Monday's through Fridays are days of rest......compared to the weekend!

There are 2 things I like to do on the weekends. I like to create a great meal that inknow I could not find in a restaurant. I also like it if I can accomplish something around the house from my insanely colossal list of things to fix, remodel, refurbish or rehabilitate. Sometimes this involves automotive tasks. Today I put a front end in Donna's Jeep just about a year after putting a front end in Donna's Jeep. Yes,I have been stung by Autozone. Lifetime warranty parts are only a deal if you are not the poor sucker that has to put them in twice! So, control arms, tie rod ends and stabilizer links done again with NOT Autozone parts. I have not only done crazy amounts of car repair over the years, but I have done it under fire. I have crawled under a 79 Plymouth to fix the muffler in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, (took a break from it there and threw it in the back of the car and drove across Arkansas without a muffler). Put it back on in Texarkanna. Just in time for a new charging system issue to crop up. I have lost brakes many times. Twice on cross county trips, both of which I had less than $60 on me. Jacksonville, Florida in 88 and Kilgore, Texas in 89. I was stuck for hours on the Will Rogers Turnpikein Oklahoma for hours in October 1986 and had to figure things out on my own. Triple A existed, but back then, for me, "that's what old people have". Point is, I have paid my dues, I could tell a thousand stories. Getting down on the bold floor under a car (with RA mind you) is not my idea of fun. Yes the dilemma is, this job would have been hundreds in labor, so I am stuck. So here I am, in serious pain, it's 2:19 AM and I cannot sleep. I did not let this stop us from having a great meal though. I have not done Asian Dumplings in a long time. I made sure before I went out to work on the car, I first prepped the evening meal.

Donna and Noah did the honors of wrapping and cooking class he potstickers. I showed up in time to make a potsticker sauce for dipping. So all in all, I got the 2 things done that I wanted to. But I realize that I wonder if I am doing something wrong. Half of the people I know we're at Brewfest today, which I of course would not go to, only because I have not had any alcohol since September 9th 1989. But wouldn't it be nice to find a "Foodfest" or something like that? Then I can enjoy something great like my friends. I would totally love Brewfest if not for this pesky little thing known as addiction. But I can' t help but wonder, does my stuff break more than theirs? I work all weekend 16 times harder than I do during the week. I work pretty hard then too! Don't get me wrong, I am not really complaining and I would not change my life. It's more algebraic to me. I wonder if I am just doing the math wrong. I saw an example of that working on the car today. It took me 4 times longer to-do the right (first) side than the left. Why? Because I was SMARTER by the time I got to the left. I renamed this blog "We All Woke Up" for two reasons. There was a Yoko Ono song on the 1972 Sometime in new York City LP called "We're All Water" that was about racial equality. The song points out there may not be a difference between Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon, if we strip them naked. A great song, but if you can't do Yoko, better not go there. On a bootleg vinyl record I bought at Cheapskate Records in the early 80s, the song "We're all Water" was printed on the label as "We All Woke Up". I mostly beleive the person rweßposible WS probably one of the many notorious Yoko haters that blamed her for wrecking the Beatles. But the statement, we all woke up seemed so beautiful to me. That brings me to the Secord reason. I want to wake up. Mentally. I want to take all of my experience, my memories, my knowledge, connect those dots and guess what? I WANNA ROCK! I just want to do it all a little better. Be more thoughtful and caring. Just like the car, I want my missteps to make better steps. Let's wake the heck up man!

Asian Grocery, Best Buy, B.A.M, and "Going under is cool"

Today was a day we had been wanting to get to, or at least out of the way. Noah needed to have a biopsy on the bone near his right ankle. It has been swollen in a lump since last April. A summer of ultra sounds, x-rays and blood work have led to the need for a biopsy. This is the 4th time in Noah's 10 years we put him out for a procedure. Most of these in the last 3 years.

I have such PTSD about this since a major hospitalization in 2009 in which he was under for 11 days allowing a machine to do his breathing for him and hospitalized for 21 days that time. But Noah informed me today, "going under is so cool." He takes all of this in stride, he is amazing. I am so proud of him.

