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.

Mustachioed

Over the weekend someone told me that my blog is starting to get depressing. I tried to explain the concept of "Tears of a Clown," but she brushed that off and suggested I write about something...anything. She suggested I write about all of the "perks" that she assumed came with having a mustache at 10. So here goes...

There were no perks. The "I have a mustache before everyone else" perks don't begin until junior high school. That's when I started having 16 year old girls hitting on my 12 year old self, only I was completely stupid back then. "I'm only 12" still echoes in my head to this day, and every single time I hear it I want to go back in time and slap myself.

Anyway...as I was saying, there were no perks. The peach fuzz started shortly after fourth grade. Back then, people just assume that you're dirty. "Did your mama water get cut off or something? Why your face dirty?" I had a substitute send me to the bathroom because she thought I had on makeup.

Sidebar: Remember when the networks used to play movies on Sundays or sometimes during the week? I think Fox used to play two or three movies back to back on Sunday afternoons. They called it the Triple Feature. Well, back then they used to play the hell out of Teen Wolf.

Once all the kids figured out I wasn't dirty, they started calling me a werewolf. I was an easy target. I was ten years old in the fifth grade with a mustache and size 10 mens shoe. Little did they know, the hair was starting to appear other places as well, and without a man around to talk to, I didn't know what the hell was going on. That human sexuality class with the light blue/pink pamphlets and the weird looking kids on the front was a year away. I wasn't stupid. I knew that men had mustaches, but I figured it was supposed to start way later...like 20. I assumed I was broken. I had to fix myself.

The hair in other places had started a few months prior. A pair of scissors and a few band aids later...I was back to normal. That wasn't an option, however, for the hair on my face. It was too low. I tried washing my face a lot, hoping that the hair would dry out and fall off. That brilliant idea came from a Salon Selectives commercial that talked about "other leading shampoos" drying out hair and causing split ends.

Eventually, I found a box in the basement with my uncle's old stuff in it. There was a rusty razor in there. I didn't know that the stuff men put on their face was shaving cream. I thought it was soap. I took some Ivory soap and applied it ALL OVER MY FACE.  Then I started shaving. Left to right, up and down...pretty much any direction that can cause lacerations.

Then I accidentally cut off a part of my eyebrow. Now how did I get all the way up there? Well, I saw faint baby hairs on the side of my brow. I just assumed they were mustaches in wait. So I tried to get those too. Since I cut one eyebrow, I had to even it out on the other side, only I made that one too narrow. I had to make them even, and eventually they were. The only problem was that they looked like dots on an "i" by that point. I cut them both off completely and prayed to God that no one would notice.

I don't remember exactly what my mother said when she got home. It took her a minute to notice though. I remember that. I do remember my grandmother telling me that I was too stupid for my own good. I also remember the praying the whole weekend that they'd grow back by Monday. I kept putting conditioner and that blue hair grease that my mother had on my face hoping that it would speed up the process.

If you thought they had jokes before, you should've seen my classmates that Monday.

Next time on MentalStorage, we'll talk about how puberty-stricken-me came up with the idea to put baking soda under his arms to stop the sweating...or maybe we won't. 

 

 

Harmony.

I'm actually writing this while visiting my grandmother's grave. I can't say that it just hit me that she's gone, but I guess you could say that I'm experiencing an aftershock. Supposedly they lessen with time.

So anyway, I'm sitting here watching the sunset. I picked an area on a hill next to a tree with a view of the city and the sunset. My grandmother wasn't very sensitive or girly, but if she was at church or trying to put on a front for someone important, then this is something she'd pretend that she liked.

While sitting here, I remembered that there will be no more memories. No more new stories to tell. The last actual memory is her taking her last breath. So as I sat here thinking about the cyclical nature of things: she was there in the delivery room for my first breath, and I was there in the ICU for her last.

As I thought about that, I felt this wave of grief. I don't think I felt it after she died. I was too busy planning things. So I was sitting here about to tear up, and I decided to pull out my phone and play a song she used to play all the time when I was little, Rough Side of the Mountain. Just as I was about to hit play, I heard her. I literally heard her voice.

"What the hell are you about to play that for. Turn that thing off. You ain't wanna listen to it when I wanted to hear it. Stop being stupid. What are you crying for. You better get in that damned car and go get something to eat. You wanna remember me...then go to Golden Corral and get a little piece of cornbread or one of them rolls. Wrap it up in a napkin and bring it back here, if you wanna do something for me. I told you, you can be sad but don't sit around here crying like a damned fool."

You know what? I feel a lot better. LOL
I'm going to get something to eat.

A Day in the Life

I have been trying to post something for the last few days, but every time I sit down to write...she happens. It is 10:14pm on 11/13/13. I feel like it's about 3AM. I'm tired, and I know that I sound like a broken record at this point. I don't care. The struggle is real, and my story needs to be told. In the event that my daughter succeeds in killing me, I'd like this to be read at my funeral.

[5:40 AM]
Wake up...barely. The oven was programmed the night before to cut itself on 20 minutes prior. All I have to do is open the Pillsbury biscuit canister and put them on the parchment paper that I lined on a baking sheet the night before. I do that, put them in the oven, and start the bacon.

[6:00 AM]
Co-Parent drops off the child, so that I can take her to school. It is my daily task. I am Lord of the Drop-Off. The child immediately demands a biscuit, bacon and orange juice. They're already sitting in her spot at the table.

[6:30 AM]
Time to go. The child wants to play with her toys. She refuses to put on her coat. I wrestle her to the ground using a jiu-jitsu move I learned watching Ninja Turtles II years ago, and I entrap her in her coat.

[6:45 AM]
We're a half mile from home headed to the train. It is 32 degrees outside with a wind chill of "wasn't it 70 degrees two weeks ago." The child is on my shoulders, because it's too damned cold to force her to walk in this weather.

[7:00 AM]
Metro happens.

[7:05 AM]
The child is bored on the train. She is 2 minutes away from Katie Kabooming the car. I open my backpack aka Metro Survival Kit. It contains four books, four toys, Goldfish, bottled water, tissues, sanitizer, band-aids, and an emergency biscuit and strip of bacon in a ziploc bag. We read Curious George and the Car Wash 17 times.

[7:30 AM]
Off the train, the child is back on my shoulders, and we're walking one mile to her school. I will the vertebrae in my spine not to collapse with the 40 lbs I'm carrying on my neck.

[7:40 AM]
Child is dropped off, as is the second breakfast and lunch that I made her that morning since she won't eat the food provided by the school. I begin my 3 mile walk through Rock Creek Park back home. It's 33 degrees, so I decide to jog.

[3:30 PM]I deny the urge to buy myself the porterhouse steak that's smiling at me from behind the "SALE" sign, in favor of something my daughter will enjoy as well. I settle on wings. I want to make mashed potatoes, but I want to make something new that my daughter will like. Rice-a-Roni. It's processed to hell, but it's the cheesy kind. She likes cheese, so I get that.

[4:00 PM]
I'm home now, and standing in front of the stove making Rice-a-Roni while the lemon pepper wings are roasting in the oven.

[4:40 PM]
Food is done. I now leave to make the 3 mile trek through Rock Creek Park to go pick her up. It's getting dark earlier than I expected.

[5:00 PM]
It's dark as hell in the park, and I just know in my heart that someone will turn up missing and I'll end up a suspect because I'm walking through the park at night like an idiot. I start to run, then wonder if that makes me look guilty of something to the cars going by. I go back to walking. Then I start to consider that I could actually become a victim myself. I go back to running.

[5:30 PM]
Arrive at the school. Sign my daughter out of kiddie jail, take her to the bathroom, hunt down my tupperware that carried her lunch, and promise the front desk person to get her dental forms updated by the deadline. Begin the one mile walk to the train. A gust of 33 degree wind hits us. I put her on my shoulders again and start to walk.

[5:50 PM]Child loses her mind and throws a tantrum on the platform because I won't let her get on the elevator. Too many witnesses to handle appropriately. I try talking to her. She stares at me, assumes she's won the battle of wills, and proceeds to shout triumphantly on the train. People stare. I stare back and then try the "mommy" church pinch. It is unsuccessful. I hand her toys from the survival kit.

[6:00 PM]
Metro happens...again.

