There are people out there who would tell you that you shouldnt take three young children under the age of the 6 on a trip overseas.

They may be right.

I don't actually agree with them but somewhere over the Atlantic at 2:00 am when I was trying to keep our 1 year old from crying and desperately wishing I could be asleep, the idea occurred to me that perhaps this wasn't our best idea.

To be fair, the same idea occurred to me two weeks ago at a hotel in Kentucky when my middle child wet himself in the middle of the night and I had to figure out how to clean all that up without going into the bathoom which was where our youngest was sleeping (don't ask).

So, maybe there's just something wrong with my kids.

Well, whatever concerns I had over Greenland were quickly eliminated as we arrived in Ireland.

We had made it!

I won't say it was an easy trip, and I won't say that we got much sleep, but we survived and we landed in the emerald Isles on a beautiful sunny day.

We said goodbye to our woefully lame airplane (US Air! The Greyhound of the Skies!) and made our way to where our car was waiting.

Because this was a house swap, we were also swapping cars, which is of course much cheaper than renting a car, but has the added dilemma of you not wanting to crash the car because, say, you forgto to drive on the left side of the road.

Obvoiusly, you don't want to ever crash a car, but with a rental car, who cares? You just buy the insurance and say, "alright stone walls and hedgerows! Bring it on! Scrape me if ye must!"

Then you just return the car and go on your merry way. Of course, it's ideal to return a perfectly intact car, but speakigng as someone who has returned a car that was plowed into by a U-haul, it's not that big of a deal.

The whole thing's a little different when it's someone else's car that you are borrowing and that they presumably want back in more or less the same shape that it was left in.

So, after we squeezed our three kids and luggage into the little european hatchback I decided to take a few spins around the parking lot. ThIs would help me get used to the fact that I was sitting on the right side of the car, that I was supposed to be driving on the left, that the car was a stick shift and that the stick shift was inexplicably under my left hand.

All of this was very different from my Toyota minivan.

That all being said it's not nearly as hard as you might imagine and within a few minutes we were hurtling down the highway..... excuse me the "double carriageway"...... toward the town of Tralee,

Thank Heavens we had a GPS. There were about a dozen turns on the 1 1/2 hour ride from the airport and most of them were not ones we would have found under normal circumstances. Half the time, we'd be driving alogn and the lady on the GPS would say "turn left" and I'd say "Really? That looks like an alley!" Then Sarah would frantically consult the GPS, and then one of the kids would say "I want to go to Chik-fil-a" and I'd yell (for the dozenth time) "There is no $#*!(@ Chik-fil-a in Ireland!" Then Sarah would say, "Yes, Yes! Turn here!" and I'd turn down the teeny tiny alley only to discover that it wasn't an alley after all, but actually the main road in to town disguised as an alley. And then Sarah would scream "AAAAHHHH! There's no one driving that car!" before we'd both realize, that they were just sitting on the wrong side of the vehicle.

It was sort of a baptism by fire, but we made it.

We arrived at our absolutely stunning home powered by 2 hours worth of sleep, a coke zero and a fair amount of adrenalyne.

The house was near the top of a hill overlooking the town of Tralee. It had stunning views of the countryside spilling out before us in fields of green grass outlined with hedgerows and dotted with sheep. It was one of those postcard views of Ireland and it was out our front window.

Looking around the house, I had the same thought I always do when I travel to Europe - everything is just so much more nicely made,

The houses aren't neccesarily as large and they're not as filled with as much stuff (what? No blooming onion slicer and deep fryer?) But the whole structure just seems more solidku built. The doors are all made of this foreign substance called wood. The windows are those expensive kinds that no one ever chooses when the Pella salesman comes by and the appliances are all kinds of fancy with buttons hidden on them in secret places.

Granted, the appliances are sized for a small munchkin family. The fridge is like a large dorm firdge and the washing machine will only wash a pair of jeans and a t-shirt at a time, but by golly they're high quality.

Certainly, there are some things that you immediately miss from home, such as the presence of a sheet on the bed (who needs em!), an ice cube (Bah! I like my water tepid!) and hot water (what are you? A wuss?), but there is an awful lot to like. Sarah said, that she felt like you could travel the world and discover the absolute best way tot do everything and then create the perfect community:

A community with quality construction AND decent water pressure. A community with historic villages AND webpages about those villages that weren't designed by 8 year olds for school credit. A grocery store with a whole aisle dedicated to different kinds of cheeses AND peanut butter that doesn't taste weird.

It would be a utopia. A dreamland where the best of Europe and the United States co-mingled to form the perfect country. Maybe we could all pitch in some money and buy Bermuda and give it a try - it's kind of half way.

Anyway, back to our story.

So we arrived in the land of leprecauns and immediately took a nap. I know this is not what travel folk say you are supposed to do. You're supposed to stay up, forcing yourself to adapt to the time change, but I'm pretty sure that the travel folk don't have children, because if they did, I'm pretty sure they'd recommend monster naps upon arrival.

And I've got to tell you, this was one of the most delicious naps I have ever taken. The windows were open, the sun was streaming in and the breeze blew by in the most delectable way imaginable. I could have slept forever, but as I mentioned before, we have children. So, once we were woken up, we all ventured into town to find a grocery store.

I love grocery shopping in foreign countries. I am always fascintated to see what kinds of things they have and what kinds fo things they dont. For instance, the Irish have about 500 kinds of yogurt and rice pudding things and a billion different kinds of cheeses and a bunch of other stuff mafe out of dairy, but not a single container of sour cream. Who knew?

I also enjoy checking out the cereal aisles. They have a few things that are the same, albeit with different names. Hey look! There's Tony the Tiger on a box of Kellogg's "Frosties!"

But they also have a lot of stuff that's similar but different. The stuff that looks like captain crunch, is being shilled by some giant rug shaped muppet called Muff. And the Cocoa Puffs don not have a mentally unstable bird hawking them, but rather a monkey. I would love to know ths history of this. Exactly how did this come about? Were they all sitting in a meeting somewhere and the Kellogg's guy says, "Well, we'd like to start selling cocoa puffs here in Ireland and we have this charming bird that runs around saying that he is Koo-koo for our product" an then the Irish guy says, "Ay, but that'll never work here. The Irish don't care for talking birds, especially crazy ones! But dy'know what we love? Monkeys! Ay, we love the monkeys!"

And it was done.

They also, not surprisingly, don't have any lucky charms. They do have this cereal called "Golden Nuggets" that is being marketed by an old, overweight, bearded, hillbilly prospector and his bucktoothed donkey, so I guess there's a little tit for tat.

We often try to venture out of our comfort zone and buy something local when we travel. We usually buy lots of cheeses no matter how peculiar looking or stinking and enjoy them very much, but there are also things that we choose not to partake of. For instance, I passed on the container of duck fat and also on the bag of shrimp flavored potato chips. And when we were looking through the frozen foods we came across a box of what looked like Aunt Jemima frozen waffles, but they were not. They were potato waffles. "What the heck?" I asked myself, but then I looked more carefully and it said very clearly on the box: "Made with real mashed postatoes!"

Now I understand that coming from a country that sells "cereal straws" (straws made of cereal that kids can suck milk through and then eat) I'm not really in a position to criticize, bur come on.... mashed potato waffles have got to be pretty gross.

So, we finished our shopping trip (and I must say, that Irish groceries are relatively cheap compared to other places we've been..... like the Safeway in Annapolis) and headed home to cook dinner. We made spaghetti and the kids played outside on the playground in the backyard and Sarah and I sat together watching the sun go down.

We sat.

And sat.

And sat.

And...... Jimminy Christmas when is that blasted sun going to set?!?!

Turns out, around 11:00pm.

It has something to do with being so far north and some spell that the fairies put on the land many moons ago to... I don't know, I just know we were all lying in bed at 10:00 at night with the sun streaming into our room.

(Just so you know, in the time I have been sitting here writing this, the weather has gone from bright and sunny to pouring rain, to completely foggy to clear again. It's like the weather is being decided by some kid and his magic 8 ball: shake, shake, shake - "I believe the answer to your question is fog")

But, eventually, our exhaustion caught up with us and we fell asleep. Happy to be in Ireland, happy to have driven here without crashing, and happy to not have to wake up to a breakfast of frozen pressed mashed potatoes.

It's going to be a great vacation.

 We’re leaving on a house swap this Sunday.

A “what” you might ask?

A house swap.  It’s like a wife swap, but instead of giving my wife to a stranger in exchange for his wife, we just do the same with houses. 

If we were to have a house swap key party, we would throw all of our wives in a bowl and whichever wife you picked out, you got to go live in her house for two weeks with your family.

We’ve done this several times before with tremendous results.  This year we are exchanging with an Irish family.  So, for the next two weeks, we will go live in their home and drive their car and make lots of lucky charms jokes and they will come live in our house, drive our car and presumably make jokes about weak American beer and how much we seem to love chain restaurants.

Ah, the beauties of cross-cultural understanding.

(Fun Fact:  Did you know that Lucky Charms were first created when someone had the idea to mix Cheerios with Circus Peanuts?  It’s true!)

Anyway, we have truly loved our house swap experiences because without the expense of hotels and car rentals and having to eat in restaurants meal after meal, we have been able to travel to many places that we otherwise could never have afforded to take our family.  There is one downside though.

Cleaning.

Part of the house swap code is that you leave your home freshly cleaned and sparkling.  This is a very reasonable standard and one that you want the people on the other end to reciprocate, but the problem is this:  When someone comes to visit you at your home, you only have to clean part of it.  You have to clean the guest bedroom and the bathroom and the living room.  But, honestly, you can get by with leaving your own room as a dump and shoving whatever you want into the corner.

This is not the case with the house swap.  You have to clean everything!

So, we have spent the last couple of weeks doing crazy things like cleaning out closets and washing windows and organizing that stack of DVDs on top of the television. 

Things that rarely ever get done otherwise.

We are not an excessively messy people, but with three children, a couple of teenagers, a busy life (not to mention the blog!) we don’t really dedicate the hours necessary to keeping the house spotless.  We more aim for “picked up” and “vaguely sanitary.”

So, in this respect, the house swap is really good for us.  It forces us to get in there and do things that we tend to let slide otherwise.  I haven’t really cleaned out our kids closets since we moved into this house two years ago, but I did last week.  I pulled out everything inside the closets and sorted and organized.  We hauled stuff to Goodwill, we put things in their proper place and we recycled enough plastic McDonald’s toys to build a new (albeit fairly tacky) prius.

This also forces us to do some of that deep down cleaning that is normally just done with a quick scrub.  For instance, we actually hired a company to come out and clean the carpets.

Wow.

I had forgotten they were that white.

I’m not sure who’s brilliant idea it was to put white carpet in a house with three children.  (Especially in the dining room.  Seriously.  White carpet under a high chair?)  So it was nice to see the carpet restored to its former glory. 

We have also spent more time scrubbing (and I do mean scrubbing – as in down on our hands and knees like Cinderella) the shower and bathrooms like rarely gets done.  Sure, we spray on some of that scrubbing bubbles stuff and give it the once over with an old rag, but rarely do we break out those chemicals that make you feel lightheaded and really spend some time scouring and killing brain cells.

Boy, I may be a little stupider now, but that shower floor sure does shine. 

