One of Those Weeks

Last Friday about this time I was mentally preparing myself for the rough week that I knew was coming. It started Saturday with my wife and I driving separate cars up to Clemson University to bring our daughter home. The semester was over, she had passed all her exams and came away with a GPA well over 3.80. I was/am proud of her as any dad can be.

Once we arrived at the collection of Soviet-era looking building that pass as student dormitories, the crazy shit slammed into a giant high speed fan. Just imagine the night the Titanic got much too personal with a random iceberg and you have something approaching the craziness of several hundred upper middle class parents all struggling to load up their kids' crap and go home. Throw in way too many cars, trucks, SUVs, and even a couple of mid-sized U-haul moving vans in an area never meant to have a quarter of that number and you could begin to understand the confusion and frustration.

Strangely enough, everyone seemed in a friendly and lighthearted mood. No arguments or fights, just way too many people in an area that the campus authorities had setup with multiple barriers to impend anyone getting too close to the buildings. We're talking 9/11 era safety features to prevent anyone from driving hypothetical car bombs up to the buildings front entrances.

Luckily, my wife and I had arrived a little earlier than our scheduled pickup time, so getting our daughter's stuff loaded was actually not as bad as I feared. Just when we were pulling out the next wave of parents started flowing into dorm parking lot. Still though, the drive back down to Columbia was exhausting and I pretty much gave up on all activity the minute I walked back into the house and saw the living room couch.

The next day was yard work, and even with a nifty new John Deere riding lawnmower I still had to pull out the trusty push mower and the irritating weed whacker to tame smaller, overgrown areas. Where was my rising Clemson University sophomore daughter? She had skipped out with her two college friends for an early Sunday brunch leaving me high and dry. I didn't say much to her about abandoning good old dad because she really buckled down and studied for her exams.

But wait folks, there was still a good bit of flying shit for the rest of the week as well.

Back at my work, I took a buddy's on-call for this week because he was hurt. And it was a moderately bad week involving a great deal of hospital equipment and circumstances I never had to deal with before. That was just Monday morning and early afternoon. The real fun began around five o'clock in the afternoon.

As massive squall line of storms swept through my area and as I was trying to post something that day. Somewhere around four O'clock I heard what that I'd have to describe as a combination of a thick limb breaking and outright explosion. It happened after a massive and prolonged gust of wind that had me listening for the telltale sound of the proverbial locomotive plowing through my subdivision.

 

We totally lost one tree in the backyard with it falling over into the neighbor's backyard crushing the fence. Making matters worse, where that tree fell is the usual location of that guy's super fancy bass boat. Luckily, the neighbor moved his boat sometime before so I didn't have to deal with my insurance guy. But I did talk to the neighbor about going halves on the fence repair since he had attached his small segment of fence to mine without asking permission. No he said, they're broke but will gladly give us tons of moral support for our trouble.

In the front yard the old and brittle river birch growing right at the neighborhood intersection lost a lot of decent-sized limbs. Limbs big and numerous enough to completely stop traffic from coming in and going out of the neighborhood. While it was still raining I ran out into the street and cleaned up the fallen limbs tossing them in my front yard. Looking on the bright side of things, my wife has finally agreed to have that river birch removed. After every storm over the last several years, I had informed her that if one of the big limbs or even a part of the trunk had fallen into the street there was no way I could clear it. And Heaven forbid had a big limb or part of the trunk hit a car that was stopped at the intersection. 

 The tree guys are coming in a couple of days to give us an estimate for removal. We're talking a couple of thousand dollars, at least.

Given the situation at work on Monday and my impromptu tree cleaning that day I passed out the second my head hit the bed that night. The rest of the work week was quite busy with me breaking new records in the number of total steps each day. I still have to cover for my buddy this weekend and will not be off call until Monday morning. Here's hoping nothing weird happens as this week slowly dies.

The final icing on the cake this week was the dishwasher. Last Sunday it gave up the ghost, stopping in the middle of a cleaning cycle. The tiny LED screen on the door threw up an error message saying the drain pump was the issue.

No problem, a couple of YouTube videos later I have my head in the dishwasher cleaning the filter screen. Since that didn't solve anything the next item on the trouble shooting agenda had me giving it a mechanical colonoscopy around the impeller of the drain pump. Sure enough the impeller was frozen with me not finding anything causing the jam.

Enter the professional appliance technician who had to make three separate visits this week to fix the dishwasher each time. Third service call appears to have been the charm with the dishwasher purring along even now as I type out this less than glamours collection of verbal offal.

