May 2019 – Deep Dark Thoughts

Packed House

Last year, I wrote a blog about moving away from home. The article, Empty Nest, was about my own experiences of going off to college, but I wrote it because I was thinking about what my life would be like in the coming year when my own children went away and left me behind.

What I have more recently discovered is that it is pretty much impossible to have an empty nest when you have effectively raised a bunch of Homing Pigeons. They are never truly gone. They are just lurking around the corner waiting to see what kind of food I’m going to put out on the table. Like buzzards circling overhead, as soon as they see an opportunity, they swoop back in to take whatever it is that caught their attention.

That’s a lot of bird analogies in just one paragraph. Oh, well. Moving on.

Last week, I drove to Sonoma to move EM1 out of her apartment and bring her back home. I was able to get most of her stuff into the truck, but there will need to be a second trip to gather a few last pieces of furniture before her lease runs out and the landlord tosses it all to the curb. (Although, I’ve seen EM1’s furniture and the curb would not be a bad place for it.)

Two days later, I drove to Sacramento State University to move EM2 out of her dorm. I thought we got everything, but it turns out she forgot to grab her saxophone from her locker in the Music Department building. The saxophone costs three times the total value of everything else she owns, yet somehow that is the one thing she forgets to bring home. Sometimes I wonder who raised that kid.

Now, and for the next three months, I will never again have a moment’s peace. There will always be a kid or two parked on my couch, eating my food, and watching music videos and K-dramas. Not to mention all their excess furniture and stuff I have to trip over trying to move from one room to another. It looks like a yard sale that got relocated into the house.

I have tried asking them to do some chores. There is always shopping, laundry, and yardwork to do around here. But, EM2 looked me straight in the eyes and said, “But, Dad, it’s my summer vacation. I worked really hard in school this year and I need a break.”

I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh or get mad. I settled for turning red for a few minutes and stammering at the cat about ungrateful children and their total disregard of reality.

When I told EM2 that the real world did not have summer vacations, that when she got a job, she would need to go to work twelve whole months out of every year, she nodded at me and smiled as if I was on her side.

“Exactly,” she said. “So, before I go to work, I have to enjoy the time off while I have it. Thanks for understanding, Dad.” Then she went back to watching some boy band on her cell phone singing in Korean.

It wouldn’t be so terrible except for the fact that while they are on “vacation,” I am shopping, cooking and cleaning up for four people again, two of whom are complete slobs (I’ll let you guess which two). I am not allowed to use my own tv, I can’t keep snacks in the pantry for longer than eight seconds, and although I get yelled at if I go into either of the girls’ bedrooms, somehow I can’t get a moment of privacy even when I try to hide in the bathroom.

I know what you’re thinking right now. I’m doing an awful lot of complaining about having my kids back home with me. Sure, there are some adjustments to make, but aren’t there good things about having the girls around?

Well, if there are, I haven’t found them yet. Recently, I asked EM1 to run to the store and pick up a couple items that we needed for dinner. She came back home with three bags of garbage that she paid for with my credit card, stuck it in the pantry after telling me I wasn’t allowed to touch any of it, and then went to her room, leaving the items I had asked for on the kitchen counter.

I suppose I should be grateful she went to the store when I asked her to. After all, it’s progress over the personally hurtful answers I usually get to such requests.

In the distant future, when (if?) the girls finally move away and get homes of their own, get jobs and become self-sufficient, there may come a time that I look back on these days fondly. I might actually miss them and wish they were still home with me. I might call them up on the phone, just to hear their voices, or drive over to their places to have dinner or just spend a quiet evening with them. There might come a time that I’m sad they’re gone.

I mean, I’m not holding my breath or anything, but stranger things have happened.

For now, I’m stuck with two leeches fastened to my sofa while they enjoy their “vacation.”

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Enough is Enough

When my youngest daughter graduated from high school, I honestly thought that I was done with all the school events, fundraisers, and parental participation nonsense. As I sent EM2 off to college, I told myself that the kids are (mostly) adults now and don’t need dad showing up at band concerts and football games or volunteering to chaperone school trips. I can just hang out at home and answer the occasional text message from one of the kids saying they were still alive, and could I please send money.

