Hey, I’ve shat in the woods.

Thought I’d start this entry with that statement, in hopes that it would grab your attention.

This was just one of the many thoughts that raced through my head this morning, as I was parked on the interstate.

(Ironically, right next to the sign that let us know that we were leaving the construction zone, and could resume regular speed.)

I noticed the MSU Spartan Logo on the back window of the Ford Explorer parked next to me, as I came upon it. MI license plate (pretty!), expensive bike on roof rack. Upon closer inspection (Hey, I had time…) I noted two pair of ski’s on roof rack next to expensive bike.

I almost laughed aloud when I got all the way up next to the Explorer, and saw the two guys inside. They were almost comically rugged, wearing plaid flannel shirts and perfectly shaped 5-day growths of beard.

“Look at us, we’re soooooo amazingly rugged and outdoorsy!!!“

It’s early Friday morning; they’re headed north out of Chicago with a bunch of gear on their roof; and have amazingly rugged facial hair. They are obviously starting out on a big adventure.

Or maybe they were just headed to an audition for a Brawny paper towel commercial.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and assumed “adventure”.

And I was jealous.

Not of the expensive bike, or the skis (Really? Skis? it’s warm and sunny and winter in this part of the country’s another 2 months away), or the fact that their manly facial hair was dark, whereas mine is alarmingly silver and white when I let it grow out.

It was the adventure part.

The road trip, the getting there (Wherever “There” might be) and the “Christmas morning” feeling when you’re finally at your destination.
The crap unpacked-toes in the sand-line in the water- beer-in-the-hand feeling.

“I’ve been waiting months for this, and here it finally is and it’s just like I hoped…”

My god, but I love that feeling.
And I DO get to experience that feeling on occasion, but not nearly often enough.

I love “The Adventure”.

The planning, the anticipation, the actual adventure…

I’ve watched families of moose slip silently out of dense brush into a N. Minnesota lake.
I’ve caught trout in small farm creeks in upstate NY.
I’ve awoke to find deer foraging right outside my tent.
I’ve slept (or not slept) where bear hang out.
I’ve climbed trees, mountains.
I’ve swam under waterfalls
I’ve gotten up with the sun countless times, fishing pole in one hand, cup of coffee in the other.
I’ve, indeed, shat in the woods.

But this morning I was headed to the office, no perfectly shaped, silver and gray flecked five day growth of whiskers on my cheek, no kayak strapped to my roof, no fishing gear rattling around in the back of my 15 year old Subaru. No cool adventurous wife sitting next to me, playing DJ.
No “I’m so excited!” or “ Are we there?” or “I have to go potty!” from the backseat.

And I thought about the endless potential of “The Adventure”.
Not like I had anything better to do at that moment...

My daughter’s juuuuuust about old enough now, perhaps by next spring we can ramp it up a bit…

Poop is Hee-larious!

Driving home from apple picking in MI on Saturday, Fiona said something too quiet to hear, and then busted out laughing.

“What’d you say, darlin’?”

“I smell Billy poop!”
And then she giggled again.

What in the…???

“Billy poop?”

She laughed even louder when I said it.

Then she repeated it, but with some kind of southern twang that comes out of her mouth sometimes, for which we’ve not figured out the origin.

“Bil-EE poo-yoop” followed by more laughter.

“What’s ‘billy poop’?”

“Goat poop.” Chortle, chortle.

“Goat POOP!” she tries again, with slightly bigger emphasis on “poop” in her delivery. And laughs some more…

Awesome!

Correctly combining “poop” with one of the funnier farm animal names, and nailing the delivery.

That’s my baby!

Tip your waitresses, she’s here all week.

Horse poop, cow poop- not as funny.
Chicken poop - too many syllables, really.

Oh, wait, I wasn’t supposed to laugh? This only encourages her???
Huh. Gotta work on that…

Yep, poop became funny to her, all the sudden, in the car on Saturday.

Funny? Hell it’s the most hee-larious word EVER.

And apparently she’s not the only one, as I find out by talking to the mother of a three year old boy while we awaited our kid’s turns on the pony ride yesterday.
She said that “poop” had just made a big splash at her house as well…

Just what ARE they learning at pre-school?

I’m now officially nervous to pick her up from school, fully expecting her teacher to greet me with pursed lips and a slight shake of her head this afternoon, as she hands me a note….

Just bust a move.

Found an “Eighties and beyond” radio station the other day (100.3 on your FM dial), liked what I heard, programmed it into my radio.

Was parked on the northbound Tristate, surfing my pre-sets with little satisfaction this morning, when I heard it.

Young MC’s Bust a Move.

I derived far more pleasure from it than I would have expected.

You want it? You got it! You want it, baby you got it! (just bust a move)

Pure poetry.

I’ll rate it an 87, Dick. It’s got a great beat, and you can car dance to it.

Since I was sitting in traffic with nothing better to do, I drifted back to late winter /early spring of 1990.

We had just let the word out that we were planning a big house party, I believe our last one in the old, haunted (yep), house four of us rented in Lansing.

I was talking to friends, Chris and Verna. They complained that house parties thrown at guys houses never had good dance music. They said they wanted to shake it, basically, and put me on notice, musically speaking.