Yeah, washing dishes is literally one of those “First World Problems” privileged and spoiled Americans whine about but I've hated that chore all my life. So as I sit at the kitchen table reflecting on the past week I take solace in the idea that my entire family, wife, son, his girlfriend, and my daughter will be going to Disney World this December. It's still a long time away but thankfully 2021 seems to be flowing far smoother than 2020.

I just hope I get to hug Goofy. I'll probably cry if I do. It doesn't take much to make me happy at my current stage of life. 

 

 

***Just as I was preparing to post, the dishwasher shut down again and started displaying the same error code. Oh well, at least it's Friday night.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cardiac Status Update- Cardioversion Fun

 

Two weeks ago the messaging service for my cardiologist left a voice mail on my phone saying they needed to talk with me. That at my earliest convenience they would like to setup a video chat between me and their boss. This messenger had a cheery voice that did not convey any urgency nor the reason my cardiologist might need to talk with me. In fact, it was heavily implied that the purposed of the video chat with just a routine followup concerning my chronic heart condition.

The best description for the messenger tone of voice would be something akin to the pleasant, laid back way a commercial airline pilot gently tells passenger and crew to return to their seats and buckle up during mid-flight. That the air ahead is going to get a little choppy and that an ounce or prevention is worth a pound or cure.

I've never been scared of flying, but I've sat next people on planes who heard the captain utter those same words and instantly turned a bleached white filled with existential dread.

Got to admit, I can relate to that sense of impending doom.

As I reported in my last post, I have a chronic heart condition that is genetically based. One little gene in my genome mutated essentially making my heart a biological time bomb. Long complicated story short, this mutation prevents my heart cells from properly making a protein which for me means my ticker can develop an electrical short circuit sending it racing uncontrollably. It that wasn't bad enough, it also means that in the long-term I have to deal with it wearing out due to cardiomyopathy.

Now in many ways I am lucky, my ailment, the LMNA mutation, was only identified in the late 1990s. At least now I can receive treatment in the form of medicine and my Cardiac Resynchronization Device which acts as both a defibrillator if I get in trouble and a pacemaker. Side note, having my CRT does officially make me a cyborg and when you throw in my mutation, I'm over halfway to being a comic book hero or villain. All I need now is some exposure to a metaphysical or mystical energy to push me over the edge.

Honestly, dealing with question of being either a hero or villain I'm leaning towards the latter these days.

Getting back to that video chat, when my doctor and I finally got around to it I was informed that my heart had slipped into an atrial fibrillation rhythm. And that he wanted to do a cardioversion to try and get it back into rhythm.

He played the pleasant, laid back doctor saying it was no big deal but I should still get it done relatively soon. This is where the existential dread enters my head and makes itself comfortable like some rich bastard taking up residence in a Manhattan luxury condo. Nothing concerning my condition has ever been easy nor normal. I would have loved for my heart issues to have been a “simple” heart attack where I get my pipes cleared out, been forced into a mandatory super-healthy diet, along with stern talks about losing weight.

But no, I got a mutation that can literally cause individuals anywhere between their late-teens and forty to suddenly drop dead. Yes, if you make it past your forties a person moves into the territory I now reside.

So with no other option in the matter my doc and I scheduled the cardioversion for last Thursday.

Thursday morning comes and my wife and I drive to the hospital for my procedure. I report to one of the administrative desk jockeys who quickly ushers me up to cardiac holding. I am told to strip down to my birthday suit, put on the gown, and to lay down on a stretcher and cover up. Luckily, the desk jockey remembered to pull the exam curtain closed around me before leaving.

This is when the waiting begins. Due to covid, my wife was escorted to the family waiting area where she had access to the morning snack bar. Even with the pandemic raging the family waiting snack bar was a borderline breakfast buffet. The two compromises with Covid-19 being that everything is prepackaged and the closure of the self-serve waffle maker.

I in turn wouldn't be allowed to eat until after the procedure. And with my wife required to drive after we leave the hospital, we were sure to hit one of her favorite eateries that served English teas and finger sandwiches. So in frustration I laid on the stretcher and played with my phone listening to everyone passing by. Just for shits and giggles I cued up Highway to Hell by AC/DC on my phone and let it play at full volume.

I work at that particular hospital so I wasn't really worried about any possible bad reaction to my music. Several people passing by did stick their heads into my area with one being a truly gorgeous blonde nurse who shook her booty at me for a couple of seconds before leaving. No, I had never seen the woman before and I regularly go through that area during my normal duties.

