Always Pre-Party

 The best part of my college days was always tailgating before the football game. All my buddies together, grilling, throwing the football around and shooting the breeze about the last night's hijnx. The games were great, but once the games were underway....it was already the beginning of the end to all the fun.

My buddies and I have a secret man trip we go on every year over Labor Day weekend. It's called F.O.V. (If you're guessing that stands for Foes Of Vagina -- you're wrong). The weekend is pretty much GOLF, MEAT, BOURBON, CIGARS and ROLLING DICE. The best part of the trip is reliving the trip all year long. Once you're on the trip, it's never as good as imagining being on the trip.

Friday used to be my favorite day of the week. Now it's Thursday, because I've come to enjoy the feeling of anticipating the weekend more than the actual weekend.

When I visited New Orleans for the first time, my first thought of Bourbon street was, this place looks a lot like Disneyland. I compared the actual place, to a replica in a silly amusement park. If you peek behind the curtain at Disneyland (I worked at the Happiest Place On Earth one summer), it's all a facade. The buildings aren't real. They're cutouts. In The Big Easy, not only are the buildings real...but there is a hell of a lot of history to go with them.

I don't know what it is about this day and age, but the real thing is never as good as anticipated. It makes sense because our imagination is flawless. We can make up any trip, place, vacation, person or ideal way better than an actual trip, place, vacation, person or ideal. In our minds everything can always be perfect.

Like a romantic trip to France would be amazing to go on right now. However, once you get there you have to sit on a smelly subway next to a non-deodorant using French person. Dogs poop all over the sidewalks in France. France is crazy expensive. You can't read most of the menus. In four sentences I completely took apart a once-in-a-life-time trip to France.

I suppose right about now some people want to punch me in the face and say, "wake up and be in the present!" and I'm sure they would be right.

Although, I truly believe its hard to argue with perfection. In my mind, the things I like most are perfect: Wife, Kids, Tahoe, Nor Cal Burrito from Burrito Express, BBQ's with friends and Sunsets. My kids are great, but they are not perfect--but in my mind they can be.

I'm not saying  that we should just day dream all day and live life in our head. That is what the Home Coming Queen from High School does. She longs for a previous existence.

Life is prickly and pokey and sometimes it's best to just smooth out the corners with our memory . My honeymoon was awesome! However, we had to fly around the world to get there (I don't remember how long it took). I'd never lived with a woman before and so we fought about leaving on time and who slept on which side of the bed (small moments I only remember when I am writing QUOGs).

The lesson I am going to try and teach my children is to enjoy the freedom that comes with anticipating a fun upcoming event and it's o.k. if our brains crop out a couple of incidents to make a past moment feel better.

Success(es)

Do you see what I just did in the previous post about success? I made success all about career! We all do it. Most frequently asked question when you're out at a mixer, "what do you do for a living?" When you go to talk to your wife's father about asking her to marry you, he says, "how is your career?" Your parents, brother, Aunt Jo Jo, all ask, "How's your job?" Sometimes it's a crutch because they don't know what else to talk about. But mostly, our culture wants to know how we are doing at work.

As I confessed earlier, if we're judged on our jobs - I am not a success. My wife earns more money than me. In my Monday through Friday gig there is no hope whatsoever of advancement. I am not challenged. I do not feel fulfilled(Monday through Friday). No recruiters ever call me. If I had to find another job or profession,  I have no discernible skills that would transfer. My job (Monday through Friday) is a certifiable dead end.

On the other hand, I like going to work. My bosses truly care for me. I work with great people. I get to use a parking garage for free. I get to be creative. It's not a success, but it has its advantages(paycheck and free coffee). I have a good situation - Its just not a success.

In fact, if you were to look at the main categories of my life, most of the columns would be marked: NOT SUCCESSFUL.

I am an average dad. I love my kids and take care of them the best way I know how. I get angry too much. I could be a lot more present with them. I could take a much more active role in the nuts and bolts(I leave that too the wife). I am not trying to be humble....if graded on some sort of Dad curve, I come out a B-. The good news is I have great kids despite my B- status.

I am not a successful husband. I love my wife. I have a great life with her. But I way under serve her. She works ten times harder then me. I should provide way more romance than I do. I should tell her how much I love her and how much she means to me way more than I do. Once again, the good news is I have a great marriage. I am completely committed to a ridiculous lady. I go to bed most nights chuckling because I look over and my main homie is sleeping next to me. Husband grade: B-.

Living situation -- definitely not a success,  C. I have crammed us all into a two-bedroom 15-hundred square foot apartment. Three kids in one room and we all share a bathroom(the poop line gets crazy). The single 50-year-old lady who lives below us, has been know to just start screaming through her ceiling, "stop the running and singing and tomfoolery, RIGHT NOW"!

Community involvement, big fail and zero success, D-. I have three kids under the age of 6. Often times it feels like I am being dragged through a desert by a rope from the back of a truck and someone keeps asking me, "Dad, can I have some more Cheetos?". I just don't have time to give anything back to anyone(I am nobodies soccer coach or Boy Scout leader or Sunday School teacher).

In the hope of moving this along: I'm a B- son. B- brother. B- poker player. B+ whiffle ball player. B+ drinker. C+ communicator. C- Sax player. A- Entertainment Coordinator.

Having now confessed my non-success, I will now present a few of my successes.

Success is a really big word, with lots of large implications. However, successes are small, daily, tangible wins.