You might be thinking to yourself, my, this seems like a lot of work.

And yes, it does.

It is a tremendous amount of work and it comes at a time when you’re already busy with stuff like packing for a two week trip to a foreign country, but it has two extraordinary benefits and I’ll tell you what they are:

1)  It forces us to actually clean our house.  I’ll be honest.  Our life tends to run on a “needs to happen” basis.  Sure, we keep the house decently clean and picked up, but some things only get cleaned when we know that someone is coming to see them.  (Maybe, I should just pay someone to come in each week and look shamefully at each room of our house).  So this forces us to do that annual top to bottom spring cleaning that would probably never happen otherwise.

2)  We come home to a clean home.  I don’t know about you, but if we’re just heading out for the weekend to visit family, the house usually looks worse than usual upon return.  The scramble to get packed and out the door leaves a wake of chaos behind it and we usually return to stacks of paper on the table, a cereal bowl we forgot to wash in the sink and clothes strewn everywhere as we were stuffing clothes into a suitcase at the last minute.

But with the house swap, we leave the house immaculate and when we return, we come home, exhausted from a 10 hour plane trip with fussy kids, to a home that is clean, organized and sparkles – all ready for us to sink in and mess it up again.

Because that’s what our family life is.  It is comfortable and chaotic and joyous, but it’s also a little messy.  And that’s ok.  There are only so many hours in the day and I am ok with the fact that we spend less time cleaning so that we can spend more time at the zoo or reading a book or going for a swim.  But, that being said, It sure is nice to come home to a clean house every once in a while.

And I wouldn’t trade that for all the pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and green clovers in the world.

It’s magically delicious!

Note:  I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks, but I hope to post a few blogs along the way, as long as we have easy internet access.  So keep checking back here, and if I end up taking a total break while I’m gone, don’t worry, I’ll have a full helping of stories about the emerald isles when I return.  Happy Summer!

 
I had a dream.

It was a simple dream and one that I was sure that I could accomplish.

My dream was to lose a little weight while I was visiting my family in Kentucky.

Now, I’m not super-overweight or anything.  Small children don’t turn and gawk at me when I walk down the road, but I definitely have a little more of a belly than I have had in the past and there are a couple of things on my side that look suspiciously like love handles.

This is not good.

But I wasn’t too worried.  I haven’t had any kind of regular exercise in over a year and I knew that if I could just get back into a regular exercise routine and maybe throw in a couple more salads into my weekly meals, then all of this excess baggage would at least recede a little.  That’s the beauty of not being too far gone.  It doesn’t take that much to bring you back.

However, I was aware that my weight had gotten to a point that it needed to be addressed.  I knew that I had crossed some kind of line a couple of weeks ago.  You see, the whole family was at a little community festival that was offering health screenings.  Now, normally, I don’t like health screenings, because they tend to tell you things that you don’t want to know. 

The way I see it, you can eat all the cheese and carbohydrates you want as long as you don’t physically repulse yourself or get admonished by a doctor.  So, as long as you have a very low standard for your physical state, you can kind of eat what you want.  The problem with a health screening is that it is very likely to end in a doctoral admonishment, forcing you to admit you have a problem. 

This is never good. 

So, anyway, we were at this health fair and they had this little device that tests your overall body fat. 

Wow.  That sounds dangerous.

But I had been somewhat concerned that my body fat was getting a little high (namely visible by the ring of body fat sticking out over my belt) so I decided that maybe it was time to face the music and check it.  I went up to the booth and went through the test and was pleasantly surprised to find that my body fat was 12%, putting me in the “very good” category.

Awesome!

I went over to my wife, Sarah, and told her the results.

She looked at me head to foot and then said, “really?  Is that all?”

Ouch.

When your own wife would rather believe that the magic fat machine is lying than believe that you are in the “very good” category, you clearly have a weight problem.

So, I made a plan.  I know myself and I knew that I was not in the dangerous area yet.  Just a couple of weeks of jogging and watching what I ate would allow me to get back to just pinching an inch.

I was taking the kids and going to visit my parents for about a week and a half so I decided that I would make a real effort to exercise while I was there and maybe just eat watercress sandwiches for lunch and then I would come back and surprise Sarah by looking all lean and sexy.

This was a brilliant plan, and perfectly achievable, except for one thing.

I forgot that I was going to Kentucky.

Kentucky!

I mean, the restaurant isn’t called Kentucky Spiced Tofu!

This is a place where anything and everything that can be deep fried is deep fried.  The meats are deep fried, the vegetables are deep fried, the fruits are deep fried (in pie form).  You can easily eat a whole meal that only requires one giant pan and a vat of Wesson.

The problem is I grew up in the South and I love that food (who wouldn’t?).  I love fried catfish and hush puppies and meatloaf and potatoes with gravy and green beans with fatback and fried celery dipped in fried peanut butter all of those tasty southern delicacies.

The problem is that I don’t get back down South all that often and it doesn’t seem fair to avoid all those tasty foods on one of the few occasions that I do get down there.

Do you know how hard it is to get a Krystal Burger or a country ham biscuit up here in Maryland?  It’s damn near impossible.  Plus sweet tea is so omnipresent in Kentucky it practically flows through the streets.  Am I to deny my southern heritage just so I can feast on salads made exclusively out of iceberg lettuce?

No, indeed.

So, I didn’t make a whole lot of progress on the diet front.  It’s just hard to diet in a state where the phrase “low fat” just means that you’re going to get a small french fry instead of a large.

But that’s ok, because, even with a little extra caloric intake, I could still whittle this waist away with some good old fashioned exercise. I put my bike on the bike rack and stuffed my running shoes and jogging stroller into the back of the van.  By golly, I was going to be so skinny when I got back that my wife would practically insist that we devour an entire pan of brownies in bed.

But I forgot something else.

It’s hot in Kentucky. 

Oh my Lord in heaven above it is hot.

And humid!

The lowest high we had the entire time I was there was 95 degrees.  I didn’t want walk outside to the car, much less run.  Every time I stepped outside, it was like someone was aiming a hair dryer at my face.  I did nothing that whole week except sit around and sweat.  And that was inside in the air conditioning.  Which meant that, to stay cool, I had to just drink more sweet tea and eat ice cream….. lots of ice cream.  Plus, you can’t get a peanut butter milkshake up here in Maryland, so how could I pass that up?

So, my dreams of walking back into my wife’s arms as a skinny piece of rock-hard-abs and be-muscled beefcake was not to be.

Luckily, without me here to cook, my wife spent the whole week eating frozen dinners, McDonalds drive through, and the new Snicker’s “dinner bar.”  So, we were at least on even footing. 

But I’ve still got more than an inch that I can pinch, and unfortunately we have a pool which is sort of a public invitation to have all of your friends stop by and judge your physical appearance when half naked.  So I need to come up with another plan.  I definitely need to start exercising, although, it’s supposed to be really hot this week.

And I definitely should eat a little better, but it is barbeque season and I don’t really want to diss my grill by eating too many salads (it’s very sensitive).  So I’ll probably just keep doing what I’ve been doing - which is drinking diet coke, eating a yogurt every few days and wondering why I’m not skinner.

That and I need to avoid health fairs.

I definitely need to avoid health fairs.

 
Yesterday, we crossed the river into Illinois to visit the little town of Metropolis. 

Now, from what I can tell, this town only has two things going for it:

1) A casino, which attracts old people, money and pawn shops.

And

2) The name Metropolis, which just happens to be the name of the fictional city that Superman lived in.

Now Metropolis, is no METROPOLIS, but they have milked this thing for all it’s worth.  They have a superman museum.  The newspaper is called the Daily Planet and in the center of their town square they have erected a 15 foot tall statue of the Man of Steel himself.

This is the entirety of the city’s marketing plan.  There are billboards with superman on them welcoming you to town.  The Chamber of Commerce website is bedecked completely in Superman’s colors and insignia.  And while I don’t think the court house is called the Hall of Justice, it probably should be.

http://www.metropolischamber.com/

This town has embraced Superman as much as a small dying river town along the banks of the Ohio River possibly could.  And I’ve got to say, I think that’s great.   I mean who doesn’t love Superman?

Is there any boy in America who didn’t, at some point in their childhood, tie a blanket around their neck and run through the yard, arms outstretched, flying?

I know I did.

In fact, my parents have at least one photo of me where I came straight from the bath, towel tied around my neck and am striking the classic superman pose – hands on hip, chest out, chin tilted upwards as I look toward the American flag and freedom – and I am wearing absolutely nothing else.

My grandmother was kind enough to crop this photo at the waist, my parents not so much.  Thus proving, that when a four year old comes straight from the bath, not everything is so super.

Growing up I had several superman capes (they kept getting lost on adventures).  I also had superman under-roos which I occasionally insisted on wearing on the outside of my pants just like Superman did.  I remember birthday cakes with Superman on them and endless afternoons, swooping around our backyard, and leaping off the swingset so that, even for the briefest moment, I could fly.

My biggest regret about visiting Metropolis yesterday is that we had just missed the Superman festival.  Every year the city hosts a 4 day festival dedicated to Superman.  They bring in actors who have played Superman and Lois Lane over the years and tons of people from all over the world show up in costume to celebrate the man from Krypton.

This video gives a wonderful sense of what we all missed by not being there this past weekend:

I love the shots of middle aged, saggy men decked out in their man of steel costumes, looking as if their pectoral muscles all sunk and gathered around their belly.

I also love the interviews where they bring out someone who looks like a spitting image of Superman, curly q hair on his forehead and all, and then he opens his mouth and talks in this sweet lilting Southern drawl.  It’s like the Superfriends relocated the Hall of Justice to Tuscaloosa.

It was also wonderful to see the video ramp up the tension and excitement as the festival tried to set the Guinness book of World Records for “most people dressed as Superman.”  Oh my!  Would they or wouldn’t they?  It was unbearable to wait…. Until….. Yes!  With 122 Supermans, YES!  They set the record!  Woo Hoo!

Really?

122?

I hate to take this away from them, because, I don’t think they have all that much going on, but I’m awfully inclined to get Audra’s elementary school to design costumes out of grocery bags and set a new world record. 

It’s clearly not that hard.

But regardless, I salute Metropolis for taking what they’ve got and making it work for them. 

And even now, as an adult, there is something about Superman that still makes me feel that excitement I felt as a little boy running around my yard.  As you get older and the world seems to get darker, it’s nice to have this man in the blue spandex and red cape to put a little faith in

Someone with superpowers, but who only uses them for Truth, Justice and the American Way. 

So, of course, we all went and got our picture taken with the giant superman statue in Metropolis.  All the kids struck the classic superman pose (although my wife pointed out that Asher looked more like he was doing the chicken dance).

And after we all had our picture taken we went over to the gift store and my mom bought each of the kids a superman shirt and a cape.

I am pleased to say that my three-year-old, Asher, has been running around all morning wearing the cape even insisting on wearing it when we went to get coffee this morning and went shopping later – much to the amusement of every senior citizen we have come in contact with.

It is a testimony to the endurance of Superman that a $10 red cape with an S on the back can bring as much joy, imagination, and play as any $300 X-box and a whole case of games.

