Our little household, which consists of a sunny wife, a cynical husband, an oafish Corgi, and an aquaphilic cat, came through the past year fairly unscathed. We were very lucky, the cat most of all.
The Missus gained a long-overdue, and well-deserved, promotion to a training position. She is a natural at presenting in front of a group, whether she be singing, or explaining the minutiae of pharmacy overrides. She spent two weeks conducting a training class at a call center in Florida, and even though she had no appreciation of the warm December weather, she did brave it long enough to take some beautiful beach pictures. She is, herself, a portrait of loveliness.
The Hoosband continues to cripple Kansas City's running community with ill-fitting footwear. Now in his fourteenth year with the company, he has become eligible for The Golden Thumb, a gold-plated, asbestos replica of the most important tool of his trade. In accordance with his abilities, it will be a left. He completed four marathons this year, which somehow failed to make it onto any Top 10 Memorable Sports Achievement lists.
Chloe the Corgi continues to belch, grunt, bark, lumber, slobber, and flop her way through life. She spends both of her waking hours "sunny side-up," so that she can be patted and scratched on her magnificent white chest. Last week we noticed that she had gotten a tattoo on it which read, "Born to Kill Bunnies."
Carlos the Incorrigible Cat visited his father in Mexico over the summer. We then took the opportunity to stitch our wounds and change the locks. Alas, he returned, attached claw-wise to the back of one of our building's maintenance men. Carlos is a challenge- in the same way the Black Death was a challenge- that we hope to one day meet, before he annihilates us.
We sincerely wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year. A complete stranger wished me that today. It was unexpected, and very kind. I don't know how she meant "prosperous." She might have meant it in the financial sense, which in these times when so many are foundering under debt, joblessness, homelessness, and despair, would have been an uplifting enough sentiment. Or, maybe she meant it in the sense of prospering in all the other things that make life worth living: love, companionship, good health, and Nutella.
Thank you for reading,
MP
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Thursday Morning Coming Down
6:30 a.m.: While taking the dog out for her breakpiss, the cat bolts past the not yet caffeinated hubby, and out the open apartment door. As the wife sings "Hit The Road, Jack," the hubby pursues, flipflops flapping down the steps, sotto voce profanities spilling like a fuzzy cat through an open apartment door, dog galumping behind.
The cat wedges himself under the stairs, his loud purring echoing through the lobby. The hubby succeeds in enticing the cat from under the steps just as help arrives in the form of a perspiring Corgi snout. The hubby falls to his knees, profanities probably audible to other tenants, and grabs cat by the hind legs. As he crawls clumsily out from under the stairs, the cat's front claws tear the carpet with a sound like pulling apart the world's largest pieces of velcro.
His knees pop as hubby stands with writhing, way overweight writhing still,loudly purring writhing cat. Hubby secures dog, who is standing outside an apartment door not her own, her nose-sweat staining the carpet. Before the party ascends the stairs, the hubby hears the wife singing "The Hallelujah Chorus."
The flipflops flap, the dog galumps, the cat purrs and wriggles. Hubby opens the door, and catches what he will later recall is a look of murderous disappointment on the wife's face. The dog rushes in, collar jangling. Hubby hands escaped purring prisoner to wife, who is promptly whacked, to no one's surprise, by the purrball.
Hubby flipflop runs down the stairs, dog dripping and galumping, as wife hums a melody from Sweeney Todd.
The cat wedges himself under the stairs, his loud purring echoing through the lobby. The hubby succeeds in enticing the cat from under the steps just as help arrives in the form of a perspiring Corgi snout. The hubby falls to his knees, profanities probably audible to other tenants, and grabs cat by the hind legs. As he crawls clumsily out from under the stairs, the cat's front claws tear the carpet with a sound like pulling apart the world's largest pieces of velcro.
His knees pop as hubby stands with writhing, way overweight writhing still,loudly purring writhing cat. Hubby secures dog, who is standing outside an apartment door not her own, her nose-sweat staining the carpet. Before the party ascends the stairs, the hubby hears the wife singing "The Hallelujah Chorus."
