Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Ode to Christmas Dinner

Hello Sports Fans, it's a beautiful Wednesday morning (2:35 a.m.) and the world is as it should be; more or less. I'm sitting here with my trusty cigarette (new quit date for New Years), a Dr Pepper and that would be the caffeine free variety (all the sugar and none of the buzz) and a screaming bowl of dark chocolate puppy chow. In case you don't know what puppy chow is, it's not the Purina puppy food, it's a snack food made out of chex cereal, chocolate chips, peanut butter, butter and powdered sugar. The recipe on the side of the chex box calls it "Muddie Buddies", but my gal pal JB calls it puppy chow. Let's face facts here, they are square and about the right size, kind of brown with a powdery white coating. Looks like puppy chow, gets called puppy chow around here and at night when i am snacky and I'm writing, i eat it with chopsticks. Naturally, my kids think i'm weird for doing that and honestly Donna just stopped asking questions sometime around year ten. The reason why i eat it with chopsticks is simple enough. If i eat it with my hands, my fingers get all gookey (has to be a word) and if i eat it with chopsticks my hands stay clean and i can type without gooking (also a word) up my keyboard. Feel free to try it sometime, if you can do it in front of little kids it will drive them mad. It sure is fun though.
Well on to Christmas Dinner. So after all of the menu changes i put myself through for Christmas Dinner, it ended up that we didn't have that woman over anyway. You know, i'd say my prayers had been answered, but i was just so horribly angry at the prospect of eating with her that i really have doubts they were my prayers that were answered.
We hadn't had a big ole Pitt. type ham in a number of years so it was good, just not the duck i was wanting to fix, but the ham was really good. There is a place in Whitesboro Texas called The Old World Meat Market and i highly recommend them for anything animal related. The Stags Head, Stags Leap, or Stags Butt Pinot Noir went with the ham well enough. On that note, doesn't it seem weird that a whole bottle will go from pop to poop in a single glass around a table, if you even make it all the way around?? I mean, they need to get more wine into the damn bottle without making the bottle any bigger.
I made a bunch of gnosh type stuff and deviled eggs with dill and horseradish for my little "Bucket Face". At the very last minute, i rolled the Green Beans Almondine out of the pan and into the dish and dinner was on. Okay, now i have to tell you the best part of the whole meal was the bread. Now, yes i do make bread often. I make it multiple times a week. However, since we all got the bug that went around a month ago i threw out my three sour doughs. Yes, i had three different sour dough starters. The traditional one that's made from fermenting off a dough that is jump started with store bought yeast. The second, called Biga, is made by fermenting grapes in a flour and water solution for a couple weeks and then nurturing it until it gets enough natural yeast from the grapes to actually leaven bread and lastly, a sour dough that was made from the naturally occurring yeast in the air we breath in Garland. This is the process the San Francisco Sour Dough Company uses to make their sour dough. It was my least favorite, but it has to be due to what is in the air here. I'd probably love what would grow out of the air in Alpine or Ft Davis, but that's there. Anyway on to the bread. I made a plain ole Italian bread dough, but i did something i read about when i was doing research on the Biga sour dough. They talked at great length of letting the bread rise in a crock bowl for up to three days, naturally ensuring the dough doesn't dry out on the surface, and then baking it off in the bowl. Well now the bowl that i most often use to do the first rise in is a big old pasta bowl. The sides are shallow and wouldn't send the sides of the dough up near as much as a regular bread bowl, but i though what the heck.
You know, that morning i got out my Kitchenaid and made one of the prettiest doughs. It really was nice and smooth and very elastic. I had high hopes, but i have had high hopes before. So, i olive oiled the bowl and dropped my dough ball in to raise. A while later it had doubled and i punched it down and that's when it hit me. I thought, hey dude, just leave it in the bowl. And, so i did. When it was proofed up nice and pretty, i threw it in the oven and smiled. It looked like one of those moments of Grace, but i didn't want to get too carried away as i still had to get it baked.
Now, just so you know, every time we have a family sit down, special occasion meal i make bread. One of us, other than me ( cause it's good for kids to get the opportunity to do it too) will say grace and being the guy that made the bread, i'll tear it in half and pass it down both sides. It's just one of our little traditions. Well i hadn't given that whole bread breaking thing too much thought when i decided to bake it off in the bowl, but how was i to know.
Okay, so i take my bread out of the oven and SHAZAAM!!!!! One of the prettiest loaves i have ever seen or made. One small glitsch though, I had a loaf that was 14 inches across and 12 inches high!!! TILT!!!! I turned it out on a towel and kept it covered for the fifteen minutes until we ate. It was massive. In the past, i have made three pounds of bread for a meal like this but it's always been a ring or a braid or something you could manage. This was like one of those medicine balls from gym class. I put it on my plate, still covered in a towel and my glasses had to be moved back to give it room. Now imagine this, i have two Darin Mcgavin's and they are junkies for homemade bread and i had a couple sneakers trying to get into the bread. Suffice it to say that we ate soon after that. My big boy said Grace and then all eyes were on me and my bread. When some jackass said, "What's this bread called??" I was a little horrified. In all that time i had never heard or read a name for the practice of cooking it in the bowl. So, i did what any good English guy would do, i pulled out my Latin and named it. Caput Di Bellum!!! Sorry to do this to ya, but try to keep up, it's sort of a joke. Caput Di Bellum is literally Head Of War/Battle, okay, so is that War Head Bread?? Well, i think it's more like Hot Head bread. Seriously, the damn thing was like handling a bread basketball. If i could go back and say something different, i'd call it Turks head after the knot, but it's out there now and they want me to do it again. I will, but i think i'll give it a few days first. It sure was nice eating off of Donna's new dinnerware. Yeah Yeah, i know you aren't supposed to give dishes as Christmas, but she dug it. If you doubt me, guess what i got. I got what every housewife dreams of getting, a 6qt crock pot with a latching lid so you can transport it. I have split pea soup in it now for later today. The only thing i'm left with that's not been covered is why, why on earth did her new dishes come with coffee cups that hold a half a litre??? Two cups the percolator is gone, but we fixed that. I'll tell you next time how that worked.
You guys take care of yourselves and the ones you love. None of us belong to anyone, we're simply on loan for a while. I bid you Safety, Peace, and Hope D

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Guess who's coming to Christmas Dinner

Oh joy of joys! It's three days before Christmas dinner and i'm getting to set an extra place. As with all things in my world, it's a long story but if there is any other kind i'm not familiar with it.
I had the menu for Christmas dinner all figured out and at the last minute i got word the woman my mother-in-law takes care of is coming with her. Normally, i don't mind additional people when we have special occasions, but this Christmas is different. I don't know why, it just is. I wanted this to be a quiet family only day. It doesn't help that i'm not a fan of this particular woman. If you compound that with her being in the latter stages of Alzheimer's, it doesn't paint such a glorious picture. I'm not sure if i'm irritated because my idea is blown apart or if it's due to her son's, that lives between her place and ours, refusal to have his mother in his house. Hell, it's not like i don't know what it's like when you don't like your mother at times, but i doubt i'd turn her away, especially on a family holiday. So, i scrapped the duck. Then, i scrapped the Cornish Hens. Next thing you know, Lamb was out. I've seen what she does to good old beef, so Prime Rib was never considered. Where did that leave me?? I'll tell you, mighty pissed off. It's like the one day a year the family can get together and no one goes anywhere. They don't sit on their phones or ipod's all day and every ones buddies are preoccupied. So, Ham is in. It's been a while since we have had any, so it'll be good. Green Beans Almondine and Loaded Mashed Potatos, with a Ceasar Salad with either a Cab Sav or Pinot Noir. I can't remember at what stage i got the wine and i'm not going back.
I swear, if anyone complains or comes up with some excuse to run out on me while she's here, i'm going to go live under the bridge.
Well, i have a few hours of sewing tomorrow so i ought to get to bed. With that, i'l leave you with ths thought: Text messaging is over rated!!!
Y'all take care of each other, D

Sunday, December 20, 2009

What the problem is???

