That's a wrap

Updated July 22, 2006 1:48 a.m. New information is at the bottom of this post.

If all goes well, I may finally be getting rid of a 14-karat gold and diamond albatross that's been hanging around my neck for more than two years.

I found out last week that someone has made an offer on the ring I have been trying to sell on consignment. The ring is a ring that I bought as an engagement ring in December 2003. The ring was given back to me two years ago this month. It took quite a while to decide what to do with it. I didn't admit it to myself at the time, but I'm pretty sure I held onto it for as long as I did in some sort of false hope that the woman I had given it to would want it back. Want me back. I finally decided to sell it when I knew with all my being that I didn't want her back. That, and I needed cash. I was broke.

Well, I still haven't got any cash out of the deal, and the offer on the ring, which isn't officially finalized yet, is less than I was asking and far, far less than I paid for the ring initially. And I'm still broke and really want to be done with the whole affair and put it all behind me -- lock, stock and facet.

When I found out about the offer, I knew I would make a blog post about it, about the closing of that chapter of my life. But I quickly came to learn something else. I got this overwhelmingly strong feeling that it would be my last blog post here.

Back when Digital Fishwrap was launched in December 2004, I wrote in the first post that "I can't say there will be a theme to this blog, or even a cohesive thread running through it. ...
I merely seek a little better understanding of life and a better way to live it."

But there has been a theme running through this blog and that is of a man who lost love and is trying to learn how to live again. The better understanding I sought was how to move on.

I mentioned the former fiancee and the ring in the first post too, detailing how I had the theme music for "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," as my ringtone for her on my cell phone. I wrote, "Perhaps that's a story for another post: How the symbol of our relationship went from a diamond ring to 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.' " Well, the ringtone is still in the phone, but her number is long gone and mine has changed.

Sure, there have been posts on here about a lot of other topics. Early on that was probably as much to convince myself that I was moving on as anything else. Later, I actually found other things I was compelled to write about. My daughter and the relationship I have, or am working to try to have, with her has probably been a pretty visible subplot.

Somewhere along the line I found a voice -- tone deaf and off pitch as it may may be -- and I had fun with the site. It got me writing again at a time when I wasn't writing much. Now, I'm writing more outside this space and the writing here has grown infrequent, tired and forced.

The time has come to turn my attention to new things, to different things. Perhaps I may resurface in the blogosphere again, with a new site and a new theme. But not this one.

I hate goodbyes, as perhaps the whole "theme" of this site has illustrated in documenting a two-year journey to say goodbye to a life I no longer have and a person I no longer am. So I really hate to say goodbye to the loyal dozen or so folks who have regularly checked in on this site, from locations near and far, including some old, dear friends and some new ones made through reading each other's blog posts.

I did consider coming out of the blogging closet as it were, revealing the man behind the G-man, and maybe taking this blog in a new direction. But that just didn't feel right. If I've learned nothing else in the last couple of years, with the end of the most emotionally serious relationship and a change in jobs and a major relocation, I have learned that sometimes we have to say goodbye to something before we can move on to the next thing.

I also thought about deleting this blog site completely. Just disappearing and being all mysterious. But I think I'll leave it up, at least for a while. There are some posts here I actually was quite proud of, typos and all, even though I never did compile a "favorite posts" list like I considered at one time. Maybe I'll back up a few of them onto a disk somewhere to read what a miserable schmuck I was back when.

But mostly I need to leave it up so all the people searching for "heart-shaped nipples," "nocturnal nose bleeds," "Barry Manilow," "Apollonia's tits," and "naked pool boys" can stumble on the site and wonder what the fuck this wacky site is all about.

I hope along the way something you've read here made you smile or laugh, even if you were laughing at me.

Thanks for the comments, for sharing part of my journey and for being part of my therapy. I am appreciative and grateful.

Well, except for you people who only came for the heart-shaped nipples.

Perverts! (E-mail me. We'll talk.)

Update: It has been well over a month since I wrote this post, and guess what? I still haven't got the money from the fucking ring. I swear that fucking thing will never go away.

I have been trying for weeks to get in touch with the people at the jewelry story that is supposed to be selling the ring. I called one day a few weeks ago on a Friday afternoon and the woman I've been dealing with in this saga wasn't there. Apparently the store was closing, or already closed. Obviously the reason the place hasn't been able to sell that damn ring is they are never open! Maybe the store is a hobby or something, because they seem to have limited hours and limited days of the week when anyone is even there. Obviously, I didn't notice that when I was living in that town, because I was working a swingshift, so I could pop in there at midday and transact my business before heading to work. Of course anyone who actually has anything approaching a normal job is not a customer there.

Anyway, The woman I talked to suggested I call back the following Monday. The problem is, I work during the week, during those few limited hours the store is open (life from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. or something). And I would always forget to call over lunch. I would remember that I had not called when I got home from work each day and was walking to my mailbox and realized there was no check in there.

Finally, one day this week, I remembered to call during the middle of the day, and got the woman I've been dealing with. But apparently the woman who writes the checks has been out on some sort of family emergency. She was supposed to be back by end of this week or next. So the jewelry shop lady tells me that the check should go out next week and she will call me when it does.

