it goes to ELEVEN....

now playing: simon and garfunkel, "the only living boy in new york"




"i get all the news i need from the weather report...." - paul simon


when i walked onto the bus last night across the street from work, the driver asked me where i was going. "shillington", i told him.

"man...i feel sorry for you", he said.

i replied, "how bad could it be? i mean, you see these athletes on tv in the freezing cold with short sleeves...so i figure if i walk relatively quickly and keep moving, i should be fine, right?"


he chuckled..."well, you'd better sprint home, then."

"well, given the choice of freezing to death or having a heart attack, i'll flip a coin. i don't see myself running all the way home to keep warm."


the lady sitting behind me was offering up options - she seemed to have the bus schedule committed to memory - and the only solution she offered up was the one i was already aware of...to pick up the "nightline" bus and get off just on the other side of the bridge and walk from there...but i decided to go ahead and hoof it the whole way. i didn't see the point in waiting for the nightline to come through, and i'd probably make better time if i just started walking right away.

i was very close to being right - i heard the nightline bus pull through the intersection not long after i'd walked past it. but then again, we're only talking about saving eight blocks or so of my route, so i didn't consider it much of a difference.

when i walked over the bingaman street bridge at around 9:15 or so, it was thirteen degrees, according to the rotating hot dog man that spins above berks packing.

i stopped in at queen city for dinner and to warm up a bit before moving on - my new favorite waitress was working and it was relatively quiet, so i was treated to the readers' digest condensed version of her custody battle for her daughter, and how her father has played the system pretty masterfully to annoint her daughter a citizen of new jersey to keep her away from her mother - what a nightmare. i remember thinking two things as she was telling me her story - one being that hatred and spite can motivate people in pretty evil ways...and the other thought was that my divorce has gone better than some peoples' marriages. i've never had to deal with anything like that, and i know it's a lot more commonplace than i'd like to believe it is. certainly, there are things that i'd change if i could about my own co-parenting situation that "it could be worse" doesn't explain away, but when you hear these kinds of stories from people like hope or rachel or any number of other people in similar situations, "it could be worse" goes a long way. i wondered, as i bundled up for the rest of the walk home, if i were even capable of some of the things i'd heard about in these kinds of stories...i mean, for all the turbulence that i went through with jill, i never hated her. she was frustrating and stubborn and maddeningly insistent that she remembered things that she was completely off base on and any number of other things, but i never hated her - i just wanted to get away from her. over time, i felt sorry that my kids didn't feel that they had that option...and, truth be told, they didn't. even if they decided to come live with me, she'd still have visitation, and it's pretty clear that she'd use that time to unleash a guilt attack that no kid would be able to withstand if they ever did make such a decision.

example: my daughter says she has no desire to drive because she knows that if she got her license, her mom's insurance would go through the roof, and that it's not really an option. and that the only way out of that quandry would be to move in with me, and jayda doesn't consider that an option, either.

now, what kid thinks that way about such things as car insurance of their own fruition? that came from somewhere other than jayda's own (highly evolved as they may be) cognitive powers.


but - as i said, if that's the worst i have to deal with (in terms of the parameters of my co-parenting situation), i'll take it.


hope has made a pretty solid recovery from her initial deal of the cards - her husband has pointed her in the direction of some competent legal help, and she's managed to regain a lot of lost ground. some women in her situation would have lost contact with their children entirely, so i count her as lucky.


after my third soda (which was a mistake, for reasons we'll discuss later), i said goodnight and started walking again at a few minutes before ten.


it's interesting, walking a route that you travel by car on a regular basis - you take in a lot more detail around you at the slower pace (an obvious enough point, i know), and you notice things that you wouldn't stand a chance in hell of noticing as you drive by. for instance, there's music coming from the service bay at a.w. golden twenty four hours a day. there was someone shouting in spanish at the top of their lungs inside a church on fifth street. a block up the street, there were three police cruisers with their lights on sitting at the corner.

i couldn't help but wonder if the two observations might've been related somehow.

people put the most interesting things out for the trash man...like disassembled lime green end tables, for instance.

i wonder how those ever got in the front door in the first place.


anyway, i did find that (thankfully) a brisk walk definitely kept most of me from feeling the effects of the cold the way i had feared i might...when i walked past the drugstore adjacent to governor mifflin high school, it was eleven degrees - but the only place i really felt it was my face and ears. a couple of times, i had to cup my hands around my mouth and exhale to get some warm air on my cheeks - and i definitely checked to make sure that i didn't have a case of "dumb-and-dumber nose"...that would not have been acceptable.

anyway, as i started getting closer to home, i discovered that those three sodas from queen city had run their course and were ready for the final stage of their journey, if you get my drift...but there was nowhere to deal with that between where i was and home, save ducking into someone's yard, or something equally screwy, and i wasn't havin' none o'that. nope.

so i was treated to the effects of extreme cold on one's kidneys under said circumstances - which would be an interesting series of random cramps in your lower abdomen and in your back at the appropriate spots. nothing excruciating or unbearable, but enough to let you know that certain parts of your body aren't too happy with your decisions.

all that aside, though, i made it home in one, unfrostbitten piece, and none the worse for wear. i put a load of laundry in and changed clothes and called it a night.

i'm not sure how far the walk was, but it wasn't nearly as bad as i had conjured it to be - certainly not bad enough to dissuade future walks home, anyway.


lest there be precipitation...then we'll be calling a cab, thank you very much.