The flipflops flap, the dog galumps, the cat purrs and wriggles. Hubby opens the door, and catches what he will later recall is a look of murderous disappointment on the wife's face. The dog rushes in, collar jangling. Hubby hands escaped purring prisoner to wife, who is promptly whacked, to no one's surprise, by the purrball.
Hubby flipflop runs down the stairs, dog dripping and galumping, as wife hums a melody from Sweeney Todd.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
He Literally Scared the...
While fitting shoes on a customer at the store yesterday, I heard another customer tell her child, " Just go in your diaper, that's what it's there for." I assume the little pooper had said something like, "Gotta go potty," but I missed that, focused as I was on my job. But the word DIAPER always reorients my concentration. (As do words like NUCLEAR, WASTE, TOXIC, and DISASTER.)
A coworker, unaware of the imminent arrival of an S-Bomb, began to help the mother. In the previous week, he'd had surgery to remove part of an eyelid, on which a melanoma had been found. The surgery was considered successful, but it left his right eye mostly shut by stitches, and that side of his face somewhat swollen and discolored in a purplish-yellow sort of way. He was not easy to look at, even for those of us adults who work with him daily and have seen a lot of zombie movies.
A couple of minutes passed, and my customer was coming to a conclusion on his shoes, which allowed me to devote about 93 percent of my attention to the happy and curious toddler. He was exploring the stacks of shoe boxes, and trying to clamber up on one of the fitting stools just before it happened. The mother was trying on shoes, and, I'm guessing, not thinking any further about the doo-doo directive she had given the flesh of her flesh a few minutes ago.
Doubtless, he was not thinking about it either. He was testing the safety of his environment, and the strength of his muscles, when, nearly atop his Everest, the melanoma-free, purple-cheeked, child-friendly but one and a half-eyed old man with the gruff voice, and comedic intonation insufficient to convince a two-year old, said, "Hey, don't climb on my chair."
The child, now filled with fear, devoted all his muscular energy to getting the hell away from that face and voice, and laid down at the feet of his mother, crying softly. The employee apologized, and said that he had only been kidding, though his pirate-zombie face could never convince the child of it. Then, of course, the mother, keenly aware of the scent of her offspring said, "Well, I guess, you did use your diaper, didn't you?" I vomited inside my own mind.
Thanks for reading,
MP
A coworker, unaware of the imminent arrival of an S-Bomb, began to help the mother. In the previous week, he'd had surgery to remove part of an eyelid, on which a melanoma had been found. The surgery was considered successful, but it left his right eye mostly shut by stitches, and that side of his face somewhat swollen and discolored in a purplish-yellow sort of way. He was not easy to look at, even for those of us adults who work with him daily and have seen a lot of zombie movies.
A couple of minutes passed, and my customer was coming to a conclusion on his shoes, which allowed me to devote about 93 percent of my attention to the happy and curious toddler. He was exploring the stacks of shoe boxes, and trying to clamber up on one of the fitting stools just before it happened. The mother was trying on shoes, and, I'm guessing, not thinking any further about the doo-doo directive she had given the flesh of her flesh a few minutes ago.
Doubtless, he was not thinking about it either. He was testing the safety of his environment, and the strength of his muscles, when, nearly atop his Everest, the melanoma-free, purple-cheeked, child-friendly but one and a half-eyed old man with the gruff voice, and comedic intonation insufficient to convince a two-year old, said, "Hey, don't climb on my chair."
The child, now filled with fear, devoted all his muscular energy to getting the hell away from that face and voice, and laid down at the feet of his mother, crying softly. The employee apologized, and said that he had only been kidding, though his pirate-zombie face could never convince the child of it. Then, of course, the mother, keenly aware of the scent of her offspring said, "Well, I guess, you did use your diaper, didn't you?" I vomited inside my own mind.