Sure, it’s fun to play video games and pretend you’re a soldier or a spy, or a small yellow circle that eats dots and gets chased by ghosts, but nothing can really compare with putting on a cape and pretending that you are the man of steel – that you can run faster than a speeding bullet, that you can leap tall buildings in a single bound and that you, alone, can save the world. 

What could possibly compete with that?

Now, I just need to get my camera ready next time he takes a bath.

 
On Sunday we began the first leg of our journey to visit family and friends spread out through the middle of the Eastern U.S. 

We drove from Maryland down to Tennessee and then from Tennessee to my parents’ home in Western Kentucky.  From here we’ll head south to Memphis before heading back north up to Cincinnati and then home.

It’s just me and the three kids and a minivan that’s loaded to the gills and has over 130,000 miles (90 of which we’ve put on in the last 2 and a half years.)  Yes, it’s the quintessential family road trip.  We’re not quite half way through yet and let me tell you, I’m exhausted.

But it’s fun.

I enjoy the whole road trip experience.  I like listening to trashy novels while I drive, I like getting to stop at regional fast food places that we don’t have back home (gotta love Krystal Burger!) and despite the chaos that comes with hauling three children around to various people’s homes, I cherish the opportunity to reconnect with good friends and family who I haven’t seen in a while.  (I’ve been tweeting the trip and so far it’s been a hoot.  I’ve found all kinds of interesting tidbits along the way.  You can follow me at @marcuszumwalt on twitter.com)

Plus, it’s important to travel out of your own little world and to revisit the rest of the nation every once in a while.  It reminds you how diverse and varied the people of this nation are.

As you leave the DC area (home of those limo liberals and the west coast media elite and probably a bunch of dirty hippie commies) it’s hard not to see the quick and persistent changes.

As the suburbs give way to farms and mountains, you notice that the bumper stickers invariably shift from Democrat to Republican.  Say no more to “Yes we can” and hello to “He’s not change!  He’s a Chump!”  Which was a lot nicer than the other bumper sticker which had a cartoon drawing of klansman and the tagline “The Original Boys in the Hood.”

Charming.

You also notice that the types of stores you pass change.  The ubiquity of Starbucks seems to give way to an almost equal number of gun stores.

I grew up in Tennessee, and maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but I don’t remember seeing so many gun shops growing up.  Maybe they’ve been there all along, but I don’t think so.  I think the presence of these new massive, wholesale gun shops is sort of a new development.  I read an article about how gun sales shot through the roof because everyone thought Obama was going to take their guns away (Yes he CAN!).  I don’t know, but it seems like the gun industry is pretty healthy to me.

But not as healthy as the fireworks industry.

There is only one marketing rule in Fireworks – Size!

If your fireworks stand is not the biggest, largest, most something fireworks store in the county, state, region or nation, then you should go home and sell guns like a wuss.  Because in fireworks it’s all about bang for your buck!

For you folks outside of the south who may have only seen fireworks tents in the mall parking lot, this is not what we are talking about.  These are full fledged stores, larger than most groceries.  They usually add on fake facades to make their store seem wider or taller from the highway.  A lot of times you’ll drive by and think “My gosh!  That place is massive we’ve got to stop!” only to pull off the highway and find that it’s really just a converted 7-11 with enough empty aluminum siding stacked around it to make a trailer park. 

But the good ones are truly large and can often be spotted from space… especially if someone was accidentally smoking and they catch on fire.

Needless to say, with my backseats filled with toddlers, diapers and baby blankets, we did not stop at any of these fine establishments, even though I was assured that they’re “prices can’t be beat!”

Another recent development along the interstate is the presence of giant crosses.  If you haven’t seen them, they’re about 3 stories tall and are usually placed in a way to draw maximum visibility

I was driving south from Knoxville to Chattanooga about 5 years ago the first time I saw one.  It was dark and as I came over a hill, there was this massive illuminated cross staring down at me. 

I am a Christian who attends church weekly and has since birth and I’ve got to tell you.  That cross scared the crap out of me.  There’s something about making something gigantically large that is inherently foreboding.  If you took a puppy and made it three stories tall, that would give me the willies too.

Anyway, whoever has taken on this project has moved into high gear.  I passed at least four of these monstrosities on my journey so far.  Luckily there are still some old school billboards listing the ten commandments and telling me when and how I might go to hell.  It seems practically quaint compared to Cross-zilla.,

In other observations, we also had a celebrity sighting.  While we were driving on I-81 to Knoxville, we passed a flat bed truck carrying Thomas the Train. 

This was very cool.

We had just paid big bucks to go see Thomas up in Baltimore a few weeks ago and here he is being hauled down the highway.  I have to admit that I found this a little disconcerting though.

Thomas is a train.

He travels from train station to train station giving expensive rides to kids and hawking his miniature doppelgangers.  I had always assumed (falsely) that Thomas traveled by …. You know… rail.

But no.

Apparently Thomas is too good to go slumming it with Amtrak and the New Jersey Transit.  In the same way that Nascar cars don’t just drive up to the race, Thomas is carried from place to place like some kind of dainty fairy train who’s precious wheels can’t touch the cold hard train tracks without chipping a bearing.

Wuss.

Another thing I’ve realized on this trip is how much I miss the mountains.

My ideal home would be a large log cabin on a hundred acres in the mountains overlooking a vista of row upon row of hills rolling out before me, and also be a 15 minute commute from downtown DC.  However, until the High Speed Heli-Car goes into mass production, this probably isn’t real likely. 

But I do miss the Appalachians.  There is something beautiful and peaceful about them.  I miss the different shades of blue and green that they have as each succeeding ridge varies slightly from the row in front of it.  I love how they seem untouched and virginal even in the midst of a society spreading ever father outward. 

And whenever I travel I’m always tempted by those mountains.  I’m always tempted to take my busy life and trade it in for a cabin overlooking that vista.  But then I’ll be walking through a Wal-mart like I was yesterday and pass some enormously obese guy wearing a t-shirt that says, “Boobies Make Me Happy,” and I am instantly struck by three thoughts:

1)  Do you think he’s talking about his own ample C cups?

2)  Why does that woman he’s with not seem to mind that he’s wearing that shirt?

3)  I really don’t want to live here.

I also start to think about what I would miss.  And, truly, I like good coffee and concerts and theater and Thai food and people that aren’t white and stuff like that.  Heck, most of these places don’t even have a Target. 

And so I once again reach the conclusion that the perfect place to live probably doesn’t really exist and that you’re really only searching for the most perfect compromise, which to a great extent I think I’ve found.

So, for now, I just keep driving - enjoying the mountains and Krystal Burgers, crazy bumper stickers and peanut butter shakes while they are available to me. 

And really, isn’t that what a road trip is all about?

 
I am off on a grand adventure, if you can call driving to Kentucky with three small children a grand adventure.  Well, you can definitely call it an adventure - the “grand” part is still up for debate.

Luckily, our kids are well adapted to long distance travel. 

We have always been a “car” traveling family.  Our motto is “why fly in a plane when you can accomplish the same trip by driving for 16 hours.”  (Basically, we’re just cheap)  If they built a bridge to Europe, you better believe we would take it (unless it had tolls, then we might take the side roads)

The fact that our family is spread throughout the Eastern half of the U.S. has helped us develop long distant travel into a real art.  Our family is just far wnough away that it’s a major trip, but not so far that we can justify buying 5 plane tickets.  So we drive.  And let me tell you, we know how to do it right.  I can pack half our life into a minivan if necessary, I am always well stocked with tasty snacks and treats and I have a first hand knowledge of every rest stop, McDonalds and clean bathroom along I-81.

Not that we ever use them. 

Bathroom breaks are a huge time suck.  Did you know that the average bathroom break takes 33 minutes?  This scientifically unproven fact is because people never just go to the bathroom.  They want to stretch their legs, or get a snack, or get something to drink, which (guess what) just makes them want to got to the bathroom again.

I suppose I learned about the dangers of bathroom breaks while traveling as a child.  My Dad knew how time consuming a bathroom break could be.  Whenever I said I needed to go to the bathroom, I was handed a half gallon milk jug.  (ed. Note:  back then, seat belt laws were a little looser and cars usually had rubber floor mats)

Times are different nowadays.  Apparently the cops don’t take kindly to you having your six year old stand up in the back of the car and urinate in dairy containers while you travel down the road at 70 miles an hour?  (Especially if she’s a girl)

What is the world coming to?

Now don’t get me wrong.  If my child told me that they needed to go to the bathroom, I’m not the kind of Dad that would tell them to hold it “just until we get to the hotel in a few hours.”  I’m not an animal.  Now, I might sigh deeply, roll my eyes and recite a short oral essay on how I “told you to go when we stopped for lunch 4 hours ago!” but I would still pull off, probably even at the next exit.

But you don’t have to be the crazed father to avoid restroom stops.  It just takes planning.  Yestreday when we drove 8 hours from East, TN to West Kentucky, we made one stop.  And there were no complaints.  No one asked to go to the bathroom.  No one even needed to, well except our youngest in diapers, and who cares about that?

So, here are a few simple steps you can take to ensure that your next trip can be virtually bathroom free.

1. Limit beverage intake to a minimum – there’s no point in your kids sitting back there sucking down gallon after gallon of fluid, ripening their bladder for explosion.  Did you know that the average human can survive for a week without water?  Surely they can survive till grandma’s house! (unless she lives more than a week away, in which case, that is a very awkward arrival – “Hi honey!  Where are the kids?”  “uh…..”

2. If the kids must drink, give them thick beverages – Let the kids drink milkshakes and V8 and guava juice.  Have you ever tried to pass guava juice?  Virtually impossible.

3. Provide lots of salty snacks – Of course your kids have to drink some beverages, you’re not cruel, so give them something to suck up some of that water.  Did you know that the salt on the average potato chip can absorb 6 ounces of apple juice?  Just keep those kids eating Pringles and combos.  Sure, they’ll swell up like a giant grape and risk serious medical complications later in life, but isn’t that worth it if it means getting to Disney World 33 minutes earlier?

4. Distract them! – The in-car DVD player is the greatest invention ever.  I don’t care what you say.  Yes, the pacemaker was nifty and we all have a special place in our hearts for the space shuttle (ok, and the pacemaker) but truly the greatest invention since time immemorial is the in-car DVD player.  What else can keep your kid entertained for 8 hours straight while you drive through Kansas?  A book?  Don’t’ make me laugh.   Our kids watch very little TV at home, so they actually look forward to long car rides.  We go to the library, load up on DVDs and hit the road.  The kids get so absorbed in what they’re watching that they never realize that they need to go to the bathroom.  They’re just sitting there happy as a clam until I stop for Gas four hours later and turn the car off.  Then all of a sudden, as the kids re-enter reality, a wash of panic floods over their face and they all say, “Oh my gosh!  I need to go potty!”

5. Don’t bring your wife – This is the primary rule to any effective car trip.  You see, my bladder was trained.  I grew up knowing that we only stopped the car once between South Florida and Memphis and that was only for gas and to spend the night.  And then in High school, I learned to go 8-10 hours at a time without using the bathrooms because they were just too scary. I knew three people who went in to use the bathroom and never came back out.  Oh, but not my wife.  Her family didn’t travel much and she went to a nice small friendly high school where it was safe to use the bathroom.  Needless to say, she has the bladder the size of a walnut, and she can fill it up just from the excess saliva that comes from chewing a stick of Dentyne.  My 3 kids, however, have my super human ability to subvert nature and carry a half gallon with us for an extended period of time.  It is a skill that comes in very handy when traveling on long trips or while hiding from Nazis.  So leave the wife at home or make her fly separate.  It’s well worth it.

