HappyStinkingJoy – Page 8 – Complaining about life in general…

The Palm Trees in My Basement Bathroom…

We have this bathroom in our basement. I love this room. This room is where I go when I want to spend some quality time alone. The wife has decorated our little downstairs bathroom with a “theme”. The “theme” of this room is palm trees.
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I used to wonder how the lovely wife came up with the theme of palm trees for this particular room. I suspected that Walmart had a clearance rack of toilet-related materials and the only matching set the wife could find was palm trees. The wife claims the theme arrived in remembrance of our honeymoon almost 18 years ago in Cancun…
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… and the soft, warm breezes on the beach and the hint of lime in every shrimp quesadilla… or lobster taco… or 39 peso cheeseburger at McDonalds (seriously, every thing from Budweiser to bacon in Cancun has a hint of lime). Whenever I inquire about the theme downstairs, the wife waxes nostalgic of a time right after she and I stood before a man of God, all our family, and most of of friends and proclaimed our undying love for each other. Cancun for the wife and I was the whipped cream on the Hot Fudge Brownie Delight that is married life. Remember when Dairy Queen used to sell Hot Fudge Brownie Delights? These were the calorie-laden monstrosities that consisted of mountains of delectable soft-serve ice cream resting on plains of nut-covered chocolate brownies separated only by seemingly endless rivers of hot, steamy fudge… and then irresponsibly topped with the snow capped ridges of 100% dairy-and-sugar filled whipped cream. The foundation of marriage is the brownies and ice cream and I do not for an instance regret any part of it… but our honeymoon was the whipped topping, full of fun and sweetness and decadence…
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… everything that convinces a man that he is settling down with the right woman to begin a life of work and responsibilities and children and STINKING FUNDRAISERS!!! I digress…

So, anyway, I spend a large portion of my “free time” in our downstairs bathroom staring at the shower curtain that rests directly in front of the toilet.
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You may wonder to yourself, “now, what exactly could he be doing on the toilet for any measurable amount of time that would lead him to spend an inordinate amount of time staring at a shower curtain?” Well, you may be slightly dented for asking such a question. What goes in must come out, and I am sincerely sorry to point this out, but even Johnny Depp and Katy Perry spend time staring at the palm trees… if you know what I mean 😉

The wife dreams of tropical places when she and I discuss the wonderful places we would like to settle down once we figure out what we are going to do with the rest of our lives. I, on the other hand, tend to lean more towards something more mountainous.
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Of course, both of us are open to the ideas of the other. I would be almost as content in a bungalow on the beach, and she seems fine with the thought of fresh mountain air and fresh-caught trout with wild asparagus for supper a couple of nights a week. One problem is that we don’t know quite how to get to either of these locals. The second problem is that we live in Nebraska, which does have a scenery all its own, like this…
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… and this…
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… and this…
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… along with…
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and, occasionally even…
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… which leads to…
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… and ultimately…
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… but is about as far as you can get from either a tropical paradise or a scenic mountain retreat.

Living in either a tropical paradise or a mountain of solitude would require an income that currently surpasses us here where we actually have jobs, let alone in a remote location where jobs are few and far between. I’d like to think that we would be able to use our retirement savings to get us to our dream location, but I would also like to think that I don’t look my age and that the tooth fairy pays out even more when the elderly loose their teeth. All three of these wishes are pipe dreams. I figure that the only way the wife and I are ever going to see our dreams come true is found in three simple words:

third world country.

Third world countries can be tropical, and third world countries can have mountains. Third world countries are a lot cheaper to live in than the United States. Help me, Third World Country… you’re my only hope!

I figure if the wife and I can save up a few thousand dollars, we should be able to move to some neato place like Guatemala or Somalia or, heck, I hear there are some good deals on property in Afghanistan right now. Guatemala and Somalia both have some nice oceanfront property
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and Afghanistan is known for it’s mountainous regions.

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Heck, that’s where all the fugitive Taliban hide, right?
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For a few thousand dollars, we should be able to live like a king and queen! Oh sure, there would be some language barriers, but I’m sure that any self-respecting country would teach English as a second language, right? And even if they don’t, just think of the millions of Mexicans who migrate to the US who don’t speak a word of English. The Mexicans get by just fine. In fact, many companies and even our government bend over backwards to make sure our Spanish speaking friends don’t have to bother with learning English. After all, on almost any telephone call you can always “apriete dos para español.” As ass-backwards as the US is viewed by the rest of the world, I’m sure these third world countries have even better programs in place to make non-native tongue people feel welcome, right? Of course they do.

There may be some other small hindrances, like decent health care, or a clean water supply, or a reliable food source. And the fact that the wife and I are Christian may lead to a problem or two. We may have to fend off the occasional suicide bomber or be weary of any Muslims with a big knife and a penchant for heads, but I’m sure it will be worth it to live in the type of surroundings that we dream of. I mean, it’s pretty obvious we aren’t going to make those dreams come true in the US.

Ahh… so maybe our dreams really can come true. Maybe there is some hope for our future outside of the good life that can only be found in Nebraska. I mean, either dying a martyr at the hands of a radical Muslim, or staring at another corn field and watching another disappointing Husker football season. At least the martyrdom would be on a beach… or in the mountains…

Well, that’s enough for now. I had a big supper, and my daily fiber seems to be kicking in. I have a date with some palm trees…
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Is that a CPAP on your face, or are you just happy to see me…

Nothing says “sexy beast” like a dude in a CPAP mask.