Thanks for reading,
MP
Monday, June 20, 2011
What I Learned From An Iowa Marathon
#1. The lake part of Storm Lake is no more than twenty feet deep, which means Jimmy Hoffa is not playing bocce ball and wearing cement shoes down there.
#2. The county where the marathon was held is Buena Vista. Pronounced like "bee-yu-na." Such a mauling of this bee-oot-i-ful Spanish word makes me think that we need more immigration from Me-hee-co.
#3. That is the smell of money, not manure.
#4. Iowans are friendly-even when treated rudely. I don't know what the jerk-off with the earbuds said to the teenage volunteer at the mile 23 waterstop (Other than it wasn't "Thank you."), but she apologized to him.
#5. There is always someone who has done more marathons than you. Unless you're the guy I talked to afterwards who had just finished his 151st. I could have said that I'd done 152, but I was in a small town in Iowa-I just couldn't bring myself to lie.
#6. Spectators should never shout out, with about 1400 meters to go, that there are only "1400 meters to go to the finish." A meter being about one step's worth of distance, 1400 of them seems like a trip around the Equator. Just say things like, "Almost there," or, "Just around the corner." The promise of imminent relief from pain, even if false, is what's needed.
#7. There is always enough gas in the tank for a couple of "fly-bys" in the home stretch. I extended my trembling arms shoulder high and swooped from side to side, like a drunk walking a tightrope. The spectators loved it, and I only knocked down two of my fellow participants, who were dueling it out for 96th place.
#8 Lastly, I love Iowa. It's a beautiful state, with well-kept farms, and hard-working, fun-loving people who will come out to watch and help complete strangers exhaust themselves running from one end of a county to the other. They thanked me for coming and doing my silly airplane swoop.
My wife is a native Iowan, and she came out to support me and those who were strangers to her. She wandered about the county roads, taking pictures of sheep, and breathing in the smell of money. She was a small-town girl who had come home. She is kind, and decent, and hard-working, and loving, and funny. She is the thing I love best about Iowa.
Thanks for reading,
MP
#2. The county where the marathon was held is Buena Vista. Pronounced like "bee-yu-na." Such a mauling of this bee-oot-i-ful Spanish word makes me think that we need more immigration from Me-hee-co.
#3. That is the smell of money, not manure.
#4. Iowans are friendly-even when treated rudely. I don't know what the jerk-off with the earbuds said to the teenage volunteer at the mile 23 waterstop (Other than it wasn't "Thank you."), but she apologized to him.
#5. There is always someone who has done more marathons than you. Unless you're the guy I talked to afterwards who had just finished his 151st. I could have said that I'd done 152, but I was in a small town in Iowa-I just couldn't bring myself to lie.
#6. Spectators should never shout out, with about 1400 meters to go, that there are only "1400 meters to go to the finish." A meter being about one step's worth of distance, 1400 of them seems like a trip around the Equator. Just say things like, "Almost there," or, "Just around the corner." The promise of imminent relief from pain, even if false, is what's needed.
#7. There is always enough gas in the tank for a couple of "fly-bys" in the home stretch. I extended my trembling arms shoulder high and swooped from side to side, like a drunk walking a tightrope. The spectators loved it, and I only knocked down two of my fellow participants, who were dueling it out for 96th place.
#8 Lastly, I love Iowa. It's a beautiful state, with well-kept farms, and hard-working, fun-loving people who will come out to watch and help complete strangers exhaust themselves running from one end of a county to the other. They thanked me for coming and doing my silly airplane swoop.
My wife is a native Iowan, and she came out to support me and those who were strangers to her. She wandered about the county roads, taking pictures of sheep, and breathing in the smell of money. She was a small-town girl who had come home. She is kind, and decent, and hard-working, and loving, and funny. She is the thing I love best about Iowa.
