There are a number of ways to bring on a divorce. One sure-fire method is to have an affair. As I've said before, I've never tried this approach, but if I did, ya'll would be the first to know. Another good technique is to spend entire days together doing something inherently frustrating ... like assembling IKEA furniture. C and I gave this one a go on Sunday. And, you know, there may have been a time, several years ago, when engaging in this sort of activity would have been peppered with snarky comments about our respective IQs, and endless repetition of the phrases, "Here, let me do that" and "No, no, no ... it's supposed to go THIS way." And the whole thing might have ultimately led to a day of silence and bruised egos. We are, after all, a couple whose dinner plans got thwarted once over an argument about my driving. (To her credit, C was right: it actually IS impossible to share food with somebody after they've been driving like a granny. And I admit it. I was ... driving like a granny. But in my defense, it was only because I was trying to tell a story. Geez.)

After eight years of marriage, though, you begin to figure out certain things about being with one-another. Like how to tolerate granny driving. And how to put together furniture. Over the last several months, C and I have tackled jobs from the Futon Sleep Shop, to Staples, to IKEA, and I'm happy to report that furniture assembly is no longer the divisive activity it once was. Much the opposite: I think this time it actually brought us closer together. I might even go so far as to say that it was borderline romantic. And yes, I realize that this fact is probably ... no, definitely ... a sad commentary on what we find "romantic" these days. The thing is, we each know our roles in the furniture-assembly equation. C likes puzzles, and she knows that I hate reading instructions of any shape or color. So she handles that part. I like using power tools, and I know C is delicate and girly and averse to calluses, so I do all the grunt work and turning of screws.

As she put it to me before we got started: "You screw and I'll do everything else." (God, I love it when she talks dirty.)

So we have another room mostly done. This time it's C's office which, thanks to a futon, will double as a second guest room for when we have lots of guests ... like this weekend. It's fun having a futon again. I like the way they smell. It reminds me of college. And I guess it probably says something about us that we have both of our offices very near completion and haven't yet a spec of furniture in the living room, aside from my piano.

But back to this weekend ... A bit of Texas is coming to New Jersey this week. Three bits, to be exact. A keg of Miller Lite has been ordered to make it more home-like for them. And there's plenty of Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Jr. on the iPod. Oh, and there will be grilling. Lots of grilling. I'm hoping I don't scare the neighbors, which is why I've invited them all over for the 4th as a sort of North-South peace offering. Hopefully, just like with our furniture-building, just like Barack and Hillary, it will lead to unity. We'll see.

link to this | comments (8) | File:  House  Cath 

It's drizzling and humid outside, and the windows are open and the house-fan is on to draw a breeze. Honey is on the floor next to me working on a bone in which I've inserted a bit of the provolone and nuked it. Because sometimes just plain rawhide is boring for her. And I can understand that. And that damn bone is really too big for her. But she doesn't know that. Or care. So neither do I. And pretty soon she'll fall into her morning slumber, comatose on her back, her pink belly and white neck exposed, and her over-sized feet suspended above her at all angles. And all this is a backdrop to me listening to "Falling Down," my favorite track off of Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits covers, and a track I've had cycling in my head since sometime last week.

First the album: Anywhere I Lay My Head has gotten some praise from critics, but unfortunately for SJ, that praise has focused more on Dave Sitek's production and musical re-workings of the Waits' songbook than the blond starlet's voice. Which is too bad, because I do think SJ's voice, while a bit flat, works well with the mood of the album, particularly on "Falling Down." I'm not saying her voice is great. But I don't think it's bad, either. And really, is Tom Waits' voice "great?" Still there are elements of passion and strength in Waits' voice that just aren't there with SJ, and I think this is what critics are pointing out.

Regardless of what you think of SJ's voice, the album is strong. It was recorded in Maurice, Louisiana, which serves as a sort of sonic backdrop to most of the songs. Swarms of insects carry the music to your ears, where it lingers, low and heavy, with a syrupy wetness. This is an album you need to listen to naked and sweating with the A/C off and a slow-spinning fan overhead.

