Half Past Awesome

The nose knows

I’ve recently become injured by way of stupidity. Long story longer, I was lifting some heavy weights, got excessively macho one day, went back the next day for another round of lifting. I drove home in minor pain, thinking that some good stretching would help solve this dilemma. I was wrong. I hobbled to the bedroom and collapsed on the carpet, my back devolving into what was later described as a “bulging disc” and a “pinched nerve” condition. These declarations were made after one chiropractic visit, some drugs, one ER visit, an MRI and some more, better drugs.

In all my life, through broken bones, some burning of the earlobes and skin, nasal laser surgery and a chance encounter with a cyst in my chest cavity, I’ve never experienced pain like that which I felt curled up on the floor, unable to move at all. In between high pitched screams and thoughts of “this is what dying feels like”, I was left on the section of carpet that, at one time, the dog decided to urinate upon. I thought we’d done a thorough and true cleanup of the carpet, which we were planning on replacing this month anyways. Again, I was wrong. Nose down in the ghost of piss, I was going beyond humiliated pain. My children were witnessing tears rolling down my cheeks, muffled choking noises as I rolled like an upside down tortoise, begging for mercy. Scared and scarred, they chose to leave the room as I howled.  Finally, I crept up onto all fours, thinking I was alone in my state. Wrong.

MoJay, our illustrious Boxer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jonathan Winters, had been observing this whole scenario. Head cocked, he looked at me as if to say “man, that is the worst impression of Charlie Sheen going through a drug withdrawal I’ve ever seen, and I watch alot of daytime television.” The look also indicated he wasn’t really sure who I was, even though we’ve lived together for well over a year. There was only one way to find out. So, as I wheezed out choking breaths, on all fours, he decided to drive his nose into the back of my pants to verify, sending me down on my elbows with another round of screeching.

“It’s me, dammit, MoJay! You worthless, no good, blind as a bat, piece of…… DAMMIT! (sobs)”.

He didn’t seem convinced. Trotting off, the arrogant bastard went to find someone else in the house to lavish affection upon him, and I began the slow crawl on my forearms toward the bathroom. And then I hear the clicking on the wood floor. He was back.

And he wanted to check, again.

There is nothing quite as degrading as having a dog make sport out of sniffing your ass, while you’re helpless to defend yourself, cursing and crying all at once. The deep underlying fear was that, if this little game ceased to amuse him, perhaps he’d jump it up a notch and try to assert dominance. Who does that to a broken, partially disabled bastard like me?

My dog does.

Fearing non-consensual aggravated canine sexual assault made me temporarily forget the crippling pain for half a second. I careened onto my back and bellowed even louder as the pain set in.

He wagged his nub of a tail, a twinkle in his eye, relishing my fear.

For sale: 5 acres, 2 shovels, 1 broom. Children not included

Vapor lock.

Two words when that come to mind when I wrap my warped mind around the concept of moving back into town: “vapor lock”.

We bought this house 5 years and 10 months ago, an excited and younger family, eager to get out of the suburbs and onto our 5 acres of the American Dream. It was a larger, kinda run down house with lots of, um, potential, but the real selling point for me was The Shop. 24′ x 80′, it was the ultimate man cave, built by the previous owner for his cabinet business. I owned a small excavating concern at the time, and although none of my equipment would fit INSIDE the shop, all the tools, beer fridge and other necessary manliness trappings would. 5 ACRES. I envisioned my boys on dirt bikes, I saw digging out a large pond that would freeze over in winter for some outdoor hockey, I pictured throwing big fall parties with a corn maze that I would create. I failed to look for the money tree that would fund all of these endeavors, but hey, when you’re dreaming, you can’t let a little thing like financial realities come crash the party.

As time and income would allow, we fixed up the things that needed it. The Dirtbag came out from the Northwest and we remodeled the former garage/family room into a fully functioning hair salon so that The Wife could work from home and the boys could come off the school bus to a home with at least one parent in it. I built things from salvaged barn wood in the shop, installed a stove and created a social haven for other off-duty firemen looking to escape their own homes. We half-built a garden that’s half the size of our former house. We have a guest room so that our out-of-town visitors aren’t fighting disgusting small boys for bed space or worse, toilet time.

Like the American Dream itself, though, it’s about the pursuit, not necessarily the arrival. The day arrived when the acquisition of more, bigger, greater wasn’t fulfilling anymore. It leaves a void, a void in which I was missing some vital aspects to being a father. Maybe smaller COULD better. Maybe I didn’t need as much.