Just ask me.

I mean, at any given point of the day I have multiple people comment on my sexy goodness, but check me out in the middle of the night when I’m all nose-hosed and compressurized. The sight of me when I’m all CPAPed-up would turn any women to a state of weak-kneed, wanton lustfulness!

Just ask the wife.

Yeppers, CPAP has been the best thing to happen to my love life since… I mean the intimacy level in my bedroom has… well, uh, when the mask goes on, the romance…

Crap.

Who am I kidding…

Wearing a CPAP has helped me sleep better, and that’s it. It has not been at all helpful in the hanky-panky department.

My life has been filled with self-doubt and low self-confidence. I didn’t date in high school or college because I couldn’t expect some poor girl lose all self-respect for herself by being seen in public with me. I kind of assumed that a kiss from me might actually turn the girl into a toad. After college, I was lucky to meet the woman who is currently my wife. She seemed to like me well enough, and she didn’t have any major issues with being seen in public with me. She didn’t turn into a toad. So, even with her glaringly obvious mental condition, I married her.

Now, in addition to being a rather unsightly fellow, I snore like a mother. Yep, always have. Roommates in college cringed at the thought of sharing a room with me. If I had a dollar for every pillow thrown at me in the middle of the night, my wealth would put Warren Buffett’s to shame. My wife, bless her, put up with it for more than a decade before she could take no more.

So, I have the sex appeal of Quasimodo, a snoring ferocity that would silence a caterwauling cat, and the love-making skills of a zombie on crack. Yes, my wife is a lucky lady.

I figured that if I reduced one of the many negative traits that make up — you know — me, maybe I could score some points with the wife. You know, increase the frequency of the cracked-out zombie lovin’ just a bit. Then I realized what the wife was looking at on the opposite end of the bed every night and morning…

… and I realized that my previous thoughts and motivation were somewhat deluded.

Damn it.

Not only is a CPAP more effective than a chastity belt, it’s hella expensive to maintain. My CPAP contraption is made by Philips. You know, the light bulb people. Apparently Philips isn’t raking in quite enough money selling light bulbs, because they try to rape you on the price of one of their CPAP machines. I mean, seriously… A CPAP machine is little more than a reverse vacuum cleaner that blows instead of sucks. It’s got some kinda brain that registers when to blow and when not to. My Droid X phone completes a hell of a lot more complicated tasks than my CPAP machine, but the Droid X cost a small fraction of what that stupid Philips thingie did. Plus, I don’t have to buy outrageously priced replacement parts for my Droid X. This little gasket thingie (I believe it’s referred to as a “cushion” in the screwlicious world of CPAP) costs $65:

Seriously… 65 freaking dollars for a little piece of rubber. And, you wanna take a wild guess at how long that little sucker lasts? About a month.

Yeppers, one solitary month, or as they stay in China: 一個臭烘烘的一個月.

After about a month, the piece of crap starts to leak. So, with the payments on the machine (we rent… ’cause that’s the way our insurance rolls), the monthly “cushion”, and the other cheaply made, outrageously prices parts and pieces that need to be purchased for this sucker on a regular basis, my CPAP therapy costs a small fortune every year to maintain. I don’t know how people who aren’t on decent insurance can afford something like this (unless, of course, they are in that stupid 1%); oh wait… they can’t. People who are uninsured or have crappy insurance get to die early because they can’t afford to treat their sleep apnea. Well, we’re all better off without them, right? Don’t believe me? Just ask the 1%.

Oh sure, my sleep apnea is somewhat under control now. I sleep better at night. My wife sleeps better at night. But, I will freaking look like this every night for the rest of my life:

Bet you’re gonna have nightmares now, aren’t you? I do, and I’m sure the wife does too…

I Hate the Holidays…

Yep, you read right: I hate the holidays. By “the holidays,” I mean the season starting right around Halloween (which I know isn’t a real holiday, but that’s when this all starts)…

… and ending shortly after the champagne is drained on New Year’s Eve.

I hate this time of year. Not that I don’t appreciate things like Christ’s birth. You know, He went on to die a horrible death on a cross for our sins! His is a birth worth celebrating. It’s not that I don’t need to show my appreciation for all that I have by gorging myself on turkey and mashed potatoes and pecan pie… I do that just like I’m supposed to. The reason I hate the holidays is because the holidays are a two-month extravaganza leading to the ending of another year. The holidays are also the beginning of a new year that is supposed to hold new promise and hope for great things to come. Whatever…

Being an old pessimist, the ending of a year means another year of exactly what I expected: nothing spectacular.

I spent about 35% of my waking hours in 2011 getting up much earlier than I cared to and going to a job. I sat at a desk and talked with people who were upset with their Internet service, tried to manage a small cast of characters, and had any creative marketing idea I came up with shot down faster than the boss could say, “I’m not feeling it.” I think a funny YouTube video with a grandma, an alien, a “probe” and Internet would be hilarious and create much interest in our Internet services. The boss disagrees. Whatever… it’s his company. If he wants to keep it a “family-friendly” local business, that’s his choice. I guess my ideas are better for a national (or even world-wide) audience. My thoughts are too grand for Crapbraska.

After work, I almost daily went to the YMCA to do some cardio, which I recently discovered was pretty much worthless. Even though I worked my butt off at the Y, I didn’t lose a pound (apparently everything on my butt went straight to my gut), and I still found myself going on both high blood pressure and cholesterol medication this past year. I’m destined to be a fat person who doesn’t quite fit in…

At this point, it should be fairly obvious that a large portion of my life is nothing more than a huge waste of time. That’s always gratifying… knowing that a large portion of the time you spend breathing air is nothing more than time spent stealing air from someone who makes a difference.

