Category: HAPPY JOY!!!

The Great Miss America Controversy… Where Exactly is She From?!?

I always write about how nothing good comes from the panhandle of Nebraska. Apparently, my beliefs may not be 100% accurate.  On January 15, 2011, for the first time in history, Miss Nebraska was crowned Miss America.  Miss America is from Nebraska, and that is something kind of good.

.

.

.

Teresa Scanlan,Miss Nebraska,Miss America,2011

.

.

.

Teresa Scanlan was crowned Miss America in humble Las Vegas, Nevada at an understated ceremony viewed by a few people around the world on ABC.  Teresa Scanlan is 17-years-old (one of the youngest Miss Americas ever… and the youngest Miss Nebraska ever), plays Chopsticks on the piano like nobody’s business, fills out a bikini nicely (even if there isn’t much bikini there), looks extremely elegant in evening ware, and isn’t afraid to answer a politically-charged question with a politically-incorrect answer (and she still won?!?).  Teresa is intelligent, and her goals are not acting or a singing career or modeling.  Her goal is to find a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court… and I know that the Presidency of the U.S. is not something she sees as out of her reach.  Normally, I would scoff at a beauty-pageant winner stating that she may have her eyes on our nation’s highest office, but I have been following Teresa’s story for awhile now.  You know how some people seem to be able to actually accomplish the goals they set for themselves?  Well, Teresa is one of those people.  And the kicker is… Teresa is from the panhandle of Nebraska!  In fact, she probably lives less than a couple of miles from the humble abode I call home.  So, I guess not everything in the panhandle of Nebraska sucks.

Now, if you’ve ever read my blog before, you know that my blog posts that are completely without a complaint are few and far between.  In fact, this is my 75th post in about 1 1/2 years of blogging, and I think there have been like 3 posts without a complaint!  This post, I’m afraid, is not going to be the 4th.

In past posts, I have complained about the idiocy of Scottsbluff and Gering residents regarding the differentiation of the two communities.  Scottsbluff is proud to be Scottsbluff, and Gering is proud to be Gering.  The two small communities refuse to consolidate and become one rural powerhouse.  Instead, they remain separate in both government and attitude, and they remain two rural economic weaklings.  Gering residents especially are territorial and throw major whining fits whenever consolidation of the two communities is mentioned.  Gering, of course, is the smaller of the two communities (they don’t even have their own grocery store), and seems to be suffering from a touch of Napoleon complex.  My personal opinion is that the two communities should put aside their perceived differences, join economic forces, and become one.  With the combined talent and resources of the two communities, we could grow into the next Ft. Collins.  Or… we can stay separate, and things around this dump will never change.  Each community is already reliant on the other, and neither community will ever thrive without it’s neighbor.  Stop being neighbors and start being family!

Well, this division between these two communities was well presented after Teresa’s accomplishment tonight.  When I logged onto my Facebook account tonight, after the victory, the division was quite prevalent.  You see, Theresa lives in Gering, NE, but Teresa graduated from high school in Scottsbluff, NE.  Oh my!  Which community does she really claim?  She chose Scottsbluff as the place to complete her high school education, so she prefers Scottsbluff, right?  Oh, but she went to school in Gering, and she and her family live in Gering, so she is a Gering girl, right?  A common example of a Facebook thread is as follows:

Scottsbluff jerk’s status:  Congratulations to Scottsbluff’s own Teresa Scanlan!

Gering moron’s comment:  You realize she’s actually from Gering, right?

Scottsbluff: Well… she graduated from Scottsbluff High!

Gering:  Yeah… but she went to Gering schools too…

Scottsbluff: But she chose to graduate from Scottsbluff!

Gering: … but her family still lives in Gering.

blah… blah… blah…

Seriously… the most prestigious beauty-related award that a young woman in the United States can win… and she is from NEBRASKA, and not just Nebraska, but the PANHANDLE OF NEBRASKA… and you idiots have to argue about exactly which town she is from?!? What would Miss America think?!?

