Reeking Mid-Life Crisis – HappyStinkingJoy

Raising Goats Would Suck… NOT!

Everyone has his or her own version of the “American Dream” tucked away somewhere in the nether-regions of her or his subconscious. Our personal versions of the “American Dream” are part of what motivates us to get out of bed every morning and live life.

Little Johnny wants to grow up and get married and have a family and own a home and be a fireman so he can spend his life saving the lives of others. Then Little Johnny wants to retire and travel and enjoy his final years.

. .

Little Suzie wants to grow up and get married and have a family and own a home and be a doctor so she can spend her life saving the lives of others. Then Little Suzie wants to retire and travel and enjoy her final years.

. .

Little Barack and Little George wanted to grow up to be politicians so they could meddle in people’s lives and screw over a country.

Everyone has a dream. Some people realize that dream, and the rest of us learn to settle.

Settling sucks.

Little Adventurer Rich wanted to grow up and get married and have a family and own a home and be a something-that-makes-a-lot-of-money-and-helps-a-lot-of-people-but-isn’t-dangerous-or-doesn’t-involve-sticking-his-hands-in-other-people’s-guts. Then Little Adventurer Rich wanted to retire and travel and enjoy his final years.

. .

Little Adventurer Rich got a cold slap across the face as a wake-up call. When you decide to grow roots in rural Nebraska, there is no such thing as a job where you can make a lot of money. If you don’t get the job that pays a lot of money, the retirement and travel associated with the retirement become pipe dreams.

I’m thankful for the marriage and the family and the house. The rest of my “American Dream” is things I will need to learn to live without. Well, I guess those things are already lacking, so I won’t need to learn to live without them… I need to learn that I will never have them. It’s called “settling”.

As I cruise through this ever-increasingly difficult mid-life crisis, things start to fall into perspective. I’m not the kind of guy who wants a fancy sports car or a token 20-something-year-old mistress to help realize unfulfilled dreams. I’m happy driving crappy used cars (even considering getting a minivan). My wife is my only link to sanity. If I lost her, I would lose all bearing on life. So, I’ll keep my 40-something-year-old model. Besides, the only 20-something-year-olds interested in old farts like me are after gold, and my veins are full of nothing but pyrite and cholesterol.

So, since I’m not looking for the typical remedies for my ills, I’ve been trying to figure out how to become less miserable. I look in the mirror and this old guy looks back at me, with his gray hairs and his frown lines, and I start to get pissed off at him. He looks so much older than I feel. Why didn’t he do something with his life? Why couldn’t he have been better looking or more self-confident? Why didn’t he take advantage of opportunities that I’m sure were available to him (yet, strangely enough, neither he nor I can think of any)? Why has he let me down? Ooh, sometimes I just want to throttle that loser in the mirror. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who would ever be successful. He looks like a stupid goat farmer…

… goat farmer…

…GOAT FARMER!

. .

OH…EM…GEE! I look like a goat farmer! A stupid goat farmer! Being a goat farmer would be AWESOME! No stupid customer problems! No stupid technology! Just lots and lots of goats! You feed them, you breed them, you take care of them, maybe you milk them, then you kill them and you eat them. Maybe you sell them. Maybe you sell the milk or sell the meat. Maybe you hire them out to breed with someone else’s goats.

OH… EM… GEE! I could be a GOAT PIMP!

. .

If not goats, maybe ostrich, or rabbit, or some other semi-exotic meat that people are willing to buy. I wouldn’t make my riches being an exotic meat farmer, but being out on a farm, working with my hands, being responsible for only my own actions and relying only on my own efforts… I may not be able to retire, but I wouldn’t want to gouge my brains out through my ear holes before going to a “job” every day, so it is something I could see myself doing until I finally snap and they end up throwing me in a loony bin!

Maybe my family wouldn’t be able to have some of the things we have now, like satellite television or cell phones or Internet or new clothes or gas for the used cars or, you know, food to eat other than goat… but it would all be worth it! If you can’t make it to the top of the food chain doing something you hate, crawl to the bottom of the food chain raising goats!

Now, I just need some land and a shack to live in. I’m sure I can pick up some land on the cheap in Nebraska, right? And I’ll need some starter goats. Do they sell starter goat kits? Never mind, I’ll Google it later… while I still have Internet 🙂 And I just need to convince my family that we would be better off without all of the stupid “conveniences” or modern life. I’ll never be able to provide for my family in the ways I dreamed as a kid, so it’s time to change the dream!

Little Adventurer Rich wants to grow up and get married and have a family and own a home and sell that home and buy a goat farm and raise goats! Then Little Adventurer Rich wants to lose his mind and get locked up in a “facility” with lots of padded rooms where he will enjoy his final years dreaming of his goats…

. .

Finally, a dream I may be able to accomplish…

The Search for Purpose…

A friend of mine recently lost his father-in-law. Well… he didn’t actually lose his father-in-law. He knew exactly where his father-in-law was, which happened to be at home dying of cancer. It’s funny how cancer ravages an individual and leaves tattered survivors behind. No… not really funny, but, you know, devastating. Kind of strange how some of our ways of stating things make absolutely no sense, isn’t it? Why yes — yes it is. Stinking English language.

So anyway, my friend’s father-in-law retired not that long ago. Shortly after retiring, he was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly after being diagnosed, it looked like treatment was working. Shortly after the prognosis looked positive, the cancer got worse. Shortly after the cancer got worse, my friend’s father-in-law was given two weeks to live. A couple of days after being given two weeks to live, the father-in-law died.

The end.

… but this entire scenario has been playing with my head for the weeks that have passed since the father-in-law passed. And then this week, a nice lady who was not that much older than me had a relatively routine surgery and, due to complications from that surgery, she passed away. She left behind a loving husband and grown children who now need to find a way to their futures without her. Of course, she was warned about the dangers of the procedure before she underwent it, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of available options. Can anyone say, “Life bites”? She was actually someone outside of my immediate family who had read this blog and thanked me for doing what I do. She enjoyed it and got a chuckle or two from the experience… and now she is gone. Well, looks like my dad and my brother are, once again, my sole readers…

I’ve been thinking to myself about what I would do if I knew I had a determined amount of time left. Would I continue working if I knew I only had a month left to live? I’d dare say I would not continue working. I would want to enjoy as much of the last of life as possible. I’d quit my job and sell as much of my stuff as possible to make my final days an enjoyable memory for the family I’d be leaving behind. But then… people who are in the end-stages of life-ending disease rarely want to do little more than be as comfortable as possible and die in a timely manner, right? These people aren’t usually in any shape to tackle that European adventure that they kept saying “some day” to. So fantasizing about what one would or would not do during the final stages of life is a sick little game that will lead to nothing more than severe disappointment, I’m sure. And this really got me to thinking. Aren’t we all, in one form or another, in the final stages of life? For some of us, the prognosis is decades, for others, weeks, days, hours? And something can always come along and screw everything up, right? I wonder how many people who are given weeks to live due to disease die in automobile accidents every day…

We are all dying.

Period.

Dying is the only thing we are assured of in this life. Death is the only goal that will be reached by every individual on the planet, regardless of race, gender, creed, social status… or whatever. From the moment we are born, our bodies begin the various functions that will end up using us up and spitting us out.

