Author: Gary

Season of Temptation

The season of temptation is once more upon us, and like most years, I am failing dramatically. Usually I get a little further in before I undergo a complete collapse, but this year I started early.

The season of temptation is that period of the year that starts somewhere in mid-October when you buy your fist bag of Halloween candy in preparation for trick-or-treaters. In many homes, that bag actually lasts until October 31st. In my house, we stopped pretending long ago that the first bag of candy was ever going to be seen by kids. We live in an area that doesn’t even get trick-or-treaters, so seriously, who were we trying to fool?

The season then drags out through the next two and a half months, through Thanksgiving and Christmas, and not really coming to an end until halfway through January when the last of the Christmas candy and baked goods finally run out. In that window of time, I usually see about a fifteen-pound weight gain. I have enough difficulty not overeating on normal days. When holiday cookies and pies start showing up, I’m done for.

People tell me that surviving the holiday season is simply an exercise in self-control. Well, as anyone who has ever seen me knows, I’m not really that into exercise in any form. Especially not the kind that requires self-control.

I spend the other nine months of every year simply trying to lose enough weight to be able to survive my holiday food compulsions. I say ‘trying’ because I have rarely accomplished those goals. Usually, I lose about five pounds, then get so excited I reward myself by consuming an entire box of Lucky Charms in one sitting. The milk is optional, as is the bowl.

 This season of temptation has started out worse than most. I suppose since it’s 2020, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. Everything this year seems to be worse than most. This year, being trapped at home, my daughters have suddenly gotten the urge to make sugary baked treats. They’ve never cared about baking before, but now, for reasons unknown to me, they have decided that sugar, butter, and flour are the main staples of life.

It began in early October, when EM2 told me she wanted to make a pineapple upside down cake. She has never seen a pineapple upside down cake before, much less made one, but now she decided if she didn’t bake one in the next couple of days, her life was about to become meaningless. So, we baked a cake. Later EM1 told me I needed to help her make six dozen pumpkin spice cookies. Not to be outdone, EM2 immediately informed me we would be making six dozen sugar cookies the next day.

Halloween came and went, but not before EM2 made crème puffs filled with chocolate pudding, and a dozen lime flavored, mini cheesecakes. EM1 added two dozen Halloween decorated cupcakes into the mix.

We haven’t even begun to make a dent in all those high-calorie sweets and EM2 has already made me promise that we will try to make a cherry pie before the end of November. I have never made a cherry pie before and, frankly, never intended to try, but because I’ve been unexpectedly sucked into this self-propelled vortex of baked goods, I will be attempting to bake a cherry pie in the near future.

I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m anticipating it won’t go smoothly, which might be a good thing because if the pie turns out completely inedible that will be one less item increasing my waistline this year.

In addition to the cherry pie, I have also been locked into the commitment of making two pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving. This is a Thanksgiving, I must add, that we might not be having any guests over due to the current pandemic conditions in the state of California. This means that there will only be four of us eating both of these pumpkin pies. And my wife doesn’t like pumpkin pie, so make that three of us.

And as soon as Thanksgiving baked goods are done, Christmas candy and chocolates are just around the corner. I’m already having heart palpitations thinking about the amount of sugary foods still ahead of me over the next six weeks or so, and my pancreas has been threatening to go on permanent strike if I don’t find a way to corral this snack assault.

I know that not eating isn’t an option. As I’ve already admitted, I have no self-discipline to speak of.  I’ve never been able to walk past a plate of cookies without picking up one or four. I suppose I could try working out to burn off some of these extra calories, but who am I kidding? There aren’t enough hours in the day to burn off the amount of junk food I’m consuming this time of year. I would have to live in a gym and sleep on a treadmill to have any hope of keeping up.

With those options off the table, I only have one more weapon in my arsenal to get through the next six weeks without suffering serious lateral growth complications.

Alcohol.

I have discovered that I tend not to eat as much when I’m passed out on the kitchen floor. Besides, a bottle of gin has fewer calories than half of a pumpkin pie. Maybe I need to explore this tactic in a little more detail.