Hmm…. Girls wanted to dance a lot, at my house.
Yeah, I could work on making that happen.

But what did guys know about dancing? We were all about standing in circles, playing air guitar, throwing our fists in the air above our heads.

You gotta fight. For your right. To Paaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrtee!

Kick it.

And while I WAS working for the college radio station, and my tastes were more eclectic than many guys, I realized I didn’t have “Shake it “ music lying around the house.

Apparently, while awesome party songs in their own right, I wanna Be Sedated by the Ramones, So Alive by Love and Rockets, and Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode did not exactly meet the required criteria.

So, I brought in a pro, a ringer, demographically speaking.

I hooked up with a female friend of mine, Tracy, and explained the problem. We got a hold of various acquaintances, did a lot of borrowing, and viola!

Approximately 80 people jammed in my house, with Joy and Pain by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, the aforementioned Bust a Move, and other music to “shake it” by, blasting through my roommate’s speakers on a cold Saturday night.

I still have the mix tape, in a cupboard in my basement. I no longer have any equipment I’d feel confident playing it on, but it’s still there.
As I recall, there’s a cigarette burn on the case, and the ink’s faded a bit.

Back to the present, traffic was starting to move, albeit very slowly. Bust A Move faded out, replaced by a news and traffic update.
Seems traffic was heavy on the toll roads.

The hell you say!

Calmly walking Lucy...

Lucy, our dog, has heart worms.
We found this out, ironically, when we took her in to get her started on heart worm preventatives.

The vet thinks that she probably had very early stages of them, when we adopted her last Thanksgiving.

Given how far along her case was, it’s either this, or she was bitten by the VERY FIRST mosquito of the year, who coincidentally had whatever it is they have that can spread heart worms.

Anyhow –

The treatment for heart worms is pretty simple, really.
Here’s some poison, hopefully enough to kill the worms without harming the dog.
See you in four weeks or so for another dose, keep your dog from getting excited until then.

The last part’s very important. As the worms die off, you want to make sure that the dog doesn’t get too excited, too often, and run increased risk of worms entering blood stream, causing major problems.

Not only is it very important, it’s damn near impossible to achieve.

She’s a puppy. Puppies are pretty excitable….

She’s a big fan of squirrels, rabbits, other dogs, my neighbor, and the world’s full of these things.

It’s become a joke with us, upon returning from her short walks, short CALM walks, to talk about the walk in terms of the distractions and such that awaited us.

How was the walk?

Rabbit in the alley, and the guy was out in his yard with the beagle again.
Or
Two squirrels, and a cat in a picture window.

You get it.

The walk to beat, the one WAY out in front of all other walks, consisted of :

A rabbit
Two different dogs
A feral cat
And my neighbor, one of Lucy’s favorite humans, stopping in the middle of the road to chat with me as she drove past.

All within a block of our house.

It became so ridiculous that I had to laugh.

I honestly didn’t think that this walk could be beaten, in terms of stuff that can excite my dog to an unhealthy level. I mean, c’mon!!!

Until last night.

Until we stepped outside, and saw the guy roller-blading with THREE BIG FREAKIN’ DOGS ON LEASHES, running in front of him.
IS HE INSANE?
He stops at the corner, opposite us, and is catching his breath, petting the dogs, etc.
Lucy’s going nuts.
I drag her around the corner, and keep her walking, while turning around repeatedly to see what direction this guy’s going to go.

Duh. Of COURSE he chose to cross the street, and have the dogs run right down the middle of the road, past us. And OF COURSE they see Lucy, and start to pull him toward us, before he could correct them.
And OF COURSE Lucy’s lunging and straining at her leash, and barking, and whining.

Lucy, of course, is fine. No harm befell her from this outburst.
And the bar has been raised, possibly to a point that is truly impossible to beat.

You see the darndest things

Stopped off to put gas in the Subaru this morning, before hitting the highway for my morning commute.
Commute, gasoline, usual gas station…all pretty standard stuff.

I had just started pumping when I happened to look up and….. wow.

There was an older guy, late 50’s, early 60’s probably, standing by the gas cap of his bright yellow jeep.

But he’s not pumping gas.
He’s washing his car.
Not sure what he was using, but he had worked the area around the gas cap and left rear bumper into a thick soapy lather. And then….. he started washing himself.

Yep, he took some of that thick soapy lather off of his car, and started rubbing it vigorously onto his arms.
And then…. On to his not-so-white t-shirt.

So there he was, covered in thick suds from neck to waist, standing next to his similarly covered jeep.
Only THEN did he reach for the gas pump.

This is why gas pumps have automatic shut offs my friends.
For when guys like me end up pumping gas next to guys like him.

Because by this point, I was not paying any attention whatsoever to what I was supposed to be doing. I’m just staring at him, thinking deep thoughts like:

“Wow, that’s messed up.”
“glad I don’t sit next to him at work”
“where’s he gonna rinse all that off?”
“Oh, geez, maybe he’s not GONNA rinse all that stuff off.”

The pump shut off with a clang, bringing me back to my task at hand.
I re-holstered the pump.
Would I like a receipt? Certainly, thanks for asking.

