And another thing. . .

 

"Oh, Terry, you would have made such a good father!"  "Geez, man, I'm so sorry!"  "Such a shame!  "You're such a kid yourself, you would have been a perfect father!"

 

Over the years, these words have come at me with a regularity that until now, I regarded with the same disdain as those lamentations that bordered on, "Too bad you're not thinner," or ". . .better looking," or " . . . richer."  Or whatever I'm not.

 

Irrelevant.

 

But now, and I believe with good reason, I take issue.

 

Within a month after marrying my first wife Betsy, she was diagnosed with a brutally brittle diabetes that wound up eventually killing her.  Back when she was diagnosed, the average life span after diagnosis was 17 years. Diagnosed in 1977, she died in 2010.

 

You could say she beat the odds, but in those years she had quintuple bypass surgery with the unfortunate byproduct of a sternum infection that never healed afterward, suffered horrendous extremity pain as severe diabetics do, winding up in a wheel chair, and basically went through Hell the last 10 years of her life before she died, staring directly at her impending demise.

 

This is not to say she didn't bring a lot of it on herself.  She never gave up smoking, I am told.  She never, EVER, gave up chocolate, I am also told.  And from the beginning, she took personal and total control of her insulin intake to accommodate her excesses.  This caused a great deal of friction between us, as you may imagine.

 

So she did well in terms of "years lived," but she paid a high price to do so.

 

But back in the early days of 1978, when her getting pregnant would have been a death sentence to her, she and I both agreed that the way to safely prevent any pregnancy for her would be for me to have a vasectomy, allowing her to get off "the Pill," so bad for known diabetics to take at that time.  Of course, unknown to me, she did not get off the pill, and with good reason since I was not the only source of semen she was receiving at the time. . . (Please note the absence of editorial content here.)

 

Nonetheless, my best friend, who was a trauma surgeon, did the honors and proudly proclaimed after the outpatient procedure that he tied my tubes so far up I'd "have trouble putting [my] arms down for the next few days."  Indeed, at the age of 27, I was deliberately, irrevocably, sterile.

 

And after that, it started.  "Too bad!" and, "You'll never know the joys of children."

 

Within a year after my 6 year marriage to Betsy ended, I fell in love with Kathy, a woman in the end stages of her divorce proceeding, who had three children (at that time,14, 11 and 7 - two older boys and a girl.)

 

I wound up marrying Kathy.  And in the process, I stayed around long enough to raise her children in a way their father never could. Emotionally,  Hell, lovingly, even.

 

This comes to mind because the oldest boy (he's the only one married thus far) came to our house this week with his wife and his two daughters, now 14 and 10, now beautiful creatures who shine sunlight on you whenever they speak to you. And they came from far away to meet the newest member of our family.

 

But I digress. Because, it turns out that I wound up losing Kathy after 16 years to a line dancing acquaintance of hers, casting me adrift once again.  (Please note the absence of editorial content here.)

 

Sparing you details, at least in this post, I moved on.  Until, I'm convinced, the Higher Power that controls my life blessed me with Sherry.  And, of course, her daughter, Bree.  Ah. . .

 

Bree was a challenge to me it turns out because her dad, her idol, her best friend, died way before he should have.  She was soon to go to college, her dad's alma mater, and he was a teacher who, when he left, tore a huge hole in the hearts of every one who knew him.

 

That was the world I stepped into, not immediately, but a year and a half later.  And in my style, not on tiptoes, but with Gusto!  I came to the Christmas party Sherry was throwing (Yes, I was invited!) and told whomever was listening, "Hi!  My name is Terry. I know Sherry! And who are you?"

 

Bree dutifully answered that question with an "I'm Bree," and I believe those were the only words she said to me that day.

 

We had work to do, and we did it, but that is not the purpose of what I'm telling you now. Because  during the course of the 14 years since that Christmas party, I've come to realize that the nomenclatures of "This is my ex-step child, So-and-So," or , "This is my future step-child, So-and-So," have absolutely No Meaning in my world. And so, for the uninformed and for all the future, I introduce my family as "This is my Bree," "This is my David," "This is my Michael," or "This is my Chrissy."  I'm through giving the back of my hand to whomever starts pointing their index finger at the imaginary family chart in front of them, trying to figure which child goes into what slot in that chart just to bring me up short.

