Wedding Knocks Kenneth Hard Off The Wagon

 I talked myself into allowing myself to skip one day of the Dry January for a wedding I was attending. I allowed myself to take in input from people, knowing full well no one was going to say, "Stick with it!" No way. Everyone was saying, "Oh you got a babysitter overnight and a hotel? Just drink, man! And they just said what I needed to hear. 15 Miller Lites and a couple edibles later and I was hungover for 2.5 days. 

So, I'm back on that damn Chuck Wagon. 30 out of 31 days of the month still wouldn't be too bad. I intentionally bought and intentionally drank my first six pack of non alcoholic beer tonight. I just wanted to feel like a man with my beer in front of the TV for a must win Bulls game. I opted for Beck's non alcoholic skunktastic crappola slop. Wow. Mrs. Noisewater said to me, "You never go with a green bottle." Dang, she's right. Heineken, Becks, and Rolling Rock are all yucky. They taste green.

Green Hell

You know what else? 45-years-old feels old. The other night we were watching that Peacemaker show on HBO and that actor from Terminator 2 was in it, the T1000. Mrs. Noisewater was like, "Wow! He looks old." I told her, "Yeah, he is old. That came out in like 1991, and I was 14. You figure he was was like 30 then. And I'm 45 now, so he's gotta be . . . God damn, I'm 45? The T1000 is old and so am I. He can't run like that anymore and I never could.

T1000 vs the T45

But, I think this not drinking thing is going to be good for my health. There are even abdominal muscles trying to poke through. They're like, "Hey, there's no IPA and greasy hangover fat in here, now's our chance to shine!" Sorry abs, your asses are going right back into hiding in February when I go right back to my horrible patterns. Or will I? I just need to assess at the end of this month.

The family is good. Desi is a wild man still. We came home the day after that wedding to a freezing home. We went into panic that something was broken, but nope. That little two-year-old impish gremlin turned off the heat switch in the basement. Erik is still hilarious. Tonight when I was tucking him in the top bunk he was in was creaking like crazy. I said, "What is that?" He goes, "That's just my weight. I'm Lord Humongous." I love when my kids say goofy stuff back to me that I don't even realize I say. Lord Humongous is the big bad guy in "Road Warriors" who may or may not have been into some homosexual S&M stuff, but I think he got the name for having bulging muscles all over the place.

Just. Walk. Away. and Just. Go. To. Sleep, Erik Noisewater.

Okay, I'm out of here. Hoping to keep up these basement posts every few nights. I need your support, Seven Readers. Let's keep each other motivated. I'm off to do the rounds on the blog roll. Let me know if there's anyone else I should be reading. I've been out of the game too long and have lost tough. Bye.

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. 

 Okay, so not such a great week. 

1. I got word that a former student of mine died. Actually, his whole family died. They were on the side of the road when a car struck them, killing him (16-years-old), his little brother, and his mother. He was a funny kid, had a certain star quality to him. And now him and his whole family are gone.

2. Then a friend of mine went missing. I guess he was at his girlfriend's place in the suburbs, came home, and then they had plans to go out to lunch near where he lives in Chicago later that day. Apparently he left his apartment and never came back. It is said that he liked to walk on the lake front, but it was freezing that day, like 17 degrees. 

As the days go by things look more and more grim. When he didn't show up to work on Monday morning I knew it was bad. I was holding out hope that he just turned his phone off and got the F' out of Dodge for the weekend, planning to return to work. Then with each day it's really looking more and more hopeless. I'm searching for scenarios where he is still alive. Maybe he dropped everything and became a Buddhist in a temple somewhere? Or maybe he just assumed a new identify in another country, but would he really just never talk to his father, sister, or girlfriend ever again? And wouldn't he have packed some things, and wouldn't there be records of travel or spending?

The other possibilities are just too sad to think about. It could have been foul play, like maybe a robbery went wrong. And sadly, it could be that he took his own life. But in either case, how has his body not been found?

I saw my good friend who is pretty much best friends with the missing guy on the local news, and my heart just sunk. It's just so real to me after seeing that. When you have stuff like that going on, you still go into work, come home and take care of your family, and life just goes on. But then seeing that it's on the news, my friend is pleading for someone to come forward with information, his sister is talking about how it just doesn't make sense, how they knew something was wrong when he missed his weekly phone call with his father, it's all just so damn sad and such a mystery. 

Everybody get out and live your life. You never know when your number is going to come up or you'll be a part of a real life damn "Unsolved Mystery." This thing is nuts, you guys. Thanks for listening. 

