sleep.

Life as a Spore

Well here we are truly inside the nutshell now. No keys, no job, no home, no car. Living out of various suitcases in various locations as we make our way slowly to Tallahassee. We spent a bit over a week with my parents in Louisville, now we're in Casper with Sunshine's mom for Emily's wedding.

Lazarus loved my parents house, and particularly the outside. He spend many happy hours exploring the neighborhood and discovering all sorts of exciting things. He's particularly fascinated by mailboxes right now. We didn't really have mailboxes in London, usually just a slot in the door. But here in the US mailboxes are the norm. Plus they have numbers on them. Very, very exciting. When he woke up in the morning he'd go to the window and sing out the window to the parents mailbox. Up here in Casper he's done less exploring of the mailboxes, but he's made a game out of picking strawberries out of Grandma's garden. (At first real ones, and then quickly thereafter plastic ones, as they're considerably less messy!)

It's been very hot though, high 90's and 100's and we're all melting. At least up here in Casper there's some air conditioning, though even that hasn't been able to keep up with the triple digit temperatures. Ah well, just a part of the road to Tallahassee I suppose. Hopefully the gulf heat won't do us in.

My concentration's gone to hell in the past month or two though. It's difficult to maintain any sort of routine while traveling, particularly when we're staying with others and moving about quite a bit. So my sitting and my writing practices have been pretty neglected. Indeed, it's been just about all we can do to keep caught up on Doctor Who, the one weekly routine we seem to have managed to keep fairly regular. In any case, I've been missing these routines, so I think I'm going to try and make a bit more of an effort to keep at them. My contemplative brain has been a bit foggy of late, and I need to clear it out again. Time to try and be a bit more thoughtful.

It's interesting how easy it is to live without thinking. It's shockingly easy to just muddle along in a fog and not really notice life. I've been asleep, and it's very different to realize you're asleep. The sleep metaphor is a decent one too. Becoming aware really does feel rather like waking up. So I feel a bit groggy like waking up after snoozing in bed all morning.

Time to be aware.

Laz is awake.

Time to be a daddy. An awake daddy.