Within an hour my stretcher and me were wheeled into a nearby procedure room. It was there that I learned a different cardiologist would perform the cardioversion. My usual heart doctor was in another area turning another patient into a cardio-cyborg. The one disturbing feature of this new doc was his age, or lack of it. This guy looked so young shaving to him would be a semi-annual event.

The new doc informed me that before we could begin all the hair on my chest had to be shaved. No problem, but I would be lying if I didn't say I had a sudden fantasy of that beautiful blonde nurse returning to take care of that chore.

No luck, it was an old male nurse with a stern, Germanic disposition who seemed immune to the idea of smiling. The last step before we got down to the shocking business of giving my heart an attitude adjustment was them placing two huge conducting pads on me. One went on the front of my chest and the other on the back, trailing from both were cables that connected to the medical version of “Old Sparky.”

With cables connected and everyone in the procedure room getting ready to begin I suddenly got nervous about one crucial element.

“You guys going to knock me out right.” I said looking around at them suddenly wondering if this might be the reason my usual doctor was busy. Let the young, new doctor deal with the patient flopping around like a caught fish.

It was then that the Germanic dude actually smiled and began hooking up my IV which would supply the sleepy juice. Must admit I didn't appreciate their attempt at humor.

Perchance to Dream

Like most dreams it didn't have a beginning, at least one that I remember. How and why my subconscious chose to build that particular hallucination, I truly have no real idea. My best guess is that as I slept, my brain just threw together random elements it found in the dusty and cluttered attic of my mind. Unlike many people, I do not believe dreams are necessarily glimpses into the mind of an individual showing off their wants or desires. Nor are they cracks in our reality allowing us a view of another version of ourselves. For me, I'm in the camp that believes dreams are just our brains blowing off mental steam. I added that last part to avoid anyone from getting the wrong idea about what I'm about to report.

Since my health issues emerged my dreams have been chaotic. Nothing out of the ordinary there, as far as I know dreams usually do not follow set story lines. But my dreams have been uncomfortably disjointed with many having an atmosphere of deep foreboding, as if a great evil was lurking in the shadows nearby. For that reason during such dreams I usually forced myself awake and then spend several minutes shaking off the aftereffects. So a particular dream I had a couple of weeks ago was an unexpected and happy departure from my usual nighttime sleeping fantasies.

This dream took place in some sort of ornate room. I can't say anything about my dream's location other than I have a fuzzy idea it was some type of resort, but no place I have ever visited in real life. I was laying back in a large, fancy recliner which was covered in a fur-like fabric. Where this dream radically departs from my recent experiences is that I was sharing the recliner with a woman who possessed beautiful brunette hair. No, don't worry my dream didn't develop into a ridiculous porn fantasy. But this fantasy woman and I did share a kiss, which was incredibly intense with how real it felt. The other item that set this dream apart from others was that the woman was wearing an unknown perfume that was equally realistic as the kiss.

Like I said, the dream didn't go any further than just a kiss. Because as I was settling into the dream, actually hoping it would continue, a scratching noise and feeling began to invade my fake reality. I actually remember trying to ignore the scratching sensation by concentrating on the woman. But as you probably can guess, the scratching commotion popped my dream like a child's soap bubble.

I opened my eyes to find one of the dogs scratching my side of the bed with his front paws and looking at me with adoration. At quick look at my watch told me it was past time to feed both him and the other dog, who was still sleeping curled up next my wife.

Yeah, as I feed the dogs I had to deal with a nice piece of disappointment that one of my very few pleasant dreams was cut short. I'm a big boy, so that disappointment faded quickly as I feed the dogs and began to deal with the new day. That didn't stop me was giving the canine interloper of my sleep some annoyed looks.

Like I wrote earlier, the majority of dreams have no bearing on real life. Although I'll probably freak out if I catch a real life whiff of that unknown fragrance my fantasy brunette was wearing in the dream.

My Accidental Cardiac Adventures

Truly ugly

 As usual did this in a rush, will proofread and correct later.

Well, as weeks go this one was pure shit bordering on true hell. The end result, which occurred yesterday with me being discharged from the hospital was sore arms from all the IV's the nurses inserted. There is a little exaggeration involved here but given the number of times I had a needle inserted into the crook of my arms or the dorsal side of my hands I could have money renting myself out as a voodoo doll.