Yesterday I was driving Erik Noisewater (age 4) to school and telling him about the dream I had. I said my recently departed Aunt Linda was in the dream, and she was young and beautiful. And I was so happy she was alive somehow. Then, of course, by the end of the dream I learned that she was dead after all. I told Erik that I was crying but couldn't remember if I was crying in the dream or while I was awake after it was over. He said, "But parents don't cry." I told him parents cry too. I said I hardly ever cry, and when I do I almost never do it in front of anyone - so he just hasn't seen me cry is all. Then I reminded him that he has seen his mother cry. To which he said, "Yeah she cries and you just go, 'I know! I know!'" 

Wow, the way he said that, the way he imitated my response to his mom crying - it was bad hearing that. There was an incident the other night and I was not exactly the most empathetic husband of all time. I don't want to make it seem like this is dinner every night at the Noisewater dining room table, but it happened. I think everyone is breaking down in these damn COVID times. It's tough. It's wearing on everyone. 

"I know! I know!"

What an asshole.

I'm going to be better. 

 I'm watching all the Star Wars movies with my eldest of two sons, Erik. I was going to wait until he was a  little older to delve into the films because of some of the violence, like Obi Wan lopping that pig faced dude's arm clean off in A New Hope with blood everywhere, but the night of the Capitol insurrection I had a few to many coping drinks in me and just said to him, "You want to watch Star Wars instead of all this news?" He has a few Star Wars books and knows that we have not watched the films due to the violence so he capitalized on my moment of weakness and gave me an emphatic yes! 

Here are a couple of interesting thoughts Erik had about the movies:

1. "Fin and Rey. Those are both ocean names."

2. "Chebacca's hugs are soft.

3. When Erik gets pissed off and snaps and throws stuff and hits his little brother, I remind him that Kilo Ren does that sort of thing when he gives into the Dark Side and his fits of rage. He also ends up killing his own father, which I'm totally not cool with and make a point of drilling that into Erik as being a not-so-good thing to do.

So the other day when we are getting into the car in the morning, while Erik is crabby about God know what, I'm reminding him how he needs to take deep breaths so that he doesn't give into his anger like Kilo Ren, Erik says, "But Darth Vader uses the Dark Side, and he takes deep breaths." Damn it. He's got me. I tried to explain that Darth's sounds of deep breaths are the machines keeping him alive due to his injuries in the molten hot lava and not at all a coping skill to avoid angry outbursts, but I was tired in the morning, he had me, so I just said "Yeah. You got me there. Let's go to school,"

Noisewater Family Updates

So what's new over at the Noisewater place?

Well, the wife and I are employed, working from home during the pandemic. The kids are in school and daycare, respectively, so we are able to actually get some work done around here. One of us was working in the baby's room, which is a pretty good office, and the other one was working in the common area. It's a pretty small condo that we stay in. What we noticed was that we kept derailing productivity when one of us would go into the common area for a snack or a workout or to switch laundry. I think we just talk to each other to kill time and get ourselves off track. So, what we discovered works better is making the toddler's bedroom into another office by putting one of those fold out desks into the wall. Is it weird when I'm on a work call and my clients see bunk beds and toys in the background? No really, when you're a teacher and your "clients" have bunk beds in the toys in their background as well.

It's tough to get kids to show up to class. Sometimes they show up for attendance and then think they can be slick and sneak off for a nap or to play video games or something. So when you suspect that you just call on them to see if they are really there. The other day I got tired of Sydney  (not even close to his real name) pulling that move day after day, so I was like "Sydney, just checking in if you're interested. We are giving away $500 and a Playstation 5 . . ." No response. It got a big laugh, which is really what I'm going for as much as anything else these days.

I got two weeks off of work right now, and I thought I would have to keep the kids out of their mom's hair while they tried to work, but it turns out the baby's daycare lady will take the toddler too! Which means, Winter of Kenneth has begun! Only 3 days of no kid time, but I'll take it. Today what did I do? Dropped off the kids, did an online training for work, went to Costco for shopping, vacuumed and mopped, and did a workout with some muscular butt ladies on the TV. That's not too bad, right?

How about you guys? Got any time off and how are you using it?

Sword Fight!!!

Fellas, do you guys remember when you were a little kid and you said you had to pee and your brother or a friend said, "I gotta go too," and then one of you said, "Sword fight!" So you ran into the John together, dropped trow, and peed simultaneously into the same bowl, moving your stream back-and-forth across the other guy's spray, likely hitting the seat and the floor in the process. You have all had a sword fight or two in your day. Stop lying.

Would if I said that my 4-year-old son and I have done this a few times? I'm thinking that you would say I'm the most immature and inappropriate father you have ever come across, and that really wouldn't be too far from the truth. I know it is stupid to do, but every once in a while we will have to both take a leak before leaving the house and it just kind of goes down that way. 

