Time.

Time is a non-spatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It can be your enemy; it can be your friend. We are obsessed with it. We attempt to defy its passing and sometimes we wish it away. There is never enough of it to do what you need to do. It can be on your side, you can have too much of it on your hands, and it can appear stand still. You can kill time, spend time, save time, waste time, do time, make good time, have a bad time, ask for the time.

Time.

Well, for me, time has screeched to a grinding halt. I start vacation in a couple of days. My son left for vacation in Newfoundland the week school was out and my wife joined him there a couple of weeks ago. That’s ok, I thought. I have lots to do. I have a busy time at work plus there are some chores I want to tackle around the house without the added pressure of attempting to keep an orderly household while I do it. I had lots of time to myself. I had lots of time to chip away at things I needed to do. I was going to enjoy my time.

That was then, this is now.

Now, I can’t wait for the time to pass. Call me a sap, but I can’t wait to see my family again. There’s only a couple of days left before I hit the road for the rock. But as I wait for the time to come, I can hear the tick-tock of every clock I see. Each second-hand-click resonates in my ears like the footsteps of a Jurassic creature in a Spielberg movie. Boom…. boom…. boom…. The trek to St. John’s via car and boat takes a full 24 hours from here, but I can’t wait for it to start. I can’t wait to start counting kilometers instead of minutes. The anticipation is tugging at me, pulling my eyes toward my watch every 36.2 seconds. I tap my watch; surely there is something wrong with it. Time can’t be moving that slowly.

Then I think… three weeks from now, I’ll be back at work. Back at the old grindstone. I’ll be wishing I enjoyed the slow ticking of time when it was on my side. Once time has run out, I’ll wonder where it went so quickly. But at least then, I won’t be alone. My family will be back and time will return to its elusive state. There will be good times and they will fly by too quickly.

At least we’ll be spending it together.

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life. Give him a fish tank, and someday he will have to clean up a frickin’ mess.

Per tradition, when my wife is out of town, I work on some project around the house. I like it that way. It gives me an opportunity to tackle a project that must span several days without having to clean up my mess in between. I did that this past Christmas when I renovated the rec room. My wife headed to Newfoundland a couple of weeks ahead of me this summer so I figured I’d install some shelves and cupboards in a couple of storage rooms we have in the basement. I decided that I would empty the two rooms into the rec room since I had the freedom of leaving it in a mess for up to two weeks while I finished my chores. At least that was my plan. My fish-fuckin-tank had other ideas.

I slaved all weekend building shelves in my cold room. (We call it the cold room because it is an uninsulated room off the basement that we use as a pantry.) I thought that the job would take a day, but instead it took me the whole weekend. This put the kibosh on my plans to spend some time in the office catching up on a report I had due to my boss. “That’s ok”, I said to myself, “Cause I can go in early on Monday morning.”

So, I get up with the birds on Monday morning and get ready to start my day early. I decided to go downstairs and check how well my newly painted concrete floor was drying and I noticed that the 30 gallon fish tank we have was half empty, or half full, depending on how optimistic you are. Once I realized why it was half full, I considered it half freakin’ empty right friggin’ quick. The gol’ danged pump developed a leak and was trickling the water out of the tank for God knows how long. On closer inspection, I could see that the table top was swollen with water and the fish tank had sunk into the saturated fake wood. The DVDs I had in the drawer were sitting in an inch of water. The laminate flooring I installed a few months ago was soaking wet with all the seams saturated and swollen. The new rug we put down was dripping wet. Luckily, I’m a handiman narcissist and felt the urge to bask in my accomplishments. Otherwise, I would have come home Monday evening to a 30-gallon spill.

Needless to say, I didn’t get into work early, or even on time. I turned off and removed the pump, got several 5-gallon buckets and pumped most of the water out of the tank (I was afraid it would cause the stand to collapse), mopped and toweled up as much water as I could, rolled back the carpet, and ever so gently transferred the fish to one of the buckets.

So, instead of bright and early, I was late and sweaty. Instead of leisurely working around my self-made mess, I was tripping over it, panic-stricken.

The early bird gets the worm. Idle hands are the devil’s tools. Hard work is its own reward. Yeah, right. No good deed goes unpunished. A fool and his money are soon parted. Ignorance is bliss. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Fish tanks are a pain in the arse.

A friend of mine, Ian McGrath sent me a facebook message this week with an interesting observation. He discovered that when you do a facebook search for my name, the search results also include the group League of Benevolent Dictators.

That’s it, there’s no other point. This is just plain funny!

I posted an amalgamated happy-events-and-well-wishes post a week ago and haven’t been back since. I created that post to derail an apparent pattern that was developing… all my posts were regarding my desire to send well wishes to my friends and family who were celebrating a special event in their lives. Since then, I haven’t posted a friggin’ thing. So, I replaced the monotony of incessant birthday wishes with the monotony of nothing. All part of my master plan to expand my readership and eventually sell the rights to ohmenerves.com to Microsoft.

But, that’s just not good enough, now, is it? So, I figured I’d find inspiration in one of the most important events in my life. Nine years ago today, my wife and I got married in our back yard. So here it is, nine years later and we are… well, apart. No, we’re not split up. We are very much happily married, but we are 913.4 miles apart. She left yesterday to go to St. John’s. There, she lounges around eating bonbons and drinking Mint Juleps while I stay here in Moncton, toiling away at my job and paying the bills. So, I ask you, is life fair? Nope! Actually, when we booked her flight, neither one of us gave any thought to the fact that she would be flying out the day before our anniversary.

So, I called her yesterday from work to see if she made it there safely. Here’s how the conversation went…

me: Hey baby… how was your flight?
she: Oh good. Do you miss me yet?
me: Yes, of course I do. I miss you lots.
she: Well, actually, how can you miss me already? You haven’t gone home from work yet.
me: Yeah, but I know you won’t be there when I get there.
she: No, I’m only going for groceries.
me: Huh?!? I meant that I miss you cuz I know you aren’t going to be home when I get there.
she: We are only going out for groceries, I’ll be back right after that.
me: I get the distinct feeling that you aren’t listening to me.
she: What was that?
me: I said, I think you must be distracted there. Are you?
she: Uhm… say again?
me: I said, I miss you.

I’m beginning to think that most of my posts are dedicated to birthdays and special events. I may even be beginning to use such events as a crutch to help me through my frequent episodes of writer’s block… so, I’m going to switch to a different approach. I’m going to wish best wishes to y’all on a monthly basis. Somewhere near the beginning of any given month, I’ll make a summary post for all these events.

If any of y’all have any events or birthdays you’d like me to add to my list, just leave me a comment or send me an email at steve(at)ohmenerves.com Include a picture if you want. The more embarrassing the better!

So… here’s goes for July. I’m going to include a couple that I missed for June though.

		June 23, Michael Williams. Happy belated birthday dude!
		June 30, Andrea Hussey.My favourite Cape Breton Island niece!
		July 4, Michael Spurrell. Have a good one Bud!
		July 15, Meaghan White. Happy Birthday… don’t kick too much ass out there in basic training. The other lady in the pic is Mackie Cooper, Donna’s sister. She turns the big five one on July 31.
		July 7, James Rose. Jamie is 39 for the first time today!
		July 9, Aunt Jean. God bless you. I hope your day is wonderful!
		July 20, Lois Williams. Got any DVDs for me?…
		…and our wedding anniversary:July 11…Happy Anniversary, my darling. Has it been 9 years already? I still feel like a newlywed.