Turns out I was deluding myself.

It ain’t over by a long shot.

Recently, I found myself attending a concert at Sacramento State University for the sole reason of being there to support my kid. I can’t think of any other reason that I would ever have gone to such an event. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that the concert was bad or there was anything wrong with it, it’s simply not something I want to go watch. Ever.

I have attended school concerts and recitals without fail ever since EM2 was in middle school. Every couple of months there has been another event my wife has dragged me to because, “we have to support our children.”

I’m tired and I just want it to stop.

Yes, of course I want to be a supportive parent for my kids. I was just hoping that now that they are away at college, I could be supportive from a long way away. You know, like on my own living room couch, watching television and drinking something heavily alcoholic.

I would be happy to pick up a phone and tell them how much I love and care about them, then hand the call off to their mother, since she genuinely seems to like talking to those two moochers.

When my wife told me that she had purchased tickets to go see EM2’s concert a couple weeks ago, I told her that I thought we had already gone to enough concerts and school events through high school. I asked why we should continue to torment ourselves while she was at college.

My wife tried to convince me that the college concert performances would be much better than the high school ones and that I would enjoy them much more.

Spoiler alert: she was wrong.

In fact, I would argue that the college performances are worse. For example, high school band concerts are free. My wife and I had to pay to attend my daughter’s most recent concert at the college. It wasn’t a lot, true, but it also wasn’t free. In my mind, I believe free is the better of the two options.

Also, the college concerts are much longer than the high school performances. In high school, the teachers and the school administration have lives and family they want to go home to. Apparently, in college, nobody has anywhere they need to be, so a concert that runs two and a half hours is no big deal.

My wife argued that the college students are much better musicians than the high school students. This may be true, but I don’t think that is much of a benefit. It’s still an amateur orchestra.

Imagine you are in a room listening to two crying babies. It is possible to make a logical, objective argument that one of those babies is much better at crying than the other. But just because one is clearly better than the other doesn’t mean that anybody actually wants to listen to either one of them.

This is pretty much how I feel about orchestra music.

And by the way, regarding this particular concert, all of the above arguments are completely moot since the college invited a high school orchestra to join them for the performance. So, I had to pay to get in, the concert was much longer than normal, AND the musicians weren’t any better than high school students since many of them were high school students!

During the performance, I kept having flashbacks to all the concerts I had attended in my daughter’s middle school and high school gymnasiums. It was like a musical PTSD episode.

To be fair, I’m sure there were many people in attendance at the concert that were happy to be there and greatly enjoyed the music that was performed. I believe my wife might even be one of those people. I, however, was merely trying to be supportive and make the best of a bad situation.

When it was over, I hugged my daughter and told her she was the best musician in the entire school and all the other kids should go home hanging their heads in shame at being so badly outclassed. I complimented her and praised her, and she had no idea that I would rather have been chewing glass than attending the concert.

Because that’s what a good father does.

I will do the same thing at her next concert. And the one after that. And the one after that. And, so on until I die.

Which, with my luck, will probably happen while I’m on my way home from a concert.

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Behind The Wheel

Apparently, miracles do really happen. Moses parted the red sea. Jesus walked on water. And now, after nineteen and a half years, my daughter finally got her driver’s license.

When I picked her up and took her to the DMV for her appointment, getting her license was not a forgone conclusion. She has had her permit for a little over twelve years (okay, eighteen months, but still) but she hadn’t had many opportunities to get behind the wheel and practice driving. Knowing the rules of the road isn’t enough, she still needed to be familiar with how to steer a car.

EM2 is a bright kid, but you can’t outthink a speeding semi when it’s travelling in the wrong lane and headed right for you.

We arrived at the DMV and were instructed to drive our car around to the back where behind-the-wheel assessments were taking place. I was told to remain in the car with EM2 until her instructor showed up and asked me to step out. We pulled up to the curb behind the building and waited behind another car already in line.

A man stepped out of the building and approached the first car in line. He was a pleasant looking guy with completely white hair. I don’t think he was that old, maybe in his thirties, but I imagine getting into the passenger seat and letting panicky teenagers drive you around town all day long might tend to prematurely age a person.

