Author Archives: tim

08 Mar

Guilty

I’m not sure if Eileen and I are getting sick or if the warmer night yesterday threw us off, but last night, we both slept horribly. Speaking for myself, I don’t think it was something I ate. For dinner I had pasta — pretty standard. Earlier in the evening, I snacked on a few chicken wings and an apple, and, uh, some brownies. Nothing out of the ordinary. I stayed up a little later than I planned, researching whether I could really get a free xbox 360 or mac mini through some website called freepay (it turns out I can, or rather I could if I had 8 friends), so I should have been plenty tired. But when I got into bed, the dreamworld evaded me. All I could think about was how shifty it would be to ask my students to sign up for freepay to help Mr. Storm get a free xbox.

Eventually, of course, I fell asleep, but it was a restless sleep. I woke up three or four times. Once, Eileen was up too, and she muttered something about how the dog kept getting up to go eat out of the garbage and then coming back and asking for help getting back on the bed. Eileen’s a professional sleeper, so I wasn’t sure if she was awake when she informed me of the above, but I think I responded by asking whether she had blocked the garbage can with the kitchen stool.

When morning arrived too early, I grabbed our little battery-powered alarm clock and held it to my chest. That way I can repeatedly click snooze as soon as the alarm sounds. A half an hour later, I fessed up to the fact that I wasn’t going to get up to bike in the basement for an hour. So I reset the alarm and went back to bed. I slept a little, but not enough to feel any better when the alarm went off again 45 minutes later. Tember thumped her tail a bit as I crawled over her and Eileen, but she didn’t bother to lift her head up — a subtle sign that she knew something was wrong.

When I got into the kitchen, I saw the damage she had done to the garbage. I was muttering to myself about how it didn’t make sense: she never got into the garbage in the middle of the night; she only did it when she was home alone for a long period of time and when she had too much energy to burn; yesterday, I had taken her to a nearby park to throw the ball for her. It simply didn’t make sense.

Then I saw the little carryout box in which I had gotten my chicken wings. I dug through the garbage, looking for remnants, but I couldn’t find any bones. Immediately, I thought back to a freshman English paper I had graded years ago by a student who told of how she had secretly given her dog some chicken bones. Her parents had told her not to, but she did it anyway. Two or three days later, her dog died, and she blamed herself.

The first internet article I found was pretty encouraging. It claimed that in most cases, the bones cause some constipation but otherwise pass through the system without harm. The next article I found was not as encouraging, however. It was a horror story about a dog who had died after eating chicken bones. I stopped my search. Emotional personal accounts: 2. Reasoned advice from a certified vet: 1.

When I called in, the vet assistant told me that if I wasn’t going to be home with her all day, it would be best to bring her in. I woke up Eileen and said, “I need you to do me a favor.” Tember ate chicken bones and might die! “Tember got into the garbage and ate some chicken bones, which aren’t good for dogs.”

Two x-rays and $140 later, she’s fine. If she passes a normal stool tomorrow morning, we’re totally clear. Tonight, Eileen commented that if we were to tell our Ecuadorian landlords that we just spent $140 on our dog after she ate chicken bones, they’d think we were crazy. She said this while spooning with Tember on the couch.

What can we say?

01 Mar

This Day Has Come

During the summer of my freshman year of high school, I went to Sydney, Australia. It was an exchange program set up through my dad’s company, which had offices all over the world. I was mildly obsessed with Australia during my middle school years; apparently, my parents knew this. I have no idea what sort of behind-the-scenes discussions went on between them before they presented the idea to me, and to tell the truth, I’m not at all sure how I learned of the opportunity. But I do remember the long plane ride; I remember the family I stayed with; I remember Woolhara, the suburb where they lived; I remember getting lost and inadvertently walking through the red light district of Sydney; I remember getting sick on a quiche I bought in the subway station; I remember sleeping with a hot water bottle; I remember being overtired one night and listening to the Grateful Dead on my walkman and having an almost-spiritual experience.

I remember a lot. Since school was in session for my host brothers and both parents worked, I was alone a lot and I explored the city on my own. I don’t keep in touch with the host family anymore. Consequently, there’s no one with whom I can reminisce. From time to time in the years that followed, I have been struck suddenly by one of those memories that are so uniquely mine. Of course, a lot of my memories are uniquely mine; strictly speaking, they all are. But Sydney in 1989 is so detached and isolated from everything else I know. Years later, I did the whole backpacking through Europe thing that college grads do; I did that alone, too, and, like my Aussie experience, there’s no one with whom I keep in contact from those travels. But there are all sorts of people who have been to all the European places I’ve been to, so it’s not in such a detached place.

One specific memory that has kept resurfacing in the past 17 years has been a song. It’s the perfect illustration of how detached those Australia experiences were. The song is called “One More River,” and I remember that it was very popular at the time. I heard it often, saw the video on TV, and since I liked it, I even paid attention to the lyrics. In fact, I still remember some of them. But I haven’t actually heard the song since 1989.