Well, I would guess that Miss America would say:

“I am proud of being from both Scottsbluff and Gering.  These two communities have every right to claim me as their own, because I love both and will continue to support both as I complete my duties as Miss America.  Scottsbluff: I will continue to shop your stores and eat at your restaurants and praise your school system!  Gering: I will… uh… I know there’s something… oh yeah… I will continue to sleep in your jurisdiction… when I’m not out doing Miss America stuff… promise!”

She is, after all, thinking of being President, so she has to learn to diplomatically lie…

Seriously…  Husker-football can’t win their way out of a wet paper bag and the Husker-girl’s volleyball choke in the tournament.  The most impressive thing to come out of Nebraska in the past few years is Teresa Scanlan… and us locals are arguing about where she is really from?!?  And people wonder why I bitch…

Another New Themed-Header :)

Once again, the Tainted Butterfly, has come through with a holiday themed header for my blog.  Thanks!

HSJ February

I know… I know… January isn’t even half-way over and I have a Valentine’s Day thing going on.  If Walmart can do it, so can I.  And I know… I know… hearts and flowers and crap seem kind of sappy, but I like the way my turd seems to have the hots for the floating heart.  Ahhh, young love, is there anything that makes you want to gouge your eyes out more?

National Champs… WNCC Lady Cougars Volleyball!

In my last post, I kind of painted Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman as a dolt.  Let me rephrase that: Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman kind of painted himself as a dolt and I wrote about it.  I really didn’t have anything positive to say about good ol’ Dave.  After thinking about it, I decided that he did deserve a couple of props, so I am going to right that wrong right now!

Governor Dave made a lot of fun of The Star-Herald !  I like making fun of The Star-Herald myself, so I enjoyed Dave’s ribbing of our “local” paper!  However, Dave made a comment about The Star-Herald not being like The Omaha World-Herald, and I kind of tend to disagree.  The Star-Herald is owned by The  Omaha World-Herald and is a lot like its parent paper.  I want to emphasize that The Star-Herald has a local staff of reporters, marketers, and support personnel who are, for the most part, good, hard-working people who do a bang-up job!  However, just because you are owned by an Omaha company does not mean that you can charge Omaha prices.  Also, The Star-Herald does not seem to have a local paper “feel”… and I can’t quantify what I mean by that, it’s just the way it is.  So bravo, Governor Dave, for making fun of The Star-Herald !

Second props go to Governor Dave for his honoring of Western Nebraska Community College’s Lady Cougar volleyball team for bringing home a national championship at the NJCAA level!  Dave proclaimed December 3, 2010 as “Cougar Volleyball Day”.
*
*
*
*
WNCC Cougar Volleyball,National Champions,NJCAA
*
*
*
*

It’s pretty cool when little podunk Scottsbluff can claim a national anything, let alone a championship.  WNCC has a great athletics program, and I don’t think we local residents appreciate our student athletes as much as we could.  Great job, Cougar volleyballers… we are proud of you!

It would have been cool to see a little higher-profile coverage given to our local national champs in our local newspaper, but I think the Huskers played that weekend…

Scavenger Hunt Winner!

Lee, the winner of the first Happy Stinking Joy Scavenger Hunt, made good on his promise to send me a picture of him in his first place prize. So, without further ado…..
.
.
.
.
.
.
Happy Stinking Joy,happystinkingjoy.com,scavenger hunt,contest,free

Man, that is one good looking piece of work.  I know that after everyone sees this picture, they are gonna fall in love… with the shirt!  If I do another one of these scavenger hunts, you will have your own chance to win one of these beauties.  And as you can tell from the picture, they look good on almost anything!  🙂

Scavenger Hunt Approaching!