[7:00 PM]
Arrive home after another half mile walk. Wash child's hands, prepare her plate, and hope for the best. The child looks at the lemon pepper wings, the rice-a-roni, the green peas, and the cup of water with fish-shaped ice from the Ikea toddler mold. "I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!"

[7:01 PM]
I barricade myself in the bathroom for the child's protection.

[7:03 PM]
I return to the dining room and inform the child that she will not leave the table until she finishes her food.

[7:45 PM]
The child is still sitting at the table. It is now time for a bath. I do whatever the food equivalent of waterboarding is. I place the child in the tub.

[7:48 PM]
I begin to eat my food.

[7:50 PM]
The child is too quiet. I make sure she hasn't drowned, although I'm pretty certain that only fire can kill her.

[7:59 PM]
Bath is done. Begin reading two stories. FaceTime Co-Parent so that she can say goodnight. Brush her teeth. One last potty run.

[8:15 PM]
Sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Turn off the light. Head back to dining table to finish food that has begun to fossilize.

[8:20 PM]
Start making tomorrow's lunch. Set the oven to cut on for tomorrow's biscuits.

The Dark Knight

The theme for 2013 seems to be letting go. Letting go of the illusion of control is something that I'm still coming to terms with. I was watching Kevin Hart yesterday and he had a bit about realizing that eventually his ex-wife will have another man around his kids. That's something that I'm just not ready for. It has nothing to do with me trying to control what my ex-wife does. I'm concerned about my daughter.

Every man--at least every decent one--wants to be his child's superhero. You want to be strong, you want to be everywhere at once, and you want to protect them from everything. The truth is that it's impossible. I'm not Superman. Long before the divorce I had to accept that I couldn't protect her from life. And even if I could, I shouldn't. Some things she'll just have to experience in order to learn to stand up on her own.

I stopped trying to be Superman. Not only did I stop hovering over her, I also stopped trying to appear invincible to her. She needs to see a man being vulnerable. She needs to learn that how a man handles his insecurities is far more important than him pretending they don't exist. Instead of being Superman, I relegated myself to being Batman. I don't have any superpowers. It's what I do with ordinary that makes me extraordinary.

But now I'm divorced and this job just got a lot harder. My daughter is now split between two houses, with two totally different parents. Remember, opposites attract. That worked when we were married. We balanced each other out and we compromised in order to present a unified front to our kid. That's just not possible now. No matter what anyone says about being on the same page, there will always be differences.

My house looks like Disneyland. Her house looks like a museum. She plays music and has flowers and stuff up. My house looks EXACTLY like a man lives here. It took four different women coming by to finally convince me to buy one of those little trashcans for my bathroom. And these are just cosmetic differences. Don't get me started on our personalities. So right off the bat I'm trying to figure out to adjust to the new parenting dynamic.

But that's an adjustment I'm trying to make with a person that I know extremely well. If that's difficult, then imagine how hard it's gonna be to add in a person I know absolutely nothing about. I'm sure that when the time comes I'll get to meet the guy, but that's about it. In a perfect world, I'd be given the names and social security numbers of every guy she's halfway interested in from the guy at work to the guy she locked eyes with on the train. Then, I'd take their info, run some background checks, kidnap them and inject them with truth serum to find out if they're pedophiles or not, and then let her know who passes ROUND ONE of my tests.

But something tells me she just won't go for that.

So here Batman sits...wondering. When the time comes will the guy by worthy? This sounds harsh, but I could give a damn what makes my ex-wife happy. The ideal guy to be around my daughter, besides myself, is a 70 year old blind, impotent, and extremely patient old man who enjoys nothing more than telling my daughter a bunch of cool stories about being in the Navy and the importance of financial responsibility. Anyone else is on my terrorist watch list. And trust me...the NSA ain't got nothing on my detective skills.

My daughter was invited to a play date once. Within five minutes I had the woman's name--but more important to me--her husband's name, where he worked, a deed and layout of their house, their 5 year old wedding registry, pictures from the wedding and a list of sports they played in high school and college.

Know your enemy.

I say a lot of this half jokingly, but the truth is that I was eleven the first time someone ever shared with me their secret of being raped by her mom's boyfriend. Back then I didn't know any better and kept her confidence. Since then, I've heard similar stories at least three dozen times, and they haunt me to this day. Coworkers, friends, classmates, ex-girlfriends...so much can happen when love is mistaken for trust. And all it takes is one time to ruin someone's life forever. So, I'll happily accept paranoia over the alternative.

Ex-wife knows this about me, and that's probably why I won't meet her future beau until five minutes before the wedding. What she doesn't know is that within three I'll have a blood and urine sample, and either a right hook or a handshake for the guy. Even in the case of the latter, I'll still be sitting on the roof across the street watching for my daughter's bat signal...

Because I'm Batman.

Me Time

There's an episode of The Cosby Show that brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it. It's the one where Claire is about to put some of the children up for adoption, because they won't leave her alone (or something like that). As an alternative, Cliff converts an empty room into her own private soundproof, electronically locked sanctuary. I need to marry a woman like Cliff...a Cliffette.

Since 12:30 today my daughter has been following me around...literally. If I sit on the couch, she sits on the couch. I went to the kitchen for some water, and I looked over to see her grabbing one of her little tumblers out of the dishwasher. I went to the bathroom and (no lie) she grabbed my waist from behind and started doing the conga line chant (dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-HEY!) as I walked to the bathroom. She let me close the door, but as soon as she heard it flush she burst through the door.

When she realized that my sitting on the couch to watch the game was gonna take a while, she started asking me to do things with her. "Let's play hide and go seek!" "Can we read The Three Bears?" "Can we go to Giant and get Goldfish?" Now mind you, we sang and danced and colored and recreated the Michael Jackson Scream video with two Penguins for at least two hours prior to me watching the game. It wasn't enough. Her affection requires a blood sacrifice, and in this case it was every touchdown, interception or Red Zone play.

A normal man wouldn't have made the cut, but not me. I kept thinking about how much I love her and that she was worth it. Okay, that's more like the theme of what I was actually thinking. It all boils down to love, but my actual thought was, "She's gonna end up on the pole, because I wanna see if they get a first down." I have to say that The Players Club has encouraged me to be a better parent than any parenting book out there.

So I ended up missing most of the game. She stretched out on the kitchen floor directly behind me while I cooked, and she pulled up a chair beside me ten minutes ago when I sat down to check the weather on my computer. It was when she started reaching for the trackpad in an attempt to navigate to the bookmarks in order to get to her Youtube playlist that I decided enough was enough.

"GO SIT DOWN ALL THE WAY OVER THERE!"

She wasn't amused. She screamed, hollered, shouted, and kicked, which normally would've been followed up by a scene from my upcoming play, "Joe Jackson: The Musical," but when she kicked she accidentally hit the table with her foot. I think God beat her to save her life. So anyway that prompted her to just sit on the couch pouting. 63 seconds later, I heard her snoring. That was 17 minutes ago. It's 5:25pm...too damned late for a nap, but I need some me time. This is my sanctuary. In the last 17 minutes I've eaten, read the news, played a round of Tetris on my phone, watched highlights of the game I missed (with the volume completely down), eaten the last Reese Cup out of the freezer, and now I'm just waiting out my last minute and eighteen seconds before I have to wake her up. I can live a whole lifetime in that amount of time.

*and of course the *$*$&#&#@* fire drill just went off in my building!

Gotta go. I bet she set that ______ off with her subconscious.

Reorganization

[caption id="attachment_3698" align="aligncenter" width="300"] What the hell is this?[/caption]

I know she's only three, but this is the worst Halloween score ever. Now granted, my feet were hurting and I was tired, so we only did two blocks, but still there is no excuse. When I was her age I could've hit up a diabetic wing of a retirement village and gotten a better take. Who is this kid?

We went up to houses where there were Reese's, Snickers, and M&Ms. She picked the York Peppermint Patty. WHO TAKES THE PEPPERMINT PATTY!? One woman told her she could have two pieces, she only took one. I just stood there with the Joe Jackson smile. "Thank you so much. Have a good evening!" That's what my mouth said. My eyes said, "I'm putting you up for adoption tomorrow." Ike Turner said it best, "Tell her if she miss a step tonight, she gonna be frying fish tomorrow."

She's out the family.

