Jason's Untimely Thoughts

I started e-mailing the mass updates because I couldn’t remember what I had told to whom.  A little bit of the same thing going on now, it seems.

So anyone that’s interested has a chance to read it, the kids’ schedule appears to be all set.  I’ve hired a girl (lady, kid, whatever) to stay at the house when the kids aren’t in school.  I chose to do that to provide some stability and a chance to just chill at the house for the kids whenever needed.  I’m still hopeful (and assuming) that people will steal the kids from time to time.

Sarah’s (our) friend Christa and her daughter Eve have been in town for about a week, staying a while longer.  They have been a huge help in entertaining the kiddos and keeping me sane.

The kids are going to visit Malden again this weekend.  I was looking at the calendar trying to find a weekend later on for that to happen, so they could see family down there again (and family could see them) and one more dip in the pool before it closed, only to discover that this weekend was pretty much the last chance.  Birthday parties, football, school, football, and birthday parties take up the majority of the remaining weekends between now and Christmas.

Speaking of football, the Tigers are ranked #7 in the USA Today Coaches poll, #4 by Sports Illustrated, and are #1 in our hearts.  Here’s visual proof of one of those.

Mizzou SI Cover -- 8-11-2008

How many times a day in normal circumstances are you asked that question?  20?  50?  I know I use it as a typical greeting all the time.  I wonder how long it will be until it’s a typical greeting to me again?  It borders on making me angry that I know people actually mean it when they ask now.

The honest answer, which I’ve finally started telling people, is “I don’t know.”  Sometimes I’m fine, which then makes me mad for being fine.  Sometimes I’m not, which then makes me mad for feeling sorry for myself.  Sometimes I’m fine until it’s clear the person asking is feeling sorry for me, at which point I get mad at them.  And none of those mads are really mads, just another set of thoughts that happen.

The other part of the answer is it doesn’t really matter, however I am now is only going to last for a few minutes.  I’ll then either find something to distract me or will become distracted by my thoughts.  Yeah, yeah, I know it matters, my point is it just doesn’t last long, no matter the current situation.

I know I’m not fine at work.  I’m here, doing stuff, but not enough.  I’m having an extremely difficult time figuring out how to focus on the more mundane parts of my job.  I will because I need to and they need me to, but I’m thankful that everyone here is looking out for me and asking “How Are You?” too.

People keep encouraging me to keep blogging my thoughts.  I’m remembering that I named this stupid thing “Untimely Thoughts” after attending a funeral and wondering if I should rename it now.

Today is Saturday, it’s the first day where I haven’t had ‘something’ to do.  Routine has been very helpful to me, and lack of same is failing me mostly today.  Normal Saturday routine when we had nothing to do would have been doing random junk with Sarah and the kids all day.  I can’t, of course, and it sucks.

The kids spent part of today at Sarah’s dad’s house, with me allegedly being productive at the house.  While I did accomplish some, feel like mostly what I accomplished was looking around and wishing Sarah was here.  It’s an any weepy girl from any weepy Hallmark commercial day for me.  A big outdoor BBQ at friends’ tonight, though, which should be good for the kiddos and me.

I’ve started the search for memorial stones, with as little luck as I would have expected.  I’m generally looking to start from something like this, if anyone knows of any place.   Start from there, then include some brass, some gerber daisies, a sun, and I’ll go on and on toward tackiness I’m afraid.

Just so it’s in this space too, I’ve created a webpage in memorial to Sarah.  I’ll update it as time goes on and other memorials continue to happen or be written.   It’ll also serve as the main page of becking.com until whatever random moment feels appropriate to change it.

Speaking of random moments to change, I’ll say that some of the hardest junk coming up recently are stupid decisions like when is the appropriate time to turn off an e-mail address or a cell phone.  I ended up doing it when I dreaded checking them more than I despised taking the action to turn them off.  Similarly, if anyone works for the Social Security office, you should give serious thought to improving your stupid automated phone system.  It’s bad enough having to make that call, considerably worse having to make it repeatedly because the idiotic system keeps telling you to call back later and hanging up on you.

Finally, football season approaches.  While the thought of Golden Girls in the fall is appealing to the family (mostly to Adelaide, but to me and various papas too), the thought of the upcoming season is extremely bittersweet for me.  During the games I spent a lot of time communicating with Sarah.  Glances and text messages and laughter.  Post-game we’d each do our own breakdowns of what happened for us and then I’d spend a few hours reviewing her pictures.  Tailgates, 14-0, generally Mizzou-RAH-edness will no doubt happen, but I’m having a hard time imaging it right now.

on a side note, hug your friends and family.

