Things I did once...#2

One day, when I was a kid, I got the brilliant notion that if I rode my bike, into the side of the house, the rubber in the front tire would cause the bike to bounce right off the wall. What fun, huh? 

Have you ever had one of those moments, where the clouds part, the skies open, and pure truth flows into your mind? I had that moment, a fraction of a second before impact with the handle bars. 

An object in motion, tends to stay in motion, with the same speed and in the same direction, unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Like a house.

Photostory Friday: Cargo Shorts

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

"What are you doing?" asked my boss, as he paid me a surprise visit, in my office this morning.

"Well," I replied, sheepishly "I'm...uh...taking pictures of my pants."

I love cargo shorts. I have several pair, from Old Navy (the most comfortable) in various shades of khaki. In the summer time, that's all I wear.

Okay, it's not all I wear, but you get the point. I can always tell when the seasons are changing, because my shorts start to fray, and wear a little thin (well, I can tell the seasons are changing in the other ways too). They're size 34 these days. That's a little disturbing.  

I've always maintained that boys carry everything they need to survive, in their pockets. And with cargo shorts, I have two additional, and very big, pockets, in which to carry more of the stuff that I can't possibly live without. But here's the problem: I also carry a LOT of other stuff too. See, I'm a note writer -- I constantly scribble notes to myself, intending to get back to them, but more often than not, I don't. But somewhere, back in the deep, dusty, cobwebs of my mind, I believe that what I have written down is important, yet when it comes time to transfer the contents of my pockets to the next pair of shorts, I'm usually trying to get out the door in the morning and, well, you probably see where this is going...

So, anyway, I had a little time this morning, so I thought I'd clean out my pockets...Here's what I found:

Right Front Pocket: Key ring (with 16 keys -- I think I need a second key ring) Pen (my Parker Jotter -- essential for writing notes to self, I've carried some version of this pen since I was nineteen. I take it everywhere. Almost everywhere).  Generic package of two Ibuprofen tablets, from the medicine cabinet in my office. I had a headache a couple of weeks ago.

Right Side Pocket: Knife. Made by Gerber (the knife company, not the baby food company), half straight, half serrated edge, 440 steel, 4 inch blade. If you carry a knife, you will find a use for it everyday. And most of those reasons don't involve hurting your co-workers. Most of them. Ipod Nano. 4 gigabytes of books on CD.

Back Right Pocket: Wallet. Contains driver's license, which apparently expires this month -- good to know -- debit card, library cards, from 6 different library systems (I'm such a rebel). And, astonishingly, 75 dollars in cash, from a photo shoot over the weekend. I forgot all about it, there's so rarely anything in there. I wonder how long it would have stayed there?

Back Left Pocket: One, used, toilet paper tube. Sometimes, you write notes to yourself on whatever is handy. This one says "Leg lamp, ink, dvd, shoelaces." I have no idea how old this is.

Front Left Pocket: One rumpled dollar bill. Two Jolley Ranchers -- peach smoothie and orange smoothie. Five Stride Spearmint gum wrappers. Cell phone -- I hate my cell phone, but I'm eligible for an upgrade this month! Two quarters (wow! where did all this money come from?) -- an Ohio and a Virginia. And three notes to self: 1. Parmesan, Butter, AJ (apple juice) - a grocery list from last week. Glad I kept that.  2. Ink for pen, notebook (go figure), novel, fall leaves, Revolutionary War, ghosts, something illegible.  3. A list of future blog post ideas - it's a surprise!

and finally, Left Side Pocket: To go menu from Chili's (I got a craving last Saturday night), One more note to self, this one written on a napkin from Jamba Juice -- Violin, ink (I go through a lot of ink, writing all these notes), pigs, tacos, prescriptions, gas, bank, ice cream cake. One mysterious little scrap of paper, that just says unicycle. What the...?

Full pack of Stride Spearmint gum. This is the gum I endorse. My dentist/brother-in-law says that the ingredient zylotol promotes healthier teeth. That's why I chew it. That, and the fact that you can blow bubbles with it, even though it isn't "bubble gum." Carmex -- my lips were chappy -- in August. And last but not least, my flashlight. My boss makes me work in the dark, so it's three LED's come in handy. And it also comes equipped with a red laser light, useful for pointing at co-workers, from afar, causing them to think that they are being targeted by a sniper. We have a lot of those in the moving industry. 

Am I the only one who does this?

This is why I wear a belt.

That reminds me... I need some ink.

October: 31 posts in 31 days

A challenge! I love October, and in honor of the greatest month of the year, I've decided to post once a day, for the entire month. 

I suppose a bigger challenge would be to post something interesting every day for a month. But, let's just take it simple to start with -- baby steps.

So here is my promise, my oath, my solemn vow:

I shall post, every day, throughout the month of October, 2008 -- come rain or sleet or Armageddon, no matter how long or short, no matter how profound or inane, by the end of this month, this blog archive will be thirty one entries longer.

And hopefully, by November, someone is still reading this blog, other than me.

That's one.

Thirty more to go.

A thank you note...