We are all dying.

So why don’t we act like we are dying? We have precious little time on this planet, yet most of us still are avoiding the things that we really want to do; the things that, on our deathbeds, will end up being missed opportunities and fill us with regret. We keep telling ourselves, “Someday, when I have more time,” or, “Someday, when I have more money.” Wake up, folks. More time and money are things we may never have. If you have stuff you want to get done, you better get to getting after it. You could be dead tomorrow, so don’t delay. Think of all of the wonderful things we as a species could accomplish if we started living like our time here is limited. Think of how few people would be in a job or a relationship that wasn’t fulfilling to them if they started living like they didn’t have eternity to do something with this life… because no one does. What we accomplish in our short time here is the only shot we get.

Of course, realism always sets in when I start thinking like this. Gotta put food on the table, right? Gotta pay them bills. Gotta put gas in the car. You can’t just try to do whatever you want with your life without being destroyed by the consequences. My mind always quickly changes back to: maybe someday when I have more time and money… maybe then I can try to accomplish something enjoyable with my life. I can make the boredom of everyday life disappear once I have a little more time and money… Well, I’m coming to the realization that I need to say…

Screw that noise!

This is my life. Your life is your life. I have a deep desire to do something I am passionate about with my life… to figure out my purpose and pursue it.

When I was a kid, I used to think that when I grew up and started making money and got a family, that would be when life really began. Well, having a family is great and gets me through from day to day, but I soon realized that not everyone can make good money. So, I started thinking that once I can get to retirement, that’s when life really begins. Of course, to get to retirement at a decent age, you have to make good money (or sacrifice much of the comfort from current life to stick it all away for retirement)… and “good money” isn’t easy to find. So retirement (if I live to see it…we are all dying, after all), is close to half a lifetime away, and half a lifetime (when you are 42) is way too long to wait for life to begin.

I know that I need to appreciate the little things, or I will prove to the world that I can’t comprehend a platitude. But focusing on the little things, as fulfilling as that can be, does not seem like a very redeeming purpose. I know that our purpose is supposed to be God’s purpose for us, but I highly doubt that God’s sole purpose for me on this planet is to appreciate the little things… that just sounds too boring; I would hope that God has given me more talent than that.

The only non-family activity that I do that feels rewarding is volunteering. Boy Scouts, church, whatever. Time spent volunteering (as much as I usually dread actually going to do the work) always leaves me feeling fulfilled. You know, like a job has been well done (whether it actually has or not). It feels good. I do not, nor have I ever, felt the same kind of satisfaction working a job. It’s this whole big Catch-22. If I could actually make enough money to meet my needs by volunteering, I would probably be semi-satisfied with life. But if I made money, it wouldn’t be volunteering… it would be a job… and like most jobs, it would probably suck. So maybe I just need to volunteer more of my free time to find more satisfaction and purpose, but I am usually so drained after 8+ hours of working a job that the last thing I want to do is take more time away from my family than my current level of volunteering already takes.

See… damn it… this is why I should win the stinking lottery:

I enjoy volunteering; it leaves me feeling fulfilled.
I have financial needs.
If I win the lottery, my financial needs would go away.
If my financial needs went away, I could spend 8+ hours a day volunteering.
By spending 8+ hours of my day volunteering, I would be helping causes that need help and I would feel fulfilled at the end of the day (instead of just too tired to fulfill my current obligations to family and the organizations I volunteer time to).
This is a win/win situation. Nobody loses… so why can’t I win the freaking lottery?!?

I can’t win the lottery because God’s purpose for me isn’t to volunteer all of my free time. I can dig that. But if my purpose involves a future of life-draining 8-5s, I most definitely cannot dig that.

“Well, nobody said it was going to be fair!”

Yeah, and nobody asked my opinion before putting me here, so that doesn’t fly. Thus, the search for purpose continues.

I actually recently read “The On-purpose Person” by Kevin W. McCarthy… and I got excited. It’s a narrative about a guy (who sounds a lot like me… but who makes a crapload more money than me) who feels purposeless. Through a series of referrals, the man in the story visits various on-purpose people who volunteers their time to help the man find his purpose and start living his life on-purpose. Whoa… that sounds pretty cool. So, I check out an introduction to Kevin McCarthy’s web-based program that helps people find their purposes. The first lesson was free and didn’t really provide too much useful info. In order to get the good stuff, you need to pay for the seminar series… and it’s like 200 bucks. And it sounds like you have to stop having a lot of fun and grow up and stuff, so I’m not exactly sure this program is for me.

“But… in the story, all of those on-purpose people gave their time and advice for free to the man,” I point out.

“But that was a story,” says the voice of reason.

“So, in real life, people aren’t willing to give their time to help others find their purpose?” I ask.

“Of course not,” says the voice of reason. “In real life, people, including Kevin W. McCarthy have mortgages and life insurance policies and the need to eat.”

“Well,” I say, “real life kinds of sucks when compared to the story.”

“Nobody ever said it was going to be fair,” says the voice of reason.

Sometimes, I hate the voice of reason. So the search continues.

I’m kind of thinking a more self-sustaining lifestyle may have some rewards…

I’m a Sore Loser… or, What School Sports Taught Me

When I was a kid, I was pretty involved in sports. In elementary school, I played basketball, Little League, flag football, and participated in track. I was very young and relatively skinny then, so I (like most young, skinny kids) did pretty well at sports.

Then I entered high school, and everything changed.

In high school, I started to put on weight. I stopped growing vertically, but I didn’t limit my eating, so I began to grow horizontally.

In other words, I got fat.

Even though I was fat, I tried my hand at various sports. Okay, not really “various”… more like a few. And two is really more like “a couple” than it is “a few”, so I really participated in “a couple” of sports in high school: football and track. Needless to say, I really pretty much sucked at both of them.

I went out for football because my dad really wanted me to. I went out for track so that I wouldn’t put on a tremendous amount of gut-fat before the next football season.

I totally sucked at track. I attempted the javelin, discus and shot put. I was too fat to run or jump, and I wasn’t strong enough to excel at any of the “strong guy” events. I remember one of the coaches didn’t like me very much. In fact, I would dare say that man hated me. I wasn’t good enough to really even be on track, but I went out all four years. This may be hard to believe, but I was kind of a smart-ass in high school. I was never disrespectful to my teachers or coaches, but I liked to make people laugh… and apparently this coach didn’t share my sense of humor. Also, one of his pet runners was one of my best friends. This coach felt that I was a bad influence on his pet. Little did this coach know that his pet was far more of a bad influence on me that I could have ever been on him. However, I liked my friend and was happy when he had success with his running. So, I put up with all of the crap that jackass coach dished out solely to me. I can’t remember a single thing that I did to that man that would have made him hate me so much… but he never once had a kind word for me… not even a smile. Whatever. It’s not like I hold a grudge or anything… that miserable son of a …

Anywho, football was a little more up my alley. I understood the game, and I even came to enjoy playing it. I actually came to believe that I wasn’t half bad at it. My junior year, our varsity team went undefeated and won the Montana Class A State Football Championship. That championship was in 1986… and was the last year to date that a Glasgow, MT football team has won state. I should be proud, right? Well, seeing as how I really didn’t have anything to do with it, nah. In fact, that championship year actually kind of ruined sportsmanship for me. I am probably the poorest loser ever… and I have had plenty of practice.