So, we'll see if she calls and if the check actually comes. If she had not told me the check was coming, I was determined to have them just ship the ring to me so I could sell it myself, or toss it in the Willamette River, or something. Maybe I could take it to bars, toss it up on the bar and tell any woman who asked about it a sob story to see if they would take pity on the "broken" man with an expensive ring, and no finger to put it on.

Frankly I'd rather have the cash. Besides, there's another woman in my life who already knows the real sob story, and it's looking like maybe, just maybe, if I haven't so offended God that he pushes me further, she may be moving quite a bit closer to my current home. And maybe we might actually get to spend some time together. I don't want to jinx it. But I'm optimistic. And I don't think she would care for a slightly used piece of jewelry, no matter how well things go between us and how understanding she may be.

So my attempt to wrap up the Fishwrap, not to mention the whole failed engagement saga, in a nice little bow didn't quite work out the way I had planned. But then again, life rarely works out the way we think it will, does it? And that's part of what makes it exciting and interesting. The end of every chapter, every story every blog post isn't really an end. It's just the beginning of something else, the epilogue. The story beyond and behind the story.

Sometimes when we read someone else's story, we are left to wonder what happened after the final chapter. And we are left to write our own epilogue to the story penned by someone else. So, if you bother to write an epilogue to this saga, do me a favor. Make it a happy ending.

Technorati tags: Blogging
Technorati tags: Retired blogs

Am I who I think I am?

So, I log on to make a post today and now I have to use word verification on my own blog posts. Not the comments, but to make a post to my own blog.

The little message that comes with this verification thingy tells me that my blog has characteristics of a spam blog.

Can someone tell me what about this blog, seems like a spam blog? I don't think I've ever submitted posts about erectile disfunction or ways to make your penis larger, which seems to be characteristics of ever other e-mail floating through cyberspace.

I don't think I'm happy about that. No, I know I'm not happy about this.

Technorati tags: Blogging

Time to take the training wheels off

As I was walking toward my apartment I was passed by two children riding their bicycles. The first, a girl, was followed by a younger boy, who I imagined was her little brother. The boy was riding a smaller bike, equipped with training wheels and we was pedaling like the devil trying to keep up with his sister.

For some reason that fleeting encounter, that little image of a boy riding his bicycle on training wheels took me back to that time in my childhood when I was learning to ride a bike.

I imagine most kids learn those things from their parents. Aren't dads supposed to be the ones who teach us things like that, especially teaching sons things like that?

Well, my dad didn't teach me how to ride a bike. We didn't play catch in the yard. There was just never time for such things. The seasons when the weather was nicest for outdoor activities were my dad's busiest times of year with his work. He was up and gone long before I got out of bed, and he often didn't get home until well after sundown.

My first encounter learning to ride a bike happened when I was probably 8 or 9. We were at a friend's house in town and the boys in that family, even those younger than me, all knew how to ride bikes. They decided to become my tutors. So I climbed up on a bike, put my feet on the pedals, and they pushed me a long. I was terrified. Telling them not to let go, over and over. Being bratty boys, they swore they wouldn't let go and did anyway, for a brief period of time, only telling me afterward.

So I got braver and they let go for longer. There was the inevitable crash, but no major injuries. And I was hooked on the thrill of riding a bike. So, I started bugging my dad to get me one.

And he did. But I was not along to help pick out my new (used) two-wheeler. The one he picked out was purple, with a banana seat and, appropriately, training wheels. But it was also a girl's bike. It even came with a white basket on the front of it adorned with flowers. I was mortified then and every time I had occasion to ride my bike with friends from then on.

How could my dad get me a girl's bike?

Fortunately, the basket was removed, but there was no mistaking the fact that the bar -- I don't know what the technical description of it would be, but we used to call the bar across the top of a bike's frame the nut-cracker bar -- was missing. Well, it wasn't missing exactly, but it was curved low so it was just above the lower part of the frame. It was more of an ankle-cracker bar.

My dad's logic was that it would be easier for me to learn to ride a bike like that. Easier to get on and off. Never mind the emotional scars that my fragile gender identity would endure.

I was determined to learn to ride the shit out of that bike and outgrow it as quickly as possible. But we didn't have a ton of money and I had to make due with that bike for a long time. Fortunately, we lived out in the country so most of my friend from school never had to see me pedal past their house on my girlie bike.

When I did finally get a new bike, and pass my old one down to my brother, I got the most butch bike I could find, long before I knew what butch meant. It was all black, BMX style, with knobby tires and a funky shock absorber thingy on the front forks. This was a boy's bike. A bike for taking over jumps. Of course the thing was heavy as shit, and you had to make sure to hank up hard on the handlebars at just the right moment when flying off a ramp, or risk landing nose-first into the ground.

But seeing that little boy on his bike reminded me of that first bike and learning to ride. I suppose it would be easy to resent my father for getting me that bike, which I hated. But now I realize, his heart was in the right place, as it usually was. He just wanted to make learning to ride easier. Maybe, as the youngest of seven kids, he learned to ride on a bike that had belonged to one of his older sisters. I don't know. I just know that easier isn't always better.

It isn't always easier either.

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Memories