Half Past Awesome

What I Might Look Like On The Road

There’s an old saying that goes something like “once you’ve left the farm for Paris, can you ever really go back to the farm?” Substitute any small town raising for “the farm” and any experience outside of your home zip code for “Paris” and I think that that statement has more accuracy than many of us are comfortable with. There will always be stories of athletes who made it big and then came home to settle down and raise a family. There will always be movies made that show the protagonist to be a fool for running off to New York, when all she was looking for was back home in Lot 35-A and the single wide that’s parked there. Anyways, that’s just fine for movies and people who feel the strong tug of their roots pulling them back home. But it’s different for those of us with wanderlust.

I like to claim how much I’d love to return home, but I’m perpetually full of crap, too. I returned home after spending some time living in Alaska, only to realize how cramped my literal single-wide home on the coast felt after experiencing the wide open spaces of the North Slope. Now home is a state of flight from hillbillies and humidity, but I have no idea why I think elsewhere is devoid of the same kinds of problems, albeit in different flavors.

When I confess to The Wife how awesome it would be to live the life of a successful musician, she looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. She then says “Really? At your age? You like the thought of being on the road all the time, waking up in a new city, away from all this?” as she sweeps her hand in a grand gesture, not realizing she’s pointed out a sink full of dirty dishes and a kitchen full of wild monkey-children. And the answer is yes. Always, yes. I need to be careful where and when to exhibit enthusiasm about how much I like the concept. I love the life my family gives me, to be sure, but I also like the idea of going to a different city each day. I fantasize about life on a tour bus, smashing guitars against my band members heads as a form of recreation, having amphitheaters full of drunken women shrieking our names, all that.

Mostly the concept of being on the road, snorting Tabasco sauce through hollowed out guitar necks and destroying hotel rooms, appeals to my sense of picking up new oddities, studying the customs of local bergs and hamlets without ever having to commit to living in each location for extended periods. I want to see so many more cities and countries than I already have, and really what better way than by getting paid for rocking out stadiums and wearing skin-tight leather pants? That’s right…..there IS no better way. A nomadic life, however, is not conducive to a retirement-earning career with a fire department or a wife that is willing to tolerate long absences in the name of “checking shit out”.

So, for now, I’ll lean against the fencepost that is Missouri, humidity rolling off of me by the gallon and dream about my own kind of Paris. Not one that I’ve been to, but one that I’ve yet to see. That’s the beauty of wanderlust: you always think you’re on the farm and you’ve never been to Paris. Whatever happens, I hope that my sense of wanderlust is never sated, because then? Life might just get boring.

"Class Of '92 Valedictorian. You Don't Remember Me? So Help Me, I'm Gonna Smack You."

Last weekend I joined The Wife at her 20 yr. high school reunion. I knew one other attendee but was still forced to wear a name tag. At least I was given the option of writing my own name, so I made one up. The rest of the night I wore the label “Random Spouse”, and insisted that people call me by that. Because really, it saved people the embarrassment of pretending to remember me from Algebra, when in truth I’d never met these people in all my life. It was quite the ice breaker, and I was glad to have a starting point in meeting people. See, I don’t really like strangers, but once we’ve talked, we’re not strangers, we’re friends. So I made lots of friends that night. And I watched with detached amusement as all these former soul mates waltzed around awkward conversations involving hair loss, kids and just what in the hell happened over these last 20 years.

It was a night to enjoy, at least from my perspective.

How can an occurrence of just four years have such a stranglehold on the next twenty years? No matter how successful these people had become, no matter how far they’d moved away, when all parties were in the room, everyone fell back into the roles they remembered back then. You could tell who the popular folks were, just as you could tell who was geeky and awkward back in the day. Add some wrinkles and a belly or two, and nothing’s changed. I really loved listening to people’s stories about how they knew The Wife, where they’d been since graduating Kickapoo High in 1990 and how it felt to reconnect with those who’d been their whole realm of social connection way back when.

