MID LIFE CRISIS

Shouldn’t I be having a mid-life crisis or something? I am a married, heavily mortgaged home owning, drone-job working, multi pet owning, mid-forties white man. Shouldn’t I be feeling boxed in by my responsibilities and want to run free in a semi-naked state on some always sunny idealistic beach with a brainless 21 year-old bimbo while I pursue my new stimulating creative career as a metaphysical therapist?

It’s just plain weird but I think I am the exception to the rule. I am pretty much happy and content in my life. Maybe it’s that I just do not look good in a bright yellow Corvette or that I have never had any tolerance for 21 year-old bimbos or possibly I was born without the ‘vain’ gene that causes some men to suddenly start using large quantities of male beauty products at the first sign of a wrinkle. (I guess here is where I must confess to using a matte finish moisturizer for my shaved head…aaaaaaaaaaaaa… I use ‘product’!!!! I hope the ‘sensitive’ male is still more popular then the macho bad boy he-man. I could never pull that crap off. I like cartoons, books, and crosswords too much.) When Rogain first came out my buddy Eric and I did the ‘I’ll try it if you try it’ thing. We both got prescriptions for it. After a month I grew a little peach fuzz but I started feeling silly and vain and soon after discontinued.

The truth is I am happy with my life. Mind you it is not perfect but what do I really have to complain about. I ran around like a maniac for 39 years. This settling down stuff is just not that bad. Sure I suffer from the occasional ‘grass is always greener’ moments but I remember the deep loneliness of my past. Sitting around a bar after a couple of beers I can pull out dozens of fun exciting stories from my past (the funeral home outside of Warren Ohio comes to mind but I will save that story for another day) but what I always remember as I wax (hmmm wax makes me think of that funeral home again) nostalgic about my somewhat crazy less then normal bachelor days is the intense isolation of my nomadic past. No matter whom I was with or where I was I always felt a bit lost.

These days I feel good in my skin. Things feel right. Of course I am always afraid to say stuff like that; sure enough if I let that phrase leave my face I will no doubt get run off the road on my way to work by a pig farmer’s truck which will careen off the road next to me filling my convertible with it’s smelly snorky contents. Then when I call into work to say I’ll be late due to being shoulder deep in hog and hog byproduct they will tell me not to come at all because I have been replaced with a dancing monkey and horn tooting seal (the combo might not be able to do my job as well as me but it would sure be a hell of a duet to watch). Then I will walk home only to discover that my house is about to be torn down to make way for a bypass (and I do not know anyone named Ford Prefect to save me from the obvious imminent destruction).
I think my wife worries that one-day I might wake up with the ‘I’m wasting away my life in this rut’ feeling. I just don’t think so. I believe I have gotten all the running around out of my system that I need to. A couple of times a year I zip away for a weekend to Vegas or football game with a bunch of old friends. It is always a wildly fun bash and a great mini reminder of my past craziness, but it always feels good to get home afterwards. I guess that is actually the key. For 16 years I never truly felt like I had a home. At the risk of sounding like Moses after wandering around for forty years in the desert (dude should have had a compass then he might have split the sea and gotten the tablets before anyone had a chance to even think about making an idol… not to mention a couple of decades less of unleavened bread would not have sucked), I have found my holy land. No wonder I am pope of the house (see entry from 5/9/07)! The only crisis I expect to face in the near future is trying to explain the Warren funeral home to my wife when she finally gets around to reading this blog.

DAD AND DOGS

I love my Dad. My family does not say stuff like that very often. We are not a very mushy talking huggy family. I give my Mom a hug when I see her but that's about it. If I tried to hug my sister she would probably assume I was either trying to hang a 'kick me' sign on her back or hiding a can of Spam in her purse (my family has been hiding the same 2 cans of Spam in each others belongings when we visit for about 20 years). When I see my siblings we tend to give each other a 'I know that you know that I know that I care about you' knowing nod. That said we all know how we feel about each other. As for Dad, well now that he is in his 80s I figure I better learn to deal with saying the occasional 'I love you' because I know some day I will regret not doing it more.


Like most kids, I grew up I repeatedly saying I hoped I would not turn out like my father. As I have gotten older I realize being like my Dad is not such a bad thing. I know it would be easy to pick apart the bad things but he really is a nice guy who truly does mean well. I could easily dig into the bag of old family stories about my Father but I will save those for another time. Today's blog is about dogs. Really. Don't worry; I'll get there. But to quote my Dad "to make a long story longer…"

One trait I definitely inherited from my Father is his warped sense of humor (Yes, now you all know who to blame). He might not be as 'over the top' or 'in your face' (feel free to insert your own hackneyed expression here) as me but he is a bit unique. My sister and I want to start a quote book of stuff my Dad has said. I am most amused by his request of me to repeat something I quickly told him with the line "whoa, whoa whoa, slow it down to a waltz". My sister's favorite Dad'ism' is when he got into a verbal debate with someone about aeronautics during a holiday dinner and he loudly proclaimed "what you know about airplanes you could stick in a thimble, shove it into your eye, and it would not blind you."

My Dad's favorite watch is an elegant old Omega that he put the hands from a Mickey Mouse watch on it. Of course this makes sense if you know that when his father turned 90 he said he was tired of time going by so fast so he reversed the movement in one of his pocket watches so it would run backwards. That watch is the only thing I have asked my parents for after they… well… you know. When my grandmother passed away all I asked for was an old wooden ruler of hers that she got free as a gift from the Colombia Savings Bank. I used to play with it when I was very little and it reminds me of her whenever I see it. Memories do not need to be attached to some fancy expensive item; that ruler means as much to me as anything sitting in my safe deposit box.

One of the good ways to describe my Dad's sense of humor is to mention the names he has given dogs over the years. Whereas my Uncle Lester stuck to one name and every dog he ever had was named Rowdy, my Dad was a bit more creative (interesting, odd) when picking a pet's name. When a friend of his was trying to come up with a name for a brown mutt he picked up at the pound my Dad suggested the accurate but bizarre name Brown Dog. For years his owner had to explain that his name really was Brown Dog and often had to show his tags to prove it (or so I was once told by my Dad, so you just never know. What I know about Brown Dog I could stick in a thimble, shove in my eye and it would not blind me).

The dog I grew up with was named Pussycat. A family friend went to the pound in search of a puppy with the potential to grow up into a huge guard dog for his auto-body shop. My Dad got one look at this Shepard/Husky mix dog cleaning himself like a cat and dubbed him Pussycat. I do not know if the name was all too accurate or if he simply just lived up to it, but at two years old Pussycat was retired from the guard dog business and this big goofy dog with the wacky name became a member of our household. Instead of teaching him to 'sit' my Father taught him to 'park'. My Dad often referred to him as Bonehead a term I have affectionately used for dogs for years as well.

I have come up with some good pet names (granted not as good as my friend Allyson's kitten in 1983 Elvis Catstello), but none quite from the same warped prospective of my Father. I have often thought I would get a kick out of having my Dad name my next dog. Unfortunately that is not going to happen right now.
My wife and I just got a new pup but he came already named. I have always loved big goofy dogs like golden retrievers and Irish setters but through an interesting chain of events we now have a five-year-old wiener pup. His name is Brisco. He does not look like a Brisco. I am not sure what a Brisco looks like but it is certainly not a 13lb Dachshund. So we are trying to come up with names with similar sounds or syllables so as to not confuse him. More then likely he will end up staying Brisco. My wife took him to the vet today and told them his name is Brisco Jones but his nickname is BJ. That way he will fit in with our two cats and fish named respectively Max, Rader, Zelmo, Francis and Sparky. I hope my Dad approves of the name.

BLOG READER

Last week I was pestering my buddy Mike, one of my oldest and dearest friends in the world (and possibly the only person crazy enough to voluntarily put up with my insanity for 30 years), about his lack of readership when it comes to my blog. I have posted an entry every week for almost two years now (and some of them are even remotely entertaining). Although I would certainly like to have a lot more readers, each week my page usually gets anywhere from 10 to 40 anonymous hits but apparently Mike is not often one of them.

My oldest friend in the world had not even glanced at my page in over a year. Humph and for shame. Just because Mike is about the best Dad to his two kids that I have ever seen in terms of the amount of quality time he spends with them. Plus he owns/runs a restaurant and works out daily. Oh yeah and he also makes time each week to spend just with his wife, his friends and get in a few rounds of golf. Yeah, so just because of all that he thinks that is an excuse.