So, there you go.  Next time you are planning that 20 hour trip to Branson, MO, use these 5 simple tips and you’ll be there in no time. 

And if all that fails, you can always bring along some milk jugs.

 
Yesterday, my daughter Audra finished her last day of Kindergarten.

When she got on the bus in the morning, she was just a wee kindergartener.  At the beginning of the year she could barely sound out words, had no idea what subtraction was and had never even heard the phrase “school lunch.”

But yesterday, when she stepped off that bus, she was a wily first grader – a kid who reads chapter books, likes to do math problems for fun and knows that she doesn’t want to buy her lunch on Wednesdays, because that’s when they serve “pork dippers,” and what the hell is that anyway?

In some ways she’s not that different than the little girl I put on the bus 9 months ago.   She hasn’t grown that much and she still likes to dress up as a princess (in fact on Tuesday, both she and my son Asher were dressed up as princesses, and he kept asking me, “daddy, am I beautiful?”) but in other ways she has changed so much.

When I think about what she has learned this year, it blows me away.  She literally entered school barely able to sound out C-A-T and now she fluently breezes through books and has discarded many of her old favorites as “too easy.”

She has also changed in other ways.  There is a cartoon that we sometimes watch called “Kim Possible.”  I like it because it is just witty enough to make it tolerable.  If, for whatever reason, I need to be watching TV with the kids, I’d rather watch Kim Possible over something like Barney which would require me to slowly spoon my eyeballs out with a spork.

Anyway.

There’s a song that comes on over the opening credits and Audra used to always get up and do this wild, twirling, cheerleader meets gymnasts meets Madonna meets SNL sketch dance that ends with her down on one knee, arms in the air, posing and awaiting applause.

A couple of weeks ago she was lying on the couch and the theme song came on, and she just continued laying there.

I paused the TV and stared at her.  “Aren’t you going to get up and dance?”

Without taking her eyes off the frozen TV set she said, “nah, I don’t feel like it.”

What the…?

When did my 6 year old turn into a sullen teenager?  Give her a bag of cheetos and a cellphone and she could have been 17!
Looking back, this school year just flew by. 

I’m not so much of an 80 year old grandmother to say “it seems like I put her on the bus for the first time just yesterday!” 

But it does seem like it was maybe only a couple of months ago.

The whole year has disappeared in a flash and I feel like I still know so little about what her days at school are like.

I volunteered in the class whenever I could get someone to schedule me, but it wasn’t that often.  I wouldn’t recognize most of her classmates and certainly couldn’t name them all (some of the weird ones stick in my mind pretty well though).  She had three teachers over the course of the year thanks to some medical leave and a new class being added and I don’t feel like I know any of them particularly well either. 

She has a whole world that I am not only not a part of, but don’t even know the basics of.

Sure, she tells me random stories from the school day, but they tend to be bizarre non-sequiturs that don’t make a lot of sense out of context.

“Today while we were gluing shoes on to the wall Danny said that I smelled good.”

“Wait a minute… You were gluing shoes?…. Danny ….. What?”

“We were gluing shoes on the WALL!” she says to me as if

A) I’m a moron and

B) it was the wall aspect that was the only confusing part here.

“Why were you gluing shoes on the wall?”

“Because the teacher said that we had to put shoes there because we were working on math!”

“Uh… Ok… what do shoes have to do with math again?”

(Giant sigh from my daughter)  “The shoes are from how many kind of shoes we had!”

“Uh…. and you were gluing your shoes to the wall?”

“NO!  Not shoes!  Paper that looked like shoes!”

“Ok”

“Don’t you get it?  We were taking paper that looked like shoes and gluing them to the wall and that showed how much math we had!”

“Uh…. Ok….. sure.  Now about this Danny character….he smelled you?”

“Yeah.  He thinks I’m beautiful.”

Oh brother.

It’s like studying a whole other world but you only get blips of unrelated information that you have to piece together to try to make sense of it.  I feel like one of those scientists that dug up all the dinosaur bones and put the wrong dino head on the wrong dino body thus creating a dinosaur that had never really been a dinosaur, so that an entire generation of boys grew up saying that the brontosaurus was their favorite dinosaur only to discover that the brontosaurus never even existed and so we had to start saying that the diplodocus was our favorite, but it really wasn’t.

Ok, so that’s a bad analogy, but my point still stands. 

I know less and less about my daughter’s life now and it is likely to continue that way until I’m just the old embarrassing guy in the minivan who “doesn’t understand” and “doesn’t get her.”

Ok.  Maybe I’m making too much of this. 

It’s just kindergarten after all.

In lots of places they don’t even have full day kindergarten.  The kids come home at noon having learned nothing and never even getting to set foot in the cafeteria.  For those parents this year probably just felt like one long, free, preschool.

But for me, it’s just one more step along the path of my kids growing up.

We were at some store yesterday and a little old lady came up to me.  I knew what she was going to say before she even said it.

“Oh, they grow up so quickly.  Don’t you wish you could just freeze them at this age forever?”

I told her that I would kind of like to freeze our 1 year old at a slightly older age, preferably one where he could talk, use the potty, and not scream so much, but, yes, I did kind of wish that.  Because there’s a big part of me that loves the age that my kids are at right now and I’m scared of not knowing what they’ll be like at that next age.

I am so excited for my little girl.  I am so excited that she loves school, is learning so much and seems to be growing into a beautiful, smart, quirky young lady (who smells good).

But it’s hard.

It’s hard to see that infant that you used to sing to sleep every night hoist a giant back pack over her shoulder and climb onto that school bus. 

And it’s even harder to see her climb off that big bus, knowing she is one year older, one year smarter and one year closer to growing up, and leaving the home you created just for her. 

It’s hard.  But it’s beautiful.

Just like Audra.

 
I was raised in the South by a Feminist. 

This did not happen very often.

I remember in seventh grade this obnoxious kid turned to me at our lockers and said, “are you a feminist?”  He asked it in the way you might ask someone “Are you a Nazi loving pedophile who regularly eats babies?” 

I knew full well what he was getting at, but also knew full well that he didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was talking about because he was an ignorant redneck sociopath (also the mayor’s son), so I cleverly asked, “what do you mean by “feminist” because I suspected that in his mind the word feminist equated to some kind of Amazonian world where the women would rule over the men with leather whips and force us to clean toilets, change diapers, and scrub the floors on our hands and knees and…

(as I now look at my own life, this seems somewhat less ludicrous than I had intended)

Anyway, he didn’t respond.  He just looked at me in disgust, mumbled “nevermind” and then walked off.  Although, to be fair, mumbling and walking off, were two of his better developed skills.

Anyway, I was raised by a woman with NOW stickers on the refrigerator and who once had me dress up as Harry Burn on a League of Women’s Voter’s 4th of July float.

(What?  You don’t know who Harry Burn is?  I think it’s universally known that Harry Burn was the young Tennessee politician who cast the final vote, allowing Tennessee to ratify the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote.  He apparently did so because his mother told him to. How did you not know this?  Didn’t you get your edjumication at the skoolz?)

(fun fact:  Mississippi was the last state to ratify the 19th amendment when they did so in 1984)

(funner fact: Mississippi ratified the 13th amendment outlawing slavery in 1995!)

But back to whatever point I was slowly meandering toward:

My mom was a big supporter of the failed Equal Rights Amendment.  This radical pro-woman commie amendment has this crazy concept as its foundation:

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Hoo boy!  Shall we take dibs on when Mississippi will pass that sucker?

The ERA was crafted by militant feminist Alice Paul (she’s the one that Phyllis Schlafly was always talking about).  Paul was sort of the Malcolm X of the women’s movement.  She felt like more radical approaches needed to be taken like chaining herself to courthouses and leading protest marches around the white house and burning her petticoats (ok, that last parts not true, but I bet I could slip it into Wikipedia.)

Anyway, the ERA needed 38 states to ratify it but only got 35.  (I bet you could draw up that list of refusing states right now)  So it died, a sad, ignominious death.

And that’s why Hilary Clinton didn’t become president.

(just kidding…. sort of)

Anyhoo.

But why am I telling you all this?  Why am I dragging you through this ramdon footnote to our nation’s history?  Well, I’ll tell you why.  It’s because I am a big supporter of the ERA and can not wait to get it passed.

Sure, I would like for my daughter to grow up in a world where she has her rights protected and as a 20 year old I was very in favor of women getting drafted because I figured it cut the odds of me getting drafted in half, but that’s not the main reason I support the ERA.  The main reason and the most important reason that I believe the ERA should become the law of the land is this:

Restroom Changing Tables.

There is, perhaps, no greater symbol of gender inequality in this land than that of the Restroom Changing Table.

You know what I’m talking about.  That weird plastic thing that’s attached to the wall with a stupid name like Koala Bear Care or Diaper Dais or the Poop Deck.  Well, you may glance at that and think “whatever.”  But for me it’s a big deal.  I use the poop deck every day.  Sometimes multiple times a day!  And it’s very important!

There is nothing grosser than having to huddle down on the floor of a men’s restroom with your infant while you try to change their diaper, surrounded by urinals and just inches away from what I shall refer to as “the splash zone.”

This is not sanitary.

And yet I am forced to do this – to take my beautiful little boy and lay him in one of the dirtiest places known to man. 

What makes this so galling is that most places have a changing table in the women’s restroom (child rearing being wimmin’s work and all) but often do not have one in the men’s restroom.  Even in a progressive state like Maryland, there are many many restaurants, stores and malls that only have changing tables in the women’s restroom.

If you go down South that number hits almost 100%.  Most men in Mississippi have never even seen a changing table – they don’t even know what it looks like.  To be fair a lot of the women’s restrooms in MS don’t have changing tables either, they just expect you to change your kid in the bed of your pick up truck or out back by the dumpster.

I will now take a moment to call out a few places that often do not have changing tables in the men’s room:

Chipotle
California Tortilla
Safeway
Every gas station in America
Old Burger Kings

Just to name a few.

I was at a truck stop recently that had a changing table.  I feel like if the truck stop can have one, Safeway can shell out for one.

And what do we call this blatant placement of changing tables only in female restrooms?

DISCRIMINATION!

And that’s why the ERA would take care of this.  As soon as that sucker passes, I have a list of places I am going to sue to make sure that I can change my kids diaper at least 3 feet off the floor. 

I know there are some people out there (probably women who already have access to changing tables) who would say that this is not what the ERA was designed for – that it was intended to address the wage gap or to keep Wal-mart from willingly passing over female managers, or to protect female astronauts from always being responsible for making the freeze dried ice cream each night…

But let me be clear. 

Almost half of these babies who are having their diaper changed on top of a petri dish of urine, dirt and other unmentionable residue are in fact (wait for it) FEMALE!

Didn’t think of that, did you?

So write your congressman, call your legislator, protest outside your Chipotle:

Hey Yo!
Our Kid Had To Go!

