Half Past Awesome

Black: Not As Slimming As I'd Hoped

In the ongoing soap opera known as Trying To Be Less Of A Fatass, I seem to encounter speed bumps on a semi-regular basis. One of the greatest obstacles is a slavery to habit. Sundays at the firehouse are a prime example; as opposed the rest of the work week where we eat at 11am and 5pm, Sundays are  reserved for a brunch that would make a sumo wrestlers heart skip a beat. Bacon, biscuits &  gravy, pancakes, scrambled eggs and fried potatoes are never strangers to the brunch table and I’ve been seduced by all of them. The scale confirms this less-than-ideal affair of the clogged arteries. And, as I try to make healthier choices, nothing sucks harder than eating turkey “bacon”, avoiding the potato pan and nuzzling up to a bowl of oatmeal.

As with all routines in our lives, habits dictate our patterns. Methheads on a bender will spend hours peeling back stolen electrical wire insulation to get at the precious copper that will fund their next hit; RoJo will dictate large portions of time to organizing his sock drawer so that all of the seams line up; The Heathens are devoted to waking up at 5am and making sure their parents are awake too, so that they can discuss their latest Transformer-inspired revelations. Creatures of habit, all. And one of my many habits is to consume food the way I did at age 18, when I had the metabolism of a hummingbird. Always the skinny kid, I ate without consequence until my mid-twenties, as did many of us.

Now would be the time in another setting where the writer would describe how his children inspired him to live better, how the radiating pains shooting down his left arm made him find religion or something like that. Well, those guys can suck it. I’m making the change towards healthier choices for one reason only: it sucks being a mid-thirties fat cliched caricature of yourself. You know it, I know it and since you’re not doing anything about it, I guess I’ll take responsibility for myself.

This came to a head at a local gas station/convenience store with a name I loathe (see my feelings here). I always pay at the pump, seeing no need to venture into the vipers den of M&M’s, 9682-ounce sodas and nasty looking hot dogs on rollers. But this time, I was forced into the situation: I needed to buy a days’ supply of cat food. Mortally embarrassing enough that you purchase cat food at a gas station, I’d be forced to enter a place where Monster Energy Cold Coffee drinks would beckon to me, those damn sirens on the rocks. I began to get a little clammy.

I headed in to the belly of the beast, confident I would not disappoint Ryan and all the other CrossFit fanatics by giving in to the deliciously sweet sights and smells of a highway convenience store. I grabbed the box of overpriced feline food (really? 4 bucks for a days supply? I swear those cats are so fu*#ing unappreciative of my efforts), and calmly strolled up to the counter. Goddddddd, I wanted to buy something, anything. The habit is strong and bred deep within me. I looked over some candy bars, kinds I don’t even like, with an instinct to impulsively purchase. Alcoholics don’t hang around bars, so what the hell was I doing here? Pork rinds were gazing at me longingly, and I found myself eyeballing the lottery tickets as though I might take up gambling today. What the hell is going on here?

Chaotically, I walked to the register and back into different aisles several times, just convinced that I needed something. The corners of my mouth started to water as I began to convince myself I really WAS hungry. After all, I hadn’t eaten in several hours, was working in the shop, c’mon, what’s wrong with a little pick-me-up? Damn, I’d make an ideal drug addict, I follow the script so well. My mouth began watering as a new concept entered my consciousness: beef jerky. My mouth is literally beginning to water at the corners, even as I write this, because beef jerky is so awesome. I found myself at the register, standing in a puddle of my own drool as I rolled the idea over in my mind. I had to excuse myself once again, to dash into the aisle that held my own version of manna. Aisle 3.

At this point, you expect me to tell you of my overwhelming mental strength, where the voice of Ryan is screaming in my head about “form” and not being fat and how I used this imagery to walk away from the sodium-laced death known as jerky. That would make a really cool finale to this story, and maybe it would inspire you in your own journey to better health.

That thought never even crossed my mind.

Finally, box of cat food in one hand and bag of teriyaki beef jerky goodness in the other, I left the store, the checkout clerk shaking her head at the weird dude who obsessively went from aisle to counter and back 23 times, leaving large puddles of drool in his wake.

Beef jerky has protein in it, right?

We’re all good, then.

Uli Less Lardass "Ryan" the Sadist, CrossFit Craziness, RoJo, the Heathens, The Wife

"No, it really IS a Rolex...see?"