He has been through so much,I would buy him a leer jet if he asked for one (and I could afford one). His request was B.A.M. (Books a Million). Unfortunately, they moved to a location half it's previous size. They somehow managed to not continue to carry all of the things Noah wants to go there for. Yes, I would buy the store and make them carry what he wants. He earned it.

We went to Liam's requested destination, Best Buy. There is a graphics card that Noah wants. I would love to get it for him, but it is $200, his computer really couldn't handle it either. I would need to buy him a computer too. It's a slippery slope. I hope some day Noah will know how much I admire his bravery and how proud I am of him.

One more stop before we left the upper valley, the Asian grocery. When we got home, he said he would love potstickers. I did not have everything I needed to make them, but I realized if I did have everything, I am really fried tonight. As Noah's father, I have stayed awake to see him through so many nights. I have read "Are You My Mother" a hundred times in 21 days. I am nothing though. Well, nothing but ever thankful to be his Dad.

A bunch of random particles spinning in the void...

I do not feel that I have really blogged. If you want to be respected as a blogger YOU MUST EARN IT! So I have failed. I need some gravitational core to cause all of the bits of me to pull together into a cohesive ball of blog wielding excellence. So what is it that I do? I play guitar, I can write music and lyrics ( at least last time I checked I could). I can cook, make soap, perform nearly every mechanical task on an automobile, carpentry, propane work, painting,flooring, propane installation and service work, drive big trucks, write books, sing, glaze windows, sheet rock, fell trees, camp, fish, hike perform many tasks in the technology field. What does one write about, when these are the things you can do? I just want it all to make sense. Tormented by this knowing a little about a lot makes me feel aimless at times. I have this magnificent long term memory. I always say that I can remember anything that does not make me money. Do I like working on cars? Absolutely not! I do that to save the load of money it would cost otherwise. I have held colossal pieces of junk together with p!umbers strap, sheet rock screws and my bare hands. I do have stories, and just maybe I can capture the age. Mine and the age of the world at the time and MAKE you feel it like a summer downpour. My abilities and my memories float like on a Sunbeam together, not knowing their proper place. Can I liberate them and allow the stories to be heard and the ability to be shared? Days Of Future Passed, the Moody Blues album was released in 1967 two months after my 2nd birthday. My parents loved it (the 8 track) and played it allot. Every note and word is etched into the fabric of who I am, like tying a rope around a tree limb that absorbs the rope as it grows. Nights in White Satin,the more famous of the composition, ends with a poetic and futile rant about the manipulation of our perceptions when it comes to night. The poem at the end of NiWS, actually called Late Lament reads, "Breathe deep the gathering gloom, Watch lights fade from every room. Bedsitter people look back and lament, Another day's useless energy spent. Impassioned lovers wrestle as one, Lonely man cries for love and has none. New mother picks up and suckles her son, Senior citizens wish they were young. Cold hearted orb that rules the night, Removes the colours from our sight. Red is grey and yellow white. But we decide which is right. And which is an illusion?" Friday night was the harvest moon. My family and I just pulled into Winhall Brook in South Londonderry Vermont. After setting up, Noah and I took a walk in the (forgive me) serious moonlight. Winhall is in a severe valley. The moon light lit everything to be seen, but, spectacularly in black and white, Just like the poem says. Never have I seen it so vividly. I kept pointing it out to Noah, and although I think he gets it at ten, I am sure that during some harvest moon many years from now, he will suddenly feel close to me, even if I am gone for a long time when he really sees it again. Of all that I am I can only promise this, that the way my brain works will confuse you sometimes and you will wonder how one thing can possibly relate to the other in my head. Sometimes I will be nice and explain the connection. Other times I will not. Again, a kindness, the reality being just too boring. They may be random particles, but they somehow compose me. I may have the smallest of hopes tonight of a chance to be blog-worthy. I promise though not to get too over confident, there is a very long way to go.