Nothing Important-or is it?

I haven't been writing my blog as much lately. For some of you, that's probably a good thing, well, deal with it. I've been busy doing other writing and just dealing with the mundaneness of life, if the word mundaneness is actually a word, which today, it is. At my age, still feeling young at this point, which is closer to the end than the beginning, I can look back and actually have an opinion that is worth something because I have walked the road. At least this much of it.

There is the bulk of our lives that are just, well, mundane; at least we think they're mundane. Its just life, refilling the toilet paper roll when there is three or four squares left on the end of the roll no one wants to try to use, that makes up the vast majority of our time on this rock. If you think about it, really analyze it, anyone can be a hero-really. What glory there is to strap a supersonic airplane to your butt and throw yourself off the front end of a moving ship, or run into a burning house and pull a small baby out of its smoldering crib, or my favorite-'keying' a door to a house with a forty-pound ram on a search warrant. Really, who wouldn't want to do that? Everyone wants to do that!

No one, absolutely no one, wants to refill the toilet paper roll.

Holy Ground, my next book after Emancipating Elias is coming out in a few more days. I was telling a friend I was having coffee with yesterday that writing to me is like heroin-the good kind of course. The type you can apparently now buy in California at their CVS pharmacies. After Holy Ground I am finishing up Looking for Indianola. Its a story of just this issue-the mundaneness of living. Life is not filled with fighting fires or the eighty yard touch down drive. Its filled with vasts amounts of time of what we could perceive as 'Boredom.'

We try to fill and remove our boring times with carrier launches and search warrants. We buy a car, we take a trip to the woods, we paint a room, something that is safe yet, whimsical. Now, don't sit there and say, 'Mark, you are just against change.' Because, you would be right. That is an Achilles issue I have had for a long time. You don't need a new couch or drapes if they are still working as a couch and a drape, do you?

The last few days, and writing this new book, is proving very interesting for me. I've gotten to focus on this topic and compare it to my life. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, until its your grass and you have to mow it. Ask any fighter pilot and they will tell you they love to fly. If you ask them what the worst part of their job is, they would say the three hour pre-flight and two hour post-flight de-briefings. Cops, cops love search warrants. They hate the eight to ten hours of paperwork afterwards.

Last night was an example. Everyone was over for Joni's birthday. She just wanted to be surrounded with her kids and grand kids-plural-jeez, it still stuns me that I am a multi-grandfather. Anyway, it was pizza and wings and toys on the wooden floor, and noise, and dogs, and TV on mute (why have a TV with a 'mute' button?-seems wrong). Then Spencer had one of those Latoya Jackson wardrobe malfunctions and blew threw his diaper like a shotgun blast at a watermelon, all over his mother, his father-my couch. People were laughing, screaming, running for towels. I just sat back, as a true grandfather would, and in all my wisdom of such things over the years called out in a calm, yet firm tone "Get the spray-someone spray the couch. Get the spray." Whatever that meant.

Actually, from a grandfather and a man's perspective, I was kind of proud of my little grandson. THAT, was an impressive feat. Most men would think so too.

I have also been working with my one son in law with his back yard sprinkler system. My other son in law, I helped lay sod when they moved in and so now is was plumbing. Of course, we waited until the hottest time of the year. Hey, if you're going to do something challenging, you might as well risk your life doing it. Also, on the last day of September, my oldest brother reported he turned the big sixty-five. This is a guy, who could and still can run us all into the ground. Lastly, my little boy sent me his first e-mail since going back to the Middle-east as an 'Advisor.' We talked about the Iraqi food and how he has Spencer issues for about a week.

Yep, the mundaneness of life.

What does it take to stay in the fight? To stay and deal with those things that come up and wash over our lives every day. I am not going to sit here and say it takes hero status to do so. That term gets misused enough. But it does take us sometimes stopping and looking around to truly appreciate what life is giving us at this particular moment. Sometimes the dancing Santa's and the Burger King commercials mask what is truly there for us to enjoy. A walk around the block, early morning coffee before the world is awake, a nap, a good book, trimming a hedge, window shopping with no intent in buying anything, anything that makes up our lives that have been given and laid out for us to look at and find humor or comfort in. Right now, as I write this to you, I have one dog asleep on the far side of the room under a desk and the other laying on my foot, sound asleep with her breath hitting my ankle. I am trying desperately not to move my foot so as to not wake her-my dog. Jeez.

The mundane, Old man Kopchek says in Looking for Indianola "You were feeling nostalgic about the good old days, or bad old days, whatever they were when you were a tike on a trike and wanted to reclaim that feeling? We could search forever for that feeling when all we have to do is open our eyes and look around.

Or we could go in and clean a toilet and change the roll. Try it. See if the next time you do it, it doesn't bring a smile to your face. I'm going to see if I can actually use those last four squares. Three cups of coffee will do that to this middle-aged man.