Well actually it is a pretty good excuse now that I just typed all that, but screw it. Hey, coming up with 52 solid blog topics a year is tough so if I want to fluff through this one whining about Mike, well just like Bobby Brown, it’s my prerogative. (My wife just finished watching some sadistic movie [Hard Candy…oooch, if you are a guy DO NOT WATCH IT… I am not keen on any movie with a castration scene] and asked me what my blog topic is about. I just read her the previous sentence to which she yawned and said, “well I guess you know my feelings on that one”. I will have to work a bit harder on my topics the next 51 weeks. Oh well… back to the whining)

Well I say that the fact that Mike is not a weekly reader is a slap in the face. This from the man that almost got suspended with me for proudly displaying signs at one of our high school football games that featured motivating slogans like ‘Ear Wax’, ‘Nose Hair’, ‘Circumcise The Band’ and ‘Eat Me’. This from the man who had a casual lunch with me at the only open Italian restaurant in Boston’s Little Italy during the gale force winds and rain of Hurricane Bob. This from the man that let me cut his hair in his backyard after a late night bar-b-q. This from the man that took most of my male and female family and friends to a sleazy strip joint the night before my wedding.


Aw shucks, I guess I can’t be mad at Mike. In his defense, he had read some of the entries last year and he did offer me constructive criticism that unfortunately has put me in a bit of a quandary. He mentioned that my blog tends to be a little sappy with cutesy endings and stuff. He is right. When I am around Mike I am very relaxed and I tend not to use as much decorum as I might when I am talking to my family or business associates. Should I hold back in my writing here? The people very close to me know I will say just about anything and often the more taboo the subject the harder I will try to incorporate it into an over the top joke. They also know what I actually feel in my heart and know that I truly am just kidding.

Should I not worry about who I might offend with my writing? You always hear about someone not getting a job or promotion because of the nonsense they posted on their own website. Not to mention am I really comfortable with my mother reading a joke that starts with the line ‘how do you know if someone is a narcoleptic necrophilia pedophile?’ (I’ll e-mail anyone that wants to know the punch line… it’s not a pretty image.)

Some people are the exact same no matter what company they keep. I kind of wish I was a little more like that but I definitely do adjust how I speak and what I say based on whom I am around. Not quite talk like a homeboy around my friends and talk like an English Prince at work, night and day different, but defiantly different. The somewhat bible-belt semi religious folks I work with have repeatedly said that ‘they expect me to be hit by lightning’ for the stuff I say. My wife just says that ‘it’s amazing I do not get hit more.” Yet my blogs have all avoided hot topics like politics, religion and sex.

Maybe Mike would read this damn thing more if I talked a bit more salty. I mean back in High school he and I drove around in my car listening to songs like ‘Dead Puppies Aren’t Much Fun’, ‘Kinko The Kid Loving Clown’ and ‘Something’s In The Bag’. Well then I guess I should rap this crammed colon bloated bowel of an entry up.
(Since I brought this up to Mike he has gone back to read more of my blog and has even left some comments on the LIVEJOURNAL version. Thanks bubba, love you man. eeeeeeeee)

CLICK TO SEE DAN AND MIKE IN THIER FSU DORM ROOM
CLICK TO SEE MIKE AND DAN IN VEGAS

FLY

Both my brother and sister have written blogs about flying so last week while I scrambled to get to my destination, after American Airlines cancelled my flight along with 3300 other ones, I thought maybe it was time for me to chime in on the subject. I used to enjoy flying but lately it feels more like a Greyhound in the sky. I half expect to see Ratso Rizzo in the seat in front of me having 'a little rest stop that wasn't on the schedule'.

I was a little kid the first time I ever rode in a plane; it was a National Airlines flight from New York to Atlanta. Although my brother Neil teased me for years about my death grip on the armrests as we took off, what I recall the most is playing with the barf bags and the seat occupant card (man I'm old National Airlines shut down in 1980 and I have not seen a seat occupant card in about as long). The flight did not scare me near as much as David (the family friend's kid I had to share a room with while we visited Atlanta) talking in his sleep. He creeped the daylights out of me with his all night muttering.

My Dad got his pilots license when I was in High School. He used to love flying littlefour-seater Cessnas. He was always amused that in some states you have to be 18 to get a driver's license but you can get a license to fly at 16. He once asked me if I wanted to get one but I think I was a bit too intimidated by it all. Especially at 15 when my main goal in life was to overcome my mega dorkdom in order to meet girls (insert your own obvious 'still trying' joke).
Like everyone else I have had my share of great flights and miserable ones. Years ago when the rules of flying were a bit more lax, I ended up sitting near a guy that had 2 shopping bags at his feet filled with clothes, scuba gear, a boom box, dozens of music tapes and several bottles of Appleton Estates rum. Needless to say if you are sitting next to someone for three hours with a 'party to go' bag there is a good chance it will be a fun flight. An example of a miserable trip would be the time my wife and I ended up across the aisle from a grossly unprepared and overwhelmed Dad and his 4 year old daughter. For almost an hour, as he figured out when and how to set up a DVD on his computer, the girl loudly repeatedly yelled non stop "I wanna watch a movie, I wanna watch a movie, I wanna watch a movie noooooowwwwwww!". Trapped in a middle seat amongst a large Filipino family full of small unruly children for 7 hours on a flight from Guam was definitely not a party. The plane was a packed with people that looked like they had never flown before. You almost expected to see an old man lead a goat tied to a rope with livestock milling around his feet as he wandered up the aisle. Of course if you want to learn about a really bad flight, read my hijacked blogs from 4/15/2007 & 4/21/2007.

My sister wrote about her stressful anxiety about flying being tied to the 'lack of control' you have on a plane. My brother wrote about the pleasure of surrendering control and compared flying to a mini vacation because of it. As for me, I do not stress over the time in the air; I stress over missing a flight because my schedule rarely has any room for flexibility if I miss the plane. I do not fear a plane crash but I fear what condition my back will be in when I unfold myself out of the ill designed oft broken chairs that I have uncomfortably been crammed into for hours.

Last week when I learned that my flight had been cancelled I scrambled to find a different flight on Southwest Airlines. Southwest is more relaxed then American. It's like hanging out with your Uncle verses your Dad; you still have to follow some rules but everything is a lot more laid back. The Southwest flight attendant kept serving me free beers (like a good uncle would). I think she appreciated that I kept the cantankerous old man next to me occupied. He was pestering her a bit until I sat next to him and let him regale me with stories about 'cutting a man from appetite to asshole' for not paying his $12 space rental fee at the farmer's market he manages or about bribing cops when he owned a bar by offering them a cigar and slipping them a $20 bill folded in the accompanying match pack.

I do not mind all the extra time getting through security especially now that I have a new driver's license. I used to look quite a bit like a shady terrorist on my old Florida license and often got pulled aside for some extra interrogation to make sure I was not Osama Dan Laden. I do not miss the bad airline food or the little extras that have slowly been phased out. I do miss customer service, clean updated planes, leg room, courtesy and the feeling that I am not on a city bus with wings. Of course with fuel prices going up and industry competition going down I guess I will soon not be able to afford to fly anyway.

THE LAWN

Well it’s been a quiet week here in Lake Wobegon…sorry… almost every time I sit down to write my weekly blog that line runs through my head. So no I do not live nor was I born in a fictitious Minnesotan town. I grew up in Queens, New York. So did a few million other people so that might not be that special, but this is my blog and it’s my warped prospective of the universe that counts here, so deal with it.

My wife and I have had a bit of company the past couple of weeks so there has been lots of chatting. Inevitably I end up digging up some old stories from my childhood. Just today I was talking about the lawn at the new house and comparing it to what I grew up with. As a little kid my four older siblings got to mow while I always had to rake or sweep. There is no fun in raking. As a matter of fact, compared to the glory and splendor of mowing I might as well have been sweeping up the poop in a circus parade while they rode the exotic animals through the big top. To this day I despise raking.

With each year that passed I thought maybe it would be my time to advance up the family grunt-chore ladder and get to shine as the man behind the mower but alas once enough older siblings had left the nest, my folks and I moved to a condo in Florida and I never got my chance to be the mow-master. This story gets me a lot more pity until people see how small the lawns are in Queens New York. The kitchen in my new house is bigger then the lawn that I bemoan having to tragically rake. I recall some friends from high school in Florida traveling to New York with me years later and upon seeing the miniscule front lawn and tinier concrete backyard they blurted “is this postage stamp of green what you complained about for all these years?”

The deep childhood scaring caused by the whole raking calamity and the fact that I am a city boy at heart have made me less then excited about spring in the new house. The lawn here feels as big as the Ponderosa compared to where I grew up. Every other house I have lived in has either had a lawn service or was someone else’s responsibility. Before we moved in my wife and I discussed getting a lawn service but after we moved in she suggested we give it a shot ourselves. I hope by August our neighbors are not referring to us as ‘the jungle house’. I agreed to try but only if I got to be the official mower and she take care of the detail stuff (like raking, sweeping and edging) that remind me too much of my childhood hardship.

Once the new sod started to turn green, we purchased a fancy new somewhat eco-friendly grossly overpriced Cordless Electric Mower (I still have to make some modifications to it like adding the cocktail glass sized cup holder). I did some reading about what height the grass should be before it’s virgin mowing. Sunday I announced that I was going out to ‘measure the lawn’ but the only parts long enough to mow were the increasingly dense weeds that seem intent on overpowering our stubbly green grass nubs.