If I had to make a list of the absolute worst jobs in the world, jobs I would never want to do, conducting behind-the-wheel assessment tests would definitely be on that list. All day long, you survive one harrowing trip after another. The moment you escape from one poorly-piloted, metal death box, you have to climb into another one.

I imagine it must be like working in the military as a mine sweeper. You take every step hoping that you can locate a potential problem before it blows up under your feet. Eventually, you’re going to miss one.

I think I would rather be handed a box full of grenades and told, “We think these are duds, but just in case, why don’t you take a hammer and bang on each one of the them to make sure.” At least I wouldn’t see the end coming.

EM2 looked at the kid with the white hair and said she hoped that he would be her instructor. He seemed nice, and she was concerned that if whoever evaluated her was intimidating, she might get too nervous and fail the test. It was at this time, a big, unhappy looking dude, about six feet, five inches tall and weighing almost three hundred pounds walked up and told me to get out of the car.

If I hadn’t already been expecting something like that to happen, I would have thought we were being carjacked.

The guy didn’t smile once as he introduced himself and told me to go away. EM2 looked at me with a panicked expression, and I just shrugged. “It will be fine,” I told her, knowing full well that I was lying.

I stood on the sidewalk and watched as EM2 was asked to demonstrate her knowledge of the various levers and buttons in the car. At one point, the evaluator saw me watching and said, “You’re too close to the car, you need to move further away.”

I suppose he didn’t want me close enough to talk to EM2 during the initial phase of her test. Although, I don’t know what he though I might say to her.

“Make sure you don’t hit another car when you drive out of the parking lot. We don’t want that to happen twice, today!”

Or maybe, “If you run over a pedestrian, make sure you move the car off of the sidewalk before the police show up.”

Two minutes later, the evaluator climbed into the car and EM2 drove them out of the DMV parking lot. I sat down on one of the most uncomfortable, concrete benches I have ever had the misfortune to experience and waited. Less than fifteen minutes later, EM2 was back and, most importantly, the car was still in one piece and the same color all over.

The evaluator walked away, looking upset. But, to be fair, he looked that way before he got in EM2’s car, so I didn’t worry too much about it.

My daughter walked up to me and said, “He told me he had some concerns,” then she started to cry.

Okay, that was a bad sign.

When she calmed down, she told me that she had passed the test, but she had missed every point she could possibly miss and not fail. She showed me her score sheet and, sure enough, there were a lot of red marks. But, she passed!

So, ummm … yay?

As we walked back to the car, EM2 handed me the car keys and told me, “Here. I don’t want to drive anymore, today. Can we go get something to eat?”

As I drove us to a restaurant to celebrate (I suppose that is still the right word), I told her she should have waited one more year before taking her test.

“Because I would have had more practice?” she asked.

“No,” I told her. “Because after your test, I could have bought you a drink. You could probably use one, right now.”

I know I certainly did.

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Roughing It

It took a little longer than I thought it would, but I finally got out for my first camping trip of 2019. My wife and I had originally planned to do some camping in January and February, but due to some truly remarkable thunderstorms moving through northern California, we opted to forfeit our reservation deposits and stay home.

Of course, both times, despite the ominous weather forecasts, not a drop of rain fell during the dates we were supposed to be gone. We stayed home and complained nonstop about the sunshine and perfectly cloudless skies.

For this most recent trip, when we made our reservations, we were determined to go camping regardless of weather forecasts, wildfires, bears, or whatever natural disasters threatened.

To hedge our bets a little bit, we decided to go someplace that could only be marginally considered a campground. We ended up taking our trailer to the Jackson Rancheria Casino RV park. The “campsite” was outfitted with leveled concrete pads, manicured, real grass lawns, a nearby general store, and full power hookups. There was even a swimming pool and game room attached to the main lodge of the RV park. It wasn’t all comfort and luxury, however. We had our difficulties to content with. For instance, the first night that we were at the park we discovered that we didn’t have any direct streaming capability on our television set, and we were forced to watch basic cable like a couple of wild animals.