There is a scene in the 2004 remake of “Man On Fire” where the protagonist Creasy (Denzel Washington), while engaged a murderous spree of vengeance, is questioning a corrupt cop in Mexico. The cops’ name is Fuentes, and as part of a  vigorous interrogation of the filthy scum, Creasy has ominously placed a five minute time-bomb in Senor Fuentes’ rectal region. Fuentes is furiously bargaining for his life, trying to bribe his way into salvation, when the following conversation takes place:

Fuentes: A last wish, please, please. Please.
Creasy: Last wish? I wish……. you had more time.

You can well imagine what happens next.

I love that movie.

But, it is more than just a great scene where the flawed hero exacts revenge on someone worthy – it’s a universal wish we all have, especially as we grow older and the time span between years shrinks. Right now, this very moment, I’m cramming in our little conversation here while waiting for The Heathens to return home; then it’s a quick buzz to the CrossFit torture palace, off to the firehouse to cover a shift for three hours, then home at 11pm, up at 4am, back to gym, then another shift cover (48 straight with firefighters makes for some ADD-addled moments) and back to my own fire station. All this before Friday. This is not a complaint, however. Life is good, sometimes better than that, and I’m grateful for all the positive aspects we can experience.

I just want to make those positive aspects last a little longer, take time to enjoy it all. Like a kid slowly pulling apart string cheese, as opposed to cramming it all down your throat, some things take time to be parsed, enjoyed, savored even. I like making a cup (or pot, or two pots) of coffee last two hours while shooting the breeze with a good friend. I enjoy the hassling that goes on between firemen after a union meeting, when we get a chance to flap our jaws with brothers from other stations. You can’t really buy that entertainment. When The Wife has a particularly engaging client down in the salon, I’ll happily idle away ridiculous amounts of time listening to their latest tales of woe and scandal.

Most would label this behavior “procrastination”. And by “most” I mean “my wife”. While this seems to make sense when you see the piles of work that need attention at our house, I might beg to differ. I enjoy these moments where we interact and bullshit and trade in on our mutually shared experiences. Yes, yes, we all have obligations like feeding our kids and not letting them become methamphetamine pushers, important little footnotes that we have as parents. I’m just hoping that we all get enough moments where the laughs come freely, the needs we have as social beasts are being met (with the exception of The Dirtbag and Bones, two people in my life who would enjoy most aspects of living in a cave) and we can just think “yeah, it’s all good.” Even in our darkest moments, none of us look to the dishes for consolation when a loved one is stricken with a disease – we turn to those we can embrace, those who support us, those we love. Those with whom we spend time.

Even a guy with a bomb up his ass knows this.

Uli Family DysFUNction CrossFit Craziness, the Heathens, The Wife

The Wife & My Replacement

Every week on the Springfield Bloggers site they have a Take It & Blog subject that we’re invited to write about. Since my mind is currently more of a muddled mess than usual, I think this is a great opportunity to have someone else come up with the theme and I’ll just fill in the answers. The question this week was “how did you meet your significant other?” Sit back my friends, while I weave a tale of lust, deceit, scandal and the most heavily exercised triceps in three counties.

Back when I hired on the fire department, we were offered a membership at a brand new, city-owned fitness center as an incentive for keeping in decent shape. The year was 2001, I was emerging from a reasonably amicable divorce, lonely as hell and living in a place with no family, no roots and no money. Taco Bell on a Friday night was considered my extravagance.

Being as the membership to Chesterfield Fitness Center was free and thus fit into my budget, I began to devote a considerable amount of time to hanging out there. Having never lifted weights nor ever belonged to a gym, I had no idea under the sun what I was doing, so I just followed other firefighters and moseyed around the machines and flapped my jaws. Somehow in the process I lost 30 pounds, a mystery diet that seems heavily influenced by aforementioned divorce.

Then one day she came in. I’m too cynical to believe in such asinine concepts as “love at first sight”, but I remember well thinking, the very first time I saw her, “man, if I could date someone as beautiful as her…….”. Surrounded by a posse of her friends, she was intimidating, laughing all the time, looking confident and self-assured while I resembled slack-jawed hairy troll, getting all knotted up in the weight machines. I dated quite a bit after becoming single, but nothing of significance. I had to meet her, but I lack any sort of confidence in this arena; I realized that I’d need to plot out this meeting like a good soap opera, coincidentally meeting her, faking a pregnancy and then forcing her to fall in love with me.

