My friend Aprille did a 20-year post a while back, and when I read it, I thought it would be an interesting exercise for me to try. You see, my memory is really bad. I don't remember things. Important things. This morning I couldn't remember if a friend of ours had two kids, or one and she was pregnant. (Two kids, it turns out, and I have actually met them both...) I don't remember stuff from my childhood. I don't remember stuff from the childhood of my own kids.
It's actually awful.
So this meme involves writing about what you were doing at different time intervals in the past, with twenty years ago being the furthest out. It will be a good exercise for my brain.
20 years ago, I...
...was starting my senior year of high school, in Madrid. Fall of 1987. This was a really intense year. Until this year, I'd coasted through school as a nice kid, a nerd, an introvert, a computer guy, a gamer. I'd never bothered with girls. I was the kid who used his free period to eat lunch with one teacher or another. I had been a Boy Scout. I had been my class vice-president. But senior year, that all changed. I like to think of it as the blossoming year that culminated in my freshman year in college. I started going out, drinking, with a whole range of the high school cliques, I was comfortable with the headbangers, the nerds, the preppies, the all-americans, even the natives a bit. I made up for all my girl-ignoring in one huge end-of-year accident of love and lust and copious diary entries and crushed friendships and drunken stupors (Hi Mom!). I listened to Bob Marley, I meditated, I read the Bible (Old Testament, for class), I swore off drinking after a Really Scary Incident (so far, so good). Essentially, I did a whole teenager's worth of emotional growing up in about nine months. It was awesome. I don't recommend it. But that first year of college was as good as this year was bad.
15 years ago, I...
...had just graduated from college. Fall of 1992. Interestingly, another really intense emotional time for me. I'd met a woman, we'll call her Love Bunny (my college friends know her by that name, coined by my good friend Oded), who lived in New York City, so naturally, with no plans out of college, I'd moved to the city. She was already in a relationship, and confused, and so was I, but I was so in love, and in the end, after lots of hopeless meetings and secret journeys to (of all places) the top of the World Trade Center, she decided that she was not in love with me. I remember that particular day intimately. We were in my sublet apartment off of Christopher Street, and she was breaking it off. I can laugh about it now, albeit a bit bitterly, but at the time it was crushing. We've spoken once since that day, by email, a week after 9/11, when I had written to ask if she and her family were okay. They were.
10 years ago, I...
...had just gotten married. Fall of 1997. We'd been in Iowa City for four months or so (well, she moved there a couple of months before I did) and were married in the little chapel on the UIowa campus. It was a lovely wedding (we did just celebrate our tenth anniversary, you know). We were living in an apartment, though we'd have our first house within a year. I was working a part-time job at the University, having just quit a web design job in Cedar Rapids. I was young and thin and had a lot more hair.
5 years ago, I...
...was helping my pregnant wife through her first trimester. I guess it was actually the second trimester by now. Fall 2002. This pregnancy resulted in our first child in the Spring. We were also gearing up for my wife to begin interviewing for jobs for the next Fall, as she was finishing up her Ph.D. (yes, while being pregnant). This time was actually pretty peaceful, as I remember it. She was sick as a dog the first trimester, and we'd watched a lot of movies (using the then-fledgling Netflix).
2 years ago, I...
...was beginning my last year of work at Creighton University, in Omaha. Fall 2005. My wife was pregnant again, with our second child. She was getting ready to interview again, too, this time for teaching positions, so it was going to be more intense than the last pregnant-interview round. Our boy was doing great, but we were looking forward to leaving Omaha. The town just never sat well with us. The whole time we were there it just felt like a time of transition. We never got settled.
1 year ago, I...
...was staying home with my newish-born second son. My wife was in the first months of her new teaching position, and everything was pretty stressful. I wasn't looking for work yet (and wouldn't start looking for another six months), but money was a bit tight already, our older boy was having some transition problems (from school to school, from only-child to brother), and the house we'd bought over a whirlwind weekend trip was proving a disappointment (we have since accepted our fate, and adapted to the house).
So far this year, I've...
...not found work. That's the biggest elephant in the room this year. I'm the classic jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, and that works really well in my exact job description, but doesn't translate to other jobs when my exact job description is not available. And it isn't. We've really come around on the house though, with some improvements we made over the year, and our boys have settled in very nicely to our current life.
Yesterday I...
...ran a whole slew of errands that needed doing, while Grandma stayed home with the kids (she was up to help out with Halloween): I got dog food, made a grooming appointment, looked for a leaf composting bin (ended up having to order one online), opened a business account at the bank, bought some exterior white, satin house paint, and went to the grocery store. Then I worked on this site a bit in the afternoon, while the kids (and Grandma) played around me.
Today I...
...am working from home again. Grandma has gone home, too, and the kids are back in school/daycare. I'm writing this, and hope to roll out a new design for this site today, maybe Monday. We're having breakfast food for dinner tonight (always a favorite) and I'm looking forward to some quality Sweetie/TiVo cuddling time tonight.
Tomorrow, I'll...
...do a bunch of yard work, and go to the Homecoming Parade. Nothing like a winning season to bring out the fans. Last year's Homecoming Parade was almost criminally small. We expect there to be much larger crowds this year, and the Governor is the guest of honor (what do they call that in parades, again?). Our older boy is looking forward to the candy they throw from the floats, like he needs to top off his Halloween bucket.
Done. Okay, so that was pretty intense, and I'm sure it was crushingly boring to read. It strikes me though ,the the timing is uncanny. Had I done this last year, or next year, those 20, 15, and 10 year milestones would have been incredibly boring. (Even more boring than they already were, you ask?) As it is, they hit on the most intense experiences I've had, pretty much. Love, loss, children.