Here’s a little tip for all you parents out there just getting into the threes and fours with your children. Expect the ruination of any holiday by your own hand.
On Good Friday, while my wife was at work, I took on the task of coloring eggs with my daughter. I set it all up and let her have at it and she did a really great job. She colored 2/3 of the eggs all by herself. She put the eggs in the cup and put them on the rack to dry. No parental mucking up of the process. It was because of that self sufficiency that made it horribly apparent that this would all end in tears.
See, after Easter is over. Those eggs need to be dealt with in some manner. You either use them or throw them away.
Personally, I’d rather use them. Chef salad and egg salad sandwiches are a wonderful use of hard boiled colored eggs. Unfortunately, they are also the last fates a four year old wants to see beset upon her prized colored eggs.
Last Wednesday was the day of eggs-ecution. I had hoped to do it in secret but unfortunately, my child is nosy and has to be involved with everything regardless of what kind of exploration Dora is doing at the time.
I pulled the carton out and began to peel the eggs. There was some initial begging and pleading for the eggs on her part. There was even some bargaining for a commuted sentence. I even think she promised to be a good girl at one point. Alas, dinner would wait for no one, not even the sobs of a four year old.
She fled to the safety of her bedroom and wet her pillow with the sobs and wails of someone who just watched their child put to death for the amusement of others. All her hard work, the accomplishment of coloring the eggs by herself, destroyed by the hand of the father. It was almost a tragedy of Greek or Biblical proportions.
Eventually, the cries of anguish subsided, replaced with the sounds of snores. She had cried herself to sleep, the poor thing. And in an hour, she was awakened for dinner and the sobs and ire for her father resumed.
But, I was to not be outdone by my wife who placed her bunny crazy straw in the dishwasher this past weekend. She straightened that bitch out… and I’m talking about the straw.
As I sat there, waiting for karma to free me from the guilt of being made the hand of fate against those eggs last week, I was given the cold shoulder and my daughter said, “It’s OK mommy. It was an accident.”
Another year has ended and once again, I bring you WUMF!
I had planned on having this in on New Year's Eve, but unfortunately forces were working against me.
Guards On Slicers Not Just Suggestions
I said forces were working against me. My wife got a new Slicer/Chopper for Christmas and decided to bust it out in order to cook up New Year's Eve dinner for midnight. It's called a Genius chopper and apparently, we were unqualified to operate it.
My wife said, "Well how do I get the onions to be slivers for the pierogis?" I said, "Look, it's simple." I added in the slicer attachment and then proceeded to slice up an onion and then a small chunk of my finger. "Way to go, dumbass." It was just a little bit, not even noteworthy. So, I said, "Well, that's why you use the guard. You stick it on the onion and slide it back and forth."
As I went into the bathroom to get a bandage for my finger I hear, "OW!" and then some four letter word. "What happened, genius?" Turns out, my wife couldn't stand to be showed up by me and took an even bigger chunk out of her right ring finger. We couldn't get it to stop bleeding. We tried everything. At one point, I thought we were going to end up at the ER, which is typical for us around the holidays. Most people use the holidays to get together with family and enjoy the company and the event. We use it as an excuse to try and max out our medical deductible.
Well, my father-in-law came over and was able to properly dress her finger, cause I left with a light bulb looking bandage which quickly soaked up a lot of blood. After she was settled down, the festivities needed to continue, so, the second string came in to cook the food and get everything ready. That would be me. I should have tried harder to get out of work.
Christmas
My kid's fourth Christmas was apparently her 14th. This year she sat among the boxes and made two piles of gifts. I asked her what each pile was. She said, "One is the presents I wanted and the other is stuff I didn't want." I asked her which was which. She said that the one with the toys was the pile she really wanted. She then proceeded to say, "See, Daddy. Even when I'm bad I get presents.
Work
As I close in on a full year at my new job, it's hard to realize that it has been a full year. I left nearly ten years of service, over three weeks of vacation and a lot of friends. And you know what? It was the right decision. Even though there are challenges in my new job, some good, some bad, I know that it was time for me to go. Not saying why, just that my later mother-in-law would have approved of the change.
WDVE shakeup
WTF?!? Last year, Randy Baumann suddenly disappeared from the morning show. He was brought back about a month later. Now, Jim Krenn, who has been the long time morning show host, has disappeared from the air since December 6th. No word on why or if he'll be back. There isn't a contract to be negotiated and even though I only get to listen to about an hour of the show, I've noticed that Krenn hasn't been on between 6 and 7am all year. The running gag was always that Jim only works two weeks out of the year, so speculation is only set to run wild.
In the long run money is probably a factor here. Money and ratings. Regardless, if he is gone, it's a big change to morning radio for me. I was a bit uneasy about Randy Baumann taking over for Scott Paulsen 12 years ago but I've adjusted to it. I don't know if it will be the same here.
Free Time
For Christmas I got Uncharted 3, Dead Island, and Call of Duty MW3. The only thing I forgot to ask Santa for was free time. I've been playing Dead Island and it's pretty sweet and sometimes a tad unsettling. Most of the zombies are Romero speed but the Infected, as they are called are more like Zack Snyder or Danny Boyle speed zombies. In fact, there are a tons of pop culture nods to all things zombies and other stuff. One sign painted on a wall says, "Don't Open. Dead Inside" At another point, the main character has to go look for a crashed plane from Oceanic Air, a nod to lost. It's fun and sick and gory and I'm finding it hard to do anything else, like cook New Year's dinner because my wife sliced up her finger. lol.
This declaration was made after my daughter’s birthday party this past weekend.
It’s not that I cook, now. I know. And even if I did I could hear the naysayers… saying nay…
- nay saying…
- naying?
- bitching at me and my wife for not cooking four only child’s birthday. Well, nay away. Here’s why it was a blessing to not have to cook.
For the past three years we have been having cookouts for my kid’s birthday. It’s the day after Independence Day which usually means it doubles as the official holiday cookout or gets moved to a nearby weekend to avoid the work week. Usually, we do the usual grilling fare, and I spend four hours grilling up food as well as taking care of things like wayward children, filling up coolers, etc. Normally, my wife and I do not get to enjoy the party.
This year was especially daunting as we tried to offset the scheduling conflicts of family and friends by moving it to the week after the fourth. That gave us extra time to clean, shop, etc. Still, we both looked at each other and wanted to cry.
We’ve been having issues with our pool. It’s one of those Intex brands one that I inherited from my brother. He bought a new pool and I got that one. The pump/filter that comes with it couldn’t cycle a 50 gallon fish tank properly. The pump barely sucks enough water to get a flow going and the paper filter cartridge suffers from poor design issues as it never fits right, leading to the pump not working properly. So, I had been in the market for a better pump since last year.
One of my old teachers from high school happened to have a Hayward DE pump and filter. It was a couple years old and hadn’t been used for a year. I bought it for $200 along with various parts and fittings over Memorial Day. With a vacation at the beginning of June we didn’t get it set up until the middle of the month. Now, I must say that because I’m an idiot and didn’t have a proper cover, the pool remained exposed to the elements all fall and winter resulting in lots of leaves, bugs and dirt residing in it.
Trying to clean a 16 ft. pool with even a more powerful than needed pump/filter is going to be hard. If I would have just resigned myself to draining and refilling the pool, I would have saved myself two weekends of screwing around with trying to keep the pump working.
Needless to say, I finally got it up and running, properly, on the Fourth of July weekend. That left me with a week to get everything else done. That meant yard needed cut, house needed cleaned and food needed to be bought. It was just too much for us to handle.
My wife made the executive decision at the beginning of the month to just get the party catered. Is that lazy of us? I say no. Is that frivolous of us to spend the money? I say no. Here’s why.
In the scheme of things we would have ended up paying the same amount for all of the food and then cooking it ourselves. Because we were cooking it, we would have lost time that we so desperately needed to run around and pick up supplies, the cake, the balloons, and anything else needed. We’d also find ourselves taking longer to eat as you can only prepare so much food ahead of time, leading to later meal times and less time for enjoying the other stuff.
We went with a local place called Skis and Nick’s. I’ve had their food before and it’s pretty good. We ordered one of their predefined menus which included batter dipped chicken, penne noodles and sauce, a potato, a vegetable, a deli tray, a garden salad, a fruit salad, rolls, buns, and relish tray. At $9.25 + tax, per person it might sound like a lot. However, we also got all of the napkins, plates, utensils, condiments and carryout containers to go with it. Not to mention, they included the use of a hot box to keep the hot items hot. Now, all I had to do was go pick it all up, uncover it and serve.
By the way, the food was delicious. We had leftovers which was great because we were dead tired yesterday and didn’t want to have to worry about dinner. And, we got to visit, eat and enjoy the party, for once. Like I said, we’ll never cook again for parties.
St. Patrick’s Day is upon us as well as March Madness. But then again, that is what March Madness is around the bars today and tonight.
Let’s face it, anytime you designate a holiday as a reason to go out and drink, you run the risk of inviting all of the people not field ready to participate and cause problems.
I was a bartender in a former life and absolutely hated working on New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day. Why? It wasn’t because of the crowds and the busy bars. It was because regular, everyday people tried to imitate the professional drinkers, like a bunch of kids who just watched Jackass and thought it would be cool to light off a firecracker placed between their ass cheeks.
