Dry Stag Party For One

 I know I've been out of the blogging game for quite some time now, but I know that writing will help me get some thoughts out and feel better. When I go down a mangy rabbit hole of self-loathing, one of my plaguing thoughts that pops up is, "and you never write on your blog anymore, a-hole." So, it's good to get back on here more often.

I'm down in the basement . . . of our new house! That's right. We saved up and bought a house in Chicago. Certain things are really nice to have, like the unfinished man cave basement I'm typing from. I got a projector so I can watch the Bulls games on the wall, and there is a mini fridge and a bathroom down here. Mostly there are exposed pipes, laundry machines, Hot Wheels and Thomas tracks . . . So, it's a man and kid cave. But after 8pm it's like a stag film man dungeon down here.

"I think that's a booby!"

We also have a garage, and a lawn, things like that. We aren't talking a big lawn or anything. The people who lived here before gave us a lot of stuff in their garage, like the plug in lawn mower I use to mow the weeds, I mean grass. Mostly weeds. But, it's just nice to have storage to put things. In the condo we were always having a battle of how to pack more stuff in there, and we even had a storage unit at the end.

COVID is getting old, huh? Jesus. Our older son, Erik, has both his vaccination shots. He's 5-years-old now. Desmond is only 2-years-old, so there are lots of things that we are scared to take him to. This can make it tricky to find things to do for the whole family, especially in the winter where you can't be outdoors as long

Erik is a really good artist. He will come home from school and go right to an art project, and we have him in an art class on Sundays. He's also really good at math. We don't really teach him much; he just picks stuff up. Desi (that's what we call Desmond) is talking a lot more, which is great because we were worried when he seemed delayed. Being able to express himself better has greatly improved his behavior, but he is still bonkers and full of energy. Beating my old ass is hilarious to him. I turned 45 the other day, by the way. Jesus, how did that happen?

Sorry it wasn't too funny this day, and I'm not the writer that I used to be. But I need to start somewhere. 

Oh, one more thing I wanted to talk about: Dry January. The first weekend was brutal for me, and I was extremely crabby tonight too. I have a weird relationship with alcohol. I feel so at ease when I have a couple, but then I really don't get a whole lot done. Then the next day I'm hungover, and then Monday I'm tired as hell. I have been walking by various forms of booze in the house and my mind plays tricks on me, just like the little devil on my shoulder in the movies. "Why are you even doing this dry January? What will it prove? You'll feel better if you just have one craft beer." So I eat a lot of junk food and cheese instead. And I knock down sparkling waters like you wouldn't believe. And I'm only 10 days into the month! I will say that I'm working out a lot more, and on Saturday I cleaned the entire house. I have been starting to think to myself if this is super hard for me to do, then maybe I should do a dry every month? I'll see how I'm doing at the end of January. The problem is that there is a wedding to attend next weekend. Those are tough to do sober. You'll be the first to know how that goes, Seven Readers. See you next time. 

The Second To Last of The Aunt Linda Posts

Day after day we pulled the rental car up to Aunt Linda's house, with her car parked in the driveway, and went in there to clean up, throw things away, and decide what was worth the sentimental value for the family or of value to anyone else. By the third day in a row driving up there I must admit it felt like punching into a job that I hated. The work was hard physically as well as emotionally. We finished the days drained with our feet aching like we were waiting tables on a double shift, our knees and backs hurting from being on the floor in funny positions going through endless stuff, looking for her will, finding what would need to be shredded, and what would go into the endless trash bags. 

The kind of things aunt Linda kept were the kind of things that didn’t make it easy to just throw things away. You had to sort through all of it and then you had to pull out all her little sticky notes that she had in her books because you couldn’t give them away to someone else with your aunt's crazy notes inside. She had so many notes written down on envelopes and kept them long-term. Why?

Prior to living in the house we were cleaning out, her and her husband Jim lived up the the mountaisn of Colorado in a house they planned entirely. But for some reason they had extra everything such as wall outlets and electrical sockets. After her husband died she got to old to maintain the mountain house, she couldn't chop all the wood anymore at her age, and bats of all things took over inside. When she moved out of that place to a nice Colorado community back in civilization, she took all of the extra stuff from when they built the mountain house, all the door hinges, electrical outlets, and everything else to the point it was like an aisle at Home Depot if you wanted one of some shade one just every single type. So someone who wants stuff for their garage to have everything would be nuts about that but if the niche person doesn’t come to an auction then it's all going into a landfill.