My wife and her visiting sister decided to do their best to eradicate our back yard of the pesky weeds. After ripping out several zillion in just a small area of what must have felt like the ‘back forty’, they shifted to a technique called ‘Zen gardening’ which I believe consisted of sitting in the only shady patch and plucking whatever happens to be in arms reach.

My wife seemed to be a bit frustrated with our weed to grass ratio so I told her a story about my friend Allyson’s battle with squirrels. She spent hundreds of dollars on various complex designed bird feeders and baffles in an unsuccessful effort to keep the persistent squirrels out of the birdseed. I suggested the simpler less expensive solution of just calling it a ‘squirrel and bird feeder’. My wife quickly connected the dots and told me we were not going to have a ‘weed garden’. “But you don’t have to rake weeds” I replied.

So I am the mowing and my wife is in charge of the detail stuff. I feel good about my mowing position but I think she got the easy end of the deal. Sometime since I was a kid it was decided that grass clippings are no longer called ‘trash’ and are now called ‘mulch’. I assume some other kid came up with this idea in an effort to get out of raking up the mess and it somehow stuck. Now it is recommended to just leave the mess all over the lawn. No more raking up the clippings and junk; all the mowers now have an attachable clippings bag. Pretty soon I will have to make the first pass with the mower and a new era of my life will begin.

LETS GET PHYSICAL

It has been a while since I tore a couple of tendons in my calf. I am recovering well from my ‘sports injury’. That’s what I call it because I was running when it happened and running can at times be a sport. Besides just saying ‘sports injury’ is a lot easier then telling the whole long story. After the doctor said I could stop wearing the boot she told me I needed to go to a physical therapist for a about a month.

I have never had to get physical therapy before so I really did not know what to expect. I will say that I was not very impressed on my first visit. I am not sure what I expected but when I entered the bland strip center storefront next to Package Shipping joint and an Army recruitment center, my first thought was it looked quite akin to a small rinky dinky gym. It reminded me of the sparsely equipped work out rooms they shove off the side of an apartment complex clubhouse so they can put ‘recreation center, full service gym and spa’ on their list of free amenities.

I know they come in all shapes and sizes but my preconceived notion of a physical therapist was someone that is half body builder and half doctor. Mine seemed like a nice enough healthy somewhat fit sort of guy but it was not his appearance that put me off; I could not get over the fact that his last name was the same as a barnyard animal. One that rhymes with ‘fig’. I kept thinking that he must have gone into a career that allowed him to hang around a gym so he could bulk up to fend off all the jokes about being named after a barnyard animal that rhymes with fig. The other thing that stood out when I first got there was that the other therapist working that morning looked identical to a young Jimmy Kimmel.

The first day’s consultation was simplistic and uneventful. Lots of obvious questions like ‘where does hurt’, ‘what do you want to get out of the sessions’ and ‘what do you want to do afterwards’. I was polite but I really wanted to answer “it hurts in that spot where my leg is swollen up like watermelon’, ‘duh, I want to be like I was before my tendons popped like an overplayed guitar string’ and ‘when I’m done I do not want to feel like I got reamed for my $100 bucks a session’. The fact is, I really did not want to be there and was not giving it a fair chance at all.

We finished the $150 cursory chat and he taught me a few exercises to do at home with a giant rubber band-like thingy that looked like a sling shot for basketballs. Two days later I was still very skeptical when I headed in for my second appointment. I kept fairly quiet and spent most of my time listening to the other people. One woman said she had been to two different physical therapists before and neither worked but now that she was self-medicating herself off pain meds she wanted to try again. She sounded like she was daring Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig to make her feel better. He said the right things to her and I started to respect him a little more. Another woman with her teenaged daughter wanted the kid’s ankle to heal faster so she could try out for the cheerleader squad although the girl did not seem like she really wanted to and might have been playing up the injury. Again Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig handled both of them in a way that made them both comfortable.



Although I bitched and moaned to anyone that would listen about not wanting to go, I really have to admit that eventually I started to enjoy it. With each passing appointment Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig pushed me harder and I really felt like I was making progress. It seemed like it was making a difference and it was not that my leg was getting better by itself. The problem was everybody in the place seemed so somber. No one ever seemed to talk to each other so I started cracking jokes with everyone else making fun of whatever odd looking balance or stretching exercise they or I happened to be doing. It was kind of like a ‘Breakfast Club’ experience that we all shared. None of us wanted to be there but laughing a little bit together helped us all make the best of it.

I started getting friendly with Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig and Jimmy Kimmel Clone. We shared wacky stories from our lives and made jokes about the other patients. Jimmy Kimmel Clone warned me to stay on the front side of the old man that passed gas whenever he was asked to do something he didn’t like. Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig told me how he was up all night dealing with a dumb neighbor that got arrested in the street out front of their house. I made bad jokes like how uncomfortable I was when I saw the pens at my doctor’s office were supplied by a funeral home; “I don’t mind the drug companies giving them all sorts of freebies but I do not want my doctor in the pocket of some funeral home drumming up business for some mortician.” Eventually Jimmy Kimmel Clone asked if I could hurt myself again so they could keep me around everyday. .

So this past week I finished with physical therapy. I have to continue my exercises and take it very slow for several weeks but with any luck my Boot-Boy days are behind me for good. . I should be back to my normal routines at some point in May. Of course on the last day of my therapy the bright side to this whole mess emerged. Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig offset all the time and money spent by giving me a free white T-Shirt with their logo on it. I might have to move into a bubble to make sure nothing like this ever happens to me again.

THE OVERSIZED DOOR GURU

Since our recent move, my wife and I have been trying to go to restaurants in our new neighborhood. A friend recommended a nearby little café for a Sunday brunch. The place turned out to be a combination spa and diner. When you enter the front door and turn to the right you can sit and order a ‘soy-chorizo egg-white burrito’ and a ‘sea scallop salad’ with a ‘mango coconut smoothie’. If you turn to the left you can get an ‘abalone sea kelp body wrap’, ‘a pomegranate body scrub’ and combination ‘armpit / teeny weenie bikini wax’. I am not sure I like all of that stuff under the same roof. Do both sides share the kitchen? http://www.solarespa.com/

Despite the fact that some guy might be getting the ‘Metro Man’ back waxing special a few feet away, we decided to sit and order a couple of omelets (which did turn out to be very good!). As we waited for our food we could not stop watching the two men doing some kind of work along side the window outside of the restaurant. My wife immediately noticed the 1970’s countryish style sofa sticking out of the back of their beat up truck. I could not keep my eyes off the 300lb plus man in the way too small t-shirt that was not long enough to cover his giglotomous hanging belly folds.

Instead of gazing out at the local scenery during one of the first beautiful Sundays of the year, I watched a rotund over exposed guy in dirty ill-fitting clothes. He climbed down a ladder, stepped back slightly from it and barked at his young wiry assistant to shift it a few inches to right. Once the scruffy kid, wearing an equally scary outfit highlighted by a cap with a multi-colored skull pattern, shifted the ladder over a little, the large guy shuffled the two steps back and climbing up again exposing vast acreage of his uncovered belly to the small crowd in the restaurant. I think they both could have really used a ‘deep cleansing surf and sand body scrub’ next door.

This past week the weather turned nasty again. The temperature dropped into the low 40s with strong winds and thunderstorms. I was at work when one of our couriers let the side door slip out of hand as he tried to sprint through the torrential storm to his car. The door brace ripped apart in the wind, damaging the push handle and frame. Later as we were about to leave for the evening one of my co-workers tried using the door as a shortcut to avoid the deluge but she too lost her grip of it and this time the wind slammed the door against the wall knocking the glass out of it.

I got soaking wet standing out in the freezing cold rain trying to fix it myself while someone else tried to track down an after hours repairman. I got the glass loosely propped back in the door but did not have the tools or know-how to get it securely attached to withstand the storm. We luckily got a hold of a client of ours that owns a glass company. After asking for a return favor from us, he rushed over in less then 10 minutes. He quickly installed the glass and got the door to close but said there was only one person he trusted to fix all the other broken parts. That guy should be able to make it tomorrow afternoon after he finished “working on an emergency at the Auto Parts store… that someone must have mistakenly thought had a drive-thru”.

Latter the next day the door/glass expert showed up. The heavy man looked familiar to me but I did not realize who it was until I saw him walk around banging on various item in his truck’s bed while barking to his assistant “I will need this toolbox and this stool… Whether an item was 20 feet away or 20 millimeters away, he cried out for the kid in the skull patterned hat to grab it and hand it to him. He slowly scrambled up the ladder and called out for “the nose picker”. After being handed the tool he told his helper “you know what you get without a Nose Picker… a runny nose.” He caught me listening in to his joke and quickly told me the complicated real name of the tool but quickly assured me that everyone calls it a Nose Picker.

