Busted Knee

Typically when I go to Las Vegas, the after effects upon my arrival home last maybe a day or two, but never longer.  Maybe longer if I do very poorly at the tables and my wife gives me the cold shoulder  if I lose a good chunk of change.  But never this long. 

This story actually reminded me that I never finished explaining the craziness that was my trip to Vegas over New Years.  I will revisit the story, but for right now I will only touch upon tiny pieces pertinent to the knee. 

2008 sucked in many ways.  When I am older and look back on my life, I can’t say that 2008 will be one of the years I want to rekindle.  2008 must have felt the same about me as I did about it because at 5 minutes to midnight this past NYE, it might as well have kicked me in the groin as a going away gift.  This is what happened…

The wife and I are in Vegas.  On the 30th of December we go out for a nice dinner, back to the hotel room to hang out, and then the wife wants to go to bed around 1:30am Vegas time (which is 3:30am Chicago time so she did good for her first full night in Vegas.)  Not me, though.  As she is ready to drift off to sleep, I am getting some comfy clothes on and getting ready to head down stairs to play some Pai Gow Poker.  8 hours and 20 free Captain and Cokes later, I am drunk and up a good chunk of change.  It’s almost 10am Vegas time and I haven’t had a wink of sleep so I head back up to the room.  For this trip, I decided since it was the wife and I that I would get a suite that offered a large whirlpool tub.  If you have been to Vegas and never had the experience of recovering from an all night terror, I would highly recommend the whirlpool tub.  Three hours in and out of consciousness in the whirlpool was as good as 8 hours of regular sleep.  We get dressed and by 2pm we are out of the hotel on our way to New York New York to buy tickets to Cirque Du Soleil’s Zumanity. 

There are so many aspects of this day that should be in itself a post, but I have to get to midnight and will revisit certain aspects of this day. 

We tried to get tickets to Zumanity, but instead I found myself on a bus going to tour some property call “Tahiti Village” since my wife is a penny pincher.  3 1/2 hours later I am emotionally scarred by the boiler room sales tactics and we have tickets in hand for Zumanity and only one hour to get dressed for the show.  We see the show (totally seperate post as well) and have 45 minutes before midnight on the strip.  Head back to our hotel, change into warm clothes so that we don’t freeze our ass off on the strip, and head down to Las Vegas Boulevard to watch fireworks off the rooftops at roughly fifteen minutes till midnight. 

We are not allowed to walk over Las Vegas Boulevard since the bridges over the road are closed.  We can only exit on the street level which in hindsight was a huge mistake.  As we are greeted by a very large crowd we began to get crushed since no one was moving and everyone continued out the exit.  I decided that we are going to climb over the barrier on to Las Vegas Boulevard since it was closed to traffic.  As I force my way through the crowd with wif e in tow, I climb up the 4 ft tall barrier that has metal spikes mounted on top of it to prevent such a climb.  As I stand up to leap over, my toes catch the metal bar and I am now falling head first 5 feet down towards the pavement.  I catch myself with my hands and my left knee bangs on the ground before I do what had to have been the most ungraceful barrel roll in Las Vegas history.   I jump up to the laughter of many drunk idiots and help my wife climb on the barrier to which I lift her over and walk way with her in my arms.  Trying to be a man, even though I know I haven’t been in this much pain for many many years. 

After we get to an area where we can finally breath, I survey the damage and I have gravel embedded in my palms and blood begins to seep through my jeans where my left knee hit the pavement.  I am pretty sure that either my right wrist is either sprained really badly or fractured.  I look at my watch and at 2 minutes until midnight, 2008 delivered the biggest kick to the groin yet for what was just one shitty year. 

Fast forward now to February 1st 2009.  It’s been more than a month since Vegas and I am mostly healed.  I still have marks on my palms from the fall and there are still signs of a scab on my knee cap.  Whenever I put pressure on my left knee it still hurts pretty bad.  I began to feel my knee and to my surprise I can physically feel that my knee cap has been chipped.  A piece of my kneecap moves on my left knee that doesn’t on my right and it hurts when I touch that one particular spot right on the tip of my knee cap.  So, it’s busted.  Thanks Vegas. 

I am most concerned about the knee since I want to go see someone about it, but fear what they might say.  I am off to Denver in 6 weeks to ski for a bachelor party and the last thing I want to hear is that I need surgery to fix my knee.  But on the other hand, if I don’t go to see someone I am concerned that skiing will make it worse and I might just destroy the thing while skiing.  I don’t really know what to do.  I have two little people on each of my shoulders doing the whole “Go to the doctor” vs “don’t be a pussy” argument thingy in my brain and I don’t know which one to listen to. 

I have more going on in my brain, but no more time, so I will have to share my oriental balloon twisting competition story later.

Filed under: 15885677, 15888541, Blood, Busted Knee, Cry baby, Tahiti Village, Vacation, Vegas, achy, asspain, body, sore, train wreck, weird, wife

Turn your head

…and cough.  That was something that I heard last Friday morning.  I hadn’t heard those words uttered in a good 10 years.  Now that I have eclipsed the age of 30, I feel that I might hear those words on a much more frequent basis. 