The summer before our big championship year, my buddy and I started hitting the weight room. At first, we were the only football players there. We really wanted to get a shot to start on a team that we both knew was going to kick butt. Slowly, more and more of the kids from the team started showing up in the weight room. By the end of summer, most every starter on that championship team was in that weight room lifting weights, every starter… and me. I could press a mean bench, and I could squat the crap out of those weights, but I weighed all of a buck-75, and I still wasn’t extraordinarily fast… so I got to sit the bench. Those who tell you that if you want something bad enough and work for something hard enough you’ll get it… are full of crap. I learned this when I was 16-years old. It’s a lesson that I have never forgotten.

Because I showed such dedication in the weight room, the coach must have felt like he needed to throw me a bone. I was put on special teams. I was the center for PAT (point after touchdown). I believe I was on the kick-off team as well. Bones for those who have the determination and put forth the effort… but really aren’t good enough. Some people just aren’t meant for athletics. I hate bones.

So anyway, the team went undefeated in an impressive way and slaughtered most of the competition. Of course, the summer in the weight room was the last time I really ever felt like part of the team, but I was happy for them. And I was ready for the next year.

Another summer was spent in the weight room, a bunch of talented seniors graduated, and I knew that I should have a starting spot. I really like playing middle linebacker (which is where I played in junior varsity), and I didn’t mind center (which I also played in JV). The season starts, and I get both a starting linebacker spot and the starting center spot. Finally, I get to play real high school football and contribute to the team.

The first game comes and goes, and we lose. I felt like I did pretty good. A got a couple of tackles during the game and had several assists. The next week, during practice, the coach pulls me aside and says, “Rich, we don’t have anyone to back you up at center. If you get hurt, we’re in trouble. I’m pulling you from linebacker and we’re going to have you focus on your duties as center.”

I wasn’t stupid. Apparently the coach thought I was. Almost every other player on that team played both ways, and there were many of them who were a hell of a lot more important to the team than I was at center. Like our quarterback, and our running backs, and our receivers… all of whom played both ways. Also, there were two guys who could easily replace me at center… one of whom was a year younger than me but was awesome. He went on to be the center for the Wyoming Cowboys on a scholarship after high school. The coach was feeding me a line of crap, and I knew it. He probably wanted to stick someone else at center as well, but my commitment to the weight room and the fact that I was a senior probably led him to feel obligated to keep me in a starting position… for at least half of the game. I came really close to quitting the team, but I figured I’d stick it out for my final year.

“Sure, Coach, whatever you need me to do,” I said.

We went four-for-four that year. Not nearly as impressive as our predecessors the previous year, but not too shabby considering that a large volume of talent graduated the previous year… and considering that all focus from the coaching staff had gone into those (mostly) seniors and that team.

Still, old people in Glasgow, MT at that time lived and died by Scottie football. It reminds me a lot about how stupid people in Nebraska get about Husker football. I remember one evening, a lot of us football players waiting outside the high school before a basketball game or something. We had a boom box out there and were listening to some tune-age before going in to root for whatever Scottie team was playing in the gym that night. I remember this crusty old piece of crap coming right up to me (why me… I don’t exactly know… probably because I was only 5’7” and he didn’t feel as threatened by me as he did the larger players) and he says something like, “If you boys concentrated more on the game and spent time listening to your loud music, maybe you could actually win a game!”

We were all stunned. The old man hobbled past us and into the building. We turned the music off, staring at our shoes. No one knew who that old man was. No one had ever seen him before, and I don’t remember ever seeing him after. All that I know is that old fart brought down a bunch of teenaged boys very quickly… a bunch of teenaged boys who were doing nothing more than having some innocent fun being what we were: teenagers. Some of the guys went in to watch the game inside. Most of us just went home. Even though I don’t know who that guy was, I hate him. I’m pretty sure he must be dead by now… and that warms my heart just a little bit. It boggles my mind how people get so wrapped-up in sports… or, as I like to think of them, little kid games played by people way too old to be playing little kid games. Old farts past their glory days living vicariously through the efforts of those much younger… playing a little kids’ game. That old fart probably never even played football, yet he took our having a little fun outside of the grueling practices and intense games as a personal assault on what he expected us to be doing. Like I stated earlier… knowing he’s probably dead warms my heart just a little.

So many people talk of the importance of sports… how it teaches teamwork and good sportsmanship, and blah blah blah. For those people, I’m gonna have to call a BS-time-out. In all of my years of school athletics, I didn’t learn how to be part of a team… and I surely didn’t learn good sportsmanship. When we won, it was great. It’s easy to be a good sport when you win. When we lost, I hated life. I was depressed for days after a loss, replaying in my head every mistake that I personally made that in any way could have contributed to the loss. I beat myself up, and I hated the victors for making me feel that way. And when I’d find a way to not focus on what a loser I was and would start to enjoy life again, some crusty old fart would come along and make me feel like garbage. Such is life. Losing is part of the game. In athletics, however, you may learn from your mistakes… but if you don’t have the natural athletic ability, or are not of the right physical composition to acquire that ability, you learn that losing is going to become commonplace. You learn that you, not the team, are a loser at certain things and there is nothing you can do to change that. My belief is that a young person can learn just as much about teamwork (perhaps even more) through clubs and other non-athletic activities that will benefit the young person more later in life than athletics ever will for the average student. America, however, focuses (too much, in my opinion) on athletics. After all, most people aren’t gong to rake in a multi-million dollar contract with a signing bonus by being good at debate. Most won’t even get a small scholarship to a small college to continue with sports after high school. Those same people who focused most of their attention on sports in high school would benefit from being able to enter into a lively debate… but that doesn’t matter. In our society, chase the money and fame even if they realistically don’t have Frosty’s chance in hell of obtaining it. Besides, the starting quarterback has a better chance with the ladies than the president of the chemistry club (at least in high school)… even though the head of the chemistry club will probably make more money in real life. Instead of focusing on developing skills that could actually benefit me in the real world, I played sports… poorly.

I don’t regret my years wasted playing sports. I had some good times and made some good friends. However, if I could do it over again, I probably would chose a different path for my high school years. But hell, if we could do anything over again, I’m sure most of us would change a thing or two (or a thousand). Life doesn’t work that way, at least not until I find that stupid genie’s lamp, or catch that elusive leprechaun. Until then, maybe I should start going to the local high school’s athletic events. I can look around for a bunch of student athletes and tell them how their behavior off the field is causing their lack of success on the field… whether that’s true or not. Maybe, just maybe, I can make myself feel better by making them feel like crap.

The Dreams of Our Youth

Ahhh… remember back to the days of your youth. These were magical years where your future seemed so bright. Remember? From the end of August to mid-May, you learned and played sports and hung out with your friends all day. But summer was when the true magic happened. Summers were a seemingly endless period of long, hot days and cool, enchanted nights. You could ride your bike with your friends day after day and it never got old. As young boys, my friends and I would ride bikes and play catch and start a pick-up game of kickball of football and hike paths and climb trees and hang-out at our favorite stores (… uh… it was Fort Peck, Montana, so there was only one) and swim at the pool or at the lake and, as we got older, appreciate the way our rapidly-maturing female friends were filling out their bathing suits in spectacular new ways… and the summers seemed to last an eternity.

