…we came in? Isn’t this where…

I’ve started and stopped a half-dozen posts since my last one.  Every time I am prattling along, chuckling to myself over some near-useless pop culture reference that is being given its moment to shine when I stop and stare at whatever I just wrote.  I take it in, and then I erase the whole goddamn thing.

Like Raspberry Citrus Orbitz drink long before it (chuckle to self), I think I’ve just lost the taste for this.

Personally, I am back where I started long ago on this blog.  My weight  and health are not nearly as well off as they should be and I am struggling to keep my head in the game.  With this comes the realization that I have a couple things (depression and hypochondria to be specific, and oh, an eating disorder less under my control than I had thought) going on that wittily writing about, chatting with friends, or even talking with Susan aren’t going to solve.  And so, I’m going to be sitting down with a therapist again, but first it’s a visit to a neurologist and a CT scan to boot, which is always heartwarming and fun – at least, that’s how the radioactive dye makes it feel.

Cooper remains the brightest part of my day.  Nearly three now, and already practising sarcasm and deconstructionist theoretics.  

He has his own digital camera now, and he doesn’t just point and shoot all willy-fuckin-nilly.  He actually walks around searching out specific things to take a picture of that mean something to him.  He almost seems to take the time to frame shots.  I’m in awe to be able to look at how he sees things. 

Cooper has delayed speech.  His therapist comes by three times a week and according to her, he could be the poster child for the benefits of early intervention.  In the time he’s worked with her, he has taken on two dozen signs and twice as many words.  He’s been putting them into simple two and three word sentences lately, and can read out loud almost the entire alphabet.  That last thing - reading, recognizing and sounding out the alphabet, is actually considered pretty ahead of the normal age.  His ability to work through a maze or other logic problems always surprises me too.  He lies in bed sometimes, holding one of his books up in front of him, and I know he’s not actually reading it word for word… but watching him flipping page by page and laughing out loud at all the right parts, nothing else really matters in the world for just a moment.

Personally, I’ve never agreed with the child-rearing books that every child is on the same schedule with what they should be able to do by so and so age.  I think it’s different for everyone, and anyone that tells you that by age 2 1/2 or 3 that a child should have a vocabulary of 200 words can categorize themselves right in the ass. 

But the boy is everything.  He cooks with me now, pulling his chair into the kitchen so he can stand right next to me and do whatever I do.  He wants to include the mixer in everything (No, Cooper this is spaghetti sauce, it doesn’t really… meh, alright).  He insists on watching the new OK Go video for This Too Shall Pass at least twice a day and announces everything he sees in it (BALL! CAR! BARREL! Sign for umbrella! WHHHHOA!) He’s already memorized his latest batch of word cards.  He rifles through them announcing arm, ouch, out, oat, and so on until he sets them down on the floor.

“Daddy? Cars?” he says and pats the rug next to him.  I come down and see that he’s again lined up about 30 of his cars end to end… I always call it “Leaving SPAC after the James Taylor Concert” – a joke he doesn’t quite get yet but he says “yeah” anyways just to placate me.  Then he looks at me and smiles.  That smile.  That smile is my world.

As for me, who knows?  Where do you start again to lose 60 pounds?  There’s a couple things I’d like to do this summer, running again might be one of them.  We’ll see how that pans out.  For now, though, I need to find another way to help me help myself, and that is not here anymore – it just isn’t fun anymore.  Not while I am what I am, and not while I’m not doing what I’m not doing.  Maybe someday again, but I doubt it. I peaked anyway.  That’s why I stopped writing the movie reviews for my high school newspaper, I mean, if you ever read my write-up for the 1988 remake of “The Blob” you’d know – it was all downhill after that.

And before I wrap this up, I should apologize to Hodge.  That last post I made which I took down was a little over the line.  I really think in the end it should have just kept its original title, which was ”Dalmata’s Mom.”

Good night everyone, try the shrimp… they’re a low-fat, low-calorie protein that’s also high in vitamins D and B12.

~ by Dan on March 28, 2010.