Posts Tagged ‘life’

I turn 40 this year. I was joking with my friend Dave (who passed that milestone last year) today and mentioned I was just waiting to see which part would drop off. We made some crude speculations along those lines and laughed about it. A few hours later I bent to open a bag of dog food and got some nice stabbing back pains that settled into a steady ache, which hasn't gone away yet. Usually my rhetorical questions don't get answered quite so quickly… Before the medically-minded mention it, this is not an age-related thing. Lower back pain is a common ailment, especially for people like me with lifelong bad posture who spend the vast bulk of their lives riding a desk. I just enjoyed the irony. I'm off to take a nice 4-in-the-morning walk around the woods and a hot shower, just thought I'd bitch a bit. Ow. Ow. Ow.

We watched "Transporter 2" last weekend, and, as we do after every impossible action driving movie with cartoon physics, we talked about our own driving habits. I am constantly surprised at how many intelligent people fail to share my unshakeable belief: every other person on the road is purposely out to kill you.

Well, maybe not every person. I'm pretty sure the Road Ranger folks don't want to make any more work for themselves, and there are probably a few new drivers who haven't checked their glove compartments yet for my dossier and their nefarious orders.

But there's simply no other excuse for why my whole entire car seems to be invisible and tractor trailers race each other for the chance to cut me off. Maniacs ride my bumper and playfully nudge me towards the bridge railing. People race their engines at stoplights, anxious for their chance to T-bone me. Even squirrels wait motionless for hours before they leap out to make me swerve.

It wasn't always like this. When I got my first car I didn't drive defensively. Or offensively, or in any manner that indicated I was aware of exterior stimuli whatsoever.

Instead I treated my car as an auxiliary bedroom. I had my music, I had books stashed here and there, I had food and drink and usually at least two of my friends with me at all times. Driving was more like hanging out, but at great speeds. Other drivers, when I noticed them at all, were nothing more than background decorations that occasionally had to be navigated around.

On occasion I also used my car as an experiment in physics I happened to be sitting in, usually prefaced with the words, "Hey, I wonder if we could…"

That all changed in an instant the day I strapped in our son's child seat and I realized with a blinding flash that I was my child's sole defense against hordes of homicidal motorists. I've calmed down somewhat since then, but evidence still points to my theory.

On the other hand, my brother-in-law Rodger drives the way a careful, efficient person would drive if he was being chased by enemy helicopters. To my knowledge he has never raced up a conveniently angled tow truck bed and sailed over three SUVs filled with armed insurgents to land skidding on an overpass, but he always seems alert to the possibility.

To ride in my son Tony's car is to know that all the vehicles around you are contact explosive, like driving through a moving mine field. The temptation to yell "Bang!" just to see what would happen is overpowering.

My dad always drove with a specific goal in mind, with a specific deadline and a calculated amount of gas expenditure. Had a yak jumped out on I-95 playing "My Way" on a tuba he would have jogged slightly to the left and then sped up to make up the lost .068 seconds in drive time.

Most of my friends in school drove with a goal in mind too: the Winner's Circle. They were all Dale Earnhardt dropped onto a huge racetrack with traffic signals and a never-ending line of competitors to be outwitted, outraced, or simply bashed.

The one attitude I had a problem accepting was my wife's. Teres treats everyone on the road, against all evidence, as her best friend. When they stop suddenly, pull out unexpectedly, or just spin in place, she doesn't get mad because she knows they don't mean it. It just happens.

And you know, maybe she's right. Who among us can say we've never innocently taken out a mailbox, or reached to add ketchup to our fries and found ourselves skidding sideways 65 feet into a farmer's market? It happens. It's certainly a more positive way of dealing with traffic and you don't feel as worn out afterwards.

So I've decided to adapt this mental viewpoint. From now on I'll pause and wave drivers in front. I'll move to the slow lane to let faster drivers pass. I'll smile and gently nod and we'll all drive on a little bit happier, a little bit more at ease with ourselves.

But I'll secretly know what I'm really doing. I'm thwarting their evil plans.

And now I'm behind them.

Today marks the 19th anniversary of my wedding to Teresa. The day after tomorrow will be the 24th anniversary of us "being together." 24 years. Nearly a quarter of a century.

It's not nearly enough.

Like many of you, I drive to work every morning, enjoying the majestic mess of I-4 and the pleasant, welcoming snarl of Daytona Beach's colorful construction areas.

Sure I enjoy it. Don't you? Heavy traffic means lots of cars and bored drivers, and that means nonstop entertainment that's better than any concert and wilder than the MTV Music Awards. And it's free! All you need is a steady driving hand and good eyesight.