As we got older, some of us started getting summer jobs, and some of us got jobs year-round. School got harder, and we had to start really thinking about our futures. Then, college called to some of us, and some of us went straight to full-time, real-world work; but we still held tight to our dreams. Those of us who went to college soon joined our working friends. During these years, many of us fell in love, got married, started families; the dreams were still there.

Our kids started to grow up. Soon, we could see our kids enjoying many of the same things we enjoyed in our youth, and we were starting to feel a little old. The dreams were still hanging on, but we began to wonder how we were going to accomplish them with a full family life. Oh well, maybe after the kids are grown and on their own.

Soon, we start living vicariously through our kids. Maybe we want our kid to be that great sports star we never were. Or maybe we want our kid to be the genius we were never smart enough to be. Or perhaps we want our kid to be the singer or actor or musician we never had the confidence to attempt to find within ourselves. Our dreams migrate to the purgatory of our consciousness, awaiting the day when they will either realize the joyous fruition of heavenly accomplishment or be cast to the inescapable torment of hellish failure. We start trying to help our children with their dreams, which are merely extensions of the dreams we had in our youth. We start to realize that our age is actually catching up with us.

We become obnoxiously proud parents, praising the accomplishments of our children as if they were our own… often to the major annoyance of most other adults around us. Soon, we find that other adults begin to avoid us because they really don’t care how good little Jimmy’s baseball team did… or how excellent little Susie’s dance recital went. We become monsters who seem intent at driving everyone away from us… everyone except our families. We scream at the umpires or referees at a game because their calls made our kid’s team lose. We badmouth the teacher who doesn’t truly see our child’s intelligence. We harbor ill-will toward the second-chair trumpet player who screwed up during the concert and made our first-chair child look bad. We become bearers of vehement hate toward every single person or thing that interferes with our child’s success. Our age is no longer catching up with us; it has caught us and is a driving force in our lives.

Our children, meanwhile, are oblivious. They are focusing on having fun and creating their own dreams.

Soon, the kids are off to college or work, and we have the houses to ourselves again. We are still focusing on the dreams of our kids. We give career advice. We warn them of the mistakes we made along the way. We tell them what they should do to be happy, which is really what we should have done to be happy. Our hindsight is, for the most part, ignored by our children.

Our kids are now adults, they are working full-time, many of them are happily married… and before you know it, we’re grandparents. Our kids seem to have put their dreams on hold in an attempt to help their kids create new dreams. Finally, there is time for us to focus on our dreams once again, so we search. We search our consciousness for those dreams of our youth. We search for the motivation to once again bring them to the front of our minds. Funny thing is, when we search for our dreams, the smell of brimstone becomes overpowering, and just the thought of trying to accomplish those dreams makes us very tired. We have moved beyond old and are now ancient.

Ahhh… it was nice to have dreams. Too bad we never found the time or will to accomplish them. What to do now? Ooooh… looks like the grand kids could use some help with their dreams…

Why I Avoid Medical People…

My snore has been likened to the thunderous growl of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Now, I know that no living person is exactly sure what a T. Rex growl really sounds like, but I have been told that my snore has to be in the ballpark.

Of course, I have never heard my snore. My snoring has woke me up in the middle of the night on thousands of occasions, but by the time I’m actually awake, I’m done snoring. Funny how that works.

Anyway, my wife and I have been married for over 16 years. My wife has complained about my snoring for, well, a little over 16 years. I finally decided that maybe it was time to do something about it. See what a great guy I am?

Why would I avoid going to the doctor to have something done about my snoring? Well, the reasons are multiple:

1st: I hate doctors. I don’t hate them on a personal level, I just don’t like the fact that I have to rely on someone who makes a buttload of money for my physical well being. I also don’t like the fact that I have to pay said person a buttload of money for services rendered. Yeah… it’s all about the Benjamins.

I couldn’t be a doctor because I’m really not smart enough, and the thought of messing with someone’s other than my own bodily fluids makes me slightly light-headed. Just another of the “life isn’t fair” deals that pisses me off. Okay, so maybe I do hate them on a personal level…

2nd: When you go to the doctor, he or she always ends up finding a bunch of crap wrong that has nothing to do with the reason for your visit. It’s kind of like when you take your car in for an oil change, you know. All of a sudden, you’re needing new brake pads and a front-end alignment and your head-gasket is leaking… you, at the doctor… your car, at the mechanic… it’s all the same. Now that I am “in my forties”, I know that crap is going to start breaking down at an alarming rate. I’d really rather just not know about it. After all, maybe I can get another 2000 miles out of the car without fixing the problem, right? Besides, it seems like when they start trying to fix one problem, everything else starts to go to hell. You know, like the 35-year-old lady who goes in because she sprains her ankle, and they discover she has pancreatic cancer, so they cut her open to get to the cancer, and they find out that it is EVERYWHERE, and she is dead within a couple of weeks… because of a stinking sprained ankle. If she hadn’t gone in for the stupid sprained ankle, she would probably be alive today!

3rd: Uh… I don’t take exactly the best care of myself. I know this. I don’t need some yahoo driving a BMW to point this out and talk down to me while doing so, because when he or she does, my level of class-envy goes through the stinking roof!

Okay, so I don’t like going to the doctor. In fact, I don’t even have a doctor. I go to a local urgent care clinic (Quick Care) for all of my medical needs… which are few and far between. You’d think that, seeing as how I’m getting to the point where annual visits are looming on the horizon, I should probably find a doctor. I don’t like shopping for shoes… and I like shoes… so why would I spend time shopping for a doctor?

So, back to the snoring. I call one of them “sleep centers” (Western Sleep Medicine, I believe it is called) to see how I go about getting fitted with one of those Darth Vader masks to make me stop snoring.

They say I have to be referred by a doctor. I say I don’t have a doctor. They say I can use Quick Care to refer me. I call Quick Care and make sure that they can refer me, which they reassure me that they can. I ask, “So, uh, I’m wanting a referral for a sleep study… and that’s it. You aren’t going to test me for a bunch of other crap, are you?” And I am reassured that I will only be tested for the condition that I am visiting about. Great! So I drive on over to Quick Care. Never believe medical people.

I get to Quick Care and they make me fill out the stinking form that all medical places make you fill out when you first arrive. I get done filling the stupid form out and I realize that right beside the line where I fill-out my date of birth, there is a line for me to fill-out my age. I ask the receptionist, “So, why is there a line right beside my date of birth for my age. Wouldn’t just my date of birth be sufficient? Can’t you figure out my age?” Of course, I’m being a little smart-assy, but in a good-natured way. The receptionists at Quick Care are not exactly “good natured”.

“It’s there so we don’t have to figure it out,” the receptionist says, and I can tell by the look on her face that I’m pissing her off by breathing her air, so I let it drop.