Alrighty, kiddies, The first-ever Happy Stinking Joy scavenger hunt is right around the corner! The official Scavenger Hunt will begin this Sunday, 10/24/2010, at 6:00 pm MST and will show up here as a post on this blog. What else do you have to do on a Sunday evening… church is over, no work until the next day, a free t-shirt up for grabs… you know you have time for this 🙂  I had a special t-shirt made with my semi-gay, semi-grotesque logo thrown on the front for the grand prize, and it is screaming to get out of my house (or maybe that’s my wife screaming to get the stupid t-shirt out of the house… whatever!) The scavenger hunt will be relatively simple. I will ask questions about specific websites, and within the questions will be links to the sites.  By “hunting” through the site, answers to the questions can be found.  The first person to get me the correct answers to the questions I have asked will win a Happy Stinking Joy X-large t-shirt.  Pretty cool, huh? Answers to the questions must be submitted via the “Tiny Contact Form” found on my website.

For example, if question #1 is “What color is red?” and question #2 is “What color is green?”, you would click on the links provided. When you scour the site and discover the answers to the questions, you would go to my “Tiny Contact Form”, type your name, your email address, and put “Scavenger Hunt” as the subject. In the message portion of the form, you would put something like the following:

“1. red” (’cause that’s the color of red)

“2. green” (’cause that’s the color of green)

…and so on and so forth, until you have answers to all of the questions.  Some will probably be relatively easy and some will probably be relatively hard. The first person who gets all of the correct answers to me wins the shirt.  I will contact the winner via email to get his or her shipping address to ship the shirt to. I will use the “time received” notification from my email client as the final determining time for awarding the prize. I reserve the right to eliminate any entry for any reason whatsoever, including, but not limited to: spelling errors, partially complete answers, and whatever else comes to mind now or later. The winner agrees to let me publish some form of his or her name and region of the country (for this scavenger hunt, I’m limiting it to residents of the United States only… international shipping isn’t something I’m interested in getting into at this point) on happystinkingjoy.com, and it would be cool if the winner would send me an email picture of the winner wearing the shirt-prize to post as well, but I’m not going to require that…

The scavenger hunt will appear as a post on my blog and will start, once again, Sunday, October 24th, at 6:00 Mountain Standard Time.  I want to thank everyone in advance who decides to embark on this adventure 🙂

Something About Nebraska That… Doesn’t… Suck… I Guess

I have come to the conclusion that the negative attitude I hold toward all things Nebraska is starting to have a negative impact on my health.  My family has an ongoing rivalry with heart disease, and heart disease seems to be winning.  All of the males (and some of the females) on my dad’s side of the family have battled high blood pressure and I am no exception.  I can actually feel my blood pressure rise when I get stressed, and I am constantly getting stressed.  The stress gets so bad that, once it kicks in, I can’t concentrate.  My thoughts flutter around my head like moths around a campfire.  If I try to pull those thoughts into my psyche to concentrate on, the thoughts, much like the moths, burst into flames and are forgotten.  The feelings of hopelessness then descend in waves, and I actually begin to question my sanity.  Ever felt like you were going crazy?  Not a good time.  Stress makes me feel like I’m going crazy.

In order to try to alleviate a little of the stress I feel in my life, I decided to focus this entry on something about the panhandle of Nebraska that actually makes me happy.  That’s right, I’m going to try to find a positive angle to follow on something.  Finding something in the panhandle that I don’t perceive as completely sucking is not easy, but I’m going to give it a shot.

Nebraska is known for its beef: marbled, corn-fed beef that practically melts in your mouth.  If you want a truly great rib-eye steak (perhaps the best rib-eye on the planet), and you want to experience that steak in a truly Nebraska-esque setting, there is only one place to go…

The Oregon Trail Wagon Train.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

The Oregon Trail Wagon Train is a local landmark.  It used to be known as “Gordon Howard’s” until the Howard family sold it.  I’m sure that most folks are familiar with a chuck-wagon-style cookout.  Many of the touristy places in the West and Midwest have these kinds of cookouts, but most of them serve crap like barbecue beef or barbecue chicken… you know, the shredded stuff that goes on a bun… and with most of them, you are paying for the experience (because the food sucks).