I think I might actually have the willpower to stay on this diet plan. I only need to keep the liquor cabinet well stocked and the unwanted pounds should melt right off.

I wonder why I haven’t tried this before. Or maybe I have, and it worked so well I don’t remember?

Anyway, if nobody hears from me in the next two months, don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m just sticking to my new diet.

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SWAT Training

Before the knee injuries, shoulder muscle tears, back strains, and all the other general aches and pains that come with living on this planet for 50-plus years, there was once a time that I wanted to be on the police SWAT team. I was in my twenties, lean and healthy, and I still had that young person’s feeling of immortality. In other words, I was young and stupid.

The Hillsborough Police Department (HPD), where I worked at the time, did not have their own SWAT team. We were too small. With only 20 or so people working for the agency, it was not possible to fund and train our own emergency response team. Instead, we requested to be part of the San Mateo County SWAT team.

They trained us and, in return, we agreed to send SWAT trained officers to assist the County during any emergency call-outs. It was a good deal and benefitted both agencies.

HPD’s goal was to have two SWAT-trained officers on each shift. This was a bit tricky since most of our shifts only had three or four people total. Between trying to schedule time off for training and the high failure rate of SWAT candidates, we were lucky to have one officer on each shift with the desired certification.

After a few years with my department, I advised my supervisors that I was interested in attending the training. They put my name on a list, then told me that before I could go, I needed to meet certain physical requirements before I could attend the training.

I was told that I needed to be able to run 2 miles in under 15 minutes, complete 50 pushups in under a minute, complete 60 sit-ups in under 2 minutes, do two pullups while wearing a 40 pound backpack, and qualify as “marksman” in both the pistol and rifle.

With a bit of work, I was able to achieve each of these goals.

So, what made me think about SWAT physical fitness requirements after all these years? Let me tell you.

The other day, I got up and went for a two-mile run through my neighborhood. When I was done, I was feeling pretty proud of myself that I had finished the two miles in under 20 minutes. That was when I realized that I was still 5 minutes slower than my pace for the same distance 30 years ago.

That doesn’t bother me too much, especially since I know I’m fortunate to be running at all after the beating my body took for so many years. 20 minutes is a freaking Olympic gold medal performance for me these days. It did, however, get me thinking about the other requirements on the list and how well I have held up over the years.

I no longer hold “marksman” certifications at the range. I can still hit a target when I absolutely must, but my accuracy has slipped the tiniest bit over the past few years. In fact, the nicest thing one of the department range masters has said to me in years is, “Well, Sarge. I’ve seen you do worse.”

Not exactly SWAT-worthy I suppose, but at least I passed.

I can still do 50 pushups. It just takes me a few hours and several rest periods to manage it. Same thing with the 60 sit-ups, and that’s only if you count lying on the floor and bobbing your head back and forth as a sit-up.

I discovered that I can still do two pullups, but that’s if I’m standing on the 40-pound backpack instead of wearing it. I’m already carrying around an extra 40 pounds that I didn’t have when I was 25 years old, so wearing a weighted backpack is just redundant anyway.

Besides, I can’t think of a time in my entire career that I’ve ever run into a pullup emergency. I’ve never shown up on a call for service and had somebody say, “Officer, you have to save his life! You just need to grab onto that bar and pull on it until your head rises just above it!”

Not once in 25 years.

Basically, I’m not exactly ready to pass a SWAT physical agility test anytime soon. Not that I really have any desire to do so. These days, the only emergencies I have to respond to are mad dashes to the store because I’ve run out of something I needed to fix dinner. And sometimes, I’m not even up to doing that.

I’m just happy with my morning 20-minute run. I don’t need anything more.

If anyone is wondering whether I ever joined the San Mateo County SWAT team, the short answer is:

No.

The long answer is:

… No.

By the time my turn came around to go to training, my wife got a job in Sacramento and I had made the decision to move there with her. My bosses told me they were not going to pay to send me to training just so I could take that skillset to another agency. I guess I can’t argue with that logic. Why buy a chauffer a brand-new car just so they can drive someone else around in it?

