Am I becoming a “muscle-head?” Actually, I’m not even sure if that’s the right term. That’s how little I know about gyms and lifting weights. Although I am learning. I’ve been trying to farm-raise a muscle or two along my upper body. A field of abs here. A row of biceps there. Maybe even a plot of pecs for the spring. As an avid runner, my lower body has always been in pretty good shape. My legs were toned with sharply angled muscles. My upper body, on the other hand, looked like a man who had launched a hunger strike about three decades ago. But a few months back, when I was forced to take to the Flagler College gym to rehab my wounded leg, I started looking around at these scary and intimidating devices for arms and shoulders. While I couldn’t figure out what any of them did, or much less how to use them, I got it in my head that I should expand my circuit to add some upper body workouts. So I’ve started lifting weights, and actually I’m really enjoying it. It’s added some variety to my running, and even put some meat on my formerly scrawny bones.
The … um … ‘Quirks’ of a Toddler
You never call your kid nuts. Never. No way. That’s out of bounds and off limits. Parents don’t go there talking about their own children. Other people’s children, sure, why not? But your own, nope! That isn’t to say they’re not nuts. More than likely, they are, especially if you have a toddler. Every parent knows their kid is bonko. But you don’t say it out loud. You don’t mention it among civilized company. You kind of pretend they’re normal, sane, and didn’t just crash into that wall at high speed, only to turn to you and say, “I fell on my butt.” This is what I’m coming to understand as the parent of a 2 1/2-year-old. You invent nice, delicate, PC ways to explain your child’s behavior, and her … um … quirks. Yeah, quirks. That’s it. She has quirks. That’s why she tried to brush her eyeballs with a toothbrush, or nearly flushed herself down the toilet. That’s why she says things like “poopie music” and wants me to smell her dirty shoes. You invent little phrases and sayings to explain all this stuff: She’s having a moment. A circuit must have fried. She’s unique. She’s special. There’s not as much oxygen going around as there used to be. Must be too much sugar in her diet. Must be all those double espresso lattes. Our new one is not so subtle, but speaks more to a time of day than a frame of mind: the 5 o’clock crazies. […]
Happy Birthday, Honey … Now for Some Advice
Happy birthday, honey. Don’t worry. I won’t give away your age, except to say that you look more beautiful today than you did when you were 20. Unless of course that’s giving away too much. In which case, when you were 11. Although that sounds a little creepy. So let’s just say you look smokin’ hot, and young not old … I mean … OK, let’s move on. Anyway, it’s your (age withheld) birthday, and I hope it’s a good one. For my part, I will try not to make too big a mess around the house; I will attempt to do at least one thing you ask (except fold that shirt that’s been sitting on the dresser for weeks — I kind of like it there now); and I’ll do my best to watch the kid to give you a break. (Yes, I know. Watch the kid means don’t let her put the dog in the dishwasher again, and it doesn’t mean two eyes on the TV and one ear on her.) I want this day to be special and relaxing for you. Yeah, I know, that was a good one. Stop laughing. You’re the parent of a 2-1/2-year-old — the responsible one at that — and it’s not easy to take time for yourself or put away your role as the mother of me, and the child. Guys have no problem there, I don’t know why. Shoot, sometimes we forget we have kids. We forget we have houses. […]
Time for a Big Kid House
I want a big kid house. I don’t know what it is — what has changed. Maybe it’s fatherhood, maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s that I want really nice things so that a storm can come and blow them all away. Or maybe it’s just that I’m finally tired of looking at those wood putty holes in the utility room door that I started over a year ago but never finished. Take a walk around my house and you find many things like that. The trim I never finished painting. The trim I never finished putting up. The trim I never bought. Little things and big things. They’ve all been weighing on me recently, making me think it’s time to finish the house and make it a little more grown-up. I have extra motivation, too: It seems my wife feels exactly the same way. Funny the things that will motivate you! I don’t want to leave my house, I just want to polish it off. Make it feel more complete. It’s a quaint, rustic-looking, century-old abode in Lincolnville that could be at home in Key West or Cross Creek. It has personality — it seeps from the pours of every piece of heart pine, and even the creaking of the floors sound like an old man telling a tale “Did I tell you about the time I fought off a grizzly bear with nothing but a pair of tweezers and a rolled up newspaper?”
Gator Hunting and the Quest for the Greatest Injury
It must be something in our DNA some little genetic tic floating around that makes us this way. Call it the “stupid” gene. All Thompson men seem to have it, and definitely so in our wing of the family tree. It makes us desperate to top each other with the most exotic, or as my wife says, most absurd injury. The Thompson men are on an epic quest, and it has started heating up lately. In the spring I had a surfing accident — a fin on my board stabbed me in the thigh, punching clean through my wetsuit and just missing my femoral artery. While I’m running again, I’m still not fully healed. I set the bar pretty high for the year with my 150 stitches. My brother and father, though, appear to be shopping for a topper. My brother, who has been collecting and refurbishing old vintage motorcycles, has started racing them. And not just on any old track, but on off-road courses mired in mud, rolling hills and tree roots that reach up out of the ground trying to snag an errant tire.