On Friday I went in for my first Physical in many years.  My wife has been bugging me to go in for quite some time, and I finally decided to bite the bullet.  It wasn’t but maybe 5 minutes into the checkup that I realized that I was in for a ride that I wasn’t going to like. 

I shouldn’t be such a pansy.  This may sound stupid, but the main reason I decided to go was because of my turtle Sebastian and all of the health issues he has had as of late.  Had I taken him in sooner than I did, he may not be having the issues that he has.  I blame myself for his condition and now I am slowly doing my best to nurse him back to health.  Well, his situation made me think that my mental fear of the doctor could possibly one day be my demise as well.  In life I tend to hope that something will go away vs. confronting it head on.  I hadn’t had a bad history of health, but after the doctor did pokes, prods, pinches, and everything else that he did throughout the physical he did a good job making me feel bad about not taking care of myself.  I have a shit load of stuff wrong with me and if they don’t get fixed I could be on the fast track to more serious issues. 

Lesson number 1:  I am fat.  I have gone beyond my chubby phase and have hit a threshold where I must now meet with a nutritionist.  WTF?  Why?  I know what food is good for me and what food is bad for me.  Sitting down with someone that is going to tell me that I have to quit eating a full days worth of food in one fast food meal isn’t going to do anything for me.  I know that it is best to have 6 small meals spread throughout the day and that with 3 small portions of protein and good fat mixed in with the healthy shakes during “snack time” is the appropriate way to live.  But who the F has time for that?  I know how to be healthy, it’s not that I don’t know.  It’s that I don’t have the time or motivation.  Instead of a nutritionist, I should actually meet with a Lazy counselor. If one would exist.  It’s not even about being lazy really, just the fact that I barely have time to run upstairs during my work day and get food while I work for lunch.  Much less, dedicating a good hour to hour and a half to ensure that healthy food and drinks hit my mouth six times a day.  Sometimes I don’t even have time for fast food.  How sad is that? 

Lesson 2:  My fattiness has led me to be a canidate for dying in my sleep.  I snore.  Really bad. At least my wife tells me that.  My doctor thinks that because of the size of my neck that I suffer from sleep apnea.  He could be right.  So, now I have to go to a hospital and have around 100 electrodes strapped to every square inch of my body while they analyze how I breath while I sleep.  If it is determined that I have sleep apnea, then I will be lucky enough to strap on a darth vader mask while I sleep.  If my sexy PJ’s don’t turn my wife on, I am sure that this will:

Lesson 3:  I may be going too far with this one, but an issue has come back that I had in high school.  Not to go into too much detail, but it’s quite possible that this issue will prevent me from being able to have children.  It was an issue that I didn’t really put much thought into at the age of 18 when I had surgery done, but apparently surgery may be needed again.  I go in on Thursday to get an ultrasound done and then I will meet with a urologist to discuss the results and what should be done moving forward.  This is a scary situation for my wife since we have finally entered into baby discussions and this bit of news is the last thing she wanted to hear. 

Lesson 4:  I hate giving blood for anything.  Luckily for me they only took one large vial, but any time someone gets near me with a needle I teeter on the border of passing out. 

In the end, the doctor wrote a thesis on what I need to do to right this ship that is my body.  I somehow will need to find more time to eat healthier and work out more and many of my problems will go away.  So, for Christmas this year, instead of asking for a Wii or Guitar Hero, I get to join a gym.  Yippee. 

I truly believe that the biggest joke on us as humans was the creation of good tasting food that is bad for you.  Why is it that the better something tastes, the badder it is for you?  Why couldn’t it be that what tastes good is better?

Some changes will be made.  I will diet and I will work out.  I am going to hold out until January 2nd, though.  That will be one of my newfound appreciations for the New Year resolutions. 

I have a funny story to tell about a church christmas party from this weekend, as well as a heavy duty rant about my in-laws and how they managed to pretty much wreck my wife’s graduation day for me.  Have a happy Tuesday!

Filed under: Blood, Church, body, excuse, grouchy, mean, pain, stupid, train wreck, turtle, weird, wife, work

Slingin Rock

 

I am struggling today.  This morning has been occupied with nothing but frustration becuase I am not being able to find anything that I am looking for on the web.  I think they call that product failure in the biz.  I don’t know what biz that is, but I have heard that before. 

This morning I have finally discovered how I am going to make my millions.  I thought being a balloon twister might help get me there, but the work is too hard, and doesn’t have the tremendous upside that my newfound profession will.  I have decided today to make a change in my life.  To work less and make more.  To put my low earning days behind me.  I, my friends, am going to learn to be a crack dealer. 

The one problem is that I can’t find anywhere on the internet on how to deal crack.  Typically in life whenever I am faced with something that I don’t know how to do, I go right to the web.  In this case, I am finding the amount of resources for a future slinger of rock to be very limited.  I can’t even find one resource book through any of the major library websites.  I can find all sorts of information on what it is, what it does to you, and where it can put you, but nothing on how to begin selling. 

I didn’t make this decision in any quick manner.  I have been thinking about it for at least two days now.  I have not told my wife, and I don’t plan on it.  I wonder if she would notice by the time I start getting “Tats” and become “Strapped”.  Or maybe when she notices my “Bling”.  I think there might be signs there for her to follow, but who knows. 