I remember one year I dressed up as Superman. I WAS Superman. I embraced that ish. We left at 6:00 and I didn't come back home until 10:30. My feet hurt. I was about six or seven. Of course they hurt. That cheap ass mask was soaked with sweat and condensation from my breath. My tongue had that red ring around it from me scratching it against the tiny slit where the mouth was. Hell, I think I lost the cape somewhere between my house and Hechinger Mall. But guess what...Superman doesn't quit. I didn't come home until I had three grocery bags full of candy.

I knew what the deal was. My mother was going to check my candy, and long before I'd ever hold a retail job I was well aware of the concept of "shrinkage." There was no way in hell that all of those Snickers looked tampered with. But that's the cost of doing business with the mob. I overcompensated for her protection money.

But that was me and my hustle. This little girl has none of that.

A peppermint patty. Really?

What's wrong with kids these days?

[Sidebar: I'm going to chaperone my first field trip today. Pray...a lot.]

The Halloween Dilemma

God grant me the serenity to...scratch that. God, please give me the strength to walk three miles to this little girl's school, and, when I get there, please bless her with a pleasant disposition that matches the reward she's going to get tonight in the form of me walking around the neighborhood begging strangers for candy. Lord, let not her heart be full of "three-year-old-isms" that cause me to regret spending the last week going from Halloween store to Halloween store, which is incredibly tedious when you don't have a car, all in the name of finding her a costume. And Lord, heal her feet which I'm certain she'll claim are too tired to walk from her school to the Metro. For whatever reason, the minute she sees me she instantly becomes unable to walk four feet without wanting me to pick her up. And if it be your will, may we not have any parent-child altercations that make me say "Forget it, we're not doing anything tonight" thus hurting myself in the process, because all of this will have been for naught.

Amen.

When I was little, Halloween was the ish. I couldn't wait to go make my rounds. My daughter doesn't even know the holiday exists. She's three and kind of...above this whole childhood thing. This is one I wish I could blame on Co-parent, but it's my doing. You see, like me, she suffers from motivation-deficit-disorder. If there's no incentive to care, then she doesn't. Brace yourself...she's never had candy before. I'll give you a minute to digest that.

By the time I was five, I had a mouth full of dice. I've responsible for more dentist retirements than anyone else in the eastern US. So, when she was born, Co-parent and I made a pact that she'd never know about candy or sugar or fast food until it was absolutely necessary. We kinda treated it like adoption. "She doesn't need to know. Apples are her candy now." Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those parents. You know, the kind who feel like kids should only drink agave nectar-sweetened beverages and eat less than 1 gram of fat a day. That's not me at all.

I truly believe in my daughter's God given right to eat after midnight and wreak havoc on the town with all of the other gremlins hopped up on sugar. Just not now. Give it time. Let me enjoy having a sweet, loveable child as long as possible. Then when the time is right she can turn into a caffeinated hellion. I'm the same one who has her thinking that those 39 cent toys from Party City are high quality AND believing that Toys R Us and Target are places people go to play with toys INSIDE the store only. Whenever we get to the register she hands me the toys back by default.

I know that this world will eventually come crashing down, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts. Still, this all presents a problem tonight. How do I convince her to leave my side to go retrieve candy from complete strangers when she has no interest in it whatsoever. I really want her to experience Halloween and trick or treating. Okay, I'm lying. I really want some Reese Cups for myself, and I don't want to buy them. They taste better when they're free (and after they've been in the freezer for a minute). I'll figure something out.

Let Your Fingers Do The Walking

I was at a bar the other day that had the old X-Men 4-player arcade game. Seeing that thing triggered memories that I'm certain my brain worked really hard to repress. I'm the poster child for the other side of child neglect. Yeah, you got your hungry malnourished kids who (rightfully so) get the bulk of the attention, but there's a whole different sect that no one acknowledges...the bored kids.

Saturdays were the worst part of the week for me. I had to be the only kid who actually liked going to school. There was stuff to do there. Half of it I didn't want to actually be bothered with, but still you get what I'm saying. Around 10AM every Saturday my grandmother would leave to go to choir rehearsal. My mother would go to... I honestly have no idea where she went. She was like Batman in the sense that she just disappeared mid-sentence. I'd wake up just as she was leaving and see her throw down a smoke pellet before hopping out the second floor window.

Once cartoons went off, my Saturdays freaking sucked. I was an only child back then, and because I was home alone the only rule was that I couldn't open the door for any reason. That meant no going outside. The first hour or so was fine, but after a while I had to get creative. Seeing that X-Men game reminded me of what I call "The Phone Book Period."

You know how kids used to call and make prank calls back in the day? That was me minus the prank call part. I used to just call places for the hell of it. The MLK Library used to have a number that you could call that would play recordings of a new children's story each week. The number was in the blue "information" section of the phone book. One day I noticed that there was a number for the historical weather data. Why not? What else was I gonna do to pass the time? I listened to that. Then I called the Boys Town Hotline, not really knowing what that was for. When they realized I wasn't at risk for anything they told me to hang up.

That led to me just calling all kinds of numbers:

• Metro for bus times just to see if they could accurately predict when the next bus would go around the park up the street.


• I called the city to report a dead cat.


• I was famous for calling to request "more information" on...everything. Lincoln Tech, D-I-Y home repairs, The Army

After a while I ran out of places to call in that section and started going through the actual Yellow Pages. I'd tell people I was doing a report on something for school and needed information. I talked to lawyers, electricians, plumbers...anybody who would talk to me.

Now that I think about it, I used to do the same thing when I was even younger. I'd dial 7 numbers at random and talk to whomever answered. "Hi. I'm Ordale. What's your name?" "Does your mother know you're on the phone?" That stopped when some man said he was going to track me down and kill me. I was either five or six, so...welcome to DC in the 80s.

Anyway, this all goes back to the X-Men game, because I remember calling every listing under "Arcade Games" to see if there was somewhere I could buy the game. I was tired of losing quarters and assumed that it must be cheaper to just buy the whole thing.

"Hi, my name is Ordale and I'm trying to buy the X-Men game." If they didn't hang up after hearing my prepubescent voice, they sure as hell hung up once I told them that I had a whopping $77 of birthday money to spend on one.

"Now, my grandmother said she's gonna give me $25 for my birthday, so I can go as high as $100 if you can hold it til July."

(Like most things, there's no reason for this story...just popped in my head just now as I was going to bed. And just that quick...End of Story)

Mocha Svelte

I haven't had much time to post anything lately. I've been running around a lot. Literally. It's awkward to talk about break-ups and divorces and people dying. Well, actually it's not awkward for me to talk about it. I guess what I mean is that it's probably awkward for you, the reader. I've been there on the receiving end before. What sounds like humor could really be cries for help or something. You never know if you should laugh or call someone. I guess you just have to take me at my word when I say that you can put the phone down for this next one: I kinda wish I'd capitalized on that divorce/break-up/heartache thing a little more.

I was too caught up in being sad and feeling betrayed to really appreciate the positives of what was going on. I'd never gone through it before, but now that I'm on the other side of it, I look back and see all of the pictures I took during the spring. The first thing that comes to mind is...Damn I was skinny!

Now if you've never seen me before in person (the beauty will captivate you), then let me describe myself to you. I'm very pretty in a handsome way. I'm an Ikea mocha dresser color, and I look tall if you kneel down at the base of a hill. Weight-wise, I'm....I don't know. In my head I'm stocky, but most people say I'm average. I don't have low self worth or anything. Clearly, anyone who describes himself in the pantheon of do-it-yourself furniture has high self esteem. I just remember what it was like when I ran track and was really, really skinny. Back then I looked like a crackhead. Now I just look like a recovering crackhead.

Anyway, right after "the fall" I lost about 20-25 lbs. It just happened. I wasn't hungry. Too busy crying and moping around. But I remember the day that I went into Nordstrom and tried on clothes. I realized that I dropped three pant sizes. I remember thinking, "Man, if only I could afford to buy something out of here." So then I went to TJ Maxx and balled out of control. I was svelte! And I never get to use that word enough when it comes to describing myself.

Two weeks ago I went back to Nordstrom to pretend that I had money, and the same shirt that I said I'd come back to buy in the fall didn't fit like it did in the summer. There's a quart where my six pack used to be. So that prompted me to go for a run...like, immediately. I don't have a car anymore, so I ran home from the train. Since that time, I've been doing my usual 3 mile walk to and from my daughter's school, plus running 3 miles a day, and riding my bike whenever possible.