Now, New Year’s Eve is a time for joyous celebration and revelry. But if you feel that you have to go out and get shit faced just to say, “I went out on New Year’s Eve and got shit faced” then you are part of the problem. You get all loaded and then you get all belligerent and start fights. Then you go and wreck your car or worse. The real drinkers are not a two night a year partying type. They do it on any day that ends in ‘Y’. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Super Bowl or Arbor Day. They don’t need a holiday to find an excuse to drink, but for the most part, they understand the boundaries.
Granted, there are plenty of drunks out there that cause problems regardless of the occasion and I’m not trying to glamorize or romanticize their lifestyle. I simply mean that there are people who realize what they are doing and don’t need to go out to a bar and wear a stupid green Styrofoam hat or blow into a noise maker to enjoy some libations. I am not a heavy drinker and I am quite comfortable sitting in my own home and having a drink on New Year’s Eve, during the Super Bowl or during a holiday meal. But I also know that anybody who comes to my house to do the same and will either spend the night or be cleared for departure at the end of the evening.
But I am not without fault. I, too, felt the need to be a part of the celebration. I finally realized how silly it was to go out for going out's sake when my wife and I decided that we just had to go out for St, Patrick's Day and did everything we could to find a place to go drink at. Yet, all we were met with was busy and overcrowded places that held ridiculous amounts of drunk people. Then, just to say we did go out, we stopped at a local motel bar and had drink, then left. It was at that moment I said, "Eff it!" No more going out on holidays for stupid reasons. But my life was checkered with doing such things for the sake of doing them. I was an amateur in my youth.
When I was in my teens, I thought that if I didn’t go out and party on New Year’s Eve, then I was missing something important. I had no intentions of drinking at that age, but mandated to myself that I had to go out, regardless. I simply stated, “It’s New Year’s Eve. We HAVE to go somewhere!” One particular year involved me organizing a trip to the nearby ski resort, just hoping that something spectacular would happen. My friend came over and we decided that we were going to drive the 45 minutes up the mountain to participate. I didn’t have a license, and technically he didn’t either, though he claimed he could drive a stick shift. That bit of information was important because the only vehicle available to use was my brother's old Plymouth Horizon. He was at college, my parents were out and so were his. The Horizon had seen better days and at this point, I didn’t even know whether or not it had tags or insurance on it, let alone gas in the tank.
I had all these grand visions of showing up to the resort and immediately being thrust into an adventure of epic proportions involving older twins in ski boots. We’d pass for somewhere in our 20s vs. 15 and 16. Maybe we would end up in some kind of spy mission or win a downhill race or at least a hot tub. This would happen by way of improbable yet totally believable 80s movie logic which would only require us to master skiing or spying in the length of a three minute rocking montage. Yes, it would be an epic night involving a stolen sports car, secret microfilm and a bevy of beauties who never bothered to check our IDs. My thoughts were filled with a John Hughes style grandiose plan that would certainly get us a medal of honor and a trip to the White House.
The next morning, my father came up to me and said, “Where did YOU go last night?” He had somehow sensed that we didn’t just stay at home. We were very careful in returning the car to exactly the spot we left it. I was painstaking in returning the keys to the exact same spot on the hooks in the kitchen as to never give anyone reason to suspect we had gone anywhere. But, yet, my father, the master craftsman of bullshit sniffing (He spent 24 years on the board of the Municipal Authority in our town) knew something was up. I had to come up with some cover story as to not risk National Security over our night of decadence and death defying feats of excellence.
I worked out the details in my head. Disavow any knowledge of mischief and instead misdirect his suspicions. In essence I came up with a wonderful lie disguised as the God’s honest truth.
I confessed to my father that we didn’t go anywhere. Somehow, I knew that wouldn’t fly. He knew we at least were in the car. But, how? I then shifted the story to a botched attempt at going somewhere. I told him my friend attempted to drive and ended up stalling the car, repeatedly to the point of flooding it. We managed to make it nearly three feet before giving up. We then threw it in neutral and pushed it back to where it was originally parked, went inside and just watched Dick Clark. That was it. That was the flimflam story I sold my father and he bought it.
Now, I wish I could divulge what really happened that night. Unfortunately, the involved parties are still around and could be in grave danger if I were to reveal any details. Let’s just leave it at the story I told my Dad. I’ve said it so many times it almost feels like the truth anyway. The official record of our actions, that night, is sealed to the public, but let’s just say, America avoided an International incident on December 31st 1990.
So from one amateur to another, stay home tonight. Enjoy a beer at home or at least make it look like you never went anywhere. The safety of the American people is your hands.
Sorry for the hiatus on the updates. I was caught up in the D-Bag Award posts and the holidays, along with some other news that will show up in, possibly, my final post???? Time will tell on that one. In any case, I hope you didn’t think I abandoned the project, because I didn’t. In fact, I surprised myself with being off of work for the last two weeks of the year. I figured boredom would have set in and I’d be reaching for the cookies and egg nog. Fortunately, there is some rule that any behavior for 21 days constitutes a habit. Well, at the time I went on vacation I had been at this for almost six weeks, which is twice as long. I guess I have a habit now.
Speaking of habits, let’s go over the last four weeks. I’m not going to get into what all I ate, but I will share some. Let’s just say, I didn’t skimp on the holiday meals.
I started off week five having already lost 10 pounds from my heaviest weight. Then two weeks later I was head long into being off of work and around all kinds of bad food. I was doing my Christmas shopping and eating on the fly which is always a bad idea. I was hitting Starbucks because I was able to and taking in a few more Caramel Brule decadence than I should have in my position. I was eating at malls and going through the drive thru.
However, when I did stop at my favorite spot, Wendy’s, I managed to keep to my reduced meal plan with the value sized burger, fry, and drink. That was a plus. Being able to be satisfied by a very small amount of food is a good step towards winning the war.
Christmas Eve was filled with meat and cheese trays, ham and roast beef sandwiches, and various cookies. I tried to be good but I know I had one or two more chocolate covered Oreos than I should have. Christmas Day was just leftovers for lunch and turkey sandwiches for dinner at my parents. My Dad’s birthday was a couple days away and I was digging this dip my sister-in-law made and downing shrimp left and right. New Year’s Eve and Day were my worst meals. We had pierogies, pork, sauerkraut, hot dogs, and kielbasa. More cookies, more meat and cheese.
I did try some a new dish at one of our regular eateries. I had fish and pierogies and loved it. At Fat Zackel’s in Claridge, they make an awesome Russian Cod and accompany it with three pierogies. It’s enough to get your gnosh on, but it won’t kill you. Skipping my daughter’s fries also helps.
Now to the biggest help over break. I had, what has been called, around here as, The Pittsburgh Puke and Poop. Actually, I never puked. My kid woke up the morning of the 19th with it but had stopped vomiting by noon. My wife had a small bout with it and I was showing signs around mid week. Like I said, I never threw up, but I wasn’t taking any chances and was pretty much eat toast and drinking ginger ale, because I was constantly nauseous. Now, I would have expected to gain all that weight back after I felt better, but I am proud to say that as of a weigh in on the morning of January 5th, I had lost almost [drum roll] [paradiddle] [LOL]
18 pounds.
Now that’s a habit!
I’m back at work this week and have had one small indulgence, a tiny Frosty after my lunch on Tuesday. Otherwise, I have been eating less and I am actually starting to feel like I’ve lost weight. People have said I look like I've lost weight. "Yeah, your face looks thinner." Great. If only I wore my pants around my nose, I'd feel like I had accomplished something. My knees still groan at me when I go up steps, but I’ve been finding pairs of pants, I was ready to throw out, fitting once more, which is a bonus. No more exploding buttons.
To summarize:
Apparently getting the flu has benefits but don't expect all results to be the same. I wouldn't go licking the Lincoln Logs at your kids' daycare, just yet.
If you plan on doing anything like this, do it a few weeks out of a big meal holiday like Thanksgiving.
Don’t call it a diet. It’s a change in habit.
Most important, keep going.
Now, I’m not going to get all caught up in the psychology of it all, just like I didn’t get caught up in all the counting and monitoring of what I did. I’ve made all these changes in an effort to have them become an automatic thing. The subconscious mind will reach for a bowl of chips just as easily as it will walk past the kitchen at 11:30 at night, despite the cries of Ben and Jerry telling you to eat them. You simply have to train yourself, in small increments.
It’s nice to know I haven’t hit that plateau, yet, but my next challenge occurs starting January 10th. More on that later. Peace out!
Week five puts me at my first major milestone for this experiment. 10 pounds lost. That’s an average of 2 pounds a week and I’ve barely done any real work other than cutting back to a cup of cereal every morning, eating smaller portions of lunch and dinner and limiting those pesky snacks to almost nothing.
Nothing major to report other than I am heading into rough waters as I get closer to the end of the month. Thanksgiving was easy compared to the thought of being off work for the last two weeks of the month. Being home for an extended amount of time is dangerous to someone trying to lose weight. Food is at the ready and boredom tends to lead to phantom hunger pains. Fortunately, I have a wife who loves to make lists. She’ll keep me busy, I’m sure.
In case you have been keeping score with that sliding scale on the side bar. I tried out a free countdown graph but my math skills are rusty. I’ve been flubbing the percentages for a few weeks now, so if anyone can verify to me that 12.5% of 80lbs would be 10lbs, I’d appreciate it. It would be nice if I could just enter in attributes like lost pounds and have it show up correctly. Maybe I’ll tweak the coding a bit to see if I can get it looking the way I want it to.