So, the holidays do nothing more for me than remind me that I spent a large portion of the year not mattering. See, an optimist may find that realization a little depressing; for a pessimist, it’s the status quo. Long live the pessimist, usurper of the air of people who matter!

Thus, what the new year holds for me is little to get excited about. Lather, rinse, repeat. Such is life.

The great thing about being a pessimist is I know exactly what the new year is going to bring… no pleasant surprises. And if there is a pleasant surprise, it will be just that: a pleasant surprise.

The sucky thing about being a pessimist is I know exactly what the new year is going to bring…

…happy holidays, or whatever…

My Arch-Nemeses…

Do you have an arch-nemesis? Do certain people upset you just by the fact that they are alive? Do you find yourself in a social situation and come to the distinct conclusion that a certain person is ruining your social experience just by the mere fact that he or she is breathing the same air as you? No? Well, maybe it’s just me. I tend to be a little odd in that way. “That way”… hahaha… like that’s the only one! No — I’m odd in a multitude of ways. The topic of this post is, however, going to be my arch-nemesis.

I do not have a single arch-nemesis. No, I have the privilege of having several arch-nemeses. Yes — I had to look up the plural for nemesis, and yes — it is nemeses. Just because I didn’t know this does not make me less of a blogger. The fact that I’m admitting it may in fact mean that my grammar is derelict amongst the uppity-ups in the blogosphere, but that brings the point full circle to the purpose of this post. The uppity-ups are my arch-nemeses.

What do I mean by “uppity-ups”? One may think that an uppity-up is someone who looks down on others through some misconception that said someone has about being better than those he or she looks down on.

No.

My definition is based more on my feelings and how I think that person feels about their relative importance to society. I am most likely completely incorrect in my feelings and thinking, but this is how I judge someone’s arch-nemesis-worthiness.

Confused? Yeah, I may be too. Let me give an example.

Let’s pretend that last night I went to a choir concert. Let’s pretend that I was at said concert with the wife for the purpose of viewing my oldest son sing with the choir. Yes, he’s in the choir and no, he did not crash the concert in an attempt show off his singing ability. He is his mother’s son as much as he is mine. At this pretend concert, the wife and I enjoyed the experience and it was a fulfilling hour of musical entertainment.

Now, the pretend concert is over and my family and I are making our way from the auditorium to the parking lot. This is when I start to spot them: my arch-nemeses. First the shoe-store man and his wife. I know that this man is a zillionaire because, if you are buying shoes in the panhandle of Nebraska, most likely, you are buying them from him. Money is practically oozing out of this guy. He doesn’t have a clue as to who I am, because… why would he? Suddenly, it’s on! And up-up-and-awaaaayyyy goes my paranoid mind:

This guy probably thinks he is better than me. His wife think she is better than my wife. Their kid thinks he is better than my kid. Other people like Shoe-store Man’s family better than they like my family because the guy is a bazillionaire.

Other kids in school treat Shoe-store Man’s kid better than they treat my kid because Shoe-store Man is a quadrabazillionaire. Shoe-store Man’s kid is going to have a better, more successful life than my kid because my kid has me for a father instead of my arch-nemesis.

My kid hates me and secretly wants Shoe-Store Man to adopt him! My wife secretly desires an affair with Shoe-store Man because it is blatantly obvious that Shoe-store Man is a better provider for his family than I am. Shoe-store Man is like seven-foot tall and attractive… and I am at 5’7″, fat and ugly… and I really can’t blame my wife for wanting to leave me for Shoe-store Man. Shoe-store Man is destroying my family and robbing me of my life!

Shoe-store Man must DIE!!!

The wife asks if everything is okay.

“Are you kidding?!?” I seethe. “Do you see that SOB and his wife, acting all like their better than us and crap?”

“What are you talking about?” The concern in the wife’s voice is filtered out by the pure hatred in my soul.

“There,” I point, my entire body shaking as I try to aim my finger in the general direction of the shoe-store guy and his family.

“What about them?” asks the wife.

“They are ruining this for me!” I say through clenched teeth.

“What are they doing?” asks the wife.

“Can’t… can’t… can’t you see it?” I stammer. “They’re… he is… tall… their net worth… and the smug… she looks so…designer clothes… AAUGH (because I may actually turn into Charlie Brown when I’m upset) — THEY ARE RUINING THIS FOR ME!”

“I think you need to go to the car,” says the wife calmly. She has seen me like this before.

“I WILL!” I yell and then stomp off toward the parking lot once again. I glare at shoe-store guy until he is out of my sight.

‘Don’t think I don’t know who you are, Shoe-store Man,’ I whisper to myself. A small girl in pigtails with a lollipop in her mouth hears my whisper of rage and stares at me wide-eyed like I’m crazy. I growl at her and she looks away.

And as I am about to exit the building, I see him. A chiropractor, smiling as he mingles with the throbbing mass of after-concert crowd. A chiropractor whom I suspect to be a multi-quadrabazillionaire. The one who may very well be my arch-nemesis… The Chiropractor!

Hahaha… of course this is all an exaggeration (… or is it?). None of this really happened (… or did it?).

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, so I tend to use mine whenever possible… not always in the most productive ways, but I’m using it. I use it daily. I’m using my mind to sniff out my arch-nemeses…

Have I Mentioned the 40s Suck?

