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.