Not that I've done that. Twice.

I've had "Falling Down" on "Repeat-One" quite a bit over the last week (a setting I've referred to before as: OCD? What OCD?). I've been alternating between the SJ cover and the Waits original, which has been an interesting exercise (Again, it's an exercise you might only appreciate if your alphabet begins with the three letters referred to in the previous sentence). Anyway, I thought I'd put both tracks up here for a little side-by-side comparison. A note to any expensive lawyers out there: I would be more than happy to remove either of these upon request.

Okay, so first the SJ track. Some things to listen for:
1) Come from St. Petersburg, Scarlett and me ... is the original lyric, something that SJ thought might be corny in doing this song, but which Sitek, according to the album notes, thought added to the "synchronicity" of the project. I agree.
2) David Bowie's voice appears on this track, as well as on one other track on the album: "Fannin Street."
3) The banjo that comes in during the second verse was inspired by Kermit's "Rainbow Connection."

Okay, so here it is:

If you're like me (and I truly hope you're not) you'll want to press play on that sucker again and again. If that's the case, than I'd urge you to go get it on iTunes or wherever you get your music.

Now, for the original. I hadn't listened to Waits' version before hearing SJ's. But I went out looking for it as soon as I did. The track below is from the album Big Time. I don't have any notes to add on this one. But I do have a suggestion on how to listen to it: imagine you're in a dimly-lit bar holding a pint and drowning over lost love. If you can't do that, then drink half a six and stand in your living room in front of your bare windows in your underwear belting out the lyrics to your neighbors.

Not that I've done this, either. Three times.


After several listens, I think I like the Sitek/Johansson version the best. But let me qualify that: I think the Waits version has a more timeless drunken-bar-song quality to it, and it stands strong on Waits' scratchy, pain-filled voice. But the cover is, in many ways, a much more interesting recording and it's immediately catching and powerful. Of course, the lyrics are the best part of any Tom Waits song. And in this respect, both tracks are on even footing.

link to this | comments (6) | File:  Reviews  Music 

I'm back. Some work was done, but not all. Dents were made, though. And that's good, I suppose. Oh, and there have been bruises. Nothing serious. But lots of little things. Like the one I got while my dad was here. He stopped in for a visit a couple of weeks ago and bought me several garden tools as housewarming gifts. Three or four mighty persuasive branch-trimming blades, a saw, and this curved blade on a pole that operates via a pulley and can slice through branches a good 10 feet above your graying head of hair. Straight through. Like nothing.

But not all the things he bought me were sharp and able to slice through bone. He also got me my first 25-ft ladder, which was the same housewarming gift his father bought him about thirty years ago. We brought that sucker home, and extended it's aluminum frame out to full length. And I shimmied up it's cool staircase to get to a broken branch in the big tree in our front yard. And with him holding the base of the ladder, and me trying to pretend I wasn't freaking out, I sawed through that dead branch with a curved saw that had teeth like a shark. And as I did it, I thought it would probably be tragic for my dad to watch me fall to my death while using the housewarming gifts he bought me. And it would have been. Tragic. But it didn't happen that way.

That's not how I got bruised.

