Monday, Meet Manic. Manic, Say Hello to Monday.

Seriously. Who wears pajamas to work?

No, lingerie models don’t count.

Anyone that knows me knows that having to wear business casual to work Monday thru Thursday isn’t my idea of a good time. Forget about wearing a suit every day. Just thinking about it gives me an anxiety attack. I’m a jeans and a t-shirt kind of guy, so I totally understand wanting to be comfortable. But pajamas? And it’s corporate approved? Seems a bit much if you ask me.

Granted, it’s not our office wearing said PJ’s to work, but I still had to witness this carnival sideshow every time I ventured into the communal areas when the need to refill on water or the urge to empty the tank struck.

Think I’m overreacting? Try walking into the men’s restroom only to discover the reincarnation of Andre the flippin’ Giant standing there, hand against the wall in front of him for support, urinal-blocking you...bathrobe spread wide open with the tie thingy dragging the ground. Apparently the fates felt that seeing Joan Rivers dressed as a GoDaddy girl last night on TV didn’t scar my psyche enough.

Rather than doing an awkward about-face and hightailing it to a different restroom, I did what any self-respecting man in my position would do: I hid from Andre in the darkness of the lone remaining depository, which was located next to him and conveniently shared a burnt out light bulb.

He flushed (points for that), and as he turned to leave our eyes made contact in a way that one dude should never have to make eye contact with another.

“Morning,” Andre said, gazing at me long enough that he should have offered a cigarette and a cuddle.

I said nothing. I didn’t feel the least bit rude about it either. I mean, you wanna chat me up, do it in the hallway. Don’t try and peek over my privacy fence because you’re curious to see what kind of irrigation system I’m rockin’.

On the way back to my cubicle, I found myself trying to purge my mind of everything that was already starting to bog it down at 7:43 in the morning. That’s when it hit me: Just go home. Go back to bed. Pretend like the day never began. Try again tomorrow.

Instead I wrote down the top five things that came to mind and seemed to be holding me back as I tried to start my day. This is what I came up with. More or less.

1)      Too many emails waiting to be answered – all of which seem to be more important than the next. After four unexpected days off of work, perhaps it’s best to just find a new job rather than even try to make magic happen in a land where fairytales don’t exist. Or hit the delete button. Yeah, that’s probably easier.

2)      I can’t believe I finally gave into my curiosity and wasted fifteen minutes of my life on “Jersey Shore” yesterday. I’d have been better off watching Gigli over and over again on a continuous loop.

3)      Did I really only bring a strawberry yogurt and chicken-noodle soup to eat today? If I keep this up I’ll fit into that polka-dot bikini by Spring Break for sure…

4)      Send GoDaddy.com a thank you card for burning the horrible, horrible image of Joan Rivers in my mind. Gag. Me. Spoon optional. And no, Joan, we cannot talk.

5)      I totally get having an off-day at work. I have them all the time, actually. But when your only job as a Grammy-winning artist is to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, please get the words right. A lot of men and women have fought for and given their lives for your right to bastardize the song with your “soulful” rendition. You want to take a song and make it your own? Try out for “American Idol.”

Perhaps I was suffering from the side effects of too much cold and flu medication over the weekend. Maybe cabin fever had taken total control of my sanity since I’d been trapped inside the confines of our apartment for six out of the last seven days thanks to the ice and snow storm that hit Dallas last week. That much “quality time” with the wife and kids is enough to drive any sane man mad, and my degree of sanity was already questionable to begin with.

Because things are never as nice and neat as we’d like to pretend they are, my list of top five had six notes of random thought on it today. Fitting for a Monday wrapped in chaos.

6)      Time to buy a house.

That may just be the most grown-up thought I have all year.

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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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Wherefore Art Thou Appreciation of Me?

Now that finals are finally over, I’ve decided that I hate Shakespeare.