So now I’m thinking to myself that I may be making a mistake by not actually having an actual doctor. I’m thinking that using Quick Care for a referral may not have been the swiftest of my most recent decisions. Did I have to list my age beside my date of birth so they didn’t have to figure it out… or because they couldn’t figure it out? I know, I should assume that the receptionist (or anyone else who touches my chart) would be able to figure out my age from my date of birth. However, before I entered Quick Care, I assumed that a receptionist in a place where people are going to have medical issues addressed and are looking for a little comfort would be able to smile… or at least be partially pleasant. I have learned to never trust my assumptions.

After a short wait, I am led into an examination room. The nurse tells me that the first thing she needs to do is check my blood pressure. Crap! This is exactly what I don’t want. This is why I called before I came… to make sure unnecessary crap wasn’t going to be tested. What does my blood pressure have to do with my snoring? But I’m already thinking I need to keep my mouth shut because of the whole receptionist encounter, so I sit down and let her test it.

170 over 130.

She looks at me like I should already be dead.

“Uh, is your blood pressure always this high?” she asked.

“No, these places freak me out,” I said. “It’s usually more like 150 over 100.” Of course my blood pressure is high. Everyone and their dog stresses me out. I hate any sort of confrontation and life is full of it… confrontation that is. The older I get, the less I am able to deal with the basic BS that every person on the planet seems intent on dishing out. If I could hole-up in a dark room and not have to ever deal with anyone or their problems, I bet my blood pressure would be just fine. I pray to God to let me not get stressed out, but stress is still there around every single stinking corner in this road of life… and God just looks down from heaven and laughs. I think jacking around with me is how God deals with His own stress.

Again… she looks at me like I should already be dead.

“I’m going to get the P.A.,” she said and disappeared out the door.

P.A. stands for “physician’s assistant”. A P.A. is like a doctor, except they didn’t have to go to school as long as a doctor, and instead of BMWs, they usually drive Audis. I don’t hate P.A.s quite as much as I hate doctors.

The P.A. comes in and he talks about getting me a referral for the sleep test, he fills out the necessary paperwork, and then he starts talking about what we are going to do about my blood pressure. He has the nurse run a ECG, and then she sticks me with a needle and red crap comes out my arm into a little vial. I’m ready to pass out as he tells me about the blood pressure medication that I’m going to be put on.

Crap!

So, I leave, I go and get my blood pressure medication, and I go home.

The next day, I take the first of the pills. It’s Lisinopril. It’s supposed to have very few side-effects. I notice nothing and think I’m golden.

I take my second pill the following morning. All is well… until I get out of the shower, reach for the hair gel (it’s Sunday, and I gel my hair up on Sunday to keep from looking like such a hippie freak), and I fall to the floor with chest pain. I can’t even stand up. The wife and kids are already gone, because the wife takes the kids to Sunday school.

Crap!

Okay, so I figure I’m having a heart attack. Figures, right? I mean, if I hadn’t gone in for the stupid snoring issue, I would have been fine. Anyway, I’m downstairs, and I need to find a way to get upstairs. I figure out that if I bend over and do not stand straight up, I can walk without a ton of pain. So I hunch it upstairs and sit down at the dining room table. I start weighing my options.

I can call the wife and freak the crap out of her. Yeah… not going to happen.

I can call 911 and get an ambulance coming. That would, however, be expensive. I’m all about the Benjamins.

Then, I start thinking that I really don’t feel like I’m going to die. You know how people who have heart attacks claim that they get all freaked out because they can tell that they are dying? Well, I’m not freaking out. I’m just pissed because my chest hurts. There is no pain shooting through my shoulder or up my arm, just a sharp pain under my left man-boob. Feels more like something is pulled than I’m dying. I think to myself, “If this cramp in my chest gets worse, do I feel like my heart is going to stop?” I answer myself, “No.” So, I sit there and wait for the pain to go away.

Western Sleep Medicine is supposed to call me to schedule a sleep study. I haven’t heard from them yet. I may not have to worry about it. After all, I went to medical people for one problem and they discovered another. I give myself two weeks, tops. Damn it… I swear, I could have got another 2000 miles out of this s.o.b.

40 :(

It had to happen. It’s approach led to this started-with-good-intentions-but seldom-written-in blog. It has been the Moby Dick to my Ahab. It has been a black cloud on the horizon of my life for the past 10 years. “It” is 40, and it finally overtook me last Saturday.

Turning 30 sucked. Turning 30 meant the end of innocence. No longer a naive 20-something, I felt like my 30s were meant to be my true entry into adulthood. It was during my 30s that I felt I was meant to create my career-life. 30s are meant to be a career building decade and if you play your cards right, you will be well on your way to building wealth and flowing into your “prime income earning years” (40s and 50s) with ease.

Of course, turning 30 sucked. Did I mention that already? As I approached 30, I panicked. “What are you doing with your life?” I asked myself. I was in my late 20s and realized that I was not in a good position to enter anything that involved a long-term career plan. I panicked. I talked my wife into researching franchises so we could open our own business and start down the road to financial independence. We chose a business, we moved to Craphole… er… Scottsbluff, NE, and we tried to make a go of it. All of this panic was caused by the turn to 30.

A few things went wrong.

1st: The franchise we opened did not do bad… we made a small profit in our first year. The franchise did not, however, make enough profit to support my wife and I and our young son. The franchise did not live up to our calculated expectations. We ended up selling it.

2nd: We personally financed the person we sold the business to… and within a couple of months she declared bankruptcy. Guess there was a reason the banks weren’t lending to her…

3rd: After getting shafted by the person that we sold the business to, we could have probably declared bankruptcy as well. But NO… we decided to take the high, moral road and pay back all of our debt. So, instead of taking a lump to the old credit almost 7 years ago (which would have resulted in much less scrimping over the last 7 years and a better quality of life for my family over the last 7 years… and the lump would be healed by now), we have reached a point where we are only a few months away from finally getting rid of all that debt. I know I’m supposed to feel good about this, you know, for having repaid my debts… but I’d really much rather avioded the past 7 years worth of stress and that money, invested, would mean that I would have had a chance to retire some day. Oh well, retirement is overrated, right? Who doesn’t want to work until they die. At least I owned-up to my responsibilities… again, that just isn’t doing anything for me. Retirement would have meant more than making sure the stupid credit card companies got their money. Who’d a thunk that doing the right thing would suck so much?

4th: The wonderful panhandle of Nebraska is not a good place to attempt to open a specialty retail business. Not only is there little disposable income here, if you can’t make a living with the new business, your job opportunities in the Craphole are, well, quite limited. Let’s just say that bright futures aren’t created here. The Craphole is a retirement community… the Craphole is an agricultural community… people either come here to grow corn or people come here to die. People shouldn’t move here to open a little business (in an effort to avoid the stress of turning 30)… because the odds are that you will fail.

Turning 30 may not be a walk in the park, but turning 40 after getting yourself stuck in stinking Nebraska… I don’t know much about growing corn, so I guess I’m part of the retirement community in the Craphole just waiting to die. At 40, it’s really kind of too late to start all over again. Guess I’ve kind of just given up on having the kind of career making the kind of money I went to college to make. At least I have a loving wife and two great kids… if only I could provide for them the way I always imagined I’d be able to. And it’s not that we’re doing bad… it’s just that I always thought I would be financially successful… not fighting to remain middle-class.

I usually try to make these gripe-sessions at least a little funny. You know, cynically tongue -in-cheek. I just really can’t find anything too amusing about the entire situation… not this time.