What usually happens is we unholster our weapons at about the same time, but he starts firing away much quicker. Sometimes he is done before I can even get started because I have an old as hell engorged prostate the size of a 16-inch softball softball. Sometimes I'll say to him, "You win again, buddy. You got the quickest weenie in The West. My old wiener just can't hold a candle to yours.

So, the other day he beats me to the punch again and goes, "I win again, daddy. You got the oldest, slowest, yuckiest wiener in the world." Now, wait just a minute. I may have said old and slow in my analysis during previous competitions, but "yuckiest" was entirely his own editorializing. Uncalled for if you ask me.

Okay, just a quick blog post I have been kicking around in my head. Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season despite the current pandemic situation. And I hope none of you call up the Special Victims Unit for the slightly inappropriate father son activity you just read about. 

I needed a pic of Ice, and the one with bagels was obviously the funniest. Apparently it's because he has never tried bagels or coffee? Fascinating.

You always hear about when people run into celebrities and it's always one thing or the other:

1. He was such a cool guy.

2. The guy was a total dick

I used to like to fantasize about my mythical celebrity life, and every time I was just the most gracious and nice guy you could ever know. But as years go by, I get why stars get a bad reputation and a slanderous story for someone else to tell. I think I would be the "total dick" in 9 out of 10 encounters with fans. Now that I have a family too I completely see it. The guy telling the story would be like "I saw Kenneth Noisewater when he walked up to the fountain drinks to refill his Mountain Dew at Taco Bell, and he totally blew me off when I brought up the third movie I liked him in." Yeah, I got my family in the booth and I don't want to talk to a some deranged fan all night - one who might start to think he's my friend and stab me some day if I don't brush him off now and not later when he is too intertwined into every aspect of my life.

In my celebrity fantasies I’m very much about the people and still dine at places like Taco Bell.

So now I'm thinking back to two my celebrity encounters.

1. The time I met Pau Gasol who was playing for the Chicago Bulls at the time. Believe it or not it was the night I proposed to Mrs. Noisewater. I had to say something on my way out to him because his table was positioned on our way out the room. So I did a drive by. I never stopped my momentum, just swept by and said, "Go Bulls! Keep it up!" In a whisper, so no attention was drawn to him. The Bulls were riding a little win streak at the time.

Very smooth and unobtrusive, right? Well, let's look at one from a few years before that.

2. Then there was the time maybe 10 years prior when I "met" Dee Snyder. I was going into the House of Blues in Chicago, and the one and only Dee Snyder was coming out. We were in a revolving door at the exact same time, and I'm a mere inches away from his face with just that glass between us going full Chris Farley on him, "Yeah! Fucking Dee Snyder! You fucking rock, bro!" There is no way in hell he didn't see or hear me, but he still managed to completely ignore me. He looked pissed about something. 

I used to get mad when I would think back to my moment with Mr. Snyder. And if his name came up I might have been inclined to say that Dee was less than welcoming to me in our encounter. However, now I'm like, hey, Dee might have been having a bad day. And I had a few beers in me and was probably annoying. I don't hold it against him in the slightest.

Dee, if you're reading this, you know longer have to worry about that time you mistreated a fan. There. I've absolved you of your sins. Now go forth and rock with a clear conscious. 

 So tonight my sons are getting a little rowdy and the 4-year-old throws a playful punch in the direction of his 1-year-old brother. I was mad at him so I said, "Hey! You don't hit your brother!" He looks me dead in the face and says, "Yeah, and you don't hit your wife." I just laughed and agreed with him. Damn it. He made me laugh with that one and made me break character.

Then he has this habit of whispering way too close in your ear so it tickles like crazy, so he leans in and goes, "And you don't punch Mary."

I said, "You mean like Mother Mary? No. You don't punch her either." He goes to a Catholic pre school even though we aren't religious - so he learns a bible thing or two up there.

Then he goes in for another whisper sesh and lets me know "And you don't punch Jesus." I told him, "Nope. Not him either."

Then this is when I lost it because he softly whispers, "And you don't punch the angels."

Oh man, just imagine running through those clouds socking all the angels you could right in their jaws, their halos flying off. It's hilarious.  I wish I could make a video game like that. I would play it all day until I got the all time high score. 

Good night, folks. Try not to throw any right crosses at any of your biblical figures.

Okay, The Last of the Aunt Linda Chronicles

 We had my Aunt Linda's ashes in the rental car for a few days coming along with us, and it felt kind of weird. It was good feeling waking up that final day in town knowing we were sending them to their final resting place. Aunt Linda lived a good amount of her life in a house she designed with her late husband high up in the mountains of Colorado. My mom got in contact with the people who currently owned that house as well as her neighbor and longtime friend who would be our guide to the stream where the ashes would go. This neighbor's name was Joe, and he gave us the much needed detailed directions, as GPS would wave bye bye as we ascented into the mountains. 

