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Surviving the Black Friday Pit of Excess

November 24, 2020 No Comments

Black Friday, you were never a problem before. What are you trying to do to me? How did you get a hold of me like that? How did you bend me to your holiday commercialistic will? Make me want to buy a whole lot of stuff that I certainly didn’t want (32% off … what a bargain!) and definitely didn’t need.

Maybe it’s COVID-19 and being cooped up all the time. I’ve never been into the holiday shopping day-of-deals, which became more like a week this year. Never liked going to the stores to be crowded in among people, all scrapping and wrestling for bargains on flat screen TVs or cookware sets. Even before the coronavirus I was something of a social distancer, not to mention discount-shopping adverse.

But online? Well, that’s a different story. And I got a little bit by the bug this year it seemed. Suddenly there were things I needed, or more likely didn’t, marked down to ridiculous prices that I just couldn’t miss out on. I knew I couldn’t “miss out” because all Web posts and news stories told me. That I would be, in their words, a “damn fool” if I didn’t take advantage. That I better shop soon and hurry!

“Oh, OK. Well, if the Internet says so, I better getting spending!”

And I did.

2020 Nutshells, Family, Travel

The travel packer’s transcendental journey

November 17, 2020 No Comments

“Do you think we will travel when we retire?” my wife asked.

I had a long packing list in front of me, and I was meticulously going down it … machete, pocket knife, backup pocket knife, formal pocket knife, pocket knife for casual outing. You know, one that says, “Hey, I don’t want to mug you, but … like … I could.”

“Travel when we retire?” I said. “Sure. I hope so … a lot!”

I got the feeling maybe she was thinking the opposite. Probably because of the whole pocket knife thing. And when I asked, “Can you fit some of these knives in your suitcase?”

Plus, the packing. In general, everything about the packing.

We were heading to North Carolina. A little house outside of Asheville. A few nights there amongst the trees and the streams and the chilly weather. A fall getaway. We took my daughter and the dog, then meandered along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We strolled the trails and sat out on the house’s upstairs porch, watching the sun rise above the mountains. It turned the whole land shades of orange and brown and yellow. Like all the trees had caught on fire. I thought sunrises above the Atlantic Ocean were special. But mountains as a backdrop? In the cool, dewy North Carolina air? It’s my new favorite.

I love to travel. And maybe as importantly, I love planning to travel. It’s as much about getting there as it is being there, and I truly embrace that part of the journey. Especially when it comes to packing.

I like to pack!

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Family, In the News, Parenthood and Children

When surreal elections and real life collide

November 9, 2020 No Comments

I looked back 4 years to see what I wrote after the 2016 election had finally wrapped up. This is what I said: “It’s over. The presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is mercifully over. Look, forget who won or lost, just for a moment. If your candidate won, you’re still smiling and gloating. If your candidate lost, you’re still researching real estate in Canada. I get it. It’s been a tough one on all of us. It’s been emotional. It’s been trying. It’s tested us, individually and as a nation. But mercifully — whether you won or lost — there is this: We can all start to get our lives back.”

Rings true again today, doesn’t it?

I looked it up because I felt I had said it before. That I had FELT it before. Another time. Another place. What seemed like ages ago, but was just some 1,460 days in the past. (Yeah … I can do math. Not well … but math.)

And I’m feeling it again. Exhausted. Glad it’s over. Won’t tell you who I voted for. But I will tell you about what I’m sure a lot of us feel: Elation that we don’t have to deal with the election anymore. We can start to get on with … well … whatever did we do before there was an election. And no one quite knows what that is.

What did we do before the vote counting went on for days? Before we swiped endlessly at our phones for the latest updates, or sat glued to TV’s talking heads – all remarkably good at saying the same thing over and over again as if it’s always new and profound and full of revelation. Before the debates and the conventions. Before the primaries, and back and back and back.

What did we do?

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Getting old ... er ... older

The fountain of youth in a face mask?

November 3, 2020 No Comments

OK, folks. I know masks have become a polarizing, hot potato issue. So, I’m not here to lecture about the health benefits or reasons to put them on in order to ward off COVID-19. Rather, I’m here to share one little-known benefit that not everyone realizes about face coverings: They make you younger!