Softball #3

You know what? I played softball Friday night and for the first time this season I felt like I could actually run! Did I stretch more than usual? No, I stretched no more than usual. Have I been running sprints on the days between games? Haha… seriously, run on days I don’t have to, that’s funny! So what, you may ask yourself, is Adventurer Rich’s secret to being able to run without feeling like the muscles in his legs are actually going to explode?

When I was a wee tot, I remember something my grandma had around the house. It came in a small bottle with a funky, sponge-like applicator at the top. When I would press the applicator against myself, cool green liquid would erupt onto my skin. Within a matter of moments, the liquid was absorbed into my skin and a mild heat consumed my flesh. This was an amazing liquid that my Grandma rarely let me touch. She, however, reeked of this liquids pungent odor almost all of the time. This magical liquid was the reason for my ability to run in last Friday’s softball game without feeling like my groin was going to burst. This magical liquid is… Absorbine Jr (I can’t believe I actually found an Amazon link for Absorbine Jr 🙂 )

Absorbine Jr. is amazing. The cool of the (I’m sure mildly toxic) chemicals that first splash across your skin is invigorating. The oddly green appearance of the liquid is reminiscent of the Grossolium 90 that transformed Melvin Junko into one of the oddest superheros of all time: The Toxic Avenger . Remember that awesome flick? I could do a whole post on how much that single film transformed my entire adolescence… or not. Anyway, back to the Absorbine Jr. The cooling of the skin is of course followed by the mild burn that never quite gets hot enough, you know? It starts to burn pretty good, and just when you think it is going to kick into a full-fledged Icy Hot type burn, it levels off leaving you wanting more. And that classic smell… that classic “old person” smell… that classic “old person” smell that stays with you for hours after the warming sensation has disappeared and reminds me of my grandma; the smell is unforgettable.

So I bought a bottle of Absorbine Jr the other day because I’m feeling a little sore all the time now since softball season started. I know it was good enough for my grandma, so it’s gotta be good enough for me. I get home and I sponge it on all of my sore spots. The cool feels good, the warm feels great, and the smell waxes my nostalgic. I’m wishing they would sell the green, stinky magic juice in 5 gallon buckets so I could fill a tub with it and just soak. Another great thing about Absorbine Jr is the fact that you don’t have to beg a family member to put it on you. You know how no one wants to rub you down with Icy Hot or Bengay because they have to spend too much time washing the crap off their hands after rubbing you down with it? With Absorbine Jr, you need no one. You just rub the green toxin all over your body with the handy applicator-tipped bottle (or, if you find it in 5 gallon buckets, just soak) and let the magic begin. The smell is just annoying enough that you will keep various family members away from you (which often helps your muscles relax as well).

The Absorbine Jr works so well after a softball game, I’m thinking to myself (which is always a dangerous proposition) that maybe putting the stuff on before a game would be a good idea. So, that’s exactly what I do, I douse myself down with Absorbine Jr before driving to the Carpenter Center to play ball. On the way there, the warm tinglies are kicking in and I’m feeling great. I get to the fields and find some of my teammates. I saunter over, feeling pretty cool and collected with my major Absorbine Jr vibe going on. One of the young kids starts to look around and wrinkles her nose. “What’s that smell?” she asks. I kind of drift off to the side of our group.

I grab a softball and ask who wants to warm up. Another whipper-snapper says he’ll warm me up, and we disengage from the rest of the group and toss the ball back-and-forth. We throw and we catch and we throw and we catch some more until the whipper-snapper finally asks, “You warmed up enough yet?”

I know that if we go back to the group that I’m sweating just enough right now that the Absorbine Jr smell is at an all-time high (it appears that it somewhat lodges in the pores of your skin and when you sweat… POW, the smell really comes alive!) “Just a few more throws,” I holler back to the whipper-snapper. We throw the ball until the game is ready to begin.

The thing with Church League co-ed softball is that you always have plenty of guys to play, but you never seem to have quite enough gals to play. Since there were more than plenty of guys, a few of us sat out for the first couple of innings and would go in as replacements at a later point in the game. Now, with me being one of the older dudes on the team, sitting out for two or three innings after already having warmed-up freaked me out a little. I just got through stretching out the old muscles and letting the Absorbine Jr work its magic. If I just sat on the bench for two or three innings, those muscles would tighten right back up and I’d be in serious trouble, so instead of just sitting on the bench, I’m outside the dugout running little sprints, laying on the ground stretching muscles, and doing everything I possibly can to keep those muscles warm. In the meantime, I’m working up a little sweat and stinking to Absorbine Jr high-heaven.

When I finally get to go into the game, I’m up to bat. I can tell that the stink is pretty heavy on me, and it’s making me a little self-conscious. I get up to bat and I glance back at the catcher. The catcher’s face is all twisted up in a wad and I can’t help but think it is because she can smell my Absorbine Jr reek (it could have been that the lady just had a kind of wadded-up face, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly… I think the Absorbine Jr fumes were getting to me.) I hit a little dinker down the third base line and off to first I go. I’m safe on first. The first baseman has a funny look on his face and I’m dead certain that he smells the “old” on me. I start sweating harder which makes the Absorbine Jr stench stronger and when the gal at bat blasts over second base I run like a bat out of hell so that no one can smell my stink. I run harder than I’ve ever run and any pain in my muscles that had hampered my play in previous weeks was nowhere in my mind as I attempted to leave the hideous old person smell of Absorbine Jr in my dust.

Needless to say, I was out at second. But throughout the rest of the entire game (which we lost) I ran without giving any thought to my old muscles. The pains and flair-ups of previous weeks were gone as, with every move that I made, I attempted to keep those around me from becoming disgusted with my smell.

The funny thing is… the way I was pushing my muscles in an attempt to seperate myself from my stench should have made for days of sore muscles and aching joints. After the game, I felt just fine. The day after the game, I felt just fine. Here it is, Sunday, Father’s Day, and I feel just fine. I’ll admit, the hideous odor following me throughout the game made me rather uncomfortable; however, I feel better than I have felt in weeks. I think my grandma was really onto something with Absorbine Jr. I love and miss my grandma very much. She has passed from life on this earth around 17 years ago. I am very thankful that she passed the secret of Absorbine Jr onto me… I just wish I didn’t have to smell like her to enjoy its benefits.

Softball #2

So the first game was a couple of weeks ago. We batted first, and when I got up to bat, I really wanted to make that ball fly. I swung as hard as I could and the ball flew… straight into the pitcher’s mit. Seriously, the dude didn’t even move; the ball just went straight into his mit. At least I didn’t have to run.

The next time I got up to bat, I bopped it right over the infield and I made it to first. I don’t know what really happened next. I don’t know who batted next and whether they got out or not. You see, I am so out of shape that all I could do was breathe in – breathe out – and try not to pass out and all this was just from the run to first. None of this seems right. I have been exercising almost every day for almost 6 months: 30 minutes on an elliptical or exercise bike daily. I guess the smooth movements of exercise “equipment” doesn’t really prepare a guy for an all-out sprint from home to first with all of the flailing arms and flying spittle and whatnot… nor was I prepared for what followed.