The higher we climbed into the mountains we saw why Aunt Linda loved living up there. Sure, UPS and the US Postal Service wouldn't deliver to you. Sure, any time you wanted to buy something you would have wind your way up and down a half hour trip each way, but wow, if you saw this place you would know what they mean when people say the live in God's country. Her husband, Jim, died and for around nine years she lived by herself up there chopping wood and maintaining the place as best she could until the bats took over. The place we ended up cleaning out was the one looking up into the mountains with the strict homeowners association, the one where her heart was never in it, where her gutters grew trees and her grass grew like Vietnam. Her heart was never in it and she was too old to care. It made me understand that where her ashes would be spread by her former property, where she spread her late husband's ashes, that's where she would want to be. 

Joe said we would see his white pickup truck, and sure enough there he was. He stepped out smiling, and he looked to be in his 80's. The first thing we noticed is that he had a Norway shirt, and he told us that Linda bought him that shirt when she went on her trip to see her relatives. This broke us all up. Joe led the way in his truck, and our rental car probably didn't have the right all wheel drive setting because we were slipping all over the place. Eventually we got up to Linda's property, and wow. I got it now. All those Christmas cards she sent with photos she took, they were all from that property. It's as gorgeous as you could ever imagine. Joe led us on foot downhill to the stream, and he was slipping and making me nervous because he was so old. I told him that I could go in front and he could just fall into me if need be, and he seemed to take a bit of offense saying something to the effect of, "I've lived here all my life."

We finally got to the stream and Joe gave us a little space to do our ritual. I had the ashes in my hands, so I took the lead with the pouring of the ashes and the speech. My sister filmed, and my mom cried for one of the only 5 times in my life I have seen. There is video of this, and maybe I'll put it up some day - but I'm yet to watch it. I'm not ready.

I only took a few things from her house, but one of them was an envelope of all her Christmas cards over the years labeled "KEEP!" I noticed one of them was a shot of what looked to be that very stream where we dumped the ashes from 2007. I texted my mom that picture and asked what year Jim died and she said "2007" and a sad face emoji. Fuck. I lost it. 

Seeing those ashes flow into the river, becoming part of it, to be forever lost in it, the final resting place just absorbing into that stream, it's so permanent. Brutal. We only have so much time on this earth. Shit. I don't have anything else to say, guys. 

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. 

Aspen Trip For My Departed Aunt Linda

 Day one of the trip with my mom and my sister to clean and sort through my Aunt Linda’s belongings is done. But I’m up at 4AM, which is due to equal parts too much coffee, too much emotion, and just being used to waking up every night from my kids even when I’m not with them  I did a 3AM workout in the hotel fitness center and even that didn’t knock me out. So I figured I would be productive and post a blog on the phone  

The day before I left I told my son, Erik, I was a little sad to go on the trip it will be not fun and because I will miss my family and he says “Yeah but when you don’t want to go somewhere and you have to go, you just have to go.” This kid just turned 4 last month, by the way. 

The airplane was the smallest one I’ve ever been on. I hit my head on the roof of the airplane because I kept forgetting how low the ceiling was. Then I’m reading the Bill Wymann biography on my Kindle and just after Brian Jones died the book abruptly ended. What?! He still played and toured off of some of the greatest albums ever through out the entire 1970’s but none of that he wanted to cover? I was only like 20 minutes into the flight and now had nothing to read because you can’t download new books without WiFi. Thanks a lot, Bill. Now I’m reading a cooking magazine, and I hate cooking. My sisters was the across the aisle, tapped me on the shoulder, and while silently laughing impersonated my angry flipping through the pages of complex recipes with a million recipes and procedures that I would never dream of attempting. 

My mom’s birthday is tomorrow so will do a nice dinner out. But yeah, we will be sorting through her good friend’s junk during the day on her birthday. Don’t die if you’re reading this. And getting old, losing your loved ones, it’s all hard, but when no one is around to keep you in check, don’t randomly turn to alcohol in you 70’s when you were never a drinker. It’s just been emotionally draining sorting through all this stuff, seeing the places on the floor where she fell and laid there for long stretch of time before getting help, and then the other spot where she had the fall that took her for her final hospital stay. 

I saw a box labeled “camping” and I could tell she knew what she was doing because I camp a little. I never knew she camped. So I took a little knife that goes in a sheath that I can put in my camping tub to take with me, and I can think fondly of Linda when I unsheathe it. 

Hey this is random, but I heard “Valarie” by Jerry Garcia, and I caught one of those types of lyrics that I love, the ones that are so simple yet so incredibly impactful. “Valarie, what’s your complaint? I try to be everything I ain’t.” I think we all try to do that sometimes. Me, I try to cook. And I hate it. But I try. 

