My brother is getting married in November, a date that seemed so long in coming (there were some who doubted it would ever happen) and now not far enough away. There’s only so much time to prepare for a wedding, and never enough. So this past weekend, the groom and his wedding party — his compatriot, George, and myself — got serious about what we would wear and ventured south to Tampa for suit fitting.A road trip to be groped. Why Tampa? Because Tampa is home. Tampa is where tradition began and continues to this day. Tampa is where my mother lives (and no clothing decisions will be made without her on penalty of never hearing the end of it). Tampa is where people know we’re crazy, accept that fact and do business with us anyway. (Most of the blame for this lies with my mother who doesn’t believe she’s getting her money’s worth until she’s caused gray hair to pop out of a salesman’s head.) “Isn’t this fun?” she asks, a big wild-monkey grin stretched across her face while the other employees are running out the back door and the owner is considering a new security device that will warn them when my mother is in the vicinity. She asks too many questions, nitpicks, makes bad jokes and complicates simple things, like “So, how will you be paying?” How can that one question take 20 minutes to answer?
Passing a Little Time at the Hotel Bar
Boy, there’s nothing more boring, or sad, than sitting alone at a hotel bar drinking beer. Even worse is when you’re talking to yourself like right now out loud. What do you do? I don’t know. Never been in this situation before. What are those other stiffs doing? Hmmn. Staring at their beer. Watching baseball on TV. Turning soggy bar napkins into origami that resembles chicken dumplings. I can do that. (Ten minutes later and the napkin looks like porridge.) OK, now what. I’ll look around some more. Lots of interesting people that I could care less about. Is it me, or am I by far the best looking person in this room? Look at me in that mirror. I’m gorgeous! Look at me. Handsome, good lookin’ hair, sharp dresser, and oh crap! is that spinach in my teeth? Jeez, that mirror’s 20 yards away and I can still see it (Ten minutes later and I’ve jury-rigged a toothpick out of a splinter in the bar and discreetly removed the spinach while pretending I was tying my shoe.)
Northern Heat and Can Space Ice Cream Melt?
Heat Wave? Who the heck cares about a heat wave? I live in Florida, for Pete’s sake. That was my response when people warned me about my trip to Washington D.C. “You know it’s hot up there,” they said. “Oh, jeez, really,” I replied. “Not chilly like it is down here.” “Be careful,” said my mother. “Take short, shallow breaths and try to wear as few clothes as you can. Eat a lot of ice and just remember, you grew up without air conditioning. Oh, and if you start to blackout on the street, don’t fall in some garbage. Look for a park bench. You don’t want to get a disease.” Good advice, mom, good advice. I’ll just try to walk around naked and only on streets with benches.
Diary of a Week Off
Dear Diary, So this marks my big week off at home, with nothing to do but play with the kid and do some house projects I’ve been planning since Ford invented the Model T. Nothing too big or difficult. Should be fun. And the temperature is only 160 degrees outside, so maybe the elastic in my underwear won’t melt to me like last year. Can’t wait. Gonna’ be exciting. So let’s get started. Day 1 Today I began work on what should have been a quick and very routine project: moving the hot water heater from its roost in the kitchen pantry. Time allotted: 2 hours. It should have been a piece of cake, despite the fact that I have no idea how to disconnect or reconnect a water heater. It weighs more than a Hummer, is well over a decade old and appears to be wood-burning, not electric or gas. I decided to wing it. I drained it by running a garden hose from the pantry, through the kitchen, out the dining room and off the porch. Lizards and birds scurried for cover when the steaming water started pouring out. A small, manageable flood developed in the kitchen, but was quite sizable by the time it reached the dining room. Not sure exactly how that happened, but thank goodness the floors are wood as they soaked up the water. I’ll fix the buckling and mildew smell later. After the water came red-rust sludge. This struck me as a little […]
Strange Noises from Inside the Walls
It’s quite a relief to know I don’t have a demon (as once suspected) living in my walls. I’m not a big believer in ghosts or UFOs, until I have something in my walls, sewer line or attic. Usually, it turns out to be a squirrel, but at first I always suspect spirits … or worse. Take the other night, very late in the evening, when my wife jumped up in bed. “What’s that noise?” she asked. “Can you hear it? A buzzing in the wall?” Indeed it was. I had heard it the night before, but chalked it up to critters. It’s funny, though, how when you’re woken up in the middle of the night by your wife who hears a strange noise, it takes on added significance. This was a dull noise, almost a hum, and yes, kind of a buzz. Suddenly, it was a little worrisome. What WAS that noise in the wall? Wasn’t there an Edgar Allen Poe story about just such a thing? Oh crap, now I’m freaked out. What could it be?