I recently had a guy from the church I go to invite me to participate in a mens support-group-type-thingie. Having never been invited by much of anyone to participate in much of anything since moving to the wonderful panhandle of Nebraska, I was at first quite excited. He explained to me that this would be a group of guys getting together once a week for a couple of hour shooting some hoops and, you know, just being there for each other if anyone needed some other guys to talk to about, you know, guy stuff.

What a spectacular idea! I thought this sounded pretty cool, and I was stoked that this guy had thought of inviting me to participate! I was stoked until he asked me the following:

“You are 40 or over, right?”

Oh crap.

“Yes, I’m 42,” I said, suddenly feeling a little nauseous.

“Great,” he said. “We’re doing this for guys 40 and over. You know, the younger guys have other stuff they are involved in and support groups in place. When you get to be our age, it’s harder to keep up with the young ones but all guys need a little male bonding. We thought it would be pretty neato if a group of us older guys could hang out.”

Suddenly, my mind is racing. “Our age”… I believe this dude just turned 50. All of a sudden “our age” is 50? Crap. “Harder to keep up”… “older guys”… “neato”… I don’t remember anyone from my generation ever using stinking “neato” in daily conversation… am I starting to lose my memory? All of a sudden I’m being asked to join a senior citizens’ group! It’s almost like he just handed me the stinking senior discount card for Perkins and is asking me to join him and the other codgers for some pie and coffee at 4:30 in the stinking morning. This is what I’m reduced to?!?

I’ve never really had a “group” that I fit in with here in the wonderland of Nebraska. At 42, I feel like I may well be stuck in some sort of groupless vortex. Those younger than me are either hanging out at the bars or doing the sports thing. I’m not too keen on any kind of bar scene, and the thought of taking off my shirt for a pick-up game of shirts and skins makes me (and anyone who has seen me) have a little bit of throw-up-in-the-mouth action going on. I don’t really hunt, and fishing is fun for about 15 minutes. Driving for 8 hours to Lincoln for a Husker game — along with the 4 hours of the game itself and the 8-hour drive back… plus the cost of the ticket and travel — is time and money from a short, poor life that I would never be able to get back. Willingly going to a Husker game would be kind of like paying the police $300 to spend the day in jail; it’s just not something I personally could do and still claim sanity. I’m at an age and level in the local society where I really just don’t fit in with any group.

Many of the guys my age or older seem to be either:

A — of a higher social standing than me and/or making more money than me.

B — on foodstamps and welfare and happy as hell that they are living off of the taxes of others.

C — of a similar social standing and income to me, but they like spending their evenings and weekends at the bars or rooting for the Huskers.

C- — This is a subsection of C. These are guys who are in pretty much the same crappy, sinking boat as me, but they have something aside from work to latch onto. They have their music, or they have their art or their hobbies. They get together with a bunch of other geeks once a month and play Dungeons and Dragons. They have something in common with others that draws them into groups.

So, even though I may be resigning myself to the fact that I am approaching ancientness, I decide to be thankful that at least the old guys at my church are willing to invite me into their group.

“So, who all will be there?” I ask the inviter (who happens to own his own successful insurance agency).

He proceeds to tell me that there will probably be a couple of other successful business owners, a couple of dentists, a pastor, and other various successful guys. Once again, I’m starting to doubt that I stand much of a chance of fitting in.

“And when do you meet?” I asked.

“Mondays, from 7 to 9 at night at the church,” he said.

“Oh… that’s too bad,” I said. “I’m a boy scout leader and we have troop meetings every Monday at 7.”

“Well, if you ever get a chance, try to make it,” he said.

“I will, ” I probably lied.

So on Monday nights, instead of hanging out with a bunch of good guys who will unwittingly make me feel even more down about my social lot in life, I’ll still be hanging out with the boy scouts. Boy scouts are young and eager and full of optimism… and I have the responsibility of awakening them to the realities of life as I see them. How’s that for hope for our future 😀

The Panhandle Smells… Apparently Like Money…

I remember back to when I first moved to the panhandle of Nebraska way too many years ago. I remember all of the disgusting smells that should have warned me that I wasn’t going to like it here, smells that I ignored and have somewhat gotten used to. I remember complaining about those smells only to have one crusty old codger or another tell me not to complain. “Smells like money,” was the codgerly proclamation. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. Money, from what little interaction I have with it here in the panhandle, smells of musty paper and cocaine. None of the things around the panhandle have what I consider to be the smell of money. I have people tell me that I need to appreciate the beauty of the panhandle. These are the same people who go around taking pictures of weeds and sunsets and crap and find beauty in these simple things. My observations tend to tilt in a little different direction, so I have tried to capture the stench of the panhandle through pictures. One of the first smells I had to adjust to was the smell of processing sugar beets.

A sugar beet is a tuber-thingie that tastes like a potato. Apparently, through some magical chemical process, sugar can be drawn out of these bland wads of starch. I don’t know exactly how it is done, but I know it involves lime, a lot of heat, and the production of some major stink.

Sugar beet is a major crop around these parts, and you can see the harvested beets in seemingly endless piles around the area.

I remember the first time I inquired about this stench. “Smells like money,” I was told. I don’t remember ever opening up my wallet and being met with the smell of sun-ripened vomit, but I guess, to some, that’s what money smells like. And, apparently, the smell of money is good for the environment, too.

There is another smell that permeates the region from time to time.