I enlisted the help of Shane, a trainer there at the gym. He told me that yes, he knew her, that surprisingly enough she might be single, that yes, she’s very funny, I should just go up and introduce myself. Stupid Shane…you can’t just do such a thing. Clearly he didn’t watch enough soaps. I began trying to catch her eye from the machine closest to where she was working out – the triceps rack. I would work that machine like a man possessed, arching eyebrows, casting glares, anything to snag her attention. She blissfully ignored me, laughing with all the meat-heads who tried talking to her, the rat-bastards. Despite developing some freaky triceps strength, it didn’t take long before I realized I needed to engage Plan B…..actually talking to her. This was going to be painful.

Do you remember those old cartoons where the dumb crow would shake his head and mumble “oh, no,no,no,no, duhhhh, nope” while his mother-crow harangues him in a thick German accent? Do you? Because that is the closest approximation to my attempts to strike up any conversation. She laughed at me. My friends and co-workers laughed at me. And, when no one was looking I laughed at me. Utilizing such brilliant lines as “so……it’s almost tax time, right?”(my brilliant line in April) and “Vegas, huh? Yeah…..Vegas is cool. Yeah….I LOVE Sigfried and Roy, yeah” (another attempt at ironic humor), it was no wonder she regarded me as some sort of illiterate moron with an inability to converse with anything smarter than a concrete curb.

Never mind that she was recently divorced and vigorously ogled by men for miles. Never mind that she had a boyfriend. Never mind that I’m clearly incapable of anything in the neighborhood of “smooth”. Akin to the big cats of the African veldt or the protagonists of daytime television, once something is in my sights, it’s nearly impossible for me to let go of it. I shucked whatever sense of dignity and self-respect I might have been holding on to and jumped headfirst towards the pavement of rejection. Finally, after screwing up the courage to ask her if she’d like to get lunch with me one day, she answered in the affirmative, completely throwing me off my game. I was so taken aback I just said “Great!” and walked away, no number, no plans no nothing but an idiotic grin and probably a stumble over a weight plate and on to my ass. Smooth.

That was nine years and two kids ago. To this day she still tolerates me, much to everyone’s surprise. Mostly mine. I never let her forget that, when done right, you can stalk someone into loving you. Then they panic and marry you out of fear, bear you children and love flourishes. It’s the classic American love story.

And yes…..we got married in Vegas.

Uli Take It & Blog Fridays The Wife

What The Pros Supposedly Rode.

I love lying to people, mostly my sons. If I was to be believed, Darth Vader built the Death Star on our 5 acres (right behind my shop), I used to be a Transformer until an accident at the power plant turned me into a human, I have a ninja on speed-dial on my phone who is ready 24/7 to fight crimes I encounter, I invented Legos one rainy Sunday and, coincidentally, I can both speak to and understand all animal life forms. These traits give me great credibility within the home, right up to the point where The Wife betrays me in favor of the truth. I curse her name when she does this. She has to, though, because I come by this capacity naturally, thanks to my father, The Lyin’ Dutchman. I grew up in a household where certain fabrications were spun out that we, his boys, were to take as gospel on pain of ostracization. An example, you say? Here are seven examples for you to consider:

• Pink Floyd , Supertramp and ABBA were Dutch bands (this is because my father is Dutch-Indonesian, hence, all things good in this world are, by default, Dutch. All bad things – well, those are usually Japanese, in his eyes)
• All major BMX stars purchase their bikes at Pep Boys Auto Parts, which is, coincidentally where my Huffy Thunder Road with the banana seat and get-your-ass-kicked fenders was bought.
• He invented the layout of the circuit board
• He got citizenship early from President Kennedy himself
• MIT was “a decent college”…..he’s a graduate, despite any sort of diploma or evidence of this education.
• He served as a tank commander in Korea ~ we’re not sure which country he was serving, none dared to ask.

…………..and most recently (as related by Bones, another of my five brothers):

• He invented the navigational strobe beacon found on aircraft as early as the 1940’s. Quite the achievement for someone under the age of ten.

Now, this might seem rude and crass to utilize this public forum to call out the old man for his fabrications, but I would argue to the contrary. If anything, they made growing up under his roof one constant adventure in fish tales. Yes, confusion reigned, especially when we dared to question the validity of his claims. A sad turn of events has led to the invention of the internet and search engines such as Google, thus making it easier to refute claims such as a long-referenced semi-professional soccer career (“stop being such a smart-ass. I was a pro. End of story.”) No, it was much simpler to weave a fabric of fabrication in the 70’s and 80’s, a fact not lost on me.