And, there were the regular hardships one has to endure while camping, of course: The shower in our trailer is a little cramped. The hiking path around the campgrounds needed to be repaved. Our 70-year old neighbors made quite a lot of noise, partying and carrying on until well past 8:00 PM. And, I was woken up early one morning when the lawn sprinklers turned on next to our trailer.

You know, the usual wilderness stuff.

No uncontrolled fires were allowed at the campgrounds either, but that was no problem. I just fired up our portable propane firepit, poured my wife and I a few (too many?) glasses of wine, and voila! Instant campfire. At least until the bugs came out at sunset, then we went back inside to watch tv.

For food, we brought with us a wide assortment of cookies, crackers, alcohol, chips, alcohol, sodas, water, alcohol, and two pounds of pre-cooked bacon. Why two pounds? Because we were going to be there for a whole three days and, despite our tv situation, we aren’t savages.

Whenever we got the craving for actual food, we had to head for the casino. The main building was too far away to walk, but luckily for us there was a shuttle bus that drove through the RV park every fifteen minutes to pick up people who wanted to go gamble. There aren’t too many campgrounds that offer shuttle service. Most places can’t afford to run twenty-four hour bus service to move you from one cluster of trees in the middle of nowhere to another cluster of trees slightly further away. It doesn’t make a lot of financial sense.

This was a casino, however. They don’t make a lot of money from the people that just stay in their trailers all weekend. They needed a method to relocate you and your cash into the seat of a slot machine with as little effort on your part as possible.

Honestly, I only went to the casino for the restaurants. I had no intention of doing any gambling, yet I somehow managed to come home a couple hundred dollars lighter than when I went. As I walked through the casino, I kept finding slot machines that I wanted to play and thinking to myself, “I’m just going to sit down for a couple minutes and I’m only going to spend ten dollars.” After a while, “I’m only going to spend ten dollars” became, “I have to win back all my money.”

Unfortunately, no matter how many games I played, the money only seemed to flow one way. It turned out the only machines in the casino that were consistently paying out cash were the ATM’s.

On a side note, I do find it interesting that on the base of every slot machine in the building, there was a little metal plate that said, “Have a gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.” I wonder if that little sign has ever helped anybody. I imagine it’s sort of like the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes. By the time you’re close enough to read it, it’s already way too late to do you any good.

Fortunately, the very quiet and subdued shuttle ride back to the RV park was free, otherwise I might have been trying to hitch a ride on the highway back to my trailer. The only cash I still had in my possession was a dime and three pennies, and I only had that much because thirteen cents was insufficient to pay for one more spin of the wheels. There is very little in this world that is quite as humiliating as a slot machine spitting out a ticket worth thirteen cents, as if it is telling you, “I’m done with you, buddy. You can go now.”

Perhaps the only thing more degrading than receiving a ticket for thirteen cents, is actually going to the reimbursement kiosk and cashing it out. But, there I was, with four coins in my pocket reminding me that I had sunk as low as I could go.

Despite my financial failures, our first camping trip of 2019 was not a total loss. Even though we were returning to our campsite completely broke, we still had everything we needed to salvage the vacation. We had a refrigerator full of alcohol and bacon waiting to cheer us up.

What more could anyone want?

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You only had one Job!

On the south side of our house, there is a dirt field. The field is about two acres of open space and, during most of the year, I just ignore it. It requires very little upkeep or maintenance in the summer, fall, or winter.

Every spring, however, after a few months of rain followed by several weeks of pleasant warmth and sunshine, the field is taken over by weeds. Usually by the end of April or middle of May, the weeds have grown to be as tall as I am, and I know it is at last time to fire up the tractor and cut them all down.

For 2019, that time has come.

Mowing the field is not my favorite chore. In fact, I try to avoid the task for as long as possible. This year, I successfully ignored the weeds longer than usual, but I had to admit it was time to get to work when the neighbors began to drop little hints.

First, it was just the gentleman next door, mowing his own fields and waving at me while he did it, as if to say, “See how easy it is? Now, why don’t you try it?”

It escalated a little bit with a few light-hearted comments like, “Weeds are getting a little tall, aren’t they?” “You trying to build a hedge maze for the kids?” Or, “Is your mower broken, or are you just a lazy, inconsiderate jerk?”