I remember going to the Flying T chuck-wagon supper last summer near Rapid City, SD.  It was over $20 per adult, the food was not impressive, and the portions didn’t come close to filling me up.  The staff was kind of rude and barked orders to the paying customers (which, I guess, is supposed to be part of the charm).  There was some good-old country music after the meal (if you like good-old country music… which I don’t) and the band tried to hawk their CDs the whole time.  I love Rapid City… the Black Hills are one of my favorite areas to visit… but I will never go back to the Flying T.  There are much better places to eat in the Black Hills.

Anywho, back to a good chuck-wagon meal.  At the Oregon Trail Wagon Train, the ambiance is pretty rustic.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train,Nebraska,panhandle

They have a horse-drawn wagon and they take you for a short ride.  Usually on the wagon ride, the driver will point out spots in the vicinity that were actually part of the Pony Express trail. It’s pretty cool to think that Pony Express riders used to actually ride so close to where you are about to enjoy your heavenly steak.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train,pony express

The “cowboy coffee” is plentiful and is cooked over an open fire.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train,Cowboy Cofee

When you get to the botton of your cup, you get a mouthful of grounds… which is the way it should be.  If you ain’t chewing your coffee, it ain’t real cowboy coffee.  All of the food is cooked over wood coals from a real fire… as opposed to a fake fire, I guess.  The boiled potatoes and the green beans are cooking in these funky, homemade-looking metal structures, and the “grill” is loaded with fire wood.  When they light the wood, you know that good times are getting near.  See, this is the thing with the Oregon Train Wagon Train: you pay something like $22 per adult (same as the Flying T), but you are actually getting an honest-to-goodness rib-eye dinner that exceeds the quality of a steak you could get in a fancy chop house.

On my last visit to the Oregon Trail Wagon Train (which was a couple of weeks ago), there were a crapload of grasshoppers.  I happened to notice a spider hanging in her web on the eave of one of the old buildings.  I figured that, since my family was about to dine on some good grub, I would treat the spider.  I grabbed a grasshopper and threw him into the spider’s web.  Honestly, I didn’t figure the spider would mess with him, but I went back about fifteen minutes later and found the following:

Oregon Trail Wagon Train,Spider eating grasshopper

Oregon Trail Wagon Train,Spider eating

I showed the kids (the wife refused to look) and they thought it was gross.  You can actually see where she has her mouth attached to the hopper.  You know she injected her venom into the hopper, waited for the venom to start dissolving the workings inside the exoskeleton, and is now sucking out the juicy remains.  Awesome!  The kids didn’t really think so… not right before dinner.  Still, I thought it was pretty cool.

While I was playing with the spider, the wood on the grill had been started.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

Now we were just waiting for the fire to burn to coals and the steaks would go on.  There are some pretty cool things to check out while you are waiting for the steaks to start cooking.  There is a path you can follow that takes you back to the North Platte River.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

Usually this area is kind of mosquito-infested, but this late in the summer, I guess the mosquitoes had other things to do.  There is a little fort for the kids (of all ages:) ) to check out.  You can actually climb up into the watch tower and check out the grounds.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

There is a old black lab that hangs out (except she seems to disappear at meal time) and she loves to have her belly rubbed (if you are so inclined to rub a dog’s belly… which I am).

Oregon Trail Wagon Train,Nebraska

There are a variety of old tools attached to the sides of the out buildings that are kind of fun to check out.  The Oregon Trail Wagon Train also has a small gift shop and a small bar attached to the gift shop, so you can buy some overpriced, low-quality toys and nick-knacks right before you start downing the brews.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

I usually avoid the gift shop and the bar.  Why pay for a beer when there is all of that free cowboy coffee to chew on?

For the more sportsy people, there are a couple of horseshoe pits.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

Yeah, I guess horseshoe tossing ain’t really a sport, but this is Nebraska, so horseshoe tossing is right up there alongside tumbleweed chasin’, cow tippin’, and sheep… uh…

sheep,nebraska,scared,nervous,oregon trail wagon train

… shearing?  Besides, tossing a shoe from time to time can be kind of fun.

