Gary – Page 19 – Deep Dark Thoughts

A Trip to the Vet

Recently, my wife told me she needed my help taking the dog and one of our cats to the Vet. I told her I would be happy to check if the kids were available to go with her. Unfortunately for me, she had already asked the girls before she came to me, and they were busy. It seems she wanted me to go with her about as much as I wanted to go.

That is to say, not all that much.

Despite the fact that neither of us really wanted me to help with this project, I ended up spending a Wednesday morning wrangling unhappy animals instead of the marathon couch sitting event I had previously planned. That TV doesn’t just watch itself, you know.

My wife asked me to start by grabbing the cat and putting it in the carrying case. Knowing that the cat would run away the second it saw the carrier, I ended up waiting until she had curled up on the bed in the back bedroom before bringing the case in from the garage. I don’t know if she is psychic or if I’m just really unlucky, but the moment I walked into the house with the carrier, the cat wandered out into the kitchen and spotted me.

I tried to hide the carrying case behind my back, but it was way too late. The cat disappeared, leaving behind a cat-shaped cloud of hair floating in the kitchen.

I spent the next fifteen minutes looking in all her usual hiding spots before I located her under my bed. It took an additional five minutes before I could get enough of a handhold on her to drag her back out into the daylight.

Bleeding from numerous puncture wounds, I brought her back to the kitchen to stick her in the carrying case. Her head went into the case easily, but the rest of her suddenly melted into a pudding that was too wide to shove through the opening. It was like I was trying to push toothpaste back into its tube, only the toothpaste kept wriggling and trying to squirt back out.

When I finally got her in the case, it was time to gather up the dog. Getting the dog to go to the vet is a much easier process than corralling the cat. All I need to do is pick up the car keys and jingle them in my hand and the dog is already sitting in the backseat, drooling on the headrest, and wondering why it’s taking me so long to start the engine.

Which brings us to the next fiasco in this trip to the vet saga: starting the car.

After packing the animals into the car, my wife sat down behind the wheel, put the key in the ignition, and…

Nothing.

The battery was completely dead. I don’t know how the cat managed it, but she must have snuck out to the garage while I was searching for her and murdered the car battery. I can’t prove it was her, but the circumstantial evidence is very compelling.

We were forced to borrow my daughter’s car since we didn’t have time to get a new battery before the animals were due at the vet clinic. As my kid reluctantly handed over her car keys, she told me with a straight face, “Come straight home after you see the vet, I need the car tonight. And, don’t forget to put gas in the tank when you’re done using it.”

Before I could respond to those statements with the honest response they deserved, my wife reminded me that we were already late for our appointment. I grabbed the keys, made a mental note to myself to yell at the kid later, and headed out the door.

The vet visit went as I expected. We were advised that the animals are too fat, and we needed to feed them less or let them exercise more (Why is it always my fault that the animals have no self-control?) otherwise they were both perfectly healthy. We got a brief lecture about not waiting so long before we brought the animals in for checkups next time. Then, the cat got a shot and the dog got a treat, thereby guaranteeing that the next trip to the vet would be an exact repeat of the ridiculousness we had just gone through earlier that day.

When it was over, we stuffed the cat back in her suitcase, gave the vet enough money to make her next three house payments, and headed back home.

I thought when we got back home that the cat would tell me what she did to the battery in my wife’s car, but she must have still been angry about getting a shot because she wouldn’t talk to me. She just hissed when I let her out of the cat carrier and ran back under the bed.

It was about this time that my daughter demanded her keys back and asked if I had gassed up her car.

I tossed her the keys from my pocket and said, “Here. You’re taking your mom’s car, tonight. The jumper cables are in the garage and don’t forget to buy a new battery on the way home.”

Okay, I didn’t actually do that. I didn’t think of it fast enough.

But I really, really wish I had.