 

And with the arrival of our newest grandchild (my Bree's first,) I realize that for someone who was never to know the joys of having children, I can point you to four examples of how wrong those pitiable sentiments were. And I challenge the world to show me how I am not "as blessed," if not more so, than they.

 

Insomnia

Insomnia is...whatever you can think of.

I am a bad sleeper. I have been since I was in college.  Something starts happening in my little pee-brain and there you have it, wide awake.

To give you some insight on what happens to me, here you go.  I do sleep well for somewhere in the two to three month range.  But then for about two weeks or so, I may only get one to two hours of sleep a night.

There is no warning.  I might even be dog tired.  But there I lie, and there is a party going on in my head. I start singing the remake to 'Holy Diver' by Killswitch Engage.


Then I have to ask myself, why not just sing the original version from Dio:

Okay, let's sing that for a bit.  Wait, now let's sing some Pearl Jam.  That would be a good encore to those last two songs, right? Okay, what's next? Oh, I should try to sleep...

So I try to sleep.  That is much harder than if you just actually fall asleep.  Trying to sleep is stupid.  This is dumb.  This is so frustrating.  I am thinking way too hard here.  You can't try to sleep.

Time to break the cycle.  I will count, and that will get all those songs and thoughts out of my head.  Maybe I can count to one thousand. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9....107,108,109,110. I have a long way to go.  Okay, back to it. 155,156,157,158,159,160...180,181,182. This is getting boring, I sure have an active mind.  Counting is so mundane.  How does anyone get anything done?

I did it again. Just as I was getting tired, I realized how bored I was.  Okay, start over.  1,2,3,4...Holy Diver!

DAMN! where did that come from.  Now it is 4:28am. Oh God, if you get me through this...

Stop. What an interesting thought. No thoughts at all. Calm the mind. Rest the body.

And then I wake up at 6:15am when the alarm does its job.  Wow I must have done it.  I fell asleep.  Maybe that was an hour and a half.  That's good enough for now, I guess. My friends have been telling me that sleep is over-rated for years.  It must be true since I haven't yet died of lack of sleep.

I hope tonight is better than last night. Has Dio got anything else? No, he's dead now. Oh no!  

How to eat Italian Food

As I write this the sun isn't up yet. There are three happy cats chomping away on morning grub, one happy baby sleeping happily in her Mamaroo, and most importantly, a happy wife sleeping in for the first time in at least a week. I am awake, sorta, with a cup of coffee and thoughts of childhood.

It seems like only yesterday I was waking up early to sneak downstairs to watch real Saturday morning cartoons. Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner were my favorites. And the Three Stooges. Watching characters get smashed, blown up, shot, crushed and mangled always entertained me. So did America's Funniest Home videos. You know, the clips where people did dumb things and made disasters out of regular life.

That reminds me...

We were out to dinner last night for Sherry's birthday. We had gotten lucky with the baby's nap schedule and dinner happened in the middle of a sleep cycle. I typically don't enjoy taking a newborn and all her stuff out to fancy restaurants (see: circus-stunt sweaty backseat poopy-diaper-change slip-n-slide craptacular), but on some occasions it is necessary. It was nice. We could have a conversation for the first time in weeks, and I always enjoy talking with my father-in-law.

Terry and I seemed to have a connection since the first time we spoke. In his speech at our wedding he announced that the jokes I told weren't funny because he told those same jokes thirty years ago. He is not wrong. We have the same sick sense of humor. There is an unspoken kinship of some kind with the two of us and that has made for an easy transition from combative, protective father-figure to family member, friend and confidant.

So we ate, we drank, we laughed for what seemed like thirty seconds. We discussed writing, books, comedians, travel, and our little collaborative writing project: this blog. Briarly slept like, well, a baby.

Our meals were delivered. Terry was stirring his spaghetti and meatballs while we talked. Combining some mighty force, surgeon-like skill with his fork, and some good ol' fashioned Terry-like flair, his hand slipped down the fork straight into his spaghetti sending a medium-sized pasta projectile across the table directly onto Sherry's green and white blouse. I looked at him with a bit of haughty derision.