The real reason I made this decision is because of the Supreme Courts recent decision to ease crack cocaine punishment guidelines.  I am usually not one to write about current events, but this one has not only become good news for any crack smoker, but it has changed the path that I shall follow to make my quest towards the american dream. 

The Supreme Court thought that it wasn’t fair that the punishment for a crack dealer/smoker was much harsher than a cocaine dealer/snorter.  It became a racial issue because of 19,500 inmates being held on crack charges, 86 percent are african american.  It’s a very public and known fact that crack rock is predominantly used by blacks; power cocaine, predominantly by whites.  So, it would be fair to ask why would someone who smokes crack get a harsher sentence than someone who snorts it?  I am with the courts on that question, but here is the issue. 

That group of 19,500 inmates who are being held on crack charges all have the potential to be released early if this ruling becomes retroactive.  This will take a vote, but if it is voted that the punishment was too harsh for the crime, then we could be looking at upwards to 19,000 crack users being released back into the crack smoking market. 

I may not be a genius, I may not have a masters in marketing, but that number of users of anything being released back out into the world should equate to dollar signs.  I am not choosing crack for any reason other than the fact that it is the one thing that these 19,000 people have in common.  If I knew that they all liked the brand Charmin toilet paper, I would probably buy a bunch of Charmin stock knowing that 19,000 people are getting out of prison and are tired of wiping their asses with whatever single ply TP the prison systems supply them with.  Today, if I am a crack dealer, I am on my knee’s praying for that vote to go through because there will be a whole slew of old customers that will begin buying again. And it’s not like they will get out and all be rehabilitated.  Don’t get me wrong here, but if they were smoking and dealing crack when they knew of the harsh penaties, doesn’t the fact that they will now be looking at a less harsh penalty defeat the rehabilitation to begin with?   

For the story that details my info and props to my friends over at CNN for their coverage:  http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/11/cocaine.sentencing.ap/index.html

Other industries that I looked at as a potential future for living my American Dream:

Home Security Sales

Crack Distributor (even less can be found on the web on distributing than dealing)

Law Enforcement

Gun Dealer

Tattoo artist

Gold teeth sales www.goldteeth.com

Emergency Room Surgeon

and finally Funeral Services

I will be getting in touch with my home security salesperson soon to ensure that we are all good with sensors and shit.  I just increased my home insurance as well.  What are you going to do to prepare for the return of all of our crack rock brothers and sisters?

Filed under: Blood, Cops, body, stupid, weird

Turtle Watch…day 3

I feel bad. I have been talking about my little buddy for the last couple of days and I haven’t posted a picture.  Now that I am thinking about it, I have hit the blog wall where I feel bad for operating a page that is non personal. 

Quick update:  Sebastian is staying strong.  He is slowly moving more.  I learned that he has the early stages of Gout in his right knee caused by kidney failure.  I am going to begin putting him on new drugs to hopefully fight the kidney failure.  I would just like to say that when you tell people that you have a sick turtle, you get weird looks.  They either think that is code for something or laugh until I explain that this has been my pet since the age of 7. 

I seriously need to spend a good hour or so and upload some real photos of me, and my family, my cats, and my turtles.  I have nothing on this site except words.  How much fun is that?  To anyone reading any of this, I could be 5′8″ and weigh in at 800 lbs.  I could be one of those guys where they have to bring in a construction crew to plan my removal from the house.   It’s kind of like a blind date, really.  I may have set myself up for severe disappointment because it would be sad if my number of visits dropped upon my picture being plastered on this page.  I might go a little slow.  Maybe a picture of my hand one one day. Then a picture of my hand and wrist the next.  Then maybe the next day will include my elbow…and so on until my ear is in the photo.  That way you can stop visiting at any point.  Wow…where am I going with this? 

I have to finish my dental debacle story from yesterday.   Incompetence.  That is my dental word for yesterday.  As I mentioned, hours after they put on the temporary crown, I almost choked on it.   It was supposed to last a good 3 weeks superglued or cemented…or whatever adhesive that is used in the dental glueing procedures. 

So, after I go home that evening, the appeteaser before dinner became left over apple pie from thanksgiving.  As I made dinner I pulled the left over pie out of the fridge and ate right out of the tin with a fork.  Nice. I find that’s the best way to eat left over pie.  That way you can leave the fork in the pie and set it back in the fridge.  There’s nothing like being able to walk by the fridge, open the door, take a bite of pie without having to get a plate or silverware, and move on with you day.  I digress…

So, I am eating the pie, and I begin to swallow.  I feel something very hard and scratchy going down with the pie.  I suddenly realize that the tooth has come off and is clawing at my throat for help.  Not to be gross but I coughed it up just in the nick of time.  I almost swallowed it.  So, I went back yesterday to have it reglued.  I sat down in the chair and the same woman that F’d it up to begin with thought she would give it another go.  I didn’t get a “sorry for fucking it up the first time” or “sorry that you almost had to shit out a sharp pointy tooth” or anything.  I pulled the tooth out of my wallet (because that is where you keep teeth when they fall out until you get back to the dentist) and gave it to the lady.  I ask if she might be able to do it better this time so that it doesn’t cause me to end up with doctor’s pumping out my stomach.  I asked it in a very light and funny manner because this lady has very sharp pointy devices in her hand.  She puts the partial back on me and proceeds to add to it with some sort of hot goo device.  (technical jargon, I know…)  After she fixes the chips and cracks she goes to remove it.  But it won’t come off. 