I started talking to the guy and although he spoke and dressed in a way that would make the Beverly Hillbillies look distinguished, he really seemed amazingly knowledgeable in his field of expertise. He told me about all the companies that built ‘these exotic doors’ in the 1980s and 90s all went out of business and most people have no clue how to fix them. He was not bragging, just matter of factly telling me how he makes a living being the guy that everyone calls when they do not know how to do it themselves.

Of course once he knew he had an audience he included me in all his jokes. Through his rotting teeth he called out for the kid to ‘fetch me My Old Lady’, he waved me over to the ladder to whisper to me that he calls his bright orange rubber mallet “My Old Lady because it is really a Dead Blow Hammer”. Later on the big guy referred to one of the broken off missing pieces as a ‘Jesus Cap’. “I call it a Jesus cap because when the little cap inevitably pops off you always look down and yell ‘Jesus, where did that go’.”
Even with all his breaks to tell me bad jokes, the oversized door guru amazingly fixed the door in no time. It has been repaired numerous times before but it is currently working better then when it was new. I wrote down his number from the side of his truck but he made it clear that I should not call him but phone my regular glass guy when it inevitably breaks again. For all the obvious reasons, it is nice to be surprised by someone. Of course I still think he is really in need of that ‘deep cleansing surf and sand body scrub’.

SAY GOODBYE TO BOOT BOY

You can stop calling me Boot-Boy. I am now sans boot so you can go back to calling me all the other stuff (Dork, Geek, Goofball, Freak-show…). Although I am very happy to not have to walk around with my leg strapped into an oversized stiff black boot any longer (I never did get around to painting racer stripes on it), my cat Radar is kind of sad to see it go. He thought it was a giant moving cat toy and was fond of attacking the Velcro straps. Then again he treats most of the furniture and people in the house as giant cat toys so he likely will not miss it.

I originally planned on donating the boot as soon as I got out of it but I think I am going to keep it a little while longer. I am not particularly superstitious but I just get the feeling the minute I give it away something will happen and I might need it again (I can keep it with the neoprene knee brace I have had for 15 years). Holding onto it is sort of like insurance; I certainly will never need a boot if I have one lying around in the corner with all the other cat toys.

You might recall I tore two tendons in my leg during the final sprint of an hour long exercise ‘boot camp’. I guess it made sense that I ended up in a boot due to boot camp (I still think they should market it as ‘Booty Camp to shrink your booty’, although if that were the case I might have opted instead to go to Gutter Camp to shrink my gut). I must confess to feeling a little old and fragile after hurting myself in what should have been an easy innocuous run.

I started to feel better about the injury when I learned that my oldest brother, a marathon runner, had a similar thing happen several years ago and in much the same unexpected way. I started thinking about other injuries I have had. Luckily none of them have been that major (knock wood… oops there I go being superstitious again). I should not feel old and fragile; I should feel like a Dork, Geek, Goofball or Freak-show (as usual). The few times I have really hurt myself have all been freak injuries that occurred in somewhat less then dramatic situations (see my blog on 10/17/07 for a longer more detailed version of the stories in the next 2 paragraphs).

When I was three years old I broke my nose. My brother and I were blowing bubbles in our small New York City back yard (we called it a back yard but really it was a very short hard-angled concrete driveway that led from the curb to the garage under the house) when I stumbled. I was a logical little kid and not wanting to spill or drop the bubble juice (a valuable item to a three year old) or lose the little bubble blowing stick (what good is the bubble juice without the little two-holed bubble juice dispensing stick), I fell face first onto the ground without ever putting my hands out to break the fall (since my hands were in use clutching the bubble producing paraphernalia). I did a similar thing 13 years later when, as an usher at my sister’s wedding, I passed cold but other things then my face broke that fall (I’ll have save that story for another time).

When I was 12 I gave myself a minor concussion and cracked a couple of ribs falling up a flight of stairs. I got home from school to discover our new dog Smokey had broken out of his crate. He had gotten into the kitchen garbage and spread it out all over the floor in an effort, I assume, to make a doggie buffet. As I started to scold him, he raced upstairs towards his crate. I darted up after him but slipped (possibly on one of the items from the doggie buffet). Inertia kept my body moving up the stairs even though my feet were not under me anymore. My chest came down hard on the corner of a step and with the wind knocked out of me I tumbled down to the bottom of the staircase.

This somewhat sports related tendon injury is about the most normal way I think I have ever been hurt. So after a few weeks of clopping around I am now faced with a month or so of physical therapy. After that I should be back to normal. Whatever that is.

BIG TALK

All right… let me shock you. I like to talk… really. I do. Oh there was a time in my life that I truly wanted to be that strong silent type guy. You know, the one that speaks only when spoken to and when they do say something the words are tightly measured like poetry. Yeah I couldn’t pull it off. I believe I was born with some odd ‘gregarious’ gene in my DNA that forces me to be rambunctious. My loudness is obviously all biological and very much out of my control.

I recently happened upon some of my old report cards from elementary school. ‘Talks too much’ seems to be a reoccurring theme in the comment section. Of course part of the problem back then was that I hit an early growth spurt so from 3rd to 7th grade I was a lot taller, bigger and louder then most of the other kids. If 5 boys were causing a ruckus I was the one that stood out and got in trouble. I am not saying I was innocent, just more obvious.

Now I might have a gift for gab but I am definitely not one of those people with a non-stop monologue about every mundane aspect of their lives. You know the people I am talking about, the ones that read out loud every billboard and road sign you pass when you are in the car with them. You can not get a word in edgewise as they drone on and on with stories like “I got up at 8:00 today not 7:30 as usual but 8:00 so I really really had to pee worse then usual but it was sunny, not too sunny, but sunny enough that I had to squint when I looked out of the window to see if the paper boy tossed the paper in the front lawn or the driveway because if it is in the lawn it might be damp and then I will have to wipe off the paper with a towel, not a bath towel, with a blue dish towel not the red ones I use when there is company because they match the color of the Kitchenaide mixer and I hate it when the paper is damp because it reminds me that I have to pee…”

I guess the key to being a good talker is to also be a good listener. So I really should have started this blog by saying I like to converse. The thing I enjoyed so much about the trip to see my family last week was all the conversations. We all chatted about stuff in our lives today but mostly we dug out all the old crazy stories from years ago. We have all heard the stories before but enviably we all end up rolling on the floor retelling tales like when Mom threw a bowling ball through the basement wall, our family trip to Washington when I disturbed the Senate (see my blog from 4/10/2007), my brother Arthur getting stitches on his head from an elderly doctor with extremely shaky hands, pea fights at the dinner table or and my famous hijacking story (see my blog entry from 4/15 & 4/21 2007).

One of the strong points of my marriage is that my wife and I communicate a lot. Granted she has lately started to say, “it’s amazing I do not hit you” when I blurt out something incredibly over the top or inappropriate (which happens pretty much daily). We occasionally get into a deep conversation but mostly we engage in a simple never-ending silly banter about whatever is on our minds. I am very lucky to have a lot of people in my life that I feel I can really talk to.

My Buddy Mike and I only get together a couple of times a year but whenever we do, it is like no time has passed since the last visit and a deep intense conversation will usually slip in amongst all the other chatter. Yeah we talk up sports, politics, religion and all those things you should not get into with acquaintances and coworkers, but our deeper conversations are the ones I really treasure. There are not many people in the world that know almost 30 years of my innermost secrets, hopes, dreams, loves and pains. We get into anything and everything without fear of judgment, which I have to say, is truly is the most rewarding type of talk.

My wife and I flew to Florida this past weekend for my Dad’s 80th birthday party. My father is amazingly active for his age. He has had a few more aches and pains lately but I cannot say much. I was the one hobbling around the beaches of the Sunshine State on my bum leg encased in a big fancy boot.

I had been looking forward to the trip to see my family for months but when I recently tore a couple of tendons in my leg I started to dread the flight to get there. I find sitting in a plane seat on par with pouring lemon juice into an open cut or getting root canal without Novocain. At my height there is never enough legroom, at my width (i.e. my extra poundage… damn those beers and burgers!) the seats are too tight and because of my long torso (look at me sometime, I’m all friggin torso. If I were the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail yelling “none shall pass”, I would still be over 6 foot tall after King Arthur hacked off my legs and arms) the seats hurt my back within minutes of sitting down. I figured the boot would just make things worse.

Getting through security was a little more difficult then usual. Not because I had to be individually screened but because the TSA agent that searched me was about the friendliest one I have ever dealt with. Too friendly. Scary friendly. He just kept talking to me. He asked how I hurt my leg but before I could answer he started telling me bad jokes that involved the punch line ‘she beat you like a red-headed stepchild'.