And it got me to thinking; in two short years I’ll be back in California, seeing my former classmates, doing the same klutzy dance of rekindling our connections. Facebook has been great as a medium by which to completely bullshit about where you are in life. I mean, no one is going to put as an update: “uggghhh. just don’t know how I’ll pay the water bill this month. Stupid real estate bubble!” No, you’re required to post things like “Another shitty day in paradise as I catch smooth lefts on Bali. THIS is living!” Or “Martha’s Vineyard ROCKS MY FACE OFF!” So, as an aside, don’t go believing my updates, as I’m apt to lie just to sound like my life is much more fabulous than its mundane reality. But in actuality, I’m starting to get really stoked to meet up with people with whom I’d lived for four years.

That’s right: lived. I went to boarding school (“Hi, I’m John, I went to boarding school and developed an unhealthy love of Led Zepplin and Ramen Noodle soup”… “HI JOHN!”). It was by choice, it was co-ed and no, it wasn’t a punishment. Quite the opposite from where I was sitting – going away to school meant freedom for me. It was academically rigorous, to be sure, but I’ve proved that you can waste all that in one career move into civil service. But it was so much more than academics to me. It was (limited) independence, it was first loves, it was the introduction to hitchhiking (sorry, ma), it was the introduction to activities illicit in nature (again sorry, ma) off-campus in a ditch, it was learning to play bass and lacrosse and how to take a punch. Formative? That’s an understatement at best.

And I sucked at it.

I was terrible at high school. I wasn’t popular, I wasn’t athletic, I wasn’t a hit with the ladies, nor was I outstanding academically. Mostly, I was good at being pissed off. I carried an entitled chip on my shoulder, irked at the notion that I wouldn’t be joining my classmates in Aspen because I would be busy digging ditches or working in Cayucos’ only surf shop over break. That was really, really stupid on my part. I spent time actively torching bridges instead of finding ways to finance a ski trip (hello, prostitution? Duh.) Yeah, so I scowled and glared and was, in general, a fool. Isn’t that what high school is really all about? Acting like you’re much smarter than you are and pissing off anyone older than 28?

Nervously, I anticipate the opportunity to make an ass of myself once again in a couple of years. I hope everyone shows up. I hope the cool kids aren’t too cool to make an appearance, I hope the fantabulous folks can take a break from whipping their help in The Hamptons to take the Lear Jet out west. I hope that I can just spend time catching up with people who ignored me and who I ignored and we can discus kids, receding hair lines and first loves.

And I’ll be glad to go as just Uli as opposed to Random Spouse. I heard that guy was a real asshole at his wife’s reunion.

Who Took My Weights?

I drag my ass into “the box” (which is the cute vernacular used to identify the CrossFit Springfield gym) this morning after work. I’m late, and that’s nothing new in the least. The workout lined out for the day seems particularly brutal and completely out of attainable range (if you want to see it, look here. I won’t bore you with trying to describe the various gyrations). Lately, the ol’ relationship with the gym has been tenuous at best, despite several proclamations that it starts TODAY. TODAY is when I get back in the groove. TODAY is when I look the temptation that is bacon and beer in the eye and shoot it the bird. TODAY I stop being such a lazy fatass. Well, okay, maybe tomorrow.

See the dilemma? No?

It’s about self-loathing. It’s about the inflexible schedule known as “being a parent with kids out of school who  demand things like your ‘attention’”. But mostly, it’s about being lazy.

So what was a daily ritual of going to “the box” has become more like a recreational hobby. And, when the time came to saunter on over to The Wife’s 20 yr. high school reunion, the tragicomic results of treating it like a hobby came into laser-beam focus. I was thankful that I only knew one other person there, since it saved me the inevitable “MY GOD, you haven’t been missing many meals, have you?” conversation that take fun and awkward to a whole new level. To those people, their poor classmate simply married another fan of the Chinese buffet; to me, it was just another excuse to drink around strangers.

But I’m getting distracted here.

Today, like most days in the gym, I planned on doing the workout “non-prescribed”. What that means is, the masochists who run the joint make up a certain weight amount or form to use that they label “prescribed”. For example, the workout may call for 60 pull-ups (rx). I am good for maybe two pull-ups and then I fake it the rest of the way, using bands to assist or just crying in a puddle of shame and sweat. The prescribed version of a workout is generally reserved for the varsity level athletes, and one of the nice things about Crossfit is that they “scale” down the workouts so that someone in just about any condition can jump in and break a nasty sweat. Having never really lifted weights and having no desire to blow out a knee and toss my cookies simultaneously, I pace myself in terms of weight and form. And the truth of the matter is, I often cheat myself.