I sold the business because I was never home, and it wasn’t worth the chump change I was able to claim as profit when my boys were growing up in my absence. I wanted to give writing a shot, even if only as a hobby. Then, the economy decided to jump the fiscal shark, and new realities really hit. We probably weren’t going to put in that swimming pool, much less a garage or a pond or a life-size re-creation of Mt. Rushmore in the back yard. And, like many people these days, we were asking “do we really need all this stuff, all this space, all those weeds?” We don’t. Mowing through the summer in Missouri equates to trying to drain a swamp with a shop-vac, humidity included.

“Let’s move back into town!” I boldly declared. My family looked at me like I just informed them that I was having recreational sex with feral cats. It took a while, but I sold the idea. Mostly, I sold it by telling them that we’re doing it. But she saw that we were spending all of our time in town anyways, that it doesn’t take a 1,920 square foot shop to house a laptop for writing, that she missed the social interaction of business in a salon. It was decided. We contacted a reputable Realtor, who guided us through the steps it’s gonna take to maybe, barely, hopefully break somewhat even on our house after all this time and money spent on improvements. We know what neighborhood we want to live in, what sort of tile & carpentry work I have to do get our house ready to put on the market, how to purge all of my hoarded treasures that are living in my shop.

I want to do this. She wants to do this. The boys could care less.

So why am I vapor locked when it comes to getting the house on the market?

I think it may be a mix of lamenting emotion, trepidation at the unknown and abject laziness. My boys have begun to grow up in this house, the only one they remember. It’s nice to have my own bathroom, whereas the historic old bungalows we’re looking at in town mandate that we’ll probably all be lucky to crawl into an old water heater for family bath times. I like that, on the rare occasions when the weather isn’t similar to either Vietnam in summer or Hoth in winter, my boys can go tearing around chasing each other with lightsabers, screaming at the top of their lungs to no one in particular. I like interacting with her clients in the salon, where I can get salacious and worthless details about people I don’t even know.

But it’s time.

Time to move on. Time to get out from behind the financial 8-Ball. Time to accept that without an excavating company to house, 5 acres just translates into a lot of mowing. I have no desire to become a hobby farmer. I would prefer to be a hobby coffee-and-bullshit consumer. Rural living has it’s benefits, not including some of the redneck mindset that my neighbors have (although I will miss trying to understand how one of them truly believes that a Kansas-born African American man as President is a sign of the impending terrorist apocalypse).

Home is a state of mind, and this one has been good to us. Hopefully, this vapor lock will pass, I’ll get off my rump and do what needs to be done, and we can begin our slow shuffle into town. And the memories? We’ll take those with us into town and start making new history.

Dad?

We become our parents.

It’s a fact of life and one that makes me want to chew on rocks when I think about it too much. This point was driven home the other day when I was pointing a finger at one of my boys and telling him to “sit up straight, I’m not raising boneless chickens here”. Karma, revenge, God’s Master Plan To Mock Us, whatever you may call it, it’s seemingly inevitable and heartbreaking all at once. Here are the signs that I’m sliding down that slope; you may well be joining me. Let’s get together and complain of our health woes in the near future, shall we?

5 Signs I’ve Become My Parents

1. Hey! Your hat’s on backwards. When I was a kid, I was told the only two reasons my stepfather would accept for someone wearing their hat backwards were if they were playing catcher in baseball or they were welding. The lame excuse I concocted of not wanting the wind to blow it off as I rode my BMX bike at a blistering 4mph was met with the cold stare of intolerant incredulity. Now? I think anyone wearing a baseball hat on backwards is telling the world “I’m still being financially supported by my parents.” I actually told my son in my big outdoor voice the other day that “no, as long as you’re riding in MY car, you’re not wearing that hat backwards and sideways. I’m not chauffeuring Justin Beiber here, dammit.” While my stepdad might be proud, I can’t believe I’m actually saying this. Pass the throat lozenges and hot coffee, please.
2. Don’t call me after 9pm. This was a hard and fast rule in our house growing up. It was also The Great Paradox Of The Teenager – if you wanted to stay out past your 10pm curfew, how could you call and make that request if it was 9:08pm? Inevitably, I’d make the bad choice of just skipping the call and the usual response of “do you have any idea what time it is? SOME of us have to work tomorrow, you know” and just enjoy some risky freedom, only to be met at the door at 11pm by crossed arms, a glare and a grounding. And now? I’ll actually fake sounding all sleepy if someone calls after 9. I have no idea why – we’re always up later than that, but that somehow crept up on me, made it’s way into my Standards of Acceptable Behavior. Go ahead and call, I’m not really asleep, I’m just being grouchy.
3. Shut up, the weather’s about to come on. Concerning oneself about the weather really is just a pastime in frustrated gambling, and yet if it’s 5pm and I’m watching the news like a responsible senior citizen, I’m addicted to the weather report. I really think that Missouri has one month of good weather – two weeks in the Spring and two weeks in the Fall. The rest of the time is spent either melting in humidity or chattering your teeth out in the icy gray of winter. So why the hell do I care about the weather? It’s gonna rain, or it won’t and yet I stay glued to the weather portion of the news like I’m responsible for delivering life-saving serum across the Midwest, and my journey hinges on mold-spore counts and potential rainfall totals.
4. Volume. No matter what channel, no matter what song, if my kids are playing it, it’s too damn loud. My music? Can’t get loud enough. Sorry boys, you’re not living in a democracy here, and there’s no way I can tolerate iCarly at volume level “4″ when we could be cranking Credence Clearwater Revival at “11″. My own father and I went through this in 1982, when he was determined to blast Pink Floyd on the Hi-Fi while dancing in his striped bikini underwear and all I wanted to listen to was Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s awesome sonic effort “Come On, Eileen”. He won, every time.
5. Comfortably weird. Reference the above statement; it’s no exaggeration – my father would wear speedo-style underwear and little else the moment he was freed from the shackles of the working world. It was horrifying for a kid trying to have friends or anything resembling a social life. And now? If our boys have a friend over to spend the night, I’ll try and convince them at the dinner table that I know how to use The Force. I’ll drink scalding coffee on hot days and late into the night. Three showers a day seems to be a reasonable number. I’ll drag the garbage can to the end of the driveway in a robe…in the snow. And when I found out a co-worker picked up a set of bagpipes for $25? I fumed with jealousy for a week. Yeah. I’m there.