I was out today at the laundry doing car towels and things, with the guys, and there was a homeless man lying on one of the benches. This guy, who looked like the fourth member of ZZ Top, was happily snoring along. I am guessing last night, having been in the twenties, he hadn't gotten much sleep. Be that as it may, it was nice and cozy warm in the laundry and Homie was sleeping well. Then the door burst open and this lady woke him up and asked him if he were homeless. He told her he was and she handed him a check. I thought, how wonderful. It's been a while since i have seen anyone really go out of their way like that. The homeless man blinked a couple of times, said thank you, and that's when the trouble started.
See, the lady had simply leaned in from the door. Since he was on the first bench, they were able to interact, though somewhat awkwardly. When she gave him the check, she was already recoiling back out the door. The whole time the homeless man was trying to thank her and explain to her that while she was very thoughtful, he wasn't able to cash a check and she should just take it back. There was this weird, angry exchange she had with him. He got very apologetic and she got very angry that her check wasn't good enough for him. The little boy that was with her, about twelve or thirteen even told her the man said he couldn't cash the check. I felt bad for them both. I mean one of them was trying to do something nice and the other was trying to be appreciative, but not have her wonder about her check. Naturally, I'm filling in the blanks here to the best of my own opinion given what i saw. It all ended with her taking the check and giving him an expletive and him lying back down to sleep.
About five or ten minutes later the parking lot security came driving up in his golf cart with, wait for it, that same good Samaritan in tow. She stood out on the sidewalk talking to the security guy for a few minutes. When i say talking, i mean it was either talking or she was showing him what great shape her arms were in. She was mad. The security guy came in and rousted the Homeless man. So ends this story.
I thought about what i had seen quite a bit this afternoon and evening. When you add it all up it's just a sad deal all the way around. I mean, would it have been so bad, if you were going to give a check to a homeless person, to walk up to them and say, "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya"?? I mean really, is an introduction so horribly bad?? I like to talk to people and i like to deal with things as they come, so I'm sure i would have introduced myself and then talked to him for a while. If he had refused my check, i don't think i would have gone to the bank for him, but i would have probably given him some cash if i had it on me. I doubt i would have gone to the ATM for him either. Of course i say that and once while i was in Chicago, i was walking around taking in the sights and met a homeless man named Stanley. Stanley was trying to sell me this beat up silk rose and at first i wasn't having any of it. I asked him if he were hungry and he said that he was and i offered him a piece of pizza in lieu of his nasty old rose. He directed me to a pizza window close by on Madison Ave and Stanley and I had pizza. While we were eating, he was telling me about all of the things going on in that area of town and that's when i found out Maya Angelou was doing an outdoor reading at the end of the block. We got another piece of pizza and off we went. Stanley left me with Maya and we shook hands, ugh, and he was gone. Stanley didn't smell too good, but was friendly enough. After Maya, i went looking for Mac Arthur Fountain, you know, the one from Married with Children. Somewhere along the way i lost my "help I'm a tourist map" and seemed to be walking in circles. I was down to three things on my todo list, the fountain, navy pier, and my cab ride down lower Wacker drive. At one point i had no idea where i was and just as i was about to give up guess who i heard giving his rose pitch in front of me. You got it, Stanley. I went and grabbed Stanley and found out that i was behind the Art Institute and he guided me to the fountain and you can see Navy Pier from there. I dug in my pocket and gave him ten bucks and a hearty thank you and i was off again, this time with a rose. You know, initially, i kept the rose because i was afraid that I'd run into Stanley and i didn't want to not have it and later i kept it cause it was such a great memory. It's in a box of stuff i have collected and it reminds me that you just never know what will happen when you take the time to talk to a person and listen to what they have to say.
While today's events were unfortunate, i just can't get over why that woman was willing to give money to a homeless man and then turn right around and report his loitering to the security guy. Especially since someone wasn't listening to what was being said. The next time around, I hope she meets a Stanley. I bet she'll end up with a tattered silk rose of her own.
Take care of Y'all, D

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Why else, because i can.

Well it's about three in the morning and I'm sitting here with my intrepid Dr Pepper listening to Bette Midler. It's hard to believe she's my mother's age. If she were playing anywhere but Vegas, I'd find a way to make a show. However, i just don't trust myself in Vegas, so I'll settle for the CD. However, if anyone ever makes it to a show i want the biggest T-shirt they have!!!
Okay, so the Christmas cards are done. I say that, but Donna K still has to write her notes in them to those she'll write notes too and I'm currently printing out a couple recipes that will get stuffed in them too. Listen! When you get a card from us, you don't soon forget it.
One of the recipes this year i got passed on to me by one of my homegirls from El Paso that lives up here. It's for a cheese ball, a chocolate cheese ball. It's not bad, a bit sweet, but maybe it wouldn't be if Donna would put something with it other than vanilla wafers!!! You know, just sitting here thinking about it, i bet it would taste a bit like a canole (kuh-no-lee) if you served it on water crackers. It's just a thought. Anyway, here it is in case you want to try it.

Chocolate Cheese ball
1 8oz package of cream cheese
3/4C powdered sugar
2T Brown sugar
1/4t Vanilla extract
3/4C Miniature chocolate chips
3/4C Finely chopped Pecans (However, it is my personal opinion this is better with sliced almonds that you have lightly toasted. Again, just my opinion)
Put it together:
In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Mix in the powdered and brown sugar and vanilla. Stir in the chocolate chips. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for about an hour. When chilled, place cheese ball mixture on plastic wrap and form into a ball. Mine has been a little loose so after you form it into a ball with the plastic wrap, have a bowl that you can put the wrapped mixture in while chilling an additional hour. When it's re-chilled, remove from wrap and roll the ball in the finely chopped Pecans or Almonds, whatever you decided to do.

It's okay. I'm not real big on it. I've made it three times since i got the recipe and it seems to get eaten. I'm not sure who eats it, men or women, but it does get eaten and for me that's the important part. Nothing sucks worse than making something and then having to drag it back home with you because their dog didn't even want it. Anyway, so that's that.
It's like my stupid Tortilla Soup recipe. I HATE IT!!! The soup, the recipe, even the fact that i took on making it the first time. Deb will never hear the end of that one. Don't get me wrong it's probably my most requested recipe and that part is gratifying, but i certainly don't get the fascination with it.
There is another soup recipe i have i do like. Well several, but I'm talking about the one i made for today. I first made this soup, or something like it, about ten years ago. I was looking for a soup that was fairly hearty and had a real good Asian flavor to it. What i ended up with is something that has become Ginger Chicken Soup. Now i have to tell you with two teenage boys in the house i tend to make enough food for a medium sized enclosure at the zoo on any given day of the week. This seems only fair i guess when you consider the apes i cook for. Now i don't stand over the stove all day in my frilly apron and my pearls. Donna Reed I'm not, but i do spend my fair share of time in there. Since i do spend an amount of time in the kitchen and I'm extremely lazy, i have made an art out of delivering on one without compromising the other. My partners in crime for this are my crock pot ( roughly the size of a small bath tub) and my roaster. There is my showtime rotisserie too, but don't ask. I love that thing so much that i have replaced nearly every part that can be replaced and i have about three years left on the super extended warranty i got when i replaced the glass door. OOPS!!!
Well today, it was me, my crock pot and Ginger Chicken Soup.
Ginger Chicken Soup
( i have converted some of the items in this recipe to prepared items for the expedience of others, but feel free to adulterate it at will)
Take 4 Chicken breasts and marinate them overnight in a mixture of Teriyaki baste and glaze, a little soy sauce to thin that down some and a good table spoon or two of fresh grated ginger.
Take one of the three pound boxes of chicken stock and pour that into your crock pot on the day you want to make the soup. To that add a table spoon of Chili and Garlic sauce, usually it can be found on the Asian aisle in most grocery stores and add a quarter cup of lite soy sauce. Take a good sized finger of ginger and peel it. I slice it thinly in two directions so it makes little sticks and add all of that to the soup stock. Take your marinated chicken breasts and cook them up in a grill pan or cast iron skillet or whatever you like. Hell you could do them on the grill the night before and then pull them out of the refrigerator the next morning. Take the cooked chicken and cup it up into small bite sized pieces and add to the pot. Now for the hard part. I don't put much else in the soup, so if you want to add to it knock yourself out. The night before cut up a head of napa cabbage. I usually slice it like cutting up a water melon when you are giving kids quarter slices and put that in a bowl. Then either buy pre-cut mushrooms or cut those up and put them in a bowl. Get a bag of snow peas or those real thin green beans. If you get those you'll need to snap them to an inch long or so. Now with your soup stock and chicken and other stuff in the crock pot on low you can go to work or whatever. When you get back about an hour or less before you want to eat start adding the veggies to the pot. The peas or green beans take the longest to cook but that really isn't all that long. All you are really trying to do is to get a good wilt on your veggies before you eat. They'll be bright and have a little crisp still and the broth is just great. I know this sounds really confusing, but this is the first time i have ever written it down. ( Donna made me!!!) She doesn't like soup, but she had it for lunch today and will again tomorrow. She and my big boy had a rock, paper, scissors thing to see who got the last bowl and she won. You know, if they wanted more all they had to do was ask i think i have enough stuff in there to make another pot. Shhhhhh, I'm planning on using the rest of that chicken to make a version of sesame chicken on Thursday.
Okay, i got that down. Now i can go do something. Who knows, maybe i'll try to go to sleep. Hey, stranger things have happened.
Till the next outburst, y'all take care of each other, D