She tried for 15 minutes to get the damn tooth off and it wouldn’t come off.  After stabbing my tongue a second time and causing it to bleed she decides to call in the dentist.  The dentist couldn’t get it off either.  It was loose but caught on something.  At one point the dentist (it is a femal dentist) is almost on top of me trying to use a lever technique that is bordering on cracking my jaw to remove this fake tooth that isn’t glued on mind you.  Finally the dentist gave some sort of look to the dental assistant and they decided it was time to pull out the power tools.  What I thought would be a quick glue job turned out to be an hour and a half of drilling, scraping, reglueing, refucking it up, reglueing again, and finally success.  It has been 24 hours now and it hasn’t popped off.  Of course, I am scared to eat anything. 

I won’t name the dentist or the office I go to.  My visit yesterday ended when the dentist left the room and I was starting to stand up.  I asked the dental assistant what her name was, and she said Diane.  I shook her hand and said, “My name is Dennis”.  “I feel like we should know each others first names with all that we have been through together.”  She gave me a slightly hesitant laugh and I walked away. 

I have supposedly one more visit with the dental office to install my future new tooth.

Hopefully the assistant isn’t the installer.  

Filed under: Blood, achy, grouchy, mean, pain, scared, sore, stupid, turtle, weird, work

So busyish

Sorry for the lack of newness lately.  I can’t really describe it, but I am busy, but not busy.  Everything that is filling up my time is very emotional, strange, and painful. 

My wife is sick.  I wanted to write a long post about how she became too sick to take me out for our birthday celebration last saturday and how this is the second year she has come down with something serious on my birthday celebration day, but the bottom line is that I only want her to be better.  I don’t care about my birthday celebration. 

My turtle is sick.  I don’t know how else to say it.  I have written about my turtles before and all I can say is that if Sebastian decides to leave me for a better place, I am going to be a wreck for some time.  It’s hard to describe the love one can have for a turtle, but I guess I can try.  I have had the little guy since I was 8.  23 years he has been in my life.  He is the smaller of the two turtles.  Bruno and Sebastian.  Sebastian has pneumonia, and I am doing everything in my power to save him.  The blood work came back with the vet and it shows kidney failure as well.  I won’t go into the gross details but it is obvious by looking at him that he is very sick.  Yesterday morning I actually thought he was gone and had what I think is the biggest emotional breakdown I can remember since my Grandmother passed.  But what is weird is that I see Sebastian every single day.  I feed him daily.  Talk to him daily.  He is such a large part of my life, and if you were to know how F’d up my childhood was, you could get an idea of how his was as well, and all of the things we have been through together.  He has been a sure thing in a life where there hasn’t been many sure things…until I met my wife. 

Not to get all sappy, but Sebastian and Bruno mean about as much as anything that has been in my life since I have yet to produce a child.  So, these last 48 hours have been pretty tough on me.  I created a new environment for him this morning to make life easier on him while he fights this sickness.  The Vet doesn’t have high hopes for overcoming the kidney failure, but we have agreed to do what we can with a barrage of daily injections and oral medication.  I don’t know what I will do without him…

In other crazy ass news, I have had some interesting experiences with the dentist.  I am trying to complete my quest for a new porcelain crown and the dental office isn’t making it easy.  The root canal blew.  I went in Monday for what I thought was going to be a simple visit where they would take a mold of what was left of my tooth to send off to some dental lab where they will create my future tooth, but boy was I wrong. 

They had this thing where they check the color of your teeth much like they do with paint.   That way they can send in the color so that the dental lab can match the new crown to the off white that is my smile.  I asked the dentist if we could do a fun color.  Purple?  Pink?  I would love to have a Chicago Cubs tooth where each quarter of the tooth has maybe a red white and blue stripe with the cubs logo.  No can do said the doc.  I think this is how I might make my millions.  Think about all of the redneck’s that lose their teeth all the time from chewing tobacca and smoking.  I’ll bet there would be a huge Nascar following for these teeth since those are your prototypical toothless sport fans.  The White Sox would be a hot seller too!  I digress…

So, while I am in there, I realize that they are not just sizing the tooth, but basically drilling out what is left of the old tooth.  That sucked as well.  The dental assistant asked me if I wanted any local anesthesia.  Not knowing what they would be doing, I said, “do you think I need it?”  She followed that up with a, “how high is your pain threshold?”  She poked my gums and asked me if it hurt, to which I said, no.  If that was all we were talking about then we can spare the numbness for the remainder of the day.  An hour into the procedure she started with the poking and prodding of the gums, but then tells me that she is going to insert a “string” between the tooth and the gums to pull the gums away from the tooth for the mold.  OK, I said and away we went.  If she would have told me that we were going to do this, I would have easily taken the Anesthesia.  20 minutes of pushing what seemed to me to be a bear trap around my tooth and pushing it down into the gums and pulling the gums away from the tooth felt worse than at any point of the root canal.  As she was pulling gauze out of my mouth soaked in blood, I realized that I had made a very poor decision.  Eventually they finished, I swallowed some good that was hardening in my mouth and almost choked/puked all at once.  The dental assistant put on a temp crown that would eventually make it’s way down my throat 2 hours later in what has to be the worst cement job of any temp crown in the history of dentistry.  I choke it up, throw it in my wallet to have it re-cemented today.  They F’d up again today.  I will share that fun story tomorrow.  

