Standby

     We have these two types of muscle fibers: slow-twitch for endurance, and quick-twitch for explosive movements. Swimming and cross-country running use mainly slow-twitch, tennis and volleyball quick-twitch. Some of us naturally have more of one type or the other. I have more quick-twitch muscles, so I enjoy more explosive sports, like tennis or volleyball.
     But if your muscles are tensed up for an explosion that never comes, that can be extremely tiring. It's like when Skye was trying to understand her new abilities after becoming an Inhuman in season two of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - when she tried to force her powers inward, she wound up breaking her own arm. Not anywhere near that dramatic, but that sense of "standby" is kind of where it feels like everything is right now.
     Not much is happening in Okmulgee County, so there's not really anything to cover for the ONN. Most of the Frontstretch staff is at Daytona for the opening weekend of the NASCAR season, which meant my news day - Thursday - I was on standby for if they needed backup. They didn't, which was fine, but it's hard to be that tensed and ready to spring if there's nothing to pounce. (I spend too much of the day watching our cats.) Macklin and Smudge have had upset stomachs for the last two weeks, so I've been cleaning up their diarrhea way too often - they've been exiled to the garage until they feel better.
     It's hard work waiting for things to happen. For the last six months or so it's felt like things - work, life, church, personal - were just about to fall into place once something happened, like a domino chain. Just hasn't quite started yet.

     Another awful school shooting happened the other day in south Florida. Facebook and Twitter have been filled with people arguing over whether gun laws or mental health systems need to be overhauled. My uneducated opinion is that both sides are probably right. .

     Finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower recently, didn't like it. Novels about stoners make me really mad, because their lack of ambition drives me crazy - in Children's/YA Lit everyone in class wanted to kill the narrator of The Spectacular Now.  And they're unbearably depressing. I still might see the movies of both of those books, though.

     Saw Black Panther last night. Trevor was chomping at the bit to see it, and Dad dragged Caleb and I along. The Orpheum was about 80 percent full, which was incredibly impressive (though the offerings were the newest MCU movie and the final movie of the Fifty Shades trilogy, and it's Okmulgee, so...maybe not so impressive).
     It had to do a lot - the royal intrigue of a Shakespeare history, with the plot of The Lion King, with the amount of worldbuilding of Iron Man 2, Thor,, Guardians or Doctor Strange. Subtitles would have been helpful - some of the accents were so thick the dialogue was kind of lost. It was all right, but I'd rank it in the 12th-15th range out of all MCU movies so far. Caleb and Mom were both astounded I could rank it within two hours of watching..Some of the most interesting characters were killed, which seems like a waste of good acting talent.
     Also, Dad's elbow was jamming into my side and his foot was in my lap, because personal space isn't something he doesn't do very well. That was uncomfortable.
     On the way home he was constantly berating Caleb's driving, which was also uncomfortable. Caleb's a really good driver. It was raining, and somebody was tailgating a little bit on the way home. Dad wanted Caleb to either pull over or stop so they would run into us and it would be their fault. In his best impression of Jack Lankford, Caleb calmly stated that he was driving the speed limit and wasn't going to break any driving laws just because Dad told him to. Dad threw a tantrum, saying that it was his truck and that Caleb couldn't drive it tomorrow for disobeying his orders (we were thinking of going to the Oilers game tonight).
     They both argued their case to Mom once we got home, while Trevor and I hid in the family room and pretended to care about men's Olympic figure skating.

    I have Relient K stuck in my head this morning, and I slept horribly.