Also during this time a majority of my chest hair was eventually shaved off so the little cardiac sensor pads would stay in place. This shaving only took place after the nurses and technicians spent a couple of days ripping a bunch of them off taking clumps of hair every time. On a pain scale, removing the little adhesive sensor pads were relatively minor although we're talking quantity not quality. The biomedical gizmo they used to monitor my heart took five pads, and if one went bad they replaced all of them.

What put me into the hospital? Well Monday night I was at work doing my usual duties, nothing overly difficult or strenuous, just the same old chores. At some point I began to notice I had about ten-thousand butterflies in my chest having a rave party, there was no pain, although I did feel woozy.

I eventually garnered enough sense to go find some medical personnel to check my blood pressure since after about fifteen to twenty minutes it became clear the butterflies were not about to call it quits for the night. Believe it or not, my blood pressure was fine, it was well inside normal, healthy parameters. My heart rate on the other hand was the cardiac equivalent of a nuclear meltdown.

The person I found to check my blood pressure and heart rate was one of the night shift nurses in recovery. Luckily, her department was empty of patients, so she ushered me over to one of the stretchers and had me sit close to the patient monitor. At first all she did was place the blood pressure cuff over my arm and let the automatic system do its electronic thing. It was when she listened to my heart with a stethoscope that I scared the hell out of her. Not only was my heart rate running north of 220 beats per minute, my cardiac rhythm was pure chaos.

Mere minutes later I am wheeled down to the Emergency Department with a whole host of highly trained and very worried people hovering over me. Their chief objective was to get my heart rate down, it took two sets of drugs to accomplish that goal. Not long after that I am wheeled to a room in the cardiac intensive care unit where I spent the next several days.

Long complicated story short, after an intensive electrocardiogram and cardiac catheterization the good news was that my pipes were clear of all that nasty stuff that causes heart attacks. Yeah, given my habits I was rather surprised at that bit of happy information. The partial bad news was that, without going into complex medical terminology I know I was screw up, my heart was suffering from some abnormal cells who essentially could hijack my cardiac rhythm. After discussing this with my doctors, I realized I had been suffering similar episodes that were far less severe and far shorter in duration for a long time. Given my ass backwards work schedule, and that I was both overweight and out of shape, I attributed these episodes to just being tired.

Further good news is that this condition is curable- the exact word used by my cardiologist. It involves a procedure called a cardiac ablation which was performed Thursday night. Once again boiling away the technical terms that I would misuse in some fashion, the doctors got one half of my heart done. There was an issue as they proceeded with the second half and that got scary for my family and for me once I realized the extent of how badly things went sideways.

I have to strongly state that I do not believe the doctors did anything wrong. As with all medical procedures there is a chance things could go bad. Circumstances just didn't obey expectations but the doctors were able snatch at least a partial victory from the jaws of cosmic misfortune. I came away with just a truly huge bruise around my groin. Seriously, it's so massively gross I am tempted to take a picture of it. Don't worry, I have enough sense to realize that posting such a picture would be the worst form of oversharing.

My intention is to recover and about a month or two from now have the other half of the ablation done. As of right now I am taking medication that should at least partially keep the nasty abnormal heart cells from going terrorist and hijacking my heart again.

Please excuse my usual attempts at humor, as you might expect it's a coping mechanism. I do have to give a huge shout out to my fantastic doctors and nurses that worked hard to save my sorry ass. Furthermore, I have to say my coworkers rallied around me in a way that left me misty eyed a couple of times. They took time out of their busy schedules to come see during me while I was laying in a hospital bed. What's worse for them is that the doctors are forcing me to take a week off to recover. That means my monthly duties falls on them, adding to their burden. That truly bothers me and I hope that at some point I can make it up to them.

Getting kicked in the cardiac ass like I did this week means my lifestyle will have to change. Even though the pipes bringing and taking blood away from my heart are squeaky clean, I'm smart enough to know things there could go wrong in the coming years. That means far less coffee and sodas and somehow I will have to find the time and energy to go to the gym.

As things progress, I'll keep everyone informed.

Truth in this Day and Age

Several years ago an otherwise reasonable person I know came running up to me clutching papers that he said, “proved President Obama was Muslim.” I have long since learned that there are people who cannot speak rationally on certain subjects, with this individual being a prime example. So, I did my usual shtick by making some disinterested and noncommittal remark while trying my best to walk away. This person wouldn't have it, not only was he going to prove Obama was a Muslim but that his health care plan was going to enslave us all under some type of Islamic tyranny.