Now, you’re probably wondering if I ever went to SWAT training with Sacramento County.

Nope. Didn’t do that either.

By this time, I had two little girls in the house. After spending every free moment of my time chasing EM1 and EM2 around, I decided occasionally getting some sleep was more important than joining the SWAT team.

I still think that was the right decision.

The sleeping thing. Not necessarily the having kids thing. The jury is still out on that one.

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Baking Like a Grownup

My daughters don’t like when I treat them like children. They want me to see them as partners in our home, with an equal say in all decisions that affect them.  As fully grown, legally recognized adults, my children are trying to assert their independence.

By “independence” I mean they still want free housing, free food, clothing, entertainment, a car with full insurance provided, phones, no required house chores, yard chores, or responsibilities, they want their privacy respected while maintaining open access for themselves to all parts of the house at any time, and they have the nerve to expect….

I think I’m getting a little derailed here. What was I talking about?

Oh, right. Independence. The girls want the freedom to come and go as they please, and to treat dad like a painted backdrop in a high school play.

Anyone reading this blog already knows that I have clearly failed as a father. It’s too late to change their behaviors now. They will continue to live their lives right under our noses while at the same time pretending they have no parents. I know this is true because, for the most part, this is exactly how I treated my parents at the same age. I’m not proud of it, but I am acknowledging that lousy kids raise lousy kids.

Since I am desperate for attention because both of my children see me as little more than an extension of the furniture, it should come as no surprise that a couple weeks ago, when EM1 asked me if I would teach her how to bake homemade cookies, I jumped at the chance to interact with my child as something other than a bank ATM.

EM1 really likes a pumpkin spice cookie recipe that I found a few years ago. She wanted to know if I had enough fresh pumpkin from the garden to make some with her and teach her how to do them for herself. I said I did, and of course I would show her how.

On the Friday we agreed upon, I began pulling out pans and ingredients. I asked EM1 how many she wanted to make. She paused a moment, then told me that six dozen should be enough, but we should probably make a few extra in case some of them were bad.

Surprised, I asked her why she wanted to make so many. That was when she told me, “My pastor asked if people could bake some homemade goods and bring them to distribute to the church families since we haven’t been able to do group services. I told him that you could make cookies for everyone.”

Yup. My lovely daughter volunteered me to bake six dozen cookies for her church before she even thought to ask me. And because I was so starved for affection from my own kids, I dove headfirst right into her devious little plan. I wasn’t happy about her suckering me into what felt like a middle-school bake sale, where the teachers rope parents into helping by making the kids agree to it before mom and dad know it’s even coming.

EM1 defended herself by saying, “But I told them you make really good cookies.”

Which wasn’t really the point of my complaint, but I still enjoyed the compliment. Hey, I’m human.

I spent the next five hours measuring, sifting, stirring, mixing, shaping, baking and bagging pumpkin spice cookies. I made sure that EM1 did most of the grunt work. I figured this was her idea, so she didn’t get to sit on the couch eating test batches while I did the cooking. To my surprise, she actually did a pretty good job once we got the assembly line rolling. She was baking like a real grownup.

About halfway through the whole baking process, EM2 wandered into the kitchen, grabbed a cookie without asking, then asked, “Why are you baking with her? How come you never do this with me?”

I told her to grab an apron and a spoon, but she shook her head. “I don’t want to help, I want us to make Halloween cookies and decorate them, just the two of us. Hey! We should do that tomorrow!”

I told her I didn’t really want to spend another entire day of my weekend baking.

She said, “Okay. We’ll do Halloween cookies tomorrow.” Then she grabbed another pumpkin cookie from the cooling rack and disappeared.

Because I am … well, me, I spent all day Saturday making Halloween sugar cookies with EM2. In order to make sure I was being fair, EM2 insisted that we couldn’t just make a dozen or so cookies. Her sister got to make six dozen cookies, so I had to make six dozen more with her.