I got bruised with both feet firmly planted on earth. I got bruised because that pulley tool really cuts through the branches, brother. I mean, it really slices through that shit. It makes me think of when I make eggs, and I lift the glass top off the butter dish and I take a dull mini butter knife from the drawer and slice me off a dab of the true stuff and put it in the no-stick All-Clad egg-making pan. When I do that, when I put that little knife through the butter, it goes through easy, like nothing. Because metal through room-temperature butter offers no resistance. And so it was with the pulley device. I lifted that thing up above my head and wrapped it's sharp metal claw around the base of the low-hanging branch whose leaves had, for weeks, been rubbing against my head every time I took Honey for a piss. And I didn't expect it to be like that, like dull metal through room-temperature butter. Like nothing. And so I really put some muscle into it. And the blade sliced through the wood like it wasn't there. And it threw me off balance. So I put my leg back to keep myself upright. But my calf found a low, brick wall in its way, and the halted momentum of my leg against that wall propelled me backward toward the ground. But I don't go down that easily. It's the ninja instincts, see? They're hard to stop. And so there was a bit of gymnastics as I twirled around so that I wouldn't fall flat on my back. And as I did that, the front of my leg dragged against the sharp corner of the brick. And brick corners are very good at a great many things, and one of them is removing human flesh from shins, from ankle to knee. And as I lay there on the ground cursing gravity and sharp sharp blades, my dad said "Are you alright?" And I looked down at my leg and the first thing that came to my mind was, I wonder where the hair went? And I stood up and walked over to the brick wall and inspected it and there it was—a patch of leg hair.

The bleeding took a minute, but it came. The red filled in the long strip of removed flesh nicely.

"You think I should put alcohol on it?" I asked my dad.

"Only if you want to dance," he said. I laughed.

Instead I decided to use hydrogen peroxide from the bottle I had just acquired about two weeks earlier when Honey ate some mushrooms and I called my vet in a panic after reading about Amanitas and how they sometimes grow under conifers. And there are a great many of those types of trees in my back yard. So could those shrooms have been akin to a Death Cap? My vet said it's not likely and it'll probably be okay, but in the same breath she calmly advised me to induce vomiting. Right, I said. How does one do that, again? Evidently, the "easiest" way is to make them swallow a teaspoon full of the hydrogen peroxide. And if this is the "easy" way, then I'm not sure I want to know the "hard" way. Because that shit didn't work on Honey. I gave her a good and plenty serving of a hydrogen peroxide cocktail. Then another. But she never vomited. She shook her head a lot and made gagging noises and probably thought why oh why is my daddy trying to kill me? — but she never tossed up those shrooms. Luckily, the shrooms she ate weren't Death Caps, and she's still alive with no noticeable gastrointestinal issues, aside from the rotten, angry flatulence, which she quietly manufactures late at night while chewing on rawhide in front of the TV.

So I used the peroxide on the scrape instead of the alcohol, and I can attest to the fact that while it may not be reliable at inducing a puppy with an iron stomach to vomit, the peroxide did a good job cleaning that scrape. And it also made me dance a little, though probably not as much as the alcohol would have.

Since the scrape, there has been a steady, consistent trickle of bruises registered on my body, from the black knot on my ankle where I dropped the flashlight, to the little blue ball on the back of my right hand where I wrapped it against the corner of my truck door, to the hole in my big toe where I inexplicably found a tiny glass shard Saturday morning after taking off my blood-stained ankle-sock. Then there are the innumerable bites and scrapes from Honey's playful, four-month-old teeth and nails. Loose-leash training requires constant encouragement in the form of yummy treats, which get inserted into puppy mouths at regular intervals like some serrated pez dispenser. It's exacting and hazardous work, training puppies, and it tends to leave your fingers dry and leathery.

But I don't mind. I really don't. Bruises have always been strangely comforting to me. Bruises and sore muscles. There's something about a body damaged and beginning the process of healing. It's vindicating—proof that you have lived hard enough to hurt yourself, which is the only living worth doing, really, isn't it? And the hurt is a reminder of that having lived. And it feels good and full and sweet, like something earned. And I can hear it now. All of you who minored in Psychology are thinking ... hmmm, he really is a masochist, isn't he? Tsk, Tsk. Whatever. That's not interesting. I mean, who isn't one of those? But you know, here's the thing ... here's what's got me worried: real bruises don't happen to me anymore. Sure, there are all these superficial bumps and scrapes. But the substantive bruises? The ones with consequence? The ones that make you stand up and take notice of your life? I don't get bruised like that anymore. Because for the most part, things are comfortable. Room temperature. And that's what we work for, isn't it? Comfort? So we can feel ... what? Insufferably numb? Pleasantly bored? Nothing? It doesn't matter which turn I take, I always end up here. In a place where there are fleeting moments of feeling that come less and less frequently. And for shorter periods of time.

