Burgers or Holes in Book One: The Not So Daily Briefs 2014

Alternate Title: Why do I always write far more than I originally anticipated?

To start with… things and people have been particularly irritating lately. The logical person in me would suggest that… I am the common denominator, which means that I am the problem and/or simply taking things the wrong way. However… I honestly can’t say for certain that such an analysis is accurate. Oh where to start?!

I have a… family member… that lives in Chicago. She is super active in social politics but is also fairly certifiably crazy. I mean it. I mean, yeah- she thought Dennis Kucinich was too conservative for effective leadership… but I don’t even mean that kind of crazy…. I mean, she introduced herself to my in laws as my “fairy godmother, but really more of a witch, since good and evil are subjective and pointless in the long run anyway.” THAT kind of crazy. I also have a friend in Lincoln, Nebraska. She is very liberal and her boyfriend is a great friend of mine who, after receiving his law degree, went back into social work because he was independently wealthy anyway. What do both of these very white, very liberal, very idealistic women have in common?

They have both told me (repeatedly, and vehemently) over the last few days that the more violent aspects of what is going on in Ferguson are entirely acceptable and appropriate. The reasoning they have been using is that “Black people feel unheard and unequally targeted by oppression. Because of that, violence is needed to demand the attention they deserve.” While I… well, I suppose, if I stretch my mind I can understand what they are saying… but their defense of the violence seems as illogically based as the violence itself. If a community feels unheard… how is damaging that community further an acceptable response? If a community feels oppressed by police…. How does “confirming racial stereotypes” demonstrate that the oppression is wrong?

Last thing about Ferguson and then I’ll shut up (unless, of course, this violence does do significant damage to my cousins or their parents in MO). If you haven’t read Benjamin Watson’s response, I would strongly suggest doing so. Here is the LINK. I am very impressed with what this young man wrote.

NOW to move on to more personal shit because… lets be honest… I want to save the world, or destroy it; but neither of those options is truly within my power at the moment.

At the beginning of the week I had planned to do something I felt would be good for my heart and good for my writing: really sit down and make a list of the good things about my wife, why we’re together, why I love her… really just address the POSITIVE things in our relationship as opposed to focusing on the negatives. That didn’t happen, of course, because Ferguson exploded and put my family directly in harm’s way. I suppose I could still write that entry now but… no. Perhaps another time.

The In-Laws were here on Monday and Tuesday. While they are significantly different from me in many respects, when they are near some things become truly noticeable. First, my In Laws and I are definitely bound by the same love for the same person… a love that stems from family and dedication. But we also share something that we would all like to see more in my wife- a dedication to family, a prioritization of family and staying connected with your loved ones. I know my wife’s parents want to see her more often… we live 5 hours away, so we accept that visits aren’t going to happen often. BUT there are still cell phones, e-mail, snail mail… I try to encourage my wife to have more contact with her parents, I can see her parents would like that, and I have never been given any reason why my wife wouldn’t want to speak with her parents.... but my wife just… doesn’t. Doesn’t call, doesn’t write. And not only is my wife their only daughter, she’s their only child… so of course they want more contact with her! So… my In Laws and I are connected through that, as well.

Then came a fascinating character study. My wife’s parents are almost 70. My wife is a bit older than I am so, logically, her parents are a bit older as well. Typically, we play cribbage as a family game. I’d never played before joining the family, but it is a long standing tradition for my In-Laws and it was fun to learn as a “family acceptance” activity so many years ago. That being said… apparently, my wife didn’t want to play cribbage this week. She really wanted to play “You Don’t Know Jack” on the Xbox 360. Normally, I love that game. However, our guests are 70 year old farmers that spend most of their time outdoors. They never even owned an Atari… maybe video games wouldn’t be the most appropriate activity. Here’s where I started to pay attention/notice some things! I could tell that my wife’s parents weren’t exactly comfortable with the idea… but they could also see that their only child wanted to do something, so the figured they’d give it a shot. Further, my wife didn’t exactly explain to them how to play. She just assumed either (1) the game would tell them how to play… which it kind of does, but it requires at least a minimal understanding of videogames to begin with; or (2) she assumed that her parents would pick up how to play on their own. I tried to help her parents, tried to explain how to play and that sort of thing… I also ruined everyone on score. I’m not a genius, and many of my friends can put my trivia knowledge to absolute shame… but Me against Most? Lets just say I tend to outscore by 10k or more usually. It was a nice experience though. Seeing my wife enjoy something she wanted to do, plus the presence of her family around her… I caught a glimpse of who she used to be. That smile that makes her look like a non-bitch version of Shannon Doherty; the free flowing laughter that made me want her as a part of my every day… so there were positives, of course.

