Coming To Terms With Approaching Middle Age

Hi, remember me?  Yeah, it’s been awhile…  OK, so, it’s been a LONG while.  I took all of February off because I am a slacker.  And by slacker, I mean… I’ve actually been working.   Nothing fun mind you.  WORK work.  You know, that stuff you should be doing every day instead of reading this crap.

So, I think I’ve answered my WUMF question.  It’s dead.  It has ceased to be.  It became a hassle to try and cram small nuggets of content into a post at the end of the month just to hit a date.  I know.  First world blogger problems.

But, now we are into March and, of course, it’s time to remind myself of how much closer to death I really am. 

I AM 39!?!?!?!?

Yep…   

As a little experiment I went back and read my past posts on birthdays.  I was a morose sonofabitch, wasn’t I?  I just read the whole post about turning 33 and Madonna and American Pie and WOW! 

OK…  Enough of that.

Here’s what the last six years have taught me.

First of all, 39 is weird.  I mean really weird.  Much more so than 29.  Except for nine and 19, all the nine years are going to be weird but 29 wasn’t that big of a deal.  I had just bought a house and was about to get married…Excuse me while I laugh about that in my head for a bit.    But really, 29 wasn’t horrible.  I wasn’t that cranky yet.  Somewhere into my 30s, I became a cranky old man.  But, now, I feel like I am 29 again. I don’t know why?  Could it be, that I have dropped down to the weight I was at 29?  Could it be that other situations resemble what my life was like when I was 29?  Maybe.  The point is, that I don’t feel bad about being 39, but it’s just so odd to see, “I am almost 40.”

What the hell?  If you are over 40, think about what 39 felt like.  I sure as hell do not have anything together in terms of my shit.  I know I have not grown up.   But I don’t feel like an immature asshole.  I am a perfectly aged one, if anything.    I don’t know if this is what could be considered a mid life crisis.  If it is, 79 is going to REALLY SUCK.

I guess that I’ve sort of reclaimed a bit of myself and don’t get as angry.  I couldn’t care less about the youth of America because, well, they’ll be in my shoes soon enough and then they will see what I’ve seen.  They will also have to deal with how my child acts because karma is a fickle bitch.  When the 20 year olds of today reach 39, my kid will already have been in their shoes and hopefully she will crush that bitch of a stigma.  If not, dumb youth is basically universal.

Another thing about 39 is that I feel like I’m healthier than I was through most of my 30s.   I wasn’t sickly, but my overall well being was poor.  My outlook was poor.  My intake was poor.   So, there is time to fix all of the internal struggles we have with getting older.  Unfortunately, we will still be hampered by some of the physical ones.    I wouldn’t tell you to be proactive and guard yourself against letting your body deteriorate, but I would say that treating your body like a rental car perched at the top of San Francisco’s Lombard St., revving the engine, knowing full well you took the insurance, is probably a bad idea.

Moderation is more than just a cliché, but it also matters what quality your vices are.  I drank a hell of a lot between 21-23 and I felt like crap, afterwards.  Now, I drink maybe once a week, and even though I have tied a few on in the last year, I have recovered quicker and with less effects during the drinking.   However, my body, in its reclaimed state can handle the alcohol a lot better.  My tolerance has gone up even though my weight has gone down.  I’ve also switched to a better grade of alcohol.  Consider how your body feels when it eats McDonald’s vs. a nice home cooked meal.  It’s still the same type of food, but better quality.  Staying away from crap like “Lite” beers and drinking more wine have had an overall positive effect.  Quality and quantity working together it seems.

SO, when it comes time to roll the odometer into my 40s, I’m probably going to get a rude awakening.  Who knows?  Maybe it’s like dusting off a classic car, one with low mileage, and taking it across country.  Shit starts falling apart rather quickly.   However, I have no desire to be afraid of life.  I am taking it as it comes.  Doing the best thing I can to stay here as long as possible, with flare and responsibility.    This body needs to be in motion and we should exercise it and keep it limber.  Get your ass off the couch and move, people.  If you do that, you can do all the other things you’ve missed out on in the last ten years.

What are you waiting for, 49?

I'm Too Old For This Shit

I hold a particular standard when it comes to beaches. To me, a beach is the sandy or rocky or general coastal area next to a large body of water. That body should usually be an ocean.

Now, being a former resident of Fayette Name, we had our own beach in South Connellsville which bordered on the Youghiogheny river. This is the same river that forks at one point and if you go canoeing or tubing down the wrong path, you’ll eventually have to pick up your flotation device and walk a bit. I don’t consider that a real beach. I consider it a lie we tell ourselves in order to feel better about not having a real beach around.