Monday, December 14, 2009

Spin Me Right Round

Okay, for a little bit of house keeping before i get into what i will eventually get into. First, my best good girl friend had her twin girls last Thursday and they are beautiful. In fact, they are pretty enough to be mine. I think they'll get to go home tomorrow and i hope she gets them on a schedule pretty quickly, after all, she's only got two arms.
Next, I'd like to thank the dynamic duo of Painted Groove Girl and Lavender Chick for the advice on the dress I'll be making. You guys got my brain going in a direction i would never have thought of and "I Thank You". Though, i found three i loved and what I'll make will be the bottom of one, the top of the second, and the sleeves of the third. I mean that's fair right?? Of course it is, I mean it's no crazier than the Catholic School Girl outfit.
Lavender Chick made the news twice this time. In my best Scooby Doo, Old Man Withers' voice, "I wouldn't have had to buy a new coffee pot (Percolator) if it hadn't been for that pesky Lavender Chick." She wrote this wonderful little blog about replacing her broken coffee pot with a percolator and something in my head started working. I remembered what my grandfather said about smelling the coffee as it perc's and it just tasting better. Ya know, It is so much better it makes me wonder if there is a fan of percolator coffee group on Face Book??
Lastly, the Christmas cards are coming along nicely. I got the calligraphy finished and have most of the raffia part done. We managed to get a couple pics out of my camera before it died a hideous death. I was going to buy one today and blog about the cards, but maybe Santa is going to hook me up. I wouldn't want to ruin anyone's plans, so I'll just let that go for now.
Well, that's the news or the housekeeping portion of this. You might want to change the channel at this point if you have a weak constitution....LOL
I have always written. What I'm talking about are stories, poetry, journaling, diary (if you will), and letters. It started around age twelve and i haven't stopped yet. When the Internet came along i pretty much put down my paper journals and almost exclusively write online. I had accounts on a few different sites including the old Yahoo 360 where i had about five hundred entries. Of course when they closed that site and moved it to whatever it became i just downloaded a copy of all my crap and went back to paper journaling again. That is until, okay so she made it three times this week, Lavender Chick suggested this site. I am happy here. No one has said anything about anything i have posted, not that i have posted anything acidic, but it's coming I'm afraid. I go through spells where i end up annoying someone so, we'll see.
You know i have this compulsion to write and waited nearly fifteen years to complete my degree and still i haven't found what it is I'm supposed to do. I feel like I'm on one of those playground merry-go-rounds, but there is no way to get off. I just keep going around in circles. I'd at least like to say I'm dizzy or queasy or something but I'm not. If I'm anything I'm tired. I'm tired of being second in so many things. Now before you think this is about my children, i knew before they got here I'd have to put them first. I mean that's what parents do. I don't want to come off as a whiner, oh poor pitiful me or anything like that. I'd just like to accomplish some goals i have set for myself. Nearly ten years ago i hatched a plan to go to the San Jacinto Monument and just sit there with a pad and my pen and see what I'd write. To put this in perspective, i used to sit under the bridge there at Kokernot lodge, on the deep side of the creek and write. I did that from the time i was in about eighth grade right up until, the last time, just a few years ago. I wrote some really good stuff there. Very little of what i wrote there was viable material, but it was all good stuff. Now, i have been to Houston about a hundred times in the last ten years and not once did i get closer than thirty miles from the monument. Unless you count the time we went to see my Brother-in-Law's football team play in some playoff game. Yeah, that was cool, but... In 2003, I noticed just how close we are to the LBJ National Grasslands. Hey, now there is a place i bet i could go and sit and write something interesting. Well, in six years we haven't gotten any closer than Chinatown Restaurant on the west side of Denton. Even this summer while the guys and i were in Alpine I had plans of doing some stuff that would afford me a change of scenery and hopefully recharge the source of where i get the stuff i write. The last time i went on a little adventure i wrote "The Last Chapter". It was really good and something that is viable. I have since polished it up and am hanging onto it for my collection of short stories. Okay, just so you know, i have a collection of short stories, two cookbooks, a kids book, a trilogy and a stand alone novel all in the works. As i run out of inspiration on one I usually pick up one of the others. What i am afraid of is that i am going to look back at the end of my life and have nothing more than one hell of a collection of sentences. You know, Here lies Dave, He wrote good sentences...LOLOL I need a break, a respite, even if it is only here at home. I know I'm not alone in this, but i am asking for it. Is it all that unreasonable??
Oh look at that, times up Mr D. We'll have to pick this up next time.
You guys take care of Y'all, D

Thursday, December 10, 2009

One Man's Anachronism is Another Man's Romantic Necessity

This time of year my mind turns to Christmas and all of the Holiday Traditions that have evolved in our home. Many of these i got from my Grandparents or my folks, but most of the really cool ones (wait for it) were my idea!!! Okay, that was shameless, but hey; What fun is it to be who you are if you don't get to do your things?? Like does that make any sense to anyone but me?? I'm not sure the bats in the belfry got that one.


Some years ago as we were receiving our Christmas cards like we do every year, there was one in there from Hughes, where i used to work. Yeah, now Hughes is a huge company, or was, but their Christmas card was the nicest, coolest, neatest, most personal card we got that year. It got me to thinking. What did i send out for Christmas cards?? Well i went and looked and Dude, lemme tell you the ones i sent out that year had a picture of a Poinsettia on the front and a horrible verse inside with a broken rhyme. YUK!!!! I vowed at that moment that i was going to have cool cards from that day forward. I mean if a big old company like Hughes can do it right, shouldn't I be able to put something in the mail that makes people go, "oh cool, what a great card!"


One year, i made the paper the cards were printed on. Yeah that was cool but it wasn't so exciting. I have printed years worth of cards off of the old printer that i have designed in Word, Excel (LOL), even AutoCad. Usually, we'll take a picture and send pictures with them and have even done photo cards. Though those didn't come out as cool as i had hoped cause the guy at the picture people didn't like us.


For a number of years i have wanted to take all of the old cards that we have been sent, that i have been holding on to, and spread them out and take a picture of them to use as the picture on the front. I think that would be cool, but i really have to wonder if anyone would recognise any of their cards in the picture. Which brings me to this year.


This year i went to Michael's and got some cards that were blank on some paper that i thought was pretty cool. I am going to use my Calligraphy pens (dip pens) to write the verse i have written for the inside. Then i got some raffia and I'm going to tie them up (sort of) so they look like presents and inside the card I'm going to put a recipe or two and something else. If i put everything in it that has been talked about it will end up looking like that coupon clipper envelope that comes in the mail. It's a monstrous undertaking, but it plays right into my "A" Number 1 Romantic Necessity.


The Romantic Necessity i am speaking of is letter writing. I know it's an anachronism, but damn, there is almost nothing more thoughtful to me than getting a letter. Don't get me wrong, I'm not that far gone toward the loony bin. Email, Texting, and Phone calls all have their place, but a letter that is hand written is so very personal. Think of it this way, the letter writer sat down and spent time out of their day to write you a letter. Any way you shake it, that's giving of yourself and it's a terribly intimate thing. There aren't enough people writing them anymore, but I'm sure I'll do it till i die. I know i will, i have enough stationery for two lifetimes...LOL If you've gotten mail from me then you know what i'm saying is true.



*If you want a card all you have is but to ask.