Had conditions been perfect, quite frankly I would have told this person where he could shove the papers he held in his hand that I assumed contained this earth shattering information. But unfortunately, given the circumstances I couldn't, while idiocy has almost a free reign this days rational thought doesn't, much to the detriment to us all. So this guy handed me this printout from a website, which will go unnamed, and I read the article that claimed that some diligent guardian of Christian American liberty had read the entire Obamacare bill and found that an Arabic word for “slave” or “infidel” or a combination of both had been inserted into the complex legislation.

On the face of it, the claim that an Arabic word for some type of slave being in a bill whose sole purpose was to provide healthcare to millions who otherwise couldn't afford it was lunacy. That its insertion meant a vast conspiracy was being perpetrated on an unsuspecting public which would result in some sort of horrendous overthrow of the American Republic was so bizarre that it was beyond sad and starting delving into the realm of the darkly humorous. Sort of like the idea of having a delusional and narcissistic real estate developer/reality television star successfully run for the presidency of the United States.

Long story short, the article about the Arabic word was fake news. I'll give the obviously radical partisan who created this fiction credit, if I remember correctly he listed a page number, paragraph, and section where this word was suppose to reside with such other insidious things like Sarah Palin's government death panels and the eventual socialistic takeover of the entire American medical infrastructure.

What really troubled me most of all was the near rapturous look on the individual's face who was presenting me with this blatant propaganda. Given that I had already known this person for a couple of years, I easily understood his worldview was so askew that God himself could come down to Earth and personally tell him the article was bullshit and I know he would have rejected that holy information. Since that time things have only degraded further, a terrifying thought given that the foundations of democracy rest on certain items that are beyond debate. Words like “Truthiness” and “alternate facts” are now a mainstay of discourse in the United States, abstract terms that either describe the muddied state of affairs in both the media and politics or outright lies told to hide the truth.

For reasons I can't quite understand the American Press has taken the brunt of the blame for the Truth becoming so difficult to discern from the massive amounts of crap daily uploaded on the internet and broadcast on television. Absolutely, they bare a share of the blame for this situation, mainly because understanding and debate has taken a backseat to ratings and commercial profitability. The Corporate suits sitting up in their plush offices have long since figured out that they make more money by broadcasting and publishing stories involving celebrities than producing hard hitting documentaries that expose uncomfortable aspects of our society.

All that being said though, from my observations the biggest problem with political propaganda and conspiracies flooding the country comes from a public that simply doesn't want to hear anything that violates the way they look on the world. Adding to this problem is that the average American attention span is woefully short, and since most of the problems we face are exponentially nuanced to the point many experts find the situation difficult and you have a recipe for disaster on many fronts. The general idea being that as long as the blue collar, Joe Sixpack and the middle class, Sally Suburbanite are fat and happy, they really don't care much about what happens to other less fortunate folks. They have their own struggles and as long as they have ESPN and Real Housewives to watch the rest of the planet can go to hell. Sorry starving kids in Africa or war torn places like Syria, you might get a token donation to a charity but as for really solving the problem most Americans don't give a rip about our own people in Flint, Michigan who had massive amounts of lead contaminate their drinking water.

The final assault on Truth and rational discourse comes from those who purposely use disinformation to advance their own agenda. This ranges from governments to politicians, to individuals who just want a few sick kicks despite the fact it harms the institutions they supposedly love. This also goes for people who lean towards news outlets that broadcast stories that fit their already preconceived notions. No, I'm not talking about right-wing nuts on this one, I stopped listening to a very progressive podcast because one of the hosts, a male blowhard that would shame the average Fox News announcer because he loves the sound of his own voice that much draws his information from RT, a Russian government-owned propaganda site. Yes dear folks, there is nearly as much liberal-based fake news as there is radical right-wing nut stuff. The right-wingers just have a more active base since most liberals will not even find time to vote much less take time away from their personal pursuits like finding the best latte and standing in line to buy the newest iPhone.

A free and open society is a tough thing to maintain. It takes active participation by everyone from across the entire political spectrum. More importantly, all these people need to be open and honest with themselves about the drawbacks of their personal political beliefs. Yes, I am a liberal but that means my own views are not the alpha and omega on how the world should run. Government is not the answer to all problems, that being said while capitalism is better economic system it readily eats the poor and inconvenient. This covers everything from how a capitalistic-dominated view of government is unable to maintain basic infrastructure like roads since that requires taxes, which might have to be raised occasionally. To the blatant and shortsighted ignoring of science which clearly spells out humans are causing climate change because of our burning of fossil fuels.