And so I think I need to fall down some more. Get bruised up a bit. Because I'm working on changing things, brother. One bruise at a time.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Chewing 

Summer is coming, and I'm going away for a little bit. There are a few projects I need to attend to, and even though I've always been of the mindset that I really should be able to do this blog and these other things at the same time, lately this philosophy hasn't been panning out too well.

So I'm going to take this off of my plate and put my energy into these other things for a while. But this isn't a "retirement" message or anything dramatic like that. I still enjoy the hell out of this thing, and I'll definitely be back. I'm just not sure when. Maybe a month or two, maybe all summer. Certainly not longer than that, I hope.

Anyway, I hope you keep me in your reader. And I'll see you when break is over. I'll miss hanging out during lunch. And smoking in the parking lot during Photography. And ... oh, oh! ... I almost forgot ... will you sign my yearbook? Thanks! You're so cool!

link to this | comments (12) | File:  Ho_Hum 

When my dad and my grandpa used to mow the lawn, they would do it "bare-chested." That's what my dad would call it. And, as a boy of four or five, I was intrigued by this concept, that of bare-chestedness. Because I was keenly aware that while being in this state was something the two model men in my life seemed to do whenever they wanted, the women never did—my mom, my grandmother, my sister. Clearly, being in this state of bare-chestedness was one of those things only boys could do, along with the awesome faculty to pee while standing up. Damn we were lucky.

Of course, as soon as I discovered this, I too went bare-chested whenever I got the chance, because it was profoundly important to me to be like my dad. And even though I couldn't actually mow the lawn yet, I used to follow behind him with a plastic Fisher-Price model. And there I would be: jean-shorts, cowboy boots (which you had to pry off of me when I went to bed) and a bare-chest which, unlike my dad's, had no "fur" on it.

Just to be clear, my dad didn't wear cowboy boots when he mowed the lawn, so I'm not sure where that came from. I've since substituted the boots for New Balance or Merrell which I suppose in some ways is a real tragedy, but the rest of the outfit is pretty much the same: shorts and a bare chest—grunt. That is until recently. Because Jersey's weather isn't reliably warm in April, or even May. This year, the warm spring days have been few, and have been bookmarked by bouts of cold, wet rain.

So this weekend, as the clouds and wind gathered for another onslaught of the wetness, I sliced blades of grass in a long-sleeved cotton shirt and a red fleece sweater-vest.

Dad never told me there'd be days like this.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  Oogah  Lawn  Family  Childhood 

The memes have been flying all over the place lately. And I got hit in the crossfire. Twice. One in each leg ... I've been tagged by Lemmonex and Jeff. But here's the thing ... one of these here memes asks for six quirks and the other asks for seven random/weird things. Together this adds up to ... let's see, carry the one ... thirteen. And there's no way I'm posting thirteen things about myself. Even if I space them out over two posts, it'll still be a total of 13 in a week and, well, that's just ... unlucky. So I've got to throw one more in for good measure. And good karma.

So here we go, six plus seven, plus one. Random/Weird/Quirky. And since we're already on the subject, we might as well start with this one:


Lemmonex didn't post rules to "seven things," so as far as I can tell there is no tag requirement. So I'm going to claim ignorance and go with that. But there were clear rules for six things, as set forth by Jeff. Here they are:

1. Tell about six unspectacular quirks of yours
2. Link the person who tagged you
3. Mention the rules in your blog
4. Tag six following bloggers by linking them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blogs letting them know they've been tagged

Now to tag ... I'm going to make it easy and go with bloggers whose names begin with H or J:

• Hammer
• Hannah
• Helena
• HH
• Jinius
• Joanne

Ya'll have been tagged. Enjoy.

link to this | comments (10) | File:  Things  Music  Ho_Hum  Books  Blog 

The book says that accidents will happen with these puppy creatures, but I had no idea how quickly the shit would drop. Literally. On my kitchen floor. It took all of twenty minutes for that first turd to fall. And it really fell, flat and hot and reeking like something dishonest, on the dog's water bowl. Dog's aren't supposed to crap on their own water bowl, are they? Don't they know about not shitting where they eat? I have to assume that normally she would not have considered this option. But this wasn't a normal time for her. And in the altered mental state she was in—still a bit out of sorts from having just been spayed a day earlier, and now finding herself in a strange home after a strange ride in a strange truck with a strange guy sporting a strange goatee on his strange face—for her, up was down, right was left. Water bowl was poop depository.

I accept the blame, because I didn't appreciate just how finely-tuned an instrument was the puppy digestive system. The book does indeed say that when a puppy eats, it will immediately need to poop. But I figured "immediately" meant, you know, something reasonable. Like within a half-hour. Turns out pups are supremely unreasonable. And immediately ... means immediately. If food goes in, poop is going to come out. It's actually kind of beautiful in its simplicity, when it isn't happening in your kitchen.

Anyway, for this pup, disoriented and maybe a bit scared, if poop was going to come out, it might as well go in the water bowl. I think this is why I have always been a cat person. I don't care what altered state of mind a cat is in, or how scared it might be, or if she happens to be riding the crest of a blue-fuzz, anus-tingling pot (catnip) high, that cat won't be shitting in her water bowl. Under the bed, maybe. Or behind the sofa. Or in the closet. But not in the bowl. Lord no. Not a cat. That would be barbaric.

Let me back up a bit ... I was supposed to pick the pup up around 4 pm on Tuesday. Thinking ahead, I had asked the foster parent not to feed the pup her afternoon meal so that she'd have an empty stomach for the ride home. The book informed me that this was a good idea. The book is full of good ideas. And we're going by the book. But it's impossible to remember everything you've read in this book. Because it's full of the kind of detailed information that only somebody who has raised dogs all his life could possibly absorb. For this reason, we have a backup book, to clearly outline the basics. Even with these two books, I can tell it's not going to be enough. Because knowledge washes over you—as knowledge is apt to do—slowly, like one of those energy-saver light bulbs that are so popular these days. It takes a second to heat up, but then it burns strong and bright.

See, I remembered the food-in, shit-out rule. I did. I just remembered it a moment too late.

When the pup and I got home, I took her right outside to pee in her pee spot. Then I showed her around the house. Then I fed her. Check. Check. Check. Man, going by the book is easy. If I keep on like this, there won't be any accidents and the dog will be potty trained tomorrow! Idealism is such a neat trick our minds play on us.

I texted C:

Got home. She peed outside. I showed her the house and she's eating. I wasn't sure how much to give her.

I sent that message and watched her eat a little while. Then I started another text message. I've still got the incomplete message in my 'Drafts' on my phone. It begins like this:

She cried a lot in the truck ...

See the ellipsis at the end there? That wasn't actually part of the message. I added that in. It marks the exact moment when I looked up to discover this pretty pup, so cute and cuddly, squatting over her water bowl and taking a dump. As the book tells one to do in situations like this, I did not scold her. I just raised my voice. I intended it to sound strong and confident and alarming. Like this: Ahhhhh!! But I think it came out sort of questioning and confused, tinged with a bit of plea. Like this: Ahhhhh?!? Are you kidding me?!? I just lifted her up and took her outside. Once there, she promptly set to work not shitting. Instead, she decided this was a perfect time to hop around in the grass and look cute and play and do just about everything else but expel poop from her butt.

I brought her back inside and went to work cleaning the bowl. I'm not sure how many fractions of a second transpired upon re-entering the kitchen before another round of poop, this one more explosive and terrible and foul, began flowing out of this innocent-looking puppy's ass onto the floor.