Thanks for reading,
MP
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Take That Beach 6/17/10
I've always loved the thought of running on a beach. The tide laps at your feet. The ocean breeze lightly blows your hair away from your eyes. Music from "Chariots of Fire" plays as you bound effortlessly along in slow motion. As I found out in Crescent City, California on our recent trip, though, t'aint always so.
First, the lapping tide. Mostly it lapped over the eviscerated shells of crabs that had been picked over by various sea birds. Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud of them. All that remained were the sharpest, least edible crab parts. Dodging them added at least a half-mile to my run.
Second: the cold. Granted, we were in far northernest Cali, not San Diego, so what did I expect, right? Even though the sun was on full display, it was no more than fifty degrees, and the wind- Holy Chicken of the Sea, Batman!, it was an icy Mamma Jamma. Not only did it blow the hair out of my eyes, it blew the hairs out of my eyelids. I flossed sandsicles out of my teeth for days. And, if movie music had been playing, I wouldn't have been able to hear it, since my ear drums were beaten by Mother Nature the way the rest of me was beaten by Ron Smith in eighth grade.
On the other hand, I should say that running into that wind did create a sort of slow motion effect. Kind of like a mime going over the top on that "Man Walking into The Wind" routine.
So, I was nearly hacked to bleeding bits by dead crustaceans, blasted by freezing sand, and slowed to a pace that banana slugs would laugh at. I wasn't just going to sit in the motel and watch the waves roll up on the shore. Not running would have been out of the question in such a situation. We don't have beaches in Kansas, and who knows when I'll get back out to the coast.
Alright, cue the music- da-da-da-da-daah. Da-da-da-da-daah...
Thanks for reading.
First, the lapping tide. Mostly it lapped over the eviscerated shells of crabs that had been picked over by various sea birds. Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud of them. All that remained were the sharpest, least edible crab parts. Dodging them added at least a half-mile to my run.
Second: the cold. Granted, we were in far northernest Cali, not San Diego, so what did I expect, right? Even though the sun was on full display, it was no more than fifty degrees, and the wind- Holy Chicken of the Sea, Batman!, it was an icy Mamma Jamma. Not only did it blow the hair out of my eyes, it blew the hairs out of my eyelids. I flossed sandsicles out of my teeth for days. And, if movie music had been playing, I wouldn't have been able to hear it, since my ear drums were beaten by Mother Nature the way the rest of me was beaten by Ron Smith in eighth grade.
On the other hand, I should say that running into that wind did create a sort of slow motion effect. Kind of like a mime going over the top on that "Man Walking into The Wind" routine.
So, I was nearly hacked to bleeding bits by dead crustaceans, blasted by freezing sand, and slowed to a pace that banana slugs would laugh at. I wasn't just going to sit in the motel and watch the waves roll up on the shore. Not running would have been out of the question in such a situation. We don't have beaches in Kansas, and who knows when I'll get back out to the coast.
Alright, cue the music- da-da-da-da-daah. Da-da-da-da-daah...
Thanks for reading.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Pop Goes Ploop
What would you do if you threw the chocolate blob at the end of your Tootsie Pop, stick attached, into a trash barrel, which was not a barrel filled with trash, but rather a barrel into which race volunteers dipped cups that would wind up in the hands of runners in the ninth mile of the Eugene, Oregon, Marathon and Half-Marathon. What would you do, if instead of hearing the "ssshhh-plink" of a Tootsie stick/blob sliding down a plastic liner and hitting a beer can, you hear "ploop," as your garbage breaks the surface of the water, and floats to the bottom of the now less-than-completely-fresh, life-giving substance your fellow racers will gratefully guzzle?
Would you instantly thrust your hand into the Hazmat Barrel, thinking that the Five Second Rule applies to acqueous violations as well, forgetting that you just wiped your nose with that same hand, the hand that was only fifteen minutes ago in a place where the sun don't shine, inside a thin coccoon of toilet paper, inside a Honey Pot (as they call them here), where you had to stop, because the crepes at Shari's had too many strawberries, and that impromptu crapador just happened to be out of hand sanitizer-SHIT! Shit, no! Don't put your hand-shaped germ-universe into all that water!