"Thanks, Terry", Sherry said, characteristically calm and matter-of-fact. It was as if this sort of thing has happened before! She cleaned herself up the best she could, we had a chuckle and continued enjoying our meal. Briarly slept through it.

I would not be outdone.

Three minutes later, as I was about to tell Terry that his storytelling reminded me of author and comedian Bill Cosby, something else happened.

I said to Terry, "Ya know, your writing writing reminds me of..."

At that moment I attempted the apparently inhuman feat of cutting my chicken parmesan. My fork broke through the chicken breast like I had split the tomato atom causing a shock wave of sauce and ravioli shrapnel to flow onto my shirt and pants.

We laughed hysterically. For ten minutes we were in tears and belly-pains of laughter and silliness at the sheer brilliance of two buffoons making almost the same mess within minutes. Briarly slept.

We calmed down and wiped our tears.

"Bill Cosby", I finally finished, even though the moment had been washed away by the sauce flow. We proceeded to finish our meals and get ready to leave.

Something occurred to me later that night...

We took a baby out to a fancy restaurant with all her stuff expecting crying, diaper disasters, having to take turns calming her while we took turns eating, and anything else a baby is capable of.

None of those things happened.

What did happen was Terry flung spaghetti onto his wife, I launched sauce and ravioli onto myself, and Briarly slept. We dragged our fat, happy asses out of the restaurant looking like we had a food fight. It was time go go home and hose off the big chunks. We had a wonderful time.

Someday we will tell Briarly tales of our follies and laugh some more. But, for now, Briarly slept through it. Good for her.

Relationship Capital Pt.1

I have been putting a lot of thought lately into how we can eliminate bad influences and bad people from our lives. More on that to come.

I got home from work today and my wife needed a hug and kiss-and so did I. Our cats needed played with. The baby needed...a NAP! (Awesome! Time to write!) The litter box needed cleaned. The trash needed taken out. (YAY!)

All these things need maintained. These are not things that take care of themselves, especially the relationships. They require cultivation, maintenance, attention and so on. Relationships all need much labor. All of them do, even the ones we develop with our pets.

The human relationship requires special attention. All relationships build what's known as "relationship capital". I heard the term from some intellectual smart-ass or like-minded comedian along the way, so I do not claim credit even though I unintentionally live this theme. Essentially it explains that all parties involved in all relationships build up capital that can be spent at a later time. In essence: I do something you want me to do, then later I get to do something I want to do. Simple, right? Sorta. It's not a direct trade, and I have yet to find a good website with an appropriate exchange rate.

Regarding a new baby, for example, I change a second diaper, then am entitled to one "you have to change this diaper" card redeemable at a later date. You wanna sleep in a couple hours? OK, then you get the cranky child this afternoon when I would really like a nap. What's that? You wanna go out for the day and go shopping and work out and hang out with your friends? I think that entitles me to two hours with my friends likely doing something dumb that involves moving things, drinking a couple beers and scratching ourselves.

What I have noticed is that we have a limited amount of resources allotted to this relationship capital, and this capital should be reserved for people who matter. Why do we waste so much time and energy on people that don't enhance our lives?

Day 1

In trying to come up with a name for this blog, I had several ideas. Most of those were not appropriate if we ever intend to let any other humans see this blog.

Here is a page I stumbled upon of some good intentions but poor results.


I was looking at the meaning for the word Vomitorium on Wikipedia and had no idea that the word had actual meaning. It is basically a means of rapid egress, but from the Wikipedia page...
"A vomitorium is a passage situated below or behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre or a stadium, through which big crowds can exit rapidly at the end of a performance. They can also be pathways for actors to enter and leave stage.[1] The Latin word vomitorium, plural vomitoria, derives from the verb vomeo, vomere, vomitum, "to spew forth." In ancient Roman architecture, vomitoria were designed to provide rapid egress for large crowds at amphitheatres and stadiums, as they do in modern sports stadiums and large theatres.[2]"

Writing will be done here. There's no earthly way of knowing which direction we are going.