I lost five pounds last week, which is cool, but I had to work for it. That sucks. Like alimony, I've become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. I should just be able to listen to a Mary J Blige song or something, and then lose all desire to eat for two or three days. So anyway, I say all of this for two reasons:

1) I had nothing else to write about, but my readership has doubled in the past three months, and I don't want to lose you fine people. I had to write something!

2) It's encouraging to put your weight loss goals on the internet, because it forces you to stick with it out of sheer fear of embarrassment after talking a good game. I could've just put this in a Facebook post, but my friends have that on lock with their Runkeeper posts and their "I think I just invented cooking" food pictures.

So after all of that plus running behind a three year old who runs on nuclear power...I'm tired. But guess what, I'm not gon' cry, I'm not gon' cry, I'm not gon' shed no tears. (Damn, doesn't work anymore. Guess I'll go do a sit up or something.)

Crazy Sexy Cool

Well, as a NonCablelite (like the famous tribe from the Bible), I wasn't able to watch the TLC movie last night. I doubt I would have even if I did have cable. I can guess what happened though. They made a bunch of records, but not a bunch of money. One of them dies at the end.

Okay, that was wrong. I take that back.

I was actually a huge TLC fan back in the day. I got my first CD player for my 13th birthday, and I literally ran 3 miles to Nobody Beats the Wiz in order to buy CrazySexyCool and II. Those were the first CDs I ever owned. A part of the original trilogy of "Wow, CDs cost more than tapes. I guess I'm not buying any more of these." For two years I held it down with Boyz II Men, TLC and Bone's, E. 1999 Eternal. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Like getting a CD player in '95, I was late to the pop culture party when it came to TLC. Once again for those just tuning in, I lived with my grandparents who listened to gospel and talk radio 24/7. Add to that the fact that I didn't have cable or know anyone who did, and the only time I ever saw TLC was when they were on Arsenio. As a matter of fact, I didn't see any of the videos from Oooh On the TLC Tip until I was in college. But I remember exactly when I first saw Red Light Special.

There's a special moment in every 12 year old boy's life when his family finally joins the 1980s and gets cable. For me, this was 1994. I spent the first night trying to squint through the scrambled lines of the premium channels (Yeah, those channels too). I stumbled across The Box (Music Television YOU control) during that special scene of Red Light Special. You would've thought I'd discovered fire. I went to school the next day with a ton of questions: "I just saw this video with these three girls playing cards and halfway through one of them..." My friends knew what I was talking about when I said, "I just saw this video..."

I ran to the library with my new knowledge of TLC and checked 1994's version of the internet, Infotrac. It was like the Atari version of Google: All of the magazines in one CD-ROM! With the magic of a dot matrix printer, it only took 2 hours to print off 20 pages. I tore the little holes off and headed home. For the next few months, you could find me in the magazine aisle of the  Safeway on Naylor and Good Hope Road at least once a month reading up on the exploits of my future wives.

You could also find the posters that magically disappeared from Word Up and Right On hanging up in my locker. Just Chilli though. The other two didn't interest me. I thought T-Boz was playing for the other team, and although she was fine, I felt LeftEye was more trouble than she was worth. But Chilli...sweet, innocent, "Now every black girl with curly hair is gonna lie and say she has Indian in her family" Rozonda Chilli Thomas. We were gonna get married and have cute, dark skinned, curly haired, 4 foot tall children. She was so bad that not only did she have teenage girls lying about their heritage, they were doing everything except hold a magnifying glass up to the eight or nine strands of baby hair that they had gelled to the sides of their head.

But such a thing isn't meant to last. Aaliyah blew up a year or two later, and suddenly TommyGirl, long weaves and the possibility of a lazy eye were in style. I never looked back. Chilli settled for Usher and that was that.

We'll always have The Box and video #440.

Testify

You accuse me of a, please let me testify
You accuse me of a, you accuse me of a
Please let me testify
Before you lock my love away...

If you were in Giant at 7pm last night, you no doubt witnessed what you think was bad parenting. There was a handsome 5'7 lad with a 3'4 kid in tow. The kid was crying and saying she was hungry. She was begging for things that would make the average parent cheer with delight: apples, bananas, rutabagas. You might have even heard her say "Ow, help me. My eye hurts." After watching the guy, let's call him "Me" for simplicity's sake, ignore her and walk out, you probably said to yourself, "He's a horrible parent."

You accuse me of a..., please let me testify
Before you lock my love away...

If you'd been a fly on the wall 5 minutes earlier at 6:55, you would've seen her screaming outside the Giant saying that her eye hurt. You would've witnessed me scrambling to check her eye as I tried to keep her from making it worse with her Metro-germ-lined fingers. At 6:55 you would've seen me running full speed with her in my arms into the Giant and heading for the bathroom to wash her eye out.

But that still wouldn't help your opinion of me at 7pm as you saw me walking out of the store and ignoring her as she continued to scream that her eye was hurting.

Please let me testify. You accuse me of a...

You had to be with us on the train about 30 minutes earlier around 6:30. You might have noticed it, but I sure as hell didn't catch it. I have a great memory, but it's more of a long term storage thing. I can tell you what happened 3 years ago, but not three minutes ago. It takes a major event to jog the short-term memory.

So if you'd been there at 6:30, then maybe you would've realized right away the correlation between that moment and 25 minutes later at 6:55 after I'd run full speed into Giant searching for the bathroom as my "frantic" child screamed and held her eye.

6:55pm- "My eye hurts. Help me. My eye. [screaming and holding eye]
6:30pm- Her: "Can we go to Giant?"
Me:  "Not today. I don't need anything from there."
Her: "Can we have Cookie Dough Ice Cream?"
Me: "No, you can't eat that everyday. You had it yesterday. No ice cream today."
Her: [crying]
Me: "Sit back and stop whining. I said no."

6:55pm- [On the walk home, passing Giant] "My eye hurts. Help me. My eye. [screaming and holding eye]
Me: Okay, keep your eye closed. Let's run in Giant and find the bathroom. I'll wash your eye out. Don't touch your eye!
Her: "Ow, ow, ow, the agony, woe is me, vision is fading, blindness is imminent."

6:59pm-Me: We're almost there. Keep your eye closed.
Her: [Both eyes wide open] Can we have cookie dough ice cream?
Me: ...

I turned around, and walked out as she began proclaiming how hungry she was. She began yelling for anything she saw that would keep me in the store. As I walked out, I was tried and convicted of bad parenting by a jury of my peers.

[In my head I heard the last verse of Common's song, Testify]
Common:

The court awaited as the foreman got the verdict from the bailiff

Emotional outbursts tears and smeared makeup

He stated, he was guilty on all charges

She's shaking looking like she took it the hardest

A spin artist, she brought her face up laughing

That's when the prosecutor realized what happened

All that speaking her mind, testifying and crying

When this [kid] did the crime, the queenpin

California Love

Whenever I travel I take one of my daughter's toys with me. It's a ritual that started by accident a long time ago. Small kids are squirrels in the sense that they hide things everywhere. You never know when you'll be standing on the subway and reach into your pocket to find eight cheerios and a half-eaten hot dog. I went to NC a couple of years ago and found one of her toys in my bag. Now I make it a point to take one with me every time I travel.

Like the movie Inception, it's my own personal totem. Boy, did it come in handy this weekend. I just got back from L.A., and if not for the totem, I would've gladly stayed in that dream world. I had no desire to come back to DC...at all! If not for my daughter, I'd still be there.

If you read my last post, then you know that this was a consolation prize since Mother Nature has apparently banned me from all islands. It was a star-studded flight. Goose and Maverick piloted us there, while I sat next to the monkey from Outbreak. After 6 hours of her non-stop coughing and sneezing, I realized that I should probably enjoy L.A. as fast as possible before I died or turned into a zombie or something.

I landed at 1pm. By the end of the day I'd been to:

• The Griffith Observatory where I took pictures of the LA skyline


• The Hollywood Sign


• The Warner Brothers Studio Tour where I saw the set of Two and a Half Men, all of the cars from Batman, took pics on the couch from Friends, and saw Rebel Wilson (Bridesmaids, Pitch Perfect).