As I have demonstrated time and again, I have no real backbone to speak of, so once more, I spent my day measuring, sifting, stirring, etc. Only this time it took even longer since we had to make frosting and decorate each cookie after it was baked.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, it’s because I am. But I acknowledge that for two entire days, I was relevant to my kids. Maybe even important. Perhaps that was only because EM1 devised a devious plan to obtain baked goods, and EM2 was too jealous to see EM1 do anything that she couldn’t do as well, but I’ll take it. Sometimes even the worst intentions can result in something positive.

I spent time with my kids.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with all these damn cookies in the house.

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Halloween 2020-Style

Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday of them all, and it will be here in just a couple days. I love everything about this time of year: the trick or treaters, the candy, haunted houses, horror movies, and even the Celtic history behind the celebration, where they lit bonfires and wore costumes to ward of ghosts.

And this year was going to be extra special because Halloween falls on a Saturday and will occur on the night of a full moon. An ideal situation.

I say, “was,” because with the public health situation that we currently find ourselves in it is unlikely that very many people will be celebrating this rare concurrence of events. There won’t be the parties or gatherings that have marked previous years as people this time around choose to stay home and observe the date quietly on their own.

Which is a huge loss.

Personally, I think kids should be allowed to go out on Halloween. Think about it. They will all be wearing masks anyway. Except for a few clumps of children that occasionally gather on the same porch at the same time, they will all be spaced out to a socially acceptable distance as they run around out of control throughout the various neighborhoods. And, since past tragedies have eliminated handmade food and unsealed packaging, the candies are all individually wrapped as well as sealed inside a larger bag, so there is little chance of contamination due to contact with other people.

If you are already sending your child out to wander the streets in the night, wearing dark clothing and masks that impair their vision, to knock on the doors of people they have never met, how could it possibly be any more dangerous this year? Let the kids have their fun. They’ve been cooped up for about eight months now, they need a chance to blow off some steam.

And the parents could probably use a night off as well. How long has it been since you had an evening to yourself with no screaming, bored, whining rugrats crawling around underfoot? Probably too long.

My situation is a little different. My kids are all grown up. (Physically. Mentally, I still really worry about those two.) They haven’t done the trick-or-treating thing in many years. Instead, they typically hang out with friends and do whatever it is that young adults do on their own. I don’t know exactly what that is, anymore. I try not to think too hard about what it is they are actually doing since I remember what I was doing when I was in my early twenties, and there is just absolutely no excuse for that kind of behavior.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

This year, however, they will be hanging out at home with mom and dad. It’s just going to be one more day where my two grown kids are in the house with me all evening, without a break. Just like yesterday. Just like the day before, and the day before, and the day before, and…

Everybody loses.

All I can say is, thank god for television and alcohol.

Can you imagine if this pandemic had occurred before we had electronic distractions to take our minds off of the fact that we have been spending time with the same couple of people nonstop for the past six months? What if the only entertainment we had was watching the paint peel off of the walls and (god forbid) talking to each other? I think I would have murdered my entire family by now.

This Halloween, there won’t even be any kids trick-or-treating in my neighborhood to add some excitement to the evening. No smiling faces. No begging for candy. And no handmade costumes where I have to try and guess, “Are you a zombie, or a hobo, or did you get hit by a car before you got here?”

The lack of trick-or-treaters in my area isn’t just because of the pandemic, however. It also has to do with my location. Stray kids don’t usually come to my house as I live out in the middle of nowhere and it takes about half an hour to walk from one house to the next. I actually haven’t had a trick-or-treater turn up at my door since 2011 when I moved to my present residence. Still, every year I watch the front door hopefully, waiting to see if some lost waif is going to brave the darkness and the distance to ring my doorbell and hold out his empty candy bag. I long for the day I can smile at the wandering child and tell him,

“I don’t have any candy. What are you doing out here, and where the hell are your parents?”

I mean, seriously. It would take a lunatic to allow their kid to wander around in my neighborhood hoping for someone to hand out candy. It’s like child abuse.