I have to run off to a church meeting and hope to drown my sorrows afterwards with a beer or two with some of the members of the church. 

Happy Humpday!

Filed under: Birthday, Blood, achy, beer, body, pain, sore, stupid, turtle, wife

Thanksgiving eve

For the first time in over five days I have a moment to sit back and reflect upon what was my Thanksgiving.  Like a fine wine, my thoughts about the past five days are getting better as they age.  It is hitting me this morning just how F’d up the holiday started and how I still can’t believe that my wife and I pulled it off.  We had never hosted Thanksgiving before for the whole family and I think we did a damn good job.  Here are some of the funny ass highlights to our crazy Thanksgiving.

Wednesday night I was prepared to go crazy ass in the kitchen since I was in charge of everything.  I decided to brine the turkey this year, which meant bathing the turkey in a solution for around 24 hours.  My older brother, sister-in-law, and my 2 nieces and 3 nephews were coming up on Wednesday evening so that they didn’t have to drive on Thanksgiving day.  They left from Bloomington, IL around 6:00pm and we expected them to arrive at our house around 9:30 pm.  The house was fully prepared for the assault that would be 5 children and two additional adults.  The inflatable mattresses were set up, the hide a bed couch was pulled out and the guest bedroom was all set.  All I had to do was cook while I waited.  I started pulling stuff out to start cooking at 8:00pm.  I started late because of the drama that was my mother and younger brother.  My mother had come home Wednesday after drinking and in her drunken state decided that she wasn’t going to come up for Thanksgiving after all which left my little brother out of a ride up to the northwest suburbs of Chicago.  I had to work with him on calling her bluff and we agreed that he would not make any sudden plans and would wait out our mother’s wrath and see how she was in the morning.  If she had not changed her mind by then, he would drive up alone Thursday morning. 

Once we were done with all of that (which took over an hour and a half of phone calls) I made my way to the kitchen.  Upon entering the kitchen my wife’s phone rang.  It was my older brother. (I am going to switch to the present tense to describe the following story to fully capture the moments of the messed up story) 

Wife:  Your brother is on the phone.  He has a flat tire.       

Me:  Tell him to change his tire.                                                

Wife:  (after asking if he is able to change his tire)  He doesn’t have a spare tire.                                                                       

Me:  (use both hands to cover my face to conceal the anger that is shooting through my body) He doesn’t have a spare tire????  He is driving a family of 7 in a van up to Chicago without a spare tire????  Give me the phone!                             

Me:  Chris, you mean to tell me that you drove all this way without a spare tire?                                                                   

Chris:  I just bought new tires for the van.                               

Me:  Where are you?                                                                   

Chris:  We are on 53N.                                                                 

Me: Where at on 53N?                                                                

Chris:  I don’t know.                                                                        

Me:  Can you give me any idea from a street sign or anything?                                                                                    

Chris:  NO.                                                                                      

Chris:  We are where 53N Splits between local and express.  We are on the express side.                                                             

Me:  Let me call you back in a few minutes. 

After feverishly discussing with the wife our options, she thinks we need to find someone that can bring a van tire out to the scene and put it on.  I have never heard of such a service.  I started calling tow services and even triple A to explain the scenario and the best solution that anyone can come up with is to tow the car somewhere that they can fix the tire.  But the problem is that it is now 8:30pm on Thanksgiving eve.  There will not be a tire place open for another 38 hours.  On top of all of that, they are in the express lanes of one of the busiest highways in the suburbs and they have 5 children in the car.  It is not like the children can jump out of the car and walk off the side of the road.  A towtruck can only seat two adults.  What the hell are we going to do with all of the children? 

After I call my brother back to address these concerns, he tells me that he does have a spare tire but does not have a tire iron.  A cop pulls up as I am talking to my brother and I ask him if he can borrow a tire iron from the cop.  As the cop walks up I ask Chris to hand the phone to the cop, and the cop tells me that they have to drive a mile and get the hell out of there because the officer says, and I quote “They are going to get killed if they don’t move the car”.  My brother will not drive on the flat because he doesn’t want to ruin the rim.  I told the officer that I would call a tow truck, and he said that he would since he can get someone there very fast.  My brother does not have a credit card, so I told the officer to call me for payment.  I get back on the phone with my brother and now the challenge is the children.  What do we do with all of the children.  Oh, and it is now snowing very hard out.  I grab some pants, gloves, and a jacket and jump in my car to drive down to where they are.  The officer said they are right above Algonquin road on 53N.  That is a 45 minute drive for me.  So much for sleeping tonight since I haven’t even begun to prepare for the Thanksgiving meal.  By the time I see them on 53N the tow truck is there and my brother tells me that they are going to the Walmart auto center at Algongquin and Golf road.  The officer has 5 kids in his back seat and will follow the tow truck.  I meet them there and thanked the officer.  He laughed because he had never had so many children in his car before.  The children were all excited because they got a free ride in a cop car with the lights on and everything.  After the officer left we pulled all of their bags out of the van, and loaded everyone into my little chevy prizm.  3 adults and 5 children in my little car.  I felt like I was back in college.  The worst part of the drive home was that I had to drive slow and the fact that it smelled like the whole family had not bathed in a month.  It was snowing out, but I still kept my window down to combat the smell.  At 11:00pm we finally arrived at my place.  The children were so wound up at this point that they didn’t end up going to sleep for a few hours after they arrived. 