The book says when you clean up puppy poop you should make sure the pup doesn't see you do it. Otherwise, she might come to think of you as her maid.

Probably some more good advice. But once again, too late.

I canceled the text I had been composing to C and began a new one:

PLEASE BRING ODOR NEUTRALIZER.

So ... in case it's not clear already, C and I have a new pup. And her name is Tawny, for her color. She's half German Shepherd and half Pit Bull. (A little heavier on the Pit Bull.) Her story is that she was rescued several weeks ago from a crack house somewhere in Plainview, NY, where she was living with her sisters and brothers underneath a porch. She and all her siblings were taken in by the good folks at All Star Pet Rescue in Linden, NJ, where they remained for the last several weeks until C and I saw her photo on the Internets and got all mushy-hearted over her. She's only eleven weeks old, so she's got a lot of growing yet to do. She has pretty eyes and a beautiful coat and she's really very smart (aside from that water-bowl pooping incident, which we won't bring up ever again.) She fetches balls (and kongs) like a pro, and one out of three times, if she's not too distracted, she'll sit when prompted. (Actually, this might be completely accidental.) Her favorite thing in the world is to sit on my lap and chew a bone.

We have commenced the crate training, so hopefully she'll be house-broken in the next three weeks. That's also around the time she'll get her final round of shots and can go out and explore and meet other dogs in the neighborhood.

The book says she should be getting lots of human contact right now. But that's been sort of a problem since we don't know too many people here yet. So hopefully this doesn't mean she'll be afraid of visitors. Since she was rescued at such a young age, she probably didn't inherit any emotional or psychological trauma from her poor, early living conditions. And that's really great. Because it means I have a clean slate upon which to instill my own neurosis and powerful psychological baggage. Yee-haw!

UPDATE: We've changed her name to Honey. Tawny just wasn't working.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  Honey 

I never met my mom's dad. He died the year before I was born, in 1972. And you might assume, therefore, that he died young. But he didn't. He did, however, marry late, at the age of 34, the age I am now. And maybe that's not late by today's standards, but it seems kind of late for 1932. Now, add to that late marriage the fact that my mom was born last of three children and that she had me late—in her mid thirties—and you can begin to see how it was that I never met this man, my mom's dad, despite the fact that he lived to be 74.

My mom's mom died shortly after my mom's dad, when I was five or six. So I don't remember much about her either. But I do have some dim recollections of a woman that I knew of as "Grandma B" and I can remember the heavy blue nightgown she wore on a Christmas morning in Maryland once. And I remember she was soft-spoken. But with my mom's dad, it's always been different. He's always remained something of a mystery to me. I have no physical recollections of him. And yet, he's always played an active role in my mind, in my imagination, largely through the fuzzy, black-and-white photos my mom has of him.

I don't have a name for my mom's dad. It's weird calling him "Grandpa." Because "Grandpa" is my dad's dad. The "Grandpa" I know was only 51 when I was born. And I knew that "Grandpa" for almost 29 years. And shouldn't "Grandpa" be somebody whose lap you've sat in? Shouldn't "Grandpa" be somebody whose laugh still echoes in your ears? Shouldn't you have a personal memory of somebody in order to call him "Grandpa?" So I'll stick with "Mom's Dad." Or Clarence. Because that was his name.

I've put off writing this post for months. Because I kept wanting to be able to point and say, Look, here is this man—my mom's dad. And here is who he was. Because it felt like I should be able to do that. And I wanted my description of him to somehow shed light on me, too. Because sometimes it feels like I'm really close to him, like a part of me is him. And, through my mom's descriptions of him, and through these photos, I can begin to peel back these layers of a mystery, not only about who he was, but who I am. And I keep thinking that maybe one day I'll peel back that one final layer and I'll be able to see clearly and say with some authority that this, this is Clarence.