Planning on Wind, Water from Tropical Storm Fay
It’s Tuesday evening, I’m writing a column, there’s a tropical storm cutting across the state … Do you know where your cans of tuna fish are? That’s all I’ve been thinking about. That’s my storm food if the big one comes. That, some canned peaches and a half-eaten jar of salted peanuts. I couldn’t wait. Who knows what we’ll be facing Friday morning when this newspaper hits driveways. Could be it’s a bright sunny day out. Or could be you’re reading this in four feet of water over a bowl of Fruit Loops made soggy by the steady drip coming through that hole in your roof. While I’m sitting here typing away Tuesday night, forecasters are pondering what to make of Tropical Storm Fay. She’s already made landfall twice in the state and is supposed to make a left hand turn back toward St. Augustine sometime … well … right about now. How will this all turn out?
Olympic Memories of Track and Field
The Olympics have arrived — Yahoo! Just in time. As the heat has turned the land into a giant convection oven, and summer enters its more-boring-than-a-lecture-on-wall-paper phase, I’ll do anything to stay inside in front of the TV … even if it means watching water polo. I love the Olympics. The competition. The stories. The variety. The fact that all I need to do is sit on the sofa clipping fingernails and drinking iced tea. Let someone else do all the physical exertion. Shoot, I might even watch synchronized swimming. A lot of people will question whether that is a sport, but I have no doubts. Try to tread water while doing all manner of complex motions with your arms, legs and feet. I would drown in about a minute flat. My brain isn’t capable of doing two things at once, and as soon as I started waving my hands in the air, I would forget I was in water and sink to the bottom like a bag of concrete. Anything I could die in, I consider a sport.
Looking for a Copier with a Lower IQ
“Hey machine, you are not smarter than me,” I yelled at the copier. “Cooperate and nobody gets hurt.” It had little noticeable effect. The piece of inconsequential paper — an off-sized invoice I was trying to reproduce — came out cut in half, even after I adjusted it on the glass. “You arrogant little twit,” I cursed at it. I wondered if slapping its molded-plastic cover would have any effect, or if it would just cause people to look out their office doors and question whether I had finally gone off the deep end. “Um … he’s beating the copier again and calling it a Fascist. Do we have security on speed dial?” I don’t mind technology — in fact, I love it. It’s what makes my world go ’round from my satellite radio to my Internet connection to my fingernail clippers. (I’m very high tech.)
In Search of a Permanent Vacation
How do you retire at 35 if you haven’t won the lottery, hit it big in stocks or invented something incredibly cool that everyone in the world wants, like an iPhone or spray cheese in a can? If you have some ideas, please let me know. Drop me a line, as long as it doesn’t involve knocking people off or me dancing. I have decided it’s time for me to retire. It’s not that I don’t like working. It’s just that I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to vacation . . . forever. I want to wake up, go to the gym, drink lattes and read the newspaper after a casual stroll. I want to live in a hotel room where I can get cookie crumbs and smeared chocolate all over the sheets. I want to swim in big resort pools with Mayan pyramids and water slides until the chlorine bleaches my black hair the color of snow. I want an endless supply of towels that I can throw wet on the floor. I want to sip rum drinks. I want to become one with my flip-flops. I want permanent stubble on my face. I want to eat greasy food and stay up late with my kid goofing off until we both pass out in bed, or my wife puts us in timeout. I want that lifestyle!
A New Kind of Vacation: Call it ‘Toddler-style’
Boy, I remember the days when vacations were hard-chargin’ affairs and adventures to far off lands. We Thompsons would do ’em up right. There were cosmopolitan ventures to New York, and laid back sojourns to hammocks in the Keys. I remember times sitting on the dusty floors of Preservation Hall in New Orleans with a newly-bought flask whetting my whistle. We journeyed to Ireland to converse with the sheep, and even my trips to Cuba as a journalist took on tinges of vacation when the music started to drift through the Caribbean heat at night and the rum began to flow. I remember them just like they were yesterday, even though they’re a long time gone now. I think of this because the Thompson family will head out on a new adventure soon — our latest vacation. And this time we’re going somewhere very exotic and out-of-the-way … Orlando! Yippee. What a different world it is with a 2 -year-old. A few years back, if I was told I was going on a trip like this, I would have said, “No thanks, I’ll go to work instead.” I was a little bit of a vacation snob. But that said, the funny thing is, I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m excited, even thrilled. Part of me is a bit confused. We’re doing everything I used to dread. We’re staying in a Disney resort where my pillow will probably whisper in my ear, “Buy more Mickey Mouse toys.” We’re spending a day […]