Did I Miss Anything While I Was Away?

I know I should apologize for my long absence, but since I am a big jerk, I won’t. I do appreciate all the kind things said while I was away. It’s nice to be missed. It almost makes me feel bad for not apologizing. Almost. I’ll go have a beer later to get over it.

Things between Mrs. Lefty and I have been good lately. There has, of course, been the sort of marital strife common to all marriages: getting on each others’ nerves, little arguments, throwing hammers and other hardware within reach, endless police visits to the house, probation, etc. Since we spoke last, my marriage has never been healthier. And I truly mean that. (Mrs. Lefty is currently unemployed again, though, so we’re back on that treadmill.)

Our kids, however, are another matter entirely. In fact, I’ll be writing about that on my BRAND NEW blog that Mrs. Lefty will know exists. That’s right. Long Relief has been an anonymous blog, but the new one will be far less so. Mrs. Lefty may even post some rants--I mean, “thoughtful commentary”--of her own.

If you have been a visitor to this site in the past, I will post on your blog with the new identity, and you can come check out the new blog. Please, though, do not ever (unless you want me to become chum in my next life) let on that Lefty is in any way connected to the new blog. I probably won’t make any new posts here after today, but I will keep it up as a disturbing reminder to myself of what can happen if I have too much time on my hands and don’t drink enough beer.

See you around.

The Lights Are On, but Everybody's Home

I woke up suddenly on Saturday night. The room was dark as a cave. That’s unusual, even at night, because there are normally half a dozen LEDs staring at me from the computer and modem. But there was nothing.

Mrs. Lefty seemed to be stirring, too. “We don’t have any power,” I said.

Other than the obvious, the problem with this is that both she and I have to be up very early on Sunday mornings. That means we need our alarm clock, which is, of course, electric.

“Somebody is knocking on the door,” said Mrs. Lefty.

My first thought was that somebody was coming around to evacuate the neighborhood due to a pack of rabid hyenas on the loose or some similar disaster. I leapt out of bed, actually remembered to put a pair of pants on, and headed out into the darkness of our hallway.

In weeks past, a trip down our hallway would be like a trip through a minefield. Lately, though, we have told our kids never, ever, on pain of death, to put anything in the hall. No clothes, no trash, no unwanted siblings. Nada. Nothing.

I was confidently striding down the dark hallway when I discovered a laundry basket full of heavy towels in the hall. I discovered it when my shin whacked up against it. I said something I won’t repeat in polite company.

The banging was from my 12-year-old son, knocking on his sister’s door. You see, he is a big chicken. I guess he can’t help it. He lives with me part time in a house with a mom and two sisters, and with his biological mom in a house with a grandmother and great-grandmother. He’s totally surrounded by women.

I have tried to counteract the extreme feminine influence by playing violent video games with him, you know, to toughen him up. And though he’s great at blasting virtual people and monsters to bits, anything that moves in the actual world scares him to death.

So anyway, there I was, shin smarting, staring at the dark image of my son. I told him to go back to bed, and I went to peek out the front window. I looked out and up the hill, and for many blocks, there was nothing but darkness. I looked the other way, and just across the street, taunting me, were all the lights on my neighbor’s front porches.

I went back to our bedroom, where Mrs. Lefty waited. She had apparently just realized our alarm clock was out, because she said, “Oh shit, I’m late for work!”

“What time is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

Sigh.

It turns out that Mrs. Lefty was not late for work. It was only about 1:30am. I set the alarm on my watch.

It also turns out that it was Mrs. Lefty who kindly put the basket of towels in the hall.

The electric company did get the power back on. Ten hours later.

P.S. Sometimes I really hate baseball.

Return of the King

Yes, I’m finally back. No, I didn’t retire. Nor did I do a stint in the slammer.

Vacation was very nice. Mrs. Lefty and I took two of our kids to San Francisco for a short visit. We did all the typical tourist things—cable cars, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, beating up homeless people.