No, that’s dead possum. Although it didn’t smell that much more unpleasant than what I’m referring to… and it does remind me of a series of unrelated pictures that I have on my phone. I think I’ll share them here. In other words, here lies a totally unrelated sidetrack. Stay tuned for more of the stench of the panhandle…

Okay, so last winter after one of my posts dogging on Nebraska, this guy comes up to me and says, “Why don’t you try to find the beauty in our area? Why can’t you be more like Katie Bradshaw?” Apparently, Katie recently moved here. She does a blog on her experiences (which are far different from mine), and she has major photo-taking abilities. Her blog actually landed her a position with one of the the local newspapers. I don’t have much in the way of photo-taking abilities, but I thought I would give it a shot.

I thought I could document the businesses that have gone under in our spectacular rural community.

Problem is, this business is still open. This business was a car wash, tanning salon, custom embroidery, restaurant, cocktail bar with a self-service dog wash. No kidding, I couldn’t make something this ludicrous up. Apparently, the rest of the business is doing great, they just had to close, you know, the restaurant part?!?

Then there are the plethora of these:

During my younger days in Montana, I used to hunt… a lot. Public land was everywhere, and finding a deer or an antelope or a pheasant or a grouse to take home and put in the freezer was easy. In Nebraska, private land rules the range, and if you don’t know some crotchety old landowner, there is no reason to buy a hunting license. Needless to say, even after 15+ years of living here, I don’t know any crotchety old landowners.

I could have focused on what we meager-wage-earners have to look forward to here in the panhandle…

… but that would have just been plain-old depressing.

I’m going to throw this one in just because I think it’s cool. It’s from a local tattoo shop and the outrage that it created was extraordinary. It was free speech versus the anally uptight… and free speech won 🙂

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Wait a second! What’s that beautiful dark figure in the awesomely artistic photograph I have taken below?

Ah, the beauty of a winter’s night in the panhandle of Nebraska. Is it a beautiful winter street flower? Is it a fairy from the tales of old?

Yeah, no, it’s a dead cat. This stupid cat had been in the road by my house for like a week. Poor thing was hit by one of the speed-limit breaking residents of the trailer park up the road. I was going to dispose of it when I first saw it, but I figured there may be a little girl somewhere missing her lost kitty. I wanted the family to be able to find the cat for, you know, some closure. However, after a week, I was tired of looking at it and decided to scrape it’s frozen butt off the street and throw it gently place it in the trash receptacle. So, I scraped it and bagged it. Little did I realize that frozen cats are a little… pointy.

So, I did what any good samaritan would have done… I double bagged it.

Still pointy. If not so morbid, it’d almost be a bit funny… you know, how pointy that frozen cat was. Wouldn’t want to swing it around because you could put an eye out or something.

Anyway, so ended my attempt at capturing the beauty of the panhandle in pictures. I disposed of the cat properly, said a few words for the family who was probably still looking for her, and may have made a pointy-cat joke or two. Katie Bradshaw can keep her picture-taking ability.

Okay, so now we get back on-track to the smell of money that reminds me of roadkill.

That’s right, the good old feedlots. When the breeze blows just right, you can get your face full of the smell of feedlot at any given time of the year. Summer seems to be best though.

“Smells like money!”

Seriously? Are you sure that smells like money?

“Yep, smells like money!”

Smells like cow shit to me, but to each his own, I guess.

Finally, the third horse of the smells-like-money trifecta: the railroad. In our little community, we have not one railroad line usurping the positive energy from our lives, but two monstrosities of greed and power to interfere with our daily being. Stupid BNSF and Union Pacific.

“Don’t complain, ’cause it smells like money!”

But the railroads don’t really have a smell, do they. I mean, that really doesn’t even make any sense…

“Shut up, whiny boy! Smells like money!”

Okay, whatever. The railroads apparently smell like money, too. A few years ago here in the wonderful panhandle of Nebraska, BNSF smelled like benzine. We got us a little national press coverage, and BNSF paid-off a lot of people to guarantee the prevention of future lawsuits. Now, all is well. I mean, there is the occasional child born with extra digits and whatnot, but we make them feel extra special… like one of the X-men.

“I’m gonna count your piggy toes… yes I am! 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13! 13 just means you’ve been blessed by the benzine, and your special… like Wolverine… except with extra piggy toes instead of super claws. We’ll call you Piggy-Toe Man, and your foot stench will be extra powerful… because, you know, you have extra piggy toes…”

Ah, the joys of benzine. They should put it in our water… you know, like fluoride. ‘Cause I’m guessing benzine may actually be less toxic than fluoride…

The tragic thing is, you can actually get stopped by multiple trains at multiple crossings if you are traveling from one end of Scottsbluff to the opposite end of Gering. That’s right, not only can you get stopped by both BNSF and UP trains, you can get stopped by more than one train at each crossing. But you know what really sucks? What really sucks is when BNSF decides to close multiple crossings in Scottsbluff for repairs… AT THE SAME TIME! BNSF has like 6 crossings within the Scottsbluff city limits, and 4 of them are currently closed.