You should just turn quickly, and get away from the scene. Do not look back at the Aid Station Captain, who, hearing the "ploop," is watching the stick/blob settle to the bottom of a forty-gallon barrel of Cascade Mountain Spring Water helicoptered in by the Oregon Air National Guard at 3a.m. from the West Face of Mt. Hood, because, if you do, you will not be able to turn away in time to avoid locking eyes with him when he acts on that feeling we all have when someone is staring at us, and then he would know it was you who had ruined his Aid Station. You may mutter, "Sorry, Dude" under your breath, but take care, Pavarotti, that the sotto is very, very voce, for otherwise you would essentially be confessing to mass-poisoning of a public water source, which, in Oregon, is punishable by a minimum of fifty years in a sea-lion colony.
Just run away, Renee. Hustle your malfeasing little butt deep into the starting corral, and let your fear and shame transform themselves into an adrenaline rush that will propel you to one hell of a half-marathon time. And when all the Eugene TV stations put you on camera afterwards and ask how you did it, you can tell them it was all thanks to the thirteen cups of chocolate-flavored water you had at Aid Station Number Nine.
Thanks for reading.
Would you instantly thrust your hand into the Hazmat Barrel, thinking that the Five Second Rule applies to acqueous violations as well, forgetting that you just wiped your nose with that same hand, the hand that was only fifteen minutes ago in a place where the sun don't shine, inside a thin coccoon of toilet paper, inside a Honey Pot (as they call them here), where you had to stop, because the crepes at Shari's had too many strawberries, and that impromptu crapador just happened to be out of hand sanitizer-SHIT! Shit, no! Don't put your hand-shaped germ-universe into all that water!
You should just turn quickly, and get away from the scene. Do not look back at the Aid Station Captain, who, hearing the "ploop," is watching the stick/blob settle to the bottom of a forty-gallon barrel of Cascade Mountain Spring Water helicoptered in by the Oregon Air National Guard at 3a.m. from the West Face of Mt. Hood, because, if you do, you will not be able to turn away in time to avoid locking eyes with him when he acts on that feeling we all have when someone is staring at us, and then he would know it was you who had ruined his Aid Station. You may mutter, "Sorry, Dude" under your breath, but take care, Pavarotti, that the sotto is very, very voce, for otherwise you would essentially be confessing to mass-poisoning of a public water source, which, in Oregon, is punishable by a minimum of fifty years in a sea-lion colony.
Just run away, Renee. Hustle your malfeasing little butt deep into the starting corral, and let your fear and shame transform themselves into an adrenaline rush that will propel you to one hell of a half-marathon time. And when all the Eugene TV stations put you on camera afterwards and ask how you did it, you can tell them it was all thanks to the thirteen cups of chocolate-flavored water you had at Aid Station Number Nine.
Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Like A Bad Penny 5/24/10
Sorry, hiatus lovers, but the blog is back- not new, not improved, and at least as pointless as ever. With a million-zillion times the hyperbole, yachtloads of made-up words, and all the movie line references (none before 1990) that you've come to expect/loathe.
The primary reason for the suspension of paragraphical hostilities was our long-delayed honeymoon. The "Honeymoon Period," the time after a marriage when mutual smittenness makes all shortcomings invisible, had been stretched out for almost two years, and behaviors that had once seemed endearing were becoming all-too visible. Amy had noticed that not only did I piss in the shower, I pissed ON the shower. (A habit developed during my freshman year of college that I never shed.) She was driving me crazy, too. Every time I pissed on the shower, she would throw a hammer at me. With frustration, and concussions, mounting, we plotted our trip.
