Center-fold of Attention

There’s something about settling in for the night to read The Great Gatsby from the solitude of your bedroom, only to have the silence broken by an unexpected tap, tap, tap-tap-tap, tap. A chorus of instruments comes alive from the television speakers, and even though it’s faint, I instantly recognize the melody of this particular classic.

“Does she walk? Does she talk? Does she come compweet?” my four-year-old croons from the living room as he keeps rhythm on the drum-kit.

I laugh. Hysterically, actually. Even the noise cancelling headphones that had just come in the mail today on loan from a friend can’t drown my son’s serenade to the much heralded homeroom angel.

It’s awesome. I mean seriously - who doesn’t love a little of The J. Geils Band every now and then? I definitely do. My wife does…ish. Brady certainly does. I know this because he plays the song three more times, each time banging the drum sticks together at the intro to cue the other band members of Her Living Room Hero on the PlayStation.

I find myself wishing that my parents could see this. Especially my mom. She’d be proud – her little drummer boy has not only grown up, but has his very own modern day Partridge Family, courtesy of Rock Band 3. With me on lead guitar, Brady on drums, Traci on vocals (very much against her better judgment), and Kacie on the keytar, we’re ready to not only see, but rock a million faces on any given night.

Perhaps I should have known that Brady would get the most out of the game. The kid not only tried to play the guitar behind his neck the first day we had it, but he also tried throwing it from left to right around his back. Just when you think there’s nothing else your kids can do to surprise you…

“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked of his ability to display such a degree of showmanship.

“Yo Gabba Gabba,” he said, as if I should have already known this and was a fool for asking.

But in the four weeks since his debut as a guitarist, he’s abandoned its weightiness for the sexiness of the drums. Somehow my son already knows that chicks dig drummers, which probably explains why he’s not wearing any pants at the moment.

I peek from my hiding spot and see the seriousness and purpose with which Brady’s hitting the pads. He’s surprisingly nailing a high percentage of the colored notes AND singing. With a little less hair, he could be the next Phil Collins. Easily. Or not. No pressure, son.

I continue to watch his facial expressions with every strike of the drum pads. I take note of the emotion with which he sings.

Traci's now standing behind him, smiling at me as I watch him. All eyes are on our little musical prodigy, and that's just the way he likes it.

My internal dialogue begins to practice a response for the first time he asks what a centerfold is.

Something tells me that showing rather than telling will not be such a good idea.

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Wanted: Driver for Out of Control Cable Car

Some days I swear that parts of my life have been taken right out of an album by The Fray. Between work, school, family, and whatever issues the Mustang decides to throw at us on any given day, I can’t help but feel I’m in over my head.

The new semester starts today. I’m nowhere near ready for that to happen. I’m not geared up to give my nights and weekends back to the University of North Texas and its English program. I’m not prepared to put my DVR and Netflix queues on hold for the next few months because I’ll be too busy studying. From the assigned book list for my American Fiction class, it seems I will be reading seven or eight novels between now and the beginning of May. I didn’t read seven or eight novels in 2010.

I’ll also be retaking the Spanish class that I got an “F” in last semester. Nothing like being told you suck in a language you have trouble comprehending. Someone should suggest to the colleges and universities in Texas that they consider offering Restaurant Spanish as an acceptable option for those pursuing an English degree. I'd even settle for Landscape Spanish.

The brakes on the Mustang are dead. Again. Not dead, dead like last time. Just different, dead. I guess there’s a leak? Or maybe it’s that not enough of a vacuum is getting created in the something-or-other? I’m thinking it’s a wheel cylinder. Or a master cylinder. But like last semester’s Spanish class, I don’t have much of a clue. They’re just dead. Muerto.

Various heater components, ignition switches, and wiring harnesses have taken up residence in the corner of our bedroom waiting for me to do something with them. I’d love to oblige, but the Mustang has been at the mechanic’s shop for two weeks. He hasn’t been able to even assess the situation because the cold weather has him too bogged down with work to be able to thoroughly dig into the latest situation with the brakes and tell me just how dead they are. I was supposed to work on the car the last two weekends. Now I don’t know when I’ll have another free weekend, leaving the parts to continue to collect dust.

Because we’ve been down to one car the last six weeks, I’ve been working from 5:30 in the morning until 5 or 6 in the evening. That’s not to say the extra hours haven’t been beneficial to my workday, but now that the winter break has come and gone I feel like I’ve barely spent any quality time with my family. All I want to do when I get home is veg on the couch and stare at whatever’s on the television.

This isn’t so different from every other day, but at least on those days I was coherent enough to talk to or interact with my family. Now I’m like the crotchety old uncle on an episode of "Murder She Wrote” that keeps hanging on out of nothing more than spite to prevent his nieces and nephews from collecting on his will. Fortunately I’m worth next to nothing, so the chances of my being murdered in a room that’s locked from the inside are pretty slim.