I hit the kitchen and began to prepare the meal.  I have so much more to write about but I will split this into several posts so that I don’t waste my whole day on this.  Some funny shit went down.  I don’t know if my post truly captured the essence of the situation, but I can say that I became angrier than I have ever been no less than 4 times throughout this process.  I would guess that I easily doubled my previous blood pressure record. 

To be continued…

Filed under: Blood, Cops, In laws, body, excuse, grouchy, mean, smelly, thanksgiving, train wreck, wife

Dennis Dumpy Day

Warning!!!! Warning!!! Warning!!! This post was written about Tuesday, started on Wednesday and finished on Thursday.  Life grabbed me by my left nut and wouldn’t let go until….now. 

The words Last night or Yesterday have been removed and replaced with the word Tuesday. 

Today I am licking my wounds from what can only be described as dennis dumpy day on Tuesday. 

At 10:30 Tuesday night it dawned on me that Tuesday might have been one of the lesser fun days that I have ever experienced in my lifetime.  Let me explain…

Nothing like starting your day off with a Root canal!  Six needle injections in the mouth and jaw later, I am ready for the root canal.  Can’t they name it something else?  I understand that they are cleaning out the root canal, but some sort of medical term that hides the fact that they will be sticking little scary dental files in and out of the roots of your tooth for 4 hours is in order.  Something like “Happy Canal treatment” or ”Big boob treatment”.  Those would all be better.  And while we are at renaming it, they should make the experience more enjoyable somehow.  I saw in one of those gadget magazines on the airplane during my trip to keywest a pair of glasses that, when worn, give you the impression of sitting infront of a movie theatre.

Put a movie on or something while you are digging away at the bowels of my tooth.  Porn will work…

Not a bad start to Dennis dumpy day.  The day got better as I went back to work afterwards.  Then Tuesday night as I arrived at Red Robin to twist, I was blindsided by a new “contract” if you will.  Apparently a shitty ass twister is working at another one of their locations and is charging them what he is worth.  Since they see no value in what I do, they told me Tuesday night that since this guy only charges this much that I either have to agree to his rates or hit the road. (It sounded much nicer than that…something like…”We don’t want to lose you but this is what we have to do…”)  What sucks is that it ends up being a 33 percent cut in my pay and they are not willing to allow me to offset my cut in pay with promotion of tip receiving.  I wanted to tell them to take this job and shove it.  I am worth more than what they were paying me to begin with, but now I have to work for less?  You have got to be shitting me.  But this is the issue.  What I make there every Tuesday night pales in comparision to the big business picture. I can’t get too precise for fear of the man coming down on me, but I will say that I make the bulk of my ballooning income from private events where I actually met the individual at the restaurant while twisting.  So, I will take my pay cut with a side of KY, please! Now I want to become a shitty twister and work as hard as they are now paying me.  Maybe I won’t shave before I go.  Maybe I will start wearing dirty clothes with big greasy stains on the shirt.  I don’t know…but all I am saying is I want them to realize that what they had was good.  If that means me walking away, I know that I would be cutting off my nose…  After all, I would attribute the restaurant as the main driver to the 400% growth I have seen on the balloon business year over year.  Suck it up and make me a bike, clown! I am debating on whether I am going to reach out to that shitty ass twister.  I know that he is shitty becuase I booked him for an event last summer where we needed him due to the abundance of children and the fact that I have 4 events scheduled that day.  I want to say more, but probably shouldn’t for fear of slander or some stupid blog suit that could come out of this if he ever comes across this site. 

I thought that the day could only get better until I finally arrived at home at 9:45.  I jumped in the shower and upon exiting, I remembered that it was time to take another happy time pill that I had been given earlier to offset the throbbing pain in my left jaw.  Being told by the doctor to not take a whole pill, I decided to pull out my wifes pill cutter.  What a neat little invention I thought as I pulled it out of the closet.  I opened it up and realized that it hadn’t been cleaned in what looked to be several years.  Everything was coated with dust and pill shavings.  So, I ran it under the faucet and then started running my thumb inside the edges to get out the remaining residue when….

HOLY SHIT!!!!  I screamed loud enough that my wife sprung from the bed screaming if I was ok, as I stood there with blood running down my thumb because apparently they put razors in the pill cutters to cut the pills. (Novel idea, I know)  I cut the crap out of my thumb and was trying to determine if the ending of Dennis Dumpy Day was going to happen in the ER to fix the cut with stitches.  Boy did it bleed.  After rinsing out the cut, I sat on the toilet and looked at my wife and couldn’t say anything but, “What a shitty day.”  My wife looked at me and gave me a sad look and a hug.

I would imagine that is one of the reasons men agree to live with one woman for the rest of their lives.  So that on a day when you have been needled and gouged endlessly in the jaw, sat behind a computer all day in pain, taken a 33% pay cut in your second job, and finally almost cut off a section of your thumb, they are there to rub oinment and wrap your thumb with bandaids and make it all better. 