My wife likes to think that Presque Isle, in Erie, is a beach, complete with somewhat dirt based sand and rocks jutting up out of the water of a lake that, at one point in history, caught fire. I wouldn’t be too quick to take a dip in that. OK, actually, it was Lake Cuyahoga that caught fire back in the 60s, but as my one coworker put it, “Have your dog take a dump on your kitchen floor. Then have your mom clean it up, using the best possible cleansers and bleach. Once that floor shines , have her make you a sandwich and then drop it on the floor where that steaming pile was ten minutes ago. Would you still eat it?” Regardless of how much time has passed, that crappy, flammable water still ends up in Lake Erie.

So, going forward, Lake Erie does not have a beach. It has a shore. It has a park. It does not have a beach. END OF LINE.

Since we’ve settled that, I wanted to relate to you my trip to Erie over Labor Day weekend. Because we are perpetually procrastinating everything, my wife and I have been doing some spontaneous summer stuff to kind of break up the long haul towards next summer and the ‘REAL’ beach trip.

My kid’s been wanting to go to a water park and because of the weather, I came up with the glorious idea to go to Splash Lagoon in Erie. It’s an indoor waterpark which is open year round. Doing a quick search on their site, I was able to get a night’s stay at an adjoining hotel and two days worth of park passes for the three of us for $250.

We drove up Friday morning and spent the afternoon drowning at the water park. We broke for dinner and then hit the hotel pool for a bit before going to crash in the room. The next morning we checked out and went back to the waterpark for a few hours, cleaned up and then did Presque Isle and Erie Not-a-Beach.

My take on Splash Lagoon.
If you have kids I would definitely go there at least once while they’re old enough to ride the slides. If you have little ones, like I do and you do not plan on going on any slides, then it’s fine to go with small children. We’re in that period of flux where we are not exactly slide worthy anymore, yet our kid is not quite old enough to really tackle the slides on her own. That being said, I rode every slide to get my money’s worth and paid the price in injuries.

My wife only went on two slides out of embarrassment and risk of injury. My kid rode two slides and spent most of her time in the kiddie area. While my wife watched her, I rode the big kid rides and sustained many an injury.

The Rides
Splash Lagoon has seven water slides, three whirlpools, a lazy river, a pool for basketball and some obstacle stuff and the kiddie area.

Maui Wowie: Basic open body slide with circular pattern. It kind of hurts the back a bit, going over the pipe seams but my kid loved it. She rode it again and again all day long. I could only ride it a few times because it kept slamming my ankle into the turns.

The Black Hole: A similar ride to Maui Wowie, but completely in the dark.

Big Kahuna: This one is a tube ride that goes outside the building and then back in, ending in a splash pool connected to the lazy river. All three of us did this one, once. I could not get either my wife or kid to go on a second time.

Python Plunge: Another tube ride that seems to be a combination of Kahuna and Black Hole.

Shark Attack: Body slide that goes outside the building next to Python Plunge, has a longer ending due to speed.

Cyclone: A tube ride that drops you into swirling bowl that eventually plunges you down a slide into a splash pool that connects to the Lazy River. This one I liked going on a lot but there is a moment when you head towards the exit chute where you end up slamming into the barrier between the chute and the bowl which usually hurts. I usually dumped out of my tube at end, every time.

Hurricane Hole: Body slide, just Cyclone. I dubbed it the Pain Hole. You slide into a swirling vortex which ends in a giant hole that drops you into six and a half feet of water. It took some time to figure out how to not dump into the pool, head first. It’s also a bit jarring when you initially exit the slide into the bowl. I found that if you sat up you had better control and could actually maneuver yourself into going feet first into the pool.

Most of the slides where hard to gauge because there was no way to see anything. You managed to get water in your eyes and nose and mouth no matter how hard you tried. Because most slides insisted you ride with your legs crossed and hand behind your head you couldn’t guard against the splashing. So, telling someone that slide goes outside the building doesn’t do much for me because I can’t see anyway.

Probably the most notable part of the park is the Tiki Tree House which has various water cannons and buckets that you can spill on people as they climb. But at the top there is the huge bucket which spills its contents on everyone below roughly every ten minutes. An air horn sounds and like some Pavlovian response, people come running from every corner to wait for the deluge of water that drenches everyone and everything in its path. At first, my kid tried to get away from it. By the end, she was running towards it.

In all, it was fun. I guess they just opened an indoor wave pool, so we’ll have to try that next time. For me, it's hard to try and be the kid that didn't have these kinds of places around me, growing up.   I want to enjoy the rides and experience them with my kid but man I'm getting too old for this shit.   That's why I made that point about having kids of a certain age.  If you have more than one, close in age and over the minimum height requirement it's easier because they can ride together or at least run off and have fun, leaving you to lament the fact that you didn't lose that extra ten pounds over the summer.   And as a clumsy, 36 year old Mongo, it's hard to be graceful as you are being tossed about by water.  I gave Splash Lagoon the tagline:  "Every ten minutes they dump 1000 gallons of water and every fifteen minutes there's 1000 awkward dismounts." 