A thank you note:

Dear mom, 

Thank you for the gift of life. Thirty six years ago this Saturday, you brought a small baby, with a multitude of challenges, into the world. You brought me through the surgeries, and the cysts and the cotton balls taped over my little eyes, as they baked me under the heating lamp. And what you got in return, I'm afraid, was a know-it-all son, who didn't begin to comprehend the road you walked until I had children of my own. Thank you for that too -- were it not for the gift of my own life, I would never have known the greatest joys of my life -- being a husband and father. 

Life did not always treat you kindly. A young marriage and a young divorce, followed by another. But, you never let us boys go without. I marvel, looking back, at what you did to hold our family together. The odds against you were so staggering, that I can only begin to grasp the enormity of the situation, from a distance of many years. 

One of your boys did not complete the journey, with us. At least not yet. But Scott will be yours to raise someday -- I believe that with all my heart. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child, but I got a glimpse, once I had a seven year old son of my own. 

I don't remember a Christmas that was ever lacking, though there must have been so little. 

You are a successful mother. I know, because the home we grew up in was a home of happiness and love. If not always order.

Thanks, Mom.

I love you.

Things I did once...#1

Okay, here's another semi-occasional addition to the blog (and, like the others, I may or may not get around to doing a second entry some day). Something I did once:

One time, when I was about sixteen, on the way home from the swimming pool that we had gone to for a scouting event, the car I was in had one of those big suction cups in the back seat -- you know, the kind that body shops use to pull dents out of cars.

I stuck it on my chest, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled (well, you get the idea). 

I gave myself a hickey, the size of a volleyball.

It lasted for three months.

The end.

Photostory Friday: AUTUMN!!!

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

It's Autumn and I am pumped! This is, hands down, my favorite time of year. I once saw a statistic that stated that autumn moves down the slope of a mountain at a rate of about 200 feet per day. I don't know if that is accurate or not, but I have been watching the mountains above my house for several weeks now, and it's almost fully colored.  It's almost to my house! My belly button has been puckering and unpuckering, with excitement, for days now.

Fall is college football and the fragrance of decaying leaves. It's warm days and cool nights. It's subdued light and Ichabod Crane. 

It is the unbearably, breathtakingly, beautiful time of the year. Fall is when Nature performs the show, she has been preparing for all year -- an extravaganza of cranberry and rust, goldenrod and pumpkin orange. I have never been to New England in the fall (I've never been to New England at all, for that matter) but that is my dream vacation. I love living where we have all four seasons, and, truthfully, I really enjoy all of them. But I get tired of the heat of summer, and I weary of the cold and dreariness of winter, but I never tire of Autumn.

It is so beautiful, that it overloads my memory, and overpowers my senses and I forget, from year to year just how stunning the Fall is -- so it comes as a nice serendipitous surprise every September.

Well...that was a little more rapturous than I had intended, but ...in the words of Ramses...

So let it be written. So let it be done.

Dorks 'R' Me

While browsing the internet the other day, I came upon a ghost from my past: The Huffy Bandit. My first bike. The most ridiculous of bikes. The Edsel of bikes. 

It was the early 1980's, and all of my friends were getting bikes. BMX was the buzzword of the the day, though none of us was actually involved with Boy's Motorcross. My best friend, Aaron, had a bike called "Gold Fever." He told me it was a disco bike. I saw no reason to doubt him -- like I said, it was the very early 80's.

So, when my parents finally agreed to get me a bike, this was what they came home with. Almost. Mine also had a long, trapezoidal shaped seat. It looked like a black pound cake. There were, literally, dozens of boys, about my age, in the neighborhood where I grew up, we all got bikes about the same time. Only I rode the Huffy Bandit. 

As an aside, the bike was supposedly inspired by the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies. Remember that highlight of cinematic history -- when the biggest name in the world was Burt Reynolds?

See those uniquely curved handle bars? The combination of the bars and the elongated seat made it possible to do NOT ONE COOL TRICK!!! I couldn't wheelie, I couldn't jump. The most spectacular feat I ever accomplished on the Bandit was to try and navigate a dip on a dirt road, and fall on my face. It was a lot like riding on the back of mentally challenged moose. But, not as graceful. 

I blame my parents. It' obvious, looking back, that they are to blame for the dork that I am today. You should have seen the way they let me dress back then: cowboy boots and guns, a space helmet and a superman cape. Yes, I was dressing myself at that point, but they had the power to stop it, and they did NOTHING! I believe it was a conspiracy.

Proof you ask? I submit my final exhibit:

About the same time as the Huffy Bandit Affair, as it has come to be known, the kids in the neighborhood were getting roller skates -- the pre-roller blade kind. These were the skates with the plastic wheels, and the big rubber stopper on the end of the toe. The kind that made the quiet whooooooooshing sound, when you rode them down the street. Naturally, I wanted some too. 

Christmas that year was the only Christmas, of my childhood, that I distinctly remember there being no snow. A perfect Christmas for roller skates, and, on Christmas morning, I got roller skates. With metal wheels. And no brakes. Naturally, I was the only one so blessed. 

Do you know the sound of metal scraping along pavement? It's like a cow bell around your neck. It's a dork alarm, so that everyone knows when you're coming. 

I'm not bitter though. 

Really.