If you run out of things to do and are feeling a little bored waiting for the steaks to go on the grill, there is a multitude of spiders which I am sure would love to find a juicy grasshopper in their webs 🙂

Oregon Trail Wagon Train,spider

Finally, the fire has burned down to coals, the coals are raked out nice and smooth, and the steaks get thrown on the grill.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train Coals

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

Oregon Trail Wagon Train,rib eye steaks

Every time I have been to the Oregon Trail Wagon Train, the guys in charge of grilling the steaks seem to have a beer in their hands.  Every time.  And dinner is served 7 nights-a-week all summer long.  I wonder if they are hiring?

The dinner bell rings, we all get in a line, and we proceed by the grill.  They ask you how you like your steak done, and you get it exactly how you like it.  You then get a heaping spoon of green beans and a large, red boiled potato.  You help yourself to the available condiments (from which steak sauce is absent… and you better not even think about asking for it) and make your way to a table.  Waiting for you on the table is a freshly baked loaf of the best sourdough bread in Nebraska.

After you gorge yourself on a hearty meat and potato meal, you head to the ice cream counter and get yourself a cone filled with delicious home-made vanilla ice cream.

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

While you are licking your dessert, you are directed to the campfire area where one of the steak cookers (half-baked on beer) will lead the entire dining group through several sing-along songs that are usually silly and probably quite fun (if you go for sing-alongs… which I do not).

Oregon Trail Wagon Train

Oregon trail wagon train,Bayard,Nebraska,panhandle

We usually leave after a song or two and head for home, quite satisfied.

I promised myself that I was not going to bitch about anything at the Oregon Trail Wagon Train.  This chuck-wagon-cookout is the best cookout-type place I’ve ever been to, and I am trying to manage my blood pressure.  However, I am know for breaking promises… and it goes against my nature to not complain about something, so I’m gonna complain about the flies.  The Oregon Trail Wagon Train is out in the middle of nowhere.  You can see Chimney Rock from the cookout site, which is also in the middle of nowhere.

Chimney Rock,Nebraska,Bayard,panhandle,Oregon trail wagon train

When you are in the middle of nowhere and you cook-up good grub, you are going to be invaded by flies.  And I’m not talking about a few flies, I’m talking about flies of horror movie proportions.  The setting is great, the food is awesome, but you are going to spend a large portion of your time waving flies away from your plate.  I guess this doesn’t bother me too much.  The food is worth the waving, but I kind of wish the owners of the Oregon Trail Wagon Train would do something about the flies.  I don’t know what they could do, but if they could find something, I would not have a single bitch about the place 🙂

If you ever find yourself in the panhandle of Nebraska, I have a couple of things to let you know.  First, I want to apologize that you are in the panhandle of Nebraska.  Second, if you find the time, check out the Oregon Trail Wagon Train .  It’s out of the way, but worth it.  Besides, the entire panhandle is out of the way, and your here, so you might as well eat some good grub!

Eugene’s Pizza vs. Imo’s Pizza

Growing up in Glasgow, Montana, I had the privilege of  regularly consuming some of the best pizza on the entire planet.  This pizza is served by a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant (located in the “Big G Shopping Center”) called Eugene’s Pizza.  Eugene’s Pizza does not take reservations, and on certain nights you may have to wait for an extended amount of time to seat yourself at a recently departed table.

You almost never sit at a clean table at Eugene’s; you sit at a dirty table and wait for a waitress to come clean the table for you.  The waitress then takes your order and you wait… and you wait… and you wait for your order.  The cool thing is, as a kid (or a kid at heart), you can watch the entire pizza-making process if you can muster the courage to go stand in front of the counter.  You can watch the dough go through this cool flattening machine, and then you can watch a highly-trained pizza-tossing professional twirl the thinning disc of gluten higher and higher into the air.  If the dough doesn’t actually hit the vaulted (probably 15 foot) ceiling, the dough isn’t thin enough.  There are usually cobwebs encrusted in flour near the point on the ceiling where the dough makes contact, but this never seems like a big deal.

