No bats in the belfry — I have squirrels in the attic. Thought it was trolls for a while there, but it’s the bushy-tailed, nut-eating rodents who have invaded my rafters. At least one that I know of, and boy can he make a racket. Apparently he has a crash derby set or a jackhammer. I know it’s a squirrel because I climbed up there the other day and spotted him. There he was, not at all frightened to see me. In fact, he looked more offended by my presence. “Who the heck are you?” he seemed to be saying. “What are you doing in my house with shoes on?”
A Brother’s Wedding Planning Blues
… and then a giant crack tore through the land, ripping across the earth like a slithering snake, swallowing everything in sight. The sound was thunderous, and people ran while it swallowed houses and convenience stores. But one man did not have time to react. He stood there unaware, eating a smoked sausage, and lost his footing before toppling into the abyss, never to be heard from again. My brother had been swallowed by the wedding planning chasm of doom. Sadness swept the land. My, it’s mighty good to have been married so long ago, and so far removed from wedding planning. Not that I didn’t enjoy getting married. Who doesn’t enjoy an infinity of planning and spending more money than the GDP of Paraguay, all so you can say, “I do”? Then you stare mouth-watering while guests devour food you won’t have time to touch.
Attack of the Taxasaur
Taxasaur — A prehistoric beast who comes every spring to devour your money after chasing you through a twisting maze of complexity and impossible-to-understand bureaucratic legalese. The Taxasaur is tedious and tenacious, taking no prisoners and wearing a thick armor made up of forms called the “1040ES” and the super protective “Unrecaptured Section 1250 Gain Worksheet.” Wo! “Unrecaptured” doesn’t even make sense.
Looking at a Future Filled with Recitals
I was sitting in a small, cramped Tampa theater, listening to a tone-deaf little girl belt out “Beauty and the Beast,” when it happened. It washed over me like a wave, like an electric shock. A chill. A flush. A fever. An epiphany. A jolt. A surge. Just like that, it happened — the rest of my life flashed before my eyes. “This is the future,” I thought to myself as the song dragged on, “and it’s out of key.”
How Do Those Yankees Stand the Cold?
For three generations I’ve had a family member call the Sunshine State home. Some member of my clan has sat beneath a palm tree here, sweaty and happy, laughing at the rest of the world. The farthest north anyone has ever lived is Kentucky, where my dad is from. In fact, I like to say I’m more Southern than most southerners since my grandmother came to Florida from Cuba. Top that! Growing up as a boy in Tampa, Jacksonville was considered up north for me (I thought it was a suburb of Boston), and when I moved to St. Augustine in 1991 to go to school, it was as if I had moved to Alaska by the way the temperature would drop. You even have to wear coats up here and once in a while you might see frost, like this past week. In Tampa, you’re lucky if your ice pop doesn’t melt in February. But as I spent the week hunkered down in the worst cold we’ve seen all year, trying to convince my boss that I DID have a doctor’s note prescribing hibernation for the rest of the season, I watched bone-chilling clips of all those crazy lunatics living up in that frozen tundra called the Northeast.
Is This the End of Non-Iron?
Is nothing sacred anymore? Is nothing safe? Is this world so dangerous that everything we eat, wear, touch and spend any quality time with is carcinogenic? And most importantly, am I going to have to start ironing again? Say it ain’t so. I read an article the other day that has the potential to impact my life in the most dreadful way. It talked about a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientific review panel labeling a chemical used to manufacture Teflon as “likely” carcinogenic.
Waiting on the Baby Time Bomb
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick … Waiting for the baby time bomb to go off. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick … That seems to be the story for the first couple of months of a baby’s life. That’s what I’m understanding, especially when you go out. My wife and I just recently got up the nerve to start venturing out of our cave with our new 5-week-old girl, Amelie. You get a bright shiny new sports car with leather seats and no teeth, and you want to show it off — the happy face, the good moods, the pretty girl, the adorable outfits. That’s natural. But it’s the Tyrannosaurus Rex that she sometimes becomes that gets me worried.
Human Beings the Great Garbage Collectors
What is it about the human species that we feel the need to collect garbage? I was thinking about this while running the other night. I had passed a house with the garage door open and what looked like a vast mountain range of cardboard boxes that rivaled the Rockies. While it was pretty dark, I could clearly see that this concentration of “stuff” was causing a sink hole to develop beneath it.
Could College Move-In Day Have Been That Long Ago?
When I think back about my first day at college — move-in day — I dredge up all kinds of memories: excitement, dread, freedom, fear of the unknown, not knowing how to do laundry, nervousness, freedom, uncertainty and liberation. Plus, that everything I owned, down to the very pair of underwear I was wearing, had my name written on them in permanent black ink. That was thanks to my mother. I think she assumed that my new roommate, or maybe the townspeople of St. Augustine, would be highly interested in sneaking into my room to make off with my shorts, shirts, and yes, underwear. But thanks to her handy anti-theft devices, should that unthinkable happen, I could march around campus, or town, demanding to see people’s underwear and then scream, “A-ha, those aren’t mine, but you should change ‘em once in a while.” She probably thought it would also be a good way to make friends. I don’t know what my brother-in-law’s memories will be of that day — the kind that you can relive in vivid color 15 years later. But I could see in his face some of what he was experiencing as we moved him into his new dorm room at the University of Central Florida last week. There was a lot of terror and this look like he was quickly losing control of the situation. Oh, not at the thought of this new life ahead of him, of having to fend for himself, find classrooms all […]
The Talking Sewer Line
Stupid talking sewer line. That’s what I have. A chatty one with an upset stomach. It started with nothing — a little burp once in a while the washing machine was draining. Gurgle. Glug, glug. Ffffft. Nothing too bad. Barely noticeable. When my wife mentioned it, I shrugged my shoulders and waved it off. “Probably, the line had a little Mexican food and is sleeping it off. No worries.”