This requires that we get our information from an unfettered Free Press that will do their best to provide the uncolored facts. No reporters are not perfect, they make terrible mistakes at times but reality is like that. Little note to those who scoff, everyone makes mistakes, and the press has a much higher rate of catching these mistakes as compared to business type and certainly government officials. Last night the White House Corespondents dinner was held, absent Trump who has the ability to dish out unfounded and bizarre criticism to others but reacts like a petulant little bitch when it is given to him. The following video is of Hasan Minhaj, a correspondent for the Daily Show. His speech is both funny and strikingly pertinent given the current situation we find ourselves. 

Thanksgiving Weekend Malfunction

Since I entered the dubious realm of what is called adulthood, and by that I mean having to work along with taking up the duties of being a parent, Thanksgiving became my favorite holiday. All jokes aside about families eager to come together and celebrate the bonds of kinship, Christmas starts losing its meaning once the great lie that is Santa is revealed to the wiser young ones. And by wiser, I mean those kids who had probably already knew the deal but kept their mouths shut since they didn’t want to endanger the Golden Goose of mom and dad desperate to keep them happy.

Even those short years afterwards, while the now enlightened children still have enough innocence that the average adult can tolerate their presence, Christmas becomes increasingly problematic. The true symbols of the season like the insanity of Black Friday shopping and the time consuming preparation involved in decorating and travel make it something to dread like going to the DMV or a prostate exam. Do not hate me and do not send any hate mail, you know I am telling truth. In all honestly, we all have relatives we literally cringed at the thought of spending time with during Christmas and this says nothing about the bottled up resentment at having to spend money for presents on those assorted fools.

For a great many people besides me, Thanksgiving has become the one refuge of sanity situated between the bastardized Halloween, whose only purpose is to support the Chocolate/Sugar Industrial Complex and the insanity that is hyper-capitalistic Christmas. Sure, you are liable to see those very same relatives that you secretly hope were adopted because you hate the idea that your own kids might share any genetic material with them. But at least the tension is reduced after dinner because everyone just wants to stumble into the living room and sleep as they process all that hormone-laden turkey bubbling away inside their digestive tracts.

At my house Thanksgiving has become so laid back that it actually irritates my wife that the kids and I have seriously recommended we just buy one of those gigantic frozen pizzas and serve that up for dinner. My wife, raised in a true Ozzy and Harriet suburban environment, is almost programmed like a robot to perform certain functions when it comes to the holidays. Among them, are the very duties I’ve been bitching about like searching for that perfect gift for our kids and her nieces, along with whatever she discovers for herself along the way.

But does that mean daddy can run off to the sporting goods store and buy him that five hundred dollar kayak? Only if he wants to include the two hundred dollar tent attachment, and then proceed to make it his permanent residence. No, dad has to be happy with his new underwear and socks and if he is lucky, just maybe mom might be nice to him once the kids have gone to sleep. Whatever the case, Thanksgiving is the one holiday that allows me to relax and enjoy the company of my family without having to put up with a lot of crap. Well, this year turned out to be a little different.

This sad tale actually began two months ago when my wife embarked on a home renovation obsession that is even now still gathering steam. We’ve had a contractor rebuilding the room over the garage since the middle of October with completion scheduled around the middle of December. All jokes aside, the room very much needed rebuilding and the contractor’s work is literally fantastic. In the coming weeks though,  different contractors will replace the stove, the kitchen counter tops, and redo the cabinets all through the house. Not only that, the carpet all through the house is being replaced and we will probably have the person fixing the fence damaged from the recent hurricane also replace the worn planks on our backyard deck.

This does not mean I sitting back and sipping a sophisticated mixed drink watching the guys do their Bob Villa impersonations. No, my wife has a whole list of tasks for me that while time consuming aren’t that hard. I actually got the first one done last Wednesday and it was painting the master bedroom.

One problem though, while I noticed that the new paint color was almost identical to the old, once the room was finished I frankly couldn’t tell the difference. In one way that was good since that meant I didn’t spend several more hours going over spots where the old color bled through. On the bad side, once my wife inspected the newly painted room the look on her face suggested she just might come home with another couple of gallons of a color that will stand out more. Which means my happy ass will be doing it all over again.

While Thursday was a true day of rest, for reasons I can’t explain my wife talked me into going shopping Friday morning. The two places she wanted to hit were the local Best Buy and the nearby Target. At first, my intention was just to sit in the car as she and my daughter navigated the belated hordes inside those temples of cheap imported goods. But when my wife vaguely suggested that we might buy another, bigger television as she headed for Best Buy I decided to accompany her inside since she has a bad habit of buying beat up display models because, “they are great deals.” On a previous trip to another one of those types of stores, she bought a surround sound system that had been used as a display model for over a year.