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Saturday Morning Cartoons

Whatever happened to the great American tradition of Saturday morning cartoons? I was flipping around the channels on my TV a couple Saturdays ago and, just out of curiosity, I started checking the networks to see what kind of kid programming they were airing these days. My girls are both grown up now, so I’ve gotten used to being able to sleep in on Saturdays and then doing some writing in the morning. The television is hardly on anymore on a Saturday before noon.

I was shocked and saddened to find there was absolutely nothing for kids to watch on weekend mornings. The major networks are all news shows, college sports, and morning entertainment shows. I even found some thirty-minute paid programming to help me have better abs, make better grilled sandwiches, and have longer, more pleasurable erections.

Not exactly kid-friendly.

Even the cartoon heavy hitters, like Nickelodeon, Disney, and the Cartoon Network, are just running repeats of the same dreck they air twenty-four/seven during the week. There’s nothing aimed at a Saturday morning target audience.

Where did the good shows go? Is Saturday morning not a thing anymore? Am I old and losing my grasp on reality and the modern world?

All right, I already know the answer to that last one, so let’s move on.

I remember as a kid, waking up to an alarm clock all week long to get up and get ready for school. I would crawl out of bed, mumbling and complaining about how tired I was as I put my shoes on the wrong feet and stumbled out into the kitchen for a hot breakfast of burned toast. (My mom was not a great cook, but we can delve into that one on another blog post).

On Saturday morning, I woke without an alarm clock (at least an hour earlier than I did during the weekdays) and leapt out of bed in a panic that I might have already missed some of my favorite shows. I would run into the kitchen to pour a bowl of some sugary mess that claimed to have 8 essential vitamins that made it healthy, then squatted down in front of the coffee table with my breakfast to watch the best television programming of the entire week. The volume was on its lowest setting of course, because my parents were usually still asleep.

Kids today are missing out on the greatest cartoons ever made. I’m old enough to remember the classic shows that were still running from the World War II and Cold War eras, with all their subtle racism (and sometimes not so subtle) aimed at the Japanese and Germans. At a very young age, I would watch images of violence between cats and mice, coyotes and flightless birds, and even some awesome explosions and gunplay between a hunter and a rabbit. If you don’t know the shows I’m referring to, it’s probably because you’re under the age of twenty and too young to have experienced the joy of Warner Brothers at their best.

But who am I kidding? Nobody under the age of twenty is reading this blog.

I remember there was some discussion in the 1980’s about whether or not violent cartoons and kid shows contributed to people becoming violent in real life, but I don’t believe the weekly episodes of Will and Holly running from dinosaurs ultimately did me any harm.

There was an unpleasant incident in college when I was running across the kitchen floor, chasing after a mouse while swinging a broom and screaming “Die, you little bastard. Die!” But, I’m almost certain that little bit of violence was destined to happen, cartoons or not.

During the early 2000’s, when my girls were little, there was much tamer stuff to watch, but Saturday morning was still a mecca of kids’ shows. EM1’s favorites were Bear in the Big Blue House, and Blue’s Clues. There was also a sprinkling of Fairly Odd Parents, and Jimmy Neutron thrown in for good measure.

There was also a certain purple dinosaur, who shall remain nameless, that was banned from our house. If any kid show was destined to create violent, emotionless psychopaths out of an entire generation, it was that one. I still have nightmares about those smiling, dead-eyed children, chanting around a stuffed dinosaur and bringing it to life. A cartoon about devil worship would have been less disturbing.

But, even possessed children and their terrifying, magically animated, stuffed toys is better than nothing.

These days, I don’t see anything for kids to look forward to on a Saturday morning and I think that’s kind of sad. I guess in a world of streaming video on demand, on-line video gaming, and twenty-four hour, content-specific channels, there just isn’t a need for it.

It isn’t special, anymore.

It isn’t Elmer Fudd trying to stab Bugs Bunny with a spear while singing opera songs. It isn’t thinly veiled drug references while Shaggy and Scooby-Doo chase ghosts. It isn’t Snidely and Muttley trying to murder a pigeon for some inexplicable reason.

There is no joy or excitement left in Saturday mornings.