So it comes down to do you focus on quality or quantity? The workouts are generally timed, so you can post a great time if you just mash your hips into the floor and scream out and call that a push-up. Or you can take the slow train and do it right. And right there, glaring on a white board is your name, your time and if you rx’d it. No one really cares what your time is, they care what their time is, especially as compared to the group. I like to make up obnoxious times with weights that are physically impossible, just to see if trainers like ThunderChicken notice. He always does.

For reasons unknown, I stopped caring about the time component today. Maybe it was the extra pot of coffee. Maybe my brain was short circuiting in the humidity, but somewhere along the line, I decided to do the workout with prescribed weights. And it damn well killed me.

As the rest of the class was finishing up, making pretty little sweat angels on the floor, high-5-ing and heaving in labored wheezes, I wasn’t even close to done. There was no sense of grit or sand or raw determination pushing me. No “Eye Of The Tiger” playing in the background. I just wanted to do it for real. My back was shrieking as though it’d been tasered, my knees wobbled like I was trying not to crap my shorts and I was leaking sweat in reportable quantities, but I decided to truck on through. Finally, one guy was left on the floor with me, and I was using him as motivation, unbeknownst to him. Each lift he did, I was just copying him. I actually grunted like a choking troll, but was too wiped out to be embarrassed.

Finally, sweet release came as the weights smacked the floor one last time. I did it. DEAD LAST IN CLASS.

29 minutes and 50 seconds later, and with eyeballs drowning in sweat it was over. I was more than 10 minutes behind the leader, and I couldn’t have cared less. For one, glorious, heave-free moment, doubled over in front of a fan, I felt the satisfaction of doing it right

Tomorrow? There’s no telling about then. I might slip back into a more casual relationship with this whole fitness business or maybe I push myself like a lunatic again. But that moment back there, all alone in a pile of accomplished sweat stains, that was pretty awesome. And that calls for a cocktail.

Mississippi John Hurt: bluesman, fellow hater of humidity (I think)

“I believe I’ll get drunk, tear this barrel house down.”
—’Drunken Barrel House Blues’, Memphis Minnie.

Time to bitch about the summer. The mercury’s on the rise, and so’s my short temper with it. And the humidity. For the love of Satan’s breath, it’s humid already. That’s the problem with movies depicting scenes in the South, scenes in the desert, scenes in the Midwest: they never can replicate the scorching, syrupy mess that drips off your neck, running in rivulets down your leg hair, making your head hang with the weight of the whole hot and sticky affair.

People who say they just love this time of year should be shot. That includes several of my friends, so when the shooting goes down, I’ll make it an ankle shot, not a kill shot. These are the same people who generally work indoors for a living and consider the stroll from the air-conditioned comforts of the house to the air-conditioned comforts of the car “getting outside”. My own folks like to comment on how wonderful and green the area looks, especially considering that Coastal California is now turning a lovely shade of dead yellow and dead brown combined with just a hint of scrub-brush drab green. Green in pictures IS lovely, I suppose, but do you know what that takes? It takes steam and relentless sun, both of which are plentiful in the Ozarks. Which apparently is nothing, as compared to the South.

I once visited some friends in Mississippi in summer and came back with a whole new appreciation for the state of weather in Missouri. That region of the country is king when it comes to making sweat sauce soup. For the life of me I can’t figure out how one would work on a road crew down there without spending one’s evening’s with a revolver in your mouth, contemplating sweet release from asphalt and back sweat. But I also came back with a new appreciation of an art form that never held my interest: the blues.