Now you’ll have to excuse me…I need to go organize my sock drawer before bed time.

Team CrossFit Springfield & Co. Photo by Molly White

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

This week, several athletes from our local gym, CrossFit Springfield, will head west to Los Angeles to compete in what is loosely referred to as “The Games”. The Games are, basically, the World Series of CrossFit (take a look here); this is where gyms (or Boxes) will be sending their best athletes to convene, compete and collectively throw up as they put their bodies through incredibly awful workouts designed, most likely, by disgruntled Navy SEAL’s strung out on boxed Chardonnay wine or the blood of their enemies.

To outsiders, this is gonna look like Jonestown, version 2011; people in the world of CrossFit speak their own dialect, spend ungodly amounts of money on supplements, “Paleo” foods (apparently we need to eat like cavemen, despite the lack of wooly mammoth meat), and workout clothing, which we immediately discard to the floor the moment the clock starts ticking down to the actual workout. Shirtless makes you faster AND stronger (why pay $64 for a shirt if you can’t throw it to the floor as soon as the clock starts ticking?). Unfortunately, like most cults and mega-churches, some people just won’t shut up about it, ever, thereby alienating co-workers, family and friends with stories that seemed seasoned with Amway-flavored enthusiastic sales tactics.

And that’s a shame, because CrossFit IS such a good thing.

It IS a community. It IS a family of encouragement and achievement. Most of the competitors representing Springfield are our coaches. To watch them put themselves through the grueling paces of what it takes to compete at this level is inspiration itself. There is a factor of discipline that eludes most of us when you play at that level. There is no room for a casual attitude. No room for excuses. I admire intensely the mental intensity these people have. They move through exercise movements with a fervor and pace that makes you think they’re relying on instinct and natural prowess, but to say that sells them short. Our friends are competing in this arena because they’ve worked countless hours on countless days, trudging through snowbanks in the dark of morning, sweating like the damned on the hot asphalt of a July in the Midwest. They deserve this shot because they’ve earned it.

There’s a part of me that would love to be out there, screaming like a maniac at the ThunderChicken, in exact inverse as to how he’s coached me over the past year. His style is to chew gum slowly, shake his head back and forth and mutter things like “put your hands on the bar, Gooley”. The other part would be driven nuts by the fact that I’ve never been much of a spectator of sports; I’d rather be in there trying to compete. Unfortunately, you need to be really, really athletic to compete, so there’s no threat of that happening any time soon. The last person CrossFit Springfield needs to be represented by is someone who’s only claim to competitiveness at the gym is in the arena of sweat production.

So I’ll wait back here, patiently. Twitter and Facebook and texts will feed and flood my mind as the Games take place. Life in Missouri will continue at the same pace, clogged by gravy and humidity. Several friends from our Box are headed out there to support our team in person, and, to experience that little bit of California heaven known as Compton after hours. I’ve recommended that they keep both red AND blue handkerchiefs on their persons, so that both The Bloods and The Crips will be confused and perhaps focus their hail of drive-by gunfire elsewhere.

So, coaches and friends…I want to wish you luck, but that’s not what you need. You already have what you need – a fierce will, strong bodies, stronger minds and the soul of a winner. I want to thank you for all you’ve done for us, and for all you’re doing for us; there is no better leadership than example. Where you place is up to you; no matter the numbers on the board, you’ve shown us all back here in Springfield what it takes to be winners. For a guy who will probably never take his shirt off in the gym, this means a lot. You’ve had our backs as we’ve struggled through each miserable workout; we’ve got yours.

