Waiting

It has been one of those weeks. I've been forced to examine the concept of waiting. My grandfather went to the hospital with chest pains. He has to have open heart surgery to open his five blocked arteries. It has been a little stressful, to say the least.

I'm waiting, we're all waiting. This somehow reminds me of a day some years back when I was working as an extra (or the fancier term "background artist") on some show on location at a high school in Hollywood. It was a day in late May or early June and the sunlight has this sort of t.v. quality to it. Have you ever seen real movie lighting? The complexity of it, the sheer quantity necessary to emulate simple daylight? The rigs, the stands, the gels? It was the kind of light an art director would flog a team of 30 guys to get on tape. It was just sort of clean, with a hint of gold. It was one of those rare hot days in Los Angeles where there’s no smog yet, but there is a siren call from the ocean that you just want to obey without question.

I was sitting in the shade by myself (I burn rather easily), a little bit away from the other extras. Just waiting. And I felt that pull; that desire for time to push forward, to zip quickly by. To get to whatever it is you are waiting for. But I wasn’t waiting for anything in particular. I was just waiting. Sitting in the shade of that day, waiting in that perfect light. Watching the dew evaporating from the grass. Waiting.

I’m pregnant. That’s kind of the ultimate form of waiting, stretched out for nine (actually count ‘em, ten) months. You can’t hurry it up; you can’t open this present before the birthday. You just have to wait. (The kid is about 4 inches long right now, per Babycenter.com).

Last week my grandfather went to the hospital with chest pains. He is scheduled for open heart surgery on Monday. He is a prisoner in his house, chained to his pill bottles by the doctors orders. Waiting to have someone crack his chest cavity. My dad, my sister, me?

We’re waiting to see that he’s going to be ok. That we’ll all be ok.

I’ve been so lazy with this blog and so brain-dead lately. This will end up being my longest post in quite a while, I am guessing.

I just read a rather entertaining article about how conservatives are out-procreating the liberals. It’s called “Attention Liberals: Please Breed. Conservatives are outbirthing libs by a wide margin. How soon can you get knocked up?” You can read it at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/09/29/notes092906.DTL. (I tried to make the link happen but it didn't want to work. You'll have to be industrious and copy and paste it).

Very funny stuff. I particularly like this sentence: “I am here to inspire the resistance, to propose solutions to this disastrous fertility gap and to help get liberals into the sack sans protection so they may go forth and multiply the number of people who adore "The Daily Show" and read actual books and think Aaron Sorkin is some sort of god.” (Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle). Has anyone seen “Studio 60”? It makes me miss “Sportsnight”....

My boys in blue won tonight. We may actually make it into the playoffs. Very very very cool.

More soon.