The blues are a product of life in the South. The music has that lulling cadence, a result of expending all available effort to the  task of chewing the air before breathing it. It speaks of misery, heartbreak and unrequited passion that ends in gunplay. In short, the blues is complaint set to music, and I love it. It is driven by the sultry steam that is a constant companion of that part of the country. You can’t have the blues in New Mexico – I mean, sure, you’ve got the heat, the loneliness, desolation, all that but you’re missing two ingredients: sticky air and fried foods. Up North? Prairies and bitter cold seem like they’d make good fodder for the blues but they are a people far too practical to complain in that time signature (Chicago, of course being the major exception. Chicago is an entity in and of itself, but I know nothing about it, so I’m going to stop talking about it. Just pretend I know that of which I speak). And California? Forget it. When I go home and witness the beauty of the ocean, the irate drivers and self-absorbed fabulosity, it’s hard to picture taking them seriously with regards to cranking out blues tunes. They have no humidity, no fuel for the slow-pace of a music that moans and wails and not in a good way.

So now, as soon as it kicks past 80 degrees and I get all clammy and sticky from just sitting there, I know just the thing to commiserate with me. I want to bitch and moan, and the blues is, if nothing else, bitching and moaning to a soulful beat. So I’ll kick it onto B.B. King’s Bluesville on Sirius/XM radio and wipe the sweat from my brow as I contemplate another day of building random shit out there in the heat. Then, I’ll say “screw it”,  jump on the motorcycle, meet up with El Jefe and find a joint that’s selling some ribs and sweet tea. Because if I keep on complaining to the Wife about this weather, I’m the one that’s gonna be shot.

And that sounds like a song in the making.

Drink The Lemonade. It Pairs Well With Rabbit.

Top 5 Reasons I Suspect There’s Something In The Water Lately

1.) Suspicious fire in the middle of the day. Firemen go predictably nuts when they happen upon gay porn stash in house, immediately accusing each other of “looking at it too long”. I can’t talk about the fire in too much depth, but I did experience massive hunger-induced panicky hallucinations while waiting for the Fire Marshals to methodically examine the scene. I accused them of spending too much time examining the magazine collection of the homeowner.

2.) Skull-viewing. While working a car wreck, we tended to an un-seatbelted passenger who had “spidered” the windshield with her forehead, tearing it open during the process of ramming a telephone pole. She was exhibiting mild concern over her hysterically screeching unbelted daughter/driver and paid no mind to the fact that we were looking at her exposed skull. I’m reaching here, but I’d bet a paycheck that it hurt like hell the next day, and that’s my semi-professional opinion. Although slightly confused, she was aided in answering our questions by the bearded grandma who was riding in the backseat and who WAS wearing a seatbelt. Outside of being royally pissed and barefoot with nasty toenails I could take an angle grinder to, she was just peachy.

3.) Gangster Chaos At The Courthouse. Another car wreck, this time at the seat of all local law enforcement, the county courthouse. A carload of thugs with gold toofs and gangtastic tatts on their faces pulled some stunts out on the road, then pulled into the courthouse parking lot and proceeded to slightly nudge a sheriffs personal motorcycle. Although there wasn’t any real injury among them, the high drama and yelling and wailing ensured the arrival of two ambulances and everyone looking around in a confused manner and pointing fingers. My favorite quote? “Don’t you take my name down, mister. Uh-Uh. Don’t you do it.” My guess? Warrants. Where’s Dog The Bounty Hunter when you need him?

4.) Rabbit Sacrifice. Today, while working on the dubious garden project, one of the shop cats I call Darth Macho proceeded to eat an entire baby rabbit right in front of me. Disemboweled, destroyed and devoured. Legs, fur and guts…gone. He enjoyed this entire feast while staring at me with a look that said “That’s right, you silly bastard, and you’re next.” I mean it was downright creepy the looks he was shooting me. He is called Macho for a reason.

5.) Don’t Drink The Lemonade. The Wife has been making some crazy delicious lemonade lately, thanks to the fresh lemons we procured from Rojo and his family while we were in Cali. Seriously, it’s like crack, it’s so addictive. She swears it’s the sweet lemons and 2 pounds of sugar per batch, while I’m prone to believe she’s lacing it with arsenic and making it wildly addictive so that I’ll consume up to a gallon per hour. She wound up the evening by slapping me in the face while saying “You show me some damn respect. I made you lemonade.” I suspect she’s pissed I’m not dead yet.