Now, go kick some ass, already.

How We Do

I pulled up to the stoplight the other day. It was an ordinary stoplight, an ordinary day, in an ordinary town, as ordinary as life has been made to seem these days.

So ordinary, in fact, that I was driving my wife’s minivan. It’s white. It’s got coffee stains on the cloth interior. It has almost 100,000 miles and one of the doors opens with the touch of a button. It’s not paid for, not just yet. It’s screams mild-mannered and is just so damn sensible. It would be the perfect robbery getaway car here in the Midwest, since it looks EXACTLY like every third vehicle here, minus the ubiquitous “Bush 2008″ sticker we don’t have. It’s fuel efficient. It pulls slightly to the right when braking, since she tends to drive like a meth-fueled Nascar racer, going through brake rotors at an alarming rate. It’s air conditioned. It smells of leftover breakfast things and hockey gear and quietly desperate suburban living.

It kills me.

Back to the other day. I roll up, windows rolled down to let the smell of unkempt homeless guy/ farting children out. My lovely, delightful boys were engaged in some sort of Star Wars games on their personal electronic devices, so as to keep us from actually interacting. They weren’t fighting each other, so I was feeling like Father Of The Year. I was happy to crank some tunes on the factory-issued 6″ speakers that came with our beloved minivan, plugged into my own electronic device to which I am a slave, thereby marking me as a hopelessly middle aged wannabe technophile. The music? Well, it was a gangsta-rap kinda day, and I was in the mood for some Snoop Dogg, because I can, in no way, relate to anything about the lifestyle he’s living, so of course, I love it. I love it, but I’m a semi-responsible parent, too, so I had it on the radio-edit version. I really don’t feel like explaining to my children that we don’t refer to women that way, we don’t use the n-word like that, we don’t pull our gats out and perform drive-by shootings in the name of respect. At least, not in the minivan.

So there we are, thumpin’ to the beat (or, I am) waiting, wondering if I should be a rebel today and order an iced coffee WITHOUT my requisite 2 packets of Splenda when we drive through Starbucks; I’m basically living the dream. In the distance, I hear a high pitched whine approaching that can mean only one thing: a horde of crotch-rocket sport bikes was rapidly descending upon our same stoplight. Three or four of them throttle down, pull alongside us, kick it into neutral and rev their engines several times to assert dominance over one another, and more specifically, to annoy everyone around them. And there she was.

Perched on the back of one of these Road Rockets Of Most Assured Death At High Speed, she sported low-rise jeans with the inevitable “tramp-stamp” style tattoo just above the crack of her backside, a long flowing ponytail billowing out of the back of her helmet and, get this, stiletto high heels. The helmet was a full face model, thereby leaving my imagination to fill in the blanks as to just how beautiful she most certainly was, hands clutched around the driver, who would no doubt be sporting too much Axe Body Spray and a backwards hat, if not for his helmet. As he gunned the throttle up and down, she turned her head to the side and our eyes locked. I recognized the look in those eyes. Not lust. Not love. Not like.

Pity.

Here she was, poised to take off to 115mph. in a matter of moments on a city street, looking at me, getting 18 miles to the gallon at 5mph. under the speed limit. I represented, in that moment, everything she and her sleeveless-shirted boyfriend weren’t: they were careless, carefree, willing to die in a hail of asphalt and bumpers and look damn good doing it. She was wearing STILETTO HEELS for godssakes. She probably thought I was wearing mid-calf-high socks with Teva sandals, which for the record, I wasn’t. “Wow,” she was probably thinking, “look at that poor, nasty old sap, listening to that old hip-hop with his kids in the Toyota Grocery Getter. Gawd. Who wants to live to be THAT old? Wind that throttle out again, Ricky, you stud.”

Just like that, the light went green, and they roared off to the next frat party or sports bar or cocaine-flavored techno club. “But wait, “ I feebly protested, with my fist in the air, “I have a mortgage. Health insurance. I recently lowered my cholesterol, and I make a mean piece of sourdough toast.”

Too late. She was gone, our love never realized. It never would be. She will continue to seek thrills at high speeds in high heels, and I will be in bed by 9:36pm after a nice hot cup of tea. She has no idea what she’s missing; very little can match the exhilarating feeling of knowing you can seat 8 semi-comfortably.

Just for the hell of it, I purchased that coffee without Splenda. Because, beneath this khaki exterior, beats the heart of a bad boy. A bad boy with good cholesterol and a white minivan.

"I said SKINNY latte, punk!"