Happy Halloween!

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Quick Fix

There has been a little bit of drama going on in the Wilbanks household this week. Two of our members recently underwent surgery and are now lying around the house making my life miserable.

It isn’t the kids. They already make my life miserable, but they aren’t the ones that went under the knife recently. My wife and I are also fine. No, the poor little surgical victims this time are our cats.

We adopted two kittens a few months ago, Scout and Willow, and we were informed by their vet that it was time to bring them in and have them spayed. My first response to the suggestion was to ask how much the surgeries were going to cost. My wife’s first response was to tell me to shut up and do what the vet told me.

So, I shut up.

We scheduled the surgery for a Monday, and we were told not to let the cats eat anything for 12 hours prior to their operations. Apparently, much like a person, if they have anything in their stomachs while under general anesthesia, it is possible that they could vomit and choke. Starving the cats would normally not have been a problem. Since the cats do not possess opposable thumbs, they can’t open the pantry door and get their own food. All we needed to do was hide their food Sunday night and they wouldn’t eat. Kind of like what I expect the kids will be doing to me in a few more years.

The issue that came up was the fact that whenever we want to catch one or both of the kittens, we normally bring out some cat treats and the little morons run right up to us and climb into our laps. Because we couldn’t allow them to eat anything, this particular strategy was off the table.

Instead, we had to go the old school route of chasing them around the house until they ducked under the bed (their favorite hiding place), then crawling under the bed to grab them by whatever body part we could get our hands on. We pulled them out from their refuge, growling and hissing with their claws fully extended and tearing large strips of carpet up from the floor as they were dragged unwillingly into the light.

As I picked up Scout, she began to purr, but this was not the purr of a happy, contented cat. Instead, it was the rapid, panicked noise of a tiny psychopath trying to decide who she wanted to maul first. She clearly knew something bad was happening; something that she wanted no part of.

I don’t know how they do it, but animals always seem to know when it’s time to go the vet. A cat that is normally curled up right next to you 24 hours a day, stuck to your leg like lint on Velcro, suddenly vaporizes and disappears when it’s time to go to see the doctor. Fortunately, my kids have never been that intelligent. Most of the time they just jumped into the car and we were pulling into the parking lot of the doctor’s office before they even thought to ask where we were going.  

It seems the cats are smarter than the kids, but I think I already knew that.

Anyway, we did finally get the kittens into the carrying cases and my wife drove them off to their unpleasant appointment with the operating room.

They came home at the end of the day, slightly groggy from anesthesia and with plastic cones covering their heads like tiny space aliens from a 1950’s science fiction movie. Scout immediately darted out of the carrying case when we opened the door. She ran around the house backwards as she unsuccessfully attempted to pull her head out of the cone. Because she could not see where she was going, she bounced off of every wall and piece of furniture in the living room during her initial escape attempts. Our house resembled a pinball machine, only instead of a steel ball it was a furry, four-legged demon ricocheting against every solid surface.

After watching Scout for several seconds, I glanced down and noticed that Willow had not moved from her crate. She was just lying in her case like roadkill on Interstate 5. I reached into the crate and pulled her out, but she immediately lied down on the floor. Her eyes were glassy and unfocussed, and I think she still hadn’t shaken off the effects of the anesthetic.

It didn’t look very comfortable, so I picked her up again and moved her to the couch, where she again just lied down and refused to budge. Every time I relocated her, she collapsed in heap and looked at me as if to say, “Okay. This is fine, too.” She was so stoned, if she could talk, I think she would have been discussing philosophy and asking if there was any more pizza in the fridge.

A few days have passed now, and both kittens have bounced back pretty well. They are eating and using the litter box normally, so I think the worst of it has passed. They still don’t like their little plastic space helmets, but we have been told they need to stay on a while longer. Besides, it’s rather entertaining to watch them pad around the house banging their heads into things. I would think after this many days though, they would have figured out how wide those cones are.

Cats aren’t very bright.

And they’re still smarter than my kids.