Your Deranged!
Our Kid Must Be Changed!

Hell No!
Not On The Flo!

The time to take back out bathrooms is now.  The moment is upon us.  Our motto is HOPE!  And CHANGE!

As in, boy I hope I don’t have to change my kid in a puddle of mello yello.

YES WE CAN!

Make Alice Paul Proud.  Or make Ron Paul proud, or make Mrs. Paul’s frozen fish sticks proud.  I don’t care, just get me a changing table in California Tortilla.

 
One of the fun things about being a parent is the opportunity to see the world, once again, through a child’s eyes.

We spend so much of our time as adults thinking about things in a certain way that it can be hard to change our brains around and understand how our kids are viewing those same activities.

This is why parents think that a picture with Santa Claus would be the cutest thing ever and most toddlers think that a picture with Santa Claus is the most horrifying thing that has ever happened to them. 

This is partly because, as adults, we understand things not just based on what they look like, but also on what we know about them.  So, for instance, when I go to the zoo I am very impressed that they have a rare Panda, flown in from China, on lease for a million dollars a year, but my two year old isn’t all that impressed by the small black and white shape hidden 100 yards away behind a tree.  What stokes his coals is the squirrel that dashes right in front of him, scampers up a tree and then runs around it in circles waving it’s bushy tail.

He doesn’t understand that squirrels are all over the place and eat too much of our birdseed and  are essentially rats with a better hair stylist.  To him, they are these active fun animals that are a lot more entertaining than that boring lion that just lies there all day thinking suicidal thoughts..

This also explains why my daughter thinks that Hannah Montana is totally beautiful and the greatest singer ever and I think she is overly dependent on a vocoder and looks a little horse faced.

Anyway, I tell you all this merely as a preface to the following story.

This weekend, we went to Bowie-Fest, which is the little town festival near us.  The kids had a blast.  There were pony rides and moon bounces, cotton candy and deep fried oreos.  We walked around and looked at all of the different booths for various local organizations and intentionally traipsed through the mud to avoid the line of churches that had put up booths at Prostelization Point. 

I got my cholesterol checked and discovered that I cook with too much butter (shocking!) but that my body fat ratio is in the “good zone.”

We watched a magician who let us know at least a dozen times that he had been sponsored by the good people at Bob’s Windows and Siding.  And the kids won prizes for shooting tin cans with a cork gun.  Asher also shot a kid in the back, but I feel like that was more the fault of whatever idiot set up the shooting range in front of the balloon dart event.

Someone hasn’t taken their NRA sponsored gun safety class.

But the highlight was clearly the face paint lady.  She is probably the premiere purveyor of full face painting in under two minutes.  Her creations are impressive, but it’s the fact that she can accomplish them in such a short time period that really sets her apart.  Because I don’t care how good you are, if you can only get through 4 kids an hour, nobody cares.

She is the Bob Ross of face painting.

Anyway, the kids were excited about the face painting so we all stood in line.  Audra wanted to look like a dog, because, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, she likes to pretend she’s a dog, occasionally even having her brother tie a string around her waist and lead her around the house.

Well, the face paint lady did a lovely job.  She used greens and oranges to paint a charming puppy on Audra’s face, but I think Audra thought it was too abstract.  She was expecting a brown realistic puppy and was a little disappointed in this more whimsical approach, but she got used to it.   I was surprised that being a whimsical dog was not as cool as being a regular brown mutt, but what do I know.

However, it was Asher who suffered the most surprise.  Asher decided he wanted to look like Spiderman and the face paint lady did a fantastic Spiderman.  From forehead to chin, he was decked out with red and white with black webbing, he even had a little jewel in his forehead because….. well…. hard to say, but it was pretty cool.

Again, the amazing thing is that she was able to accomplish this in under two minutes flat.

Well, when she was all done, Asher hopped down and went over to look at himself in the mirror. 

He seemed a little freaked out.

I asked him to smile so I could get a picture of him and this is what I got:

Asher was quiet and sort of sullen for the next hour or so.  He didn’t raise his hand to volunteer for any of the tricks at the Bob’s Windows and Sidings Magic Show!  And he didn’t really seem interested in anything else we were doing at the festival.

Finally we pulled him aside and it came out that he was scared of himself.

He hadn’t expected to look like that in the mirror and he thought that he was going to look like Spiderman for the rest of his life – that this had been some kind of magical transformation that would forever cause him to scare himself silly whenever he looked in the mirror while brushing his teeth.

Sort of like Beauty and the Beast except in this version the prince gets changed into an alien Spiderman wearing a yellow wig. 

Can you imagine how horrifying that would be?  To think that you had willingly volunteered to have yourself disfigured and that now, because of an innocent mistake you would look like a super-freak for the rest of your life – forever frightening small children (including yourself?)

So, we hugged Asher close, (but not too close, I mean he was covered in red goo for heavens sake) and assured him that all of the paint would come off and that he would once again be Asher again.  This seemed to cheer him up some, but it wasn’t until we got him home and scrubbed him raw with a paper towel and soap that he really seemed ok.

Yes, seeing the world through the eyes of a child can be fun, but also challenging.

Now if I could only understand my daughter’s fascination with being a dog, then I’d really have something figured out.

 
Have you ever met someone without a filter.  You know, the kind of person who has zero sense of what is appropriate or inappropriate to say to someone.  They don’t ever pause to think about whether something that is forming in their head should or should not make its way downstairs to their mouth.  Nope it’s like a living James Joyce stream of conciousness.  If they think it, they say it.

Have you ever met someone like that? 

Well, have I got a story for you.

Last night I was at the Chik-fil-a meeting some friends for dinner because I had a coupon for a free kids meal.  Our kids were playing happily together and us adults were talking.  On the other side of the restaurant was this lady who had come in with her daughter and she was clearly in desperate need of adult conversation.

And she was clearly crazy.

She was having a rather forced conversation with the family a couple of tables over.  Asking them questions and telling them unrelated facts about her life in an overly loud voice.

“I teach first grade!  And that’s a 60 hour a week job!  Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s 35, because it’s not!  Sure, we get the summers off.  6 weeks, 8 weeks maybe, but not me!  I still work, I might take a class or something and this summer I’m teaching English in Guatemala!  What do you do?  Is that your boy?  Whoops, I think he knocked a cup over!  Is it full?  Hey where are you from…”

And Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah

Blah

I made a mental note to avoid the crazy lady at all costs. 

I got up to carry Micah into the play area trying hard to avoid eye contact.

“Hey!”

(dammit)

“Your daughter’s been showing my daughter up!”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, she’s in there telling my daughter that she’s older than her.”

I smile politely.  “Well, that’s really the only thing she’s got going for her,” I offered with a minimal amount of eye contact.   “She’s only in the third percentile for height so, age is really all she’s got.”

“Yeah?  Well, my daughter’s in the 97th percentile and your kid’s in there asking her why she can’t count past 20.  Jeez!  I sure am glad she’s not in my class!”

Wow.

Several thoughts raced through my head, and I think I can be complimented for not saying any of them.  (this is called having a filter).  They were:

“Yes, well, I’m pretty glad she’s not in your class either.”

“Oh my Lord, what a horrible thing to say, what’s wrong with you?”

And:

“You know what you crazy ***** you’d be lucky to have my daughter in your class, because she’s brilliant and could maybe teach your ginormous medical experiment gone wrong of a daughter how to count up to her mother’s IQ without skipping over 17!”

You see, it’s called a filter.

Anyway, instead of saying any of those things, I winced at her and walked away.

A few minutes later she hollers over at Jessie who’s sitting with us.

“Hey!”

Jessie, our 20 year old friend from Mississippi looked up, probably wondering why on earth this crazy white lady was talking to him.

“Hey!  What are you doing hanging out with these people?”

Jessie, who does not always have the ability to hide the fact that he’s kind of laughing at you, smiled, but politely answered:

“Ma’am?”

“You’re too young to be here!  You need some friends!  You shouldn’t have to be hanging out with people with kids!  That’s terrible.  You need to be going out and having fun with people your own age!  You know, I’ve got a friend across the street who’s a bartender at Chilis.  He’s a little younger than you, but you should go over there and hang out with him.  I feel like I’ve got to help get you some friends!”

Now bear in mind, all of this is happening at 6:00 on a Thursday night across about 5 tables in a Chik-fil-a with a room full of other customers.  Jessie, at this point is somewhere between amused, bewildered and a little frightened.  

“I’ma right.”

“No!  You gotta hang out with some people your own age this is ridiculous!” 

Around this time her daughter emerged from the playroom, breathing hard and with cheeks that were bright red and appeared to be inflamed form the Ebola virus.

Jessie grinned over at me and said, “she’s crazy!”

Luckily, she then got distracted by a deaf family sitting on the other side of her.  Apparently her brother in law is dating someone who works at Gallaudet and she was telling them all about it.  I know this, because even when she was signing, she was shouting.

We thought we had maybe evaded the rest of the crazy for the night, when she got up and walked over to our table.

“Alright, Dad!  It’s time for you to be the hammer!  I teach first grade and I have to do this all day long.  It’s about time for you to get up and do something!  Why don’t you go tell all the kids it’s time to go!”

(deep breaths… try to not hit her.  She’s bigger than you…think of something to say that is not one of the things that you are currently thinking about saying…)

“So, where do you teach?”

“I teach in Landover?  So you live here in PG County?”

“No, we live just across the line in Anne Arundel.”

“Oh!  I bet you live in Crofton and were all upset when PG County was trying to annex it weren’t you?”

(what the hell is this woman talking about?)

“Well, we used to live in Cheverly, but then we moved to….”

“Yeah, as soon as you had kids, huh?”

To my credit, I didn’t say anything, but at this point, my face clearly said, “What the **** is wrong with you?”

“Oh, I’m just kidding!” she practically bellowed, “I live in Calvert County!  Come on, let’s hug it out!”

She put out her arm for me to hug her and I literally stared in bafflement at her for several moments, but when it became clear that she had no intention of lowering her arm, I reluctantly leaned in for the most awkward hug I have ever had.

“So, where are you from?” she said, once again directing the crazy at Jessie.

“Mississippi.”

“Why are you up here?  Why did you leave Mississippi?”

“It’s better up here,”  offered Jessie, which I thought was a nice thing to say.

“What?”

“It’s better up here!”

“Really?  How is it better up HERE?”

Jessie is all but laughing out loud right now.

“Well, I like Mississippi, but you know, there’s jobs and stuff up here and...”

“Well you’ve got to get some friends!  You can’t just be hanging around here with people with kids!”

Jessie decided to change tacts, “But my friends all got kids.”

“These aren’t your friends, you need friends your own age!”

“Nah, I mean my friends back home all got kids too.”

“He said he was from Mississippi,” I joked.

“Now that’s just a stereotype!” she shouted.

“Jessie,” I said, “ how many of the girls in your high school graduating class have babies now?”

He thought for a minute and answered, “all but about three.”

(that’s out of a graduating class of several hundred)

“Alright wise guy, where did you grow up?” 

(more deep breaths)

“Tennessee.”

“Where?”

“In Kingsport.”

“Oh my gosh!  My husbands family grew up in Kingsport!  They lived on Skyland Drive!”

