Notorious--Long Live The Queen

Today would have been my grandmother's 83rd birthday. In memory of her, I've been watching videos online that remind me of the two of us: Been Around the World, Can't Nobody Hold Me Down, Hypnotize. At this point, are you really surprised? It's been long established that there is something fundamentally wrong with me.

I don't know, our bond was unique. By the time I was five, I'd gotten so used to people warning her about treating me like a peer. "You treat him like y'all are equals. One day you're gonna regret it." I guess they expected me to grow up and not respect her like most kids would in that situation. They didn't know that interspersed between every conversation were a few "I'll bust your head wide open." I knew not to challenge the throne. That's why she's Biggie in all of the videos and I'm Puffy...or I'm Ma$e to her Puff.

Looking back, I miss her, of course. But she always told me to keep living, so that's what I'm gonna do. Now I'm listening to Jay Z:

Don't worry about Brooklyn
I'll continue to flame
Therefore a world with amnesia
won't forget your name
You held it down long enough
Let me take those reins
And just like your spirit, 
The commission remains

[caption id="attachment_3750" align="alignnone" width="215"] Man, did she slap the hell out of me when she got these proofs back from Montgomery Ward.[/caption]

Housekeeping

Just a quick heads up:

I've decided to take on the enormous task of redesigning the site from the ground up. It's a task I began two years ago when I said, "I'll just pick this god-awful dark theme for the time being." As you can see, I haven't made much progress. Anyway, in the meantime you'll probably notice some random changes. A professional would make changes in the background, and test them before finally making them visible to the public. I'm sure you can find a site like that somewhere. In the meantime, this site is hosted for free on Wordpress, and that option isn't available to me.

You may also notice that typing in Mentalstorage.com will soon lead you to a "PAGE NOT FOUND" message. That's because Wordpress wants about $12 for that service, and I'm not entirely sure I want to commit to them for another year. I predict about a week before I make up my mind. Indecision is the cornerstone to my procrastination. Anyway, if the site stops working for some reason...I'll be back!

In the meantime, examples of my considered changes include the lovely and completely random picture on the right of the screen. I've discovered the Instagram feature. That's a picture of my bathroom floor as it existed at the moment that I pounded my phone's screen while trying to figure out how to use the Instagram app. I also discovered the paint app on my computer. Just wait til I start drawing.

Anyway, this was supposed to only be a paragraph long. If the domain stops working, you can always find me at mentalstorage.wordpress.com

Home Alone

I just read this article about a woman who's been charged with child cruelty after leaving her six-year-old home alone. The gist of it is that the little girl woke up around her 11 and couldn't find her mom, so she just dialed random numbers on the phone until someone answered and told her to call 911. The lady came back home around 3 am and reported the girl missing. The cops then arrested her, and put the child in the care of another relative. The story has a somewhat happy ending, so I feel it's okay to make a few comments.

Is there a statute of limitations on this kind of thing, because with Christmas coming up I'm inclined to file a report against a certain parent if I don't get anything this year. By six years old, I was a pro at staying home alone. As a matter of fact, it was my preferred choice over:

• Go with my mother to rehearsal


• Go with my grandmother to Senior Circle (or whatever they called it) at church


• Risk my life riding around with my grandfather who drove like the traffic signs were suggestions


• Sit in the 9-hour-long Evening Service for the Pastor's/Usher's/Church's/Senior Choir's/ Trustees' Anniversary.

Now granted, no one ever left me home alone that late, but even if they did I don't think I would've panicked and dialed random numbers. My grandmother used to have me watch the evening news for her and recount the top stories when she got home from her night job, so by six I was mentally damaged enough to consider that one or all of my relatives could be brutally attacked by one of the 15,000 animals that seemed to escape from the National Zoo on a regular basis back then. Either that or they'd be swept up by the tornado watch, and taken to Oz. When my mother came home later than promised one time, I worried that she'd fallen into an open well like Baby Jessica. Real world events + six-year-old-imagination= loose interpretation of reality. The bottom line is that I knew that as long as there was a box of Cap'n Crunch downstairs that I had at least enough food to survive for a while. No need to call the cops just yet.