The next thing I remember is our stinking coach getting up to bat. I think that at this point I’m on second, but I could be mistaken; everything is fuzzy and I find myself breathing heavy just trying to remember! Our coach is a young dude… early twenty-something, just out of college, freshly engaged to be married, still probably thinks life is going to be fair (and given these negatives, I still like him) and he can run like greased lightening (and I don’t even know what greased lightening is but I think it has something to do with John Travolta and Olivia Newton John and I’m assuming it’s really fast!) So he hits it deep into the outfield and I start sprinting. Before I get to third, I can hear Coach round second behind me! You’ve got to be kidding… when did I turn into the slow old guy?!? I struggle around third and sprint for home. The ball is still out in the outfield and I could have let up a little, but I don’t want Coach behind me to have to hold up at a base just because the old guy is in front of him (I used to get upset when an old dude held me up in my base running… and now I’m the old guy) is limping along. I hit home and try to stop. I can’t stop. I run straight into the chain-link fence behind home and steady myself. My lungs are on fire, my legs are burning, and the cheering hourd on the otherside of the fence is fading in and out of focus (ok, there are like two ladies cheering from our church, but “cheering hourd” sounds cooler than “couple of ladies”). I stumble back to the dugout, yearning to place my rear on the bench for a couple of minutes. Suddenly, someone hands me my glove and says, “We’re in the field.” Apparently the next batter had no respect for the elderly and got out immediately… stupid whipper-snapper.

So, the rest of the game is a blur because I never really got a chance to catch my breath. I am relatively certain that an inordinate amount of brain cells died that evening due to a lack of oxygen. My wife and two boys had watched the game (which we won) and waited for me after the game.

“How do you feel?” my wife asked.

“I feel great,” I lied.

“You looked great out there,” she lied.

The walk back to the car was painful, but I tried to walk as normal as possible. I couldn’t let my family know that their husband and father was really a semi-pathetic geezer who is too old to play softball.

A week passed until our next game. During that week, I was a little sore but never felt like total crap. When the second game rolled around, I thought I was ready. I was mistaken.

Before the game, I started stretching. Something didn’t feel right. My thighs started to semi-cramp. ‘No big deal,’ I thought to myself, ‘just stretch it out.’ So I stretched and I stretched and I stretched some more. By the time we were ready to play, I’m thinking that I’ve got to have about the most stretched muscles in the WORLD (or at least at the Carpenter Center’s Church League Softball games for the night).

We start playing and everything seems just fine. I get up to bat and I smack that silly ball right between the 1st and 2nd basemen. I start my sprint to first, and I think aliens may have temporarily taken my thigh muscles… seriously, it’s like they were not there! You have no idea how important your thigh muscles are to your ability to run until STUPID ALIENS TAKE THEM! I had no power to run! I couldn’t sprint, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t even jog; I think “mosey” may be the only word that can possibly describe my jaunt from home to first. And the crazy thing is, I was safe!

Ok, so now I’m freaking out. I’m miraculously on first base and must be prepared to make it to second if the batter behind me hits it. With my thighs missing, I’m trying to figure out a way to make that happen. I reach down and feel my legs where my thighs should be and my fingers are greeted with cries of pain from my thighs! Stupid aliens somehow put them back, but they must have put ’em in upside down or something because they most definitely do not feel right! Sharp, shooting pain is flickering across the surface of my thighs like someone lit a sting of Balck Cats on my thigh on the Fourth of July. My thighs are starting to cramp so I’m standing there on first base pulling my foot up to my butt on one leg and then another trying to stretch out the alien evil from my legs when the gal batting behind me hits one right between short and third! CRAP! I start my limp/hop/mosey toward second as fast as I can when I feel a small fire starting right between my legs in an area where fire, no matter how small, is most unwelcome! I glance to where the ball is: an outfielder is winding up to chuck it to second. I know that if I push just a little harder, I will beat the throw. I know that if I push just a little harder, the fire between my legs will stretch into a full-blown inferno and I will be safe at second with the prospect of finding a way to third with a pulled groin safely beside me! My mosey slows to a … I don’t even know what’s slower than a mosey, but I found it, and I watched my impending out come to fruition as my foot hit the base less than a second after the ball hit the glove of the opponent already on the base… but my groin remained un-pulled:)

“Waddle”… that’s it… that’s what’s slower than mosey, because “waddle” is what I did back to the dugout. “Waddle” is what I did through the short amount of game I was forced to play through before someone younger and stronger than me who didn’t move about like a STINKING DUCK took my place!

So, as I’m sitting on the bench watching our team painfully lose a game we come relatively close to winning, every stinking muscle in my body is screaming at me. It’s as if last week, my muscles gave me a break, you know?

“What’s this idiot doing running around and crap, ” my thighs said. “Does he not realize we’re all too old for this?”

“It’s delusions of grandeur,” replied my bicep. “Let’s give him his last moment of glory without making him look like a total boob. After he makes himself look semi-tarded tonight, he’ll never want to do this again.”

Of course, my muscles didn’t realize that I’m not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. My muscles didn’t realize that by showing me mercy, they were inadvertently increasing my confidence! When the second game rolled around and there I was trying to push my stupid muscles to the limit… the muscles pushed back!

“Ok, this jerk isn’t getting it,” screamed the muscles in my back.

“Let’s show this idiot what’s what,” my thighs demanded.

“All together now,” hollered every single muscle in my body in unison, “GIVE OUT!”

…and they did.

If I had a tail, it would have definitely been between my legs as I limped home. Upon entering the house, my wife asked, “How did it go?”

“We lost,” I replied.

“Too bad,” she said. “How do you feel.”

Now, my wife had warned me that this would happen… I was going to hurt myself. Although I was more incredibly sore than anything, my pride was hurting like it never has before. “I feel fine,” I smiled. And I just stood in the dining room, not moving… not wanting my wife to see me limp.

“Good,” she replied. When she turned around and started back into the kitchen, I slowly trudged toward the bedroom. She turned around and faced me again, and I froze. Her confused expression started to slowly morph to recognition. I stood like a statue and smiled my idiotic smile.

“Are you sure you’re ok?” she asked, a small grin starting to form at the corners of her lips.

I was not at a point where I could deal with an I-told-you-so, so I continued to hold perfectly still and smile. “Never felt better.”

“Ok,” she smiled and again turned into the kitchen.

Once she disappeared from sight, I waddled into the bedroom with every intention of taking a nice hot bath. However, once I made it to the foot of the bed, my muscles were screaming with ear-splitting intensity and I collapsed into a pile on my stomach on the bed, and I knew I would not be getting up anytime soon… and then I heard my wife’s footsteps as she entered the room!

CRAP!

“Just… uh… just taking a little breather,” I said, beating her to the punch and hoping that would be enough to get her to turn around and leave the room while I struggled to obtain an upright position once again.

The footsteps got closer.

CRAP!

As she sat at the foot of the bed by my legs, my body rolled slightly toward her and I think I may have squealed ever so slightly like a little girl from the pain.

CRAP!

Then her hands were on my back, rubbing out many of the small knots that had accumulated throughout not only the night but the past week. As the muscles in my back began to release me from their painful grip, her hands moved down to my legs and those muscles too soon gave up their punishing intentions.