But instead of shedding light, the process only ends up casting more shadows. My mom will offer spoonfuls of information, things she remembers about him. And I'll eat them up. But the whole thing only makes me more hungry. And I get discouraged. Because the bottom line is I will never know this man. I will die and he will remain a mystery to me.

And I know what the problem is: the things I want to know aren't the kinds of things you can be told. They're not the kinds of things you can just receive, filtered through someone else's perspective. Because I want to hear Clarence speak. I want to listen to him tell a story. I want to know how he put words together, how he constructed a sentence. I want to watch him get up from a chair and see him walk. I want to know for sure he had the same back condition I have. I want to see exactly how he smoked an Old Gold ... or the way he held a beer. I want to feel what it was like to hear him laugh or play the fiddle or stomp and dance at family gatherings at a lake house somewhere in Michigan. I want to shake his hand. I want to hug him. I want to hang out with him. And when I think about how I can't internalize these things—how these perceptual memories won't ever exist for me—it brings tears to my eyes. Because there's a hole there. And all I have to fill it are the words spoken by my mom and a handful of fuzzy snapshots.

And then it occurs to me that, for me, my mom's dad is, and always will be, her experience of him. And that's kind of a great thing to have, as well. I may not be able to know Clarence first hand and develop my own impressions about him, but I can experience first-hand the person my mom knew and the way she felt about him. And what it meant to her when he'd come home each week from his job inspecting ties for the Chesapeake of Ohio Railroad Company. The excitement she'd feel when he returned after a week away. How he called my mom's mom "Wifey," and how it really was a term of endearment for him. And the way he looked at Grandma B and the way he loved her and would hug her in the kitchen when he got home. How he used to tell my mom she "ran like a deer" because my mom had long, skinny legs. How he rarely went to the doctor, despite his various aches and pains, and how he had a cerebral hemorrhage in his fifties and still lived another twenty years, but was never quite the same. And how one day, when she was a little girl, she waited hours and hours for him at a train station in Battle Creek, Michigan. Because he was supposed to stop there and pick her up to take her to where the rest of the family had gone for vacation. But he had forgotten, or he hadn't realized that this is what he was supposed to do. And when he got to the final destination without my mom, he felt terrible at his mistake.

Neuroscientists believe that memories aren't things that are stored in a brain and "retrieved" like a file in a file cabinet. Instead, they think a memory is constructed from scratch each time it is "remembered." And a memory is never remembered exactly as it happened. Details get added or dropped. And the more you remember something sometimes the less accurate it becomes. And I notice this with my mom. I notice that she'll tell me a story about Clarence one time and then the next time it will be slightly different. And I'll say, I thought you said such-and-such. And she will say, Oh yes, that's right. You're right. And it sort of makes me frustrated. Because how can I be right? She's the one who needs to be right. Because I want the unfiltered facts. I want the truth. Because I feel like somehow knowing the true facts will bring me closer to knowing the true Clarence.

But then I take a step back. And I remember that what I'm coming to understand isn't my mom's dad. It's my mom's perception of him. And for me, this is knowing Clarence.

link to this | comments (7) | File:  Family  Chewing 

You'd think that on its second mow, a brand new mower would be hungry to eat some grass. You'd think it would just be getting warmed up.

Apparently, my mower decided it had had enough of this grass-cutting shit. It died on me yesterday.

My neighbor, Ax (not his real name), was outside later that evening and I walked over to our fence to tell him my bad news. He and I are establishing a relationship not unlike the one between Tim and Wilson on Home Improvement. I'm Tim. Things tend to break when I get my hands on them. I go to him seeking consolation and advice. He's Wilson. He's older and wiser and he just knows shit. And dammit he's got a great freakin' lawn.

Ax also owns a classic muscle car, which he showed me the first day we met. I have to admit, it's pretty sweet. And shiny. Ax works on it in his free time. Also, he drives a Ford F-350 4x4, a truck that continually lobs taunts over at Remington from Ax's driveway. Damn bully trucks. The only thing that's a little pansy-ass about Ax is he's got two Dachshunds. I mean one would be unfortunate. But two is tragic.