This is just a quick update about this week and last week’s progress. With the holiday falling near the middle of the week I was swamped with other work in preparation for being off for a few days and had to miss posting. Apologies to all of you who are hanging on my every word concerning my quest to lose weight. Sarcasm is intended there.
This is going to be the toughest part of the experiment. We are heading into the winter which means lessened outdoor activity, unless you count putting up Christmas lights which should be considered an Olympic Sport at my house. It also means that we are heading full force into the holidays which means lots of bad influences like carbs from Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, cookies and leftover Halloween candy, and Egg Nog. Egg Nog, alone, could negate any progress I’ve made over the last couple of weeks.
I will say it has become so much easier to pass up the snacks. Because we are heading into December, people are bringing more and more goodies to work. I’ve passed up a few things but I hate to insult someone by not accepting their offer of food. One of my biggest problems is that I am, like my namesake, Mikey from the LIFE cereal ads. When I first met my wife back in 1998 I went to dinner at her house and met her parents. They like to cook and they don’t skimp on portions. Whenever I would finish my plate they would continually say, “Have some more.” Soon, one serving of pasta became two large plates. Trust me, I like food and I like to eat but I have to begin turning down such hospitality if I plan on losing the extra weight I’ve gained in the last ten years. So, here’s the progress report.
Here’s the good news.
I did not gain any weight after the Thanksgiving weekend, in fact, as of today, I'm down an additional pound. My wife made her first Thanksgiving dinner with a 14 pound fresh turkey, sweet potato casserole, homemade stuffing, corn casserole, and Pillsbury iced cinnamon rolls. All in all, I had two helpings of stuffing, turkey, sweet potatoes and rolls and managed to come back to work on Monday with no extra weight. And, it’s not like I did a damn thing but veg out on the couch watching movies and playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Free-For-All Deathmatch. That is a new addiction of mine and I really suck at it, which makes for a lot of frustration and continual attempts to get better. Let’s just say that I cannot wait until I unlock the perk of dropping a grenade when I get killed because I die more from grenade drops than I do from anything else.
Here’s the bad news.
I might be reaching that first plateau. I was kind of hoping I could get back to my earlier weight of 255-265 before having to add additional steps. I can explain the additional 20 pounds very easily. My mother-in-law passed away in April and that’s when I started gaining the extra weight. It would be normal for us to eat at my in-laws, maybe three to four times a week. Sure, the extra portions are a problem but at least the food is home cooked and not full of bad stuff. Since April, we have been going out more and eating quicker, more carb heavy and fatty foods. While my wife is becoming an awesome cook, especially with that turkey that I am still eating sandwiches from for lunch, she teaches piano almost every afternoon into the evening and doesn’t have a lot of time to prepare a meal.
Next Steps
Hopefully, with the brief lull in festive eating, I can knock off a few more pounds the way I have been. Last night I caught myself, after work, wanting to break into the sweet rolls before they have to be pitched. Luckily, they looked kind of nasty and we pitched them. The apple on my way home from work is still enough to hold me until dinner. Although, after the New Year, I am sure I will have to ramp up my efforts. Don’t expect any resolutions from me because they are trap and a great way to fail. In fact, I advise any of you, looking to lose weight, to follow my example. Don’t make a New Year’s Resolution because you are betting against yourself. Resolutions tend to be unrealistic, pie in the sky goals. Instead just start taking those small steps that create results and stick to them.
Breakfasts for the last week
Weekdays – 1 cup Lucky Charms and skim milk
Holiday weekend – no breakfast or Pillsbury cinnamon roll
Lunches for the last week
Leftover turkey sandwich
Light Yogurt
Diet Pepsi
Snacks for the last week
Apple
Pumpkin pie with Cool Whip (Late at night – VERY BAD)
Dinners for last week
Thanksgiving dinner
Leftover Thanksgiving dinner
More Leftover Thanksgiving dinner
McDonald’s club sandwich meal with Diet Coke, small
Wendy’s Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, small fry, small Diet Coke, no Frosty
There should be an email saying Happy Birthday. There should be an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. There should be a brand new tea cup or some gadget she would love. There should be a card signed from a little girl. There should be a dinner at Persichetti’s or the Olive Garden. There should be a lot of things, other than sadness.
I’ve avoided talking about what happened back in April because it’s still rough. I’m having difficulty sketching out this post just because of the lump in my throat. But, it’s time.
On April 11, 2010 my wife’s mother died. She lived life the way most of us wish we had. She didn’t go jumping out of planes or pushing the speedometer to 106 mph just to feel the rush of flying on the highways. But, she lived life without fear. Fear of what another person might think about her clothes or opinions never entered her mind. When you get a 12 year extension on a death sentence you stop sweating the small stuff.
I first met my future mother-in-law on November 8th, 1998. That weekend had been the first official date I had been on with her daughter, my future wife. It was the kind of date that makes you wonder why she called me the next day. After all, I totally embarrassed her at the movie theater, laughing and literally slapping my knee at the comedy of The Waterboy. The fact that her daughter had punched me in the leg as I dropped her off was probably my only saving grace. She must have felt bad and called me up, asking me over. I didn’t know I would be having dinner with her parents as well. After all, I had never met them and was totally unprepared.
I remember meeting this little white haired lady with these bright red rimmed glasses. She had this spiky hair and round face, full of rosy cheeks. My first initial thoughts was that she was the offspring of Elton John and Sally Jessie Raphael, if that were possible. She puttered around the kitchen getting dinner ready while I took on the task of dealing with the aspect of meeting my future father-in-law. “Now, he’s probably going to want to show you his guns. It’s a scare tactic. He’s a farm boy.” My wife informed me before descending into the finished basement of her house, decked out with a living room, game room and full kitchen. Being the smart ass that I was, I needed to break the ice and diffuse any tensions that might take hold of my first official meeting with the parents. After introducing myself to her father, I took the initiative to say, “So, I hear you’d like to show me your guns.” The laughter alone made me feel 100% safer and dinner was a breeze.
As we became closer, I felt as if her parents were an extension of my own family, years before I had even asked my wife to marry me. That was five years later. But, over that time, I learned a lot about my future in-laws, including my wife’s mother.
I almost didn’t get to meet her. Just that last year she was fighting for her life. She was diagnosed with stage IV renal cell carcinoma. That would have been a death sentence for nearly everyone. Her only saving grace was that she had been giving that diagnosis while already opened up on the table. The doctors knew there was a tumor, but they had no idea what else was there. They proceeded and she was put into a study where a high dosage of a drug was given to her. She was literally taken to death’s door with her immune system, only to ring the bell and run away. She came back from the brink and you could never tell she had been sick.
I got my first real glimpse of the real character my mother-in-law was that first Christmas. The whole house decorated as if the North Pole exploded in their home. It was amazing. She would literally take off most of the month of December to enjoy the holidays and enjoy them she did. The day after Thanksgiving her husband would go to hunting camp for the next week while she’d decorate. I could only imagine the electric bill. Scattered around the house were reindeer, snowmen, elves, animatronic Mr. and Mrs. Claus, wreaths, bows, and the lights, oh the lights. It was like a shopping mall with no stores.
Come Christmas Eve, they would throw out a spread that would make you want to take a long winter’s nap. She took such great pride in presentation and everyone took home a party favor. She reminded you if you didn’t, too. Along with the food was a sing along of Christmas Carols. She loved a good party and loved the holidays, especially Halloween and Christmas.
Oh, we had our differences. There’s no doubt. But it was never anything that didn't get resolved quickly. We'd argue over stupid things and sometimes I felt she but into stuff that didn't need adressed. In fact, at first she even told my wife not to hang her hopes on me. “He’s not going to stick around. He wants to go to California.” Had I actually done that, I would have went alone. After the cancer in 97, there’s no way my wife would have moved away from her parents. We all try to deny the existence of our own mortality, as well as the mortality of our parents, but after going through what this family went through, my wife wanted every minute with her. But, I didn’t quite understand it. I couldn’t. My family was always there. It never mattered how far away I moved or how long it was between phone calls or visits. I accepted that my parents would be there when I did call. I took them for granted. But, I never took offense to the statement about the longevity of our relationship. It probably made me a more mature person.
I stayed and I became a part of that family. My wife would tell you that her parents loved me more than they loved her. I just think it was different. We got along on a different level. I understood her. Of course, it was always easier buying her mom Christmas presents. I could spot a good gadget or tea cup that she would love. I mean, how many grandmothers did you know nearing retirement age that had a Sirius satellite radio in their car along with a docking station for her iPod? She loved little things that lit up or whirred. A Dollar Store pen that lit up and had a Santa or Black Cat on it tickled the hell out of her. She would go shopping for Christmas all year long and each Christmas morning the house was wall to wall, floor to ceiling presents. They could be little things that she picked up along the way or they could be the big purchases. She never disappointed.
Neither did the cancer. It put up a good fight. In 2006, she had to have more surgery and this was the one we thought was going to get her. She lost her spleen and some of her pancreas. She spent a week in recovery alone, though that was because of a administrative snafu. Still, I had confidence that she would be back. She didn’t disappoint me. She was now my mom, too. I was damned if I was ready to let her go. She just looked death in the eye, flipped him the bird, and told him to, “Eff off!”
Even after that bout, she never seemed to slow down. She could out and beat the best of the holiday shoppers. You could just see her shuffling around the mall with those dangly snowflake earrings, snapping her gum in frequent crackles. She’d come home with a sleigh full of purchases to wrap later, on the pool table. She’d fire up the Christmas music or put and put on a pot of tea.