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. – George Washington Carver

As I slithered from the parking lot into the grocery store, eager to escape the hellacious humidity that defines living in the Bible Belt, all that was on my mind was the delicious iced coffee that would soon be lovingly consumed. I snapped to inside and began my stride across the floor, past the commissioned fish salesman trying to hawk his salmon to my deaf ears, when I realized I nearly cut off an elderly gentleman being pushed in a wheelchair by a store employee towards the Starbucks counter.

She was listening to him gripe about the amount of coffee he wanted put in his cup: THIS much, not THAT much, and HOT but not TOO hot, and why do they always make it so hot and no, I don’t need that much, I need this much, and my back aches.

She listened dutifully, and I pulled aside to let them in front of me; after all, there is a high likelihood that I have more time left on this planet to enjoy coffee than he does, and what the hell, respect has its place.

I hope when I’m old enough to be pushed about in a wheelchair, someone has the patience and kindness to listen to me bitch about the coffee, the state of the Union, those damn kids. I won’t have earned it, any more than this old coot has, that much is certain. But I guess I have enough faith in us as a people that I might merit a push up to a coffee counter.

Thank you, lady, for being that kind of person.

Out Of The Abyss

My name is Uli.

I’m 37 years old, I have two sons, a bachelor’s degree in agricultural business and an overwhelming desire to fritter away any disposable income on Starbucks, smoothies and sushi.

Rarely content to stand still, I’m a professional firefighter, an amateur writer and cynical about humid weather, people who carry small dogs in purses and the downfall of culture as evidenced by what I see on the E! channel.

I also recently came to terms with another aspect of life:

I’m claustrophobic.

I never had issues with tight spaces until I had to get an MRI a few years back, wherein I recreated a scene from The Incredibles as seen here: Into The Tube, Chunky. I had pretty much the same thing happen, minus the launch into a space capsule part. Once squeezed into there, I realized I couldn’t raise my head and promptly freaked out. It wasn’t pleasant for me, nor the tech running the machine, and a few days later, with the help of some drugs, a towel over my face and earbuds lulling me into a peaceful state via the soothing tones of Bad Religion, we got through it. It was an ordeal, and it set the tone for idiotic anxiety, I suppose.

Flash forward several years: as the member of a ladder truck company for the fire department, I’m expected to assist the rescue companies in various forms of rescues – ropes, trench collapses and, unfortunately, confined space scenarios. Getting stuck in tight places….every firefighters dream gig. I knew our training class was this week, knew how much I’d probably break out into sweats and scream like a little child when wedged in, even made several jokes about who’s job it was going to be to inform my family that I’d died of a panic attack (impossible, really, but several calls we make revolve around people panicking themselves into a stupor). Then the day arrived, and, as I gazed down the 24″ diameter pipes and felt my hands twitch nervously, I buckled down and forced myself to stay calm….right up until I was on my knees in front of the tube and my fertile imagination ran away with me.

Finally, after much coaxing, I convinced myself I was being ridiculous and just crawled in the damn thing. I got tangled up in ropes, finished the task, and set some sort of speed record getting out, based on my desire to be done with the whole thing. I thought I was over the hump. I was wrong.

The next task was to crawl into the same tiny tube, then have your partner crawl in after you, “leap frog” over you, then you over them, to simulate having to crawl over a victim to prepare them for extrication. And that’s where I just gave out. I’d crawl in a foot or two, get near my partner’s legs, feel the pinch and rapidly back out. Two guys, two feet of diameter….this is an unholy exercise in ridiculosity, and I was firmly against it. Why? Because this right here is the view with ONE guy in there:

No thanks. I decided enough was enough.

And then a funny thing happened. Well, two things, really, from one source: that crazy, cultish, thing I love dearly, CrossFit.

1.) I’ve lost weight. Thanks to the vigorous workout schedule of CrossFit Springfield, I’ve dropped several layers of fat and belt loops, all while gaining some weird thing called muscle. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to escape the pipe without getting wedged in, despite the harness and helmet and with the help of nervous sweat greasing the walls. It felt really good to know that what once would have hindered me completely was becoming something less of an issue. Now I just had to scale the mental walls.

2.) I’m not one for coaches cliche’s. From “you can do it” to “you gotta give 110%” to “we leave it all out on the field”, I can never hear these sayings without picturing the coach in tight softball shorts angrily projecting his failed athletic career hopes upon us, the Goleta Valley Little League “Cubs”, who’s record stood at something like 0-16. I appreciate honesty, not politically expedient phrases meant to offend no one. I like curse words in my motivational speeches, lots of them. Speeches that go something like this one (here!), from the Washington Capitals hockey coach. However there is a sign in our gym, large and across an entire wall, that says “Learn To Never Quit”. I joke regularly that I’m gonna sneak into CrossFit in the dead of night and Sawzall off the part that says “never”, but in truth, I’ve taken that philosophy to heart. I wrote in a previous post (here) how our gym has taught me to keep pushing through the mental and physical boundaries I’ve set up for myself, but this thing, this claustrophobia, it is a hangup with no basis in rational thinking.