Talk about throwing a major screw-up wrench in the daily lives of thousands of people. What mongoloid idiot made that insane decision… and why did no one from the city do anything to alter those magnificently dubious plans? City manager Rick Kuckkahn made a statement to local news outlet KNEB and he said he understood drivers’ frustrations. Does he really? Apparently BNSF has “extra people” in town, so the jobs can be completed quicker than normal. Notice all of the people humping ass to get the work done in my pictures above? Yeah, drive by any of the closed crossings and they all look pretty much the same. And not only is there an apparent lack of urgency in completing the work necessary to re-open the crossings, now all of the trains creep through town at like a quarter of there normal speed. Talk about some small town gridlock. Mr. Kuckkahn said the closings were “unavoidable.” Really, Rick, unavoidable? The city manager has no say on not closing the majority of crossings in the town he manages? I don’t think Rick Kuckkahn understands much of anything. Smells like money to me.

I have come to a distinct conclusion after considering the various smells of money that permeate our community: there may very well come a time when one must stop living in a community where one can smell the money and move to a community where one can actually earn it.

The Holidays are a Great Time to Lend a Hand!

The Holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Kwanzaa (whatever that is)… Time to think of others and be thankful for what you have, right? Normally, I would take this opportunity to dog on each and every single one of these holidays. I would bitch about everything I see as being wrong with these holidays… which is a lot. But, then I asked myself, “What would Jesus do?” Jesus would not dog on the holidays. Jesus would tell us too look out for our fellow man. Jesus would tell us to put the needs of others ahead of our own needs. Jesus would tell us all about Stacy Rock!

Stacy who? Stacy ROCK! Say it like you mean it… ROCK! Although a few years younger than me, Stacy grew up in the same small Montana town that I did.

Whenever I think of Stacy, I think of her mom… Mrs. Rock. Mrs. Rock was my English teacher in 6th, 7th and 8th grades. All of the younger grades feared Mrs. Rock. She was the kind of teacher who would yell at a kid down a long hallway if said kid was screwing around. Mrs. Rock’s voice could be heard from one end of the school to the other and stabbed fear into the hearts of the young children. We knew that, sooner or later, we would end up with her as a teacher. There were rumors of children who had mouthed off to Mrs. Rock and just… disappeared. I held a suspicion that the Rock family had a freezer full of formerly-mouthy kids who were served — you guessed it — for the holidays.

When I finally reached 6th grade, I was terrified that I would end up as a Thanksgiving main course. Mrs. Rock was not only the English teacher, she was the homeroom teacher for 6th grade. 6th graders are too young to die. What was wrong with the Ft. Peck school system?!?

Well, it turns out, nothing at all was wrong with the Ft. Peck school system. Mrs. Rock was an awesome teacher. She was strict, but she was also kind. She had a great, cynical sense of humor, which, of course, I loved. Mrs. Rock ended up being my favorite English teacher of all time. It was an incredible experience to watch Mrs. Rock yell down the hall at the younger kids who were misbehaving… knowing the fear that was building in them… some of them probably wetting their pants… maybe even a touch of the poo… Good times! In fact, I contribute all of my writing success to Mrs. Rock. Yeah, this stupid blog is all her fault. So the five of you who read it can blame her.

Back to the real reason for this post. Stacy Rock is no longer a little girl. Stacy Rock is now a soon-to-be rock-and-roll LEGEND! She just needs a little help from whoever stumbles across this post. After school, Stacy moved to the Big Apple in search of fulfilling her musical dreams. She found some success with the release of her first album. Now, she is attempting to produce a second album, and she is raising funds in the effort to make that second album come to life. But Stacy isn’t just asking for money… she is giving out rewards at every contribution level. The rewards sound pretty cool, too. If it wasn’t the holiday season, I would have went for the $50 level just to get some of Mrs. Rock’s cookies, although I still suspect there may be bits and pieces of mouthy kids within (‘What’s the secret to your delicious cookies, Mrs. Rock’, ‘Why, just a little Robert Jones, Mrs. Smith.’) If one were a great contributor to the arts, he or she could actually end up with a personal concert from Stacy in his/her house. That would be pretty cool. Check out Stacy’s story:

Currently, there are two semi-famous people from Fort Peck, MT. One is Wayne Hawkins, who was like a guard for the Oakland Raiders or something. The other is Ron Hauge, who is a television writer who wrote for The Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy, and I think he wrote an episode of Seinfeld or something. Please, please, please help this small Montana town have one more semi-famous person to its credit: Stacy Rock.

Check out Stacy Rock’s Kickstarter page for more information on how you can help and what you get in return. There is a goal and a deadline, so don’t delay. Also, check out Stacy herself and her music at StacyRock.com. The holiday season is a great time to help someone out 🙂

Thanksgiving Header

Finally, thanks to my coworker Stacy, my collection of holiday headers is complete:

I now have headers for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Thanks, Stacy 🙂

Manly Men Like Pumpkin Butter… even though it sounds like something little Mary would serve at her make believe tea party…

The time of year is upon us for some pretty cool seasonal food. I grew a few things this summer, and it always kind of sucks to have to wait for the fall stuff until… well… fall. I did well with buttercup squash and pumpkins. I only planted one pumpkin plant, and it only grew 4 pumpkins, but I think I’m set on pumpkin for awhile…

A beagle and her pumpkins — Our old beagle has a spot in every room that she calls her own. In this room, pumpkins invaded her space. She was pissed.

Now, I like pumpkin pie as much as the next dude. Three of the four pumpkins we grew are in the picture above. The two that are a darker orange color weigh over 100# each. The lighter-orange pumpkin weighs slightly over 80#, and one more pumpkin not pictured weighed in at over 40#. That’s over 320# of pumpkin… how much pie can a fellow eat?!? Although one or two of these may end up wasted as jack-o-lanterns, this is way too much food to not find some different ways to eat pumpkin. Deciding to try out the smallest (40#!) pumpkin first, I decided on a pumpkin soup and some pumpkin butter. The pumpkin soup was okay, but the butter rocked, so I thought I would share my recipe and experience.