I am just glad I made it though Dennis Dumpy Day. 

On a lighter note, I woke myself up this morning by tearing ass like I have never done before.  I don’t think passing gas in my sleep has ever been an alarm clock for me before, but it worked this morning. 

Filed under: Blood, achy, balloon, body, excuse, fart, grouchy, mean, pain, scared, sore, stink, stupid, train wreck, weird, wife, work

Happy Vampire Friday!

Ahhhh, yes.  Halloween is finally upon us.  I am rather unhappy because I am stuck going to not one, but two Halloween parties tonight.  Both are grade school parties for the schools that my wife teaches at.  I don’t mind dressing up for Halloween, but I typically like to do things that are tasteless.  Or I enjoy becoming something completely opposite of who I am during this wonderful day.  My wife insists that we dress up as a couple.  Matching costumes and all.  I’m down with that.  We have done it in the past, but if it were up to me we would do something that we can’t.  You know, Brittney Spears and Kevin Federline.  Or, something like a Pimp and Ho.  I don’t think those would go over well at a grade school Halloween party.  I wanted to go as Larry the Cable Guy, but my wife wouldn’t let me.  I already have that costume. 

 So, last night I drove an hour to meet with my wife.  I don’t know why, but I thought I would go as Frankenstein and create a big goofy frankenstein head out of balloons (www.misterd.balloonhq.com) and wear clothing to match the mask.  So, I told my wife that maybe she could go as the bride of Frankenstein.  Long story short, I was pulled into an unscheduled meeting and hadn’t even left for my hour long drive before my wife had already arrived at the costume shop.  By the time I arrived and discovered they had nothing in the Frankenstien arena, my wife had already picked out her costume.  So, after all that I bought a damn cape and I am going as a vampire.  I drove a total of 2 hours to pick up a damn cape.  Good times. 

Big weekend ahead for me. Lots of parties to attend, lots of parties to work, and lots of football.  Have a great weekend!

Filed under: Blood, balloon, beer, confused, grouchy, mean, stupid, weird, wife, work

Creepy Wednesday

 

This morning I was put in my place by all my bitchness the last two days.  I also said something last night that signifies that I am the adult I feared I would be as a child. 

This morning at 4:00am I was pushed and slapped by my wife in my sleep.  This was by far the most physical abuse in our 4 year marriage to date.  The funny part is that my wife is just a little fella, and her slapping me and pushing me as I slept barely woke me.  I asked why she did it and she said I was screaming like I was a ghost and then it turned into shrieks as if I was being murdered.  I was thankful that she woke me because I had the creepiest scariest nightmare to date and it immediately should become a scene in either a horror film or a haunted house.  I don’t know, but I had a hard time going back to sleep. I told my wife about it and she said that she was so creeped out that she couldn’t go back to bed as well.  I typically don’t put too much stock in my nightmares, nor do I ever write about them, but I must this time, because I am curious to find out if anybody has one of the books that can decipher what the hell is going on in my brain. 

Here is the basic story minus some of the minor details. 

I have a child. (which I really don’t)  The child is african american (I am caucasion) and he has hurt himself.  I think it was scrapped up knees or something minor like that.  It is late at night and I put the child into the bathtub to soak the wound and tend to the child.  I needed to get some band aids and medical things so I leave the bathroom to go the other side of the house to get the supplies.  I start walking back to the bathroom and see that the door is closed.  I didn’t close the door on my way out.  I start to walk to the bathroom and quickly open the door and the lights are out and the shower curtain is now closed.  I flip the light switch on and I see at the edge of the partially closed shower curtain a full sized grown man sitting in the bath with red everywhere. 

I guess that is when I started screaming like a girl or something. 

Freaky shit. 

I have never been a believer of dream books because I think anyone can sit down and write about what they belive each part of a dream means.  I could do it myself. 

You had a dream about monkeys?  That means that you are struggling with work and feel that you are attempting to climb up an unclimbable tree. 

You were running in your dream?  That means you are scared to face something in your life. 

See?  I think that those books are as reliable as putting faith in horoscope readings.  My horoscope reading today is: Apply your newest ideas to your life today. You can serve as a powerful example.
That sounds like a fortune cookie.  And someone gets paid to come up with this shit. 

So, if you think you know anything about dreams, give it a shot.  I am all ears.  My wife immediately asked me if I was traumatized in the shower ever.  I immediately explained about all the times my brother and father would scare the shit out of me by sneaking up to me in the shower as a kid.  It then dawned on me how bad I should feel for having done that to Jeanne several times in our old house.   Shame on me.  There is nothing like scaring someone but I shouldn’t thrust my fears upon others. 

I also managed to say something to my niece via email that made me feel very old.  I have a myspace account and each and every day I wonder why more and more.  See this story and you will understand why I will never allow a family member under my control to ever use this website.  http://www.thekansascitychannel.com/news/13789708/detail.html?rss=kc1&psp=news

This is just one of the thousands of stories that come off of myspace about horrific people doing things to users of this site.  I personally believe myspace is the breeding ground of the worst our human race has to offer.  Anyway, my niece who has a myspace page emailed me and asked me to put a real picture of myself on myspace vs using the balloon photo that I use as my picture.  I use a spider man balloon photo and I would have to say that the picture is pretty BA (bad ass) but apparently my niece is probably tired of explaining to friends why she has a latex balloon superhero on her buddy list. 