Good night, blog friends. I think I can finally get some rest. The workout, burping the worm, the shower - none of that worked. This worked. Thanks. 

I lost my aunt Linda recently. And that's a wrap on my extended family. I have a small family. My mother was an only child and my father had one sister - Linda. All my grandparents are dead, so I'm fresh out of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. And what's killing me is she was the extent of my extended family for 30 years and I never bothered to pick up a phone. I'm not saying I could have saved her from drinking herself to death, but I could have called her on her birthday at least.

My mom is the best person and someone who I love talking to, but she never just calls out of the blue. I was on my way to play volleyball with some friends I hadn't seen in a long time when I saw her call. Even though my Aunt Linda, while not in great shape, was not in any immediate known health risk, I knew it was the call saying that my aunt Linda had died. And I ignored it. Instead, I pulled into a liquor store to buy a six pack to drink on the volleyball courts. I grabbed a retro pack of Miller Lites and got in line behind a hardcore alcoholic who was getting a lecture from the man working the register. "Have you eaten anything today, Cleave? You need to eat, man." But he still sold it to him. I found it weird that Cleave should wander into that store with my aunt having just died of late onset alcoholism, and people close to her said she had similar patterns of drinking heavily and hardly eating.

I listened to the voicemail confirming what I already knew and got to the forest preserve where my friends were set up with tents, BBQ, coolers full of beer, and a volleyball net set up in a beautiful clearing of land. My volleyball friends gave me shit for never playing anymore because none of them have kids. They don't get it, but I don't get mad at them for it. They'll see. There's no time once you got kids. Through the course of the day I drained the whole sixer. I sucked for the first few games because I was tight, but believe it or not I got okay as the day went on - and I started hammering spikes. The piss I took in the woods led to those prickly things sticking to my gym shorts, and believe it or not they stuck to the shorts after a wash. What are those damn things?

Now, I may be a shit nephew, but my dad is a terrible brother. He has only been out to Colorado once to see her. My mom was actually friends with Aunt Linda before my dad met my mom - it was a set up. Isn't that nice? My mom is the one that went out to Colorado a couple years ago to help Linda clean out her apartment and try to get her back on her feat. My dad doesn't like traveling, so he didn't go. His wife went out there to help his sister out. My mom met one of Linda's friends out there who was trying to help, but Linda was pushing her away - likely due to the alcoholism. This friend was trying to give Linda some tough love, and I think the demons of alcoholism get threatened by that and push folks like that away aggressively. But the shock of the booze problem was news to my mom and all of us.

And it's weird because I never knew my dad to drink to excess until his 70's either. He started getting worried about his heart, got worried about a heart surgery, and starting hitting the sauce harder than ever. I had seen my dad drunk zero times in the 80's, 90's, and 2000's, and then late in the 2010's he was passing out, trying to order dessert after we just did, and my nephews were laughing at him as he was lying on the floor blind drunk. I can't help but think there was some unresolved stuff in my dad and Linda's upbringing, but who knows.

My mom and sister flew out a couple of weeks ago to clean out Linda's house and figure out what to do with her estate, and it's a total mess. The house is all over the place. She lost faith in U.S. banks and had money in all kinds of European spots, and there is no clear cut will of any kind. I have to go out there now in a couple of weeks and sort through all of the stuff. They need my manpower now to move all the junk around, but I really should have volunteered before they had to ask me to do it. In a lot of ways I'm a lot like my dad. Just trying to avoid problems.

My sister is a little older than me and remembers Linda in her glory days a little better than me. I guess my sister went to Linda's house and spent the night there. It was the first time my sister listened to records with headphones and it sounded amazing. Aunt Linda gave me a bunch of records, and that might be one of the last times I saw her. I catalog all my records in a spreadsheet and put in where I got them. Aunt Linda's records bequeathed (I know she was alive so not the right word- but such a fun word) to me are all in pristine condition, and I still think of her every single time I pull one out. Lots of Willie Nelson. Apparently she was quite an athlete in her day. My dad still boasts about the time the two of them beat me and my neighbor friend in 2-on-2 basketball on the driveway.

So off to Colorado I go. My sister came back a little depressed for a while, thinking about how sad it was for someone to die all alone like that. Her husband died around a dozen years ago or so, and that's when she slowly drifted off into alcoholism. Around a year or so before she died she had an incident where she fell and couldn't get up and was there on the floor for a day or two before getting any help. Jesus, I get sick just thinking about that. Imagine that. When my mom and sister were going through receipts they found that she had bought hundreds of dollars worth of vodka and then would find another receipt for just as much vodka few days later. My two sons are amazing for a lot of reasons, but one really good reason is someone will hopefully give a shit about me when I reach that age and not let me slip into that state. I mean, daughters would be better in that capacity, but I like to think I'm charming enough to keep it going into my twilight years.