When her hands stopped, I muttered a “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. No “I told you so”, no “are you ready to quit”, nothing negative at all… just “you’re welcome.” And then, “What time is your game next week? I think me and the boys would like to watch another game.”

So, tonight is game # 3. My body is feeling pretty good, my family is behind me, I’m representing my Church in a league where sportsmanship usually (but not always) takes precedence over winning and I’m having some fun. I may have to pick up some cleats at one of the local sporting goods stores when they put them on clearance in another week or two. I figure I’ll be able to run the bases better next year if I’m in cleats. 😉

Softball

Ok, a few weeks back, I signed up for our church’s softball team. It has been a couple of years since I played due to having a crappy retail job that allowed me no normal free time (just a note: I don’t think there is such a thing as a non-crappy retail job… I’ve had my share of them, and every single one of them pretty much sucked). The last time I did play, I ended up tearing my calf during the first game on my first trip around third (no, I didn’t stretch… I never used to HAVE to stretch). Anyway, I was pretty excited to be getting back into softball. I love the camaraderie of being on a team, I love the spirit of competition, and I just plain love anything that involves hitting something with a bat! I signed up during church and was excited when I got home and told my wife.

“I signed up for our church-league softball team,” I said with a big smile on my face.

My wife didn’t smile. She looked mildly shocked and the air slowly began its escape from my balloon (you could almost hear the squeaky, fart-like sound of the escape). I expected words of encouragement or maybe a little I’m-proud-of-you hug. Instead I got, “Aren’t you too old for that?”

“Wha… what do you mean?” I’ve never actually seen my puppy dog face, but I know it has been extremely effective in the past (well, ok, not “extremely effective”… but it worked once…). On this day, however, the power of my big hazel eyes and pouty lips pulled off nothing.

“Last time you played, you pulled your calf in the first game and you were out the rest of the season,” my wife pleasantly reminded me. “You also spent a large portion of a month just laying around complaining about your leg. You were the one who said, two years ago, that you were ‘too old for this…’ let me see if I can remember the exact word… oh yes, I believe it was ‘…crap’.”

The memory of a woman is a frighteningly complex series of processes that serve a primary purpose of making the male in her life feel as absolutely small as possible at any given moment when it most works to her advantage; this moment is seldom less than at least one year from when the actual event occurred and almost always comes as a complete shock to the male when the memory is revisited.

“So you think I’m too old for softball?” I asked, the puppy dog thing still trying to work its magic.

“No, you think you’re too old, remember?” my wife reasoned. “I’m simply showing my support by agreeing with you.”

At this point, the puppy dog has run away (I’m sure to be hit by a large car) while I try to figure out why what she is saying should not make sense. Suddenly, it comes to me. “But that was two years ago… and I didn’t stretch, but I will from now on… and I really want to play again!”

“Well, if that’s what you want, I’m okay with it…”

Why is it that when a woman agrees to let you do something you really want to do but you feel they really don’t want you to do they can agree to let you do it and make you feel guilty as sin for wanting it in the first place?

“… just don’t come crying to me if you hurt yourself again.”

So it was agreed: I would play softball, not as a young man who could help the team, but as someone really too old to be playing who was reluctantly allowed to play by his wife (with noted reservations). My initial enthusiasm lay on the floor in the form of limp balloon remnants exhausted of all former glory and now a mere mushy pile of latex and saliva.

This is gonna be a great softball season…

The Dreaded 40

Sometimes at night, just before I drift off to sleep, I sense something moving under the bed. On my way to work on some mornings, I glance in the rear view mirror and see a movement in the backseat… but nothing is there. At various points throughout the day, usually in the shadows, I sense foreboding movement while everything is stationary. The presence I feel more and more as time goes by is the dreaded age of 40 creeping up on me.

Turning 30 sucked. Turning 30 was kind of like the true end of childhood. Turning 30 meant I had to start being responsible. Turning 30 meant that it was time for everyone under 30 to start looking at me as an adult. Turning 30 sucked.

Turning 40 is going to MAJOR suck. Over the last 10 years, my body has started to sag; not that I didn’t sag in the first 30 years… I’ve been a sagger for most of my life… it’s just that the sagging has become much more noticeable over the last 10 years. I used to think man-boobs were funny. Man-boobs are most definitely NOT funny. Gray hair has taken up a permanent residence on my head… and on my chin. I used to think it was kind of cool when I’d spy a new glistening white hair amongst my brunette locks. Yeah, it ain’t cool anymore. My 30s have been a slow decline in body and spirit. I really can’t believe that my 40s are going to be better. Turning 40 is going to MAJOR suck.

No good can possibly come out of turning 40. There’s a guy I work with who just took the 40 plunge. The dude used to be really active, you know, riding his bike all the time, going on hikes, not the kind of guy to sit still. Then he turned 40… and everything changed. He turned 40 and shortly thereafter he got The Gout. Seriously, The Gout! Now he walks slow and funny. He isn’t active anymore… because of The Gout. He spends a large portion of his time sitting around with his gouty foot elevated griping about The Gout. Something that everyone who has to turn 40 can look forward to: getting to the age where the old-person ailments start kicking in… The Gout, Rheumatism, Shingles, Arthritis, Cirrhosis, High Blood Pressure, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Dropsy, Dementia, Alzheimer’s… oh my, what good times lie ahead! And that’s just the diseases. That doesn’t include all of the fun stuff like hair on the back and coming out of the ears, liver spots, wrinkles, weakening strength, hunching over, using a cane or walker, losing hearing, and more and more and more! Of course, turning 40 gets you just a little closer to that wonderful senior discount at Perkins (yippee).

I’m already beginning to act the part of a 40-something in certain ways. After a long day at work, sometimes I’m just too lazy to lose the black work socks in exchange for white socks. So, yes, sometimes you will see me mowing the lawn with shorts, tennis shoes and my stupid black socks up to my knees. I swore I would never go there, but there I am. I always wondered how a man gets to that point that wearing black socks with tennis shoes and shorts doesn’t seem dorky. I’ve come to realize that, yeah, we know it’s dorky, but we just don’t care. In my case, I’ve been married for almost 15 years. It’s not like I give a crap about what the cute young women driving by think of me while I’m mowing the lawn. They weren’t that interested in me 20 years ago when I was single and less saggy, so why would they glance twice at an almost-40 sagging dude… the color of my socks isn’t going to make a difference.

In college, I used to imagine how my life would turn out. With my business degree, I was going to take the business world by storm. By the time I was 40 I was going to be raking in six figures in some high powered position with some major corporation. Well, 40 is less than 6 months away, I ain’t making close to six figures, and my position is about as high powered as a Nerf dart gun.

I think this is the point where the mid-life crisis kicks in… a major benchmark (40) is approaching and those stupid goals (money and power) haven’t been reached (and most likely never will be reached). If only I could afford a stupid convertible sports car. Guys going through a mid-life crisis are supposed to get a stinking sports car, right! Yeah… I’m screwed on the sports car thing. At least I get an affair with a hot woman half my age, am I correct? Mid-life crisis guys at least get the young hottie, right? Oh yeah, too many hotties have seen me mowing with those stupid black socks up to my knees… CRAP! Did I mention that turning 40 is going to MAJOR suck?