Ahead of me this morning was an SUV featuring a live performance of Pink's 'Get The Party Started' by three teenage girls in the back seat. Just before the rest stop I was passed by a carload of business-suited pseudo-rappers. Behind me on Nova Road I could see a middle-aged man singing lustily along with Tina Turner (easily identified by the head-snapping motions). And the only thing separating a wildly gyrating soccer mom I saw yesterday morning and the Billboard Top 50 was actual talent.

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Far too many people associate 'spring cleaning' with the merry months of March through May. But remember, just because it's June it doesn't mean it's safe to relax, thinking that the urge to purge your house of any and all dirt, grime, and fast food wrapper buildup is over. This is a false sense of apathy, beware of it!

Any time of the year you might find yourself struck with the irrational impulse to scour your house above and beyond your usual chores so that all is fresh and new again. Otherwise sane individuals will be engaging in their usual weekend family activity of building beer can pyramids with their children and suddenly, without warning, will be struck with the crippling desire to see if the floor in the bathroom is still there. Millions of unfortunate people fall victim to this condition, one that is, happily, recognizable and easily avoided. Especially in our house, where "spring cleaning" means it's been a year since the last time we cleaned and has anyone seen where we threw the mop?

We've found that the impulse towards spring cleaning can be ameliorated by lowering your general standards of basic housework so that when the urge does strike it can be easily satisfied with a couple of swipes of a rag over the furniture, or by merely finding the vacuum cleaner before calling it a day.

Housework is a very occasional thing in our household. The prevailing opinion seems to be that if a neat area is that important to you, you should be the one to straighten it up. The prevailing opinion also seems to be that you can leave half-full cereal boxes open on the counter for weeks without harm, and that clothes are cleaned by piling enough of them up and waiting for a kind of mulching process to occur.

As often happens in a relationship, where my wife and I are concerned one of us is an incredible slob. I've never quite caught on to the need to do what seems to me to be unnecessary tasks such as making my bed (when I'll be using it again in only 17 hours), sweeping the floor (when the kids and pets will track sand right back in again) and washing dishes (when it's easier to just eat directly out of the refrigerator). With many couples this is a point of contention that causes no end of arguments and marital strife, until casual hints to pick up dirty socks escalate into what police and rescue workers refer to as 'a domestic.'

Unfortunately my dear lady wife is also a slob, and together we've passed these fine work ethics down to our children. If Martha Stewart ever walked in our front door I think there would be some sort of explosion.

Our house isn't a Health Department concern, usually. We have no open sewer lines or piles of discarded medical waste (our personal benchmark). We call it the 'lived-in' look. Much like a college fraternity's "lived-in" look the morning after a party, and a fire. And yet, we're happy, because we've managed to come to terms with our inner slob. In the never-ending battle against trash, we are the most passive of resisters.

Oh, sure, it can be a pain when there aren't any clean forks, and finding something to wear can take the better part of a day, and if guests come over we have to stop and remember where we left the couch, but we also have a lot more time for ourselves than do people who clean. Consider:

When you only do laundry on a lunar cycle, you quickly discover which articles of clothing are the most important to you. You can therefore wash only those, saving yourself hours of time and lots of money on detergent, money that can then be spent on buying new, clean clothes.

Dishes can be arranged in the driveway and cleaned by using one of those car-washing attachments for your garden hose. You can even open the canister on the hose and pour in some of that spot-removing stuff, if you want to get all hoity-toity about it. If you drag out your furniture, your dry-cleaning and your kids, you can get all the week's cleaning done at once, especially if you use one of those pressure cleaner attachments.

Invest in heavy, gothic castle-type draperies for all of your windows. These, combined with low-watt light bulbs, provide a pleasing old-movie feel to your surroundings. Direct lighting is not your friend.

If you don't care to vacuum regularly, simply use a rake to create a pleasing and aesthetically soothing design on your living room carpet. Incorporate the randomly-placed furniture and piles of Coke cans as symbols, representing a tigress crossing the sea with her cubs, or the Chinese characters for the heart.

Dusting takes forever. Use a hair dryer to even the dust into a uniform and therefore invisible layer.

When faced with a kid's room full of dirty clothes, mounds of video games, and the same wafting scent found in the primate's cage at the Central Florida Zoo, simply use a broom or spade to move enough litter aside until the door can be fully and completely closed. A job well done, time for a Coke. I think I saw one in the living room.

I've been experimenting with some disinfectant and explosive charges, hoping I can invent the sanitizing equivalent of a bug bomb, but so far I've been unsuccessful. Instead, trying filling your humidifier with bleach and leaving the room for a few days.

With habits such as these, spring cleaning is now such a ridiculous notion that its cleansing horrors may be completely ignored and you can rest easy again for another year. And yes, I admit I did exaggerate for comic effect.

The primate cage doesn't smell nearly that bad.