One last thing. I haven't the ability to pick a best friend in this world. I am very close with a very small number of people and just can't put one ahead of all the others. One of them, as Forrest Gump would say, Best Good Girl Friend is having her twins today and as i close this, i want to say that my thoughts are continually with her. In the years since i met her she has gone from something of an annoyance to my most trusted confidante and the world will most assuredly be enriched with a little more of her in it. I had a daughter once that told me, "All things will be made whole through sacrifice and grace." I wouldn't be alive to tell you that if i didn't wholly believe it.
Take care of yourselves, so that you can take care of the ones you love. D

"Fat bottomed girls make the rockin world go round" 12/10/09 4:18AM

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Like Heroin for Cigarettes, Obsiquience, and Your Thoughts

I'm not sure what all i have to say, but it's in 3 parts
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Well it has been three weeks since i quit smoking. Now before you start saying way to go and all of that, finish reading the post. I have always said if i could make it through the first day i could quit for good. For me the hard part has always been getting through the evening hours to complete that day. Well a few weeks back i got sick. Okay, here is where i'm going to diverge a bit. I know the flu is a virus and that once you have it your body makes anti-bodies and you aren't supposed to get it again. Like the Chicken Pox, which i got three damn times. A couple Nurse friends of mine said i'll probably get shingles when i get older, so i have that going for me. Well my big son gave me the flu and i no sooner got to feeling better and i got flu-like symptoms again. As if that weren't bad enough, before i could get over that something malicious settled into my chest and i got antibiotics and other pills to make me better. I was miserable, but by that time i had put the cigarettes down for a few days hoping that i might get better, faster. Or, maybe i'd just not smoke and be sick. Okay, so back to the stream, i didn't smoke for over two weeks. I mean not even a sneaker drag or anything. To be quite honest, i didn't much think about it and the days came and went without lighting up. Then, a few days ago i started noticing that i was glad i wasn't smoking, but that my desire to smoke was back. I didn't want to smoke all the time, but i did have moments when i sure thought about it.
Yes, i fell off the wagon. I'm kind of a do it all kinda guy and was replacing a watch battery in one of Donna's Goofy watches and was having the devil of a time getting the back back on the watch. As i remember, this watch is a bear to get the back on. Something happened and i lost my cool and that was it. I smoked. That was yesterday and i smoked three last night. I mean i went three weeks and then smoked three cigarettes yesterday and i thought i'd feel more guilty about it than i do. I started smoking in Basic Training in the Army and that was in the summer of '83 and in all the years since, the longest i have gone without a cigarette has been no longer than hours. That is, not counting the times i couldn't smoke because of playing Army or working DPS in Arizona. I smoked a few today, but i think i'm going to go back to not smoking tomorrow. I really do feel better, i just wish i didn't like to smoke so much.
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I have a whole pile of stuff going on right now that i never thought i'd be worrying about at my age. For several years some of my friends have wondered if i have always been "Surly". Well, i don't think so, but how does one know if one is or is not surly. I have identified part of what the query is all about though. You know the joke about the woman that tries on a pair of jeans and asks her husband if the jeans make her ass look fat and the atuned husband replies," no, it's your ass that does that." Well, i'm that guy i guess. It's not because i'm mean, it's because i refuse to be some obsiquious little worm. I know plenty of those. This has led to a loyal following of people who call on me for my opinion because they know i will tell them the truth. Well this guy that always tells his friends the truth has been lying chronically to one of them like some Captain Milquetoast and though i can not or will not assuage the dilema at this time, i am forever anotating it for myself now.
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Now, This next part has to do with the whole "High School" experience. Oh, where to begin. While i can't say that i have the best memories of High School i do have fond ones for a great many things. I can look back at some of the teachers i had and think, yeah they had an impact on me or no not so much. Some of the people i'll never forget and some i miss seeing. The thing that is really on my mind sort of breaks down like this. I remember very fondly, and this is in no particular order, Band, pep rallies, contests, welding and AG, cruising up and down the one ways, rangra theatre, road side, grassy banks, the duck pond, the coke plant, Lope's tank, Mrs Powell, Starr Warford, Mrs Matthews, the dances, just kinda the whole package. I hope this makes sense to someone. Now here's the thing. I want both of my boys to have that. Maybe not to the extent that i did, (Keep your giggles to yourself, i know what i said)but the whole experience. The high school here after what is now nearly half a year had a pep rally at homecoming and one when they made the playoffs. Mind you they went to quarter finals. Then, they have only had the one dance and that was at homecoming. Other than that, it doesn't seem like there's much of my version in this high school. Now, this isn't a question of friends, i know that because i hate his cell phone. He's in a couple of Pre AP classes and he started every game and was a captain for the second half of the season. He will also likely take district in Shot Put this year. Is this what 5A High School is?? Am i looking for something that's an illusion or was the isolation of the desert the catalyst for such an experience and that's the only place they'll get that?? I really am looking for your thoughts on this. Peace be upon thee. D

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Rainy Days and Odin's Days

Okay, so sit back and enjoy the view:


Zeke: Dad, which mythological character would you be??

Dad: I don't know, maybe Odin.

Zeke: You wouldn't be Poseidon?

Dad: No, i think Odin would fit me just fine. Who would you be?

Zachary: Why wouldn't you be Thor

Zeke: Cause Thor is like you. I'd be Hephaestus!

Zachary: What do you mean like me. He kicks every ones butt with a hammer.

Zeke: Yeah, and a tiny brain.


Ain't love grand??

Just to be fair in all of this, it all started due to a series of books. If you liked the Harry Potter series or the movies of same, listen up. The 5 book series, currently, is called, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The movie from the first book is due out in January. Search out the trailer for it on YouTube, it looks like it ought to be a hoot. It's a modern retelling of the pantheon of Greek Mythology. Oh, and it's in America and Mount Olympus is above the Empire State Building.

Well Zeke has read all five of the books and believes himself to be a subject matter expert on Greek Mythology. Okay, The little fart has read everything he can get on the subject short of Homer. Which he claims will mess up the movie for him. Whatever, is my comment.

Now, with that in mind, he has also been reading up on the Nordic Pantheon as well, though there is no modern literature that makes it fun, and has a pretty fair grasp on the cast of characters. Zachary on the other hand, is here to play football and maintain a B avg in school.

Although his English teacher, you might say, drew him off sides.

In Zachary's English class they read selections from the Odyssey. (Wait is that Homer??) It irritated him greatly that they couldn't read it all. I told him that there probably wasn't enough time in class to read it all but that if he wanted to read it, just do that in the evenings or when he had time to read. I assured him there was no law against him reading all of Homer. He seemed shocked and shaken, like how can this be? I can read outside of school?? Oh Wow!! When did i get old enough to do that. It was funny.

Now, being the guy i am, i bet him ten push ups that i had a copy of homer that he walks by everyday and if i didn't I'd do the ten push ups. He started laughing. He said, how about a hundred, i said sure and we shook on it. Then i winked at him and told him to start pushing. hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!! He simply said, Crap and started bending for the floor and i went and retrieved my copy from the bookcase. I just love it when they are so positive they are correct and i know differently. So, he's happy and reading, the little one is happy and reading, and I'm just happy they're happy.

You guys take care of Y'all, Dave

Sunday, September 27, 2009

more Perfect Texas,

(Please comment good or bad, i won't take it personally. well unless you don't comment)