Eugene's Pizza,Glasgow,MT,Best Pizza Ever! St. Louis style pizza,thin-crust pizza

Crap, if there was a spider in my Eugene’s Pizza, I probably wouldn’t care, because the pizza is that good.

After the dough is tossed, they bring the paper-thin masterpiece to the counter and slather it with a tomato-based sauce.  The other toppings follow… and what most clings to my memory are the sheets of mozzarella cheese.  This isn’t a handful of shredded cheese sprinkled on top of the pizza; rather, a solid foundation of sheeted mozzarella is laid under the building blocks of flavor that will soon be exploding in your mouth.  Honestly, I didn’t know pizza was made any other way until some point beyond my youth where I came to the conclusion that some pizza-makers cheated with faster-melting shredded cheese.  There is no “faster” with a Eugene’s Pizza.  From the counter, the pizza makes it’s way into a true pizza oven, where it spends what seems like an eternity.  This ain’t fast food, and you can tell by the taste of the finished product!  Cracker-like crust that bursts upon impact with the teeth, stringy mozzarella in every bite, a world class sauce that is reproduced by no imitator, and enough toppings to satisfy the largest hunger.  I always figured that Eugene’s was one of the best thin crust pizzas  in the world.

After leaving Glasgow (’cause pizza alone cannot retain a soul yearning for satisfaction… there has to be jobs), I discovered that the style of pizza that Eugene’s served was unique.  I couldn’t find anything like it anywhere I went.  So, I did a little Internet research at some point that led me to believe that Eugene’s served St. Louis style pizza.  Yeah, I know, St. Louis style pizza in Glasgow, MT… seems like a stretch.  So I did a little research on St. Louis style pizza.  What I found out is: there isn’t a lot of information on St. Louis style pizza.

Although the info on St. Louis style pizza is limited, I did find some.   St. Louis style pizza is made on a cracker-thin crust, is cut into 3″ or 4″ squares (instead of the traditional pie-type cutting), often uses (but does not require) Provel cheese, and is either loved or detested by most people who try it.

Eugene’s cuts its pizzas into the squares found in a traditional St. Louis pizza, and the cracker-thin crust of Eugene’s Pizza is one of it’s greatest features.  The major difference I could find between traditional St. Louis style pizza and Eugene’s Pizza is the cheese.

Provel,Imo's,Eugene's Pizza

Provel cheese is a blend of cheddar, swiss and provolone cheese.  But Provel isn’t just a blend… Provel is a processed cheese food (think Velveeta).  Provel cheese originated in St. Louis in around 1947 (Wikipedia) for use in the St. Louis pizza market.  If you have never heard of Provel cheese, well, that’s because you probably aren’t from around the St. Louis area.  The world outside of St. Louis knows little about Provel cheese.  Why?  Well, if a pizza place started using Velveeta on it’s pizza, the average pizza connoisseur who most likely run the opposite direction.  In St. Louie, they run for it?!?

Mozzarella is real cheese.  In fact, mozzarella is the traditional cheese used in modern-era pizza-making.  And, when a pizza joint forgoes the now-common shredded cheese in favor of large slices on cheese; well, said joint is going to serve a superior pizza! At least these were my thoughts having never tried Imo’s Pizza.

Well, recently, I had the opportunity to visit St. Louis. I didn’t see the Arch, I didn’t hear any live Blues, I didn’t catch a Cardinals game… but I made sure I tried an Imo’s Pizza. It had been so long since I had good thin crust pizza of the Eugene’s caliber that I was extremely excited! I had grown up eating a copy of Imo’s, right? Now I was going to get to try the original! After all, Imo’s claims to be “The Original St. Louis Style Pizza!”

I ordered the pizza from my hotel room and anxiously awaited the call announcing the delivery dude had arrived. When the call came in, I sprinted to the lobby and grabbed the wonderful-smelling treat.