When I arrived back at the office there was the usual pile of extra work and emergencies to clean up. I don’t know the name of the physical law involved, but whenever you leave for two weeks of vacation, you always come back to six weeks of work on your desk. Plus, as you know, I have staff people with a gift for creating emergencies unless I am holding their hands.

I’ve been working my ass off, which is why you’ve not heard from me lately. I’m also moving into my busiest quarter of the year, so my goal is to post two to three times a week, probably no more for a while.

Of course, I’ll be as witty and charming as ever.

Note to Tink: I saw a Landshark Lager billboard.

Note to American League fans: Scott Proctor's not bad; Esteban Loaiza sucks.

Fun with Kids; Fun with Food

I love my kids!

I love the way they leave food out on the counter, like milk, butter, raw liver, jars of pig’s blood, so that it will turn rancid and attract hordes of insects, many of which have never before been described by science.

I love the way they leave plates of half-eaten food, grease, ketchup and other former food items in their bedrooms. I am confident that one day a cure for cancer will be found in the mold and fungus that grows beneath their beds. Also, I love the way when they leave a half-drunk glass of milk on their nightstand until it turns into a solid. It’s sort of like delicious flan, but with a kick!

I also love the way they smear food--peanut butter, jelly, butter, syrup--onto the outside of every food container in the house. What a wonderful tactile experience to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and to come away so covered in goo that it feels as if I have velcro hands. And there was that one time when the substance on the outside of the jelly jar was a strange orange-brown--definitely not jelly. It was so gross I could barely stand to lick it off my fingers.

Did I mention that I love they way they leave their spills out for someone else to step in, slip on and then clean up? There was that one time that I stubbed my toe on a rock hard three-day-old pile of macaroni and cheese dropped beneath the counter.

If I had known what great fun kids were, I would have had none!

Just Phoning It in Today

First, some important background information: I do not own a cell phone. I hate cell phones. They are evil.

I was checking out our bill last night, and saw that the girls use their phones a lot. My wife has a cell phone, and I didn’t like that idea in the first place, but she’s an adult, so what can you do? Part of the issue was cost, since we can’t afford many luxuries, and part of the issue was that cell phones are evil.

Later, without telling me--without even consulting me--she purchased additional phones and a plan that would accommodate our two girls and my daughter’s best friend. Yes, that’s right. We are paying for the cell phone use of someone not even in our family. In theory, that young lady is supposed to be giving us money to cover the cost of her bill, but in reality, she has only given us a small portion of that cost. Did I mention that we cannot afford many luxuries? And, did I mention that cell phones are evil?

I decided I’d crunch some numbers on the bill for our middle daughter just to see how much she was on her phone. Do you want to make a guess as to how much time she is on that damn phone every single day, not including texting? Nearly two hours. Every single day. For the most recent billing period, that works out to nearly two-and-a-half full days of talking on her cell phone. That does not include time spent talking on the house phone or on My Space. No wonder she’s flunking English. Did I mention that cell phones are evil?

Since the girls aren’t mine biologically, and since my wife prefers to handle it however the hell she wants, regardless of what I think, I wash my hands of the matter. That’s also why we now have completely separate bank accounts.

Do I sound a little bitter here? Sorry, but I am bitter.

And cell phones are evil.

Home Again, Home Again

My wife and daughters are safely back at home, which is, of course, a mixed blessing. After two weeks of drinking beer, eating meals on the couch in front of the television, wearing the same pair of underwear, and singing “Magical Mystery Tour” at the top of my lungs (“we’re waiting to take you a-WAAAAAAY!”) at all hours of the day and night, I now must consider the sensibilities of others before I act. Damn sensibilities of others!

I did, however, learn a few important lessons. First, never watch Cast Away the night before your loved ones are due to get on an airplane to fly home. Second, a single bottle of beer provides a complete and nutritious meal for lunch. Third, too much time alone is not good for me.

Normally, my brain is distracted by the comforting sounds of domestic bliss, such as the screeching “you’ve been on/in the phone/computer/bathroom all day,” the soulful tunes of 50 Cent (“I'll take you to the candy shop, I'll let you lick the lollipop”), or the blaring, ear-shattering din that comes from the family room where one child is trying to watch television, talk on the phone, and listen to music on the computer all at once. When I was the sole occupant of the house, though, I had no such distractions.