• The Walk of Fame where I saw the saddest street performers and impersonators (more on them later)


• The Grauman (TCL) Chinese Theater where I saw Gravity in 3D in their newly renovated IMAX screen


• Rosco's Chicken and Waffles


• The Santa Monica Pier

Believe it or not, I didn't rush through anything. I only slept a total of 9 hours over the four days that I was there, so I had plenty of time on my hands. The WB tour was fantastic, but the Walk of Fame has to be the most depressing thing I've ever seen. I heard about the impersonators and the folks walking around in costumes begging for you to take pics with them, but I really wasn't prepared.

The first thing to catch my eye was the 5'10 black guy who had to weigh about 230-250 in black pants, a stretchy shirt, a green vest like something you'd rent from Men's Wearhouse for a wedding or prom, and a black mask. You know who he was supposed to be? The Green Lantern! Then there was his buddy, Batman, whose costume appeared to be carefully woven from Hefty trash bags. Then there was Catwoman who had a body to die for and probably the diseases to die from judging by her "costume." Honestly, if she took her mask off at night and worked a few corners away, it would not surprise me.

The WORST offenders, hands down, were the Michael Jackson impersonators. There were three: Black Michael Jackson, Brown Michael Jackson, and Gray Michael Jackson (Charcoal "Wesley Snipes" skin + White makeup=Gray). Gray Michael Jackson wasn't that bad. He just kept prancing up and down the street like it was the Billie Jean video. Black Michael Jackson...where do I start. This dude stood at the end of the block in a frozen pose pointing at a sign that said, "tips make me move." I stood there for five minutes waiting for someone to put money in the jar (I wasn't going to). He never moved. I was impressed that he held that pose for so long. Finally, some kid gave him a dollar and he started dancing. What...the...hell? An epileptic having a seizure could've done better. And that leaves my favorite, the highlight of my trip, and the reason I had to leave the walk of fame...

Brown Michael Jackson looked a hot damned mess. He had plastic surgery to try and make himself look like him, but I swear to God he had it done at a daycare with some left-handed scissors. He looked horrible and had a jheri curl that looked JUST like the one Randy Watson had in Coming to America. He was wearing what I can only describe as a fire engine red onesie. It looked like the pajamas you wear to go to bed as a kid with the feet in them.

He was blasting Thriller and walking down the street with a large American flag draped over him as if he'd just won the Michael Jackson Olympic 100 Meter Dash. He had a single stem rose in his mouth. He put the flag over Michael's star on the Walk of Fame, and walked around it like three times. Then for no reason whatsoever he did a cartwheel over the flag. Not even a good cartwheel. It was like a "I'm out of shape" fat person cartwheel where your feet aren't even vertical. Then he sat down on the flag, started crying and shouted, "I LOVE MICHAEL JACKSON! I LOVE MYSELF!" Then he got up, picked up the flag and reset back down the street so he could do it again. I had to walk away after that. I completely left the area. I could take no more.

I didn't mean to dedicate so much of the post to that, but it's a tragedy that had to be told. LA is the city of dreams, and that stretch of Hollywood Boulevard is the septic system where the broken dreams flush back out into reality. I hate when these posts hit 1000 words, so let's wrap it up:

I paid extra for the VIP tour of Universal. I got to take pics on some movie and TV sets that are usually closed to the public. I went to Malibu for a day and FINALLY got to a beach! Anyone who knows me personally can tell you that I'm a HUGE Back to the Future fan. As a kid I tried to build a time machine at least once a week. I have the near-electrocutions to prove it. Anyway, not only did I see the original Delorean from the film, but I also went to Marty's house. The owners weren't thrilled about me taking pics of their house, but they'll get over it. I also went FULL GEEK and drove my car around the mall parking lot from the movie all while making the time travel noises in my head.

I ate a lot of good food, saw every tourist attraction I could think of (Venice Beach is a horrible, horrible place), crashed a banquet at a hotel that was much nicer than the one I was staying in, and I put 400 miles on the rental car. I had a blast! Then I looked at my totem, and drove myself back to LAX. 12 hours later, I was back in DC taking my daughter to school this morning.

Awesome, awesome, awesome trip! After the year I've had, it was just what I needed.

If you're reading this

First let me say that I'm writing this from my cell phone which wouldn't mean much if I were a constant texter, but because I'm not this is very tedious. Who knows what havoc autocorrect is gonna wreak.

Secondly, if you are reading this then it means that I have safely landed in the Los Angeles. I'd like to thank god and the wannabe fighter pilots up n the cockpit of my plane. What they call turbulence I call a laxative.

Originally I was suppose to be going to The Dominican Republic. Mother Nature has apparently forbidden me from going anywhere near the Caribbean. This is the fourth trip to be rained out by one of her mood swings/tropical storms. On second thought, forgive me Mother Nature...my plane hasn't landed yet and all it takes is a gust of wind to give the happy to lucky cowboys up in the cockpit another reason to play Top Gun.

I've always wanted to go to Cali. We were poor when I was a kid so the closest I got was a palm given to me at church on Palm Sunday. So wish me luck everyone. The flight attendants are telling me to power down my phone. It seems like a Windows phone, not an iPhone, would crash first. (Horrible joke considering I can't jump out the plane from here).

I'm hitting submit even though I'm sure this will hang until I get service again. If you don't hear from me again next week the.ln either I was discovered and am hobnobbing with celebrities, or I've succumbed to whatever virus the Outbreak monkey sitting next to me has been coughing into the air the entire flight.

Gotta go. Angry flight attendant. If you don't hear from me, see to it that my daughter gets my makeshift Palm Sunday Palm Tree.

Back to School Night

I had my first Back to School Night last week. It was weird. I still remember being in Head Start as if it were yesterday. My grandmother left me there, and I stood outside of the circle crying as everyone else sang The Hokey Pokey. Critical of people even back then, I stood there trying to figure out why I had to put my left foot in only to take it right back out. And why am I shaking it all about? This song is stupid. 

Anyway, it was weird because there were pictures all over the classroom. In just about every one of them my daughter has the same this is stupid expression on her face. Let me clarify: she is not a disagreeable child. She's extremely pleasant actually, but she is my child nonetheless. I can imagine what was going through her mind.

There was a picture of the whole class sitting on the tiny carpet on the floor. In the background, my daughter can be seen sitting in a chair. I imagine she thought the same thing I would:  My butt hurts on the floor. How about we all sit in chairs since that's what they're for. 

They had drawings on the wall. Out of 18 kids, only two of the pictures didn't look like cries for help. Draw a picture of a time that you were sad. One kid drew a picture of a single celled organism with blue dots coming out of it. I assume they were tears. The Michelangelo of the class had a picture of a humanoid with an upside-down U where the mouth should be.

Then there was my daughter's picture:
47 lines  of various colored markers all pressed onto the paper with varying degrees of intensity. All headed in different directions. The proud parent in me is almost terrified at the level of realism and scientific insight. Other kids tried to draw a scene of an event that made them sad. My daughter, on the other hand, drew a picture of her neural network, more specifically, the increased activity occurring in her prefrontal cortex. My daughter drew sadness as scientists are just recently beginning to understand it.

I could have explained it to her teachers, but I don't want them to treat her differently. Plus, I didn't want them to feel insecure about their inability to coach a mind as brilliant as hers. I doubt that they even noticed that her self portrait looks a lot like a DNA molecule.

[caption id="attachment_3661" align="alignnone" width="300"] Image courtesy of Renjith Krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_3660" align="alignnone" width="300"] You almost can't tell them apart.[/caption]

I'm Shutting Down The Studio

Due to a lapse of government funding, this blog is closed.

So I'm making my 3 mile trek through Rock Creek Park as I attempt to go pick up my daughter when I encounter this:



My immediate thought was, "Wow, they just shut down God. I guess if I keep walking all of the trees, dirt and rocks will be gone." Naturally, no one paid this sign any attention. I am not a government worker, but I'm certain I'll be affected by this soon enough. The same people who are so concerned about the economy don't seem to recognize the impact this will have on treasuries, consumer confidence, consumer spending, and (hopefully) their ability to get reelected.

The highlight of my day was watching the WWII vets walk right through the barricade in front of their memorial down on the mall. All of this is just infantile, and reinforces my long-held belief that I made the right choice turning down "a bright future" in politics. At the conclusion of my summer internship in a congressional office back in high school, I was offered the opportunity to stay on throughout the year. I gave a semi-professional declination, one that was completely undone by my commencement speech at the closing ceremony for the program.