I still don't understand how the six year old didn't know the number to 911 or at least one relative. I guess we can chalk that up to stored numbers in cell phones and speed dial. Anyway, I'm glad the little girl is okay. I don't know where the mom had to go for four hours that late at night. Correction: I don't want to know. And I guess I can go ahead and pat myself on the back, because by seven I'd been promoted to caring for other kids as well.

Leadership potential!

Decking the Halls

"You need a woman in your life."

That was my friend's response to a picture of my Christmas decorations. My response cannot be published. Christmas is extremely important to me, especially now that I have a child. I used to send Santa schematics of toys that I wanted the elves to make for me. Every year, I'd put the old beat-up white Christmas tree together by myself, unravel the decades-old tinsel, and hang long-past-their-prime ornaments on the tree. No child has ever sympathized more with Charlie Brown than this guy.

[Cue the violins]
*sniff sniff* I even remember the year that no one came home when they said they would to light the tree with me. *sniff, sob, sniff* That was the year I sat on the floor with a radio looking for Christmas carols, but found Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You instead. So goodbye. Please, don't cry. We both know I'm not what you need. And IIIIIII...
[End violins]

It was in that moment of despair that, deep within the recesses of my soul, a maniacal elf was born. I swore promised took a blood oath vowed that when I grew up I would have kids and my house would look like the North Pole. A few things that I didn't count on:
It costs a lot of money to go full North Pole
My daughter is three, so her enthusiasm is about 98% less than mine
I don't really have an eye for decorating, coloring, crafts, or organization

But I'm not gonna let a little thing like that stop me. I bought $50 worth of decorations from The Dollar Store, and a nice 7ft tall tree from Target. I put lights up in the window--the fancy kind that move in a pattern. I let my daughter put on the window decals, which kinda spell out HELP ME depending on how you look at them. I have Christmas cookie jars (no cookies yet, but we'll get there), a snow globe, some jingle bells for the door, a bow...A whole lot of stuff. I even cut out construction paper in the shape of trees, candy canes and ornaments, which I let my daughter glue together so that we could put them on the wall. We're doing it big, but at Black Friday prices.

So while it may not be the prettiest thing you'll see, I think we're really in the holiday spirit here at the North Pole Satellite Location.

[caption id="attachment_3740" align="alignnone" width="225"] It's like knocking on Santa's door.[/caption]

African-American Friday

Well, my first Thanksgiving since The Fall went off without a hitch. It'll take a while to get used to spending the holidays without a complete family unit, but I think me and Mini-Me did alright. I made two stuffed cornish hens, yams, baked mac and cheese, collard greens, ham steak and a sweet potato pie. Three hours, I cooked. Three hours, and all my daughter wanted was the marshmallow topping on the yams. Oh, and "I want the macaroni in the refrigerator!" She was talking about the leftover Kraft from two days ago. I just scooped her up in my arms and kept whispering "I love you" over and over until I believed it again.

This whole week has been a learning opportunity. I realized that my idea of family and holidays will never actually materialize...and that's not a bad thing. The vision that I had in my head for Thanksgiving was very picturesque, very cliche and very stale. The two of us would sit at the table with hands folded and talk about what we were thankful for. She'd say something adorable like toys or candy, and I'd laugh. The 80s sitcom music would play as I told her that I was thankful for her. We'd embrace. The credits would roll.

Instead, I said "Come sit down" so much that I woke up saying it in the middle of the night. I watched her run away from the table screaming, "I'm late for school!" before putting her foot on top of a sheet of paper on the floor and pretending to skateboard away while hanging on to the back of the chair/car a la "Back to the Future."

After giving up on getting her to eat, we put up the Christmas tree. Again, reality trumped expectation. I couldn't even put the tree together because as I sat on the floor she kept creeping up behind me like a lion or something before leaping onto my back. I eventually put it up, and you can tell her contribution just by looking: All of her ornaments are bunched together 3 feet off the ground.

Finally, our very Brady Christmas photo was photobombed by her. I bought a santa hat for myself and an elf hat for her. Forty-seven pics, and every single one has her making a crazy face. The final one when I decided to just let go is the one I'll hang up: Both of us screaming at the camera with our tongues out. There's a fake Target tree in the background leaning to the right because someone tried to climb it.

I think these are much better memories than the preprogrammed ones I had in my head.