Today, the lyrics once again popped in my head, and I decided to do a little internet search for the song. I had done one about five or six years ago, but I couldn’t find much at the time. But I well know that the growth of the internet has been pretty much exponential in the past decade, so I figured it was worth a try again. And guess what? I found it. I found the lyrics and I even found the artist’s website. I have no idea how popular he is, but he has 12 albums out, so he must be doing alright. “One More River” was on his second album, which came out in 1989. Employing my pirating skills, I even found a copy of it. It sounds a little different than I remember it, but not much.

Tonight, just prior to playing the copy I found, I told Eileen, “this is a momentous occasion.” She went back to reading her book after the song was half done, but I sang along with the whole thing. Here it is: One More River

27 Feb

Dreams

Last week, I had several dreams that are worth writing home about, so here goes:

The most frustrating one took place in a small high school cafeteria. I was proctoring a big essay exam for about 120 students, all of whom were seated very close to each other at those tables typical of high school cafeterias — you know, the ones that are like long picnic tables that fold upward in half. One of my students happened to be Mark Nepper, a colleague of mine in the English department. At one point, he was blatantly cheating on the exam, talking to a girl across the table and four seats down, telling her exactly what he had written. I went over and said angrily, “you can do this. You’re cheating.” He responded by looking up at me and very calmly saying, “knowledge is for everybody.” I couldn’t think of a reply. I just stood there speechless and angry.

A day later, I had a very different dream. It was at my cousin Casey’s house — specifically in his basement. There were these big tick-spider things that would pop out of the ground like those big worms in the movie “Tremors” (with Kevin Bacon). They were about the size of a coffee table. At first, the problem was fairly manageable. You’d go down to the basement to grab a soda from the fridge or something, and before they popped up, you could see the ground move a little, so you simple stepped away. They were blind, of course, so they couldn’t see you and come running after you. As long as you got out of their way when they popped out of the ground, you were fine. Unfortunately, they evolved quickly to become mobile above ground. They were still blind, though. So you could just throw a chair in front of them and they’d hit it and go back underground, having realized their failure to catch you. The real climax of the dream came when our dog and Casey’s dog went downstairs. Then I was freaked. Casey came down and reassured me that the dogs know how to get out of the way. We were standing on the lowest step of the stairs. He then arrogantly said, “watch this,” and he stepped out on the basement floor. I pointed and shouted, “one of them is going to pop up right in front of you!” He backed up a little, and I watched in terror as the thing burst out of the ground right in front of him. Then he kicked it and it went back underground. “See?” he said. “That’s all you have to do.” I wish all nightmares ended like that.

By far my strangest dream last week was the one about the angry midget. I had heard in passing that the Badger Hockey team played a game on Lambeau field, which I think inspired the premise of the dream, which was that the Badger Football team was playing on a highway. I drove there with a carload of friends; we actually drove across the field and then circled around to a parking lot. There were people tailgaiting at the parking lot; we got out and started walking toward the field, on the way passing a few sand volleyball courts. Next to the courts was an intimidating group of fat, tan, shirtless men, tattooed and drunk, making lots of noise. My friends didn’t want to walk by them, but I had no fear. In fact, I was so confident in my abilities to kick ass, I almost wanted four or five of them to start something with me. As we walked by them, however, they must have sensed my confidence and they backed off, giving us space. Then suddenly, one of the drunk bikers shouted from amonst the crowd of his friends, some of them parted, and the man who had shouted came running toward me. He was about four foot six, and he was naked. He had a grotesque body. It was kind of cone-shaped. He had these firm folds of fat that didn’t jiggle, which gave him a waxy appearance, like a melted candle. He ran at me, clearly intending harm. I quickly stepped out of the way and grabbed his arm, pulling it down and in the direction of his momentum so that he went straight past me and fell face first on the ground. He got up and came at me again. This time, I evaded him again and karate-chopped him on the back of his neck. He fell face first in the sand. We repeated this procedure once more; the next time he was on the ground, he rolled over, looked at me angrily, and spoke with a slight lisp, saying, “seduce me.” He ran at me, I pushed him down, he again lisped, “seduce me.” I realized he was enjoying getting his ass kicked and it disgusted me. I shouted, “get away from me!” After pushing him down a couple more times, I didn’t even want to touch him again. That’s where the dream ended. I prefer not to analyze it, thank you.

16 Feb

Snow Day!

I left for school early today so I could swim, but when I got there, the door was locked. I walked around to the principal’s parking lot, where there’s a door that’s always open so long as the school’s open. On my way I ran into a custodian running a snow blower. “You know school’s cancelled today, right?” she asked.

“Really?” I replied. “Why?” It hadn’t snowed much overnight. We got about five quick inches of snow between 7:00 and 9:00 last night, but no more.

“They’re predicting another seven inches before 3:00,” she said.

“Wow! So that prayer worked,” I said, once she had turned the snow blower back on and couldn’t hear me.

When I got home, I started working on polishing up my screenplay. Eight Mile Below tells the story of a rogue band of sled dogs whose abilities as rappers might be their last hope to get out of the oppressive antarctic. I need to add some finishing touches to the story, which is currently in production. The studio has put together a trailer for the film, which stars Eminem, Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer and Kim Basinger. Click on the photo for the trailer.

8 Mile Below