She always tried new things, no matter what the consequences. She loved her cooking shows and would often make us guinea pigs to her culinary whims. It’s sad that I know who Paula Deen and Sandra Lee are. I could sit there and watch them with her simply because she enjoyed them.
She loved musicals, too. If it wasn’t Christmas music she would be enjoying a good soundtrack like the one from Chicago. I remember taking her to see the Phantom of the Opera when it came out a few years ago in movie theaters. Her taste in movies was a lot like mine, including taking her to see a James Bond movie, much to my wife’s chagrin.
And she was a good Grammy. I say that, not taking anything away from my own mother, but my mother-in-law had a style all her own. My daughter loved her and loved having her babysit her while my wife and I were at work. I had always hoped that she could retire exactly when she wanted to but unfortunately, after 15 years as in HR, her job was terminated due to redundancy. Also, the cancer had come back.
This was a new one. We had all gotten over having the stomach flu in February of 2009 and something about my mother-in-law seemed off. She would have trouble remembering things and would fight to find the right words. My wife knew something was up and told her to get checked out. She left work one day to go get a scan. Now, she had been through countless scans over the years because of her history, but not once had they thought to check her brain. There it was, a tumor, pressing on her brain, causing the confusion. It led her to stop the car at mailboxes and run through red lights. The doctor called before she had even got back to work, telling her to get to the ER in Shadyside. It wasn’t good. She called me and told me to pick her up and bring her straight to the house, so that her husband could take her while I made plans to get my wife and break the bad news.
The tumor was there and then it wasn’t. The week after St. Patrick’s Day, my mother-in-law went in for brain surgery and three days later, she was home. Afterwards, you couldn’t have known she even had a tumor. It was a piece of cake and she was home free, or so we thought.
Nearly ten years had gone by from the initial diagnosis to the second surgery in 2006. Now, it was just three years later for brain surgery. My wife was worried that her mom was running out of house money to play with at the table. Her mom had never seen the ocean and she’d make sure she’d see that. It wasn’t so much a bucket list for her mom, but for her. As we sat in the waiting room after surgery, we flipped through vacation guides. We didn’t know another obstacle would present itself before June.
Mother’s Day was spent in Shadyside hospital. My mother-in-law was riddled with pulmonary emboli. She had to be put on a high dose of blood thinner and we feared she wouldn’t be able to make the nearly 12 hour trek to the beach. We also found out that she had developed another tumor, in her only remaining ovary. But, since she was going to have to wait for a few weeks to have surgery, thanks to the clots, we decided that she should just go to the beach anyway, and we did.
I remember seeing her propped up in the back of the van, keeping her legs elevated. We’d make frequent stops for her to get up and move around. I wasn’t sure she was so keen on the logistics of planning and executing a trip like that. Yet, once she got there, she enjoyed the hell out of it. Vacationing in a nice big house, seeing the ocean for the first time, sleeping in, she loved it. Our last night there, after the car was packed and the house was checked, we noticed some leftover frozen custard that was just going to be tossed. So, the fondest memory I have of that trip was sitting in the kitchen, finishing off the last of the frozen custard with my mother-in-law. I asked her what she thought about this whole thing. She couldn’t understand why people went through all this trouble to go to the beach. The sand gets in everything. You deprive yourself of sleep. You fight over stupid things like maps and exits and directions. Then, I asked her if she would do it again, perhaps next year. She said she would. With that, we ate the last bites and called it a night.
Surgery to remove the tumor went like clockwork, like it always did. However, there was a new wrinkle. Her abdominal fluid showed signs of cells. It was determined that this was not renal cell cancer but ovarian. She would have to endure chemo. She went for six treatments over the next 18 weeks. The time over the year she should have enjoyed the most was nearly negated with vomiting and exhaustion and the loss of that spiky white hair. She began wearing a wig because she refused to not go out and do things, but the vibrancy that she had with walking around a mall or driving in her little car was diminished. She got tired more easily. She started to feel like fighting was pointless. She was tired. No more surgeries she said. I’m done.
Apparently, she wasn’t, just yet. 2009 was about as bad a year as you could tolerate. Brain surgery, pulmonary emboli, ovarian cancer and chemo would disgust anyone from wanting to see another year of the same. However, in March, after a full work up and scans, she was given a green light. She was, for all intents and purposes, cancer free. Another deal, another set of cards, and house money back on the table. We began planning another trip to the beach and there was general enthusiasm from her about going. We were looking to put the previous year behind us.
We had a lovely Easter dinner and enjoyed company. Then she started getting a headache. Now, this was a woman who could tolerate pain. On a scale of one to ten, it would have to be somewhere near 20 for her to complain but this was different. She went most of the week after Easter with the headache and finally went to see a doctor. They didn’t feel worried and sent her home. On Friday, April 9th, she enjoyed Chinese dinner at our usual restaurant and felt better. On Saturday, it was almost unbearable. My wife took her to the hospital. She said the pain was if someone had hit her in the back of the head with a baseball bat. She was totally cognizant at the hospital and rattling off all the medical information she had always had to recite when she went anywhere like that. Soon, everything worsened and they decided to life flight her to Pittsburgh. She went into a coma and they nearly lost her on the way.
This woman who had beaten cancer for 12 years. This woman who loved Christmas. This woman who loved her family and life with such a fervor was now gone. She was alive, but nowhere to be found inside. From what we can tell, she had an aneurysm. Her brain bled, filling up her skull, causing the flow of oxygen to cease. She could not breathe on her own and she would not wake up. They tried to remove the swelling, hoping to alleviate the pressure and give her a chance. It wasn’t enough, or it was too late. In any case, she was alive because she was on life support, until we said otherwise.
To actually hold the fate of someone in her hands, to make that decision is not something I would wish on anyone. I wanted her to fight. I wanted her to come back. She always had before. But not this time. We gave it the night and on Sunday, April 11th, we had to chose. There was no chance she would ever regain consciousness and even if she had, she would never be the same person we knew. I knew she would never accept that quality of life, not in a million years, but I didn’t want to accept the finality of it all.
On the way to the hospital, we had to explain the situation to our daughter. She was too smart to dumb down the issue and we didn’t want to use an analogy that would confuse or scare her about what was about to happen. We simply told her what happened and what was going to happen. My wife told her we were saying goodbye to grammy and that she was going to live with Jesus. My daughter asked if Jesus was a nice man. My wife said that he was and that he was the nicest man you would ever meet. My daughter said, point blank, “Well, good. Because I would kick him in the balls if he wasn’t.” You can only imagine the simultaneous laughing and crying that went on in that car. Somewhere, in the aether, I imagine a snort and a cackle, along with the snapping of gum.
We still went to the beach this year. It wasn't the best trip we have ever had, because we were missing someone. She would have enjoyed the trip, it was much smoother this year. She would have loved seeing the wild horses. She would have loved the house we had this year, with a great view of the sound. She would have enjoyed the dinner we had at Captain George's. She would have loved seeing her family having fun. She would have loved to see alot of things. She would have loved to see her youngest granddaughter's first day of school and first peanut butter paint job on our living room. She would have loved to see her new kitties growing up fat and sassy, just like she would have wanted. Still, she got to 12 years she would have never had and in that time she got to see one daughter graduate college, both daughters get married, another grandchild be born, the beach and twelve more years of Easter and Fourth of July and Halloween and Christmas. She got to see her husband learn how to play bass and play in a band. And now, you could say, she sees everything with a great vantage point.
It’s been seven months since that day and every day a new challenge faces us. How do we cook that? How do I fix that? What does this benefits packet all mean? The things we would always ask her are discoveries we would have to make on our own. Still we laugh and still we cry over the memories. Still, my daughter says she misses grammy and wishes she could be here. Still, I do, too.
Today is her birthday. She would have been 66 years old. She would have outlived us all if she could. With all her maladies and missing parts, she could have run circles around me. And regardless of how bad it gets, I plan on making sure this holiday is as magical as any, for her sake. I want the party and I want the glitz. It’s not to take the place of what she did, but to honor it. She loved a good party and that’s what life is, a party.
It might be that this year’s holiday season has been marred by the absence of a true holiday lover, my wife’s mother. It might be that I just don’t have the time or the patience to get my ass in gear this year. It might be that I’m growing old and losing that childlike wonder about the holidays. For whatever reason, I’m just not feeling it this year.
I’ve heard parents talk about how holidays, like Halloween, become fun again because you get to relive it through the eyes of your child. I don’t know. I mean, my daughter is digging the whole Halloween scene but I’m having trouble seeing it from her perspective. I’m sure if bothered to put the laptop down and stopped spending so much time on the shirt side of Mongo, I’d be able to see it. Maybe not. Trying to build that empire, right? I know. It sounds silly to me, too. I’m trying to cram all the things I want to do into the space of four hours and probably missing out on life. I’m missing out on the life of my child.
Of course, that’s the only reason we’re even celebrating Halloween this year, for her. If it were up to us, we’d give out candy and go trick or treating but that would be it. No decorations, no big to do over a meal, no fanfare or fete. Yet, we are going above and beyond and attending a Halloween party. It’s a costume party to boot.
The last time I dressed up for Halloween was back in 2002. We went to a party, at a friend’s house, dressed as Sharon and Ozzy. It was during the whole craze over The Osbournes. One of the other guests showed up as Ozzy. Of course, he looked more like Ozzy from his Black Sabbath days and I was from the reality show days. We deemed him “Ozzy on Heroin” and me “Ozzy on Viagara."