The TSA guy told a ‘she beat you like a red-headed stepchild' joke as he tested for explosive residue on my boot and hands. He continued with another ‘she beat you like a red-headed stepchild' joke as I gathered my belongings. He told yet another ‘she beat you like a red-headed stepchild' joke as I sat and put my other shoe and watch back on. Then he followed my wife and I as I hobbled into the terminal to tell us a fourth ‘she beat you like a red-headed stepchild' joke. Eventually he wished us a happy flight but I kept thinking he would follow me on the plane to tell me another one.

We wandered down the hall looking over our shoulders in case the ‘she beat you like a red-headed stepchild' TSA agent was following us, as we went in search of a quick overpriced airport snack before the flight. Next to us in the food line was a couple easily in their 70s. They had a great banter with each other like they had been together forever but after we let them in front of us they excitedly told us that they were newlyweds. We joined in their joking about the bad menu selections. I kidded around about my messed up leg and he trumped me by wisecracking about his hip replacement surgeries. My wife and I left smiling hoping that we will be that happy at their age.

By the time we finished our frightening airport treats it was time to board the plane. We barely had time to make fun of the freakishly bent fingers on the woman with the laptop (her long fingers bent backwards at least an inch at the knuckle and then crimped back down forward at a 150 degree angle over her keyboard, think of a disjointed bent up skeleton hand), grumpy hissy fit ‘demanding an upgrade’ boy (he was really unhappy he had to sit in the back with us riff-raff) and oddly accented ‘18 hour long drive to the airport couple’ (that acted as if they were being tailed by an Amazing Race film crew).

The plane was overbooked and the folks abusing the carryon rules were franticly fighting over the last remaining tiny gaps of open space in the overhead bins. I smiled at one of the flight attendants and she decided to adopt us and dubbed my wife and I as the only ones on the plane that were on her side. She kept coming over to tell us stories about other ‘rude’ and ‘stupid’ passengers like the guy that finished ‘playing on his computer’ and now wanted her to carry his bag up and down the aisle to find a storage spot. She did not tell him but she told us where she thought he should stow it.

We knew we would have a wacky time at my family get-together. There are a few interesting characters in my family (myself included) but I never expected to meet so many new ones just getting to Florida. I just hated that I had to hop around the State looking as if I had been beaten like a red-headed stepchild.

KVETCHING TIGER ACHING DRAGON

I hate exercising. I do it all the time but I hate it. I have a co-worker that drives me crazy by constantly talking about how much she loves working out because it makes her feel great. I work out because if I did not I would be the size of a small Ukrainian village. I’m not talking about a tiny hamlet of Slavic dwarfs. I’m talking about a small city of big hearty meaty Ukrainians. I work out because I want to maintain some semblance of good health and I desire to keep my girth somewhat less then ginourmous not because ‘it makes me feel great’. Think in terms of a necessary evil.

Back when I traveled for work and was basically living on the road, I would occasionally get into a good workout regiment. It would last for a while but then a few months later my life would be uprooted again. My nifty disciplined schedule of running/ aerobics/ cardio would soon end up in ruins. Because of that my weight has seesawed up and down as frequently as a small Ukrainian village concubine (I have got to get my head out of Eastern Europe).

Since I settled down and got married I have had a very consistent exercise routine. I ran a few miles a day until I hurt my back, then, upon my chiropractor’s advice, I switched to 50 minutes on an elliptical five days a week. When that started hurting my knees I went back to minor weight lifting and running four miles most every day. Through all this I have gained and lost the same 25 pounds several times. The weight usually drops if I am good and stay away from too much beer and fried food but then again everything tastes great with Salo* on it.

I have a hard time sticking to a very healthy diet. The bad stuff tastes so damn good. I would hate to be mowed down by a bus and find myself laying in a hospital bed near death and with my last breath saying I should have had that bleu-cheese burger and fries for my last meal yesterday night instead of that bowl of carrot sticks and rice cakes.

So a couple of months ago a friend was trying to get back on track with his weight as well. He had been going to a ‘boot camp’ exercise program three mornings a week. Apparently these are very popular. You show up at 5:00 am and pay a faux drill sergeant to bark out orders like “ run 3 laps” or “do 2 minutes of push-ups”. He was having trouble getting back on track and I thought, since the pounds were sneaking back up on me, it might be worth a try so I pulled the old ‘I’ll go if you go’ thing.

Setting an alarm for 4:20am is bad enough. Setting an alarm for 4:20am to get up and go to boot camp for and hour is as miserable as the Mongols overthrowing Vladimir The Great’s 200 year-old empire. (I must have some crazy Ukraine fever). I was a cross between apprehensive and scared the first time I went (to boot camp not the Ukraine). It ended up being much easier then I expected. Things like squat jumps, pizza walks, football drills and luggage lifts worked out muscles I had not used for years, but I could do all the different exercises pretty well.

After the first month, I started integrating the boot camp workout with my usual running and stuff. The next step was to modify my eating habits with slightly better options and a lot better portion control. Things were going great until two weeks ago. We were getting into place for the last drill of the day, a sprint across the gym. I took off and felt a pop on the back of my calf. I assumed it was a cramp or charlie horse so I finished the run and subsequent stretches.

I limped home. I limped around at work. I limped with my wife. I limped with my friends. I limped for about four days assuming things would get better. My leg didn’t. My wife and co-workers have taken credit for convincing me to go to the doctor, but like the peaceful Orange Revolution of 2001 to over turn the rigged Ukrainian Presidential elections, the truth was obvious to the participants that trying to pretend the inevitable was not real just was not going to work anymore.

It took the doctor about 30 seconds after looking at my swollen and multicolored leg to diagnose a torn tendon. She sent me for an MRI to see ‘not if’ but rather ‘how bad’ it was. I got to the place on time for the test but they were running an hour or so late. The receptionist suggested I go have lunch. I went down the street and had a small snack and a couple of beers. The only bad side effect of that was instead of fearing claustrophobia during the MRI, I worried about the possibility of desperately needing a restroom.

Bladder intact, I made it through the MRI and eventually got good news from the doctor the next day. It does not look like I need surgery but I do need to wear a very large strap on boot for a few weeks. The doctor phoned the prescription into the nearest medical supply place which happens to be a tiny storefront with half the shop dedicated to medical stuff and the other half to small cheap collectable figurines. It looks like my nickname will be Boot-Boy for the time being. My boot might be big, ugly and uncomfortable but I bet it could kick some Bolshevik ass.


* Salo—salted pork fat, similar to bacon but with significantly higher ratio of fat to meat, or occasionally raw pig fat (sometimes jokingly referred to as Ukraine's "official food". Other Slavs sometimes call Ukrainians by this name as they find the thought of eating it unpleasant). (wikipedia)

http://www.ukraine.org/

ELMER part 2

In 1987 I made my second trek across the country in a horrible little gold colored Plymouth Horizon. During the last leg of this three-day midsummer drive to Los Angeles, the air conditioner in this shoebox of a car died. I pulled off the road in what I assumed would be a vain search of a service station with a real mechanic late on a Friday afternoon. I had never been in the thriving metropolis of Needles CA before. I thought it was a fictional place created by Peanuts author Charles Schultz for Snoopy’s desert dwelling brother Spike.

Amazingly enough, right off the highway I found a gas station with a mechanic who after glancing at the engine for less then two minutes shot me a big toothless grin and said the problem was a loose plate connected to the A.C. compressor. He said if I wanted to spend the night a truck could have the part delivered to him late in the morning and it would cost about $50 bucks to fix. If I wanted to continue the six hours to L.A., he said “a-long you don’t mind sweatn’, yuh can keep on-a driving without hurting nuttin, if yuh keeps a AC off.”

I am not sure if I did not trust him or I simply did not want to spend an extra day in the middle of nowhere but I opted to continue my drive. I figured I could get the job done under my warranty once I got to L.A. I waited a few hours till the sun went down and headed onward with the warm dry desert air blowing on my face. With the windows open the desolate and baron Mojave Desert seemed eerily alive.

A couple of days later the mechanics at an L.A. dealership had a different opinion of what the problem was and got the A.C. working again by ‘jiggling things’ around. About a week later I got a call from work and had to rush to a job in Georgia. A few miles into the trip the air conditioner died. I ended up driving cross-country in a gold colored Plymouth sauna. During the next month two other dealerships full of trained mechanics in Georgia tinkered around making minor adjustments also not related to the little compressor plate and got the AC working but not long after each time it soon again died.

Eventually I made it home to Florida where the dealership that sold the car told me the A.C. did not work because the compressor was shot and it would not be covered under the warranty. They also mentioned that this $575 repair could have been avoided if I would have had the plate connected to the compressor repaired before I put a few thousand miles on the car. In less then two minutes the toothless mechanic in Needles diagnosed the problem with more accuracy then three dealerships full of heavily trained repairmen.

Several years and two cars later, I found myself on the side of the road during a cool desert evening with a nasty blown out tire about an hour outside of Needles. Having just survived a series of self-inflicted panic attacks while changing a tire on the precipice of the Mojave Desert, I was now faced with a tough decision. Do I continue in the correct direction for unknown distance to find someone to fix my flat hoping the mini doughnut does not blow out stranding me with my car full of possessions in the middle of nowhere? Or do I admit there is no chance of actually reaching L.A. that night and head back to Needles the home of the mechanic that could have saved me months of grief and wasted money a few years earlier.