For instance, I am not a cook. I just have to cook because the wife isn't around when it's time to cook dinner (she's working...but lots of times she is partying). Most days it's 5 o'clock and I have to give my attention to making the food (that means three kids are kicking the hell out of each other with no referee around). Up to this point, no kid has died (although someone got shived last month-the weapon was never found). There is screaming, crying and bleeding and most days we eat the food I cook. I try to be creative about what we are eating (not just heating up chicken nuggets, although that definitely works). Its a nightly success when my family has something to eat for dinner.

I take pretty good care of some folks that live on my street. My buddy Charles is wheelchair bound and lives in a group home. I consider it a success whenever he sees me and thanks me for buying his newspaper subscription.

I researched and came up with a recipe for tonic water (like for a gin and tonic). I usually have a batch ready to drink at home. Whenever somebody comes over and tells me they like it. I check the success box in my head.

I am the social coordinator in my family. I plan the hikes, the visits to bakeries, picnics and kite flying expeditions.  I get the feeling of success every time the family is doing something fun together and laughing about our Sharknado kite.

All of those are just successes, with only one category in my life where I have full blown success: friendship

I have unprecedented friendships. It's the one aspect of my life I take a lot of pride in.  However, the irony to having great friendships is that the friends have to be great.

I've maintained deep friendships because I invest in people. I make sure that I am involved in their life. I ask good questions. I meditate on what's going on in their life. I've come to realize that if you're interested in people, GREAT people usually invest back.

My closest friends are still the guys I met in the 3rd grade. We've gone from playing dodge ball together, to living as lazy single bachelors together, to dads and husbands. We've all grown into fuller and different people, but we have made a determined effort, through a lot of life circumstances, that we would all stick together. Basically, all we've done is stay interested in each other.

I moved away from those guys when I was 25. I remember thinking that I'd probably never make another friend again. It took me a few years after moving, but I ran into another life changing group of guys. We all live in San Francisco, which is known for being a transient town (people and families pick up and leave when they can't handle the hustle and bustle any more). Not this crew! And I think the reason is because we've invested so much into each other, now there's really no place else to go(we've kinda taken on each other personalities and wouldn't know how to act if the others weren't around). The other thing I will say about this crew is that everyone is so damn interesting and someone always has a hairball scheme that just has to be tried out (driving four-hours to eat a steak, mandatory 1/4 mile on your birthday) .

BE INTERESTED IN INTERESTING PEOPLE and life will not be boring. If life is not boring - YOUR LIFE IS A SUCCESS.

So there is my living contradiction. By all the major metrics in which the world judges a human being, I would be deemed -- not a success. However, when I look at the people that are actively involved in my life -- I feel like a success.



P.S. If you're a friend of mine and I owe you money.... I'd ask you to please not leave a comment.

I Am Cursed

The only time I had available to get to Trader Joe's (for our friends west of Mississippi, that's a super market) was an hour window in the middle of the week. And oh yeah, the wife was working so I had to take my three kids with me. I needed to go to TJ's to buy just one item. I went last week and bought everything I thought I needed, but then I decided to double the recipe so I had to get one more of this certain item.

Most days it takes all of my energy just to buckle three kids in, drag them across the city, unbuckle them and then drag them into a busy freakin' store after driving in a circle for 15 minutes trying to find a parking space. We get in the store and what do you know -- they are sold out of my item. What are the odds that on a random day, the EXACT thing that I need would not be there? If you're me-- the odds are high!

You see.... some time long ago when I was a wee lad, some unknown witch-doctor stole me from my parents long enough to throw a "time-crunch" spell on me. It's been proven out over the course of my life.

I always choose the wrong line at the grocery store. What I think is the shortest line proves to be the longest when a lady I thought looked young, turns out to be wearing some sort of mask. A mask that she pulls off after it's too late for me to move. After she pulls off her young mask, to reveal her old face, she asks the clerk if she can pay for her bundle of goods, all in silver dollars! Which she proceeds to count one by one. Some version of this line lengthening story happens to me every time I go to the store.

There are multiple ways I can get home from work, but guess who always chooses the street that has pot hole road construction?

A kid will get sick and barf on me when I need to get to a work mixer (that's fancy for party). And wanna guess who always gets stuck in freeway traffic?

I'm not sure which wise sage it was - the Freakanomics dudes, Malcom Galdwell or Deepack Chopra - but one of those crazy guys talked about this great study. It says that when you're stuck in traffic on the freeway, you only notice that the other lane of traffic is moving faster than yours--when you're in a hurry!

I was supper pissed when I first heard this! I've calmed down since. It can only really mean two things: One, it all evens out at some point. You stay in the left lane and it's slow, but eventually it will become the fast lane. and the middle and right lanes will both get their turns as the fast lane at some point too.

Secondly, and this is the big kick in the gut-- if you're in a hurry, YOU ARE SCREWED and God will bring his wrath on you.  I don't know how this Great, Universal, All Knowing Being does it, but sure enough...God has it out for the people in a hurry. Some.... just call this Murphy's law.

So there it is, plain as day. If you are in a hurry, it doesn't matter what you do... you will be delayed.

The only recourse for action is to not be in a hurry. I hated even writing that down. Who in the hell doesn't have time to not be in a hurry?

I will say this. On a lark the other day, I had some time on my hands and went to Trader Joe's with no kids and no time crunch. It was bizarre. I could hear the birds chirping in the store (yes, birds were actually signing). Random people waved and said hello. I ate snacks. I saw items that I had no idea existed before. When I got to the check-out line, the clerk (at TJ's this is usually a fat, bearded dude named Ram) was handsome and witty (his jokes were Jimmy Fallon-esque) and his name was Duke.

I hate to admit this, but maybe one of the Freakanomics/Galdwell/Chopra guys is right. If you're not in a hurry...everything could be different.