This year we tried to coordinate our kid’s costume with ours. She was going to be the Cat In The Hat and we were going to be Thing 1 and Thing 2. I even used my shirt shop to produce the Thing 1 and Thing 2 shirts. All we needed to do was buy blue wigs and get red sweatpants. Well, who knew that red sweatpants were so hard to find? My wife had a pair but checking three stores yielded no results. That and we couldn’t find a Cat In The Hat costume. We dropped the ball and went shopping way too late to find one. Luckily, the little one was alright with going as a ladybug. It works out because at least we aren’t all going to be dressed up for the same event.
The big thing for this Halloween will be the addition of the fire pit. My in-laws bought us a portable fire pit for the summer time and for Halloween. It was my mother-in-law’s idea. It’s bittersweet that we get to use it on one of her favorite days, but sad that we never got to use it until after she died. She would have loved it. We’re still having people over for dinner after trick or treating, mostly because The Steelers are playing The Saints on Halloween. The World Champs against us. Should be an interesting game, considering the season, so far.
I will still watch It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown with my kid, not because she loves it, but because I do.She’s just hostage to my nostalgic whim.I know she enjoyed it in the past but she’s fickle.It took repeated attempts to get her to watch Toy Story and now I’m fighting a losing battle with Shrek.She’s three, what does she know?But this Halloween, she has no choice.We’re even going to watch it recorded off of television instead from the DVD.Why?Because there’s just something special about it being on television.If only it still included the old CBS Special Presentation intro from when I was a kid.It’s on ABC, now, so I know that won’t happen.Those bastards better not edit it like they did with A Charlie Brown Christmas or there will be hell to pay.
I suppose maybe I am feeling it a little. It just sucks that we waited until this past weekend to get the decorations up and it’s hard with my wife being out in the pumpkin patch on the weekends to make some extra cash. It sucks that Halloween is basically a one off holiday whereas Christmas kind of starts around the end of November and lasts until January. I’m sure that’s the malls’ fault but I can’t prove it.
There was just something so special about Fall as a kid. Even when I’m watching Michael Myers rip teenagers to shreds, the atmosphere of those films just lend themselves to a time when being a kid was fun. There was so much excitement over going out trick or treating and seeing the leaves turn and feeling the crunch of them underneath your feet when you traipsed through the neighborhood after dark. The shadows created a world beneath the one you knew. The Fall made the world feel brighter and more alive even though season was signified the transition towards death, the sunset of life. Perhaps it was the ever changing landscape. Something made it fun. I just have to find it in these last few days leading into winter. Of course, it didn’t help that it was 82 degrees yesterday with the threat of a tornado and Windapalooza.
If only that tornado could have swept through and gotten rid of all the leaves that are in my yard.That’s going to be a bitch to clean up.I love the Fall, but I hate those damn leaves.
It’s time again for tricks and treats. It’s time again for you to smell my feet! OK, I won’t hold you to that. I’ll just help myself to some of your candy.
At the age of three, my daughter knows exactly what candy is and how Halloween figures into getting it. Her first year was more about showing her off in a cute costume than about getting candy as she was only a couple months old. Year number two was pretty much the same thing. Last year, she started to understand it, but didn’t understand the concept of candy all that much. Oh, but she gets it now. She knows full well that she’s going to dress up and go house to house saying, “Trick or Treat” in the hopes of getting candy. I assume that, once the night is over, she will already have a mental checklist of each and every piece she collected and will make sure it’s all still there in the morning. But she has to account for the Daddy Tax.
You might be familiar with the Daddy Tax, even if you’ve never heard it called that. The Daddy Tax is the candy that gets collected taken out of your stash before you get it. It’s so wrong, I know. You know, I don’t remember if my father ever took any of my candy as a luxury tax for living in this world. I know there were times I got tired of seeing Pop Corn Balls and Bit-O-Honey in my bag and wondered where my Reese’s Cups went. I don’t know if was because my dad took some of the good stuff out of my bag claiming it had to go through closer inspection for things like razor blades. I do know that I hated those black and orange wax paper, awful tasting, filling removing, candies that tasted like they had gone rancid before getting into your bag. I lived for the Reese’s Cups and Fun Dips. I was even OK with SweeTarts or that strip of candy in the shape of different fruits including watermelon. I detested anything licorice or anise flavored and couldn’t stand Chunky. I was alright with getting a mini pack of raisins but Chunky? WTF?!?!
My kid tends to like chocolate, for the most part, which should be good in the case of me getting my hands on a few Snickers bars. She's not a big fan of peanuts. Hopefully, there will be some caramel in there. A Caramello would be preferred over a Rollo but I’ll take what I can get. Thanks to my wife’s father she has a predilection for Milky Way, Tootsie Rolls and lollipops. We frequent a place that has one of those crane games that will let you keep playing until you win some candy. It’s a ritual that she gets to have Pappy win her some candy before we go. Halloween will be a jackpot for her. At least it better. I went to Sam’s Club this weekend and bought two 120 count bags of the good stuff and a five pound bag of the cheaper stuff. You may think I’m nuts but I remember running out of candy the first year I lived in my current residence. It was almost like Night of the Living Dead when we ran out. We were flipping off the lights, shutting the blinds and hoping the hordes of monsters wouldn’t see us inside. The next year it poured down rain and I ended up with lots of leftover candy which ended up going to her piano students… and me. This year I fully expect to fill the bowl at least three times.
These days, the Daddy Tax almost seems foolish. If I have a lot of leftover candy after all is said and done, there’s no need to pick through my kid’s bag since she doesn’t need it. Not like I do, but I’m only looking out for her best interests. LOL. It’s inevitable that I will have leftover candy because we always buy too much as a conditioned response to that first year. However, I may spy something in my daughter’s bag I really like. In that case, I may have to have sit down and discuss a deal before the trade deadline.
If I see a Fun Dip in her candy bag, though, it’s totally mine. I’ll put up a blockade, post guards and enforce martial law if I have to. That damn thing will be mine.
I’m slowly beginning to be able to write this stuff down without going all completely kablooey. Eventually, I will put down something more substantial that really gives you the sense of what took place in our lives last month. I just can’t do it right now. However, because I am the unbelievable prick that I am and I know that my wife and her family can appreciate my sense of humor, even in the saddest of times, I feel I can at least share how I managed to cope with a pretty emotional event. More on that later.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Wow, thanks Captain Obvious. And I usually find an opportunity to at least visit if not spend the evening with my own mother. This year was a different. My wife just lost her mother the week after Easter and it’s been pretty rough. I’m not going to go into the whole back story, but my regular 4.2 readers know of what I speak. So, I took the munchkin up to see my mother on Friday night for a little Grammy Time. Then on Sunday we visited with her other Grammy, who is no longer here.
Now, I am nowhere near what you would call a churchgoer but for the sake of my daughter I talk the talk in order to kind of help with explaining what exactly has happened. She’s very smart and we would rather be upfront with what happened.
If we tell her that Grammy is sleeping but will never wake up she might be afraid to go to sleep at night. If we say Grammy had to go away and never come back, she might be afraid of us going anywhere without her. So, we were honest and told her that “Grammy had a boo boo that the doctors could not fix and she died. Her body is buried at the cemetery but the part of her that made her your Grammy is heaven now and that’s why we are sad because we can’t see her anymore.” She surprisingly gets it and understands completely what happened. But I don’t think she quite understands the feeling of loss and sadness she feels.
However, the kid is so her father’s daughter. On the way to the hospital to say goodbye to my mother-in-law we began to explain where Grammy was going. “Now, we are going to go say goodbye to Grammy. She is going to go live with Jesus now.” My daughter then looked up at my wife and asked, “Well, is Jesus friendly?” At this point I began to tear up because I knew that this was it. “Oh, yes,” my wife said, “He’s the friendliest person you’ll ever meet.” My daughter then deadpanned, “Good, because I’ll kick him in the balls.” Both my wife and I were simultaneously crying and laughing at honesty my daughter had with her intentions. She’s not even three yet. Now, this isn’t the first time she’s made that statement and for the life of me, I can’t figure out where she got it. My wife wanted to blame me but I live in a house with her and our daughter along with four cats, three of which are female and the one boy was neutered before we got him. Who the hell am saying “I’ll kick you in the balls” to?
We can always count on our daughter to provide a little perspective to the situation. And that’s why Sunday was another opportunity to smile through the pain. We had been planning for three weeks to go to the cemetery on Mother’s Day and release balloons with little notes attached. We were going to “Send them to Grammy.” Now, we prefaced Mother’s Day with ample amount of warning to my daughter that these balloons were going to be let go to fly up to heaven. She’s a balloon junkie and is very adamant about getting balloons. So, we figured there might be some resistance on finally letting the balloons go. But she did good. She even kept asking my wife if it was Mother’s Day yet because she wanted to “Send balloons to Kevin.”