Wednesday was more challenging at work than expected. I arrived at court around 8:30am… court went fine, then I had to conduct interviews. THAT took me until noon! At noon, I was informed that- due to the Holiday- an extra court session had “suddenly” been added to the docket for the day. So… I had an entire extra court shift added to my day! After both court appearances; I had even more interviews to do. Normally, I don’t give a shit about doing additional interviews when they’re late… but with the Holiday week, I easily understood why inmates would be submitting Work Release and House Arrest requests until the very last second. So, I had no problem doing those extra interviews. Though… it did make a long work day even longer. I got home around 7 or so and checked to see if Office Depot was still open. You see… my wife’s Laptop (one of them, she uses 2) has been acting up. It has been really slow, borderline unusable. Now… my wife’s version of “dealing with the situation” has been to allow this computer S.N.A.F.U. to randomly send her into a rage-fit where the only person or thing she’ll talk to for almost an hour is her computer… and she doesn’t use nice words there. Lots of yelling, swearing, followed by simmering silence where you can see the cartoon rage lines coming out of her body. After the countless times this had happened, I told my wife that if she prepared the computer and a list of issues, I would take it to get fixed this week.

So… even though I’d had a long day, Office Depot was still open and my wife had written out a list of issues with the computer. I figured it would help make her Thanksgiving Work Day and Black Friday Work Day less stressful if I was able to take care of the computer issue before the holiday really started. I grabbed her computer and took it to Office Depot. The tech there did a thorough job of looking it over, informed me that there were virus issues and malware issues; and gave me three options for what Office Depot could do to fix it. As it is my wife’s computer, I wanted to get her input before deciding which course of action to follow. So I grabbed all the paperwork, all my notes on what the guy had told me, and returned home- by now it was probably around 9:00pm… a long day indeed!

I got home, put the computer back, cleaned up around the apartment and settled in for some PS4 Destiny action. Apparently, my timing was impeccable as both my best friend and my close law-school friend were both on. It was fun for the first 40 minutes until the wife came home. Then… things went south. My wife and I would break out into arguments, she got pissy because she didn’t like the information I gave her about her computer (even though… I was just the messenger and had done the Laptop check as a favor)… it was rough. It was at that moment that the title of this entry came to me. My wife keeps thinking she may be on the Autism Spectrum, but refuses to get any kind of official diagnosis or confirmation. This led me to think “There should be some kind of test to determine whether someone has Asperger’s or is just an asshole!

Ultimately, though, I stood up for myself. I told my wife that… she could be mad about her computer, she could be mad about work, but unless she could think of a specific reason to be mad at me she wasn’t going to treat me like that! She walked off and… maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later… came back, hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and apologized. She said that I had done a nice thing for her and she had acted inappropriately. She said how it still got to her how I stayed with people like C and M when every nice gesture I made was greeted with malice and ungratefulness… but how she realized that she was acting very similarly and she didn’t want to do that. From there the night went okay. She decided that, when she had time, she was going to take the laptop to Office Depot herself because she had extra questions; and I had an awesome night playing Destiny with my friends and getting a lot of joking going on. Of course, the night ended very seriously… my Law School Friend is very “I’m white, I’m affluent, so I need to make sure I see myself and everyone like me as The Bad Guy in times like Ferguson.” My best friend is much more “I’m white, I’ve struggled, and I know that the best way for a community to succeed is for everyone to see one another as their neighbor despite skin color!” So that made the night end on a particularly serious note but… yeah. An interesting few days!

Happy Thursday, Thanksgiving, November 27th, or whatever else this day means for you all!!!