Pruning The Dark Side

I’m really, really good at growing weeds. Like, maybe pro level. I give them everything they need. Free reign to take over the choicest areas of our property, unfettered access to the best sunlight and copious amounts of rainfall here in the middle of the country, where we receive rain by the week. I never bother their growth patterns and I rarely try to kill them or do ANYTHING except leave them to terrorize the place. I could have a show on HGTV, wherein they showcase me drinking beer around several locations on the compound, watching my weeds grow and marveling at their progress. I think many people could relate to this show and it would become a hit with every other lazy homeowner in rural America.

I decided recently that we’d tackle this situation with a raised bed garden. We’ve had gardens in the past, simple affairs that yielded us a nice little bounty of fruits and vegetables. But that wasn’t enough, you see. I am a man with tools. A man with the desire to over-engineer the construction of a sawhorse. A man with a desire to justify the purchase more tools by taking on projects that require more tools. A man with a hankering for bankruptcy at the hands of tool vendors, apparently. And thus it was determined that we would have a garden of Leviathan proportions, fenced in, trimmed out and enough to slap Martha Stewart in her proverbial face.

As an aside, I feel the need to slap Martha Stewart on a regular basis. She’s just so damn smug and condescending and comes across like a royal bitch. My mother and I got into it when I insisted that she should have gotten The Chair a few years ago for her financial transgressions. Mom sorta worships at the altar of Martha, so naturally, I want to chainsaw said altar into many pieces. Hello, therapeutic breakthrough, you just came outta nowhere.

Where were we? Oh yeah, the garden project. This project has been about two years in the making, since my lazy gene is highly dominant, especially over the productivity gene. I set the fence posts a while back and then went on to insist to The Wife that I could do no further since “they had to settle properly” (yes, I realize the utter bullshittiness of this statement). So the NEXT YEAR, I began to string the fence wire up, and I’m pretty good with the ten feet of progress I’ve made. We’ve secured some cinder block, which I hope to get set before the boys leave for college. I’ve got to carefully weigh my procrastination with the level of resentment She feels towards me….it’s a delicate, tightrope-walking line I tread, and is best left to a pro.

All that’s left is…..well….most of it. You see, I can appreciate weeds, since they’re willing to do all the work and I can claim credit for their aggressive behavior. This whole business of constructing Fort Knox for bell peppers is beginning to lose it’s appeal. I can justify no tool purchases in the foreseeable future (thank you, motorcycle. I love you. Endlessly) and growing season is here. The Wife is beginning to demand results. Pressure is on for health conscious organic foods for my family, dammit.

And all I really want to do is drink beer out in my field and watch the weeds bloom.

Last night I hung up my firefighting gear for the foreseeable future. And by “foreseeable future” I mean “the next two weeks” since I have the attention span of a fly and two weeks into the future may as well be two decades. The family is heading out of Missouri, as mentioned in this post, the nerve-wracking, make-me-sweat-like-a-whore-in-church experience known as emceeing the Blogaronis is over, and Hotwire has been put in charge of maintaining the compound while we drive like mad bastards to my home state. All is good on the horizon.

Sometimes it feels like a royal pain in the a-double snakes to be a government employee – the bureaucracy, the constant cycle of loathing/admiration/hating/envy that the citizens feel towards public safety (pension problems, anyone?), the feeling of being a cog in a blue shirt, replaceable within about 5 minutes or less. The bureaucracy – yeah, I gotta mention that twice, and if you work in government service, you can appreciate this.

But on top of that, I feel really lucky. Lucky that I’ve found the career that makes sense to me. The fire service is loaded with all kinds of wayward issues, but really, what job isn’t? Anytime you have more than two employees, you have politics. Any time you answer to the citizens, there’s gonna be one old grouch out there who wants to kick you in the balls just because he got a speeding ticket once. So we accept where we’re at, but that doesn’t always translate into appreciating it.

Every third day I spend in the company of 5-7 others who endure my lies and copious bull. I drink ungodly amounts of coffee, I get to tinker with a three-quarter million dollar ladder truck and generally when people dial 911, they’re happy/relieved to see us arrive. Little kids never, ever fail to wave up at the truck, little old ladies always coo when we change their smoke detectors and our spouses are generally happy to get rid of us for one day out of three. When the economy is down, our business seems to pick up, not necessarily a good thing in terms of public safety, but it makes for interesting times. We operate on a level of maturity with one another that you may have last witnessed in sixth grade.