As I walked over to Ax, the two "dogs"—a term I use loosely—greeted me as they always do, with furious barking and yipping. Have you ever seen a Dachshund when he's furious? It's kind of like when real dogs are being playful. Because of the commotion, Ax didn't hear me too well when I said, "My mower died." I could tell by the expression on his face and the way he said, "I'm so sorry" that he had misunderstood me. So I bent down and offered the dogs my hand to sniff, which shut them up. Then I said, no not my mother, my mower. God, who walks up to his neighbor, who he's only known for a couple of months, and says with a sort of flabbergasted, aw-shucks, can-you-believe-it atttitude, "guess what, my mother died." Nice weather we're having, isn't it? He must have thought I was crazy. Oh well, it won't be the last time for that. He'd better get used to it.

So I'm not sure if I set a record for killing a lawn mower, but I was going to look into it. I brought it back to Fred, who doesn't seem like so much of an angel to me anymore. He went to start the thing, only to find that the pull-chord wouldn't budge. Like I said, it was fed up. He admitted that this definitely seemed a little fishy. "But don't worry about a thing!" he said. He would figure out what was going on and I wouldn't have to pay for a thing. He's damn right I'm not paying for a thing. It's a Toro. And I bought it last week, remember? I wasn't worried about paying for things. But I do want to get up all this thatch I raked up the other day so that I can get some seed and fertilizer on the lawn before it rains this weekend. I'm on a time crunch, here Fred. I can't deal with mowers that die on me on the second mow, brother.

So if I find out more bad news today, and I can't get my mower back, I'm going to ask Fred for a replacement. And if that one dies, then I'll know God is pissed at me for last week's post. Maybe I should go ahead and apologize now.

link to this | comments (11) | File:  Oogah  Lawn  House  Grunt  Remington 

In lieu of reading novels, which take far too long and are weighed down with useless things like "character development" and "plot" and "meaning," these days I've taken to reading only short snippets of text that can be inhaled in five minutes or less. I believe there's a term for this condition. What was it again? Oh yeah: brain atrophy. Unfortunately, my five-minute-or-less rule tends to exclude even my own blog posts, so usually I have to wait for others to read them and tell me whether or not they make sense. (Often, it turns out, they don't.)

Lately my taste for "short" has dwindled down to one-sentence powerhouses. They're short and sweet, but they really pack a punch. The great thing about these little text candies is they can be consumed in an instant, while you go about your daily routines. The other day, for instance, I was brushing my teeth and came across this little gem:

FOR BEST RESULTS, SQUEEZE TUBE FROM THE BOTTOM AND FLATTEN AS YOU GO UP.

It's wonderful what this author—who, as far as I can tell, wishes to remain anonymous—manages to accomplish in so few words. The great thing here is the ambiguity, how he leaves so much open to interpretation. Is he referring to this tube in particular, or all tubes, generally? And which end is the bottom and which is the top? Ahh. He never says! And when we "flatten" is this in reference to the tube, or to ourselves? Or something else entirely?

The real question, however, has to do with this concept of "best results." Because it's never explicitly stated: best results for what? Should we assume it's only about applying toothpaste to our brush? Or is this about something more? Maybe the author is suggesting we'll actually have better results in brushing our teeth or fighting cavities if we somehow manage to find the right tube and then squeeze it in the right direction. Or maybe it's broader still. Maybe we will be rewarded with better results ... in life. A better smile, bigger muscles, smoother skin, silkier hair, a longer-lasting erection. It leaves us wondering: is this simply an instruction for extracting toothpaste from a tube, or a mantra for getting more out of life? Certainly context would argue for the former. But why not make it clear then? I'm betting there's deeper meaning here.

And I think you all agree with me.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Ho_Hum