Instead, I did something dangerous. I thought. Yes, that’s right. I rummaged through my brain, and what I found in there was not pretty. I discovered quite a bit of guilt--a ruined marriage, breaking up my son’s carefree life with two parents, my own failures at work, my own failures as a husband to my current wife. That guilt led to some moping and sulking and depression. Which meant, of course, that despite my freedom, I had a rather miserable time of it.

You’d think that I could get past some of my feelings, that I could learn to appreciate the simple joy of an empty house and no responsibility. Next time, I vow to do a better job of taking advantage of such a gift. Now, if only my mother-in-law could have another stroke so I can test it out.

Thank God I'm a Middle Class Suburbanite

I was clearing my inbox of unwanted e-mail, and I discovered some buried treasure. I wrote this piece a couple of years ago. Here it is, a window into my soul:

I popped a Creedence CD into the player in the blue Chevy Cavalier, my bruised and banged up half-a-car, rusted out on the bottom like any other self-respecting redneck jalopy. Because it was cool and foggy out, I was wearing my rough flannel shirt with half the buttons missing. The shirt, the music and the car allowed me to revel in my hick soul, even though I was returning from a meeting with very respectable people in a neighborhood full of $750K homes.

Sometimes I wonder if I really am a hick at heart, or if I just like the idea of it. Just because I pull on my boots to slog around in the garden a few times a year doesn’t make me a country boy, even if, in my childhood, I did clear the chickens’ water of ice during the winter and walk up the creek in my shoes in the summers. Now I sit all day in an office surrounded by books with a secretary who sometimes brings me coffee.

As I drove home, Fogerty began “Lodi,” and by the time he got to the words “things got bad, and things got worse” I realized I had heard someone else cover the song recently. Where was that? And who? Ah yes, the fog of memory began to lift...

My brother sat at the table, guitar in his lap, longnecks lined up, some strewn on the floor, soaking the rug with alcohol--a smell that would linger even longer than the stench of roadkill. Moon pie chocolate stained the corners of his mouth as he sang: “things got bad, and things got worse...oh Lord, stuck in Green Creek again.” Between verses he would wipe his greasy hands on his tee shirt, which was too short to cover his belly, or on his blue jeans, torn at the knees. His wife, my sister-in-law, held a child (or “chillin,” as she calls them) in each arm as she swayed in a drunken stupor to the music. Pa, an old man of 76, whistled through the gap in his front teeth, and Ma, celebrating her 50th birthday (her eldest son is 36: you do the math), picked her teeth up off the table so she could sing along, too.

Though the music belongs to CCR, the lyrics are my brother’s rural Homeric attempt to describe the saga of the Wilson clan’s (his in-laws) trips to the campground at Green Creek for family reunions. Most families would choose a plush beachfront resort or an oak-shaded glen in the Midwest for this annual event, but this group caravans their 4x4s and Frankenstein’s monster domestic sedans to a muddy and mosquito-infested stretch of backcountry to drink beer, eat franks and beans, and reminisce about the time Pa Wilson’s shotgun accidentally went off at my brother’s wedding.

When the Wilsons gather their nine children (along with spouses and chillins) to meet up with the other family members, strange things happen. Bodies fall into creeks; bears carry off a week’s supply of Ho-Hos; fishing rods get stuck up in places that ought not be mentioned in polite company, and the like. My brother’s mutilation of “Lodi” describes each year’s journey to Green Creek and forever immortalizes the deeds of the Wilsons and their kin. It was this song he sung as we sat around the table in a swampside shack late into the evening.

Nothing much out of the way happened that night. It was a typical Lefty family gathering, including Ma snorting Jack Daniels out her nose when she got the giggles. Thinking about that night, I realize I am not really a hick, but merely a part of a regular, middle class family. I am only a redneck wannabe. Oh well, maybe in my next life.

“Things got bad, and things got worse, but I guess you know the tune. Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again.”