I seriously wonder what kids growing up today will reminisce about when they are adults. What era-specific events will stick in their minds enough that they will talk to their own kids about the good old days?

Based on this blog, I’m guessing it will have something to do with how grandpa wouldn’t shut up about watching cartoons while they were trying to play video games with their friends.

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A Week in the Woods

My family and I just got back from a week in the woods. In order to escape the one-hundred-degree heat in the northern California valley, we packed up the trailer and headed for the much cooler climate of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

I know perhaps many of you are thinking to yourselves, “What? Another blog about a camping trip? Don’t you ever do anything else?”

The short answer to that is, no. No, I don’t ever do anything else. I’m stuck at home most of the time and I don’t have the money to fly around the world, so whenever I have an opportunity to get away it has to be cheap. Cheap, for me, equals camping.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah: I was camping.

My wife and I enjoy taking the trailer out and travelling into the wilderness for a few days. It’s quiet and peaceful and it’s an opportunity for the two of us to just hang out with each other with no outside interruptions. The kids claim to enjoy it as well, but I think they just like to be away from home so I can’t complain about the fact they haven’t cleaned their rooms or done any of their chores.

For the entire five days that we were gone, neither one of the girls left the trailer except for an occasional jaunt up the hill to the only spot in the campgrounds that had an active WiFi signal. Otherwise, they barricaded themselves inside our camper like they were afraid the zombie apocalypse had just jumped off and if they went outside they would be the first ones eaten.

Actually, that’s not completely true. They did come outside on the third night we were there. That was the night I built a campfire hoping to lure them outdoors. I set up the fire, burned several large logs for a few hours, then stirred them around to create hot coals. My wife pulled out a bag of marshmallows, chocolate and a box of graham crackers. She told the girls they should come out to the fire and make some s’mores. At first, they both said, no, but then my wife reminded them that it had been their idea to buy all the stuff in the first place. She suggested if they didn’t go outside and make s’mores immediately, it would not just be marshmallows that got stabbed with sharp sticks and dropped into the fire.

EM1 poked her head out of the trailer door first, sniffing around like a groundhog trying to decide if there was going to be six more weeks of winter. When she was convinced it wasn’t a trap, she beckoned to her sister and the two of them shuffled out to the fire. Each one of them picked up a stick, stabbed a marshmallow and held it out over the hot coals in the fire pit.

After they had both roasted one marshmallow, they said, “thank you,” waved at us and went back inside the trailer. That was it.

One marshmallow.

Each.

Other than the fact we couldn’t pry the kids out of the trailer with a crowbar, it was actually a very nice family trip. Because we had no WiFi reception where we were parked, we couldn’t use our phones or watch TV. We were forced to interact with one another whether we wanted to or not.

The four of us ended up playing card games and board games, and – on rare occasions – even talking to each other.

It was a lot of fun.

Electronic devices weren’t the only distraction we managed to avoid, either. During the first part of the week, we had most of the campgrounds to ourselves. Most people tend to go camping on the weekends, which is why we specifically decided to go during the week. For the first three days that we were there, the only noises we heard were the birds, animals and bugs in the forest. Well, that and the sound of our kids fighting over whose fault it was that a soda got dumped on the floor. (Personally, I blame the older one. It’s easier to randomly pick one than it is to investigate and figure out who actually did it.)

We stayed up late, slept in the following morning and nobody bothered us. No barking dogs, no loud parties, and no screaming kids (except for our own, of course). It was bliss.

On the fourth day, things began to change. A motorhome pulled into the slot next to ours. The owners brought three tiny dogs outside, tied them to a tree and then proceeded to ignore them while they barked nonstop from sunup to sundown.

A young family showed up later the same day and set up a tent near us. They had three kids, all under the age of seven, that they immediately turned loose with a collection of bikes and scooters so they could travel the campgrounds with maximum mobility. I believe the only time the kids weren’t yelling or screaming was when they were forced to pause to take a breath. The noise parade lasted all day, packed up briefly during the night, then started up again about five o’clock the following morning.