At this point, a cold shiver went down my back, like Satan himself was tickling my spine.

You see, I lived on Skyland Drive in Kingsport, TN.

Kingsport is a town of almost 50,000 people.  The chance of anyone being from Kingsport, much less Skyland Drive is infinitesimally small.

My mind starts racing.  How could she have known that?  I haven’t lived there in 15 years.  I’ve lived almost a dozen different places since then. 

For the first time in my life, I’m starting to wonder if psychics exist.  Could this lady be psychic?  Do psychics usually kill people?

After a long pause, where I’m trying to read this woman’s face to tell what is going on, I finally mumble, “I lived on Skyland Dr.”

“Shut up!  Really?  Oh my gosh.  I’ve got to call my mother in law!”

Which she proceeds to do, standing in the middle of the chik-fil-a.

It turns out that the grandmother does live on Skyland, not too far from where we lived, although neither of us ever really knew the other.

“Ok” she continues, “but where are you from?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, still fairly terrified by her dark powers.

“Well, I know you didn’t just grow up in Tennessee.  I’m a linguist and I can tell you didn’t just grow up in Tennessee.”

“No,” I said, feeling a little more confident, “I was born in South Carolina and lived in South Florida and Memphis for a while.”

“But you don’t have an accent!  Where are your parents from?”

I’m finally starting to breath again.  Clearly she doesn’t know everything about me.  She’s not psychic.  She’s just nuts and happens to be married to some redneck that lived down the street from me.  And this accent thing clearly has her thrown.  It’s as if I have ruptured one of her foundational beliefs.

“Well,” I said, knowing what’s coming next, “My mom grew up in Jackson, TN and my Dad was born in Alabama.”

Take that you crazy old bat!  You think the whole world is simple?  Well prepare to have your mind blown by my lack of an outrageous hillbilly accent!  MWA HA HA HA!

“But that doesn’t make any sense!  You don’t have any accent!  Are you sure that…”

Holy crap!  She’s like the Terminator.

At this point, our girls come out of the playroom.  They are now fast friends and this woman’s 97% daughter towers over my tiny waif of a child and looks as if she might eat  her at any given moment.  The daughter then comes up to me and says:

“What’s your phone number?”

Woah Nelly!  Phone Number!  And the stalking is complete.

I stare blankly at the girl, her inflamed cheeks shining back at me as she waits for me to tell her my number.

“Oh, don’t worry, she’s not diseased” says the crazy lady gesturing at her daughter’s cheeks.  She just always wants freckles, so she tries to draw them on with a marker.”

I look closely and realize that, yes, it is just smeared red marker and not leprosy as I had previously supposed.

“What’s your number?” the non-diseased girl repeats.

I mumble something about “uh, well, uh, do you have a piece of paper,” all the while trying to decide which fake number I should write down.

It’s at this point that the Mom pulls something out of her purse and hands it to me.

“Here you go!  My phone numbers on that!  Look through it and once you pick out something you like, give me a call!”

It’s an Avon catalog.

You have got to be kidding me.

This evening is in danger of becoming one of the strangest nights of my life when I was 12, I once danced with a drunk woman at a Mexican Disco, while the Mariachi band played a salsa song about superman.  “Superman, Superman, Super, Super, Superman!”

(true story)

Luckily, it is at this point that the lady’s phone rings and she starts gabbing away at full volume to someone about how she just met a guy from Kingsport, TN and can you believe it!

I take this moment to tell my kids that it is time to go (now!)

So, we pack up.  I round up kids, throw away garbage, make sure everyone has shoes and socks and start making my way toward the door. 

“So, did you find anything you like in the catalog?” she calls out to me.

“Uh, I haven’t really looked, but I’ll be sure to ask my non-make-up wearing wife what she wants.”

“Oh there’s all kinds of stuff in there!  She could get some anti-aging cream or….”

Yeah, I’m going to suggest to my wife that she get some anti-aging cream.  Maybe while I’m at it I’ll buy her a subscription to weight watchers for her birthday and tell her to dye her hair blonde.  Good lord, does this woman want me to be killed tonight?

As we’re walking out the door, she screams at Jessie, “And you!  You should really go over to Chilis!”

We immediately get in the van and lock the doors. 

On the way home Audra asks if she can have a playdate with her new friend and I tell her we’ll discuss it later….

as in on my deathbed.

I check the mirror several times on the way home but I don’t think we’ve been followed.

We pull into the driveway and as the garage door shuts, I breathe a big sigh of relief.

Jessie starts to laugh. 

“Man, that woman was crazy.”

Or as we might say in Chik-fil-a parlance:  "two nuggets short of a kids meal."

 
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the trauma of taking my youngest son, Micah, to get an EEG.

It was a tale of pain, agony and general child abuse.

It was also my birthday (woo hoo)

(The full story of that disastrous day is here: http://familiesonly.com/Community/blogs/overdad/archive/2009/05/21/torture.aspx )

Well, after the test we sat around for a week or so waiting for the various doctors involved to mail one another the results and then get off their duff and tell us about it.

Not to my surprise, we waited a long time.

Eventually, it came down to me making a few phone calls before we could get anyone to actually bother to track down these results and share them with us.  I talked to a nurse and she said that they had not received the results but would make some phone calls.  A couple of hours later she called back and said simply that “the results were normal.”

That’s the full extent of what we were told.

This is good news, obviously.  Very good news, but it’s not all the news.

You see, something happened to my son that day when we had the staring spell.

Now, it’s actually relatively common for kids (and occasionally adults) to 023have a single seizure.  What is not particularly common is for this to be one of the petit mal “staring seizures.”  It’s also not common for those kinds of seizures to last as long as Micah’s incident.  They tend to last just a few seconds, where Micah’s was well over a minute.

So, it seems likely that something else happened to him during that minute or so when he left us, but what?

So I am left with the bizarre feeling of disappointment. I certainly didn’t want my son to be diagnosed with epilepsy, but it did feel like it would be an explanation, and one with a likely solution.  Instead I am left with a son who had something happen to him, but we have no idea what.

To complicate matters, my son has had some delays.  He didn’t walk until 18 months and, even now, as he closes in on his second birthday has a fairly limited vocabulary.  He says “Da-da” and “no,” and a handful of other words consistently and a whole slue of words inconsistently, but by any measure he is at least 9 months behind (which when that’s almost half of your life, is significant).

Now, it was never clear that these delays would have been tied to epilepsy, even if he had been diagnosed with it, but it seemed to give us something to grasp on to. 

I have some good friends who have a child who has physical and speech delays that are more significant than Micah’s.  Because the delays were more pronounced they began looking for a cause very early on.  Their daughter has been through EEGs and MRIs and a whole range of other tests: all of which have basically come up normal and yet there is no doubt in the minds of the parents and the doctors that there is something wrong – something not normal – going on.

No one wants their child to be diagnosed with any kind of illness, but the not knowing seems almost as bad, because the fear, of course, is that it could be something even worse.

I’m sure that if we wanted to, we could demand that an MRI be done, or insist on a series of tests, each more random and desperate than the last, but that’s not really who we are.  I am not one to jump to conclusions about things.  If anything, I’m prone to thinking that things will turn out fine. 

But you can’t help but worry when you see that something is clearly not right.

So, for now, we’re just going to take a deep breath and take a step back .  We’re going to simply wait and see if anything else happens.  And then, if it does, figure out what to do next. 

But even without a clear medical issue, there is still the obvious speech and possible cognitive delays my son has.

The optimistic side of me suspects that they are nothing.  At 18 months, Micah was still not walking, but once he took those first couple of steps, he was off like a light and walks and climbs like there was never any problem.  There’s a big part of me that assumes that the speech will come in a similar  manner – there will be months of babbling followed by an influx of words and sentences until, after a few short months, no one would ever be able to believe that he was behind.

But there’s also a part of me that’s not so sure – a part of me that is concerned that my son is suffering from something much more than the need for a few more months of time.

When I was a kid there was a ludicrously awful cartoon called GI Joe (soon to be a ludicrously awful movie).  It was great.  Anyway, at the end of every episode there was this bizarre teachable moment, which I can only assume was mandated by the FCC.

The army guys would have just gotten done saving the world from nuclear annihilation by the evil Cobra organization and then it would cut to a scene with two kids crossing the street.  They’re about to walk out into traffic when a fatigued, gun toting super soldier swoops in on a flying motorcycle and stops them.  He teaches them that they are always supposed to look both ways before crossing the street or some similarly inane lesson.

This mini-moment always ended the same way.  The kids would have learned to not be morons and to look for cars and then they would say something like “Gawrsh, thanks Sir, now we know.”

And GI Joe would stand there with an American flag flapping behind him and say

“And knowing is half the battle!”

Because I grew up in the 80s and because I’m a dork, I remember this and I think back to it every once in a while.

For us, with Micah - knowing IS half the battle…but we don’t know anything.

Which means we haven’t even started the battle yet.

And that’s what worries me.

 I need to get a haircut.

My hair is fairly thick (I know, I know, it’s a curse I’ll just have to live with) and so it grows pretty quickly.  The problem is that my hair will look fine, look fine, look fine and then I’ll wake up one morning with this giant puff of hair that has begun to curl back on itself and in one 12 hour period I’ve gone from looking like Brad Pitt to Bea Arthur.  (Ok, I’ve never looked like Brad Pitt, but the Bea Arthur thing is pretty spot on – God rest her soul).

So, much of my life had been spent feeling pretty good about myself and then waking up one morning and realizing that I had less than 3 hours to get a haircut before I start looking like I’ve been electrified.

Luckily, my hair is pretty easy to cut and my personal standards are relatively low.  I’m not looking for anything special; I just need it to be shorter.  So, this gives me the ability to go just about anywhere and so I tend to choose places based on one criteria: availability.  Are they close by and can they take me.

So, I’ve been to the hair cuttery in the mall.  I’ve been to women’s only beauty parlors where they always try to get me to “product” in my hair.  I’ve been to black barbershops and barbershops run by 90 year old white men.  I’ve gotten a trim at a men’s only shop that had a stack of playboys in the magazine rack and in an old lady beauty salon where Guiding Light blared at full volume.  I’ve had a pretty full range of barber experiences.  There was the lady who had no idea what she was doing who took over an hour to cut my hair and the guy who cut the whole thing in under 5 minutes using only a pair of electric clippers. 

I tell you this because I think that my wide range of barbering experiences gives me the right to tell you about the best Barber I ever had.

His name was Mr. Wilson and he was my next door neighbor when I lived in the small town of Itta Bena, Mississippi.

Mr. Wilson was a character.  He was in his seventies, if not older, but he still dyed his hair jet black with what, I can only assume was used motor oil.  He also dyed his little moustache, but never died his eyebrows which were bright white.  This led to an eerie effect that had you staring at his face, knowing that something wasn’t quite right, but not being able to figure out what it was.

One of my earliest memories of him was a few weeks after we had moved in.  One of my roommates was doing dishes when she looked out the window and called me over.  There was Mr. Wilson out in his backyard mowing the lawn, which was a normal enough thing to do, except Mr. Wilson was wearing a t-shirt, Bermuda shorts, and a sombrero.

This initially lessened my desire to have the man cut my hair, but eventually my hair grew to the point that I was starting to frighten small children and I knew it was time to bite the bullet and head down to Mr. Wilson’s barbershop.