At first we didn’t get it. Who the hell was Kevin? Of course, this malapropism was her thinking that heaven was Kevin but where she learned the name Kevin, I don’t know. But we kind of went with it and said “We’re going to go send balloons to Kevin, now.” So, as we stood there and released the balloons I found it hard not to find some humor in this moment. I thought about putting an email address on the cards attached to the balloons. Since they were made of Mylar they would probably last a lot longer than traditional latex ones, even at a higher altitude. I suspect they won’t make it very far and will end up no more than a twenty or thirty miles away before they hit something and end up tangled in a tree. But it would have been nice if the person who found these notes attached to balloons were to send a message. So, in that vein my sister-in-law said. “Who is going to write you, Jesus? Do you think he has the email address, Jesus@aol.com?” I said, “Of course, but the bastard will probably try to sell me Viagara.” “Yeah, I got spammed by Jesus. Oh, and now he wants to be friend on Facebook. Hey, everybody. I just poked Jesus. That and he keeps asking me to join his mafia.” Like I said, I can be a prick, but at least the humor can be appreciated. Now, if you excuse me, there is a lightning bolt coming towards me from the direction of Kevin’s. Avenge me, daughter. Go kick Kevin in the balls.
For the last 60 years a ritual has occurred which rivals that of the annual pilgrimage to Punxsutawney to see if a groundhog will see his shadow. Every January 19th since 1949, a figure known as the Poe Toaster has appeared on the grounds of Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, MD. He or she, disguised in black, makes their way to the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, raises a toast of cognac and then leaves the rest of the bottle along with three roses. It is believed that the roses are meant as a remembrance of Poe, his wife, and her mother who all are interred at the cemetery.
Diehard Poe heads are usually on hand to witness the mysterious event without ever knowing the identity of the toaster. In 1999, a note indicated that the original toaster had died or had at least passed the torch onto a “son” or new toaster. Last year, no note was left, which was odd being that it was the bicentennial of Poe’s birth. Even stranger yet was the no show of the Toaster this year.
Some observers actually cried when the news of no toast had taken place. Some wonder if the toaster had taken ill or had died prior to handing off the torch to another. In any case, the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum intends to keep a close watch over the site for the next couple of weeks in case the Toaster just happens to show up.
Now, I have a great and profound respect for Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve read several of his stories and poems over the years like Eldorado and The Gold Bug as well as The Masque of the Red Death, The Casque of Amontillado, The Raven, and The Pit and the Pendulum. The one story that has eluded me over the years is the Fall of the House of Usher, but it is definitely on my to do list. Still, this event that has taken place over the last 60 years is something I would definitely get a kick out of attending. Being a native of South Western PA, one would think I would be more up to making the trip out to “Punxsy” as we call it to see Phil’s shadow. Not bloody likely. First of all, I’ve watched the recorded event on cable and it seems like a big drunken party. The observance of the Poe Toaster has that air of macabre being set in a cemetery and the only imbibing to be taking place would be that of cognac or some port wine, which does not come in a box.
To sit in silence and witness such a mysterious event would interest me more than crowd surfing with a bunch of drunken coeds who would rather do a body shot of the groundhog’s belly than to actually be a part of something more steeped in history and culture than a prognosticating Punxsutawney Phil.
But from the looks of this year’s absence of the Poe Toaster, one can only speculate if 200 years after the birth of Poe was a good stopping point. Perhaps a toaster will show up and most likely it will be a copycat trying to keep up the tradition. Given the ravenous fandom of this event, it would be rather humorous but off putting to see multiple Toasters show up at the same time. Perhaps a coordination of members to a secret Poe club can keep the dream alive. After all, It’s hard to think that one will raise a glass to Poe’s memory nevermore.
In my 34 years on this Earth, there have been more forgotten Christmases than ones I can remember. The first three are a bit hazy, for sure. Sure, there was the year I got the Millennium Falcon and immediately broke off the radar dish. Something that foreshadowed the events of Return of the Jedi. Then, there was the year we got an Atari, although to be totally accurate it was the Sears Tele-Games version that came with the darker word grain finish and Target Fun instead of Combat. But for the most part, Christmas seems to come and go without a memorable event that makes it stand out against the mosaic of all Christmases combined. That was, until this year. Perhaps the two most remembered quotes of the holiday will be “Remember Caillou” and “Fire! Fire! I need a grown up!”
To start I should back up to Christmas Eve. Our two year old and a half year old is starting to get the idea of Christmas and we wanted to record the act of putting out cookies and milk for Santa. Of course, my daughter is all about quality assurance and immediately checked the cookies for suitable eating after she put them down on the stool in front of the tree. We also put some carrots out on the front porch in case the reindeer get tired of waiting on the roof. After lights out, we made sure Santa had enough space to put out all the presents. In fact, Santa became quite the vandal as he left messages on our back door, front door and refrigerator in red washable ink. It was something of a cross between Danny Torrance’s “REDRUM” and John McClane’s message about having a machine gun, "Ho, Ho, Ho." From the scrawling penmanship, I felt Santa was a sadistic bastard who didn't realize how hard it would be to clean up the mess after all was said and done.
The next morning, my in laws came over to watch the joy and awe like effect Christmas morning has on a child. The night before she was able to open one present and her excitement for that told us that a room full of presents should be a big deal. I stood in the living room, camera at the ready, and she waltzed down the hallway. She walked into the living room, right past the tree and over to an end table where her gift from the night before was sitting. She proceeded to stand there and show it to her grandmother, reveling in its coolness. Meanwhile, the blazing tree and multitude of gifts, that stood not two feet from her, went unnoticed. She didn’t even bat an eye at the cookie crumbs or gnawed carrot bits on the front porch. Looks like Christmas memories for her will be few and far between as well these first few years.
After we coaxed her into opening at least three of her gifts, we managed to clean up the discarded boxes and torn paper and prepared for a trip to my parents. It’s always hard to travel with children. They get so worked up because of the holiday and then you have to do all this travelling which just exhausts everyone. Not to mention, all kids want to do is play with their toys after they open them and to rip them from that playtime and trot them off to another person's house is not pleasing, even if that person also has presents for them. Since, my child was oblivious to presents at this point I figured it shouldn't be a problem. Although, it’s nice if we can work in a nap for her before we leave. She was already excited, not because she would be opening more presents but because she would be able to play with her cousin.
Now, we haven’t really seen a white Christmas around here for years. They are usually rainy and cold, but not white. This year was no exception, adding wind to the mix. It was hard at times to keep the new minivan on the road. Center of gravity was the one thing I hadn’t considered when replacing my low to the ground coupe. The car shimmied all over the road as the wind whipped over the hills and onto the turnpike. As we pulled into my parents’ driveway we could see the pine trees, that lined the driveway, bend and sway in the breeze. We took a few minutes to sit in the new sun room, which they had just added, and watched the closest pine almost kiss the glass more than once on the large windows.
About ten minutes before we were ready to eat, the power went out. My wife and I were standing in the living room with our daughter when it happened. I immediately called out to her to stand still as I walked over to try and find her in the darkness. Even if the outage had been confined to our house, alone, there would have been no outside lights to even give off the faintest glow through the windows. My parents live on the outskirts of town in a semi rural area, surrounded by farms and small housing plans. The only lights you get out there are from other houses and the occasional street light. We were pretty much in total darkness. Once I had gotten a hold of my kid, I picked her up while others worked on getting flashlights and candles. Once we had some light to go around, I grabbed a flashlight and aimed it straight at the ceiling. The white ceiling acted as a reflector bouncing the light around the room creating enough light to see but not enough to blind you from pointing a light in your face.
Luckily, my mother had finished cooking and was just getting ready to serve dinner when this happened or we may have been reduced to eating a Christmas dinner that was smiling at us. "Fa Ra Ra Ra Ra..." Now, I half expected my daughter to be in hysterics at this point. After all, she has issues with the dark in our house. But instead, she kept repeating the same thing over and over in the darkness. “Remember Caillou?” and then she would trail off into toddler incoherency. For those of you without small children, Caillou is a Canadian kids' cartoon on Sprout, based off of books. It’s about a little bald headed boy named Caillou. One of the episodes centered around a storm that caused the power to go out. She made it a point to tell everyone in “This one time at Band Camp” fashion “Remember Caillou, when the lights went out?” This went on for a least 30 minutes.
Dinner was excellent as always and afterwards we retired to the sun room to open presents. Usually, we would all just open simultaneously but due to conditions we took turns. One person would hold a flashlight while the other would open and vice versa. My father who claims that he doesn’t need or want anything for Christmas was actually jazzed for one present he opened this year. It was an LED lighted head band. It was practical and easily applicable in our current situation. We had candles around the room and a few oil lamps but this thing threw off a lot of light. He even hung it on the ceiling fan shining enough light for everyone. Even in perfect conditions we would have had trouble navigating from one side of the room to the other with all the presents. Because of the outage it was twice as tricky and this little bugger helped out a lot. At times, we couldn’t tell what exactly we had opened or who it was from, but we all enjoyed ourselves.
After presents, traditionally came pumpkin pie, but for some of us Tylenol would have been welcome. A couple of us began complaining of slight headaches and a bit of dizziness. We didn’t realize that maybe three oil lanterns would be a hazard. We decided to forgo the lamps during pie and coffee and I opted to wear the new most excellent Christmas present since Ralphie got his Red Ryder B.B. gun. The light was great if you needed to shine directly in front of you but in this case you could blind someone. So, I flipped it upside down and allowed the light to point upwards. I walked out into the living room where my daughter was playing and heard my nephew calling from the kitchen. He had taken up residence at the kitchen table with his new Nintendo DS while waiting for desert.