In not so many (or so nice) words, I basically told a room full of congressmen that they don't do anything. Not only did I burn bridges, I set fire to highways, tunnels, and dirt paths. I'll never forget the one (and only) person who approached me after it was over, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. She told me that I was absolutely right, and that she appreciated my candor. My old "mentor" told me I was an idiot. "Say goodbye to that school trip to Europe."

In hindsight, it was probably the dumbest thing I've ever done at a job, but it was also the most sincere. The things I saw just bothered me. They bothered me so much that I pretty much set ablaze a fully paid European study tour (Rome, Paris, London), a guaranteed scholarship to college, and a TON of professional references.

Would I do the same thing today? I don't know. Only if it could prevent me having to explain this to my full-bladdered three year old on the way back home:

[caption id="attachment_3653" align="alignnone" width="604"] No, you can't go to the bathroom, because Congress needs to use it. Right now they're full of...[/caption]

Three's Company

I was supposed to write this last night, but I was too tired. I was so tired that I woke up an hour late this morning and had to rent a Zipcar to get my daughter to school on time. I'm never late, so that says something. So what happened? What crazy shenanigans did my daughter pull to make me so tired? Believe it or not, nothing. This time it's not on her.

Yesterday I went on what I can only describe as a family test drive. A friend of mine invited my daughter to a birthday party and we tagged along with her and her two kids, ages 4 and 4 months. I used to want three kids. Then yesterday happened. Now, I MIGHT want three kids. To steal this simile from a friend: it was like trying to herd squirrels.

First we went to Target to get a birthday present. It was weird walking in there with three kids. When it's just me and my daughter, I get admiring stares from everyone. "Hey, there's a young brother taking care of his responsibility." Yesterday, I had two in the shopping cart that I was pushing, and my friend was pushing the baby in a second cart beside me. I may be exaggerating a tad, but people knelt as I passed. Maybe it was out of sheer reverence for what they misinterpreted as a family of five, or it could be that they felt I was due a kind gesture for what was about to come.

Kids will never be as well mannered as they are when you start going down a toy aisle. They'll also never be as "put-up-for-adoption-able" as they are when it starts to sink in that you're not going to buy them anything. I had one trying to jump out the cart while another one was reaching hard trying to use The Force to will a toy into her hand.

We eventually made it to the superhero-themed party. My friend's daughter went as Robin. I refuse to buy anything else this year, so my daughter went in her Doc MacStuffins outfit and I told the other kids she was a supervillain from the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Evil. The party was at Anacostia Park, so that's where most of my energy was depleted. We ran around for what seemed like ever. My friend (pure genius) was happy to let me entertain the kids while she caught up with her friends.

Half of the time was spent trying not to seriously maim the 11 year olds trying to play stunt-football on the little kids' playground. One of them walked up to my daughter on top of one of the platforms, and I believe it was his intention to push her out of the way as his lips began to form the word "move." I honestly can't tell you what happened next. I saw his mouth form the "m" sound, but by the time he got to "oov" I was in front of him. Maybe I have my own superpower. What happened next can't be told until the statute of limitations passes, but we had no more problems out of him.

We stayed another hour or so, and I ran around trying to entertain the two of them before spending time with the baby. I wanted to see if I really could go through that phase again. I think I could, not that it's up to me. If I do end up getting married again, I know that I could do at least one more. My daughter started off as a twin, but she ate the other one in utero. Assuming lightning strikes twice (minus the Highlander womb fight), I THINK I could do two more.

Fully Insured

[Doing the Ice Cream Dance from Eddie Murphy Delirious]

I got insurance! I got insurance! I'm gonna use it all. I'm gonna use it all! You don't have insurance. You didn't get none. Cuz you are on the welfare. You can't afford it!

There is nothing more humbling than celebrating something that you used to take for granted. As you know, it's been one HELL of a year, but I'm still here. A friend of mine, and frequent reader, "E.G.," put a status on Facebook yesterday that said something along the lines of life throwing her a lot of curve balls, but God giving her a bat and teaching her to swing. I can relate, but I take it a step further. Life threw me two curve balls before hitting me with a beanball on the last pitch. God gave me a bat alright, but I'm not using it to hit a ball. Me and the pitcher (Life) are about to have a conversation about righteous indignation.

So anyway, back to my ice cream dance. I got insurance! I got insurance! So, you know...I got divorced. There's this crazy rule that you can't stay on someone's family insurance if you're not actually in their family anymore. (Where do they come up with this stuff?) I anticipated that before I filed, and applied for health insurance with my old employer. Ain't no love in the heart of the city...

I used to be the one to tell people that their coverage was been denied. "Sir, you stated on your application that you're 200 lbs overweight, smoke two packs a day, have 5-7 drinks a day, engage in unprotected sex with multiple partners, and you have several surgeries scheduled in the near future. You're gonna die. We can't cover you." If I were in that category, then I'd expect someone to sing me the same song. Here's the conversation that I had with the underwriter:
Me: Hi, my insurance application was denied. Before I appeal, I wanted to talk to you about it.
Her: Based on these things, I don't see an appeal going in your favor.
Me: Why?
Her: You have a history of heart disease.
Me: No. I had heart surgery to remove an accessory pathway. They removed it five years ago. The condition is gone. It can't grow back or anything. It's like having Lasik surgery on your eyes.
Her: Doesn't matter. There is a history of a heart issue. Plus you're morbidly obese.
Me: No I'm not! I weigh 180.
Her: That's considered obese for your height.
Me: It's muscle mass. I run 3-5 miles a day. I lift weights. My blood pressure has always been exactly 120/80. I have a resting heartbeat in the 40s. If you send out a nurse, she can verify my body fat percentage.
Her: We don't send out nurses or do medical verification. Finally, you have a history of mental illness.
Me: WHAT!?
Her: You have used mental health benefits in the past.
Me: I went to a marriage counselor before I decided to file for divorce! The benefit is charged under mental health, but it's not an illness.
Her: Any mental health usage is considered a suicide risk.
Me: Are you kidding me?

They gave me the option to take a different plan where everything, including office visits and prescriptions, would apply to a $10,000 deductible. This plan was $1,000 a month. After I read that I decided to devote my life to the used bookstore downtown, more specifically the old medical school textbooks section. I had already decided to start by making my own flu shot this weekend (vinegar, saline solution, three drops of Dayquil, and two drops of Lysol) when I got the email a few minutes ago saying that another company accepted my application.

So now I am doing my happy dance.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/2JfMCBh1sJQ?t=1m39s]

Sleep Deprived

I want to post something. I really do, but I'm still getting over this weekend. The child woke up at four in the morning one day and three the next. And it's not like she wakes up to use the bathroom or something. She's the rooster from hell. She's Satan's Rock-a-Doodle.

I haven't seen it myself, but I hear that there's a brochure that advertises children to the (naive) childless. I've heard that there's a section in there that talks about them waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or because they saw a monster in the closet or something. My daughter has the bladder of a 30 year old man, and actually prefers that the lights be turned off when she goes to bed. She's not afraid of things that go bump in the night. She IS the one who bumps!

I'd do a praise lap around the living room if she woke me up just so that she could use the bathroom. Instead, she wakes me up to Rock-a-Doodle...for Satan. I have no idea how she slips into my bed without me noticing, but almost every morning I wake up in what seems like a twisted version of The Little Mermaid. (Yes, I now speak in Disney references. It's been a long week.) The prince gets knocked out and when he wakes up the mermaid is standing over him staring down at him singing. At least, that's what I remember happening.

I wake up groggy and confused, and I open my eyes to see these two giant globes staring back at me. A small soft hand is stroking my cheek, and just as I'm about to smile my senses kick in. My vision kicks in, which helps me realize that it's still dark outside. That makes me groggy, because I know what's about to happen as soon as my hearing fully awakens. I hear some random, not-for-early-morning song like "Mama Said Knock You Out."

Sometimes she has a prop with her. This weekend it was a microphone. I came to while she was saying, "I'm gonna knock you out" and then putting the mic on my face, then going back to "Mama said knock you out," then putting the mic on my face again. What she wanted was for me to do the grunt. "Umph! I'm gonna knock you out. Umph! Mama said knock you ouuuut!" Oh yeah, she wasn't stroking my cheek either. She was smacking me in the face with the microphone.