I thought about the virtues of quitting, of being able to avoid that which I don’t like. I thought of being the only person in the training drill that day who was going to have a big “did not finish” hanging over my head. I thought of how when firehouse kitchen table talk came up later on, and people were discussing who couldn’t pass muster, my name might come up. I didn’t want to be that guy. I didn’t want my crew to look at me with suspicion when shit goes downhill, as it does on emergency scenes. I didn’t want them to doubt me. I didn’t want to doubt me, either.

I was told it’s ok.”You don’t have to finish, everyone has their hangups”. I could see in the eyes of the instructor, my co-workers that no, it wasn’t ok. To be controlled by an irrational fear is to be controlled, something I loathe intensely. So, I grabbed the smallest person there (she’s the one in the first picture) and she obliged me, willing to go back into the tube with a half-crazed mental case, just to prove a point. I’ll spare you the details (screaming, et al) and just say that after some sheer stubborn willpower, it was done.

It was ugly, it took several embarrassing false starts, but, to quote an instructor that day, “you didn’t quit, you weren’t a pussy, you kept at it till you finished, and that’s what counts”.

I may finally have begun to learn what it means to learn to never quit. And while I’m sure being a claustrophobe is a lifelong state of mind, I’m grateful to have a place that’s taught me how to be physically and, more importantly, mentally prepared for adversity, however you may find it. When we have the second half of the drill on Friday, though, and we’re using 18″ diameter tubes, all this talk may be for naught; I can only hope that that same strength is in there somewhere.

In the meantime, I’ll keep on cussing at those voices in my head. Quitting is never a good option, especially to the stubborn among us. When backed up against a wall, or wedged in a piece of corrugated plastic, that’s when the triumph of will is put to the test. And, as the little league coach might say, it feels damn good to not back down.

Aunt Viper's doppelgänger in Thailand

It’s been a while, I know.

I’ve missed you too, but frankly with The Heathens out of school and my commitment to celebrating the humidity of the season by complaining loudly to no one in particular, my schedule’s been rather booked. It turns out that when I try to issue my complaints at the top of my lungs no one really wants to be around me, so I’ve been spending quite a bit of time by myself in the back corner of our property yelling at fence posts and fireflies and not getting much traction with my issues. So I thought I’d return to you and family as I turn to thoughts of someone who loves this kind of weather: Aunt Viper.

As described in previous posts, Aunt Viper is the only blood sibling my father has in this country and earned her name by way of description from The Lyin’ Dutchman (who would never say it to her face): “Thahht wooman ees a goddahm viper, son”. She’s vicious and loyal, determined to survive in a world where her existence is in a constant state of threat, perceived or otherwise. She’s 4ft. something, jet black hair and is still pissed at another brother of hers who, she claims, tried to sell her into a prostitution ring when they were younger in order to get cigarettes. My uncle vehemently denies this accusation as the ramblings of a “teepical woman”. Personally, I believe Aunt Viper.

I’m currently on our family’s version of what we call The Great Indonesian Wheel of Fault & Fate, or more conveniently, The Wheel. My brothers and I came up with The Wheel as a way to describe that period of time when we are considered “dead to me” by either our father or aunt. We are a large enough family, and dysfunctional enough, that The Lyin’ Dutchman & Aunt Viper feel the need to always have Favorites and Enemies. One of us is always on The Wheel, for that makes it easier to talk trash about them at family gatherings (the Starbucks in La Cumbre Plaza, if you happen to be free), where The Dead One isn’t present and is usually considered the current source of all ills in our family dynamic. I’m presently Dead To Them for a wide variety of crimes against The Family, and the only way off The Wheel is to approach the elders and beg for forgiveness, even if you have no idea why they’re currently ignoring you. Typical family dynamics, really.

Living 2000 miles from them allows me the privilege of enjoying their shenanigans from afar, never having to have direct contact with her anger, risking lung cancer that much less, since no encounter is complete without some second-hand ingesting of a pack of Virginia Slims per hour. Last I talked to Aunt Viper she was openly running smack talk against her co-workers in their presence, regaling me with tales of their incompetence and bigotry against the elderly (her) and their nerve, their very nerve, to try and get rid of her. She’ll leave when she’s good and ready, dammit, probably on a gurney with her fist gripped around the neck of the paramedic, demanding someone tell her “just what de hell you tink you’re doing to me? Trying to kiiill me?” She finds the coastal temperatures of Santa Barbara “too freegin’ cold”, thinks that people on the East Coast are much kinder than “dese assssholes and idiots in California”, and is mildly irked that she hasn’t really dated since 1978, when a man we knew as  Uncle Jake got fresh with her in a bowling alley and put his hand on her leg.