He had been cutting hair for 5 decades when I went in for my first cut.  He sat me down in a chair that was somewhere between a gorgeous antique and a piece of junk.  He covered me with a sheet that might have been WWII surplus and pulled out a long tube that looked like something used to keep Darth Vader on life support.

This was his grand invention.  He had taken a pair of electric clippers and duct taped it to a vacuum hose so that as soon as the hair was cut, it got sucked out into his shop vac.  This process was loud and a little strange, but I’ll be darned if it didn’t work.  

He would turn the vacuum on and trim away, with virtually no mess to clean up and none of those little hairs falling down your neck and making you itch.  The man was a genius – a mad genius perhaps, but a genius none the less.

After the vacuum powered trim, he would get down to the process of doing the detail work of cutting your hair with the scissors and comb that had been sitting in that jar of weird blue liquid.  While he cut, he would tell story after story about his kids, his military service, or the time when the town had a pool before they filled it in to keep it from being integrated.

He loved telling stories and having someone to tell them to.  My favorite tale was when he talked about how the barbershop had once been used in a movie – “Ode to Billy Joe”

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074995/

He was very proud of this fact, although I wondered if he had ever seen the movie.  We of course, went right out and rented it and I was very surprised to find that this little barbershop had actually been used as the front for a whore house in the film and that the film itself was about a Mississippi boy who kills himself after coming to terms with his homosexuality.

Not exactly the kind of film I bet this sleepy conservative town thought was being made about them.

After the conversation and the trim, Mr. Wilson would take an old metal cup, run some hot water in it and use a brush to whip up a lather of foam.

I had no idea what this man was doing.

I remember clearly the first time he did it.  He lowered my seat back, covered my neck in lather and pulled out a straight razor – you know, the kind Sweeny Todd used to kill people.  He sharpened it on a leather strop and then pushed my chin up.

I have to admit, my heart stopped for a beat, but a few seconds later I was still alive and had the cleanest shave I’ve ever had in my life.

Mr. Wilson sat me up, brushed me off and turned to an antique wooden cash register.  Above it was a sign that said:

“Haircuts $5.00” but the 5 had been crossed out and a 7 written over it.

I guess inflation hits everybody. 

So, I paid my $7.00 threw in a generous $3.00 tip (42%!) and thanked him for the cut.

After that, I never went anywhere else in Mississippi for a haircut and even after we moved away, I would stop by whenever we came back to visit. 

A couple of years ago, I stopped by and Mr. Wilson’s barbershop was vacant.  I stopped by his house and it too seemed empty.  Clearly Mr. Wilson had made his last cut.

Now, I have three kids and most of my haircuts take place in a children’s barbershop sitting next to my kids and watching Dora the Explorer.  I don’t really mind.  Like I said, my hair’s easy to cut and at this point, I’m just happy to find the time to get it done, but I sure do miss Mr. Wilson.  He was a living connection back to a different age, an age that for 30 minutes, was a wonderful place to visit.

I bet Bea Arthur would approve.

What's lef of Mr. Wilson's Barbershop  / Movie Whore House

 
Last night, my wife, Sarah, and I were in New York City on a College field trip and I beat up a bouncer.

Ok, perhaps I should preface this story by saying that this was actually a dream.  That’s not a particularly important aspect of the story, I just thought it might help clarify a few issues.

So.  We were in New York City and Sarah and I (who may have only been dating at the time, I’m not sure) decided to go downtown to see a Broadway show.  We invited a bunch of people to come along with us but most of them ended up going shopping instead of to a show (boy you can drag an imaginary college friend to culture but you can’t make him drink… am I right?)

So, Sarah and I were the only ones who actually ended up getting tickets to a show.  It was late when we got to the half price ticket booth and most of the good shows were gone.  This was sort of a last minute decision so we ended up choosing one of the few shows that still had tickets available. 

I don’t remember what it was called, but we had very good seats: row a.  (it was a little a, if you’re wondering).  The show was a musical about a bunch of cartoon characters that had come to life, and it starred Alyssa Milano.

This is, perhaps, when I should have known I was dreaming.  Alyssa Milano’s presence on a Broadway stage alone should have been a pretty good indication.

Anyway.  I looked at the ticket and realized that this wasn’t actually a Broadway production but an off-Broadway production.  This meant that it wasn’t in Times Square, where we were, but rather downtown somewhere.

I remember that the address on the ticket stub was 621 6th Ave.

FYI, this is actually the address of “Chelsea Green Associates” which to the best of my knowledge is not performing a cartoon musical starring Alyssa Milano.

But that point aside, I realized that the show started in about half an hour and we needed to get there quickly or all the money us poor college students had spent would be for naught.  So, we ran over to a taxi stand.  The first taxi there pulled away as soon as we walked up.  But luckily, there was another one waiting behind it.  Unfortunately, this taxi was a weird convertible three wheeled roadster, but it was painted yellow and appeared to be a regular taxi.  I knew that taxi protocol required that you take the next vehicle in line so it did not seem appropriate for us to skip past the yellow Munster Mobile and get in the normal looking crown vic taxi behind it. 

The driver of the trike leaned forward so we could fold the front seat down enough to squeeze into the back and we clambered onto the bench behind him.  I read him the address (621 6th Ave.) and we put-putted off into the New York traffic.

Perhaps, THIS is when I should have realized I was dreaming….. I did not.

Anyway, as I’m sure you all know, it gets very hilly down in southern Manhattan (well, at least in my dream) and the taxi-trike had a little difficulty getting up some of the inclines, but eventually we found the theater with the big lighted sign with Alyssa Milano’s name in lights above the title of the show (which I can’t recall) and we went inside.

It had taken us longer than I expected to find this place and the show was about to start.

The theater was actually very peculiar, there was a stage and there was an audience area, but there was also a long bar around it and lots of patrons drinking and talking as the lights dimmed. 

We found our seats and they were terrible.  We were off to the side so far that I could hardly see the stage and we were seated on different rows.  Sarah seemed ok with it, but I wanted to sit together.  (Maybe we weren’t dating.  Boy that would have made that move I tried to put on her in the taxi pretty awkward)

Anyway, the show started and at first it was just cartoons on a screen and then a couple of giant talking cartoon characters walked on stage and started singing.  One was a big bird knock off and the other was just large and hairy.  It could have been some kind of a muppet or possibly Tom Selleck, hard to tell.

Well, this was ridiculous.  Our tickets said that we had seats in “row a,” together.  Something was clearly wrong.  So I went and talked to this giant bald guy with an ear ring and a hell’s angel tattoo who appeared to be the usher.  He walked me over to the far side of the stage and down these steps to this weird cage like area underneath the bar and pointed me to my seat.

“This can’t be right, I said, these seats are terrible, you can’t even see the show!”

He took his meaty hands and forced me into my seat and said, “sit down!  And I better not see you wandering around again or I’m going to crush you!”

What was this place?  The musical gulag? 

I tried to look up and watch the show, but all I could see were giant furry feet moving around in front of me.  Sarah wasn’t here and I couldn’t even see the stage.   I mean, was Alyssa Milano really even in this show?

I watched for a few minutes, hoping Sarah would show up, but to no avail.  Eventually I decided to get up and try to find her.  This had clearly turned out to be a terrible choice, but we could at least watch it together, or decide to throw the towel in and leave.

I got up to leave the dungeon and someone at the bar leaned in and said, “You better not let that bouncer guy see you up.  If he sees you out of your seat, he’ll kill you!”

Good Lord, it was like 10th grade math all over again.

I decided it was time to go.  The show was terrible, the venue was laid out by drunk monkeys and the bouncer was insane.  Maybe we should just grab some cheesecake and get back to our dorm.  I finally found Sarah who was now sitting near the front.  I sat down beside her and asked if she wanted to go.

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” she said, making no apologies for disappearing earlier, “lets just watch.”

“I don’t think we’re allowed to sit here,” I said, “the ushers are a little crazy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is fine.”

Just then Olaf (for that is what I have decided to call the crazy usher guy) saw me.

“Hey, what are you doing here?!”

He began to run toward me and his eyes had that bloodthirsty look so common in deranged eastern European bouncers.

I immediately jumped up and started running for my life.  Sarah shushed me and turned back to the show.

I ran as fast as I could and ducked out one of the exit doors and hid on the far side of a pillar. 

What the hell was going on?

I probably should have known, now, that this was a dream.

I was standing against the pillar breathing hard when I heard someone shout, “There he is!”

It was squat little Olaf and he had two big muscular cronies with him.

Crap.

I started to run.   I was racing down the sidewalk like a gazelle on acid.  I knew I could outrun them, but for how long?

Eventually after an exciting chase which involved scaling walls and leaping trash cans and the likes, one of the body guards caught up with me and I turned around and kicked him in the knee cap.  Much to my surprise, he fell to the ground whimpering in pain.

This is when I should have really really known this was a dream.

Then Olaf grabbed me and I kicked him where it counts and he was down. 

By now, the third guy had caught up and he grabbed me and lifted me over his head, apparently intent on breaking me in half.  I gouged him in the eye with my thumb.  And he dropped me, screaming.  I gouged him again because a person trying to kill you can never be too blind, and then I took off running back up the hill. 

I had to get out of here. 

I ran by the theater where the exit door was still open.  I heard a female voice singing.

Who knew Alyssa Milano could sing?

I ducked in and looked for Sarah but she was nowhere to be found.  I ran back out and headed up the street I was going to have to text her and hope she could meet me back at the train station or something when the show was over.

And then my son started screaming and I woke up.

Ok.

So, having spent the better part of the night going through this whacked out crazy dream, I have several questions:

1. What is wrong with me?

2. How in the world did I come up with this dream after watching an episode of the Simpsons and 15 minutes of a Desperate Housewives rerun?

3. Why in the world were those beefy bouncers so mad at me and how in the world did they get hired to work at an off-Broadway theater?

4. How did it end?  Did Sarah and I ever reconnect?  Did we make it out of lower Manhattan safely?  Did we earn all the credits we needed to for our academic study program?  Was there, perhaps, a romantic reconciliation back at the dorm?

And finally, and perhaps most importantly:

5. How come in the only dream I have ever had that involved Alyssa Milano, THIS was the story line?

Seriously?

Seriously.

 
I’m sure many of you have been confused and distressed as you have watched over the last year or so as our national economy has begun to curl up and die like a spider in the toilet.

I’m sure you’ve listened with confusion as you have heard “experts” talk about “mark to market” and “insurance backed securities” and “a crushing trillion dollar deficit which will enslave our children for all eternity.”

Yes, it’s confusing.

How did we get here?  How did we go from being the world’s strongest economic power to the country that has to go around, flag colored stove pipe hat in hand, asking places like China if we can borrow a few bucks.

“Come on, man.  Be cool.  It’s just until I can get back on my feet.  You know I’d do the same thing for you.  I’ve just had a bad couple of years, I can get things going again, I know I can……. So how about 8 trillion?  Oh, and by the by, how’s that communism thing working out, cause I’ve got be honest, this capitalism stuff seems pretty dicey.”