When you sit alone in a car driving for days on end your mind starts to play tricks on you. Your judgment gets a little out of whack. After 20 hours of driving I once stopped off at a diner outside of Tucson that I could swear was filled with the pig-faced people from a Twilight Zone episode. The longer the drive the stronger the desire is to reach your destination. No matter what. I knew that doubling back to Needles, the land of toothless genius mechanics was the smart, safe, sane decision. Yet even though I had recently passed a sign that said ‘next services 140 miles’, I opted to drive deeper into the lonely desert solely because it was the direction of my goal.

My Mazda’s manual said when driving on the mini-spare to stay under 40mph and not to go farther then 50 miles. I started to question my decision when a group of huge tractor trailers almost ran me off the road after quickly raced up behind me at double and triple my speed. Getting more concerned with each passing mile of nothingness, I plodded along about 30 miles until I saw a light off the side of the road. It was getting later and night had settled in when far off the side of the road a Shell sign became clear.

If I got off this exit and searched for the gas station, the window of time to find someone to fix my tire that night 60 miles down the road in the bigger city of Barstow would soon start to close. I gambled and took the empty exit and headed north towards the glowing Shell sign. Up the road a ways I turned a bend and there it was. A huge brightly lit open Shell service station was right in front of me. As I approached, I was elated to see a garage bay with the doors open and two walls filled with tires.

It was 7:00pm when I pulled up to the doors. I got out of the car and walked around to the front of the gas station and saw two men talking. When one jumped back into his car I approached the heavy set older man in a plaid shirt and jeans with suspenders. I told him my blowout story and asked if he could fix a flat tire. He did not say very much except that his name was Elmer and “yeah I can change a tire” but he made no movement to do so.

After I found several other creative ways to ask about repairing my tire, Elmer finally got the hint and asked me where my car was. I pointed to the only car in the entire gas station, “The Mazda over by the garage is mine”. Elmer took the long route winding through the front room of the gas station while I walked past the pumps over to my car. I removed the tire from my backseat where I had hastily shoved it back on the side of the road and rolled it into the building. In the light I saw that it was in pretty bad shape.

I looked around for Elmer but I could not see him. I wandered into the gas station backroom where he was loudly talking to himself. I told him I had the tire ready and he seemed pretty excited about that. Instead of heading out to the garage though, he sat down and started telling me stories about other people in distress that had wandered into the station. Then he told me about the man that owns the station. Then he told me how he came to live near there. Then he told me about other people in distress again. Eventually I reminded him enough times as to why I was there and we headed outside.

Elmer said the tire looked pretty bad and that it would be hard to fix. I told him if he thinks it’s not safe to drive on I would just buy a new one from him but he made it clear he wanted a shot at “mendin’ it”. Although it was obvious where the gaping hole was, he put more air in the tire and dropped it in a large bucket of water. Massive amounts of air gushed out of the obvious gash. He very slowly put the wheel on a machine that removed the tire from the rim. Moving at a pace slightly slower then Tim Conway’s old man character, he spent about 20 minutes smearing rubbery clear glue on the hole. I repeatedly suggested it might be easier/ safer/ smarter/ quicker to just get a new tire.

At about 8:00 Mrs. Elmer showed up in a well-worn old Chevy to help Elmer shut down the station and drive him home. The very short stocky woman in a housedress walked up and immediately started yelling at Elmer for trying to fix such a ‘destroyed’ tire. I had run out of ways to say maybe we should just get a new one from the giant wall of tires behind him, so I was thrilled when he listened to her suggestion of getting a new one.

Mrs. Elmer went inside to ‘count the bossman’s money’ while Elmer went to the big bolted down ‘tire conversion’ book, to find out what tire would fit my car. After checking and rechecking the numbers several times, he pulled about a half dozen tires off the wall finally settling on one from the top shelf. He said it was a $120 tire and I said I would go inside and pay his wife for it right away to save time.

When Mrs. Elmer and I finished we went out to check up on things. Elmer was in the process of scooping out what had to be the twentieth giant handful of lubricant from a white bucket and was smearing it all over the inside of the tire. Crazily enough while I was shocked at how much he had put on, Mrs. Elmer was equally as shocked at how little he used. As she urged him to slather more and more on, I started slowly backing up to take cover. Eventually they put this tire encrusted in slime on the machine that pops it onto the rim. I ducked when he started it and sure enough pounds of the stuff went flying in every direction as the tire worked its way into place. Both of them got hit with some of the glop but neither seemed to think this was an odd occurrence.

It was pushing 9:00 when Elmer finally rolled the new tire over to my car. To speed things up I had taken off the baby spare myself. It soon became very clear something was very wrong. The new tire was at least six inches bigger then the other tires. It was so big that it did not even fit in the wheel well, of course that did not stop him from trying to wedge it into place. While Mrs. Elmer yelled at him for screwing up, I went over to the bolted down conversion book to find the right tire. It turned out that not only did they not have the exact tire I needed, they did not have anything even remotely close to what might possibly fit on my car. I looked closely; most of the tires were for trucks.

It was near 9:30 and was obviously getting too late to buy a new tire either back in Needles (city of the anti-Elmer mechanics) or ahead in Barstow. My chance of getting to L.A. that night was quickly disappearing into the cool desert night as well. I dejectedly handed Mrs. Elmer my credit card again so she could run my refund while Elmer played another round of ‘splatter the lubricant around the garage’ as he removed the oversized truck tire from my rim.

I shoved my busted tire and rim into the backseat, politely said goodnight and got out of Elmer’s place. I headed down the highway at 45 rpm on my mini spare sure that it would explode any minute and now that it was so much later I would most certainly be stranded all night out in the middle of the desert. Stressed to the max, at 11:30 I got to Barstow but could not find anyplace open to sell me a tire. I found a hotel next door to a Good Year store and wandered out into the night to find some food and a beer.

Early the next morning I drove next door to buy a new tire but when I went to pay for it I realized that Mrs. Elmer had not returned my credit card to me. Eventually I tracked down the phone number of the station and I called Elmer. He looked around and said he found the card and I could pick it up anytime. I reminded him that I was just passing through but he said he would hold it for me.

I asked if he could mail the card back to me. I tried to give him the address but he said he needed to know my name even though it was on the card in front of him. I told him ‘Dan’ and started to spell my last name but he made me go back and spell ‘Dan’. Slowly. ‘D’ (pause) ‘A’ (pause) ‘N’ (pause)… It took some time but we got through the entire address and sure enough an envelope with the word ‘Dan’ spelled wrong on it, arrived a few days later with my card inside.

Over the years I have taken that same route several times and each drive I have wondered if I should go look for Elmer. I guess like looking for the restaurant of pig-faced people, some things are better left alone.

ELMER part 1

I purchased new tires the other day. Although they were a bit expensive, this was the first time in my life that I didn’t get the feeling I had just been ripped off while driving off of the lot. A client of mine manages a tire store and he sold the tires to me at the ‘rack price’ (that’s the official tire shop term for ‘really cheap’) and barely charged me for the balancing and stuff. Usually I leave one of those places feeling like a 350lb member of the Hell’s Angels gave me a prostate exam (oh wait, we covered that in the ‘Fo-Tee-Fo entry from Sept 26th). Finally I am benefiting from one of those ‘one hand washing the other’ deal-e-o things; I feel like an elected official on a lobbyist paid for Bahamian vacation.

Buying tires is one of those necessary evils that we all hate but have to do at some time. It’s like having to quickly buy a new refrigerator while your old one is rapidly turning what remaining food you have into foul furry fungi covered Chia pets. At least I was lucky this time. Even though I rode on my badly worn wheels for longer then I should have, I did not have to deal with a roadside flat.

These days with my current relatively short commute, the thought of being on the side of the road changing a tire does not bother me too much. Back when I used to travel for work it was not uncommon for me to load the car with enough luggage and comforts from home to live out of it for six months. Being my usual paranoid self, I constantly worried about my car breaking down in the middle of nowhere with my mountain of possessions exposed for anyone to steal. I certainly had my share of car problems all over the country, but when I think of tire issues I always think of Elmer.

I was on the last leg of a three-day cross-country drive with about four hours to go until I made it to Los Angeles. The sun was setting as I drove deeper into the eastern California desert. About a half hour earlier I had passed the sign outside of Needles that read ‘next services 150 miles’. I was enjoying the quiet beauty of day turning into night in the barren desert when a loud ‘bam’ rocked the car. My rear passenger tire blew out. I immediately pulled off to the side of the road, caught my breath, and started to deal with the inevitable.