So now I’m faced with children who will have the ability to research my claims of leading a zombie army in the overthrow of a hostile military junta in South America way back when. But rather than being intimidated by technology spoiling my animated stories, I relish the challenge of  working around inconvenient truths. After all, part of the reason I became a father was to experience the thrill of lying to my kids in order to look cool. Some may label me a bullshit artist, but I prefer to go by “Dad”.

Uli Family DysFUNction Bones, the Heathens, The Lyin' Dutchman, The Wife

Do you remember, when we were kids, that thirty years old was considered early-onset senior citizen status? Who wanted to live that long? Then, as a pre-teen, sixteen years old was as far ahead as you could plot. At sixteen, you started thinking that life really began and ended between the ages of 18-22. By 18, you were salivating at the thought of being 21 and no longer flirting with that underage drinking stigma that the filthy cops were forever slapping on “innocent” kids looking for fun.  By 21, you start looking forward to lower discounts on insurance when you hit 25. By 25 you don’t want to be “that guy” at college parties, and yet no one takes you seriously in terms of life experience. And when you hit 30, people start bringing Viagra and penis-barbell gag-gifts to your birthday parties.

What the hell happened?

Thirty five years has gone by, that’s what. In my continued struggle against a set of Johnathan Winters-style jowls and a Mr. Belvedere gut, I try and embrace different physical fitness activities, and said activities kick me square in the grapes. Look, I’m even calling them “physical fitness activities” as opposed to playing sports. Cripes, I’m getting old. As I sit here in my office, the hoodie pulled up tight against this wicked 69 degree temp indoors, I shudder a little at the thought. I have now switched from an offensive mode of aging into a defensive posture, whereby I’m forced to defend the 30’s much the way I’m forced to defend the music of the 80’s. This is how old men earn the title “crotchety”. It’s a little bit of a relief that it’s not just me, though. When describing to my mom this couple who were in their 70’s as “elderly”, there was an audible clearing of her throat, followed by what I can only imagine was an arched eyebrow (mind you this is on the phone) and an “Excuse me, young man? Old, you say?”

I didn’t even feel bad at this point telling her that, yes, society does tend to refer to people in that age bracket as “older”. Listen, I’m in my thirties and already The Wife’s teenage clients roll their eyes at the thought of someone my age being useful as anything more than a walking relic.

And that pain in my back that pops up at weird times? Like when I’m pulling up my turnout pants and boots to make a fire run? That one? It’s f—-ing debilitating and embarrassing as well.

It’s really just another reminder. Another reminder that the fight against going downhill is an uphill battle, one that requires twice as much effort, inhuman amounts of willpower (why CAN’T I eat two pounds of bacon and drink nine Guinnesses?) and a healthy dose of Ibuprofen.

A sense of humor helps, too.

Old People Rule. I should know….I’m one of them now.

Uli Less Lardass, Tales of Misery The Wife

"Ryan" getting deep into it

A few nights ago I experienced a first. While awaiting our turn “in the box” at the CrossFit gym, three guys who are varsity-caliber athletes were in a training evolution that mandated taking their shirts off and tossing heavy weights around as casually as I might flick away a sweaty towel. Of course, “Ryan” was a part of this group. It turns out that these boys are competing in CrossFit regional feats of manliness in St. Louis over the weekend (see here) and are shoveling in last minute workouts to fine tune their grunts and wheezes.

MEANWHILE, the working class mortals (the rest of us) were getting our warmups in before another session of torture, when, out of nowhere, I start hearing some cat-calls. And, no, it wasn’t callous dudes whistling at the women in the gym – rather, out of nowhere, a couple of the ladies were verbally swooning over these muscle-y he-men as they pounded out one lift after another. And, out of the corner of my eye, I caught the Wife, who was NOT there for a workout (but to pick up the boys), hanging around, just to, in her words, “check it all out”. Her version of “checking it all out” involves her jaw hanging slack with a little drool coming out of the corner while these taut bastards are hefting the iron.

From the far side of the group my buddy’s MOM Beth says “Hey, how can I concentrate with all this Man Candy happening?” This was answered by a bunch of agreement in the form of cackles and hoots by the ladies and none of which was noticed by the lifters; it went over like a turd in a punchbowl to the rest of us boys in the group.