Free Parking

“Okay Coyote jump out and grab it.”
“Jump out and grab what, Loyd?”
“That damn parking ticket.”
“Whose car is that?”
“How the hell should I know? Grab that damn ticket.”
“Grab that damn ticket?”
“Yeah, and hurry up about it we’re blocking the street.”
“Look Loyd, I’m not getting into one of your little games. If you want it, you get it.”
And with that, Loyd flew out of the truck, grabbed the ticket, and was driving back down the street. The moment had all the urgency of a fire and none of the bells. Loyd threw the parking ticket in the glove box with what had to be a hundred others and raced down the street at a mind numbing speed of about ten miles an hour. “Look”, Loyd said. “There are two more. You get the one on that side and I’ll get the one on this side.” In this Coyote flatly refused. He once again insisted that he was not going to engage in whatever silly little game Loyd was playing this week.
Over the next thirty or forty minutes, Loyd and Coyote drove the Perfect loop and collected parking tickets. The glove box had become over run and the tickets were now being stuffed under or behind the seat. In the middle of all of this Coyote sat back, drew on his beer and giggled at what could be nothing more than a Tuesday night special. Usually Loyd stuck to littering, but the judge had grown weary and changed the Sheriff’s departmental policy. Littering was no longer a crime unless it was committed by someone other than Loyd. This all came to pass because Loyd would, on any particular Tuesday after payday, find a Deputy and litter right in front of him while acting the ass. There were times when Loyd would end up in his underwear on a public street tearing little bits of paper from a notebook and throwing them to the ground for the sole purpose of being arrested. After all, you don’t get to see the judge, if you don’t get arrested.
Our Judge was one of a kind. D.A. Hallowell. Her given name of Dale Anne was both a mirror of her twin sister Anne Dale and the first names of their parents, Dale and Anne. With both of her parents now gone and a vicious rivalry with her sister, her name was Judge Hallowell or D.A. for short. The other sister was just as furious as the Judge.
Anne Dale Hallowell went by Dale. The funny thing is, she looks like a dale too, whatever that is. The name just suits her. I remember one day when Loyd was screwing around with a lingerie catalog on the bar at the Fox Hollow. He was erasing the bras off of the models on the pages when Dale came out of her office to see if we needed fresh beers. Immediately Loyd shut the catalog and started reading over the back cover. His transparent feigning of interest spawned the comment from Dale that he was going to go blind if he didn’t quit shopping. Somewhere in that Loyd read the address box; A. Dale Hallowell, Hallowell Mercantile… “Hey, I know A. Dale Hallowell”, he said. “Do you know A. Dale Hallowell?” Well the next thing you know everyone at the bar was talking about knowing A. Dale Hallowell. There weren’t but five or six of us, but that was enough to raise the ire of the A. Dale Hallowell and she threw us all out until we could grow up. We spent the afternoon out back on the patio drinking beer from the grocery store, pitching washers, and discussing our familiarities with A. Dale Hallowell. I still don’t believe she was out to hurt anyone, we all know that shotgun isn’t loaded, but we got the message.
Klaus Van Horowitz was a Sergeant on the Perfect police force and the assistant chief. A poor hapless bastard born of a mouthy German woman and a Jewish father who was never healthy and never let you forget it. For one reason or another Klaus was born with a chip on his shoulder and a world to take it out on. Klaus, like most people in Perfect was a native. What set him apart was that when he went away for college, he didn’t stay gone. He moved back, went to work for the police department, and never looked back. Most people will tell you that he came back because he would have had to work in some other town, but what would he do in Perfect? Get even with anyone he wanted. Take Loyd Cantrell for instance. Just once he’d like to bust his ass. To bust Loyd for something that would make him feel good for doing it. Something that would make up for all of the jokes that were played on him as a kid and it would happen. Nobody is so good they never get caught. However, right now Loyd would have to take a back seat; he had bigger fish to fry. Somewhere out there right now was a true vandal that he had been investigating for months. Some kid was out there lifting parking tickets off of cars causing a severe administrative headache for him and maybe if he caught the little booger soon enough he could turn him away from crime. The chance to save a boy from going bad would go a long way toward becoming lieutenant.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

The canon that is my life

As a person of letters, that i like to fancy myself as being, i have a canon of literature that is my life. Many people remember what year something was because a certain band or song was popular or perhaps an event like an election or the Olympics were held. For me, There is a story for every event in my life. Take for instance the first novel i read, Robinson Crusoe. I remember toddling my little third grade ass to the school library on library day and checking it out. This caused a tremendous uproar in the school because that book was for fifth graders not third graders. When i got to my grandparents that day i was a little bummed out by the whole thing and the next day my grandfather convinced them it was completely alright for me to have that book. At the time i had already begun reading some shorts by Chekhov and Poe, what was Defoe going to do to me.

When i got married the first time i was reading a book on Sam Houston called Six Foot Six. I didn't know it then but i was feeding my need for all things Texas. I know what i was reading when all of my children were born and what i was reading the day i got the news my daughter Jackie had died. That day, i was reading The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. The irony in this is still so horribly faceted that i reread portions of it to remind me of how i felt and to feel closer to her. I love to hate that book and it's one i never loan out.

The day that Donna and i decided to get married i was reading the National Electric Code. That should have told me that our life together was going to be something. Though i am unable to articulate what i mean by something, It can be said that there have been sparks, short circuits, and plenty of blown fuses, but the lights are still on.

Even as the years crept by, every landmark seemed to be punctuated by what i was reading. When the guys started school it was Catholic School and i was reading a series of books on the Saints. After Sept. 11, 2001, i had to sell my '72 Mach I Mustang because i, like so many others, lost my job and the Tech Writing market went to shit. I, just by happenstance was reading How to Win Friends and Influence People and The Chicken Soup book. When i met my best girl friend i was reading Eudora Welty and five years later when i heard she was pregnant i was reading A Hundred Years Of Solitude.

Today I'm not reading anything. This is quite unusual for me. I wonder if this period of not reading is a hallmark in my life. A great empty void where i can't continue on to what is next until i have put to rest those things that most prevalently occupy my mind. Some things are easier said than done. In this case my mind and my head aren't on speaking terms and it makes it nearly impossible to develop a solution to the quandary. There's a great line from The Prince of Tides that goes something like this: "I learned that I needed to love my mother and father in all their flawed, outrageous humanity, and in families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness. But it is the mystery of life that sustains me now. I look to the north, and I wish again that there were two lives apportioned to every man - and every woman."

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Sometimes it's the cake (warning goofy prose alert)

Sometimes it's the Cake

It wasn’t long after Cam told the Pope to kiss his ass that Stevie B., started coming around. I always saw her as something of a predator. Not in the sense of when a bear lumbers in a stream to fish out salmon, but more like a buzzard that hates carrion. She’d circle and circle and in that last moment of life she’d take hers. You might think of it like the loud ass brother-in-law that circles the turkey on Thanksgiving so as soon as everyone’s back is turned he can scavenge a morsel or begin pecking out the last remnants of flesh still clinging to the bone.
Cam wasn’t his real name, just a handle he went by because he hated his name. At least, that’s what we all believed. Cam wasn’t his whole nick name either. Cam is short for Camo, which is short for camouflage. We called him that since we were kids. His dad had tons of Army grease paint left over from his reservist days, the kind they use to camouflage their faces with, and Cam wouldn’t play “Forts” with us without it. This usually meant we had to wait on him to get it just right. He always said, “Heavy on the bone, light on the meat.” Something his dad undoubtedly picked up being in the Army Reserves, though none of us knew what it meant. So Camouflage was shortened to Camo, and then to Cam and it stuck. Just so you know, his real name is Grant Lee Eisen-something-or-other. I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem all that bad to me, but then again I was the only white kid in the neighborhood and my name is James Brown. Like they say, nobody’s perfect.
For some time, Cam had been in a downward spiral. I say for some time. If you consider his high point as birth, then it has been a bit more than merely some time. On his eighth birthday, his older sister choked on a hotdog and died. It wasn’t really as simple as all that. She had been walking around with a hotdog in her mouth, the way kids do, when Cam, while swinging at the piñata, hit her in the mouth with the stick. When he brought the swing forward again the piñata split in half raining gold coin chocolates down over the flock of kids diving for the candy. In all the excitement, his father had missed the part where Cam’s sister had fallen to the ground. Cam’s mother died giving birth to him, so if it hadn’t been for the Pastor’s wife, his sister would probably still be lying there.
Eileen Underwalther, the Pastor’s wife and frequent visitor to the Eisen-Something-or-other house, called Mac’s attention to his unconscious daughter on the ground. Immediately, Mac sprung into action. He knew just what to do. He elevated her head and checked her for breathing. It was kind of hard to really discern what condition she was in given the location of the hotdog and the amount of blood on her face. He checked her for breathing and listened for a heartbeat, in the middle of all of us kids screaming. When he didn’t hear a heart beat, he started CPR. The Medical Examiner said there really wasn’t any way to know for sure she was alive when her rib punctured her lung, but just know he tried his hardest with all of his training to save her and didn’t. I guess what I remember most about that day is the cake was really good.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

One lit in my face and one burning in the ashtray...

Well it's three in the morning and i just cracked a Dr Pepper and choked down a couple BC Powders. I say choked down, i think I'm starting to take them for the same reason some old people eat dirt or corn starch. I'd like to say that i have a headache every time i take them, but I'm not entirely sure that would be accurate. One thing is for certain, i endure chronic headaches. Oh, and no my BP and sugar are both fine, but thanks for asking. I think it has to do with when i fell out of the sign at the Bien Venido Motel some years ago and i whacked my neck pretty good.

