Month: September 2018

This weekend, my wife went out of town to hang out with a few hundred people, dancing and drinking beer.  She will do this again next weekend.  And the weekend after that, and so on for about six weeks.

My wife has a problem.

She belongs to a German band.

No, that is not a euphemism for anything.  She actually plays trombone in a band that performs German music.  She has played with them for a couple of years now, and they get hired regularly on weekends in September and October for Oktoberfest events.  She will travel all over the Sacramento region (and further on occasion) to play Roll Out the Barrel for a crowd of drunken revelers over and over again until it is time to chase everybody out of the venue and mop up the vomit on the floor.

To be fair, they play many different songs during the evening; they have quite an impressive repertoire.  It’s just that it all sounds like Roll Out the Barrel to me.  There are only so many sounds you can get out of an accordion played with brass accompaniment.  It gets a little repetitive after a while, especially when you get a few beers in you.

They don’t just play German music while wearing street clothes, either.  They dress the part.  My wife grabs her trombone and heads out the door every Saturday in her wide skirts, fluffy white underwear, push-up half-vest, and open white shirt.  Yup.  My wife is the St. Paulie Girl.

If only I could get her to wear the outfit and stay home for a weekend.  But, I won’t dwell on that since I’m trying to keep this blog PG.

Generally, I don’t go with her to these events.  The reason I stay home every weekend instead of going to the performances is two-fold.  First, I don’t really like German music.  Second, I can’t stand German music.

When I say, “German music,” let me clarify that I am not referring to the compositions of Bach and Beethoven as well as dozens (perhaps hundreds) of others of classically trained musicians.  Germany has a long, rich history of amazing composers and artists that all contributed a great deal of beauty and incredible music to Europe and the rest of the world.  From the 1600’s through the late 1800’s, Germany was the pulse of the classical movement and the go-to place for devotees of the arts.

And then some son-of-a-bitch invented the Polka.

Now, before you start firing off e-mails telling me that Germany didn’t invent the Polka, I am aware of that fact.  It was born somewhere in Eastern Bohemia, created by Czech peasants.  It was probably created by a bunch of brooding teenagers with long hair that wanted to torment their parents.  The older generation probably complained and told their kids to stop making so much noise, and the kids would say stuff like, “Mom!  You just don’t understand my art.”  Then they would throw their accordions on the floor and lock themselves in their rooms using those big metal keys that take two hands to turn.

But I digress.

Although the Germans did not invent Polka, they embraced it like a baby embraces its mother’s breast.  Like a cancer, it spread through the body of central Europe eating away at the healthy music until there was nothing left but Polka.  Europe, sickened and wasting away, tried everything to cure itself, but the Polka was too aggressive.  Too invasive.  By the mid 1900’s the disease … sorry, music, had even spread to the United States.

More recently, Polka has gone partially into remission, but it is not completely gone.  There was a brief reoccurance in the 1980’s and 90’s, thanks to a comedian with an accordion named Weird Al Yankovic.  Why he named his accordion Weird Al, I’ll never know.  (*Sorry, obligatory Groucho Marx joke*)

And here we are today.  With proper medication and a healthy lifestyle, Polka can be managed, but there are still unavoidable flare-ups in the early Fall.  Which brings us back to my wife and her merry band of polkateers.

I don’t mind that she leaves me every weekend for two months.  She genuinely seems to enjoy it and I want her to be happy.  She can run off with her rowdy, beer-drinking friends and play the devil’s music; I will just hang out at home and celebrate October the way it was originally intended to be celebrated: by eating junk food and watching horror movies on television.  And, I am comfortable knowing that when she is done carousing with the Austrian rabble, my wife will come back to me.

When the sun rises on Sunday morning, she will wake up in her seedy hotel room with a hangover and a vague memory of what happened the night before.  Too ashamed to risk making eye contact with anyone, she will slink out of the hotel, spend a few hours wandering through the parking lot looking for her car, then drive herself home, where she will find me waiting patiently for her return.

I just hope she washes her hands thoroughly before she comes back home.  I don’t watch to catch a bad case of Polka.

In our current atmosphere of mistrust and social divisiveness, I have recently felt compelled to take a good hard look at my own personal beliefs; a spiritual journey of discovery, if you will.  What I found might surprise you.

Or, probably not.

The dictionary definition of prejudice is: “a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.”  And – although I would argue that they are not completely without reason – I must admit that I have my own biases and irrational views about certain groups of people.  There is one group in particular that I have found I dislike intensely, and despite my attempts to be more accepting, I still can’t stand being around them.

I call them “others.”

Who are others?  Short answer: If they are “not me,” then they are “others.”

Others are terrible people, and they have no goals in life except to make me miserable.  I try to stay away from others, but they always seem to turn up no matter where I go.  They are everywhere.  If I drive somewhere, others are on the roadway trying to crash into my car or merging into my lane just to slow me down.  If I go to the grocery store, they park their carts in the middle of the aisles so I can’t get by.