“Sorry Beth, I’ll try to reign it in!” I shouted back at her, as though she were referring to my self-perceived manliness. This at least earned a chuckle from the rest of us emasculated-types. I feel a need to stick up for us, the muscle-challenged. The workout continued in earnest, with the guys focusing on strength and form and the ladies focusing on the bodies of the bad-asses working out behind us. Inspiration through envy I suppose.

After the class, I caught up with Beth as she was describing her feelings about either the workout or tax laws, I couldn’t really tell. Nonetheless, I apologized for distracting her with my distinct lack of muscles and excess body hair. I can’t help it if I toss manly pheromones out like so much candy at a parade. It’s not my fault. She just laughed at me, dismissively. She said to her conversational partner, “Oh yeah, this is Uli, you should read his stuff, it’s really funny.” Although thankful for the compliment, when I step into the gym, it’s all about making my body look less like melting wax and more like chiseled cheese.

It must be time to come to terms with reality.

So I looked her right in the eye, and I said, I says, “those boys may be Man-Candy, but I’m Intellectual Man-Candy, and you can’t find that in any old gym. Take a moment and drink it all in”. I then attempted to flex my giant hair as if to prove how big my brains are. It ended up looking more like I was suffering an aneurysm, which in turn led to more laughter.

I just can’t win.

Uli Less Lardass "Ryan" the Sadist, CrossFit Craziness, The Wife

Hello, comrade.

In the past year, you’ve taken to writing to me, or more specifically, my site here, in order to establish some sort of relationship. For reasons unknown, all of your correspondence comes to the spam section of Half Past Awesome, but believe you me, I’m getting all of your letters. EVERY SINGLE ONE. While I’m so flattered that you want to be my digital pen-pal, there’s just one small hitch. I DON’T SPEAK RUSSIAN, YOU SOVIET CHOWDERHEAD!

Sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled like that. You’re just trying to talk to me about God Knows What, and here I am screeching at you because of my inability to embrace the silky Russian dialect. I regret to inform you, that while you’re being relegated to the spam filter of cyberspace, you’re in pretty shady company. Apparently there are several people with names with no vowels out there sending me messages about whitening my teeth and increasing my penis size. I’m not sure who DR.XRFlyWE&67@dentalisme.com is, but he seems a little less than genuine in his communiques. How am I to know if he really cares about my dental well being or he’s just saying that to anyone who dwells out here in cyberspace? I’m not putting him on the Christmas Card list this year, not until I see some more sincerity out of him, that much is certain.

No, he’s not like you my Bolshevik “моя родруга”, what with your fancy Cyrillic alphabet and lots of underlined words as you try and reach out to me here in the middle of America, desperate for international flavor here in the Ozarks. What’s your name? I can’t decipher it beyond a series of mismatched consonants and numbers. Is it Irina? Are you picturing us in coffee shops on opposite sides of the world, connecting over a series of philosophies and worldviews, becoming soul mates despite the miles and apparent language barrier? My little babushka, you do know I’m married, right? The Wife cannot ever find out about our forbidden exchanges. But you already know this don’t you? THAT must be why every entry is sent to my spam box. Oh, you’re a crafty little Russian fox, no? Wait. I just checked over in the mailbox, and there’s not ONE SINGLE MESSAGE, much less 14, waiting for me, from you. WHAT THE HELL, YOU TWO TIMING COSSACK TRAMP? ARE YOU SENDING MESSAGES TO OTHER GUYS TOO? YOU SIBERIAN SLUT!!

Again, a thousand apologies, I just thought that we really…….I dunno…..connected. I’m waiting here, patiently, my Irina. I’m holding out against hope that what you really want is to be my special friend, that beneath all of that Soviet-style psychobabble, you’re not trying to hawk homeopathic alternatives to Valium. I’d be devestated. Crushed. My hopes for a tawdry forbidden affair would go to my own private gulag.

I only have one question left for you to answer, my sweet little Muscovite. After your last message, I hastily looked up what you’d written to me…..and it turns out that  “Вы имеете большие сиськи” translates into “you have big boobs”. So I’m left with the burning question – how did you get a picture of me without a shirt on, you filthy bird?