Finally, when I got the anonymous note hand-written in blood that said, “Cut down the f***ing weeds or you will never see your dog again,” I knew it was time to mow.

Mowing the field typically takes a little over three hours, so I figured I could do the job on a Saturday morning. Of course, projects around my house never seem to go smoothly, so I cleared my whole day, just in case. Apparently, that was the only thing I did right, all day.

I got up at about eight o’clock and went outside to fire up the tractor. Because I had not used the blue beast in a few months, the first thing I did was check the fuel gauge. Of course, the tank was empty.

I went back into the garage to grab one of the five-gallon portable tanks of diesel that I keep for just this sort of emergency. I picked up the first tank, but it was as empty as the tractor. I grabbed the second and discovered that, while not completely dry, the pint or two of fuel inside was not going to be sufficient to cut down two acres of weeds. I tossed the empty tanks into my truck and drove to the nearest gas station. The nearest gas station, by the way, is still a twenty-minute drive from my house.

When I returned, I fueled up the tractor, then noticed that the front tires were both almost flat. No problem, however. I just fired up the air compressor in the garage. After the first half hour, the compressor had not risen above 5 pounds of pressure. I finally realized that I had left the pressure valve on the bottom of the compressor open. Another half hour after closing the valve, and all tires were returned to their appropriate internal pressure.

It was now almost ten o’clock and I was at last ready to get to work. I placed the key in the ignition and turned it. There was no reaction. Just a soft clicking noise that slowed to a stop, then dead silence. After sitting unused for three months, the tractor’s battery had gone completely dead.

Still not deterred, I retrieved my battery jumper box and attached it to the tractor battery. I again jumped into the driver’s seat of the tractor, placed the key in the ignition, and….

Complete silence.

I rechecked the connections between the jumper box and the battery, but everything seemed properly arranged. A little more investigation revealed that the jumper box itself was also dead. Apparently, if you don’t recharge them every year, they stop working. Who knew?

I dragged the box into the house, plugged it into a wall socket and, a mere hour and twenty minutes later, it was fully charged and ready to be put to work. I returned to the dead tractor, attached the connectors of the jumper box to the battery and tried once more to start the engine. When I turned the key, I got some more of the weird clicking noises, but the motor still refused to start.

It seems in addition to a dead battery the tractor had developed a few other ailments during its three months of inactivity.

The dog’s chances of ever coming home were beginning to look a bit bleak.

In desperation, I began to call tractor repair stores in the area. Most were either closed, did not provide pickup or delivery (I do not own a trailer big enough to carry the tractor), or did not work on my particular model. I was quickly running out of daylight and phone numbers to try.

Then, just as I was starting to wonder what kind of dog I should get to replace the old one, I finally caught my first break of the day. I found a repair shop that I knew had gone out of business the year before, however their website was still up and active. The website advertised that although the business had closed, the owners were still doing mobile servicing and repairs. When I called, I spoke with a man who stated he would be happy to take a look at my tractor.

I asked when he might be available, and he said, “Are you home right now?”

Tim (as I discovered he was named) was at my house thirty minutes later. He looked at my tractor, shook his head, and told me, “Nope. I’m not going to be able to fix it today. I need some parts and I won’t be able to get them until next week.”

Just when I thought I was saved, more bad news. I shook Tim’s hand and thanked him for coming out. He said he would give me a call when the parts were in, and we could schedule a time to service the tractor. Then he asked me, “Do you need the tractor running today?”

I thought that was an odd question. Hadn’t he just told me he couldn’t fix it?

“Um, yeah,” I said. “That’s kinda what I was hoping for, but I understand you can’t do anything until next week.”

He smiled and told me, “I can’t fix it until next week, but I can get it running for you today. Once I get it started, though, you have to leave it running. If you turn it off, I can’t guarantee it will start again.”

I don’t know what he did, but five seconds later, the tractor’s engine roared to life.

It took most of the day, but I finally had a functioning tractor. What had started out as a three-hour project had become a saga of ridiculously epic proportions but, in the end, the damned field did get mowed.

And, oh yeah, the dog came home, too.

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