I felt the best part was going to a restaurant located in the parking lot, called Boston’s. I’d never heard of it before but it was pretty damn good food. My wife got an Italian sampler which consisted of chicken parmigiana, Fettuccine Alfredo, and a sausage lasagna.  How sad am I?

The only things we didn’t dare try were the family and adult only whirpools or hot tubs. I’d just assume not even go there. I know, consider how many germs were probably in that water, no amount of chlorine would make it safe, but it was probably safer than Lake Erie which does not have a beach. STEP OFF!

Screams From An Italian Restaurant

I will start off by saying that ten years ago, I would be guilty of this. Although, I don’t know why. I question it because almost 15 years ago, at the age of 20, I would have been content to mosey into my favorite dark and smoky bar, Hemingway’s, nestled below the dorms of The University of Pittsburgh and just slink into a set of tables, near the back and just hang out. No loud whooping it up. No lined up shots along the bar ready to toss back. Simply a few us, just sitting there, enjoying our drinks and loving life as an unemployed actor, contemplating life after college.

Shhh. Don’t tell anyone I was drinking underage in a bar. Well, it’s not like any famous NFL quarterback, with questionable morals was there buying me drinks… at least because I’m a guy. (I had a whole tangent written involving the joke about keeping a guy’s “you know what” in his wife’s purse. I’ll just skip it.) My point is that, yeah, I went a little nuts when I turned 21 and spent my hard earned pay partying after a long day of working for an Amusement Park in Ohio, still, after that year I retreated back to my cloak of tortured, misunderstood, old, before his time, soul. That was until I graduated college and had to get a real job.

Then it was, “Hey a bunch of friends are going to the local sports bar for wings. Let’s be loud and tell jokes and make lots of noise.” The 21 year old me would have glaringly side-eyed the 25 year old me for being annoying. Still, it was a simple phase that I grew out of before I hit 30. I very rarely drink except for a holiday which may be at most a glass of wine with dinner. However, I like to go and enjoy a good dinner with company. Usually, on Saturday, we join my in-laws for dinner at an Italian restaurant, near our home. It’s a hard place to get into on a Saturday night. They aren’t very big and with a little one it’s easier to get a large booth and let her sit on a booster between my wife and I?

The biggest problem I have with the place is that they always seem to have the loudest and rowdiest bunch of people seated at a long set of tables right up against us. It never fails. It’s hard enough to be able to carry a conversation with my daughter jabbering away but when you have the 50-60 crowd of cackling women and screaming men who all seem to laugh in a simultaneous uproar it becomes nearly impossible.

Whenever we sit down and begin to see the staff pushing the tables together we know what is coming. A group of glammed up cougar wannabes, doused in Old Lady Spice, toting their cocktails from the bar over to the table. Then comes the man and their vodka tonics or whatever and they look like they should be in contracting. Well dressed and slicked up hair, perfect mustaches that would make a 70s porn star cry. They all sit down and begin talking loudly, laughing even louder, constantly making it difficult for us to get out or our server to get in to serve our dinners.

The ears bleed, the eyes water, and the left hand firmly restrains the right one which is wielding a steak knife aimed directly at the temple. Honestly, It is so hard to sit and carry on a civil conversation just below a mild roar and not be annoying? I could understand if we were in a rowdy bar or someplace like a T.G.I.Fridays. But this is a little Italian restaurant with excellent house dressing and low lighting. I’m just trying to enjoy my steak sandwich and I have to put up with the cackling. Even the 25 year old me would be sitting there with the 20 year old wondering, “WTF?” (mandatory use internet slang quota reached for this post.)

Ultimately, we just put up with it, keep our comments under our breath. We finish our meal and we go, awaiting the next week’s offering of the men and ladies of the Aqua Velva and Net set, respectively. It really is a good house dressing. I love the turkey club and the Fra Diavola. I just don’t like all the yelling. I’m grumpy and old now. I’m no longer a tortured soul. I have a family and a mortgage. I’m not an unemployed actor, but I play one on….ok that was too easy of a joke. I’m still misunderstood but that’s because I am the only guy in a household of females. There’s my wife, my daughter, three female cats and one male, but he doesn’t count because he’s fixed. (Here’s where the reprise of the “junk-in-the-wife’s-purse” joke would have come back.) Makes me want to scream sometimes. Perhaps I will over a nice seafood marinara and a piece of bread dipped in the house dressing. You really do have to try it.