By day five, it was time to go. I was starting to fantasize about putting the yapping dogs into a pit with the screaming kids and making them fight in a no-holds-barred deathmatch. When I caught myself holding a shovel and searching for a place to put the hole, I decided the time had come to go home.

Now, we’re all back in the hundred-degree heat and getting back into to our regular routines. My wife is back at work, EM2 is getting ready to go back to school, and EM1 is doing whatever the hell it is that she usually does.

And me? I’m doing what I always do. Sitting around and trying to figure out a good time to go camping.

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Flea Market

I recently visited my good friend, Wes Blalock. My wife and I were invited to San Jose to spend the weekend at his home and we immediately took advantage of the opportunity to abandon our children for three days.

When we arrived at his house, he asked where EM1 and EM2 were. I told him they were unfortunately busy and couldn’t make the trip with us. It was easier to lie to him than to admit we snuck out of the house without telling the kids where we were going.

While we were visiting, Wes asked if my wife and I would like to go to a local flea market the following morning. The market is open on the first Saturday morning of every month and there are typically vendors from all over the region that set up booths and tents in the parking lot of a local community college. Since I love digging through other people’s stuff and I have no problem spending money on garbage I don’t need, I immediately agreed to go.

The market opened at 8 AM sharp. As I am all about punctuality, I rolled out of bed at 8:45, brushed my teeth and threw on some clothes, then wandered into the kitchen looking for something to eat. I found my wife, Wes and his wife in the kitchen waiting for me.

My wife glared at me and said, “We’ve been ready to go for an hour.”

Wes threw a bagel in my direction, picked up his car keys and headed for the front door.

The drive to the flea market was uneventful. Mostly because no one was talking to me. I sat quietly and gnawed on my bagel while my wife made comments that were little more than thinly veiled attacks. “I hope we still get there early enough to get parking.” “I hope we have enough time to explore before it gets too hot.” And, “I wish my husband had more consideration for other people.”

That last one wasn’t even thinly veiled.

When we arrived, we did indeed find parking. It might have been the last spot available in the lot, but we found it. We exited the car and wandered into the collection of colored overhangs, stalls, and booths, finding ourselves immediately surrounded by hundreds of items scattered over tables, laid on blankets, and occasionally just piled in open boxes.

Before we wandered in too deep, I went to an ATM conveniently positioned in the first row of booths. Due to my love of shiny objects, I figured I was going to need some cash, so I slipped my bank card into the machine and tried to make a withdrawal. Either there was a problem with my card or with my savings account, but either way, the results of the transaction were not what I had hoped. The machine spat out my card along with a receipt full of zeros then asked me to go panhandle somewhere else.

Gripping my receipt in one hand and what remained of my dignity in the other, I returned to the rest of my group and told my wife the ATM was broken. I asked Wes if he could lend me a few bucks, and he said, “I’d be happy to, just as soon as you pay back what you already owe me.”

He could have just said, no.

The rest of the day went about as you would imagine. Walking through a flea market with no money is a lot like … well, like being anywhere with no money. Feel free to look, but don’t touch. Whenever I found something I was interested in, I had a conversation with the vendor that went like this:

“How much are you asking?”

“Twenty dollars, sir.”

“Will you take a dollar?”

This would be followed by either laughter or profanity. In one instance, I got both.

Needless to say, I did not end up purchasing any of the fine goods available at the market. My wife, on the other hand, purchased a couple of orchids from a vendor selling plants. I didn’t ask her where she got the cash to buy the flowers. I was worried if I made her mad at me again she might not let me ride home in the car with everyone else. Instead, I just put out my hands and asked if I could carry her stuff.

I’m not the brightest husband out there, but I have figured a few things out. Such as, if you’re still alive after poking the bear once, don’t go back and try it again.

The rest of the weekend passed much more smoothly. I enjoy hanging out with Wes and his family quite a bit and it was a nice break from my own rotten kids. In addition, I got to nap on the couch and watch TV while Wes did all the cooking and household chores. How could that not be a great weekend?