My mom said it was definitely a stressful way to spend her birthday but it was an enjoyable day because she spent it with her kids and she has great kids. We for sure had some nice times at night reminiscing. I tried to explain to my sister and my mom what was so sad about my days working in Aunt Linda's home. Her having such a cluttered house forced me to have to sift through her whole world, all her areas of expertise, photography, sewing, alternative medicine, architecture, birds, and motorcycles to name a few. As a result I learned more about who she really was for really the first time, and she was already dead. I was too late. But the process forced me to properly mourn her. Of course I didn't get through trying to explain all this without crying, and I had a hell of a time stopping. I can't remember the last time I did that in front of anyone. You ever notice when people start crying when they hadn't planned on it, it's often when they try to explain why someone or something was so important to them? It's something about that explaining process where you're trying to get it out and just lose it. 

Oh, and then on the plane ride home we had one of those giant planes with the rows of two on the sides and a big row of four in the middle - and it was totally full. Very scary thinking about catching Covid on that thing. Then this Asian guy in tinted blue glasses hops on board the plane without a mask. The woman next to him said something about being scared of getting sick, and this asshole says, "We're all going to die some time. We can't live in fear. Then he launches into something about how he has guns and how he pets his gun like an animal, and how he will shoot anyone on his property. He says he lives in California and the governor there is a communist. He's saying this all loudly to make sure people around him hear his nonsense. My sister says to me just as loudly, "This would be a great time to put on some headphones!" I said back even more loudly, "Yes, some loud music. The louder the better!" And then my sister tipped off the flight attendant that this guy wasn't masked up. He put it on, but then since he was in front of me diagonally, I could see that he would let it dangle off his ear for long stretches of the flight. I double masked it. What a festering pile of bat guano this dude was. Like the bat guano that took over my aunt's house so long ago.

Okay, that's all I got. Take care, everyone. And reach out to those relatives you don't talk to enough. If you don't have kids of your own, reach out to those nieces and nephews. Or just make sure you keep a nice circle of friends as you get older. I would hate for any of you to let your circle shrink and shrink to the point where you're just pounding vodka all day and letting all your hobbies and interests sit in tons of Tupperware tubs for your relatives to have to sort through in an emotional weekend like the one I had. 

The Covid 13.1

The cancelled holidays, plans, family time, swimming, just about everything - it all sucks. The rescheduled concerts are particularly annoying because they will be pushed back to the following year. It is hard to remember who bought the tickets, which friends were going, sometimes the show gets downgraded from a weekend to a school night, and hell, some bands could break up or die in a year! Also, they only guarantee the appearance of the headliner, and sometimes I bought the tickets more because I like one or two of the opening acts. 

I also had like 3 running races cancelled this summer. This is why some friends and I organized our own race in a trail in a suburban forest preserve where we all plan on wearing shirts and bibs from cancelled races. The race is tomorrow, and I will somehow have to run 13.1 miles with very little training. We got a pretty decent turnout and we are raising money for a local children's hospital. 

Got my stuff laid out like a dork. Only running dorks do this.

Hey, I'm now going to get "political" with no segue whatsoever: I had some thoughts about when people seem to freak out and get all defensive about Black Lives Matter and start in with the "all lives matter" crappola. I mean, the obvious explanation is probably that they're just racist, or probably more accurately, they are racist and do not know they are racist. Because why get so mad and defensive? Because here is the what occurred to me today: For years and years the country was way too racist, such as hanging black people from trees, blasting them with fire hoses, making them use separate bathrooms and other facilities, basically dehumanizing them. So, years and years later out of a response to police officers killing black people, we are now saying Black Lives Matter and some white people get mad about that and say, "Not everything is about race!" But here is what I'm saying, if we spent hundreds of years being way too racist, is there really any harm in perhaps being a extremely racially conscious for a little while, and what is the harm in doing so? I think the people who take offense to BLM are likely the same who take offense to having to wear masks in public places. I'm positive there is a correlation. 

Just my opinion and merely theories. I don't claim to know everything. I welcome discussions in the comments, and I'm not a psycho who yells and swears at anyone when they disagree. Or if you want to stay out of the race topic, just comment on (running) races or concerts or whatever from earlier in the post. Or comment on something completely separate from all this stuff. Wish me luck in my race tomorrow morning and do a dance so it doesn't rain on me.