When the clerks packaged it up, they couldn’t find the instructions so they went online and printed them out. A nice gesture, but after my wife brought it home I spent several hours following those instructions trying to get it to work. At some point I finally discovered the clerks had given us the printout for a completely different model totally incompatible with the junk that by then was scattered all over the living room floor.

However, at least I ran enough interference Friday to prevent a similar occurrence. Once that was done, I snaked my way through the crowds and retreated to the car like a beaten dog. I did have enough foresight to bring a book to read in the car and enough sense not to go with my wife and daughter into Target, which looked even more crowded and insane than Best Buy.

Unfortunately, I repeated my mistake the next day. Saturday being the day before my birthday, we all went out to eat a nice lunch. Curiously enough, the local Home Depot is about two-hundred yards away from my favorite Chinese restaurant and after we were all nicely satisfied, my wife decided she absolutely had to go look at carpet. I’ll just say that while I usually enjoy walking around hardware stores looking at all the cool stuff, those next three hours were tough to endure. I will say this, the Home Depot lady in charge of carpet earned every cent of her pay those long grueling hours.

My wife and daughter are going to London, England sometime in 2017, the exact date is still up in the air but one is thing for certain is that I will not be traveling with them. The cost for just two people is outrageous and besides some fool has to man the fort and keep our two dogs from peeing all over that new carpet. Long story short, other than a few short and cheap wife-approved trips, I’m not going to get a real vacation in 2017.

However, given the soul crushing and time consuming nature of all these home renovation projects, I must admit I am reconsidering my threat to whip out my own credit card and purchase a trip to someplace in the Caribbean with my departure date the day my wife and daughter return from London. My general idea is to call the house as I sit my happy ass on the other side of the airport TSA line and tell my lovely spouse I will bring her home a souvenir from whatever warm, sunny beach I find myself visiting. Yeah, I’m going with the "it’s better to act then ask for forgiveness than wait for permission that will never comes" route. Whatever happens when Thanksgiving 2017 comes we should all have some wild stories to tell. Hell, maybe my lovely spouse will even agree to pizza next year.

Crunchy Peanut Butter Transcendence

Paraphrasing here, but I recently read an article by a travel writer describing how after a long and grueling schedule of visiting wonderful places and meeting interesting people around the world, he likes to return home after his tiring journeys, sit in front of his fireplace and sip a glass of fine wine. As I further read the article, I waited for some tacit comment that while navigating various labyrinth-like international airports, dealing with degrees of exhausting jet lag and difficult bureaucratic immigration and custom officials are a pain, being a travel writer was about the best work a person could snag in this stunted existence. But strangely enough, in a world overflowing with crappy jobs, this irony-impaired author just continued on about the best wines to drink after returning home from strenuous travel as if his predicament was natural and shared by the rest of humanity.

Far be it from me to criticize a truly talented and successful writer but unfortunately my normal sympathy, compassion, and basic give-a-fucks were all stupefied at the idea that seeing the Eiffel Tower, the ruins of Rome, or a beautiful Tahitian sunset could ever approach being more trouble than they were worth. I'm sure other people are more deserving of someone smacking them upside the head than this travel writer, but right now I'm at a loss to name anyone else.

No, the jobs most of us workaday schmucks have settle for are ones that pay the bills and, if we're lucky, leave enough left over to do more with life than just survive. As for mentally and physically unwinding after a tough day at work with a fine wine, personally for me, that will remain the purview of socially snobbish pricks who fret about the type of china used at dinner and the proper placement of the shiny silverware. Hell, in reality given my schedule, I really don't have the option to unwind for any length of time after work.

Coming home in the morning after my shift I have just enough time to clean up, eat some breakfast, then try and crash around 8:30am before the two family dogs start losing their minds around 2:30am needing to go outside and pee. I know you shouldn't anthropomorphize the behavior of animals, even pets, but I swear my dogs, Snickers and Sparky, have this particular facial expression that says, “Hey dude, if you don't get your sorry ass out of bed right now, you'll be the one cleaning up the stains in the carpet and picking up the poop.” Funny things about that, when I don't let the dogs out in time, both of my fur kids retreat to the couch and then give me this smug,”we warned you” look as I go through the motions of fueling up the carpet cleaner and disposing of their solid toxic waste.