The first thing we did was to split the pumpkin, gut it, and bake it.

40# pumpkin — Don't throw them seeds away! Clean 'em, soak them in salt water overnight, and roast them in the oven at 300 degrees or so for a couple of hours. Awesome snackin'!

I cut a bit of it off raw to make the pumpkin soup, but the rest of it went in the over at 350° for about an hour. Remember, this was a BIG pumpkin… I had to do 2 shifts to cook the entire thing. I made the pumpkin soup while the pumpkin baked 🙂

Baked pumpkin — The whole house smelled like Thanksgiving... in early October. It was awesome 🙂

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Once it was nice and soft, I removed it carefully from the oven and drained of the juices (there were a ton of juice cooked out of this sucker). Then, I got out a knife to start removing the flesh from the shell. Of course, being a dude, I like my knives big and sharp.

The big knife was, of course, a mistake. Almost every time I get together with a knife in the kitchen, someone gets cut. And seeing as how no one will enter the kitchen if I am holding a knife, it’s always me.

Stupid knife — I always seem to cut little bits from the exact same place on my finger... every time. One of these times, it's just going to refuse to grow back.

So, with my finger hurting, I soldier on and remove the pumpkin flesh. It all goes into a bowl and I mash it up. Now, as you can imagine, I got me a ton of pumpkin meat… way more than I’m going to need to make a little bit of pumpkin butter. The nice thing about pumpkin is it freezes really well. So, I decide I’m going to make about 8 cups of pumpkin puree into pumpkin butter, so I blended and set aside 8 cups.

Pumpkin puree — I decided to use 8 cups because... uh... that's the biggest measuring thingie I had.

I freeze the rest of the flesh just mashed.

Mashed pumpkin — Nothing quite as appetizing as mashed pumpkin...

I froze it mashed instead of pureed in case I came across a recipe where the pumpkin needed to have a little more substance… but I’m guessing it’s mostly going to go in soup, more butter, and some pies. But, it’s easy enough to blend it after it thaws.

To freeze it, I just filled quart freezer bags with 4 cups of mash.

Uh... Yeah... More pumpkin — Yummy... er... well, someday it will be.

A neat way to get the air out is to stick a straw into the bag and suck as you seal it up.

Pumpkin shake — Nothing like having your teenage son walk into the kitchen, spy you sucking on a bag of pumpkin, roll his eyes, and, without saying a word, turn right back around and leave.

Okay, I’m getting close to ending the freezing of the pumpkin. Of course, my hands are all slimed up with pumpkin. I wash my hands and realize…

Uh oh — Uh... this doesn't look right...

… something is missing. I know I had a bandage on my freshly cut finger. I know it hasn’t been off that finger for very long. I know I didn’t have it when I went to wash my hands. For crying out loud, where could it be?

Oh no. I had a pretty strong suspicion I knew where the bandage was. See, the masher did a decent job of mashing the pumpkins, but every once in awhile, there was a piece the masher didn’t get. I’d just stick my hand in that goop and mush it with my hands. So, I went “fishing”.

Fishing — Yeah, it feels as creepy as it looks.

It didn’t take long until I found what I was looking for.

The big catch — Strangely enough, I didn't end up reusing the bandage.

Yeah, I just tossed it… the bandage, that is. I’m not going to waste good pumpkin. I just marked the package extra special so I knew which one not to eat myself.

Special batch — That one's going into pumpkin bread to give away during the holidays 🙂

Finally, I finished getting all of the extra pumpkin and was ready to start in on the pumpkin butter.

Following is what you will need to make a batch of pumpkin butter. I actually made a double batch. However, I went the slow cooker route to cook the butter (cause there is no stirring or watching or any of that crap) and I quickly realized that my concoction was a little much for a standard slow cooker.

It was a little messy. If you want to double the recipe, do so at your own risk 🙂

* 4 cups pumpkin puree

* 1 cup brown sugar

* 1/2 cup white sugar

* 3/4 cup apple juice

* 1 Tbs vanilla

* 1/4 tsp allspice

* 1/4 tsp ground cloves

* 1/4 tsp ground ginger

* 1/2 tsp nutmeg

* 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

* 1 Tbs lime juice

That’s it. Mix it all together and throw it in the slow cooker. I cooked the double batch for about 12 hours overnight on high in the slow cooker. A smaller batch probably won’t take quite as long. Make sure you tilt the lid on the cooker so that a lot of the the moisture cooks off.

Full lid — Tilt it, or crack it. I wrote "crack"... hahaha!

You want your pumpkin butter to be nice and thick… you know, so that sticks to the back of a spoon. You want it spreadable. I love that word: spreadable. Sounds kind of sexy, doesn’t it? Sweet and spreadable.

While I’m getting prepared to cook this overnight, the wife says to me, “Uh, that slow cooker looks a little full,”

“Yeah,” I say, “I want lots of butter.”

“You realize that is going to make a mess, right,” the wife says.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’ll clean it up.”

Well, you see, I have this little habit of saying I’ll clean stuff up and then, for some reason, I never really clean it up. Or rather, I don’t clean it up fast enough for the wife and she ends up cleaning it up herself. Long story short, the wife doesn’t let me cook my pumpkin butter in the kitchen. I am relegated to complete my cooking project in the basement.