As it got darker and darker I unloaded my jam-packed trunk of possessions onto the road to get to the spare tire. I had thought it was smart to pull off the road as far as I could so as to not get hit by a speeding tractor trailer but as I dug out the little mini ‘doughnut’ spare tire I kept feeling like I was one foot too many in the desert. It soon became pitch black. Imagining desert critters big and small watching me, I worked as fast as I could move. Between turning lug nuts I constantly stared into the nothingness right behind me to spot whatever it was that was about to bounce on me.

When the occasional truck did come along, I used the beams of their headlights to hastily scan the desolate terrain until they passed right next to me shaking my car, blowing over my stuff and kicking up a mini windstorm of dust. As their tail lights faded into the night things seemed even darker then before until my eyes readjusted to the light. Sure that some desert creature was about to drag me into the unknown, I changed the tire with the speed of a Nascar pit crew.

I tossed the blown out wheel in the back seat and shoved all my stuff into the trunk as fast as I could. Faced with the decision of going the wrong direction after driving over 2000 miles to a sure thing service station back in Needles or continuing to drive towards L.A. at 40 miles an hour with the chance that the ‘mini spare’ will blow out in the middle of nowhere, I opted for the journey deeper into the desert. Little did I know I would soon meet Elmer.
TO BE CONTINUED….

MOVE IT

I live in a new house. My wife and I moved into the place a couple of weeks ago. The move went pretty smooth, well almost. I have never really used movers to move all my stuff before, well not professional paid ones. At least the movers did not rip us off like you hear about in those moving horror stories, well not too badly.

As I have previously mentioned, my wife and I have amassed a large quantity of stuff. Well over 350 boxes plus furniture. The movers had given us an estimate but come the morning of the move they tried to jerk us around. I have heard about extortion tricks like holding your stuff hostage until you pay some newly discovered fees but these guys were not that good (bad?). Armed with the knowledge that it is unlikely we could get a new mover right away or reschedule our move at the last minute, they showed up and said the move will cost triple the estimated price and that they needed a big chunk of it up front in cash.

The moving company we contracted them through was called ‘Starving Students’. Struggling Ivy leaguers they were not. We made a quick call to their boss and magically the cash part was forgotten about and the price fell back down to where it should have been. Maybe had they actually gone to school they would have learned it is easier to rip somebody off after you start moving their crap into the truck. After some early stress everything ended up perfect and they actually did a great, fast job at a reasonable price; I just would not want these ‘Starving Students’ around me too much.

I did not always have so much stuff. For years I kept my possessions to a minimum. That does not mean I am a minimalist; someone that owns a lamp shaped like a bust of Elvis and several thousand books and records just cannot wear that moniker. Granted some of my stuff might be pretty damn heavy but until I got married all of my stuff could fit in one room. If I moved, the vast Dan-estate could be easily put into one of those teeny tiny trailers that hook onto the back of a car.

Back when I graduated college I could cram most everything I owned into my 1972 Skylark. It was a great car…or at least it was the decade or so prior to me driving it when it was remotely newish. I recall when the black leather-like roof started rotting my Dad thought he was doing me a favor by painting it white with some extra exterior roof paint that someone gave him. Unfortunately it started to peel quickly. That was OK because it just helped it match the rest of the car. The paint had originally been green but it was starting to rust. I ‘bondo’ed the rusted through holes with the gray color filling putty but never got enough money together to paint it so the green/gray body started to get orangey patches. By the time I left college the car was green, rust, gray, black and white colored.

During my last few months at Florida State my car’s engine had started to occasionally catch fire. Nothing real serious. Well as non-serious as flames shooting out of a car engine can be. It had starting problems and I often had to prop open the carburetor and shoot in some of that canned ‘Spray Start’. Every few times a flame or two would shoot out. Just in case it spread I kept a fire extinguisher under the seat.

I was a bit concerned during my final drive home after graduation that everything I owned might go up in a flaming inferno. I put all my most important things in the passenger seat next to me just so I could grab them if I needed to make a hasty retreat into some ditch. I took it as a bad omen when an hour into the drive I actually passed a car engulfed in flames on the side the road. The rest of the trip I envisioned my car exploding from the fiery heat with my record collection turning into thousands of flaming vinyl projectiles.

Four out of my five of my next moves other people moved my stuff for me while I was out of town working. Usually I would get a map sent to me with how to get to my new abode. I would pull up for the first time and get the grand tour climaxing with an introduction of my new room already filled up with all my worldly possessions. That is the way to move. I have only had one other move that was easier

When I briefly moved back up to New York from Florida, I arranged for some college aged friends from Ohio to make a weekend road trip to The City (read my last entry). I had told them if they carried my stuff up the three flights of stairs for me I would buy them dinner in China Town and drinks and a local pub. It was some of the best money I had ever spent on a move.

CHARLES NELSON RILEY & NEW YORK OLD LADIES

I was born in New York City. I can’t shake the place. I might try to fit in as a Texan or Floridian but I am a New Yorker at heart. I find an odd homey comfort in strolling through the streets of New York just listening to the ever-present din of ambient street sounds. I know. To some people the thought of that is a living hell but for me it transports me to easier times in my life (i.e. before all the responsibilities of the real world climbed onto my back and started repeatedly kicking me in the back of my head).

One of those quintessential New York experiences that always makes me smile is when I find myself walking down a crowded sidewalk on a busy avenue and then turn onto a strangely calm and quiet side street. Within seconds the loud street noises fades to the background until I pass the front of some residences and suddenly you are accosted by the familiar sounds of regular people just living their lives. Thick Brooklyn accented ladies with kerchiefed hair loudly bitching about god knows what from thier front stoops. Young guys trying to sound a lot tougher then they really are as they bust each other’s chops. Multiple forign accents and languages layered on top of each other. Is it strange to wax nostalgic about things that would annoy most people?

Even if it is just for a short visit I enjoy being emmersed in the City. That’s what we call it up there, The City. As if there are no other cities and to folks from New York, there is no other. Living in Texas I have learned there is a huge similarity between New Yorkers and the Dallas Cowboys, you either love them or you love to hate them.

When I was in Junior High School I moved to Florida. The person I am today has definitely been shaped by the combination of the fast paced New York lifestyle and the laid back beach life of Florida. I miss both places. As much as I need my occasional New York fix I also need to walk on a beach and listen to the ocean. There are beaches in New York but rather then seashells the shore is often littered with bottle caps, broken glass and god knows what. Of course sometimes I wonder if I miss the actual places or do I really miss the particular time in my life that I spent there.

My wife and I usually find someway to travel to a beach every year but getting to New York is a little harder. To get my fix I sometimes go to the New York Daily News web site. It’s not as stiff as the New York Times but not quite as low-brow as the ‘National Enquire’-like New York Post. Every few weeks I click on to see the world through a New Yorker’s eyes and I feel a little less lonely in the world.

With my recent move deeper into the northern suburbs of Dallas (or ‘Oklahoma’ as the folks downtown call this area) I have a mountain of unpacking that needs to be done but on my day off Wednesday I decided to do very little and recover from the past few weeks of intensely packing. I slept late (for me) and eventually sat down in front of the computer. I drifted onto the Daily News website and ended up on one of those lists of famous people that passed away this past year. Of course the list was somewhat ‘New York’ biased; I do not think that Grace Paley and Brooke Astor made most of the national lists.

As I scanned the article one of the names that jumped out at me was Charles Nelson Riley. I had forgotten that he had died in May. As a little kid I knew him from an insanely bizarre psychedelic Saturday morning show I used to religiously watch called Lidsville (I can still sing the theme). Most people do not remember Charles Nelson Riley from his long acting career but rather for his campy appearances on old game shows like Match Game.

When I was young I used to walk home from Elementary school. I would get home a little after 3:00 and not long after that my Mom would often turn on the TV and the sound of Match Game would echo through the house. That must be why hearing of Charles Nelson Riley’s death triggered the same wave of nostalgia as being in New York does for me.
Things eventually turned even more morose on Wednesday as I scanned down the list wondering what it will be like to watch all the famous icons my generation grew up with die. The other star of that freaky Lidsville show was Butch Patrick, the kid that earlier played Eddie Munster. He’s not that much older then me, I wonder if he is famous enough to someday make the Daily News’ year end dead celebrity list?

TREE

I moved this past week. It is amazing how time consuming packing and unpacking can be. It seems like such a waste of time to sit and shove everything you own into labeled and numbered boxes only to open everything up a few days later. I do not mind tearing open boxes during some party when everyone is giving me new stuff but its a drag to rip open 300 boxes of the same old crap. The new place is dandy and even looking at that sheet of paper with that massive number two and half times larger then the price of the house that they stick in front of you during closing that tells you how much the place will cost including all the interest, was not enough to spoil my happiness about being in a new place. With everything else going on there has not been much time to write this week. I did not want to break my run of posting a new blog every week so I will share with you my failed idea for last year's holiday card letter . My original idea was to plant a tree and take a picture of it every month with the changing seasons as it's backdrop. The photos were to make up the background of the letter. In an effort to make my life easy Dawn bought me a dandy little tree kit with a few seeds and a starter pot. Unfortunately things did not work out as planned. After the tree's sad summertime death it lingered around the house until we started packing for the move. I kept hoping it might magically sprout back to life but he ended up having an unceremoniously funeral today as I dragged a few last things out of the old place.