I know, Mom. You’ve told me a hundred times. The Plain White T’s have told me a hundred more. Hate is a strong word. But you know what? At the moment I really, really, really don’t like him.

Saying something so bold might be the kiss of death for a writer, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway because the guy has consumed so much of my life the last several weeks that I can never get back. Ever.

I get that Shakespeare is in many ways the Holy Grail of wordsmiths. I understand that drama as we know it is what it is largely in part to Shakespeare. Simply put though, I don’t enjoy reading his work, which kills me because Shakespeare in Love was such a great movie. But there are too many glaring holes in his work that I just can’t get past. I can think of three off the top of my head. Check it:

1)      With Othello, Shakespeare pretty much created the first stereotypical black male literary and stage character. Othello snatched up the hottest white woman in all the land, gave her a good smack down in front of his peeps, and then *SPOILER ALERT* killed her. Where is Al Sharpton when you need him? Or Jesse Jackson? Spike Lee?

2)      How many times does a grown man need to utter the phrase “how now?” More importantly, why is it that every time I read said phrase my mind was overtaken with the uncontrollable urge to finish with “brown cow?” That’s not very conducive to learning.

3)      Rambling on and on is not okay nor does it make for fun reading, even if you create super-duper cool names for it like “soliloquy” or “aside.” At the end of the day, you’re still just the guy that stands at other peoples’ cubicles and wears out his welcome by talking too much.

Perhaps this sudden revelation of mine stems from having been forced to spend so much time reading, rereading, listening to the play on Netflix (which was nothing short of genius I might add) just to keep me focused as I re-reread, and then having to analyze the thing to death. Whatever happened to something simply being what it is? Why do we constantly find ourselves looking for deeper meaning in places where it’s entirely possible that none may exist? Two words: Face. Value.

But just because I don’t enjoy reading Shakespeare doesn’t mean that the stories behind the words aren’t incredible. It’s just that the words on paper just don’t jive for me. On film? Most definitely, which provides the epiphany that Kacie’s Shakespearean education should instead come in the form of Hollywood adaptations of some of his more popular plays. It’s a brilliant idea, really. Probably one of my best ever, after the Netflix thing of course.

As I look at the long list of options, I see that some selections hold true to the entire concept of what Shakespeare was originally writing about. Others will only embody certain aspects of the work. All in all it’s a good mix. I’m thinking we’ll go with:

1)      O – (Julia Stiles, Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett) Tim Blake Nelson’s rendition of “Othello”

2)      10 Things I Hate About You – (Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger) Gil Junger’s remake of “Taming of the Shrew”

3)      Hamlet – (Ethan Hawke, Julia Stiles) Michael Almereyda’s modern day spin on Hamlet

4)      Romeo+Juliet – (Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes) Baz Luhrmann’s take which actually includes the original dialogue

5)      Much Ado About Nothing – (Denzel Washington, Keanu Reeves, Kate Beckinsale) Kenneth Branagh’s version of the play by the same name

After watching, I’m sure Kacie will make some witty comment about my having a crush on Julia Stiles because she’s in three of the five movies that will be part of her Shakespearean experience. While true, it’s purely coincidental. But hopefully after we’ve watched these different interpretations of Shakespeare’s work, she might have the desire to read the originals and be able to not only accomplish but actually enjoy something that her old man just wasn’t able to.

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Note to Self: If You're Going to be a Superhero, Wear Shoes...

My wife and I were awoken just after 3AM Sunday morning to screams coming from the parking lot of our apartment complex. We live in a really nice community, so the disturbance got our attention rather easily. Peering through the anonymity of two-inch window blinds in our third floor domain, we speculated as to the nature of what in the wide, wide world of domestic violence was going on out there.

At first we thought we heard a child crying, which brought about an immediate call to action for both of us. Traci dialed 911 while I continued to spy from the safety of our living room a hundred yards away.  While on the phone with the dispatcher, a light came on in the car, allowing us to faintly make out two people – neither of which to our relief were children – who looked to be hitting each other. The then driver appeared to climb on top of the passenger as the light turned back off. That’s when the worst case scenario hit us. What if this girl was being raped?