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Bad Odds

I read an article recently that said more adult children are moving back home to live with their parents than at any time since the 1930’s. They referred to these men and women as the “boomerang generation.” Well, I must live in Australia because I got boomeranged. Hard.

Now, many of you may think this is a good thing. You might believe that adult offspring living at home would be of great benefit to their aging and overworked mothers and fathers. They could help out financially by covering some of the bills, including food, power, and other necessities. They might lend a hand with the chores, taking on yardwork and housework so their rapidly deteriorating elders don’t wear out quite so quickly. They could even fix meals and run necessary errands.

You might think that.

And you would be terribly wrong.

I have two adult children living with me these days. EM1 is 23 years old and firmly entrenched in my home. She treats her bedroom like an apartment and has even changed the locks without providing her landlords a key. Landlords she doesn’t pay rent to.

A few weeks ago, I asked EM1 to pick one night during the week to plan a meal and cook dinner for the family. Instead of actually doing what I asked, she did nothing all week, then on Friday suddenly said, “Oh, I guess it’s my night to do dinner.”

She then told me to pick a restaurant, go online to order what I wanted and pay for it, then schedule a pickup. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t consider this to be “fixing dinner.” It’s more like Uber Eats, only with a shittier attitude.

And when she went out to pick up the food, EM1 decided to stop for coffee on the way home just to make sure everything was good and cold when it got to us.

This is her idea of “helping.”

But I have actually sort of gotten used to EM1’s particular brand of B.S. It is the younger kid that suddenly presented us with a whole new set of challenges this year. EM2 will be 21 in a few months. She is attending college, but her school has gone completely virtual. EM2 moved out of the dorms and back home with us so she could save money and try to shorten my life.

Although classes are online, she still drives to school on most days so she can hang out with her college friends while she studies. I am not sure of her reasoning for this other than perhaps some strange desire to cost us gas money and put wear and tear on the car. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t understand why, instead of staying in her room and opening up her laptop to attend class, she feels the need to get in the car and drive for 45 minutes to a friend’s apartment so she can open up her laptop to attend class.

But I have never understood how this kid’s mind works. This is the same child that wandered into our bedroom at 10 o’clock at night while my wife and I were trying to sleep and started singing a song from her favorite cartoon. Despite harsh words and a few thrown objects, she didn’t stop singing until the entire song was done.

To clarify, this wasn’t several years ago. This was just last week. (And the cartoon was We Bare Bears, just in case you were wondering. I have no idea what the name of the damned song was.)

This is my life with adult children in the home. No extra help with chores or running errands, just nonstop tests to see if I can keep my sanity or if I’ll finally break and fire up the chainsaw I keep in the garage and try to bring the house down around our ears. At the moment, the odds are about two to one in favor of the chainsaw in case you wanted to get your bets in.

Just the other day, I was in the kitchen washing dishes and loading up the dish washer. I probably spent twenty minutes boiling my hands in hot soapy water before I finished the stack of plates and silverware that had accumulated in the sink over the past few hours. I turned off the water, grabbed the bag out of the kitchen garbage can and took it outside.

When I returned, I found a dirty dish and a fork sitting in the sink.

EM1 was sitting on the couch watching the latest installment of some Korean soap opera. I asked her in a very pleasant voice, “What the f—k is this?”

She turned and asked what I was referring to. I asked her why there was a dirty dish in the sink, and with a look that suggested she couldn’t believe I was bothering her for something so trivial, she told me it was from her lunch.

I took a deep breath then clarified that I wasn’t really asking where it came from, but rather why didn’t she bother to wash it. She told me, “I’ll get it later.”

I asked, again very politely, “If you didn’t want to wash it, why the hell didn’t you at least hand it to me thirty seconds ago while I was washing all the other dishes?”

She shushed me, then turned the volume up on the television set.

For anyone who is wondering, EM1 is still alive and breathing. I’ll admit however, that it was touch and go for a moment.

But maybe we should up those odds to three to one in favor of the chainsaw.

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Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

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