I’m living proof of this. I kid you not.

I don’t know that a lot of research has been done on the topic, but I have all the proof I need. The truth is, they can take at least 25 years off of your age, if not more.

Don’t believe me? Listen to this: It all happened to me at the grocery store while I was wearing a gray mask with black trimming. (Not sure the coloring is the key, but wanted to share that in case.)

I was piling all of my groceries — mostly cookies, ice cream and my weekly ration of beer in a case so big you could carry a bear in it – onto the conveyor belt.

As the nice cashier slid the behemoth carton across the scanner, she looked up at me and without the slightest hesitation said, “Can I see your ID, please?”

A choir of angels sang and I could hear celestial trumpets playing in the background.

2020 Nutshells, Houses, yards and projects, Technology

Dread and drama over modern-day lightbulbs

October 27, 2020 No Comments

I hate light bulbs. I hate them to the point that I am about to remove every lamp in my house and replace them with kerosene torches staked to the walls. Like a Medieval castle. That way I won’t have to deal with light bulbs anymore. That way I won’t have to make so many futile trips to the hardware store in search of the correct size, shape or “color tone.” I mean, you would think I’m installing nuclear reactors by the complexity of the task. All the research, planning and agonizing over it and then still …

Meltdown. I got the wrong bulb base again!

I never get it right.

This all came to a head as I installed a remote control in my ceiling fans. After more than 20 years of banging my head on those chain pullies with the little wood balls dangling like kitty toys, I decided to wire in remotes and join advanced modern society. Also, because when your house already has 3,000 remote controls – most lost deep beneath sofa cushions – why not add a few more?

And with the fans and lights on remotes, I can walk around the house clicking wildly as I try to figure out which one controls the light I need. Won’t that be fun?

Seemed simple enough – the remote was, the wiring was – until I noticed one of the three bulbs in a dining room fan was dimmer than the others. Worse still, ALL of them seemed dimmer than the room’s other fan.

Huh?!?

2020 Nutshells, Family

Soft hands in need of a macho hobby

October 20, 2020 No Comments

My dad just hit the road pulling a tear-drop trailer. He built it by hand. A tear-drop trailer isn’t called that because you cry at how expensive it is. It’s the shape. Like an aerodynamic tear as you tow it down the road, off to some great adventure where you sleep in it under the stars with a little window and some kind of marine-grade battery running your computer. Because stars need Netflix.

And, let’s return to this: He built it … WITH HIS OWN HANDS!

Pretty cool.

More impressive: It didn’t fall apart as he hauled it up the interstate on a trek to drive my sister from Tampa to meet up with her boyfriend in Virginia. He parked at a lake in Georgia and sent photos. The sides didn’t seem to be shearing off. The roof wasn’t peeling away like the lid of a sardine can. It hadn’t hopped the hitch and plowed into a pine tree or dumped its contents all over the interstate before becoming a viral video titled, “Dude’s trailer just threw itself up.”

Remarkable.

“How’s it riding and working out?” I texted after getting a photo of a lake sunset and my sister enjoying it in a foldup chair.

“Beautifully!” he wrote back. Translation: I thought it was going to hop the hitch and plow into a pine tree. BUT IT DIDN’T!!!

2020 Nutshells, Houses, yards and projects

This old pain-in-the-you-know-what house

October 14, 2020 No Comments

Old house, why do you forsake me so? Like a bad Shakespearean tragedy. Stabbing me in the back. Haunting me with ghosts. Tormenting me.

“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer …” Oh, who am I fooling? I’m an English major, studied Shakespeare at Cambridge University one summer in college and can’t even remember enough for a half-baked literary … um … well, whatever this is.

I’ll just leave it at, “Et tu, Brute?” which, if memory serves, is Latin for, “So, you’re also gonna’ kick me in the pants, ya’ weasel?!?”

That is my relationship with my old house. Oh, love and hate. It loves to torture me, and I hate how I’m always spending money, time and sanity putting it back together every couple of years. Because when it comes to old houses, there is no such thing as “done.”