Imo's Pizza,St Louis style pizza

I rushed back to my room, mouth watering, and threw the box open! The pizza that rested before me looked quite similar to the Eugene’s that I missed so dearly; square cut pieces, cracker-thin crust, loaded with toppings…

Imo's Pizza,St Louis style pizza

As I slid a piece between my lips and snapped into the crust, a wave of nostalgia swept over me. That was some good pizza. In fact… believe it or not… Imo’s is… is… almost as good as Eugene’s Pizza!  Imo’s just didn’t have the zing of Eugene’s.  Although I liked the smoky flavor of the Provel cheese, the stringy-chewy-deliciousness of Eugene’s mozzarella just can’t be touched by a processed cheese food.  Eugene’s is KING!

You know what I really found interesting?  If you notice on the box from Imo’s, the “Original St Louis Style Pizza” has been around since 1964.  If you check out Eugene’s website (from which you can order these pieces of art to your own home anywhere is the continental USA), you will notice that Eugene’s was established in Glasgow, MT in 1962?!?  My research had led me to believe that Eugene’s copied Imo’s… but it looks like Eugene’s was in business before Imo’s!  Maybe Imo’s isn’t the original St Louis style pizza… maybe Eugene’s is the original Glasgow, MT style pizza… and maybe, just maybe, Imo’s copied Eugene’s 🙂   YEAH… Glasgow, MT may be famous for a pizza style… it just has the wrong name!!!

Enjoying Birthdays

It’s my youngest son’s 7th birthday today. He usually sleeps in at least a little bit during the summer, but he was up bright and early this morning. And I’m heading out the door for another day of incessantly ringing phones and dealing with the dreaded “people”. It’s funny how the older I get, the less I like dealing with people. Other people, whether they mean to or not, directly or indirectly cause over 99% of the stress in my life. I used to be able to deal with people and empathize with their problems and concerns.  These days, I have enough of my own problems, whether real or imagined, that I really don’t want to listen to yours.  So, another stress-filled day awaits me, while my boy is going to be enjoying his birthday.

“Happy birthday, buddy,” I tell him as I’m heading out the door, to which he gives me a big hug.

Man, I can remember being excited about birthdays like that.  Almost.  I do not, however, exactly remember when I realized that each passing year is not something to be celebrated; each passing year represents another year closer to death and another year where all of those goals I set for myself in youth go unrealized.  And  it’s a spiral, this death/unrealized-goals thing.  The closer you get to death, the less time you have to realize your goals, and the faster time seems to pass with each passing birthday.  Summers, which used to be a long season of leisure in my youth… a season where time actually seemed to slow down and a time filled with fun and frolic and development of the imagination and dreams of the future… summer, now, is the short season between all of the time-consuming activities that the kids have to be shuttled to and from (school, scouts, soccer, t-ball, youth group, AWANA… and this year the oldest starts confirmation and an after school program at the public library and the youngest wants to do Tae-kwon-doe).  All of these activities are right around the corner, which the wife and I could probably be prepared for if we, too, had our entire summers off, which we didn’t.  So time just goes faster and faster and those goals become more and more unrealistic and death looms closer and closer… and the spiral accelerates.

One of the main things I wish for my kids is the joy of birthdays.  I hope that my sons never reach a point where they see the tornado of life as an out-of-control, stress-filled monstrosity.  I hope my sons always find joy in their birthdays because their goals are being met and other people don’t tend to piss them off just by existing.  This is a lot to hope for, I know, but it is my hope.

Tonight, my family will go out to eat in celebration of the youngest’s 7th birthday.  We will eat Chinese, because sesame chicken is his favorite.  We will then go home, light candles on the birthday cupcakes, sing “Happy Birthday”, watch him make a wish and blow out the candles.  We will hope he wished for something important, something grand, and we will hope his wish comes true.  We will watch him open his presents with certain giddiness.  He will enjoy his birthday, and so will we.

Enjoy your birthdays, while you can.  If you already can’t… well… you are not alone.  I guess we can always try to enjoy the birthdays of someone else 🙂