End of the Week/Start of the Week

Today, I hung out with my mom and my daughter; we went to Barnes and Noble after telling my mom I'd like to take my daughter. After browsing the stacks for a while in the Spanish section, my mom finally picked a book and she decided to buy it. We browsed the store with my daughter and my mom mentioned a couple of times how she planned to buy this book now and another book next time she came back. This made me think that she actually enjoyed the trip to the bookstore. 

Afterward, we stopped by Jack in the Box to buy my mom a salad on the way home. As I ordered at the drive-thru I noticed a cat on top of a parked car and I backed the car up so my daughter would see it. I noticed the drive-thru girl saw us through the window and she seemed confused. I drove up to the window and noticed the girl was an ex-student of mine. After an awkward conversation (which most interactions with students outside the classroom almost always are) she gave me my salad and we drove off. Before leaving the drive-thru, I noticed my salad was missing the grilled chicken; this was a grilled chicken salad without chicken. Needless to say, I drove back and asked her for the chicken; she reluctantly complied. 

Wacky Dreams not Guaranteed

I have had these strange post-apocalyptic dreams since I was about 15; they're always a variant of the lone survivor (me) with a few recurring tropes. I wander the wasteland of an urban area scavenging for food and water when I encounter a fellow survivor that wants to kill me before I manage to kill them. We survive together against all odds, while the rest of the world is out there ravaged by famine and violent cannibalism. 

Now last night's dream was no different, except for one thing. I feel I was a survivor during what might have been an earlier timeline of events; perhaps during the height of the Cold War, the early 1980s. As I casually strolled about the decaying post-nuclear world intact from what seemed to have annihilated all mankind, I was surprised by a fellow human survivor, a woman. She awaited, silently lurking from a balcony in the building where I walked past and she was cocking a pistol she had pointed right at my head. When I heard the click of the gun, I looked up and her pistol failed to shoot when our eyes met. He woman quickly receded into the dark balcony and pulled out a barrel, rusted but uncovered and proceded to douse me with what seemed like tar. 

She asked me wearily to come up the stairs to the apartment where she lived and I did against my own better judgement. When I entered the place I could see a clear window at the far wall with a clear view of a plain infested with what seemed like cadavers and a few people walking amongst the dead. As I stood there admiring the decay of what remained of earth, music appears and it's not just any song, it's a dance theme from the 1980s but the name I cannot recall. We danced with what little energy we possessed and the dream faded away. 

This made me wonder about the show on amc - the walking dead. In this show I had momentarily thought the timline was also undefined or early 1990s but then  there is that one occasion where they arrive at a house where Carl, one of the protagonists finds a young kid's bedroom where he has a modern television and video game system. This was a dead giveaway to me that this catastrophe in their world happened around the present day in our world. Creepy. 

Being a dad; year 3.

It seems like being a dad has made me reevaluate a lot of things in my day to day life. One thing that I now have to do is care for another human being. That has made me change in so many ways.

In essence I've become responsible for not only myself but for another person: my daughter. Long gone are the days where I just woke up casually and did whatever I wanted to. Now my whole day and my entire schedule revolve around her. I don't necessarily mind these things because they've become routine.

For instance, today I had to do her hair and, even though I do not feel like I can do it well, it does come out looking nice. I hope one day she can look back at the many photos that I take of her and think that her hair did look nice. Who knows, she might look back and say "dad what the hell were you thinking?!".

It's Sunday and I hope that today we can have a good day. I hope she does not feel too bored with me these days that she has to stay home with me.

   My first post on what promises to be another place I may write in for a while and then slowly forget to update consistently. 

I want to write here; but I have to make it a point to do so repeatedly for it to really stick.