To Aunt Linda. 

I always enjoyed the cards you would send with your own photography. I have no idea why you wanted to live in the middle of the mountains where you had to have a gun with you at all times in case of bears, but I have to admire the badassery involved with that decision. Jesus, the mailman wouldn't even go up to where you lived. We had to send stuff to a P.O. Box. Anyway, I'm sorry I was a shit nephew and didn't pick up the phone to give you a call. You were probably lonely but too proud to reach out yourself. 

Love,

Kenneth

So my kids go to two different locations every morning. The 4-year-old (Erik) is going to a Catholic preschool for in-person masked-up learning, and the 1-year-old (Desi) is goes to his nanny. More often than not I have been picking them up with the bicycle and the little chariot thing that they ride in. Sometimes it's the only time I get outside, and I figure life is going really, really suck when it starts getting cold out soon. Also, there are times where it's my only exercise for the day. It's about 8 miles there and back, and that's no easy task when you're pulling all that weight. 

I got some of it down to a science. One thing that has been working out great is using one of those exercise belt/fanny pack deals with the water bottle holsters. I found one that will fit my mammoth phone, my Costanza wallet, my janitor style keys, and a Covid mask or two. I never feel good about stuff in my pockets when I'm biking. And then one trick I figured out is I could get a wire from my phone to a speaker tucked into one of the water bottle holsters, with that water bottle at home. Voila! Except when the 4-year-old wants to tell me about random things along the way so I have to pause the jams - such as jeeps and muscle cars that he has spotted on the road. 

There are those days where Erik starts screaming because Desi is pinching him, but then there are other days where they're nice and quiet, I look back there, and Erik is holding Desi's hand. And that's just the best. 

Random, Random, Random Updates

1. So we were thinking of being the X-Men for Halloween as a family. I'm going as Gambit because I think he is just such a cool character who was never represented well in the films. The wife is going to be Storm. She and I are just going to piece together our outfits with thrift store stuff. Erik (who will be 4-years-old next month) is going to be Wolverine - probably will have to spring for a costume. And do you know what Erik said? "Do you know what would be funny? Desi (our 1-year-old) can be Professor X!" It's actually a great idea. We can push him in the stroller when we trick-or-treat and make the stroller look like a wheelchair with big X's for wheels, put him in a suit, and he's already pretty much bald. It's going to be great. If there is trick-or-Covid-treat. 

2. This upcoming weekend we are going to stay at a hotel with a swimming pool for a little "staycation." We got two adjoining rooms so that hopefully we can put the kids to bed and enjoy a little alone time. That's wishful thinking, so we will see. 

3. I finally got my used mountain bike working and will test it out on some trails this weekend with my good friends Choo Choo Train and Night Train.

4. Today I took Erik to school with the jogging stroller for about a 1.2 mile run, and then did another 3 or so miles or so, pushing an empty stroller for a grand total of 4.38 miles. But then I was able to push it around the grocery store and carry groceries in it, so it felt worth having it. When I went to pick him up I walked the jogging stroller up there with his scooter and helmet in it, and we walked all the way to the library and back home, logging in another 3.72 mile walk for me. My feet are killing me now, so no running tomorrow. 

5. One of my fantasy football leagues has a professional wrestling theme this season. This is a dream come true for me, but I'm a little disappointed in myself for not coming up with a good team name. So far my finalists are The Diamond Dallas Cowboys or The Dog Faced Gremlins. I'm not in love with either. Help me out if you can!

That's all I got, friends. Hope all is well with all of you. Hit me with a random, random, random update in the comments. 

Nothing!! I have nothing to share!!!!

I feel like the guy at the end of this clip going, "Nothing. I have nothing to sell." I actually have nothing to say here, but I'm doing it anyway. One of the ways I stopped blogging was by saying I had nothing to write about. I'm just going to start typing and see what shakes loose.

So I have a friend who got a mountain bike recently, and he started getting up early and going for a long ride before work. My thought was I would buy my own and then join him some morning. I don't know if you know this, but bicycles are one of those COVID items that are really tough to come by. I'm 6'2", so I can't buy just any old bike. What I was looking for is around a size 21" frame, but some people selling the bikes have no idea what the frame size is. I took shared bikes all the way into the city late last night to try out someone's bike, and I looked like Debo from Friday trying to ride that tiny thing. I was like the bear on the unicycle at the circus. 

This was me. Only with a lot less upper body strength. 

Then today I found one that was "vintage" but finally the size I needed. I got to the guy's house, and it appeared to be an aged 50 plus man living with his mother. The gear shifters were something I had never come across, and this is because the bike was from the late 80's or early 90's by a brand I had never heard of. It looked like an Ocean Pacific t-shirt. Ultimately I was desperate to get on those mountain bike trails, so I bought it. Him and his mom said that if I had any trouble with it to come on back. 