Crossroad

Le sigh.

I'm still alive, and no I haven't forgotten about the blog. Believe it or not, I have about fifty unpublished posts sitting in my draft box. They just don't feel right. I'm going through a period of transition. Before you start writing me words of encouragement, let me say that I'm not depressed in the slightest. I'm just...changing.

I remember being in gym class one day when all of my friends just started cutting up. Normally, I'd be the class clown joining in with them, but on that particular day I didn't find any of our usual hijinks funny. My teacher was like a stand-in parent to me at the time, so I talked to her about it. "I don't find the usual stuff fun anymore. I feel really serious and contemplative lately." She told me that sometimes growing up happens gradually while other times it happens in leaps and bounds.

I've been in a leaps and bounds mode lately. I had a lot of life events happen close together this year. When there's extensive structural damage to a building it's often cheaper to just demolish it and rebuild. With that, however, comes the very rare (and very, very fortunate) opportunity to decide whether or not you want to rebuild exactly as it was or make something new. I'm going for the latter.

So what does any of this have to do with posting? My posts were usually about my daughter, my grandmother, my childhood or my life as a stay-at-home dad. Well, my daughter has some things going on--things for which writing would be very therapeutic for me, but it's her life. When she's older she may take issue with that level of personal stuff being online, so I deal with it on my own.

My grandmother's gone and with her passing I kinda locked away the nostalgic part of me.  It's not out of pain or anything. I just don't need nostalgia anymore like I once did. There used to be a hole in my emotional cup. I'd keep pouring in memories to fill it up, but cleaning out my grandmother's house over the course of a month somehow sealed the hole.

Now that my daughter's in school there aren't as many stories to tell. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, then you get to hear snippets of my day. We had a Bobby Flay styled throw down last week. We each made a pizza. She beat me on taste, but I won thanks to the category of "Paid for Ingredients and Utilities."

So yeah, that's pretty much what I'm up to these days.

I've posted this a million times before, but it plays in my head a lot lately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSBt94MuNnU

Jack.

Well this will be quick. I have two minutes to go to bed and still get eight hours of sleep. Wish me luck. Anyway...Guess what I did this weekend.

I had whiskey for the very first time. Guess what else I did this weekend. I had whiskey for the very last time. Now if you're just tuning in then you missed the post I wrote a few years ago talking about what it was like being the only person I knew who didn't drink.

I went something like, "Blah blah blah, I don't drink because I don't really like the taste of alcohol. I have no moral opposition to it. It just isn't for me."

Then...my daughter left the (totally under appreciated) "I can't move on my own" stage. Many a naive parent mistakenly believes that their kids will be "more fun" once they learn to walk and (I laugh most about this one now) talk. So yeah...I drink now. Because I waited so long to join the club, wine was doing it for me. Occasionally I'd go to a Yelp event where they give out free drinks, but I'm pretty certain that those are watered down.

My host this weekend seemed to take special pleasure in the knowledge that I know nothing about nothing. I sat there and drank it like it was a soda. Then came the warning, "You're supposed to sip, not gulp!" But it was too late. You know that cliche action scene where there's some large metal door slowly descending and the hero has to run to get to it and then slide Indiana Jones-style under it? Well that's what I felt inside my head. I felt the alcohol slowly lowering down through me, and I knew that once it reached the bottom...Nothing but bad times would follow.

I'm a horrible drinking buddy. I'm a nerd, and like most nerds I believe that I have a really powerful brain. About 90% of my brain power is used to keep my thoughts at bay, because...I'm a nerd. The whiskey turned that off. You know the first thought that popped in my head?

"Hmm, I feel inebriated. Let me count how often I blink. I imagine that my glossy eyes will somehow have a bearing on my blinking. Yep...blinking more than average.The room is tilting left to right. I know this isn't really happening, but it feels so real. Perhaps the part of my brain that is perceiving this artificial vertigo could be tapped into for virtual reality simulators and flight training. I'm too drunk to consider patenting that. Now I wonder what effect a gyroscope would have on my perception of balance. If I could stare at the gyroscope and see that it is not moving, then perhaps my sense of balance would return..."

Yeah. Who the hell wants to drink around that guy? So...that's pretty much all I have to say for now. I'm going to bed.