DO YOU LIKE STUFF

I have a lot of stuff. Heaps of junk. Vast quantities of paraphernalia. Piles of possessions. My place is crammed full of books, music, toys, art… and most every item has a fun story attached to it. Occasionally I long to live in a well lit white walled extremely sparse minimal space but most of the time I find comfort in having my vast quantity of odd possessions around me.

Typically I do not think about how vast the collection of stuff is. When you see it every day it all just kind of fades into the background until some new guest shows up at the house and starts asking for details about everything in a slightly overwhelmed tone. Questions like “where did you get a lamp shaped like a bust of Elvis?”, “do you ever actually play that William Shatner record hanging on the wall?” , “is that Menudo doll supposed to be Ricky Martin?” or “why is there a mannequin head on your shelf next to the Baccarat crystal?” (By the way, the answers are “a junk shop in Washington Court House Ohio”, “ yes his version of Lucy In The Sky is priceless”, “no, it is Roy my friend burned the Ricky doll’s head off 20 years ago” and “it’s a very long story but in short since this old possession was returned to me at my wedding I felt it needed a place of prominence to be displayed.”

The other time I notice just how much stuff I actually have is when I find myself packing it all for a move. That is usually when I will have a mini-crisis of sorts dealing with my pack-rat tendencies. I find myself asking no one in particular “why am I keeping this Laverne and Shirley board game”, “will I ever really reread that Thomas Pynchon book?” or “why do I have over 15 record albums by the Chipmunks?” I am perfectly content holding on to these things when it is not moving time but when I see box after box of packed unnecessary items I often find myself introspectively asking is my life better because I have these items under my roof? And even more importantly, while moving to a bigger place might temporarily ease the crowdedness and clutter level, will I just make the problem worse by eventually filling up a new larger living space.

My wife is of no help with this issue because she is as bad as me. Occasionally we go through things and toss, donate or give away a pile of stuff. Unfortunately we both sometimes have an issue just throwing out things that we perceive to still have value. The other day I sold two bags of books and CDs to a resale bookstore and only got $16 for the lot of it. That was less then I paid for the included Davis Foster Wallace book alone. A rational person would tell me that ‘at least it is out of the house’, but I still am having second thoughts about the received compensation not exceeding my perceived value of just keeping the stuff.

I guess I am sensitive to the saving issue because my Dad’s way of cleaning when things felt too cluttered was to just throw stuff away. My brother still bemoans the fact that my Father arbitrarily threw out all his old comics and baseball cards from the 50s and 60s without need or cause. He was just in cleaning mode that day; a cleaning mode that sent thousands of dollars of collectables to the Fresh Kills Landfill.
In an effort to overcome this feeling of just throwing money away, my wife and I have started an E-Bay box with items that we will feel better selling for any profit verses just giving away. This giant E-bay box has been sitting around for over a year without a single serious attempt to post an item. I am not sure what price I might get for my ‘Watergate Coloring Book’ and ‘Mrs. Miller records’ but it can’t hurt to find out. Even if the price is right, I am just not sure if I can part with my Menudo doll. I guess there is room for Roy at the new place, if I ever get around to finishing up all the packing.

JUST SAY UNCLE

When I was a little boy I had a whole lot of Uncles. As I got older I learned that a lot of them were fakes. I grew up calling these people Uncle because, from the time I was a teeny tiny tot, that is what they were referred to as around me. It was much later when I started to realize that some of these men were really just friends of the family. To make matters more confusing there was also a slew of uncles that were actually just older relatives like great-uncles (granduncles) and multi-removed cousins. Some I still have no idea how I am actually related to them.

One of my Mom’s favorite family stories is about Uncle Moe. In his latter years his memory was pretty much gone and he spent the bulk of the day napping on the day bed off the front porch. Whenever company came his wife, Aunt Selma, would dutifully call him to the table to sit with everyone. One afternoon my Mom was at the table and Aunt Selma called Moe in for coffee. As he shuffled by he looked at my Mother and matter of factly said “ I don’t know who you are but you gained weight.” It is a cute, funny family story except when I tell it I have a hard time explaining just exactly who Uncle Moe is because I have no clue how he is actually related to me. The only thing I am sure of is that he is not really my Uncle.

I eventually learned that very few of these faux Uncles were blood relatives. When I was growing up the only living siblings that both my parents had was a sister each. Their husbands are my only real Uncles. My Mom’s sister’s husband, Lester, was one of my very few ‘real’ Uncles. I only had one problem with him; as a little kid I was sure he hated my guts.

OK, I later learned my Uncle Lester was really a very loving man that liked me a lot but as a child I did not understand his sharp wit. My four siblings and I would pile into his house for some family gathering and he would look at me and say ‘your not invited’ while closing the door on me. I eventually would figure out some other way into the house and he would bark ‘how did you get in here.’ This would go on for hours. For a time I was sure he despised me. Of course now I look back and could easily see myself playing the same ongoing prank on some pesty nephew of mine.

I recall finally understanding my Uncle Lester’s sense of humor after the umpteenth time of my Mom explaining that if he did not like me he would not waste his time teasing me. I did not know anyone else like him so it makes sense that I would not ‘get it’ right away. As a kid I might have seen him as a cantankerous man but as I got older I started to really enjoy his biting humor and strong personality. Come on, as a young man how could I not love a grown man whose two favorite foods were burgers and peanut butter. Not only did he eat those foods constantly, he also made a huge deal about never eating anything green.

A few hours ago I found out that Uncle Lester passed away this morning. I do not think I ever told him how much I liked him. In today’s world of mushy mamby pamby people that spend all their time trying to impress the Joneses or worrying about how others will perceive them, a true character like my Uncle Lester stands out way above the rest. Individuals like him just do not seem to come along anymore. I am glad he was my real uncle; I will miss him.

I HAVE A GUT

I have 6-pac abs; they are hidden underneath the pony keg I lug around on top of them. Yes, I have a gut. It has pretty much been there in one form or another since my first year of college. Not long after I moved into my dorm I discovered that the Howard Johnson’s Restaurant across the street had an all-night $2.99 “2-2-2-2” breakfast special consisting of 2 pancakes, 2eggs, 2 slices of bacon and 2 sausages. Of course the all you can eat pizza place next door to the HoJo did not help either. Oh yeah, and there was a little thing called beer that I have always had a bit of a fondness for.

Throughout my life I have gained and lost the same 45 pounds over and over again. I know that it is bad for me and it gets harder to lose each time but it has been a reality in my life for more then 25 years. When I find myself getting a bit too ginourmous I modify my eating habits and kick start an exercise program until I get things a bit more under control. I try not to use the word diet, although since my ‘modified eating habits’ tend to obviously only be temporary I guess it really is closer to a diet.

About 4 years ago I again had to move up to the pants from the ‘Gordo-Dan’ collection. Before my wedding I got myself down to near my high school weight but I fell prey to the common first year of marriage bulge. I restarted my running (jogging) routine until I hurt my back. I woke up one morning with nasty shooting pains in my lower back. After walking around like Lon Chaney’s Quasimoto for a few days, I was talked into going to a friend’s chiropractor.

The Doctor was a nice enough guy but after several months of $50 a week sessions consisting mostly of sharing bad jokes and being told that things are progressing nicely, I called it quits. I do not know if I got better from the Chiropractor’s minor treatments or simply that enough time had passed that it healed itself. Either way I felt better. I did in fact follow the doctor’s advice of quitting my daily running and started riding the recommended elliptical machine instead.

For the next 3 years I spent an average of 50 minutes 4 days a week on the elliptical machine until one day I noticed my knees were starting to throb. They cracked and popped whenever I kneeled. I had never had aching knees before. As a matter of fact I often used to come home from work and brag to my wife that “I’m a 44 year old man and I just ran up the stairs 2 at a time’. My knees had quickly gotten so bad that I could barely walk up the flight of stairs.

I quit riding the elliptical a few months ago and am now back to running a few miles 4 days a week. My knees and back are feeling great but my gut does not seem to want to leave this time. I have decided to push a little harder and I am going to add to the current regiment by attending one of those boot-camp style workouts 2 days a week but I am afraid that the 5:00 am start time might cause this to be short lived adventure.
Of course it might help me lose the weight quicker if I cut out the beer and fatty foods but I have this fear that any minute I might get hit by a car. From my hospital bed a doctor will lean over to me and tell me for the brief time I have left I will not be able to eat solid foods. I would hate to think my last meal on Earth had been rice cakes and celery sticks. Bring on the bacon and fries. I guess I might be lugging around that pony keg a little bit longer.