(The font and colors are actually a lot like this. And the internet says this shirt is from 1991, which is about when the bike is from. I'll show you the bike if it comes out of the shop and if the guy in the shop says it's worth fixing/keeping.)

A mile or two down the rode, after stopping at a stoplight, I put my foot on the pedal and heard a snap. I figured the chain had just come loose. Nope. The chain had snapped in two. I googled the nearest bike shop and walked it quite a ways only to find the guy who works there outside talking to two different customers, saying they would have to leave their bikes and he would likely get to them early next week. What could I do? I wasn't going to walk it to another shop miles from there. I know the dude and his mom said to bring it by if I had issues, but that's crazy. If they sold me a lemon, well, they got me. 

Not only that but during the brief time that the bike was working I stopped to buy a new $60 lock for it only to find out that Mrs. Noisewater had a spare one at home that she said I could use. 

Being out in the heat all day with stuff going wrong had me frustrated and tired, but making homemade pizzas with the family and pouring a tall vodka and ginger ale certainly helped. 

How you doing, Seven Readers? Have you been trying to get something for yourself during quarantine? 

 Well, Erik had his first day of school today. We got him in a school that is doing in-person learning during the pandemic, so it's a little scary. But there are tons of policies in place where we feel pretty good about it. Erik wasn't the least bit nervous. His mom took him, and she said he pretty much just said bye and ran inside. After that I took him to pick out a new backpack and got him an ice cream for no reason.

Last night there was a small gathering of friends going on, so I rode my bike over there for a bit. I had a beer or two and said I would try to get back later after putting the kids to bed. My time away from the party could not have been more than about 2 or 3 hours, but people had gotten themselves into a completely different state in that short time. There was an unopened cake in a box, and one gal said, "I so want to just dip my hand in there and take a bite. F' it. I'm going to do it." She just waltzed over there and dug out a huge fist full that amounted to more than half of the cake and just bit and licked it off her hands as we all laughed our asses off. It was a lot like how Desmond ate his birthday cake at his first birthday party on Sunday.

How about you, Seven Readers? You got a bucket list weird thing you have always wanted to do at a party? Or just anything else you want to comment upon?

Our family camping trip last weekend was a lot of fun. It's the second time we have gone to this place. We like it because it's well maintained, quiet, and you can walk to the beach. Aside from the mosquitoes biting us at the campsite and the horse flies biting us at the beach, I would say everything went without a hitch. 

Erik always wants to stay up late enough to see all the stars. He always makes it late enough to see about half of them, and then a mere minutes after he falls asleep there are double. He did his darndest this time with a bunch of glow items to play with, but eventually he said, "I'm so tired. I'm sorry I couldn't stay up late enough." I reassured him that I was proud of him for listening to his body, and he was under no obligation to stay up any later than he wanted or needed to. He's an awesome kid.

The other day I played a bunch of tennis for probably the first time in at least 15 years. I met up with a couple of friends that I was playing online team trivia with. One guy I know pretty well, but for the other guy it was the first time I met him in person. He is really cool and gave me two really good tips that I'm going to use.

1. He had tires on his bike that don't require any air in them. To me it would be worth it to put those on to never have to worry about a flat or puncture, and to never have to go through the time of checking the PSI and pumping up before a ride. 

2. He also shared with me that he is coming up on one year sober. He said that he has had trouble supplementing one addiction for another, and his nicotine consumption went way up, sometimes in the form of Snus nicotine pouches. So, he found tea bags that you put under your lip, and the only drug in there is caffeine. I must admit that I throw a snus in from time to time, and I know it's a horrible habit. I'll be at a baseball game, for instance, and then decide at a certain inning that I'll just snus up for the remainder of the game to cut off the booze intake. But that strategy would turn out to be a terrible one if I ended up getting mouth, throat, or any other kind of cancer as a result. So, I ordered up a four pack of tea packets to try out. 

The tennis itself was mostly pretty terrible, but we had some pretty solid volleys from time-to-time, had a lot of fun, and got some good outdoor exercise. The courts have some cracks and weeds growing out of the ground, but courts few people know about that are right on the lake with this view are an amazing find.

What is really funny is how there are apartment buildings just beyond the fence on the other side, so if you accidentally launch a homerun (something you don't want) over the fence, you can land your ball right on someone's balcony or porch. Those folks probably never have to buy their own tennis balls. 

Tomorrow night I'll be heading out for a "guy's night" over by Choo Choo Train's place. It will be the first time all of us guys have been in the same place together since the Covid hit. I have Desi's first birthday party the next morning, so I plan on implementing the tea pouch technique at a certain hour so that I'm not a hungover sack of doo-doo at my own kid's party. 

