Tension is Rebuilding, Somethings Got to Give

I'm sick of working but mostly I'm tired of being out in the snow and still getting a sunburn on my face. The other day I came home and my daughter said, "You work too much, dad." I said, "I know. I'm never going to work that much in one week ever again." She said, "You don't HAVE to go. All you have to do is tell them I QUIT." She makes it sound so simple.

I've been working on trains lately. Lightrail lines, to be more precise. Today, we were shoving some soil and this black dude comes tearing out of a nearby bus station, dives and somersaults over our temporary fence and then sprints across four railroad lines. With his pants and underwear around his ankles. And cops chasing him. I don't know if they caught him. I imagine they did eventually.

When he first flew over the fence, I was close enough that I could have run over and tackled the guy, but these days it gets tough to tell who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. Or if you really want to get philosophical: How does one categorize what is good and what is bad in a world built on greed, deception, slavery and other such atrocities? It's all about looking the other way, isn't it?

The other night I was hanging out in a vault in the street between The Gateway Mall and the Delta Center (I still don't call it the Energy Solutions Arena, cause that's a dumb name) until 4 am because it was conference weekend and the city wanted those trains running fast and strong. I don't know if the people going to conference were good or bad, I just know that I was getting paid double-time. Sometimes that's all you get to know whether you like it or not.

The other night, I was on lunch-break from the furniture store and I went to the gas station with the 18-yr-old (who is actually 19 now). I told him that my wife called me and told me we got a bunch of paper work saying we were recieving some money from my mother's life insurance. I'm not rich, of course, but it's a big enough chunk of change to make a dent in the debt I owe to other people. But it's boring to be responsible all the time so I decided to splurge by buying two of those big cookies with the pink frosting (one of them was for my wife, because she likes those cookies more than I do, even though she recently told her mother I WASN'T the-nicest-guy-you'll-ever-meet and her mother said, "Emmett is nice!" and my wife said, "Oh yeah, Emmett is NICE but he ISN'T the nicest guy YOU'LL-EVER-MEET." I didn't deny it, I just told my wife, "When you have a lot of responsibilities and no time to take care of them all you get a lot more impatient with people and you're not willing to let them waste your time. You end up not being as nice as you could be to a lot of people. I don't deny it and I don't regret it. I'm a busy guy... besides I would probably hate the nicest-guy-you'll-ever-meet because he's probably creepy and has probably never really been challenged in life or he's overcompensating for something or he's just trying to get something from you.")

Anyway, I told the 18 yr old it would be fun to go on vacation or just buy crazy stuff instead of using it to knock out your credit card bills. And to prove it, I referenced the two pink-frosting cookies in my hands and said, "Mother would have wanted it this way."

I look forward to making another random purchase and saying the same thing. Maybe for the rest of my life. Because eventually, I need to do something fun. And I really mean it. The 100 hour work weeks and people dropping like flies isn't doing it for me. I told my wife I need to start making some GOOD memories and soon.