I grabbed a pair of jeans from the bedroom floor while Traci was on the phone again, telling the dispatcher of our suspicions and that the police needed to speed things up. A young blonde woman got out of the passenger side of the car and began to run from the car as the driver’s door opened. Even in the darkness, I could read the expression on Traci’s face telling me to hurry.

The frigidness of the cement delivered one forceful blow after another with each collision of my bare feet against the hardened sidewalk. My feet were growing numb, and pain began shooting through my bad left ankle. I remember trying to not think about it and wondered as I ran when it was that summer had officially left us and the night had gotten so cold. I was freezing and regretted not putting on tennis shoes or a jacket. That’s when I saw her, wandering around the grassy knoll where resident dog owners let their canines go poo and neglect to dispose of it.

I knew immediately that this African-American girl in her early twenties was definitely not the blonde girl that we’d seen get out of the car; she must have been the driver. I could tell from her clumsy steps and slurred words as she called out to me that she was was totally faced.

There was an overwhelming urge to say something witty about dodging poo land mines, but I let it go. Once the girl was close enough for me to conclude that she was physically okay, part of me wished she’d fall face first into a nice fresh one. I was no longer a concerned father. I was just a man who had been woken up in the middle of the night because two irresponsible girls had decided to take advantage of the loophole allowing bars to stay open an extra hour due to the time change and weren't man enough to handle their liquor.

I tried my best to find solace in knowing that our worst fears were just products of overactive imaginations, but it didn’t keep me from lying awake on the couch the next couple of hours in a state of pissedoffidness.

As Sunday managed to drag on, it brought a certain clarity that helped lead me to following conclusions: If you're going to be a superhero, wear shoes. I also needed to work on a new manifesto as a father.

It’s not good enough just to try and teach my kids to go all Spike Lee and do the right thing, to make friends who won’t take them down the path of unrighteousness, or more importantly, to not eat the last two Oreos in the package that I purposefully hid behind the boxes of cereal in the pantry. I decided that everything Kacie will ever need she can have from the confinement of our home. Check it:

1.   School? She can go virtual and attend online. The only good things about school itself when I was growing up were Pizza Fridays and when the final bell of the day rang. Let’s face it – the pizza wasn’t that great.

2.   Interaction with friends? She’ll go old school and reinvent letter writing for a generation that’s forgotten that words and phrases don’t always need to be abbreviated and how punctuation marks are for more than just creating different smiley faces. And she can have three sleepovers a month. Maybe. We should probably just start with two. Or one. Yeah, let’s start with one for now and see how that goes.

3.   Exercise? Wii Fit.

4.   Sports? Wii Sports.

5.   College? Again, online. Between that and ESPN U she can get a higher education and still follow her university’s athletic programs. Go, team!

6.   Dating? Yeah right.

7.   Career? We have stay-at-home moms. There’s even the urban legend of the stay-at-home dad (a.k.a the aspiring writer). Why not the stay-at-home daughter?

8.   Marriage? Does the phrase “over my dead body” ring a bell?

When Traci got home that evening, I shared with her my newfound enlightenment. She laughed and said “good job, honey.” She may as well have patted me on the head and fed me a treat after neglecting to bag my poo from the grassy knoll. But I got it. I understood what she was thinking, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, Traci was right.

Regrettably, I can’t lock Kacie in her room for the rest of her life, not because it’s cruel and unusual, but because she deserves the right to make stupid choices that trip her up in life, causing her to land face first into a fresh one of her own making. I just have to teach her that sometimes the best part of falling down comes in knowing that you’re able to get back up.

Sounds easy enough, right?