Fare thee well, Seven Readers. 

 This week's film discussion group is about Point Break (1991). I was shocked to see this choice, but I guess my friend who runs the group wanted to do a female directed movie and knows the woman who did it. I did my homework today and watched it for the first time since probably 1995. Here are some thoughts I had.

1. Keanu Reeves plays Johnny Utah, an undercover FBI agent who played quarterback for Ohio State in the Rose Bowl a few years prior. His first case is going undercover to bust surfers who rob banks disguised as "The Ex Presidents," Reagan, Carter, Nixon, and LBJ. They skipped Ford, so maybe it's the four most recent elected presidents? That just wouldn't be as catchy.

2. There are at least two hair metal songs on the soundtrack, Ratt and L.A. Guns. The movie came out in 1991. Had it come out in 1992 there would have been zero hair metal songs. That's how swiftly Kurt Cobain and the rest of the grunge bands eradicated those bands from the face of the planet. But you have some crossover in the film from one band who would take things over because Anthony Kiedes from the Red Hot Chili Peppers appears as a member of another criminal surfing gang who would be mistaken for the bank robbing ones. There is a scene where he is shooting up, and he probably didn't need a whole lot of direction to know how to do that properly.

3. Another cameo is by Tom Sizemore. Remember him? He had a very promising career and then I think he chose heroin over acting. Two heroin points in a row - not intentional. The last I heard from him he was romantically linked to Heidi Fleiss, The Hollywood Madam. To his credit, his acting was excellent in the scene that he is in. 

4. I also really liked Gary Bussey as Johnny Utah's partner. You forget just how good an actor he was because of what a parody of himself he became in his later years. Watch him in Lethal Weapon to see just what a bad ass he was in his day. 

5. It is a film that is exciting, it has some incredibly shot and choreographed action sequences, and then you have Reeves pretty terrible acting and some completely implausible leaps of faith that one must take. Once you just have a good laugh at the acting and remember that none of this things could really happen, it's a hell of a good time. In fact, I think I would argue that it is the best bad movie of all time. 

6. There is a scene where a bad guy is trying to shove Keanu's face into a running lawnmower, his skin less than an inch away, and it is done so well that I was squirming and screaming, even though I knew his chissled jawline would never make contact. 

7. One of the other great sequences comes when Johnny Utah is chasing Bodhi, the Ex Presidents' leader, who wears the Reagan mask, portrayed beautifully by the late Patrick Swazye. Bodhi is in the process of lighting the getaway car on fire to dispose of evidence via making a torch out of the pump. When Utah tackles him, Bodhi is lit on fire and is running away from the FBI agent he most certainly recognizes as that man he thought was his friend. After putting the fire out on his tux while running, he then runs through a series of houses and backyards, a lot like Ferris Bueller, only higher stakes. At one point Utah chases him through a back door and the second he gets out of the front door, Bodhi chucks an angry dog in his face. I mean, it's just a goddamn fun movie, people.

8. What ever happened to Lori Petty? She plays the love interest of Utah, one of Bodhi's former girlfriends who teaches Utah to surf and introduces him to Bodhi and his gang. I don't think she ever had the leading lady status because she never really had the classic leading lady beauty, but she works well in this film. Of course, everyone looks like an acting champ opposite Reaves. But here's the thing, would we want anyone but Reaves in the role of Utah? No way. Once you have seen it once or twice, some of those poorly delivered lines become perfect. Anyway, I never heard from Lori after League of Their Own and Tank Girl. I remember Ice Tea portraying a rat faced guy in Tank Girl, right?

9. The things that were hard for me to get passed as a teenager and remain crazy to me as an old dude are the ones where Utah and the Ex Presidents continue to hang out when they know that they are bank robbers and the undercover guy trying to bust them, respectively. And then when Bodhi throws his gun across the plane and jumps out of the airplane, Utah jumps after him knowing he has no parachute of his own! He just grabs his gun, jumps, and glides over to Bodhi and latches onto him. Now that's really wanting to get your man at any cost. Give that man a promotion!

10. And it ends with the classic move of the cop throwing his badge, in this case into the ocean. We don't know if Bodhi dies from that monster wave he has been waiting his whole life for, we don't know what Utah will do next career wise, and none of that really matters. Just cue that Ratt song that never became that one last hit they would need to pour into their savings when Cobain crushed their careers, and role credits. 

What say you, Seven Readers? Ever seen the movie? Any other insights you have? Any other topics that you think I should bring up in tonight's discussion? Do you like surfing? If so, is it as spiritual of an event as Swayze has so perfectly convinced me, worth robbing banks, killing people for? 

 Went to the zoo today