What do you say to that at three in the morning? Nothing that can be repeated here without provoking the ire of parenting groups and Child Protective Services. When she realized that I wasn't going to sing, she started making demands: "grits, eggs, sausage..." 3:22 in the morning and I'm cooking breakfast like we're on a farm. When it's all finally done she asks for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Like I said before, one day someone will write a song about me long after I'm gone. I hope they blast it in her room at 3 in the morning.

The Ballad of SuperDaddy

This one's gonna be very short. It is 6:24 AM. I woke up about ten minutes ago and just knew that it was 11:00PM. I went to sleep at 9:30 and there was no way that more than two hours had passed. I'm guessing the Earth spun faster last night. We have to leave the house in 20 minutes. Even if you don't have kids you should know how that game goes.

If I had to give it a theme, I'd say that this week is The Eliminator from American Gladiators. Co-Parent's on vacation, so I'm doing drop off and pick-up of Darkwing Baby. But this wouldn't be The Eliminator if it were just that simple. I don't have a car anymore, so I have to find the path of least resistance to get to her school. But this wouldn't be The Eliminator if it were just that simple. Her school is located in a part of the city where you have to cross a spiked chasm, walk over hot lava, and go around a dragon. In other words, I have to rely on Metro.

The first day I tried the train. That didn't go well. It's a ten minute drive normally. It took an hour and some change on the train. So the next day I tried the bus. I might as well have walked, which is exactly what I did the day after that. I walked through Rock Creek Park and got there in an hour. That was fine, except for the whole part about getting back. I tried walking back with the child. Even with her in a stroller, it still took over an hour, because a good chunk of the path isn't paved. And then there's the matter of this ski slope that they call a hill at the end of that walk.

But this wouldn't be The Eliminator if it were just that simple. I'm cleaning out my grandmother's house, so there's a very large dumpster in front of her house that I ordered. I only have two weeks, else I have to pay more money, so I have to scramble to empty the house. Sooooo....regardless of how she gets to school and gets home, the middle of the day is spent lugging bags of clothes and other old-people objects to a dumpster where I have to summon the power of Castle Greyskull to toss things up and over the 6 foot tall dumpster walls.

When all is said and done, I come home, cook dinner, play whatever game my daughter makes up in her mind, and then put her to bed before passing out myself. One day someone will write a song about me, grab a lyre and go from town to town singing my ballad.

It's 6:43...gotta run to the train by 6:50 and make this child eat eggs that apparently aren't up to her standards. That song will be beautiful.

Turn the Crank

Just turn the crank and snap the plank and boot the ball right down the chute. Now watch it roll and hit the pole and knock the ball in the rub-a-dub tub which hits the man into the pan. The trap is set, here comes the net...Mousetrap!

I really do remember the most random things. I have a house guest. If all goes according to plan, he'll be on life support by the time I finish typing this. You ever have that moment when you think you see something move out of the corner of your eye, but don't want to look because you'll just feel stupid when it turns out to be nothing? That happened to me yesterday, but I looked because not looking is how horror movies start.

Of course it turned out to be nothing, so when I had the same moment today I tried to save face and be Neil Degrasse Tyson. It's just light reflecting off the window across the way. More than likely a car turned the corner and, with the sun being directly overhead, it bounced from the windshield to that unit and then into my apartment. The illusion of movement was no doubt caused by the fact that the car was in motion, thus the angle of reflection changed due to the curvature of the windshield.

Uh huh.

Thirty seconds later I remembered that my degree is in Business, not Physics, and I took another look. I saw my daughter's werewolf doll (don't ask) and rationalized that that was what I saw. I went to pick it up and my brain started talking again just as I bent down. You know, even though this is here, it doesn't answer the question of what it was that we saw moving. This isn't Toy Story. Toys don't move on their own. It could very well have been...

A damned mouse Usain Bolts across the floor. I jump back and that's when it gets weird. There was a cricket in my house yesterday and you would've thought it was a langolier or something. I hauled ass to get the can of Raid from the closet and wielded it like a proton pack. I don't do bugs.

But when I saw the mouse, I jumped back...and immediately sealed off all the rooms in the house. I didn't want him to have anywhere to escape the beat down. When I was ten we moved into a crappy apartment in Rosedale. We only lasted two months there because everyday we caught at least two or three mice on a trap. I got over my fear of them real quick. Bad news for Ben.

I grabbed a broom and started pushing furniture around trying to find him. I know I looked insane to any passersby looking in my window. Picture a savage carrying a spear as he slowly approaches a boar or something. That was me with the broom. Call it my mouseketool. I searched high and low but couldn't find the bastard. So I...

***Update***
I got him.  No point in telling the rest of the story, but I'm too tired to write about something else. Right before I started typing this I put down two glue traps. I just heard one dragging along the floor. I'm about to send Jesus a pet.

[Two minutes later]
Yep, that was him. I don't know if I should sing Ben or Gone Too Soon.

Hey, why not both?

End of Chapter

Today would've been my 10 year anniversary. Would have been...if I didn't get divorced two days ago. Talk about falling down at the one yard line. Then again, to be honest, this story began back in January. The divorce just made it official. Still, the timing of it all: ten year anniversary, a month after my grandmother died. It's a lot to take in. But that's what we do here at OrdaleCo. When life starts to rain we find a way to walk between the drops.

I won't lie; I'm emotional. Better yet, I'm confused. Part of me is still waiting for someone to jump out and tell me I'm being punked. I honestly don't believe the stuff that I've seen with my own eyes this year. I don't feel like writing the specifics. I will eventually, but that's a story that needs to be told over some chapters and not in a singular post. The best way I can analogize it is to say that it's like being married to someone who didn't know they had amnesia, and then one day they just snap out of it.

It doesn't matter that you have nine years together. It doesn't matter that you have a kid. They wake up and are instantly a totally different person. You can't negotiate that. You can't work that out. If the old person was happily married and a week later the new person says, "I'm not marriage material," what recourse do you have? I learned this year that trust is not a requirement for love. That explains the friends of mine who willingly went back into the whack-a-mole game that their relationships became. As far as I'm concerned, trust may not be a requirement for love, but it sure as hell is one for happiness.

It's depressing as hell to make the decision to sacrifice one for the other. It's hard to trudge through a divorce without the limitless energy that hate can provide. Even if you do make it through, you come out of it compromised. To be told that you didn't do anything wrong, that you were actually more than they felt they deserved, and then for that conversation to end with an axiom: I'm sorry, but I guess what they say is true, nice guys really do finish last... How can you not be compromised?

The truth is...you can't. You can't avoid it, but maybe that's a good thing. Something like this happens and it makes you question yourself and your values. If you can process all of the emotions and all of the hurt feelings and still arrive at the conclusion that this is who you are and how you want to live your life, then you know that it's real. You know who you are. I don't have to worry about having amnesia myself one day. I don't have to worry about my own happiness ever coming at the expense of someone else. So my story doesn't end just because one character drops out. We flip the page and start a new chapter.

***

 

 

Today

I want to acknowledge 9/11, but I don't want to dwell on it. You'll never forget where you were. No one needs to remind you of what you felt. We all remember how that day became the dividing line between the way things were and the way they are now.

All I'll say is that I hold my hand over my heart for all of those who died that day and for those left to carry the scars of their absence.

 

Out of Office Reply

This is going to be a very busy week. I may not have much time to write. I'll be sure to write a humorous recap when it's all over, but for now...I gotta go see a man about a mule.

If you are bored and just need something to do. How about you pray. Not for me, but for October. I want to get away. Correction: I NEED to get away. After all that's happened this year, I just want four days of relaxation. I got a passport, and I'm going...somewhere. Wherever I can find a last minute deal to a beach with clear water, that's where I'm going. So pray that there be no hurricanes in my vicinity. It seems like every time I try to go away something crazy happens.

Thanks in advance.

PS...If you can also pray up a nice looking woman with marriage potential under 5'3 (I wanna feel tall the next go round)...that'd be AWESOME!

Random Vent

I'm going through a "tiff" with someone (You ever forget a word was a word until it pops in your head? Tiff. When was the last time I used that?) Anyway, I'm not one to put people on blast, but I'm really annoyed right now and I can't seem to shake it. So, let's highlight a few of the folks who haven't pissed me off. That's positive, right? It's not an all-inclusive list. It's just a few that come to mind in no particular order.