Probably the best example of her outlook on this life is the time she arrived at The Lyin’ Dutchman’s house in her car, took one look at his then-wife and pronounced that her car was about out of gas, and would she be so kind as to go the Shell station and fill it up? Because, in her own words, “a reeeal lady don’t pump her own gas.” On a related note, she doesn’t have too many female friends, either.

But what she does have, and what she cherishes in her own mind, is family. She hates my guts right now, but I, and the rest of us, belong to her. My father is a colossal mess and has virtually, single-handedly alienated every person he’s ever been close to, but he just can’t shake Aunt Viper. She won’t have it. We have a running bet that when her casket is being lowered into the grave, her final act from beyond will be to have The Lyin’ Dutchman trip and fall into the coffin, thereby assuring an eternity in each others company. Being on The Wheel, I don’t get much more than a card from her on random holidays, but she never forgets to send The Heathens a nice note and some money on their birthdays. Through it all, and through the fog of the various hurts we’ve heaped on one another, she has a deep, if not twisted, love for her family. More than willing to start a race riot on our behalf if she feels slighted (which she has done), she also makes a mean Indonesian meal with her special wok, seasoned with piss & vinegar, no doubt. There are brief moments when I truly miss the weekends at my fathers house, the smell of her cooking permeating the neighborhood, her bigoted racial epithets being screamed at the television as she took in that “sissy sport, football, my assss…..RUN YOU FREAKIN N—-!”, the neighbors wondering just how much their property values lowered when we moved onto the cul-de-sac.

These are the things that rambled through my mind as I yelled at the fireflies about the heat & humidity. Next thing you know, I’m seeing a little Aunt Viper in myself, arguing with no one in particular, only two feet taller and not bigoted. Despite my position on The Wheel, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to pump my own gas.

And if she ever reads this? I’m reasonably certain she’ll clobber me with a chair, grind a smoke out on my cheek and screech at me to “knock eet off, smaht-ass!”

It’ll feel just like home.

"Guess how many poods I'm hiding in my outfit?"

There is an old Russian proverb which, according to Wikipedia, goes “You never know a man until you have eaten a pood of salt with him.” Like all things Russian, especially the comments in my spam filter, this makes no sense to me. Wanna know why? Because, I don’t weigh things in terms of poods, I don’t don’t speak Russian, and as we all know, salt leads to chins multiplying like rabbits on Viagra, so I try and avoid it if I can.

Technically, a pood is 36.11 pounds. It was a unit in the Imperial Russian Weight measurement system, coming into play around the 12th century and officially abolished by the USSR in 1924, when they realized how ridiculous it seemed. Ridiculous, and probably just a little capitalistic. Either way it was abolished, and for the better, really, except in two arenas of life: obscure bulk grain & potato farmers and the world of weightlifting. This is based on the history of the traditional kettlebell, which was, apparently, cast in denominations of the pood. Great.  You know who uses kettlebells with a scary frequency? Mmm-hmm…Crossfitters.

To be fair, I’m a kool-aid consuming, card-carrying cult member of CrossFit Springfield, and I love it. We’ve gotten healthier because of it, met lots of great people and rediscovered the joys of lower back pain. And, honestly, I’m no xenophobe, but rather, I’m just truly bad at math and conversion tables.

So I think the pood is stupid.

Ounces to quarts to pints to gallons to litres, it’s all fine, but just MAKE UP YOUR DAMN MIND. We going metric? Then let’s do it. Sticking with ASE? Runes? Cubits? Let’s stick to a common language here so I don’t hurt myself trying to eat an entire pood of salt.

We have kettlebells in pounds and kilograms at the gym, and I can’t tell the difference, and they’re all heavy and I feel the fool swinging them back and forth, between my legs, always aware of the inherent danger to reproductive zones. But you know what we don’t have? Poods, dammit. And I’m proud of our coaches/owners for sticking to their guns. We ain’t living in a Cossack Time Zone, people.

This is not good enough for some elite-ish CrossFitters, my brother being one of them, who scoffs at the notion that I don’t bark out my pood weight when selecting kettlebells for random sessions of sweating kilos, or liters of liquid fat off. This is not that uncommon. It’s in the tone, really and here’s how I imagine it goes down all over CrossFit Affiliates the nation over:

“Well, yeah, that’s a good number of reps, but how many pood was it?”

“Excuse me? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Did you say ‘pood’? Cause that sounds like a gross bodily function-noise or something”

“Yeah, you’re not serious about CrossFit, obviously.”