Given the occasional drawl that both Adelaide and Jack possess, I’ve been hopeful they’d pass as southern types.  Those hopes have been dashed.

Last night, the kids and I were going to the park after I finished dishes.  I asked Adelaide to “bring me y’alls plates first.”

“Um, y’all?” she said digustingly.  You’re supposed to say ‘your’ or ‘you guys’.  Or ‘Bring me yours and Jack’s plates, please.'”

I then informed her emphatically that “y’all” is a completely proper word.  And made her go find me some sweet tea, cornbread, and buttermilk.  (Not really on the buttermilk, it’s gross)

Congrats to Ben Askren, 2008 Olympian in Freestyle Wrestling.

Congrats to the beakers, for embarrassing themselves, junk-rubbers, and elevators.

And congrats to Jungle, new web director (effective soon) at the Missouri Department of Conservation.  In celebration, I went mudding in my truck through the state park and then drove through a bunch of local streams to clean my truck and empty out all my old chemicals that I keep laying around.

p.s.  I’ve discovered that sometimes I need to type junk down (or write it out, but I don’t write hardly anything these days) in order to get it out of my head.  The post below is example of that.

p.p.s.  I wanted the Celtics to win, but I’d much preferred they won with class.  Who does a Gatorade dump on the court while the game is in progress?  A beaker, that’s who.

p.p.p.s.  I have no idea what the proper format is for multiple post-scripts.

p.p.p.p.s.  Screw ku.

The setting is Father’s Day evening, at Mike and Sarah’s house with the Messer family, dinner, four cousins five years old and younger running around, typical loudness.    Until Tiger Woods lined up his putt for birdie on the 18th green.  It wouldn’t have been any quieter in there if everyone was asleep.  Of course the TV was silent, golf tradition and all, but I couldn’t believe how quiet everyone in the house was.  Then he made the putt, the kids start chanting “Let’s Go Tigers!”, and the action was back on.

Speaking of Tiger – absolutely amazing.  Although I did laugh when he backed off of a putt because a bird flew over.  Announcer guy:  “Was that a bird that flew over?”  Announcer guy #2:  “Yes, a sea gull!”  Both announcer guys go on in general amazement at the concentration required to perform with distractions like birds flying over.   All that said though, one of the most amazing sporting events I can remember.  Not that they need it, but kudos to all three of the top finishers from me – thought they all held up to the spotlight extremely well.  The drama that comes from those sporting events is why I have no use for reality TV.

Back to silence (and then selfishness and hypocrisy).  Two years ago Sarah was thrust into surgery, having no idea neither that it was coming nor the diagnosis that would happen after the fact.  We were blown away by the outpouring of calls, e-mails, etc., in the weeks and months after that.  She’s now readying for a fairly more substantial surgery, in all likelihood, but with the ‘benefit’ of preparing for a month.  It’s not so much of a benefit.  Dread, worry, and what ifs have entirely too much time to come to mind.  Yuck.  The silence of not knowing surgery was coming is a little helpful.

Coupled with all that, in general most of those we come in contact with are of the ‘uh, this is no big deal, right?’ opinion.   While that’s because of understandable factors – the old line about minor surgery only happening to someone else, my killing everyone with updates that everything was OK, the fact that she did undergo similar surgery successfully two years ago, the fact that she recovered from that remarkably well, and the point that we’ve been basically hoping for this surgery since then – it’s still weird to us, mostly because we have no idea how to respond.

Except for stupid blog posts, and probably even stupid enough for me to point out the stupidity of this blog post twice, you simply let them believe what they already do.  Sure, yeah, no problem.  Maybe we will get together for dinner after we get back.  Like sometime in September or October maybe.  Doesn’t feel right to tell them what you really think — that we expect the outcome to be good but the process to suck.  Maybe they’re saying it trying to be super positive, or maybe I don’t want to contradict trying to be super positive, or maybe it’s just silly.  And they’re trying to be nice and have problems of their own.

And I type this while simultaneously ignoring a request to provide our e-mail update list to a few people who are trying to organize a something, no doubt.  Because I don’t want a fuss made or people bothered.  The selfishness was the previous two paragraphs, the hypocrisy is now.

Or the Green Wave.  I recently signed up for Mizzou’s “Official Sports Report” out of curiosity.  Mostly generally stuff I already know, but sometimes offers greater detail and then an occasional new item to me.

