Random Ramblings

As my sweet children idle reluctantly at home with me this week, languishing with a rather miserable case of the croup and double ear infections to boot, I have found my sleep~deprived mind wandering on occasion.

As the chance of my producing something astonishingly compelling on the limited hours of sleep afforded to me since Tuesday, I will rely on the kindness of you strangers (and some not-so-strange friendlies...) to cope with this meandering entry of disconnected, random ponderings:

Tom Cruise.

His love life, flights of romantic fancy, impending fatherhood, pseudo~religious banter, anti~prescription drug mantra, and whatever else he is up to these days it giving me pause in a bit of an unusual way. That whole "Eyes Wide Shut" period notwithstanding, I've enjoyed his contributions as an actor which have, in some cases, been brilliantly moving. As a person, the man appears fairly well off his rocker lately. But the fact that he is openly himself, unapologetically, with all obvious flaws and ~shall we say~ idiosyncrasies bared, both interests and impresses me. We should all be so open about ourselves. There are too many men living lives of quiet desperation. At the very least, Mr. Cruise is living his life of unabashed kookiness out loud. I find myself lately more impressed with the noble uniqueness of uncompromised ethics, however outlandish I personally find them to be.

If we were all as dedicated to living our lives out loud, it would be far easier to separate the wheat from the chaffe and the sheep from the wolves, wouldn't it? And it would make for a far more fascinating journey in the meantime. I vote for that.

Customer Service. Or lack thereof.

The state of our American service industries across~the~board is neither humorous or simply merely irritating. It has become quite a little epidemic involving service people who would rather be anywhere else but are forced to serve me in whatever employment capacity they are unfortunate enough to have undertaken as their best option to earn enough to buy that new XBox game.

At the risk of sounding magnanimous or ungrateful, I am awfully fatigued at the consistent prospect of not being understood as I speak to a cashier in English. And of getting the wrong order anyway, even after repeating myself five times. Of being treated with the kindness and professional courtesy one would extend to a burnt out lightbulb. Of not being able to depend on the most basic of functions occurring in the professional realm with any degree of reliability. Of being regularly mistreated, misdirected, misinformed, miscommunicated with, misdialed, and mishandled by those whose jobs are exactly to provide the very services they galatically fail at.

Important packages due Tuesday inexplicably arrive on Thursday ~ down the street at my neighbors' house whose long vacation left behind a bored and grouchy dog who has decided my package makes a rather delightful chew toy.

Two chicken tender meals with fries, ordered via drive~thru windows, somehow morph into three cheseburgers with onion rings. Dry cleaned carpet is neither clean nor dry, but still manages to cost a pretty penny. Telephone operators hang up on you. The very moment you sit down in the restaurant, your waiter slips out the back for a half hour cigarette break, but the counterperson at the cosmetics display seems to have evaporated altogether within moments of packing a dozen wrong items into your bag and sending you off on your merry way.

I think I am in a mood.

So, change of subject. Onto something I have recently developed an excitement level for that resembles my childhood Christmas Eve anticipation thrill: Letterboxing. My girlfriend, Chandra, who shamelessly does not blog (yet. I am a good nag.) introduced me to this neat phenomenon. When the dark, grey cloud of coughing, feverish, croupy illness finally moves on from our house, I have made silent plans in my mind to trounce with my children and long~suffering Copper all over tarnation, searching for these buried, hidden~treasure letterboxes. And insodoing, create few treasured family memories all our own.

Recall that I did offer a warning about the random nature of this post. I promise to have my thoughts more neatly aligned by tomorrow morning. Or at the very latest, mid afternoon.