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Thanks for Everything, Saturday

Saturdays aren’t supposed to suck. Saturdays are supposed to be awesome. They’re supposed to be the day you get to sleep in, They’re supposed to be the day that you transfer from the bed to the couch where you lounge until Saturday morning cartoons are over and then flip to TNT or TBS with hopes of finding a classic 1980’s movie to watch until you’ve formulated some semblance of a plan in your mind for how the rest of the day is going to shake out. Saturday is not supposed to be a day for life lessons.

This morning I informed my 12U softball team that after four years of coaching them, I was walking away. I tried my best to make sure that they understood I wasn’t walking away from them but that I was saying goodbye to the game and my role in it. My words were meant to simply say this: Thank you for letting me be a part of your lives, even if for some of you it was only for a short time.

I cried. I knew I would. I’m the reason people like Nicholas Sparks and Nora Ephron have jobs. I tried my best to get through it unscathed, but as I delivered my speech - which was really nothing more than a silent prayer to whoever was listening to please get me through the next few minutes with my dignity intact - I swear I heard a women walk up behind me and say “Look honey, some poor guy dropped his man-card. We should probably turn it in to the Lost and Found.”

Telling the girls goodbye was hard. I knew it would be, but I was ready for it. I thought I was ready for it. I’d performed a trial run the night before by telling Kacie and her cousin Camille when we got home from practice. I’m not sure Camille knew what to make of it, but Kacie did. She barely looked at me the rest of the night.

The game itself isn’t something that I really remember much of. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that I was snapping photos of the girls every opportunity I got, but in that single game I relived the highlight reel from every other game I’d been a part of over the course of the last nine seasons. I remembered all the girls that had come and gone and wondered how they were spending their Saturday mornings. Were they sleeping in? Watching cartoons? Still playing softball?

When our final inning to play defense arrived, Kacie was forced to sit bench rather than play shortsop as I originally penciled her in for because of some bonehead snafu I’d made in the defensive positioning. I found her standing against the dugout fence, ready to cheer her teammates on, just as I’d preached to the team every game since they were eight. Kacie had always been a loyal soldier. A faithful soldier. But at that moment, she was a crying soldier.

I went to console her – something I’d never really done in all our time together on the diamond – and apologized for my miscue. She shook her head and simply said, “It’s the last inning.” Tears were welling up in her eyes.

Like most kids who play sports, she never wanted to sit out, but she also understood that sometimes she had to because like hitting and fielding, it too was part of the game. Today I wanted her to be on the field as much as she wanted to be on the field. I wanted to watch her, not as her coach, but as her father. For one inning out of all of the innings that had added up over time, I just wanted to be dad.

“I know,” I said.

I hugged her. She resisted. I hugged her again. She resisted again.

“No, daddy. It’s the last inning.” She could barely catch her breath. Her tears were making a jailbreak from the confines of their imprisonment. “Our last inning,” she finished.

I hadn’t prepared myself for that. I had no words to make things better. All I had were my own tears to keep hers from becoming lonely. Kacie and I stood side by side and watched the fruits of all the previous seasons together unfold on the field in front of us. We were two heavy hearts whose worlds, it seemed, were coming to an end.

As I write this, I’m desperately resisting the urge to send an email to the team with a subject line that reads: Sike! The email would disclose that I was only teasing and that I of course will be back to coach the girls in the spring. Perhaps that would be the easier solution to a decision that has me feeling like crap on a Saturday. But I know that no matter how hard letting go might be today, it’ll only be harder tomorrow, and even harder the day after that.

What I was unaware of when I woke up this morning, was that this particular Saturday had a plan for me that didn’t involve Scooby Doo, a bowl of Frootloops, and the last hour of Sixteen Candles. You see, I thought that Kacie and I restoring the Mustang together was just my last ditch effort to fill in the missing pages of time that I lost out on spending with her because I’d let a hundred-and-one other things get in the way. In some ways it is, but now I understand that this rebuilding process is, in its own way, also preparing both of us for how to eventually let go.

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