The ability to get a good night’s sleep has abandoned me. That’s not to say I’m not sleeping at all, because I am. It’s just that what sleep I am getting is not restful. My mind won’t shut down and I’ve been having at least five or six different vivid dreams a night. Usually those dreams are a welcome respite from the things that bog me down during the day, but not lately. These particular dreams are chaotic. Nightmarish. I’d give just about anything right now for the oldie but goodie that leaves me showing up to the first night of class wearing only boxers and a t-shirt. When I got dressed this morning I made sure to match – just in case.

I get that I need to do a better job of thinking “big picture” and understand that I can’t carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. It’s a mantra I’m trying to incorporate into my daily life, but it’s a slow-moving process. My wife wishes I could disengage. She's constantly reminding me that as hard as I try, I’m not Superman (or even Clark Kent) but that with the addition of several new gray hairs I am more like Perry White.

I probably shouldn’t tell her that my internal monologue has started referring to her Lex. 

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Welcome to My Life, 2011

A new year is here, and with it the promise to be better than the last. Show of hands. Who’s holding their breath?

We’re thirteen days into this sucker and I am proud to say that I have yet to break a single New Year’s Resolution. No, I’m not perfect - just wise enough to know I don’t need to throw some well-intentioned decree into the atmosphere about how I’m going to undergo this profound change and why this is the year I’ll get around to becoming a better person. I’m thirty-five, and frankly I’m finally beginning to understand myself well enough to find comfort in knowing that like Popeye, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.”

It’s true. I’m an enigma. Just when people think they’ve figured me out they realize that they’re barely starting to unravel the mystery that is Me. But let’s face several obvious facts: I will never wear a pair of size 32 jeans again. My hair is graying a little more every day. Each new semester only proves that the students in my classes continue to get younger while I only get older. And now, as I just typed that last period, I realize that I sound like a woman. Not awesome.

But rejoice, for the first few days of 2011 has brought with it and laid upon me some wicked cool (yes, Susan, that was for you) knowledge that I am willing to impart on all of you. For better or worse. Sicker or in health. Funny or just TMI. Mostly I just need to write something. Anything. And also because a friend was sort of having a cruddy day today and said that she needed a good laugh. Hopefully this helps – even if it’s just a little bit.

Eddie Rabbit might have loved a rainy night, but I heart random, and the following list of randomness is what I am willing to throw into the atmosphere to begin 2011…

1)   Wandering the streets of Washington DC at night is truly amazing. Wandering the streets of Washington DC at 1AM? Totally rad and worth the price of admission. There’s just something about the cat and mouse game of dodging potential muggers or cops posed as prostitutes while navigating your way through the streets of our nation’s capital, all the while hoping to catch a glimpse of the President. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t eagerly check the screen on my digital camera after every shot in hopes of finding an orb or two as I photographed various monuments. I guess the rumors of ghosts roaming the White House lawn got to me. My bad.

2)   I don’t talk to my kids nearly enough when I’m travelling. I like to pretend it’s because I don’t want to disrupt whatever groove they might have going on at home and that they’ll hang up the phone and cry to my wife for hours of how they miss me terribly and don’t like it when I’m gone. Truthfully? I’m afraid I might realize their lives actually do go on without me.

3)   DC cab drivers? Nuckin’ futs. Not NYC crazy and all horn happy. Just dangerous. A forty-five minute cab ride from the hotel to the airport is just too much for one man to endure when all he wants to do is get home and see his wife and kids. I didn’t think it was physically possible to get a headache from clenching your butt cheeks together for so long. It is.

4)   I need to lose some weight. Or a lot of weight, depending on who you ask. No matter how you slice it, there are a few leftover Oreos managing to hang around the house party that is my waistline that clearly don’t get the subtlety behind the phrase “you don’t gotta go home, but you can’t stay here.” You remember how weird it was the first time you saw the polar bear running through the jungle on the first season of “Lost” a few years back? Imagine opening the shower curtain and seeing one staring back at you from the mirror. So not cool. Especially when you thought you’ve rid yourself of said polar bear once before.

5)   It is entirely possible to both sweat and freeze your nuts off the same time. Yep. I said it. I know this scientific anomaly is true because it happened to me the other night as I made the two-mile walk from Wal-Mart to home in 28 degree weather just two days after we got 5-inches of snow. I no longer have an appreciation for icicles. And no, I didn’t have to walk home because my wife and I got in a fight because she said we couldn’t buy Oreos. It was a purposeful attempt to start exercising again.

All kidding aside, I want to start 2011 by expressing how grateful I am that you take the time to read, care about, and enjoy the sheer randomness that can be my imagination. I’m appreciative of your texts, emails and Facebook messages that ask when I’m going to publish something new. It’s amazing how something that started out as a joke between a co-worker and I turned into a blog that’s been read in fifteen countries.

Thank you for helping to bring Her Living Room Hero to life.

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