The only downside is that we did eventually have to go back home. I don’t think Wes felt that was as much of a downside as I did. I’m not saying he was eager to see us leave, I’m just saying that my car doesn’t actually need to be push started. Still, there he was, leaning against the back of the car, yelling, “Go, go, go!”

He’s always ready to lend a helping hand.

That’s why he’s such a great friend.

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Movie Time

I love to go out to the movies. What I don’t like is having to go out to the movies with all the other people who love to go out to the movies. I understand that the theaters need to sell tickets in order to stay in business, but there is a part of me that believes every theater room should have one seat and one seat only. You buy your ticket, go in and watch the movie in complete privacy, then go home.

I have never liked crowds, so this is nothing new. I typically go to the movies on Tuesday during the first screening of the show I want to see. Statistically, Tuesdays are the days that the fewest people go to movies, so this is not coincidence. I also choose movies that have been showing for a few weeks already so most people who want to see it have already done so.

Despite these precautions, I am still besieged by other people who, for some reason, believe they have as much right to be in the theater as I do. I don’t know where they get these ridiculous ideas.

Most people in a theater are pretty considerate of others and I really don’t have a problem with them. This is about 95% of the theater-going audience. It’s the other 5 percent that always seem to manage to have a representative in the room when I am there that make me want to stand out front with a picket sign proclaiming, “Shut up or get out,” and “Ushers should be armed.”

Desperate times require desperate measures.

We all know the people I’m referring to. We have all dealt with them at one time or another. If you can’t think of a single time that you were bothered by someone in a movie theater, it’s probably because you’re one of them.

First on my list for banishment are the loud talkers, loud eaters, loud laughers, and just generally loud everything. These are the people that sit five rows away from you, but you can still hear their “whispered” conversation as if they were sitting in your lap. Usually they love to chat during the previews (which I dislike but am not going to make a big deal about), then decide the conversation they started needs to be finished even if it goes on for the first ten minutes of the movie. These are the same people who bring their own noisy food which they inevitably unwrap at the quietest parts of the movie. The worst of this bunch are the ones who have seen the move already and happily announce to the rest of the people in the theater things like, “Oh, there’s the guy that’s going to shoot the dog later.”

Next on my hit parade are the parents who bring little kids to mature-themed movies because $8 is cheaper than a babysitter. I don’t care if you think you need a couple hours away from the house or you really wanted to watch this particular movie, if you’re going to emotionally scar your offspring, do it at home like the rest of us. There are plenty of things you can stream on your TV to give Junior a pathological fear of chainsaws.

Leave the kid outside tied to a tree if you must, but don’t let the little brat into the theater. While I’m watching scantily-dressed teenagers get cut open with a meat hook, I don’t want to hear, “Daddy, what’s that man doing to the other man? Why is that girl running away from him?” Usually followed immediately by, “I have to go potty.”

Sick people should also be verboten from any theater. I saw a movie once where I had to listen to the guy behind me sniff, cough and sneeze through the entire show. The noise was bad enough, but the fact he brought his plague virus into a sealed and crowded room to share with the rest of humanity should be a crime in all fifty states. I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that this guy was the reason I came down with a nasty cold less than a week later, but I would still like to run into him in a dark alley someday so I can kick him in the nuts.

Okay, that might be a bit harsh. Maybe just one nut.

The left one.

There are so many more theater pests that I think should be fitted with shock collars at the front door, but no one has the time to read my entire list. A couple more quick ones are: People who check their phones during the movie so that it lights up the entire theater. People sitting next to you that you’ve never met before but have decided they want to chat or “tell you something funny.” People who snore.

Yes, I said snore.

I actually had a man sitting next to me who fell asleep while we were watching “Thor: Ragnarok.” I don’t know how the hell he managed it, but about midway through the flick, he was slumped to the side of his chair and making more noise than the movie soundtrack.