On the table, a gel based candle had finally reached its flash point and the gel caught fire, creating a larger flame. “Fire. Fire” He called out, calmly, while still playing the game system. My wife and sister in law stood in the kitchen and assessed the fire. It didn’t look that bad but it soon became bigger. “Fire. Fire” he called again, “I need a grown up!” They rushed over and I made my way around the living room and into the kitchen. Both my wife and sister in law had begun blowing on the table which was now engulfing the entire candle and with every blow threatened to spread. They both seemed sort of stunned and a bit alarmed at the growing threat. I calmly walked over and grabbed one of the pie plates. In what looked like my ignorance of the situation, in order to save the pie from disaster, was actually methodical. I merely placed the plate on top of the candle, snuffing out the oxygen supply. Both women looked at me like I had just grew antlers.
With the fire out, we proceeded with desert which deteriorated into fits of giggling and uncontrollable laughter brought on by what I can only figure was exposure to the oil lamps. My brother asked what my father used for fuel to which my father said, "Some can in the garage." I followed up asking if the can had a dirty old rag for a cap. All the while, I wore the head band lamp upside down on my head shining upward at the ceiling. My head nodded as I laughed at the littlest of things causing the light to create a strobe effect. My wife, who had really felt the downturn of the holidays this year declared that this would be the most memorable Christmases ever. With that, my daughter looked up with a whip cream goatee and said, “Remember Caillou?” Once again, we broke up into hysterics.
But my wife was right. I admit, this season was a bit of a downer. After all, 2009 was pretty unfavorable in that we had more valleys to navigate than peaks in terms of moods. Her mom battled cancer most of the year, beginning with surgery to remove a brain tumor, moved onto pulmonary emboli and a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, that ended with her having additional surgery and chemotherapy. She lost her job due to redundancy from a merger/acquisition in her company and her home was flooded during heavy rains in June. Her usual spunky attitude towards Christmas was dour with thoughts of having to wear a wig or shell out money for repairs and Christmas presents from her savings instead of regular pay. In the end, she came out on the winning side but had taken a lot of lumps to get there and it showed. We should be thankful that we get another Christmas with a woman that should have been dead 13 years ago. That’s 13 Christmases that were unremarkable just because no one was missing. Had it gone the other way, my wife would have probably done everything she could have to forget the holiday.
Still, she was right, this was the best Christmas ever. Thankfully we weren’t all too hopped up on diesel fumes and could remember it….and Caillou.
For a two and a half year old there are certain things, in this world, that are not to be questioned. One is whether or not they want your help on something. My kid’s pre-programmed response to any question of that nature is, “I do it myself.” Another is if they want to help YOU do something. My kid wants to help me work on my laptop, banging away at the keys, popping out the plastic flash card insert or just plain ole yanking the wireless mouse USB receiver right out of the port on the side. But, sometimes her intentions are good. This weekend was the annual Griswold tree trimming event where yours truly makes the long arduous trek up into his attic to retrieve the big ole honking Christmas tree from its secured location in the back of the decorations and to the left of the dismantled futon. Needless to say, it does not fit through the door very well, either way, and tends to leave more paint chips and ripped off insulation in its wake than plastic needles. I accepted it from my in laws as a replacement for the $70 Ames special 6’ 5” Spruce that consists of a pole and 40 or so individual branches that must be fluffed and unfolded before inserting tab A into slot B on its respective tier. This is what we call fun, right?
After doing some light spackling, I’m ready to get the tree into place. The first thing that we have to do is make room. That involves moving the furniture around, flip flopping the entertainment center and the couch and then taking the recliner, AKA my shirt shop design studio, and putting it on the opposite wall, next to the tree. The love seat that was in that spot now gets put up my ass because I have no place for it whatsoever in the living room. Last year we put it in a spare bedroom right after we put on top of one of my cats… long story, go here. But, in order to put the couch into the spare bedroom, we had to slide it down the hall with very little clearance, taking into account door knobs. After that, I to pull the bedroom door off the hinges, remove the legs from the couch and then actually have an empty space to sit it on once in the room. We managed to forgo that geometrical math problem from hell and fit it nicely on the back porch. No, I don’t have an El Camino up on blocks in the driveway. The porch is enclosed and there is no washing machine out there.
OK, the tree is up and all I have to do is plug it in and decorate it. Prelit trees are cool, huh? Now, why the hell is half of the tree not lit? So, I dismantled Devastator, as I call it, and checked the plugs. This is the one thing I hate about prelit trees. If you lose a strand and the fuses are good, you have to check every bulb and it’s not like they are all clearly marked, and it’s not like I have a lot of light to work with, and it’s not like I have the greatest eyesight in the world. In this situation you have two options. Spend the next two hours checking every single bulb to make sure that it isn’t the problem, or be a Plugger, like I am and just add a string of lights in the darkened areas. My wife hates this method but the tree is one of the few places I win out in an argument. Now, instead of working hard, I like to work smart. Efficiency in the work place as I call it. Let’s wring out problems and have a well oiled machine. Anyway, instead of putting it all together, I started with Devastators bottom, added a string of lights to the darkened area and then added another section and then checked all those plugs.
What occurred next could only be described as hearing the internal thoughts of a referee reviewing a play on the field. “It’s out. No, it’s in. It’s out. It’s in. it’s blinking?” I looked at my wife and said, “Blinking?” The plug must be shot because you had to hold it a certain way to keep the string on and then of course you had two other strands plugged into that one all dependent on the first one’s ability to stay lit. At one point I must have been jiggling the plug, causing it to blink. I finally got it situated into a staying on position and then added two more strands of lights to what was still dark. This isn’t a fire hazard, no.
After getting Devastator’s head on and plugged in, I could begin decorating. Now, this is a point of contention between my wife and I. She wanted to listen to Christmas music while she cleaned and I decorated. The selection on the cable music channels was lacking, although I did enjoy Bob Seger’s “Little Drummer Boy,” so I opted to switch the channel and found ABC Family running Harry Potter movies. That’s Christmas-y right? The point of contention comes in because my wife thinks that I work better without the distraction. I think that commercials make me work faster and get more done while the movie allows me to take time and really get a good look at the tree, making sure all the ornaments are properly placed. They go on in this order. Strands of pearls first. Balls and other solid objects go on next, usually silver, gold, blue, and then burgundy, respectively. Next comes all the specialized ornaments like figurines. Then the ribbon goes around and finally, the bow. If all goes well I should be done in two hours.
Four hours later, my daughter was up and helping me put on the last ornaments. It was a good movie, what can I say? She even helped put on her own ornament and held the ribbon as I ran it around the tree. All the while saying “I help” and “I do it, myself.” I explained that the ornaments are glass and could break. She finally agreed to let me do it and then tried to put the empty cardboard ribbons spools on the tree. Well, they weren’t made of glass, so technically, she was allowed, I guess.
Having the tree up the first weekend of December is a feather in my cap as a holiday purist. Unfortunately, I spend the next three weekends criticizing my work and moving low hanging ornaments up out of the reach of cat and kid. I even found one of them snuggled under the tree skirt, hidden from view. The cat, not the kid. By the end of the month, the bottom of the tree is mostly just lights and the top is laden with all kinds of ornaments that have sought higher ground as if a flood threatened their lower living arrangements.
Usually, my wife has a lot to say about how the tree looks. It’s one of those things that as the decorator you can’t get a handle on because you are too close to it. She nods or asks me to move something, which is fine. At least the one person I can count on to like it is my daughter. After she woke up from her nap and wandered into the living room, the half decorated tree was dim in comparison to her bright eyes and smile. “Oooohh” she said. “That’s a pity Critmas Tree, Daddy-O”
“Thank you.” I reply. “Would you like to put your ornament on?”
Houses are a pain in the ass. I love being a homeowner, though. Sometimes I feel like I rushed into the whole deal. However, looking back at how the economy took a nose dive and mortgage owners became almost like third class passengers and steerage on the Titanic I’m sort of glad I did jump on the bandwagon. After all, when Wall Street collapsed under the weight of its own nefarious practices, I was still sitting in my home with a monthly payment I could afford and my lender wasn’t sweating bullets.
But that is the process of buying and paying for a home. What I really find frustrating is keeping the darn thing from collapsing around me. My yard makes Jack and Jill exhibit Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I have four trees that rise up like turrets, surrounding a keep, in the corners of my yard. Unfortunately, these turrets do little to protect the house except from rain. I can pretty much walk to my car in a downpour and get only a smattering of rain upon my brow. Otherwise they constantly threaten the safety of my home from falling branches, well placed acorns atop my head and the prospect of having gutter grown trees in the Spring and clogged up pathways in the Fall.
On the inside we have another story. Every January, I must make the arduous process of tearing down all the decorations from Christmas and stow them in the attic. Now, the attic is not exactly friendly to persons over four foot tall. The top of the staircase leads to an area where the hunchback of Notre Dame may feel slightly comfortable but that’s about as far as he can go. While there is ample square footage in which to store items, the ability to get them to and from their destination is a tricky process.
Being that Christmas commands more area, the space immediately to the left of the steps is designated as all Christmas as well as the space immediately in front of the steps, where I keep the Christmas trees. To the right of the steps is Halloween and the temporary spot for everyday items. In the ten and two positions, on either side of the steps, belongs the Easter decorations and the Stuff-we-don’t-use-but-weren’t-smart-enough-to-throw-out-before-it-got-blocked-in-by-huge-seasonal-boxes items which include old luggage from a relative and a disassembled futon.