Swim, Little Baby, Swim
I get confused with lots of directions. Give me complicated instructions — turn right over there, then stop — and I’m a basket case. My mind spins in somersaults trying to understand such strange and cryptic commands. It just can’t process them. Tell me specifically what to do with my hands — put them here, lift this way, rotate around and don’t forget to breathe — and it’s like I’ve just been told how to put the space shuttle together. My face goes blank, and sometimes I pee my pants. It’s why I was never good at knots. The bunny goes around the tree, down the hole, over the hill, down by the prairie, back up the hole … What the heck are they talking about? Next thing I know, I’m tied up in a tree screaming for someone to cut me down. I’m a basket case. Which is why days later I’m still not sure how well our first baby swimming class at the YMCA went, or whether I accomplished anything at all. This I can tell you: I sure didn’t understand anything at all. My wife signed up our family, including our little 6-month-old girl, for these very basic classes. No Olympic breast stroke for babies here. Mainly it’s how to handle your child in water, and for your child, how to handle being nearly drowned by your clumsy parents. It was a lot of fun. We swam, we splashed, we didn’t drown and my baggy board shorts […]
Will Insurance Insure an Alien Invasion?
It’s time to insure your home insurance. Do they sell policies like that? Floridians might need them if the hurricanes keep coming, the rates keep rising and companies keep evacuating from the state. I’ve been listening to my mother talk about this quite a bit recently. Her homeowner’s insurance in Tampa went up $1,000 this year, and there’s another increase looming. She wants to sue them, not for price gouging or raising rates, but specifically for being jerks. I don’t know that it will stand up in court. So I tell her insurance is a business, and all businesses need to make money, but she’s not listening. Then it occurs to me: What am I doing defending insurance companies? My rates are going up, too. But it’s all made me much more interested in my own policy, specifically what is and isn’t covered. If you’ve never read the excluded losses in your policy, take a look as it’s not only critical, but also fascinating. I read mine the other day and wondered if they had been written expressly for me as a way to head off stupid, house-damaging things I do. Strange stuff I thought only happened to me is on there, like this uninsured loss: “settling, cracking, bulging, shrinkage or expansion of the structure.” Shoot, that’s been known to happen all on the same weekend at my house. Plus elongating and elevating.
When it All Goes Projectile
It took me two weeks to the point where I could write about Father’s Day — my first. Not the day itself. That was wonderful, and really gave me time to think about what it means to be a new dad. It helped me put in perspective what this little 6-month-old munchkin means to me (beyond the tax deduction), and I savored the moment. It wasn’t Father’s Day I needed separation from — it was “the incident,” which is now becoming a parent’s day tradition, as our little girl did the same thing when we went out to eat on Mother’s Day. Three guesses I give you. Need a hint? In college, this act signified the end of a VERY good night, or the beginning of a VERY bad morning. In Roman times, they had special places for you to go and do this after an expansive meal. It’s one of only two things your child can do in public that can horrify and embarrass you to the point that you consider changing zip codes. The other is breaking out in a Barry Manilow tune at the top of her lungs, and I haven’t experienced that one yet. But I got the full effect on this. There’s nothing quite like baby public vomitation.
Searching for a Barber to Prune My Bush of a Head
I’m going to break one of my column writing rules today. There aren’t many. Mainly it’s things like try to come within at least one or two letters of spelling a word correctly or know what day your column is due so you have plenty of time to come up with an excuse for why it’s not ready. This week it was, “I sprained the three fingers I type with.” But the one rule I always adhere to is: Never write about the dentist (they can cause too much pain), the water department (if you like to bathe, don’t mess with people who can cut off your water), anyone who prepared your food (need I say more), or most of all, your barber. Don’t mess with anyone who can buzz “Big Idiot” in the back of your head. But my barber is moving to another state and can’t shave my noggin’ anymore. Freedommmm! I’ve been going to Price’s Barber Shop since I was in college, and for that long, Genie’s been turning me into a respectable member of society. I go in about every 4 months looking like a Yeti, she wonders what in the world she did in a past life to deserve this, and then fires up the chain saw. Cutting my hair is a lot like trimming a pecan tree: you need special equipment, you need a pole saw, you need a truck with a basket on the end of a crane, you need to start drinking […]
Got Me Some World Cup Fever
So, I wanted to … wait a minute … hold on … Sorry about that. I’ve been a little distracted lately. I don’t really finish my train of … uh-oh … be right back … It’s really become a problem because … oh, Damnitt! … talking to you people and I missed a goal. Now that’s just great! Yes, it’s World Cup time at my house. That would be soccer for those of you who honestly could care less, and would rather watch ink in a ballpoint pen go dry. Hey, that’s your privilege. But me, I’m becoming fanatical. I’m one of those strange Americans who is hooked on the spectacle — 32 of the world’s top teams squaring off in Germany to decide whose supporters can drink the most beer. I mean, to see whose supporters can get arrested as the worst hooligans. Actually, to see who will be crowned world champion in the beautiful game.