And still, we bitch about it.

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll hopefully sleep through the night. There will be no phantom alarms at 3am, no loudly lamenting the empty coffee pot, no staring off at the rest of the world going home at 5pm while we have a whole 14 more hours of gilded cage time. No staring at a giant truck knowing that there’s really several hours of checking it that need to get done. No arguing over what channel to watch. I’ll need to keep my mouth in check, since firehouse humor doesn’t necessarily translate smoothly outside the station. It won’t go well, and I’ll end up saying stuff I regret. The Pimp and The Pirate won’t be around to berate me, and tales of JoBoo’s adventures into Oklahoma will have to wait. I won’t think about funding issues, staffing issues, pension issues, rookie issues or the plain ol’ business of fighting fires.

The Heathens will spend time on the beach, time at Disneyland, and time on my nerves. The Wife will pass judgment on my driving skills and my brothers will point out how great it is to see us and how old I’m looking. The Lyin’ Dutchman will probably make some sort of appearance, trying to ambush Buns and me through a meeting that Bones will have unknowingly set up. I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time missing living on the coast. I’ll watch Barbara get married and lament losing time with my family. I’ll secretly wish for a return to a life that really never was. Hopefully The Author and I will have time to meet up and we can wax idiotic on classmates from twenty years ago.

And in two weeks? Putting on the turnouts and climbing on to Truck 2 will seem like a damn fine way to make a living. Even if the coffee pot is empty.

Nan, Chewie, Oma, Amanda & Barbara

One week from today, the entire Missouri wing of our clan is rolling west to California, road tripping in what will surely be come to known as “I-can’t-believe-we-thought-that-was-a-good-idea fest 2010“. I’ve made the drive a handful of times, most notably in a newly purchased Peterbilt with the Outlaw Trucker (back when I had an excavating “interest”) and with SeaBass (on a trip to gather up the Lyin’ Dutchman’s abandoned possessions when he left the country, saying he wasn’t ever coming back. Two weeks later, he was back, but that’s another story).

This trip will be the first time I attempt 26 hours in a vehicle with The Wife and The Heathens.

Someone may die.

Neck-wringing will be determined to be the cause.

So here’s the plan: we leave at 3am, this way I can get at least 4-5 hours of solid, uninterrupted driving time. Time in which I get to pick the music (even if it is in ear buds), time where I can drive without constant “advice” from the passenger seat. Time without questions and pesky little voices declaring war on one another over Spongebob.

It’ll be the smoothest part of the trip, no doubt.

Chewie On What Shall Soon Be Mine

The reason we’re heading out there? Supposedly my brother Barbara is getting married, to a lovely girl named Amanda, and we’re going. I feel sorry for her, she seems so nice, and Barbara is such a, well, a Barbara. He’s actually extremely intelligent, but he doesn’t want anyone to know this, so he never displays this trait. He’s kind, but he’s my brother, so I refuse to acknowledge this fact, preferring instead to harangue him mercilessly online and to his face. I’m proud of him for becoming the man he has, but don’t tell him this, you’ll ruin our rapport. THIS is why I’m enduring a road trip with all the appeal of The Exodus.

But not really.

In an unusual alignment of the moons, it turns out my other brother Chewie is selling his motorcycle. To me.  What better way to get it back to Missouri from California than to be attending a wedding out there? Who better to buy a motorcycle from than my own brother? How perfect is it that he’s selling EXACTLY what I want? This logic is nearly flawless in my eyes. Not so much in The Wife’s or anyone who cares about “surviving”, but what do they know? This whole wedding affair is getting so many earmarks, I’m making politicians look like amateur pork-barrelers. The Wife has talked me into hauling the family down to Disneyland so that my boys can experience that whole hobnobshebob. Any objection I raise? “Motorcycle. You’re getting a motorcycle, so you just shut your face.” Can’t argue with that. In a little more than seven days, I’ll have my nasty, filthy hands on a bike. AFTER ALL THIS TIME! The road trips with El Jefe have already been plotted, I’ve already started a motorcycle gang, I’ve already pissed off my wife – this is just the natural progression of things.