My cooking space... apparently... — For some reason, seems like a lot of my cooking projects end up here...

After about 12 hours, my slow cooker full of goodness…

…had reduced to the perfect consistency. Too bad so much of it was water.

Messy much? — Okay... so it was a little messy.

All that work and I get a couple of jars of pumpkin butter.

I was trying to decide if I wanted to process the butter by canning to make it last longer (which isn’t apparently recommended), but I decided that it wasn’t going to take long for the family to go through what I had made. I stuck one jar in the fridge for now and one jar in the freezer for later. The hardest part was preparing the pumpkin. The rest was a cake walk. It sure is good… and I have the reassurance that if I want to make more, I’ve got plenty of pumpkin to make that happen.

I can always make more... — How much pumpkin butter can one family eat?

Now, I just need to figure out what I am going to do with my squash…

The Leaves of Fall

A few years back, I had a job that required me to spend a large portion of my time behind the wheel of a truck. Early mornings were common, and I’d drive a lot of miles before returning home. One memory stands out in my head above all others from that period of my life, and I believe that memory helped shape my current attitude toward the community I currently call home.

The day I remember must have been really close to this time if year. The leaves had mostly turned, early mornings demanded a slight scraping of frost from the windshield, and the jacket I wore to brace against the frigid morning breeze rested on the seat beside me before noon. Fall in Nebraska is almost like two seasons in one: the pleasant, warm time while the sun brightens the day, and the crappy, cold time when the sun, too, has had its fill of Nebraska. On this particular day, I had left at around 3:00 am for some early morning business in Kimball. The business in Kimball didn’t take too awful long, and I found myself driving back into Scottsbluff at around 11:00am. As I drove north on Highway 71 and drove over the bridge spanning the meek North Platte River, I couldn’t help but notice all of the leaves that littered the side of the road. The area around the river is one of the few places where you can find a multitude of trees all in one spot in western Nebraska, and a significant wind must have blown through the previous night. I can not remember a time before nor after that day where I have seen an exodus of leaves along the roadside of that magnitude. I was so impressed that I actually pulled over to the side of the road and just stared at the leaves.

A light breeze blew, and the leaves tumbled and twirled along the embankment. Brown leaves, yellow leaves, and even some green leaves and the occasional red leaf — leaves of all shape and size, though mostly cottonwood leaves — bustled along in an attempt to find the final resting place where decay could completely consume them. The leaves fascinated me. They were just a bunch of stinking leaves, but they were beautiful in their own way. As I watched the leaves, I realized that they had all come to this stretch of road in Scotts Bluff County, probably through no choice of their own (I don’t think leaves have “choice”, do they?) either to die or because they were already dead.

While watching the leaves from my truck by the bridge over the North Platte River, I remembered a man I had recently seen at Walmart. A funny looking man standing back in the dairy section caught my eye. From a distance, the man appeared to be quite well-off. He appeared to be dressed in a nice suit with shiny shoes and a stunning little bowler hat.

“How odd for someone to be dressed like that in Walmart,” I thought to myself, “and it’s not even Sunday.”

As I pushed my shopping cart closer to the man, his clean, crisp image began to unravel. The man’s suit was not really very nice at all; it was haggard and stained… and it smelled… smelled bad. His shoes (although it was obvious that a great deal of care had gone into their shining) barely had any soles, his right toe peeked out from not only the right shoe but the right sock as well, and the frayed laces appeared to be just getting the job done of keeping the shoes on his feet. The white sweat stain that circled the man’s bowler added to the appearance of age that the runs in the bowler’s fabric created. The old man seemed to be in a hurry to find something. As I passed him, however, he offered a sincere, toothless smile as he gently touched the brim of his hat… then he bustled on his way.

The memory of the man faded, and once again I watched the leaves — the leaves whose sole remaining purpose was to become fertilizer for the next generation — the leaves whose final resting place may be a stretch of road in the panhandle of Nebraska.

My mind wandered again, this time to the overweight population of Scottsbluff. In 2009, Quality Health ran an article titled “10 Fattest Cities in America.” Scottsbluff (not a community that graces many “top ten” lists) with 31% of its population classified as obese, came in at number seven. Seventh fattest city in America… there’s something to take pride in. See what a little corn-fed beef and buttered corn on the cob can do for a community? And don’t forget about the wonderful high fructose corn syrup! Corn… it’s what for dinner… and it leads to obesity! Maybe people here just don’t know how to take care of themselves. Maybe people here just don’t care. Maybe people in the panhandle of Nebraska are just trying to tumble and twirl through life and get what little pleasure they can along the way. A lot of pleasure can be found in a couple of Big Macs with a large fries and a Coke.

As I continued to watch the bustling leaves, I started to get cold. The leaves I watched put on quite a show, but I started to realize that they really weren’t as beautiful as I originally thought. I began to suspect that, upon closer inspection, the leaves might actually be kind of gnarly — full of bug bites and patches of disease and torn flesh and broken dreams. I thought of the people that I know who have a bachelor’s degree in this or a master’s degree in that, and they are stocking shelves at a grocery store or working as para-educators or slinging a construction hammer. The leaves weren’t searching for a fulfilling life there along the side of the road in Scottsbluff, NE; they were there because they were dying or dead.

My appetite for watching the leaves gone, I suddenly just wanted to go home. Still chilly, I slid on my jacket from the seat beside me as I started the truck and bustled toward home with the dawning realization that I probably had a lawn full of leaves in need of raking…