My 14 yr old has sprung from his chrysalis and come out the other side a social damn butterfly. Thank God we have an unlimited plan because between his one ring tone for text messages and his myriad of ring tones for his friends, I've made him set it to vibrate anytime it's within ear shot of me. Some days it's maddening!!! He has really started coming into his own in school too. Well, Football for sure, I'll know about the academics in a couple of weeks and as all of you know that's where i live. It sure isn't football. Anyway, he's gotten his permanent position as the starting center. He really didn't think he could do it because, evidently, there is a lot of responsibility in that position. However, he likes to yell and block and tell people when they aren't doing what they are supposed to. Stupid me, i thought the center just gave the quarterback the football and then blocked, but he's told me tons of other things that he has to do to make sure the play comes off the way it is designed to. I have to admit, i look at him when he starts explaining, the same way i used to look at Mrs Davis when she tried like hell to explain to me the objective and nominative cases in English in 9th grade.

OK for the next part to make any sense at all i have to preface this with a little bit of an explanation. Our boys are 15 months apart. The one mentioned above is red headed, six foot and built like Adonis. The 13yr old is 5'4", sandy blond hair and the closest he gets to sports is the chess club. Yes, the older one is a fair student and a great athlete; the younger one is totally an honor student and no athletic prowess what so ever (save possibly the remote for the TV)

I pick the little one up from school everyday and i always ask him the same thing. It's kind of like a catch phrase at this point, i say,"good day, bad day, or okay day??" He'll usually give me the old "good day". Then I'll ask him what the best and worst part is, this is where he goes into a soliloquy on par with "Song of Myself" and will talk for thirty minutes about how unrealistic it is to put kids like him into regular classes with kids that don't want to be there and only want to cause problems or tell him he's retarded and give him the finger. Here again, i digress into my own school experience and have much the same look on my face as when Mrs Morgan tried so desperately to teach me, "Order of Operations".

Then my lovely wife locks up the administration at her school around eleven most evenings and calls me. Naturally i am twenty minutes from the end of a movie i am completely buried in like Wednesday. I was watching, i really love Netflix!!!!!, this movie called "Elegy" with Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley. It was so tragically amazing. I'd say that it made me cry, but we all know guys don't do that. Just like the first time i saw the movie "Philadelphia". (Vamos Aver) I was buried in "Elegy" and there was about twenty minutes left and my phone rang, i saw it was her and i hit the end call button. See that way it could go to voice mail and she'd think i was on the phone and i could finish the movie. I'd tell you what they were doing but i won't in case the odd one of you watches it. If you liked the "Notebook" or "La Puta Y La Ballena", you'll love this. Anyway, about two minutes later she called back and i hit the end call button again. The movie is just that good! Well, then that old devil on my shoulder started talking to me about her car being broken down or of her getting mugged in their parking lot and i had to stop the movie and call her. So i did. I asked her if she was OK and she said yeah, she was on 35, blah blah blah. Here again, my face went as blank as it did every time Mrs Matley used the words several (serval) and she had another one she used to screw up too, but that used to just send me into an out of body experience.
(and Yes, i made that dress)

The wife blathered on for her entire thirty minute ride about things that happened at work that were funny and some stuff that was un-called for and the like. All the while, I'm blindly listening to these things and i don't know any of the people or anything about where she works other than it's on 35. I went there once to start her car and thus the sum total of my knowledge of the events in her world. About two hours later i restarted the movie and watched it from beginning to end and it was worth the interruption just to get to see it again. I have to admit that i, probably from being a man, needed to see it twice to understand what it meant and that was fine too.

I guess it's days like these that make me love that new Zac Brown Band song "Toes" so much. There is a verse that goes:

I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand

not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand

Life is good today, Life is good today


I have got some more of "Perfect" to put up, but i just have to get my arse in gear and do it. Plus, here a while back Paige had asked me what it is that i sew and that is such a hard question to answer this way. I don't want to put up a slide show on facebook, but if blogger will let me, I'll throw up a slide show. I just have to figure out if i can or not. If not, i may just have one huge posting of pictures. But those are the things on my horizon and i plan on doing that in the next couple of days. If it starts to look like I've gone blog happy don't worry it's only the 24hr kind.

Till i share with Y'all again, Take care of Y'all, D

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Sigh-ning all the papers that come home from school.

The guys came home yesterday with the usual stack of papers that require a parents signature. I LOATHE this day every year. It's a bunch of pointless crap for the most part. I mean why in the hell do i have to sign a copy of the code of conduct, i'm not going to school there? As long as i'm familiar with what it says is that not good enough?? It's like when they took the sodas out of the school vending machines or cupcakes at in class parties cause they make kids fat. Are you kidding me?? I mean really we have to make sure johnny doesn't get fat from eating cupcakes at a class party, but they serve fried burritos covered in nacho cheez in the lunch room. I'd really love to meet the person that finds the fried burrito more healthy than a cupcake.
Something new for us this year, but probably not for the rest of the world cause our school district is five years or more behind any trend, was the racial/ethnicity updated survey. They have incorporated the one that was started under Reagan and passed by king george; hell it could have even have been Clinton. There are two parts that just annoy the hell out of me. First is the Hispanic/Latino or Not Hispanic/Latino question. That is the ethnicity portion. There are no other ethnic divisions worth noting, obviously or they would have been included. Well, for me this is a murky ass question. If you think of all the Ethnic markers for Hispanic/Latino, we certainly fall into that category. However, as it is defined by the OMB and the statisticians, most of the people i know would fall into this ethnic group. You know what, i don't have a problem with that. What i have a problem with is that it's either that or nothing else. The question is, is this really necessary??
The other weirdo part is under the race category. I absolutely abhor this one. Now before i get to it, i'll say that part of my ancestry is from Scotland and part is from the Creek and Cherokee that went to Spanish Florida and my wife is, for lack of splitting hairs here, Lebanese. This is where the Race section is just wacked. The White box is for anyone that is descendant of the peoples of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Let's see Scotland is Europe so White and Lebanon is North Africa, so White again. Does this make all Lebanese White?? What about those people from Egypt or Dubai, are they White also?? WEIRDNESS!!!!!
So, We are Hispanic/Latino and White. I hate being labeled. Would it not have made a hell of a lot more sense to just put a NATIVE TEXAN box?? Now that's a label i not only can live with i am proud of.
Oh and for those of you thinking, what about the Native American box?? Well you only get to claim that status if you have lineal documentation to one of the nations. Really and truly that is something that i should have as i am the family historian and have tons of information about those that came before me, but there was a census done after the Seminole war stopped, note not ended, it just stopped. In that census my ancestors were worried about reprisals or worse and adopted the names Johnson and Williamson from people they admired. That census was to get an accurate count on the peoples of what had been Spanish Florida and family history, customs and traditions, the very identity of some families were lost forever from something as simple as that census. What will the ramifications of the new one be on the American Ethnicity's in the decades ahead?? I'm sure i don't have the answer, but what really sucks is that i'm sure they don't either.

Monday, August 17, 2009

a piece of Perfect...