We had to get out of town, and we had to go somewhere beautiful. Thus were Lenexa, Uvalde, Texas, and Riverside all quickly eliminated. We didn't have skiffloads of dinero, so, Jamaica, Hawaii, and Leawood were crossed off the list. And our destination couldn't be jammed by tour buses filled with nonagenarian food sample grubbers, which eliminated Branson. Only one region remained: The Pacific Northwest, where talking on your cell phone while driving is illegal, but, thanks to right to die laws, you have the right to off yourself at anytime and not face prosecution. Where the air is fresh, except for the medicinal marijuana haze, and everyone rides a bike- probably because they're unemployed and have had their cars repossessed.
It was to be an eight-day trip, with five of those spent in Oregon, one in California, and one in Washington. (The last day was spent at the Denver airport, funk you very much, Frontier Airlines, but our lawyer says I can't comment, until our plea agreement for verbal harassment of a Sky Marshall charges is accepted.)
The goal was to see the wonders of nature, like, mountains, wide beaches, waterfalls, mountain lakes, ocean sunsets, huge trees, and tidal pools, and, through those wonders, develop a sense of our insignificance in the universe, and through that sense of insignificance, realize just how alone and vulnerable we were, and through that realization of aloneness and vulnerability, cling to each other for dear life, literally, and so that inappropriate pissing would seem like triflingly smelly inconvenience. And to take a lot of cool pictures. And to come back with a ketchload of shotglasses etched with the silhouette of Mt. Hood.
How did it go? How did we do? What did we see? All will be revealed, except the details of the condition of the bathrooms in the more remote State Parks. (Hey, at least they were open. Funk you, very much, Arizona.) If it helps ease the suspense any, I'll just let you know that Amy and I are still married, and the Redwood Super Butt Fungus is responding to antibiotics.
Thanks for humoring me.
The primary reason for the suspension of paragraphical hostilities was our long-delayed honeymoon. The "Honeymoon Period," the time after a marriage when mutual smittenness makes all shortcomings invisible, had been stretched out for almost two years, and behaviors that had once seemed endearing were becoming all-too visible. Amy had noticed that not only did I piss in the shower, I pissed ON the shower. (A habit developed during my freshman year of college that I never shed.) She was driving me crazy, too. Every time I pissed on the shower, she would throw a hammer at me. With frustration, and concussions, mounting, we plotted our trip.
We had to get out of town, and we had to go somewhere beautiful. Thus were Lenexa, Uvalde, Texas, and Riverside all quickly eliminated. We didn't have skiffloads of dinero, so, Jamaica, Hawaii, and Leawood were crossed off the list. And our destination couldn't be jammed by tour buses filled with nonagenarian food sample grubbers, which eliminated Branson. Only one region remained: The Pacific Northwest, where talking on your cell phone while driving is illegal, but, thanks to right to die laws, you have the right to off yourself at anytime and not face prosecution. Where the air is fresh, except for the medicinal marijuana haze, and everyone rides a bike- probably because they're unemployed and have had their cars repossessed.
It was to be an eight-day trip, with five of those spent in Oregon, one in California, and one in Washington. (The last day was spent at the Denver airport, funk you very much, Frontier Airlines, but our lawyer says I can't comment, until our plea agreement for verbal harassment of a Sky Marshall charges is accepted.)
The goal was to see the wonders of nature, like, mountains, wide beaches, waterfalls, mountain lakes, ocean sunsets, huge trees, and tidal pools, and, through those wonders, develop a sense of our insignificance in the universe, and through that sense of insignificance, realize just how alone and vulnerable we were, and through that realization of aloneness and vulnerability, cling to each other for dear life, literally, and so that inappropriate pissing would seem like triflingly smelly inconvenience. And to take a lot of cool pictures. And to come back with a ketchload of shotglasses etched with the silhouette of Mt. Hood.
How did it go? How did we do? What did we see? All will be revealed, except the details of the condition of the bathrooms in the more remote State Parks. (Hey, at least they were open. Funk you, very much, Arizona.) If it helps ease the suspense any, I'll just let you know that Amy and I are still married, and the Redwood Super Butt Fungus is responding to antibiotics.
Thanks for humoring me.
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