I just gotta get the thing back here without choking the crap out of my family in the process. One week. ONE WEEK AND LIFE AS I KNOW IT CHANGES! YES! YES! YES! VICTORY IS ON THE HORIZON, BOYS!!

Barbara may feel the same way, although for different reasons, I suppose. Just give it a few years, a couple of kids and he too, will salivate at the thought of freedom on two wheels. Maybe he’ll give me a call, looking for a motorcycle.

That sounds like a road trip.

Morning Face

4:02 am – Alarm begins its relentless attack. Self-loathing is the first conscious thought. Smash the snooze.

4:07 am - Litany of excuses for NOT working out begin to stream into consciousness. Excuses make sense. Smash snooze.

4:12 am – The Wife shares her feelings: “Get your ass outta bed and get to the gym. I love you. Now, go.” Stumble around blindly. Smash toe on kids toy. Mumble curses under morning breath.

4:13 am – A glance into the mirror confirms it – God, I’m an ugly mofo first thing in the morning, and it ain’t gonna get any better throughout the day. Self-loathing begins to reach critical levels as I catch a whiff of my own breath.

4:16 am – Vigorous brushing, face splashing and cracking of joints do nothing to improve appearance. Shrug and accept lot in life, all the while pining for a wasted youth. Thoughts of coffee begin to dominate and overwhelm as I realize I really don’t care how I look.

4:17 am – Attack first pot of  coffee and begin mad dash for gym, but realize am walking out the door without shorts on. Stop for a moment to appreciate the enormity of consequences if I show up without pants. Hilarity? Restraining order?

4:20 am – First of the acceptance that this is really happening. No going back to bed. Vow to go to bed by 7pm tonight.

4:21 am – Gaze longingly at house, knowing that warm bed is 106′ away. Double check to make sure I’m wearing shorts.

4:22 am – Plug iPod into Toyota’s stereo. Decide to crank music to “11“ to punish those sleeping in the house.

4:22:30 am – Realize they can’t hear it in the house. Curse violently at steering wheel, take another shot of coffee.

4:25 am – Pull out of driveway, realize that I’m too old to headbang without getting a severe concussion. Seethe inwardly.

4:30 am – Pot #1 of coffee begins to kick in and I begin silently hoping for a deer to jump into my path, just to add some spice to my morning commute to the gym.

4:35 am – Why spice it up when I can swerve all over the road trying to find the perfect song to scream along with?

4:40 am – Realize I’m glad it’s dark out, so I can conduct full conversations with myself, complete with sweeping hand gestures, without other drivers staring at me. Congratulate myself on such stealth. Out loud.

4:43 am – Take too long staring at heavy equipment on highway lit up by floodlights. Road chaos, followed by road rage, followed by cursing of indeterminate origin.

4:44 am – Start alternating shots of coffee with hits off the water bottle. You know, cause I believe in hydration. Plus, too many coffee stains on t-shirt this early in the morning just adds to peoples perceptions of my mental stability.

4:46 am – Think to self: “screw what people think. I love coffee and I’ll wear some if I feel like it”. Kidneys begin to quiver in protest.

4:50 am – Wrap up conversation with self with a loud and violent debate over whether I’ll make it in time to 5am class.

4:53 am – Start up another round of yelling at traffic engineers for their idiotic placement of stop lights. Begin to mull over merits of blasting through red lights. Unable to go full outlaw, I decide to obey the rules, but fume on the inside. Consider writing a very stern letter to City’s Traffic Engineering Department. Get more irate as I realize nothing will change. Damn you, bureaucracy. Damn you.

4:55 am – Slide in to parking lot of gym. Quick glance in mirror confirms suspicion that I look like a homicidal maniac. Pleased with self. Guzzle one last swig of coffee and tumble out of truck, tripping on non-existent obstacle in parking lot.

4:59 am - Shoot fellow CrossFit member curious look when he asks if I “am always this ‘up‘ this early?” Consider ramifications. New cycle of self doubt and self loathing begins.