When I go to the movies, others show up.  Not just the blockbusters and new releases, either.  I go to movies that have already been in the theaters for months and are currently being screened in a janitor’s closet with three swivel chairs to sit in.  But there is always an other in there with me.  Usually talking on his cell phone or unwrapping candy he snuck into the building in his pockets.

Others find me in gas stations, restaurants, stores, and even public bathrooms.  Apparently, they have an amazing communications network, because they always know where to find me, no matter where I attempt to hide.  It is as if they have some kind of psychic ability that tells them where I am and how they can best irritate the crap out of me.  It can’t be coincidence.

Last year, I took a trip to Norway.  I figured if I left the country I might finally get a brief respite, but no such luck.  The plane I took to get there was absolutely packed with others.  And, when I landed, guess what I found.   Yup.  They all spoke a different language and pretended not to know me, but that didn’t fool me for a second.  I knew who they were as soon as I saw them.

Others.

There is no avoiding them.  And, believe me, I’ve tried.

People come over to my house all the time and comment how much they like the pond I have outside in the front yard.  They think it is decorative and pretty, and they ask me why I decided to build it.  I never tell them the truth.  I never tell them that it isn’t really a pond at all, but rather an incomplete moat.  I had to stop digging it when I foolishly left my blueprints for the drawbridge and portcullis sitting on my desk where my wife found them.  I think there were also some notes on the front page about the pros and cons of crocodiles vs. sharks.  She made me stop the project immediately.

Now, we have a pond.

And ducks.

My wife is an other, by the way.  There is no disputing that.  She clearly fits the category, however I have had to make allowances for her.  Just like any good parasite needs a host, I need her.  She completes me.

To clarify, I do not mean that sentence to sound like some sappy movie, pick-up line.  I literally mean that she keeps me from falling apart and shattering into little mental pieces.  She frequently reminds me to eat, to bathe, and to occasionally leave the house.  She is also the one that, when I take what is left of my fragile sanity and toss it in the garbage can, takes it out, dusts it off, and places it back on the shelf where it belongs.

Without her around constantly telling me to stop acting like a complete psycho, I would probably end up living alone, boarded up in a cabin in the woods, and writing my manifesto.

Or, maybe a blog?  Well … let’s not delve too deeply into that one.

As far as the kids go, they only get a pass because they are literally part me.  They are, however, also part other, so they are walking on thin ice most of the time.  And, now that they are both going off to college in the fall, they will probably be more like others than ever before.  It has already started happening with the older one.  She is more other every year and, if she is not careful, she is going to come home one day to find all of her belongings in the moat … er, I mean, the pond.

Anyway, it is clear to me that others are not going to go away anytime soon.  After all, there are way more of them than me.  I have to learn to accept this and, although they don’t deserve it, I need to be more tolerant of their presence.  It won’t be easy, but I know that it is the right thing to do.

At least until I figure out how to keep sharks alive in fresh water.

As a parent, is it acceptable to favor one child over another, or should you always hate them equally?

I have two daughters, and if I am being honest, the one I like most (or least) changes with the time of the day.  My favorite child is usually the one who has gone the longest without talking to me, since most conversations in my house end up with me yelling at a kid for saying or doing something stupid.

Both of my girls are in college now, so I don’t see them quite as often as I used to.  This is probably good for my blood pressure, but I have to admit that I do miss them at times.  About a week ago, we were all together at home; the girls had come to visit for the weekend.  I gave EM1 a hug and told her that I loved her and missed her while she was away.  EM2 immediately interrupted and told me, “Hey, that’s exactly what you just said to me.”

I explained that I loved them and missed them both equally.

EM2 glared at me and said, “If everybody is special, then nobody is.”

Then she asked me if she and her sister fell out of a boat and there was only one life preserver, who would get it?  I told her that I would be keeping the life preserver for myself, because if both of them were in the water at the same time it was highly likely that I was the one that pushed them overboard.

I don’t understand this competition they seem to have regarding which one of them is my favorite.  They have spent their entire lives making it very clear to me that my opinion on everything else means absolutely nothing to them.  So, why this one area?  And it has been going on for a very long time.

When EM1 was five years old and her sister was two, she asked me, “Daddy, am I your favorite?”

I told her, “Sweetheart, you weren’t my favorite for the three years you were an only child.  Why would that change, now?”

Actually, I didn’t say that to her.  I wasn’t about to waste such an awesome putdown on a child too young to fully understand it.  I saved that harsh reality for years later when she was a teenager.  It was much more satisfying that way.

More recently, EM2 walked up to me while I was fixing myself some lunch in the kitchen.  She helped herself to a bite of my sandwich without asking, then took a sip of my soda.  Still chewing, she said with a straight face, “I know I’m your favorite.  You don’t have to say anything.  I’m cuter, and she never listens to you.”

“You never listen to me, either,” I replied.

While looking at a text on her phone, EM2 said, “What?”  Then she walked away, still holding my soda.

It is extremely hard to decide which child you like more when you aren’t completely certain you like either one of them at all.  And I know they don’t like me either.  On a recent camping trip, we were warned by the camp hosts that there had been bears in the area.  EM1 had even seen one of them while she was driving up to our camp site.  She told us all about the black bear that had run out in front of her car only about a mile away from where we were currently located.