Credit to them for the following:

The Tiger Who Owned Babe Ruth
Commentary Exclusive to Mizzou OSR
by Todd Donoho
Columbia, MO –  And now the story of Hubert Shelby Pruett.  His friends called him Hub.  His nickname was Shucks.

Hub was from Malden, Mo.  He attended the University of Missouri and lettered on the baseball team in 1921.  He was a left-handed pitcher who perfected a screwball.  Sounds kind of like Fernando Venezuela.

Hub left Mizzou and went to the major leagues where he pitched for the St. Louis Browns in the American League in 1922, 1923 and 1924.  If you were an American League pitcher during those years, that meant you had to pitch against the Yankees’ Babe Ruth during his prime — a daunting task.

Well, nobody pitched to Babe better than Hub.  Babe had fits with Hub’s left-handed screwball.  In his first 13 at bats against Hub, Babe struck out 10 times!  I’ll bet Babe said more than “shucks” when he struck out so often against Hub.

In all, Babe faced Hub 30 times.  He struck out 15 times in those 30 plate appearances against Hub.  He walked eight times, grounded out twice, sacrificed once, and got four hits.  Of those four hits, one was a home run.

Hub died in 1982.  Here is how his obituary read in the New York Times on January 30, 1982:

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“Hubert S. (Hub) Pruett, a left-handed pitcher who was once a nemesis of Babe Ruth, died Thursday at his home in suburban Ladue. He was 81 years old.

Pruett started a seven-year major league career in 1922 with the St. Louis Browns. He had an uncanny fade-away delivery, with which, as a rookie, he struck out Ruth 10 of the first 13 times that Ruth faced him. During his career, Pruett struck out Ruth 15 of the 30 times he pitched to him.

Pruett retired from baseball after a seven-year career in which he pitched for the Browns, the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Giants and the Boston Braves. His career record was 29 victories and 48 losses.

While still playing baseball, he had enrolled in the St. Louis University School of Medicine, and, having earned his degree after eight years, he became a practicing physician.”
***********************

That’s right, Hub Pruett went on to become a doctor.  He was a physician in St. Louis for 40 years.

A baseball player who became a doctor after his playing days were over?  Where have I heard this before?  Sounds like Hub Pruett was “Moonlight” Graham from the movie “Field of Dreams.”

I only have one thing to say after that.  Shucks!

Adelaide’s last ever day of pre-school was today. Allegedly they had some sort of graduation. “Yeah, you know, we wore, um, plate hats.” Sarah nor I never heard anything about this graduation beforehand.  She and Jack and I were outside, talking about how she was now officially a kindergartener. She was jumping up and down excited, I say “why don’t you yell out ‘Woo Hoo!'”, the kids’ traditional yelp of joy. “Um, whatever,” she replied, leaning casually against the pillar. Way too cool for that.

Jack’s birthday party is Sunday, he turns three on June 9. He wants a “Cowboy Party.” When asked what he wants for his birthday, “A black motorcycle and a swimming pool.” Everytime, those are his answers. Like in all the old cowboy films, I guess.

My great-grandmother, Pansy Miller, died last weekend at the age of 103 (obituary here).  Unfortunately, Sarah & I were headed to New Orleans for doctoring so were unable to attend the services.  I know no one minded, but I wish I could have been there.  While her memory had failed her in recent years, she never failed to be pleasant to me nor to smile when I approached.

I’m one of very few who had the great fortune to not only know their grandparents, but also a great-grandfather, great-grandma Pansy, and her mom, my great-great grandmother “Grandma George” (Leora Davis Riddle).  Beyond Grandpa Zimmerman very rightly fussing at us for harassing his chickens, I don’t remember a single cross word from any of them.  Maybe I just have selective memory though.

Great people, all of them.  Work harder than I ever could, would do anything for any body, and many times have.  I’m lucky to have had them, and Adelaide and Jack will realize the same later on.

I’ve spent about 12 years on college campuses… about 6 years at Mizzou (two degrees, wisecrackers) and about 6 years at Columbia College (over two jobs).

I was back at Columbia College this morning for a meeting. Beautiful campus, beautiful buildings, beautiful grounds, beautiful atmosphere, lots of activity, etc. Then I ran into some faculty members. Two were great, the rest were typical faculty.

Reminded me of my thoughts from early freshman year, college would be great if it wasn’t for the classes (or faculty).