4:59:30 am – Realize today’s workout consists of 2 mile run. Begin to experience chest pains upon realization.

5:00 am – Seizing (or seizure) of the day begins.

To paraphrase any number of lyrics of a solid 80′s tune: times/people/seasons change. If you look to the cast page of this site, you’ll see that I’ve not updated it in quite a while and maybe you’re wondering to yourself “who are all these people that this idiot keeps referencing? Why am I on this site anyways? Where are my pills?” If you find yourself in that situation, fear not; over the next couple of days we’ll give you an update as to what the stars of Half Past Awesome are up to, and then we’ll introduce a couple of new characters. Here we go:

Ruler Of The Roost

The Wife: she’s currently plotting my untimely demise. I urge each and every one of you to NOT believe the suicide note she’s gonna swear she’s found on my body. She’s also still running her salon out of the house, so I can’t get away with jack, especially if it involves a delivery that requires a signature. Despite the fact that she’s hacked off to no end about approaching an undisclosed age, she’s somehow still tolerating me. If you want a couple of random posts that focus on her, you can read them here, here and here. ps- you want a little known fact? She’s a sucker for Harry Hamlin in the original  “Clash Of The Titans” (circa 1981). NOW who’s the weird one?

Slugs and Boogers

The Heathens: they’re getting that much older and starting to utilize the question “why” in response to every request/demand made of them. Although it’s always wrong to ever shake a baby, they seem more than amused to be shaken as small kids. I’m pretty sure they’re gonna shake me when I’m old and frail, and guess what? I’ll have deserved it. Currently occupying the ages of 4 and 6, these boys have a serious attachment to all things Transformers, Star Wars and Mario Kart – thank you marketing departments of aforementioned icons, you’ve made them believe they can’t live without EACH AND EVERY ONE of your creations. Some posts with the boys can be found here, here and here.

The Jackass & Nachos In Happier Times

The Lyrical Jackass: I was recently and unceremoniously dumped by the Jackass in the manner of a couple of 14 year old girls – he “unfriended” me on Facebook. This should demonstrate the level of maturity on which we operate. Crazy is as crazy does, and his current relationship situation mandates a divorce of sorts from all things sarcastic & toxic in his life. Unfortunately, I happen to fill both roles quite well. I’m not 100% devastated at this point, though, since he and his current flame break up just about every other week . He’s still in Arkansas somewhere as the Propaganda Minister of some fire department and we wish him the best of luck. Well, I do, but he may well have crossed into dangerous turf by “unfriending” The Wife. She has the memory of a very pissed off elephant, whereas I forget just how I (no doubt) started this whole thing

Buns & His Woman

Buns: Little has changed for Son#2 (or #3, depending on how you counts all of The Lyin’ Dutchman’s progeny). After a few international forays, Buns has yet to find a nation willing to install him as a Benevolent Dictator, a fact that irks him to no end. Continuing in his career as a computer hardware pirate, he’s taken to recently wearing an eye patch and interjecting “ahoy, ye scurvy dogs” into all business transactions. Buns spends much of his free time trying to unhinge paradigms of the modern-day salesman.He has no plans to abdicate his title as Undisputed Tall Guy of Santa Barbara any time soon.

Bones, Right On Schedule

Bones: One of the advantages of being OCD is that you lead a life of consistency. Such is the case for the youngest of The Lyin’ Dutchman’s sons – as long as the routine is followed, no one has to get hurt, or worse, mumbled at under his breath. He continues to work as a photographer and photo editor for Couture Candy and has his own two avenues for his photography; one on JPGMag and another on his own site. More importantly, he continues to be a link between those of us who are considered “dead” and The Lyin’ Dutchman. His stories of times with our Dad, when you can drag them out of him, are the stuff of legend, both in the nature of the wild yarns being spun on one side and the ever so awkward reactions on our brothers side. One of my first posts was about Bones, and you can read it here.

That covers part one of our in-depth series. Tomorrow we’ll hit the other players, and introduce you to some fresh talent. You’re gonna love it. In the meantime, tip back a Guinness or three and enjoy all the idiocy the world has to offer. Pretty good chance you’ll see me there.