If I am lucky, and I mean lucky in the sense that I am not boarding stray cats, hoping that they get adopted, or having a family picnic, I may be able to use my back porch for storage. It’s enclosed and, while not fully weatherproofed, stays dry, yet cold. This year we are using the porch for the empty bins that once contained newspaper wrapped contents which are now distributed around the house in an organized fashion.
I say organized because I made the decision to not have the repeated conversation of “Where did I put this last year?” with my wife. I took pictures of all the decorations once they were up and kept them handy. Still, sometimes her tastes change and the location of such items as wood carved scarecrows or wall hangings in the shape of sleds will shift to other parts of the house. This is why I usually maintain a laissez-faire attitude with her decorations and focus mainly on the things that are always a constant. Those things are the mantle decorations, the Christmas trees, and the little Victorian Village houses on top of the entertainment center. These areas are my domain and I rule them with an iron fist.
Now, every September we experience a bit of a crisis. We have to get decorated for Halloween. The problem is that Halloween is such a constricting holiday. I mean that in the sense of you can decorate in September but then you kind of usher in the end of Summer. You also have one day to truly celebrate your interior decorating achievement. It used to be that once Halloween was done, we would remove all of the Halloween type items such as ghosts, witches, Jack O’ Lanterns and other spooky stuff and leave up the harvest items like pumpkins, gourds and Indian corn. That ended after we found it difficult to keep the upstairs and downstairs items separated as well as having half empty bins with Halloween items and overstuffed bins with harvest and Fall items. Also, I got tired of lugging bins up and down the attic steps every other week. So, we opted to just leave Halloween up until we were ready to decorate for Christmas. Christmas is a holiday that stretches over the end of the year into January because we just want to enjoy the lights a little longer.
But Halloween has its frustrations as well. After all, it seems like we just decorated and now it’s time to tear it all down and put up another set. I will say that this year we are somewhat on top of our game. While Halloween was down probably a week before the holiday, Christmas will be done by the end of the first week of December…hopefully. I say that because we always find some reason to put off the finishing touches. Thankfully, Halloween is all down and packed away and my wife, who I love dearly, but sometimes can’t reconcile her cleaning methods, always does her Spring cleaning in November.
It actually makes sense, in a way. Her reasoning is that this is the time of year that everyone comes to visit and why not have the walls and floors really scrubbed well for that onslaught of visitors. I think it needs to happen in September with the usual dusting and floor mopping to keep it up until the end of the year. But once again, I am just the hired hand, the serf who just gets roped into late night cleanings or all day carpet steaming sessions. I will say that, for the money, renting a Nautavac from the local grocery store was an awesome idea and it did wonders for the carpets we do have.
Now, for those of you who ask, “How bad could it possibly be to decorate your house?” I realize it, too. I only live in a three bedroom ranch with a finished basement. Really, how much stuff could I have to decorate the house with for the holidays? It’s not about quantity it’s about insanity. We literally have seven Rubbermaid totes dedicated just to Halloween. That’s probably a half or a third of what’s in the attic for Christmas, not to mention two Christmas trees and the outside lights, wreaths on all the windows, the ten individually boxed houses that go on the entertainment center along with all the towels, pillows, dishes, and floor coverings that are Christmas themed. Believe me, it is a lot. That’s nothing of the three or four bags or boxes of stuff we haven’t used in a couple of years but haven’t thrown out.
So, yes, home ownership is a blessing and a curse. It has its joys and moments of desperation. In all, I like having the house looking nice, but I wish it was someone else’s job to make it that way. After all, you’re talking to the guy who got stranded on his roof while trying to clean the gutters last month.
In the minds of children, three holidays usually ring out as the most fun. Easter, Christmas, and Halloween. It’s no surprise that all three involved getting some kind of treat whether it be presents or candy. In fact, all three have the distinction of sharing a duality with religious iconography. Santa Claus with Jesus Christ, The Easter Bunny with, again, Jesus Christ, and Halloween with the Zombie Jesus Christ….I’m kidding, of course. That’s because Halloween has more connections with Pagan themes than Christianity, unless of course you think of Halloween as being a Satanic holiday. If that’s the case you probably think kids who read or watch Harry Potter will turn into a witch and actually do magic. Face it, Halloween is the Celtic New Year’s Eve. All this demonic worship and references to the occult were added later. Anybody who chooses to look at Halloween as a reason to worship Satan is about as on the mark as people who believe that evil aliens live in volcanoes and for a price can make you famous actor. Jumping on couches is optional.
So, being a Halloween purist, I choose to look at the more modernized version of Halloween, stripped of any religious connotations and boiled down to the basic desire to have fun and be creative from the perspective of childhood and adulthood. To that end, I think if you are going to at least get involved with the holiday and expect others to take you seriously, you need to do at least some of the work.
It’s simple. As a kid, you dress up and go trick or treating, collecting as much candy as you can. You take a lot of time and effort to come up with the right costume. You are respectful to those you visit and you thank them for their treat. As an adult, you do your part to help make the experience for little ones enjoyable and you make sure they understand all the rules.
Growing up, I took Halloween seriously. Now, my mother told me of how her hometown would have trick or treating that would last an entire week. That would have been cool for a kid, and expensive for an adult. What I find sad is that nowadays, some kids are forced to go trick or treating during daylight hours and sometimes on a different day than Halloween. And additionally, a lot kids don’t even put in the effort to come up with a good costume and just walk around a camouflage shirt or football jersey and call it a costumer. They grab a pillowcase and go out with the sort of enthusiasm that makes you think that it really is Night of the Living Dead out there.
I remember the good old days of the early 80s. Your parents would go out and buy you that kiddie costume that consisted of an vinyl outfit and a plastic mask. It was the kind of mask that forced you to make sure you brushed your teeth beforehand because you’d be subject to your own breath for the next few hours, not to mention profusely sweating underneath that plastic shield held together with an elastic band. Visibility was a matter of perspective. If you tried to adjust your mask to see better, you risked cutting your eyes on the jagged holes punched into the mask or massive welts from the snapping of the elastic on your skin.
As I got a little older, costumes became a little more inventive. One year, I scrounged around our house and came up with enough supplies to pull off a fully wrapped up patient. Some old crutches, hospital gown, and a pair of long johns made up the bulk of the costume while bandages around my arms and head completed the look. It also served as a great costume for our grade school’s party. After we would get dressed up, the teacher would try to guess who we were as we sat in different seats. I still don’t know how she was able to easily tell it was me under those bandages. In any case the coolest of all costumes was in fourth grade.
In June of 1984, Ghostbusters had become a HUGE hit at the box office. By October, even at the age of nine I knew the cultural impact of the movie on the Halloween holiday. Come hell or high water, I was going to be a Ghostbuster. I don’t recall if costumes in retail stores had caught up to Pop Culture at this point, so I have no idea if there was already a version being sold to the public. In any case, I knew I could pull it off with what I had around me. As always, I could come up with grand schemes, but the nine year old mind had no way of understanding the mechanics of actually executing such plans. I called on the two smartest people I knew, my dad and my brother, for help.
We took an old gray snow suit and established it as the jumpsuit. I drew the logo of the ghost with a line through it and a name tag to be taped on the pocket area. My two genius engineers constructed the proton pack by taking an old black back pack and putting a cardboard box inside to square it up. Using a six volt flashlight and a discarded gun stock, with no barrel or trigger, they created the particle thrower. Taking the mirrored cone from the flashlight and the bulb they built a lighted front end of the gun and wired it to light up with a trigger on the gun stock. The wire was then run through an old corrugated vacuum hose to a battery inside the backpack. In all, it was a crudely designed costume but it was the coolest thing I’d ever wore and made me an instant hit during our school party. Someone had the 45 of the Ray Parker Jr. movie theme in class and played it as I did the dance from the end of the video, complete with a fake sliming that had me end up flat on my back. From the outside observer, I probably looked like the biggest dork on Earth but, in my mind, it was hippest thing I ever did in my life. Looking back, if someone were to have attempted that same costume, designed the same way, they would probably have been sent to the principal’s office for brandishing a weapon.
Fourth grade was the pinnacle of Halloween for me, as a kid. As adolescence set in, I became too old for trick or treating, but too young for wild Halloween parties. Soon, the problems of the world reared their ugly head into our lives. Kids from my generation were warned by McGruff the crime dog to not talk to strangers and long before Amber Alerts we were well aware of the creepy men in the trucks offering candy. I distinctly remember watching Adam on television and sat in disbelief as they found the body of little Adam Walsh. It was beyond the mind of an eight year old to comprehend that children could be killed. That was my first taste of mortality outside the passing of my grandfather. Still, that was not going to deter a kid on Halloween. We trick or treat no matter what. We are just careful and follow the rules. But when I turned 10 and had moved into a semi rural area outside of our town proper, trick or treating hours was moved to a Sunday afternoon between 2 PM and 4 PM.
That slight was a blaspheme to the heart of the Halloween Purist. I can understand with the danger of abductions and the amount of traffic that would zip along the infrequently monitored roads of my area, you had to be safe and what better way to be safe was during the day. However, the frequency of trick or treaters, along with the bad timing reduced the amount of visitors so much that my parents stopped handing out treats. In my last attempt at childhood, a friend and I wore makeshift costumes and went trick or treating in the middle of the afternoon which made some people scratch their heads. After all, when two thirteen year olds show up on your doorstep asking for candy, you think they are jackasses. But soon, adulthood would come into play and the holiday became fun again for the Halloween Purist. See you in Part Two.