There is only “underway” or “what’s next?”

And “what’s next?” is usually the kind of project that makes you wonder why you didn’t buy a nice concrete block home where the only thing you have to worry about each weekend is whether you watch college football or auto racing. Ah, imagine it!

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Parenthood and Children, Travel

The dad and daughter drive

October 8, 2020 No Comments

“Wo,” she told me while sitting down in the passenger seat. “I’ve never gone on a trip this long upfront.”

“Wo” was right, as the same thing struck me.

A 3-hour car ride to Tampa. Just a few inches apart. What in the heck does a dad and his 14-year-old daughter talk about for that long?

Wo!

It was just a dad and his daughter getting away to visit some family. The two of us. My sister was in town from Chicago. My dad wanted to show off the tear-drop trailer he was building. We hadn’t seen my aunt in who-knows-how-long, and you always need to make sure she’s staying out of trouble.

It was something we hadn’t done – couldn’t have done – in the longest time as everyone battened down the COVID hatches and stayed close to home. As safe as we were being – masked up and carrying an extra 50-gallon drum of hand sanitizer – it was stretching us out of our safe confines and comfort zones.

2020 Nutshells, In the News

Just a little break from the 2020 presidential election carnage

September 30, 2020 No Comments

Whew! I need a break. You need a break. We ALL need a break. I don’t know what I just witnessed, but the fight promoters … I mean debate producers … said it was supposed to be a presidential debate between the two leading party candidates.

Only, what I saw the other night when I wrote this was carnage. Like when you were a kid and glimpsed something on TV you weren’t supposed to. How it left you chewing your fingernails, feeling dirty and kept you up all night muttering to yourself: “I will never watch TV again! I will never watch TV again! I will never watch TV again!”

Amen.

So, my good friends, with almost a month to go before the end of this mangy, molten fungal train wreck of an election in what has been a mangy, molten fungal train wreck of a year, I think you deserve a break. Something to get your mind off of it. To clear your head and refresh your soul. To give you hope and a sense of humanity. To provide you with some uplifting and inspiring news that isn’t about polls or COVID or all-things presidential election-related.

And because I like you that much, I spent the last 20 minutes scouring the Internet for a bounty of spirit-boosting stories to get the bad taste out of your mouth:

• Believe it: Politics CAN be about relevant and meaningful topics that actually relate to real peoples’ lives. Like in North Carolina where Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham took a controversial stand on an issue close to the hearts of many North Carolinians: BBQ. In a Tweeted photo of himself standing next to a GAS grill, he wrote: “There’s nothing better than BBQ.” Except, since he wasn’t standing next to what looked like a smoking World War II-era submarine loaded with burning hickory chunks and a whole hog, Twitter erupted

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Childhood, Family, Florida, Parenthood and Children

The Lizard Hospital opens for patients

September 23, 2020 No Comments

“Good morning, Lizard Hospital. How may I help you? Oh, I see. You’re looking for a family of suckers who will take in injured everyday Florida yard lizards, nurse them back to health and potentially adopt them for life? Yep! You’ve come to the right place. Let me just go flush the rest of my sanity down the toilet and I’ll be right with you.”

My house is now … a lizard hospital.

There are two reptilian ICU containers sitting in my dining room. Stuffed with grass and sticks and pieces of drying ground beef. YouTube videos are on the computer about caring for injured lizards. A syringe sits in a bowl of water in the kitchen waiting for my daughter to dribble drops into their mouths.

I hope these two critters have insurance. Someone is going to have a hefty bill for this top-shelf care.

It all started a week ago. My daughter returned from walking the dog to recount the trauma she had witnessed: A massacre! Lizard carcasses scattered about the sidewalk. (There was a flat frog in the street, too, but that was a different problem. Speeders!) The lizards must have had a run-in with a cat. An angry cat. With a grudge. He left the broken bodies as a warning to others.

“It was awful!” she said. “There was just one survivor. And as you can see, he’s not doing so well.” She shoved the lizard in my face. He had one eye bulging out. It’s an image you’ll never forget.