That night, both girls proceeded to rummage through the snacks we had purchased for the weekend and leave an assortment of cookies and pepperoni sticks on the ground around the space where I was sleeping.  I don’t consider that type of behavior careless.  I would argue that it is attempted murder.  The fact I survived until morning instead of being ingested by a hungry bear was sheer luck.

So, which child should be my favorite?  The one that left the least amount of food next to my head while attempting to lure a bear into our camp?  I don’t think so.

Maybe I should tell them that my favorite will be the one that moves out of the house first.  Or, my favorite is the one that gets a job and starts paying her own bills.  The problem with that is the high likelihood that neither one of those things will ever happen.  Both girls seem very determined to stick around until the money and food run out.

Perhaps I should just add an addendum to my will that says, “My favorite child is the one that didn’t end up killing me.”  So, the next time one of them askes me which one is my favorite, I can tell them that I wrote the answer down, and they will get to read it after I die.

This way, we can all have something to look forward to.

They will have their answer, and I will be somewhere peaceful and quiet where I won’t have to listen to them argue about whose fault it was.

Recently, I had a rather unpleasant experience in an outhouse while camping.  I wasn’t really surprised because … well, … because it was an outhouse.  But it did get me to wondering, are there ever any pleasant experiences in an outhouse?  These buildings are created for the convenience of people who need a bathroom in places that generally do not have such facilities available, but the location is often the only thing convenient about them.

To be clear, I am not talking about the bathrooms you find in parks and public spaces in the middle of your average metropolitan areas.  I am referring to the rustic, medieval torture chambers sporadically placed in out-of-the-way campsites and along sparsely used hiking trails.  The kind of place you stand outside and stare at for fifteen minutes trying to decide if you should go in or just drop your pants where you are and take care of business.

Most of the campsites I have been to use the “open pit” style of bathrooms.  This is simply a brick or wood building erected over an open septic system with a couple of seats propped up over holes in the floor.  These seats are situated so as to allow patrons to make direct deposits into the pit and, if you’re lucky, not fall in.  The smell is generally awful and, if the pit has not been pumped out recently, the view through an open toilet lid is definitely less than scenic.

Because the receptacle is just a big hole in the floor, it is the perfect breeding ground for flies and other insects that feed on waste.  From personal experience, I will tell you that there is nothing quite so disturbing as sitting on a toilet trying to relax while listening to the angry buzz of a thousand insects engaged in a sloppy orgy directly beneath you.  Except perhaps when one of those insects decides to launch itself straight up and tap you on the bare bum.  Fortunately, because most people avoid such places, there probably won’t be anyone around to hear your scream.

On very rare occasions, the bathroom will have running water, a closed septic system, and an actual flushable toilet.  Although, for some reason I am unable to fathom, most of these bathrooms attract people that are either unable or unwilling to flush a toilet.  The bowl is usually full to the brim and overflowing onto the ground with … well, no need to get quite that specific.

On a side note, I can’t help but wonder sometimes if what is on the floor is actually overflow, or if somebody was just so drunk they thought, “Hmm, I made it inside the building.  I guess that’s good enough.”

The toilet paper supplied in the average outhouse (if, in fact any is supplied at all) is also an absolute treat to the rugged outdoorsman.  Some paper manufacturer has managed to create the comfort and softness of a high-grade, finely-grained sand paper, and combine it with the durable absorbency of a quality waxed paper.  The stuff is absolutely amazing.  And that same manufacturer apparently convinced the owners of every campsite I have ever visited to buy only their particular crappy product (pun intended).  But the truly incredible feature of this toilet paper is the fact that they managed to make is so incredibly thin, if you don’t fold it at least three or four times before using it, it is guaranteed to tear and leave you with a finger firmly embedded exactly where you did not want it.

And speaking of needing to wash your hands, let’s discuss the faucets next.  The last outhouse bathroom I utilized had a sink with running water, which is definitely a plus.  However, the faucet was operated by a little, spring-loaded, twirly thing on top.  In order to turn the water on, you had to turn the twirly thing with one hand, but the moment you let go, it turned itself back off.  I can understand that this probably saves on water since nobody can walk away from the sink and accidentally leave the water running, however this also requires that one hand be on the faucet at all times.

Think about this situation for a moment: one hand on the faucet and the other in the water.  Release the faucet, switch hands and repeat the process.  How exactly are you cleaning your hands when you transfer whatever was on your right hand onto the faucet, then grab it with your other hand?  Not to mention whatever the hell the last guy left on there when he “washed” his hands.  There is a reason that normal people wash with both hands under the water at the same time, and yet this set up was designed to completely defeat that process.  Maybe the builders figured that since you are camping in the great outdoors you might not mind a little e. coli poisoning to go with your S’mores.

Despite the drawbacks of having to use an outhouse, I still enjoy camping and I am planning on taking as many trips as possible while the weather remains hospitable.  I have discovered that copious amounts of alcohol make the experience much more pleasant.  Although, drinking requires me to make more frequent journeys into that funhouse of poop, it also makes it less likely that I will remember what I did while I was in there.

Or where I did it.