I mean, come on. If you’re that bored with a movie, just get up and walk away for crying out loud.

Although I have already for the most part given up on humanity, I am not going to give up on my movies. I will continue to go to the theater and watch whatever strikes my fancy. I will also be silently judging everyone else who chooses to be in the theater with me. I will be the old guy in the fifth row who keeps turning around to stare at people and mutter obscenities under his breath.

If you see me, feel free to say hi. Then please gather up your things and exit the theater.

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Happy Birthday, ‘Merica

Last week was the Fourth of July. If you live in the USA, that is sort of a big deal, since it is the day we celebrate the birth of our country. We go out in the yard, blow some stuff up, and barbeque burgers on the grill as a patriotic gesture of our love and respect for this great nation.

If you live outside the US, then it was just another Thursday. You, of course, can still go outside and blow some stuff up, but it will no longer be a celebration. It will simply be vandalism.

For the Fourth, this year we invited several friends and family members to our home for the festivities. I fired up the grill and cooked burgers and hot dogs, provided plenty of sodas and alcohol, and even set up our inflatable pool for anyone who wanted to swim.

A quick side note: our pool is only two feet deep and eight feet wide, so by “swim” I mean sit in one place and try not to move around too much so the water doesn’t all splash out.

Most of the invitations were met with a series of questions. Things like: “Will there be fireworks?” “Can I bring some fireworks?” and “What kind of fireworks do you have?”

Unfortunately, I live out in the country. My house is surrounded by acres of dried brush and scrub trees or, as some people call it, “kindling.” Any attempt at lighting fireworks within a ten-mile radius of my home would most likely result in a smoldering pile of ash that used to be the house. Because of this, I advised everyone that fireworks would not be part of the activities. Most people were okay with this development, however, many of the teenaged members of our family suddenly remembered previous engagements they had made elsewhere.

I don’t mind. I prefer the kids go light someone else’s house on fire. It’s makes less impact on my own insurance.

For the younger children, my wife’s cousin came up with the wonderful idea of bringing glowsticks to the party. When it got dark, the kids broke open the glowsticks and proceeded to decorate the entire yard with multi-colored lights. It was quite the display. Plus, I didn’t have to worry about fires when somebody threw a couple of the light sticks up onto the roof. Of course, I still have to figure out how to get that litter off of my roof, but that is a problem for another day.

Maybe I can grab the burned out glowsticks in December when I’m up on the roof stringing lights for Christmas. Of course, I’m kidding about that. I never took the Christmas lights down from 2017.

The best part of the evening was right before the sun set. A friend brought a really nice bottle of Irish whiskey to my home as a gift. Although this was supposed to be an American celebration, I decided in the name of international relations to allow the foreign alcohol to come to the party. That turned out to be a very good decision.

Although no fireworks got lit that night, myself and several other guests certainly did.

I shared a few cigars with those that wanted to partake, poured several shots of the whiskey, then sat back to watch the kids bludgeon and whip each other with glowsticks. My rapidly blurring vision made the whole spectacle even more magical as I stared at the flashing red, blue, green, and yellow lights.

At one point, I thought I had begun to hallucinate as a blue disk of light began to float around my chair. As it turns out, somebody had put a ring of glowsticks on the dog and she was just running in circles trying to get it off. I would have helped her, but with a cigar in one hand and whiskey in the other I was already fully occupied.

I have my priorities.

I think, in general, the evening was a success. Everyone appeared to have a good time. I ate too much and I drank too much, which I believe is completely appropriate. If the good ol’ U. S. of A. represents anything, it is excess and self-indulgence, and I am certainly the poster child for both of those.

Perhaps the only downside is now that the Fourth of July is over, there are no more holidays to celebrate for a couple of months. The closest excuse to party is Labor Day which doesn’t come around until September.

I did notice on a calendar that Canada celebrates Civic/Provincial day on August 5^th. Which makes me think of another great American tradition: Cultural appropriation.

Happy Civic Day, eh?

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