At the street end of the dirt drive, you could only turn right or left. The funny thing, both directions ended up in the same place; Fox Hollow. Fox Hollow was the only bar in town and doubled as the Post Office. Coincidentally, it was the ice cream parlor in the summer and where you take your kids to get their picture with Santa during the holidays. Oh! Let’s not forget the Rotarians and Tuesday night bingo. The other handy thing about the place, it’s also the bus stop. Naturally, that’s where I met Loyd, nine years ago, when I hit town. You might say it was two steps down from the Army and a stumble back in time.
Back at the house I’d make my left or my right and head for the Fox Hollow. Me, Loyd, and Bit had been meeting up there for coffee at O’dark thirty for a number of years now and it just doesn’t seem right to start the day differently. Sure, I guess we could have met at the diner, but as long as Paula Ann was willing to bring our plates to us, why change?
By the time I get there Loyd will be on his second beer and his third cup of coffee. Bit will ask him why he drinks beer so early in the morning and Loyd will tell him it’s cause he never met a beer he didn’t like. Shortly after that, Bit will ask him why he doesn’t eat something and Loyd will remind him yet again that there is a sandwich in every bottle and a pork chop in every can. Then there will be silence till I get there. God, I love small town life. Nothing ever changes and there’s security in that.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Missing the Font



I sit here tonight with about a thousand things racing about my head. I have rats tearing flesh from bone and worms devouring the scraps. The echos of this carnage bounce around my skull with cavernous abandon, while i attempt to make sense of it all. The raging thoughts inside are leaving me out.
I find myself sitting in the parking lot of Our Lady of Perpetual Recreation and yet, can find no courage to enter. No candle will be lit and my bemedaled ladder Rosary will see no daylight today. I simply admire the facade. I can't afford myself enough grace to enter the house. If my peace lie in thee, I'm on the outside and shall not know.
The sins of the father are nothing more than a road map. The repetition of history cast along another generation. Will the son walk this same highway and if so will they all or just one? I ache for them. I hope for them. I pray for them. Will they find grace in all things or will they be chained by the sins of the father in all aspects of their life? I burn for them. I give myself freely that they might never bear the yoke or feel the lash. All i am is for them and still I'm merely looking in.
Nearly all of my life i have been blessed with a tremendous font. Dipping my tired fingers every chance i got. I have now returned to that font to find only promises and dust. There is no font. What i had grown so accustomed to is gone and shall never return. One day i am sure i will catch up with my font and by then the rats in my skull will all be dead. It is my earnest wish that the sons have a font that doesn't disappear, but when it does they have the courage to be on the inside.
Looking in is not life, but it isn't death either. It is an earthly purgatory, one to be endured until you can rise up and open the door.
This is the last blog i am going to share on FB. I hope you got something from it, even if it is only that bemedaled isn't a real word. Besides, it's mine, so it is a real word. Bemedaled, having medals, usu. several.
Y'all take care of Y'all, Dave

Monday, August 3, 2009

I think i just earned myself the "Dad of the Day" Award today. I have been promising the guys MusicMan style guitar straps. Naturally, they had to be made of leather, oh and they wanted their initials to be revealed. Revealed in sewing terms means that there are two layers and when you cut out the pattern from the top layer, the bottom layer is revealed. How cool, No?? Garage Band, the next generation...........

Of course, my Alien child wanted his done in a font style like the movie Ice Age and he wanted "eye brows" on the letters. Undoubtedly, he got that crap from Chip Foose. I'm not thrilled with it, but he is and that's all that counts. He's a short little cuss and i'm probably going to have to take a couple more inches off of the end of the strap. I just hope i don't take off too much and that he'll grow into it. Though i doubt he'll ever be any taller than 5' 9" or there abouts.





My Beastly child, the one that doesn't stop eating, made a great font choice and i really liked the way it turned out. Since he'll probably top out around 6' 3", his strap was made a little longer and should see him through many years of playing. Really and truly, leather is the only choice for this job. Oh, and he totally digs the way the reveal came out. As they say, if he likes it, i love it. Pssst!, they practice with headphones on. That was money well spent!

And finally, i included this picture because it makes me laugh!!!! I just love the hair......lol I won't rain on his Heavy Metal parade, i'm sure the Football Coach will do that next week.













At any rate, i thought i would share this with the world. The straps are functional and durable and the guys love them. Who could ask for anything more. Y'all be good, DDDave

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Birthday shorts and back to school

Okay, it's like four in the morning and i'm listening to Shania Twain. Don't blame me, it's what came on that stupid Slacker radio thing on my phone. Actually, I really like it most of the time. It's not that i don't like Shania, i was hoping for some Van Morrison. Anyway, moving right along.
A couple weeks ago my trackball on my blackberry stopped working properly and i ordered a replacement from Fonlogix (www.fonlogix.us) and in keeping with my fetish for all things Green!!!! I got my replacement trackball in green and the bezel to match. So, i guess you could say that i pimped out my Blackberry. Sort of anyway, when you add that to the three day battery i put in it, it just works for me.
Oh i guess first i'll tell you about my birthday shorts. In 2002 when i decided to go back to school and finish my degree to hedge against the downturn in the economy, the University of North Texas had some funny ideas about what courses would and would not transfer from Sul Ross. Somewhere in this, the Marching Band and my Military Record no longer satisfied my Physical Education requirement. Go ahead, laugh it up i know i sure did. You should have seen the face of the dean when i said fine, i'll just go out for football at 37. She didn't find the humor in that at all and suggested i take a class called Stress Management Through Movement. (This is a huge euphemism for "Yoga Class") More on the class some other day, but during the class a troupe of drummers and dancers from Ghana came by for a week. They were just too damn cool! They had all these chotchkies for sale to subsidise their trip. I bought a pair of purple and gold drawstring shorts that looked like someone had cut up a couch to make them. You know what?? They are ugly and i love them and i still have them. I hadn't worn them since last summer until this past weekend. When i went to put them on, i never untie the damn things i just shimmy them over my hips up or down, they were about ten sizes too big. I was standing there holding up those shorts and thinking who in the hell wore my shorts. So, i retied them and went to the bathroom and pulled out the scale. Dude, i am down 45 pounds from my physical last year at the VA. I don't know what i'm doing differently, but i'll take it. Now don't get me wrong, i'm happy with the skin i'm in, but a little less of me to go around would be nice as long as i don't have to participate. That's only due to having enough to do already without adding something else on top of what i already have.
Well, that's about all of the therapy i can handle for one night. Tomorrow, i have a meeting with UT Dallas about going back to school for another degree. Y'all remember that substitute teacher Mr. Zubia and how we joked about him having all of the degrees Sul Ross offered, well some days i feel like i'm on the same track through life. I guess i wouldn't feel this way if i'd only give in and either be a journalist or a school teacher, but yuk! That's just not for me, i'll leave that to those with the calling. Till i find mine, i'll just keep soldiering on. Y'all take care, DDD

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Amistad, My Grand Parents and How I Miss Them


It's a pitiful habit when a writer digs into their stash of completed works and republishes something. The generally accepted rule on this is, Don't! Well, i think you would all agree that when it comes to rules i would be forthright in saying i take what i like and disregard the rest. Then again, i believe that most of us do in some form or fashion.




I have been working quite a bit on a piece of length lately and after the summer I've had haven't really felt too much like writing anything that wasn't germain to the project. Here again, with the crappy summer I've been having most of what i have written in the last five weeks is way too angry and way too off voice for this project and will get thrown into the prompt bin for when i can't seem to find anything to write about. I think one of his kids finally just set fire to the last couple hundred boxes of notes and sentences that Hemingway had scratched out and thrown into his slush bucket. Personally, i hope I'm coherent enough to burn all that crap before i die so that no one has to wonder what i was thinking. Some days it's hard enough for me to figure out if it was something reality based or total fiction. I guess that's why Raymond Carver said that everything he wrote was fiction and nothing he wrote was fiction. I am certainly on board with the concept.




While I've been working on this project it has brought back memories that i have had stashed away for years. Many of these memories revolve around my life with my Grandparents. It occurred to me that in days passed i would go to them for advice, or just to talk, or any of a number of other reasons; they would have been considered my support system. At least a great part of that system. This Friday, July 17 is and always shall be my Grandfather's birthday and while he isn't here to celebrate it with, maybe i can share some of my Grandparents with all of you and in turn maybe one of you will learn something about the special nature of the relationship between a grandparent and a grand child. I thank you for taking the time to read this and truly hope you get something from it.

Oh how i miss them, Be Well, Dave


Amistad in august, first appeared in the "Northwoods Journal", Fall, 1998. Reprinted here as is my right being the original author of same.