Lovingly yours,

me

Uli Wandering Ponderings The Wife

So many insidious sitcoms and romantic comedies are based on the put-upon, far-too-hot-for-him wife and the bumbling/goofy/fat/incapable-of-communicating husband. As an hombre, I find this stereotype funny, reasonably accurate and at the same time far too formulaic. But then, how else can you keep someone amused for 23 minutes, if not by pointing out how inept the man is and how the woman is but one salvation away from saint status?

So I sat back and watched with a smug laugh as Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond) threaded the line between being “adorable” and “a horses ass” in the eyes of his wife. I thought Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) played the lovable relationship ignoramus very well as he learned to deal with a woman he impregnated after a one night stand. But these buffoon-like caricatures were merely an exaggeration of the notion of the clueless male, right?

Turns out once again, truth can be more idiotic than fiction. I am living proof of this. I wanted to write the tale down, so that as it gets embellished over the years, I’ll have something to point at as a way of keeping the story from growing too fantastic. It went down like this: if you’ve been reading these posts at all, you know that recently I became a member of the local Cross Fit Gym here in Springfield. I did this for several reasons, but primarily to keep from achieving a weight that is greater than the scale is able to produce. I’d like to be around for the kids, too. The Wife is joining the same gym this Saturday and is harboring great fear as to what the trainers are going to make her endure, and with good reason. Those trainers are sadistic health enthusiasts with a drive bordering on zealotry, and a knack for producing results. So, as I limp home from each session, I report to The Wife, giving her the details of the torture while moaning all the while. She’s flat out terrified, a fact I don’t help by pointing out to her that the gym is filled with like-minded youth, getting all fit and looking far too good.

I was excited to tell her yesterday, then, that I’d met a very nice lady working out there, around our age, who was interested in getting a new hair stylist. I piped up that my wife, soon to join this entourage of pain, is a stylist always happy to meet a new client. The Wife was pleased with this effort. And it was only in the summation of the story that I committed the ultimate faux-pas and made a statement that will follow me to my grave. When asked about this new acquaintance, I gave a brief description and ended it with….“she’s very attractive, an attractive older person”. TO BE CLEAR – I MEANT THIS IN TERMS OF THE NORMAL “YOUNGER SET” THAT IS AT THE GYM. When quizzed as to just how old this older person was, I said…..

“oh, you know, late thirties, maybe forty.”

This was not my finest hour.

The veritable shit-storm that followed, both in the house and online (thanks, Facebook status update followers! Glad to know just what an idiot I am!), has only served to further diminish whatever dignity I once held. There is no backpedaling from this one. There is no excuse. There is only one option, and that is to go down with the ship, which is not a problem for me, since I seem to step in it more and more these days. I’d like to think that our lives are reasonably more intricate and complex than a sitcom could successfully portray, but I’d just be wrong about that, too. And, unfortunately for her, it seems I never learn.

Uli Less Lardass, Tales of Misery CrossFit Craziness, The Wife

Here we go again. Another New Year’s and another set of broken promises lie before me. I’ve already listed my set of what not to dos (read here), but the truth is that some changes need to be enacted, post haste. The reason is that my descent into middle age lard-assedness has been given an unfair advantage by my sheer laziness and unwillingness to make decent food and exercise choices. How many of us have sat and watched some mixed martial arts fight, football game, jai-alai tournament and thought, “hell yeah, I could probably do that. I know for sure I coulda ten years ago.” I love the little lies we tell ourselves as we order another round of cheese fries (ranch dressing on the side, garcon). The truth is that left to my own devices, I will comply with the overwhelming demands of the convenient, delicious fat-food cartels and before long TLC will be doing a special about how a crane is required to move my bed to the local obesity clinic. Well, maybe not that bad, but it’ll be damn close.

I’ve been going to cycling classes at the local Y, still play hockey and once in awhile I go to a Pilates class, if for no other reason than to hear myself grunt and pop. And, while I’ve enjoyed limited results, the truth is that the scale is giving the middle finger to these attempts. After torquing my knee attempting to train for a half marathon, I began to appreciate what my body was screaming at me: “YO, fatass, I can’t take this abuse anymore, so I’m compressing your knee to the point of pain. Take that, asshole, and lay off the special #7 at the Peking House, for the love of Christ!”