But fear not, for I am here to share with you the reason that we are in this mess.  And it has nothing to do with subprime mortgages or risky investments or GM building too many damn Hummers.  The reason we are all in the state we are in can be traced back to one thing. 

One single item:

The Williams Sonoma Pizza Que Grill Stone

(Well, metaphorically)

You see, last week I was sitting at my computer, minding my own business when I got an email from Williams Sonoma advertising their brand new “Pizza Que Grill Stone” (Does that translate as:  Pizza What?).  It is, apparently a $100 rock that you can put in your grill so that you can cook a pizza in your grill.  I immediately threw up my arms in disbelief and shouted:

“This is why Rome fell!”

Honestly, is there anything more useless in the entire world than a $100 stone that allows you to cook pizza on your grill?  I mean, why would anyone even want to cook pizzas on their grill?  We all have very nice ovens that, from what I can tell, are quite capable of cooking pizzas – seeing as that’s how I have cooked pizzas my entire life.

I’m not sure why the ability to cook a pizza outside is really that much of an advantage.  Is it so that if you’re having a party on the deck you don’t have to open the door to the house and walk inside?  Is it so you finally have a 2nd use for the grill you only use on Memorial day and the 4th of July? 

I mean what is the point?

This is precisely what is wrong with America.  We have gotten duped over and over again into buying stuff that we absolutely don’t need.  We can cook pizzas in our oven, but why not have the ability to cook them on our grill?  Heck maybe we could invent something where you could cook them in your car on the way home too.

Or, how about figuring out a way for your grill to make ice cream or your refrigerator to warm a frittata or your blender to act as a coffee maker?

Why is there this insane need to duplicate what we already have? 

“You know, I have an ice maker in the freezer, but I don’t have an ice maker outside…. And I do hate walking 20 feet…. so I think the $400 Williams Sonoma portable ice maker is really a very useful investment.”

This is precisely what happened to Citibank.

(metaphorically)

And of course Williams Sonoma has stuff where you can cook a chicken in your grill, or grill nachos, or grill vegetables, or a roast, or corn, or…. grill nachos?

What does everyone have against their oven?!?

So anyway, after spending several minutes ranting at my computer and my fellow man, I decided that this required further investigation, so I decided to watch the little video that Williams Sonoma provides to show why you so desperately need the “Pizza Que Grill Stone.”

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/sku9924218/index.cfm?pkey=coutdoor%2Dgrilling&ckey=outdoor%2Dgrilling

Here is what I learned:

1. It’s pronounced “Pizza Q,” not “Pizza Kay.”

2. The reason you want to use a grill is because an oven can’t actually get the pizza stone hot enough and a hot stone is the key to a crisp, “authentic” Italian style pizza.

3. The Pizza stone can cook a pizza in 3-4 minutes, so you really can have a party where everyone takes turns making and cooking their very own individual pizzas.  Yea Pizza Party!

4. The Pizza Que Grill Stone is something I can not live without

Yes, I have to admit, after delving into the details of the pizza stone, it really did seem like a pretty good idea. 

The fact that I have been cooking pizzas in my oven all these years is probably why they always end up limp and soggy instead of crisp like those “authentic” Italian style pizzas.  I can absolutely see myself using the “Pizza Que Grill Stone” to make authentic Italian style pizzas for my friends and family.  What better way to celebrate the fact that we appear to be coming out of the recession than by having a big backyard pizza party?

And this is why our country is going to pot – people like me.

People who are easily swayed by a cute chick in an apron telling me how easy and delightful my pizzas would be if I would just give her a $100 (plus another $35 for the special wooden pizza spatula thing)

So forget Chrysler.  Forget Bank of America.  Forget ING.  Just direct all of your hate mail to yahoos like me who think, even for the briefest moment, that $100 seems like a reasonable amount of money to pay to make a marginally better pizza.

Yes, I will be going to economic Hell.

But you better believe that I won’t be alone….. and I’m going to make darn sure that I take one of those portable ice makers with me.

 
I have a secret for you. 

It’s a secret that you probably don’t want to hear and one that, if you’re honest, you will agree with, but you probably don’t want to.

Are you ready?  Here it is:

If Susan Boyle was pretty she wouldn’t be in the finals 

Yep, there you go.  Feel free to start sending hate mail and calling the AARP to organize a letter writing campaign. 

But unfortunately, it’s the painful truth.

If you don’t know who Susan Boyle is, you probably don’t have a computer at home and are only reading this blog because your nephew printed it out for you or something, but just in case, here’s the deal.

In England they have a show called Britain’s Got Talent (which sounds like they’re trying to affirm themselves if you ask me.  “we’ve got talent!  I swear we do!  It says so in the show’s title!)  and any old schlub can come up and sing or dance or juggle or whatever.  Well, anyway, onto the stage one night walks Susan Boyle who looks for all the world like she just escaped from her church’s Wednesday night supper of Haggis and powdered potatoes.  (which she essentially had)

When I first saw her I had, what I think was the same thought as most people:

“My heavens, if you’re going to be on National TV, you could at least brush your hair.”

So, the video clip shows everyone in the audience snickering at her dowdiness, and then she starts to sing “I Dreamed a Dream.”  And everyone falls all over themselves applauding her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

Her voice was good and she did a nice job with the song.  Her voice wasn’t “bring down the house” amazing (although it, in fact, did bring down the house, so what do I know?) but it was a good solid voice.  I remember watching her sing and thinking, “Yeah, with a  little bit of training, I bet they could squeeze her into some West End role, or whatever the British equivalent of Branson, Missouri is.”

If you can get past the cheering and the dowdiness, you can hear that her voice quivers a lot, and that she sounds an awful lot like she’s just imitating the singer on whatever  album she’s been playing on her victrola for 20 years.

Now, I’m not trying to be catty here (although, if the claw fits….) but I’ve seen this song sung a lot.  I went to showchoir camp for pete’s sake.  I was in the theater department in high school.  I’ve taken several school trips to Broadway.  I’ve been a part of community theater talent shows.

Believe me, I’ve seen this song sung a LOT.  And I’ve seen it massacred and I’ve seen it sung in a way that would bring tears to your eyes.  (Not my eyes of course, I’m very manly, but, you know, I’ve looked around and stuff and other people were crying… but not me…. I just had like a sinus thing or something).

Anyway, I would put Susan Boyle somewhere in the top ¼ of people I’ve seen sing this song, but nowhere near the top.  In my professional opinion (Ok, I’m not a professional, but I play one in my blog) I think that with some training, she could be pretty good.  But the show isn’t called “Britain’s Got Raw Talent” is it?

I don’t know, am I being too hard on her?  Oh, probably.  But, suffice to say, I was confused by how excited everybody seemed to be upon discovering that an old dowdy lady could sing.  As someone who grew up in a big white downtown Methodist church, it’s not much of a surprise to me.  In a place like that, the only people who could sing were old dowdy ladies.

But despite my general cynicism, I’ve followed the story, mainly because I think Susan Boyle seems like a hoot.  I like how she wiggled her hips in a sassy way at the judges.  She seemed confident and happy and sure of herself and just a little bit nuts.  I think she would be a blast to be on a staff parish church committee with.

“Oy!  Who wants to go for a pint after?”

So, despite my concerns about her actual talent, I’ve been rooting for Susan.  I think with some training she could actually be pretty good and I would love to go see her play Mother Superior in the Sound of Music, or….. Ok, that’s probably it, but she’d be really good.

So, I’ve been hoping good ol’ Sue could pull it off, but then I watched her most recent performance on the youtube and I’ve got to say, it was pretty…well, …. bad.

When she first walked out, I was really worried about her.  She looked like someone had just told her that all of her cats had died.  All of the joy and wackiness that we had seen during her first performance was gone and she looked, well, scared. 

As she should have been.  She must have known how huge this moment was, but, unfortunately, I can’t say she lived up to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLLIIb_jA9Y

She sang Memory from cats, which is about the least creative choice I could imagine, and she didn’t do that great of a job.  The early part was beyond “pitchy,” it was downright off key.  It took her several lines to find the right key to sing in and keep her voice from wobbling.  She pulled it together in the end, but it was  still a pretty stilted performance.  She hit the notes, but I can’t say that there was much emotion behind them.

If she had been a 19 year old blonde kid from Wiltonshire (ooh, I hate all the pretty popular Wiltonshire girls!) then I’m quite confident Simon would have said something along the lines of :

“You know, Brittany, you’ve clearly got some talent, but we just didn’t hear it tonight.  You were out of tune and wobbly in the beginning and your nervousness seemed to get the better of you.  You did alright in the end, but I’m afraid that just wasn’t enough to beat the one legged jump rope champion from Wales, better luck next time.”

And that would have been the end of it, but no, Susan is old and dowdy and doesn’t brush her hair and so everyone finds her automatically endearing, sort of like that freaky cat that grew wings in China

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30967440

Or that kid with one hand that got a basketball scholarship

http://msn.foxsports.com/cbk/story/9614714/One-handed-hoops-star-lands-D-I-scholarship#tb/?gt1=39002

Yes, we sure do love it when someone with some kind of disability (wings, one-hand, dowdiness) does something spectacular.  In fact, we love it so much that we’re even happy to vote for them when they do something even marginally spectacular.

And that’s what happened here.  Society has somehow equated being dowdy and unfashionable with having a disability and so we are just tickled pink when someone like that is able to sing pretty well.

“Look at her!  She can sing, she can really sing!  Even while dressed like that!”

It makes no sense.

Last I checked, singing ability had little to nothing to do with hair color or style (well…. real singing, that is.  Lip synching to a heavily synthesized background vocal track while dressed as a dominatrix in the middle of an arena has everything to do with hair color and style…. and bust size)

But real singers tend to be a tad on the homely side.  Susan Boyle said she wanted to be a singer like Elaine Paige.  You probably don’t know who that is, but she’s a famous musical theater star in England.  She’s their Patti LuPone.  And if you don’t know who that is, well, then just pretend you do. 

Paige was actually the first person to sing Memory in the London version of Cats.  She’s theater royalty there.  And, she has learned how to dress over the years, but honestly, she’s not too far from being Susan Boyle herself.

I mean have you ever seen Elaine Paige?  She’s not exactly Jennifer Garner (or insert hot actress from your personal list)

Check out this video.  She’s dressed well, but she also looks like she forgot to brush her hair and it’s not hard to imagine her looking a shade dowdy when she wanders around her home in a bathrobe at 3:00 am dragging a bottle of bourbon behind her. 

But, boy she can sing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s96NZoeDs68

So, I guess my extremely nerdy, theater boy point is:  Susan Boyle isn’t all that great. 

She seems nice and there’s a part of me that would like for her to win.  But as much as all the press has been about how shocked (Shocked, I say!) that everyone is about her talent, she’s really an above average talent at best.  B+, maybe an A-.  If she had been 24 and thin and wearing Ambercrombie, she would have gotten tossed out several episodes ago. 

And really, that prejudice that everyone self flagellated themselves about (Wow!  She looked old and poorly coiffed, how could she possibly sing?  Boy did I learn a lesson!)   has now just managed to manifest itself as a reverse prejudicial belief that she really is extremely talented.  (This is sort of like that reverse racism that the republicans are always whining about)

She’s a nice lady.  She has a decent voice.  But let’s face it folks.

She’s no cat with wings.