Friend #1
I know a lot of people, but I have very few friends. The smaller the organization, the easier it is to manage. This person made the team back in 2001. I was in the elephant graveyard that is my HBCU's all-male dorm when I noticed something strange: my refrigerator was gone. Remember that scene in A Thin Line Between Love and Hate when Lynn Whitfield steals the tires off Martin's car while it's parked in front of the police station? I responded just like Martin did.

What kind of crackhead steals a refrigerator? I had a Playstation. I had a computer! They stole my refrigerator!!! That's like stealing a baby's car seat. Some things you just don't do. I took that personal. I'm 5'7 on a good day, but I was 6'9 that day carrying He-Man's sword, because I walked up and down the hall cursing everybody out from the football players to the R.A.s. This was back before 9/11 when you could make idle threats. "I will burn this _____ place down if I don't get my ______ refrigerator back!"

I didn't. But out of the blue Friend #1 (who didn't go to my school and thus isn't a suspect) bought me a brand new fridge.
Friend #2
Back in high school, during the winter of our discontent when our gas was off and our house was a freezer, I had the misfortune of my backpack falling apart. I went to Banneker where we had homework in every class every night, so those books went home every night.

This was back when I ran track, and the joy of each day was waking up to God's glory at 7AM (late) and realizing that I had only six minutes to get to the bus stop. Me and the bus driver...we had this game we liked to play. He'd see me running for the bus and speed up. I'd run after the bus cursing the whole time until I caught up to it. Doing this day after day puts a strain on the straps of the backpack. They snapped off, but being poor means you know how to sew. I used to just sew them back on.

One day I was running for the bus and noticed that it was becoming easier with every stride. For a split second, I thought it was due to my olympic-level athleticism. Common sense kicked in just as I caught up to the bus, and I realized that the bottom of the bookbag ripped open. The books fell out one by one as I was running hence the gradual decrease in weight.

For the next week I walked around carrying my books in grocery store bags and even at one point I put them in a suitcase (not the rolling kind either) and carried them to school. My friend took pity and even though she was broke too, she went around and tried to take up a collection to get me a new bag. Foolish pride meant that I turned it down, but I was deeply touched by it.

What's the Point?
These two did something really nice for me, and as grand a gesture as it was at the time...They've never brought it up. It's been over 10 years and not once have they said a thing about it. They've done more things, grander things, but they never bring it up. I really hate when someone gives you a gift or does something and they bring it up every chance that they get. It annoys me, ESPECIALLY when it's something that you could do for yourself.

Anyway...vent over.

 

Cemetery Follow-Up

Well, I tried. I went back to the cemetery today for my "follow-up" visit. The hole was opened, casket was lowered, the hole was closed. Why that warrants a return trip, I have no idea. Oh wait, yes I do!

I was told that there was a complimentary keepsake being offered to the family in memory of my grandmother. I just needed to pick it up. Of course when I got there they wanted me to pick out which shade of pink I'd like it to be and whether I wanted her picture at the top or bottom. This keepsake was a bookmark, of course. And because they needed my input on its design, I had to wait 20 minutes for it to be finished. And what could we possibly talk about for 20 minutes...in a conference room with nothing but sample headstones mounted on the wall? How to spend more money.

I tried to be nice to the woman, but I have my limits and she pushed the wrong button. Fine, you're a salesman. Earn your money. But don't you ever in your life use my affection for my grandmother or my daughter in an ill-conceived attempt to guilt trip me into spending money. You don't start a battle of wits with me when you're unarmed.

Me being nice = Me lying and saying that my plans are to be cremated and scattered at my favorite vacation spot. You know damned well I haven't been anywhere. Where are they gonna scatter me? The skating rink over at Anacostia Park? Put a little bit of my remains in the trashcan in front of the Snickerdoodle shop in Forestville Mall?

I even tried to just level with her and tell her I wasn't interested in anything at this time. That's when she went passive aggressive on me and started talking about how unfair it is for someone to leave managing their death to their child. "Even if it's a grandchild, I just don't think it's fair to put that burden on someone who should be grieving. You have your whole life to set something up. It's inconsiderate and irresponsible."

Really? Go on.

"I see a plot as a way of memorializing someone. I mean, what does it say about your life that you have nothing to remember it by. You're just gone leaving nothing behind."

[Inside my head was like a scene from those movies where everyone just gets up and walks out of the bar without saying a word. I tapped Nice-Guy-Me on the shoulder and told him he could go home for the night. I'll lock up.]

Though these may not be my exact beliefs, I found the words coming out of my mouth anyway...

I would hope that my legacy is more than just a headstone in the ground. It is my hope that my life would echo through the person that my daughter becomes, and the people I've touched. The things I've done will be enough of a monument to who I am.

To be honest with you, my grandmother didn't even want to be buried here at this cemetery. I mentioned it to her the week she was diagnosed with cancer and she said that she sees cemeteries and places like this as just a giant way to capitalize on people's sympathy and grief. The reason she made me power of attorney and executor of her estate is because she felt that not only was I strong enough to make the right decision, but that I wasn't stupid enough to fall victim to things like that. She told me that she'd rather me not even claim the body than to waste money on stuff that has no actual connection to who she is.

You said it yourself that people come to the cemetery to feel better by connecting with a loved one. Could not the case be made that all of this is really for the living and not necessarily for the dead? I'll do my best to raise my daughter to be balanced and when the time comes and I'm gone, then I hope she uses the insane amount of life insurance that I'm leaving to do whatever she feels comfortable with.

The lady's response..."Let me go see if your bookmark is ready."

Luckily it was ready, because that was the warm up for what I REALLY wanted to say.

 

 

Too Soon?

Random thoughts and observations that weren't appropriate last week, but I find funny now...

*Sooooo my grandmother died while she was in the hospital. How exactly should I respond to the "Satisfaction Survey" that the hospital sent her in the mail this week? It says that if she is unable to complete it, then a member of the family can do it for her. I just don't know what to put. "Level of care" On the one hand I'd give them a 10, but the overall goal was to make it home and if we're using her house as "home" and not "heaven" then...I guess I have to give them a 1. I think I'll skip it.

*She and I were on the same bank account because she was one of those old people who didn't trust "those ATM cards" and she no longer felt safe walking three miles home from her bank every week with "all that money" ($200). So anyway, I ended up on her account and after I put her obituary in the paper I got a call from the bank. Now it's a really small bank with only two locations in the world (both in DC). The lady said, "I just saw Louise Allen in the obituary section, and I had to call to see if that's the same Mrs Allen who used to come up here every week."

"Yes, I'm sad to say that it is." Now I expected some anecdote about my grandmother coming up and giving them hell because she didn't have a photo ID, but still acted like they should just know her since she's been a member since the 50s. Nope. The lady said, "Okay I was just checking. We have a lot of senior citizens here, so every morning I check the obituaries to see if one of our members has passed. I'll contact social security and have her deposits halted. Thank you...oh and my condolences."

*You don't really learn the business side of death until you serve as executor of someone's estate. For example...did you know that there are burial upgrades? I didn't know that caskets went inside of a burial vault. I thought they just lowered the casket into the ground. They actually lower it into a sealed container. That container was $1500 if I bought it from the cemetery or $995 if I got it from the funeral home. Who doesn't enjoy whistling the low prices smiley face song from the Walmart commercial whilst grieving? Upon hearing that I purchased the vault from the funeral home the SALESMAN at the cemetery (who works on commission) told me about the "dangers" of the cheaper concrete vaults.

"Some people don't know that the concrete ones flood during a storm. But a stainless steel one is waterproof and will keep your grandmother dry." I wanted to say, "I doubt that drowning is a concern at this point," but I held my tongue. Then we talked about mausoleums vs in-ground burials. Oh! And there are PREMIUM spots in the cemetery. Five rows closer to the road is an extra $500 automatically. If you want to be in a premium garden then it costs another $1500 or something like that. What makes it premium? "They have themes." Yep. Like a Disney resort, the cemetery has themes. The giant cross is "the garden of faith," while the big American flag is "The Garden of Service." Again, I held my tongue and didn't say, "Is the view any different from inside the casket over there? Will you move her if she doesn't like it over there?"