Motivated by The Wife’s recent purging of our refrigerator of all that is not raw, green and/or disgusting, I decided to jump on her bandwagon. We signed up for a Biggest Loser competition going on here locally (in which I intend to take home the entire pot of prize money, even if I have to adopt a temporary meth habit), and I signed up at the local Cross-Fit gym, where the motivational theme seems to be centered around puking. Several other firemen are working out there and have seen some awesome results, results that will benefit us in our everyday work environment. As was put to us so eloquently in the introductory course… “when in life are you going to be required push a metal bar off of your chest?” However, when you get up off of a toilet, you’re basically doing a squat, and there’s a lot of that sort of thing going down in this gym. I like this concept, because in my twisted mind, I’ll claim a workout every time I get off the can.

So, we’ll see. The goal here is to chuck somwhere between 40 and 50 clunkers off this tired body, and in the meantime derail the heart attack that awaits. Adios, deep fried Chinese food, we might meet again once in awhile, but I doubt it. Bacon….it’s over, I’m seeing someone else, and her name is “chicken”. She’s not near as tasty and naughty as you are, but the ugly truth is, you never cared for me anyways – you just wanted me for my gut. Guinness and coffee, I’m keeping you on the team, but you’re getting a lot less playing time; you have to understand, it’s for the greater good. To the rest of my body, I deeply apologize for what I’m about to put you through…..just know that it’s gonna hurt me a whole lot more than it will you.

Uli Less Lardass The Wife

One night a year, I get to write this letter. It takes all of the usual ingredients of a normal post, alcohol, creative flogging and time spent staring at a wall, to name a few, but the whole process takes on a different meaning tonight. I try and shelve the cynicism. I leave the enemies list tucked into my pocket, ignore the normally-reliable cheap shots, and attempt to focus on this night of nights. I don’t get spiritual in the Christian sense but rather, I try and take the occasion to stroll across fond memories of the Christmases of my youth.

I remember my mom reading “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to me, the large, dog eared copy of the book the same one her father had read to her. I remember tucking in for a brutal Santa Barbara night, where the temps might hit 50 degrees, our obnoxious family feline, Fat Cat, running her motor on my shoulder until I dropped off into slumber land. I remember scrambling out of that bed to find what I’d been left by the mysterious St. Nick, who was always kind enough to leave me a couple of Clementine oranges in my stocking, along with a candy cane or two.

Christmas was a big deal around our house. My mother decorated like Martha Stewart when Martha Stewart was still running a catering business from her basement. We had the typical parties, punctuated by distant strangers pinching my cheeks while simultaneously blowing cigarette smoke everywhere; the kind of parties where I snuck off to try and make time with the Episcopal priest’s daughter, caring not that she was six years older than me. There was mistletoe….there was a chance. When scorned, I could always turn to listening to my new Beastie Boys tape, using it as a background for the sketches I’d draw of such deep topics as motorcycles and WWII-era bombers.

Before long I was loathing Christmas get-togethers, responding to forced interactions by showing up with a lumberjacks’ beard, a vest and a rebellious streak of alcohol permeating from my pores. There are few things in life as cynical as a teenagers jaded outlook on such urbane topics as “family” and “ugly sweaters”. I wanted out of there, wanted to jump in the ocean, wanted to head back to the hills, wanted to be anywhere but there. I’m sure my stance as an ingrate was noticed, and yet surprisingly I was allowed to continue to attend these functions, scowl in place. That’s the role of family, I guess – to tolerate you even when you’re going through that horrific phase, knowing it all.

Years later, I find myself longing for that embrace of family. They’re all in California, and I’m out here in Missouri where there is approximately a three percent chance of having a white Christmas. I’ve just finished reading the boys “Twas the Night Before Christmas” from a copy of the book from my childhood. We’ve started our own new traditions, including watching “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” several times, we leave a plate of carrots and cookies out for Santa and The Wife bakes like a woman possessed all day so that I’ll have something nice to take to the firehouse on Christmas Day. We’ll get up at 4:00am so that the kids can tear through their presents before I head out to work. I wish, though, that we were gathering at the familial home on 18th Street in Cayucos, California with family members numbering in the thirties, the teens looking sullen and put out, the kids running around like maniacs with their newly acquired toys, the elders just happy to be in the company of those they love.

When I take out the Clementine orange from my stocking tomorrow morning, I’ll be thinking of that family while forging new traditions with my family here in this house. It helps immensly that on the back of my handmade stocking, sewn so many years ago are my mom’s initials. Some traditions are meant to be kept alive, and I intend to keep it that way.

Merry Christmas, my friends. May your memories be forged in the happiness and joy that comes from those who love you the most.

Uli Family DysFUNction the Heathens, The Wife