“I’m sorry if my non-use of a long dead Russian unit of measurement is lacking. Clearly, I suck.”

“Yes, you do. Now, take your shirt off and show me you’re serious about elite fitness.”

“What?”

It’s as foolish to me as walking into the lumber yard and ordering framing materials in cubits, as though I was constructing an ark rather than a garden bench. They’d look at me with a vacant stare and hit that button under the counter that orders the cops. Same thing to me with weights. I know how much I weigh in pounds, so I can reference other things weight in comparison. I’m not a cocaine dealer, nor European, so kilos mean very little to me. When they start ordering us to run in terms of “clicks”, right after I’ve finally gotten used to “meters” (I just multiply by 3 and call it good, cause I’m casual like that), I may just lose it.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to revel in my non-elite status, happy to line things out in increments of 5, or 10, or 1. I’ll think up funny-to-me phrases for shirts I’ll never make that say things like “I just pood for a PR”.

And I might seriously consider seeing if Rosetta Stone offers language immersion courses in Ancient Russian, so my amigo Ashley & I can strut around the gym and bark out marching orders as though we were gonna launch the next Sputnik from the rowing machines.

Probably with our shirts on, too.

Heathen #2 On Turning 6

Six years ago today, he came barreling into our lives, a chaotic storm of character, panache and humor. Six years and a day ago, I had no idea I could ever love someone as much as my firstborn child, he who craftily stole my heart twenty three months previously. This one, he was scheduled to come into this world on a certain date, and as I’d later learn, he sets the agenda in his world, whether it was arrival out of his mothers womb or the almost European-like pace of his eating; never in a hurry, always over an animated conversation.

But my life was altered yet again that day, in ways I couldn’t imagine previously. For all of the characteristics we see in our children that reflect our own, I still find the original ones the most intriguing and impressive. Heathen #2 has a disarming smile and a charm that allows him to sell ketchup popsicles to women in white gloves when the mood strikes him. I’ve watched as stern and hardened teachers gush like teens when describing their love of him; his refusal to show an interest in having a girlfriend has resulted in all his female classmates blushing when his name is brought up. When he gets off the school bus, or arrives at a local sporting event, you’d think the President had stepped on the scene: he’s all waves and hellos and glad-handing his fellow citizens. Once, I caught him kissing a baby, I’m pretty sure of it. He’s always described as “funny”, “charming”, “loving”, “peacemaker”, “such a ham”, and all these are accurate, I suppose. I’ll have to credit his mother for those traits. I’ve tried to instill sarcasm, pessimism, and a healthy skepticism towards mankind and organized religion, but nothing seems to curb his sense of adventure and optimism towards life in general.

He is my son, and he, along with his brother, are the very best things to have ever happened to me. I’ve never known an unconditional love like this. When his world hurts, I hurt alongside him. When he hits the ball off the tee and shoots me a thumbs up before he heads to first base, I shoot him one back, his smile and sense of accomplishment a testament to the enduring hope of youth. When he asks about a dog I had long before he was born, he always cries at the end of the story, and tells me how much he misses the dog for me, his empathy an instinct, his compassion pure and without motive. His laughter is infectious, his ability to spin tales from the reaches of his imagination something my creative soul envies and admires. Every night, we have a ritual in which I ask him if he knows I love him.

He tells me “yes, Daddy, I do.”

“How much do I love you, son?”

“More than anything in the world.”

“Don’t you ever forget it, son. Ever.”

“I won’t, Daddy.”

He better not. I can’t offer him many reassurances in this world, that it won’t take heartbreaking turns, exceptional highs and unanticipated detours. He’ll go through it all, hopefully, and all that I can offer him is my love, without reservation, always. His safe passage into young adulthood is my responsibility, and it is the one of the few things in this life that I take seriously. I know what it’s like to have conditional love from a parent and quite frankly, it’s a thunderstorm that always lingers on your own horizon, no matter how old you get, how much you can get others to laugh at you. My goal is for my boys to never experience that from their parents. What can’t they accomplish knowing there are always going to be two people in their corners, always got their backs? Go on boys, tackle the world. We’ll be here, for you, for ever.

Maybe when he gets older, he’ll read this and wonder what possessed him to want a mohawk. I hope he does, so that he knows that today we not only celebrate his entrance into this world with carrot cake and swords and musical instruments, but that I’m celebrating an anniversary as well. The anniversary of another day that changed my life forever. I’m so grateful you’re in my life, son. You’ve taught me how to be a dad, how to laugh at the silliest of things. You’ve showed me love, compassion and what it means to be a caring soul. Every single day I’m glad you’re in my life, and today, I nod my head and give thanks for the opportunity to be the kind of father you deserve. I love you son, always.

Don’t you ever forget it.

Happy Birthday, Max.