No, the only real time circumstance has allotted for me to get all introspective is what amounts to my lunchtime in the middle of my shift, usually somewhere around 1:00 to 2:30am. If I was a sociable person I would eat lunch with my two coworkers, its just that I don't like Duck Dynasty, or any of the other shows they watch in the actual break room that all have a combined IQ of 60. In an effort to keep good relations, I do sit with them in the break room at the beginning of the shift and drink a cup of coffee. During that time I have adapted the advice of the leader of the penguins from the Madagascar movies to keep good relations. I simply smile and nod at the unoffensive conversations they have, subjects like how they can't understand how any self respecting guy could have a cat as a pet. Or my favorite, their usual rage festivals at bad drivers and how close they came to pulling their pistol out from its hiding place underneath the seat after some fool offended their delicate sensibilities while on the way to work.

When my lunchtime comes I retreat to the room used by my group to store supplies and spare uniforms. Inside that room we have a table and comfortable office chairs that allow me to sit back and enjoy what has to stand in as a replacement for any fine wine. Believe it or not, I get an immense sense of enjoyment from eating a crunchy peanut butter sandwich. No, it's not a finely aged wine nor is my location for lunch in front of a warm, inviting fireplace but in this progressively depressing age, shit could be far worse.

For reasons I have never figured out, there seems to be a bias directed against lovers of crunchy peanut butter. This goes back to my childhood when I remember the other kids at my school lunch table staring in horror as I bit down on the tasty shards of peanuts mixed in with the regular creamy spread. Given their expressions, they apparently misidentified the crunchy noise coming from my chewing as screams of horror from the tiny peanuts as they met their demise. At least that is how I liked to played off their disgust and grade school condemnation at my lunch preference. Unfortunately, no one else in my family liked crunchy peanut butter, so I was eventually forced to go with the preference of the unimaginative majority.

By accident I renewed my love of crunchy peanut butter after becoming a dad. I was making a grocery run and along with buying the wrong shampoo for my wife, the totally incorrect breakfast cereal for the kids, I accidentally grabbed a jar of crunchy peanut butter, which was supposed to be used for their school lunches. Frankly, I never in a million years would have guessed the level of blow back I got from my wife and kids over picking the wrong peanut butter. Picking both the wrong shampoo and cereal was completely forgotten about when they saw the horror of all those chopped up peanuts inside the jar. If my kids ever have to go to therapy, I figure that incident will be brought up as to one of the reasons they can't deal with life or have long-term personal relationships.

As for my wife, it amazes me that in as little as five minutes after the fact, she can totally forget the odd place she moved the book I was reading, or where she tossed my shoes that I mistakenly left in the living room—another terrible sin in its own right. But to this day, over a decade later after mistakenly buying a jar of crunchy peanut butter for the kids lunches, she readily brings up that fact whenever I inadvertently again screw the pooch at the grocery store. Yes, she brings up many of my other sins but it all goes to prove the point that the Pope is correct in that women can never be priests. It is simply impossible for them to forget any transgression and as sure as bear leave steamy piles of poop in the woods, they cannot forgive.

All that changed recently since I have one kid in high school and the other in college. Neither of them like peanut butter anymore, and my wife buys her own organic creamy, which to me looks more like wet mud. So that leaves me to finally indulge in my crunchy peanut butter without guilt. What this personal crunchy peanut butter renaissance means is that I am now able to sit back during my all too short lunch breaks at work and unwind while contemplating the crappy state of human affairs. One of my favorite thought-experiments while I savor the magnificent flavor of my sandwich is to think of where I would go on the planet to get away from all hoi polloi that make up many of my fellow Americans. For years my favorite imaginary sanctuary was either the south island of New Zealand or the southwestern coast of Australia. Both places are blissfully underpopulated, which fits nicely with my general antisocial tendencies and well established disgust of the human animal. I would be remiss if I didn't add that both places are about as far away from the United States as a person can get and still be on planet Earth. A nice benefit when the United States has its collective psychotic break with reality. Yes, the election of Trump is a disturbing omen that such an event will be here sooner rather than later. 

Yes, during these periods of relatively deep thought, it has occurred to me that I am taking on many of the snobbish characteristics I laid at the feet of the wine drinking travel writer for whom world travel can be a burden. There is nothing more plebeian than peanut butter but on the other hand drinking wine at work would get me fired. Anyway, I save the alcohol for the weekends to deal with things at home like neighbors and chores that never end.