So, I emailed her last night and said that I would not be putting a regular photo of myself up and that I would be happy to email her a digital photo of me if she wants one.  I went on to say that “I am not a fan of the site and that she would understand when she gets older.”  That is the first time I have ever said those words and it really made me feel old.  Do I like that my niece uses Myspace?  No.  But the sad thing is that my sister in law (her mother for you slow folk) has her own page and I have been saddened to read some of the risque messages from strange men to my sister in law when she is married to my brother.  I can say that there has not been a superior example set forth from my niece and it is not my place to explain to her that sick people use that site to meet little girls.  So, I feel old.  Whatever.  This last few paragraphs have managed to put me back in my 3 day now bad mood hangover so I am going to go back to work and hope that eventually the grumpy fog lifts before this weekend.  Big weekend ahead and I can’t wait.  Drinking is in my future. 

Happy hump day. 

Funny story later about my cubicle mate and how much he loves the Notre Dame fight song. 

Filed under: Blood, In laws, body, confused, coworker, dad, grouchy, mad cow, mean, scared, shower, sleepy, weird, wife, work

Holy bicycle flip batman!

 

The weekend is over.  And I must say that my weekend for not doing anything extraordinary was the perfect blend of fun and excitement without having anything scheduled. 

Friday started off the weekend right.  I wrote about Schief’s birthday party that was in a Hookah bar.  The plan was to go to Schief’s place, drink for a few hours and then hit the hookah scene.  I arrived at Schief’s place expecting to be able to change, shave, and get dressed only to have him answer his phone to buzz me in stating that he wasn’t home, but that they were already at the hookah bar.  I drove a good 15 minutes out of my way to go to his place only to be told that they forgot to update me that they were leaving much earlier.  So, I changed in my car, and sported 4 days of beardage to the bar.  I must say that smoking out of a hooka is not for me.  I sat on the floor with out shoes on around a midget table with 12 others for 4 hours while they all puffed on a pipe.  The interesting thing to me was the fact that the majority of my friends that smoked this thing were not smokers.  They all too probably 100 drags on this thing over the course of 4 hours.  I guess the smoker in me has been scarred by the many nights of smoking a pack of cigarettes in one night and coughing up a lung the next morning.  How could you inhale all of that smoke and not hurt the next day?  I tried it.  I took two seperate pulls on it, and I must admit that it didn’t feel like smoking.  It felt more like flavored oxygen with smoke that came out of your mouth when you exhale.  They went with blueberry tobacco with Rum in the Hookah for added flavor.  They reloaded with Jasmine lemon.  Pretty cool.  My favorite part of the Hookah experience came as we were leaving to go to another bar. 

I have to start a new paragraph and set the scene for this very interesting moment in my life.  It was now 11:45PM and I am walking alone to my car that is parked 4 blocks away on a residential street.  I start walking north on a street when I noticed a large man bicycle rider coming from my right (heading West).  He was going very fast and he wasn’t slowing down for the 4 way stop as he rode past me.  I noticed that he was wearing a camo shirt and green shorts, which is as dumb as you can get when riding a bike at midnight.  As he neared the intersection I noiced the SUV that had stopped for the stopsign start to drive forward without seeing the bike rider on the sidewalk behind the row of cars parked on the street.  This is when everything went into slow motion.  I saw the bike rider headed for a dead on collission for the SUV and then it happened.  The bike rider slammed on his breaks, but ended up flying off of his bike and clipped the back end of the SUV as it drove by.  The guy ended up going head first onto the pavement and let out a big moan as he hit the ground.  I immediately looked around and realized like 4 other people saw the exact same thing I had.  We all immediately rushed to the guy laying on the ground and some of the others went to block the other cars that were heading in our direction to apparently finish the job that the SUV didn’t.  They guy continued to moan and we started to ask if we should call 911.  As he came to rolling on the ground, he started to talk in a very moaning manner.  I thought he was going to ask to use my phone to call a loved one as he lays on the ground dying, or if we could call someone for him, but no.  The first words that came out of his mouth with 8-10 people now standing around him is….”Does anyone have a smoke?”  We all wen’t from looks of concern on our face to looking at each other saying what the F?  It was then that it dawned on us that this very large man, rolling on the pavement, was incredibly drunk.  As he started to try and stand up, our sorry feelings disappeared, and one guy picked up his bike and carried it to the tree and leaned it against it.  The guy started to feel if any bones were broke and said that he should be fine.  This is when he started to cry.  I don’t mean crying because of pain.  He started crying like a baby.  Sobbing and moaning.  It was at this moment that we all realized that they guy has issues,  and it was time for my departure from this surreal experience.  This man was 1 second late for a date with death due to riding drunk on a bike.  I am just glad that I didn’t witness something that could have been much worst than it turned out to be. 

So, I went on my way semi laughing at what I had just experienced and headed uptown to a German Bar where I had my first run in with “Das boot”.  I will fill you in on this portion tomorrow since I’s gots to gets backs to work. 

Filed under: Blood, Schief, beer, body, confused, fun, grouchy, mean, pain, scared, sore, train wreck, weird, work