I contemplated sticking around until he was done, just to see what was going to happen next. At the same time, I realized that NOT knowing was probably more entertaining than what the reality would end up being. So I got in my car, and drove away.

By lucky coincidence, The Pretenders song, Middle of The Road, was playing on WXRT when I turned the radio on as I pulled out of the station. I turned it on just as Chrissy Hynde was singing “You see the darndest things….”

Indeed.

Visons at the Zoo

So, I was at the zoo with my daughter yesterday.

Brookfield Zoo’s pretty great, as far as zoos go. We’re members, and big fans.

My daughter’s two, and her zoo needs are pretty simple. A couple of animals she MUST see, picked out of the air at random as far as we can tell.
Then a carousel ride, and on to the Family zoo building, to see the kitty cats and the lemurs...


Anyhow, yesterday it was kangaroos (We've been reading Winnie the Pooh...), so we watched kangaroos lay around in the grass for awhile, where they stubbornly refused to get up and hop over to us even though my daughter was imploring them to do so.

Then we headed to the large carousel in the middle of the zoo.

As we awaited our turn, she informed me that she wanted to ride on the zebra, the penguin, not the penguin, and the peacock.
We got to the peacock, she found out it was a bench and she couldn’t stand up and hold onto the peacock’s head, and we were off again…

Once firmly ensconced on the lady bug, we began to move.

This is the lengthy description part of the entry, so pay attention.

We’re on the inside of the carousel, closest to the center.
There are mirrors placed close together, all around the center of the carousel.

So, as we begin to move, you see yourself in the mirrors.

BUT: they’re angled a little goofy, so you actually only see yourself in every OTHER mirror.
You also end up seeing the person in front of you in every other mirror.
You, them, you, them, you….

You still with me?

Ok.

So, there I am, standing behind my two year old daughter, making sure she doesn’t fall off. She’s got hair in her face and a slightly nervous grin, but she’s enjoying herself.

The person in front of us is a girl, maybe…11-12 years old. Same color hair as Fiona, tied back in a pony tail.
She’s sportin’ blue plaid Bermuda shorts, and black Chuck Taylors.
I’m impressed with her fashion choices.

As we continue to go around, and I watch the mirrors, it hits me.

There’s my daughter, holding on tight with daddy standing behind her, there’s a cool lookin’ girl about 10 years older, all by herself , not quite old enough to be bored with the carousel yet….
Two year old with daddy
12 year old
Two year old…

Anyhow, unless you’re completely unsalvageable, you get the picture.

And I found myself getting caught up in the moment a little bit, getting the tiniest bit choked up, checking to make sure that there really was a girl on the animal in front of us, and not just a mirage in the mirror, a vision of things to come.

So the ride ends, and the mirage looked and sounded solid enough, as she got off her mount and tromped off. And I gave my daughter a little extra hug as I carried her off the carousel.

“I’m hungry, daddy.”
“Crackers, or cranberries?”
“Crackers!”
Crackers it is, darlin’. Whatever you want.

Maureen Storey - thanks for helping me give up soda.

One of my favorite novels is Thank You for Smoking, written by Christopher Buckley.

(It apparently became one of my old buddy Nate’s favorites as well, because he never returned my copy...)

Anyhow, it’s a story about a PR hack for the tobacco industry, his trials and tribulations, etc etc.
It’s funny, smart, and timely.

One of the subtexts of the novel is that the main character meets regularly for dinner and drinks with two friends, also PR hacks. One works for the liquor industry, the other for the gun industry. They jokingly refer to themselves, if I recall it correctly, as the merchants of death.

I had occasion to think about this book on my drive home from work the other day, along with old Saturday Night Live skits where Dan Ackroyd defends unsafe toys, like “bag of broken glass” to Jane Curtin.

I was listening to All Things Considered, on NPR. They were discussing soda consumption, how it’s changed over the decades, studies linking it to various health problems, etc.
Pretty straight forward stuff.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126511372

Then they brought on Maureen Storey, senior vice president for science policy at the American Beverage Association for the rebuttal.

And I almost wrecked the car.



Maureen explained that soda in and of itself was not bad for you, and actually provides you with healthy and necessary nutrients.

Like… water.
See, cuz kids run the risk of not being sufficiently hydrated, so a nice big soda after exercising can help with that.

What else?
Sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup.
See, cuz they’re full of calories, and calories give you energy….

I figured at any moment, she’d just bust out laughing, and say “Ah, I’m just *bleeping* with you guys. C'mon, it’s soda for godssakes! You might as well look for nutritional value in a bottle of Mrs. Buttersworth…”

But she didn’t. Turns out, she was really serious about the health benefits of water and sweetner.
And in being so, also appears to be really serious about the idea that we’re ignorant.

I’ve been trying to give up drinking Coke for awhile now, anyhow. Thing is – I love the stuff.
L-U-V love it.

Yesterday I heard the Coke machine calling my name from a couple rooms away, like the song of a Siren, trying to lure me onto the rocks….

But she actually pissed me off so bad, that I’ve decided to redouble my efforts to give it up.

That’ll teach ‘em.