Can’t a man dress up like a goat without causing a national stir? Come on, people. It’s America! Modern America. We’re a civilized land of understanding citizens. It’s about time we stop judging and start accepting. Men who dress like goats are just like the rest of us. They just smell a little different.
Suffering from those vacation adjustment blues
The VAB has set in. Oh, and it’s a mean one. Made worse by California jet lag. A three-hour time difference that socks it to you after the flight back. It was past midnight when we all settled down and got the eyes to rest the first couple nights. And God only knows what time we woke up. That’ll do wonders for work. And it doesn’t help in getting over the VAB — the “Vacation Adjustment Blues.” That’s when you come back from a particularly amazing trip and the real world seems … well … a little too real.
Loving and hating in California
On a trip in California. San Francisco. Pacific Coast Highway. Los Angeles. Beautiful here on the other side of the country. And chilly. Lots of thoughts. Lots of loves and hates. Typed them into iPhone. Here they are: Hate: Typing into iPhone. All mays trying to correct my words and spelling. My spelling is horrible! Deal with it iPhone! You will just screen it up anywhere. Love: San Francisco. What a town. Friendliest people. Fog rolling in all the time. Cool museums. Breakfast places that serve smoked chicken apple sausage with eggs. I have found the address to Heaven.
Pick a parenting style, any parenting style
I must be a damn fool. A DAMN fool! Never, in my wildest dreams, in my foolhardy notions, did I realize there were styles — actual styles! — of parenting. Did you know this? Do you have one? It’s apparently just like clothing … plaid, skinny jeans, 70s post-hippie chic, drank two 12-packs and woke up in a kilt three days later. All styles.
Termite tenting prep-o-rama
It’s only two days out of the house — two days that will be over with by the time you read this. But it already feels like an eternity … and we haven’t even left yet. We’re still packing to leave. It’s quite a process, prepping a house so the termite people can erect their grand circus tent of horrors. They’ll pump it full of gas, eradicating all those wood-eating critters who think my 100-year-old domicile is a McDonalds drive-thru. The termites have been coming out in little swarms, dancing about like drunken spring breakers. “Party-on, dudes,” I tell them. “Enjoy it while you can.”
Pondering the REAL questions about extraterrestrial life
The new movie “Prometheus” — about man’s origins, spaceships and creatures that like to treat us like we’re chickens in a processing plant — has me pondering the existence of extraterrestrials. Whether there is life out in the stars — out amongst the great unknown. And what questions we would want answered by these intelligent beings. Unlike great scientists and philosophers, I have simpler mysteries I want solved. Like do they have any colors we don’t know about? Something you couldn’t get in a box of Crayola 64. What would it look like, that amazing, wonderful, never-seen-before discovery? Would it have a cool name like “jimpooza” or something simpler … like “stan?”
Last flight of the kindergartner
She had to say it again. Her tone sounded … well, it sounded like she thought I was an imbecile: “Yes! TOMORROW is the last day of kindergarten.” OK, I am sort of an imbecile. We men don’t compute things until they’re laid out in front of us with neon and barbecue sauce slathered all over. We should pay better attention. We should listen once in a while, but that requires more brain cells than we have in the bank.
The wretched son and the flower box failure
And now to sound like a horrible, awful, no-good son who says things like this: I should have bought my mother a Christmas present instead of agreeing to build her flower boxes. Yep, I said it. I’m a lout. An ungrateful sack of rotting kidney beans. I should have bought her socks or ear muffs or a gift certificate for plants. Something … anything! It would have been over and done with. Delivered on Christmas morning. Unwrapped, fawned over and forgotten.
Searching for greatness … or just surviving Orlando in the summer
Muhammad Ali once said, “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about quotes like that. Thinking about how great champions — heroes of the sports world! — pushed themselves to the limits … overcame obstacles … undertook grueling training to climb high atop pedestals of glory. I am on a similar quest. A similar training program that I hope will bring me greatness. It will push my body to the limits. Finely tune me so I’m ready for anything. No, not just anything. Just one thing — my single-minded focus — my Mt. Everest — my championship — MY glory!!!!
A search for answers to my dog … if she is a dog
I’m just about ready to drop some money on a mystery: What kind of dog is my dog? Or is she even a dog? Because she’s quite peculiar. Not in a bad way. There’s peculiar bad — like what you say when you’re trying to be polite: “I must say, GULP!, this apple and sausage pie is, you know, peculiar!” And then there’s just plain peculiar … the true definition … like “what the hell is that thing?” That’s my dog, Lily.