Amistad in August


I was taken back to a special place and time when the wind was hot, the water glistened and the doubted words of an old man became truth.
All of my life, people have given me the same advice, “work hard, so you can play hard.” As a child, I didn’t understand what this meant, all I knew was I never got to play as hard as I worked. There was always some chore that needed my immediate attention. Being the oldest of three, it seemed to be my responsibility to make sure the chores got done. I had chores at my grandparents’ house. However, their chores were more educational than physical. So in an effort to keep from having to pull up the goathead stickers in my parent’s yard, I found reasons to visit my grandparents. Actually, I made an art form out of finding ways to get out of pulling weeds.
As with most kids, I enjoyed visiting my grandparents. They were not in the habit of giving me gifts but the one thing I did receive was plenty of understanding. My grandparents had a photography business for many years. From an early age, I was instructed in the theories and practices of good photography. I learned what it takes to make a good picture bad and to make a good picture great. My grandfather had a great sense of humor. He found humor in some of the strangest places, usually at someone else’s expense. He really enjoyed being a clown and putting on an act. It never seemed to matter who was around, he would break into some act like putting his lit cigarette into his ear and walking around with his tongue stuck out.
His humor was a great source of comfort for me. Using humor as a tool he taught me about nature and weather. My grandfather was one of the first meteorologists, as we understand the science today, and an avid reader.
One day while fishing off of spur 406 just west of Del Rio, Texas, I made a discovery. My grandfather and I were discussing weather patterns and what is called the dry line when something on the bank caught my eye. I sat up in my seat on the boat and said, “Hey Papa, look!! That has got to be the biggest rat in the world.”
Under a swig from his scotch and soda and an overdone gravely belch my grandfather said, “That is a nutria.” In the past he had given some really far out and unbelievable answers to questions, but this answer was too much. For years I took him at his word whether or not, I believed him. In response to nutria, I just sat there drowning my worm while sweat beads ran together and rolled down my back.
The sun shone off of the glass surface of the lake as if we were only a mile from the sun. The blistering heat and stillness of the day was periodically interrupted by the occasional chill of a slight breeze. Again I thought nutria, it must be Latin for good food and just giggled to myself. The longer I thought about it the funnier, “nutria” got and I wanted to ask him if he was pulling my leg but still I said nothing. I just sat there respectfully listening to him tell me about the uses people around the world had for nutria pelts. He explained to me in great detail how people in South America made their living from the trapping and sales of these hides. He was willing to bet half of all the cowboy hats in Texas were made of nutria felt rather than beaver, despite what the labels were printed with. He felt most of the buyers were ignorant to the differences between the qualities of nutria and beaver fur. In his opinion the nutria’s pelt was far superior to the beaver’s. The hairs were thicker and softer than the beaver’s and they had a far superior sheen to them.
After listening rather flippantly to my grandfather’s version of the plight of the nutria for what seemed to be all afternoon, he told me to pull in the anchor and we’d head for shore. Shore was really where I wanted to be. It was just too hot out on the water.
Back on shore, under the shade of the live oak and black locust trees that surrounded our campsite I was still bothered by the nutria. More so, I was ready for a coke, with ice, and a cigarette. I would usually steal one of my grandfather’s and a match and make up some excuse to get away from my grandparents to smoke, like going down by the water for a look around.
Down by the water I found some clams and watched the minnows swim in and out rhythmically with my shadow being cast upon the water. The clams were always fairly abundant. There were some live ones but mostly just the half shells left in the wake of an armadillo’s or, according to my grandfather, a nutria’s supper. After all of the stories my grandfather told me, including the life cycles of thunder storms, satellites with one hundred minute orbits, and learning to measure the height of a tree while standing on my grandparents’ porch, something had started eating at me about how one guy could know so much about everything.
After finishing my cigarette, I walked back to our campsite. Along the way, I heard a mocking bird chattering away at a wood pecker. I stopped for a minute to watch. I got so caught up in this wild conversation of screech and rata-tat-tat that an armadillo had walked up and brushed my leg. Instantly I looked down. I was fearful that it was a snake. Western diamondbacks and cottonmouths were found regularly in the park. When I looked down, I saw an armadillo and it startled me so badly that I took off running. An armadillo was not what I expected. I expected to see a snake, but no, just a damn little armadillo. Frantically, I ran back to our camp and forgot about challenging my grandfather’s nutria story.
Later that evening while watching the whippoorwills come in to feast on the early evening bugs as the first stars came over the horizon, my grandmother came out to the pier where I was fishing. To keep from being too disrespectful, I asked her what those forty pound rats were I had seen earlier in the day. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “So you don’t believe your grandfather?”
I said, “Well uh, yeah. Uh no, uh.” She always had a way of cutting through the fog and bringing out the light of day.
My grandmother said, “Why don’t you ask him if he’s pulling your leg or if he’s telling you the truth?”
For a time, my grandmother and I fished from the pier. When my grandfather came down to the pier, he was putting on this act of rattling ice cubes in his customary glass of Scotch and making goofy faces and other antics while playing with his lit cigarette. It was quite vaudevillian. He asked me if I had caught a Guinness fish yet. I was really reluctant to answer because I didn’t know what a Guinness fish was and was afraid that the whole out of doors would laugh at me for being ignorant. My grandfather bent down making this exaggerated groaning noise and lifted the fish basket out of the water and said, “Nope, no Guinness fish here.”
I thought to myself, I know there are no Guinness fish in there. All I had were two blue cats about a pound each. So he dropped the basket back into the water and took a seat on the ice chest between my grandmother and me. For a time there was peace. The only thing that could be heard were the crickets, the breeze, and an occasional fish jumping from the water to catch a celestial fire fly.
That was the last fishing trip my grandparents and I ever took together. My grandfather and I made two or three trips after that by ourselves, but it just wasn’t the same without my grandmother. The three of us were getting older. As for the Nutria, I never did challenge my grandfather’s answer or the natural history lesson that came along with the finer points of nutria felt.
Some years later while watching television, constantly flipping from one scene to the next, something in the back of my mind stopped the activity in my hand on one of those public broadcast stations. My own son said, “Look, Dada, a beaver.”
I said, “No, Son, it is a nutria.” My grandfather’s words from years past came floating in to my television set and repeated the lesson, nearly word for word, on more time.
An amazing thing happened that night, I was taken back to a special place and time when the wind was hot, the water glistened, and the doubted words of an old man became truth. The clouds in my eyes began to build like the giant thunderstorms in the high desert of my youth and the height of that tree we measured, seemed justified. I looked at my son and said, “Hey boy, work hard, so you can play hard.”

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Just like the Chicks, i'm not ready to make nice


Well, here i am. I'm back from Alpine for nearly a week and i still haven't cleaned the trash out of the Trooper yet. It occurs to me that I'm a self centered, petty, miserable little turd that spends every waking moment in the pursuit of that which i am entitled. In other words, I'm a jerk that spends all day dreaming up ways to get the stuff he wants without having to earn it, or to that effect. Be that as it may, i gave up everything i had going on for six weeks this summer to go to Alpine and fix several maintenance issues with my mother's house. That six weeks turned out to be akin to that all you can eat stew in the Huey Lewis song, "I Wanna New Drug". It was 1.99 and one dollars worth was all that he could stand. Conversely, three weeks was all i could hack. In the hopes that this won't turn out to be a Stump, I'll just cover a few things that i feel i want to share and then I'll be on my merry way.

Many of you have known me for all practical purposes all of my life or the vast majority of it thus far. I have a tremendous memory and remember little bits of "nostalgia" on all of you. I'm betting that all of you that have known me since childhood remember that I went to school with one name for years and then suddenly in High School it changed to what it is today. I also bet that no two of you would have the same reason for the change. Well, I'm about to dish it and at 44 i really don't think it means a whole hell of a lot, it's just something i want out there. I've been the red headed step child long enough. It's really quite simple. I was born in April and mom got married in August. See, now wasn't that easy?? The only thing is and it's horribly obvious to everyone, I'm not his. However, there was a thirty year benefit to that. When i was a boy they got my SS Card with his last name. I carried that card through three enlistments and four weddings and didn't have a problem until the Department of Homeland Security was created. Let me tell you how it worked to get the name changed on the card for me. See, suddenly i had to change the name on the card because i was no longer eligible to work in the ole US of A. Fact!!! It took from some time in 2003 until April of 2008 to get someone who understood rural West Texas and how something like this could have happened. As fate would have it, our taxes came up for SS verification and i had to go down to the local SS office and get this standard form that said yes, he has to pay taxes and yes he's a citizen. I was almost hoping to get deported. Well, i noticed the subtle nuances we used in the desert coming from the beer bellied clerk behind the glass.

To make a long story short, he was from Wink and he knew exactly how it happened and he gave me a new SS Card. It all happened just that fast.

Later, when i was sharing the story with my mother all she could find to say was, "that's good he should have helped you."

This is like the eighth blog i have written since i returned from Alpine and i doubt I'll publish any of those, they are just too mean spirited. A famous man once said, say what you want to me, but don't mess with my kids! oh wait! That was me.

Anyway, I hope you are all doing well and for those of you still wondering if everything we have plugs in, nope, we found something. Our eye glasses seem to be cordless...

Dave