Brain Spasms

Baby on Board

The tires chirp as they drift across the black pavement, kicking up small pebbles as they spin while looking for the traction they so desire.  I downshift a gear and the engine instantly revs higher in response, 425 horsepower now on tap as it eagerly approaches the redline.  I deftly feather the throttle lightly as I guide the Porsche through the completion of the turn, and when the wide rear tires finally gain full traction against the hot asphalt, I mash the throttle to the floorboard.  The twin turbochargers spool up and whine and the 911 launches into the straightaway like a rocket sled blasting down a test track.  As we accelerate furiously into triple digit speeds, the trees alongside the road quickly become a blur.  A steeply-banked hairpin turn comes into view ahead.  Ceramic brakes glowing orange from the intense heat, I brake hard and crank the steering wheel, slinging the brilliant German machine around the corner in display of driving that teeters on the razor-thin edge that separates pure genius and utter recklessness.

But I am, of course, not piloting a supercar on the Nürburgring. 

I am instead pushing a stroller on a walking path.

There’s something about an asphalt walking trail or a golf course’s cart path that tricks my brain into thinking that I am actually a world-champion go-cart driver, or that I’m ripping through the gearbox on a brand-new yellow Corvette ZR-1 while sliding through the negative-gravity S-curves on the pathway.  Often, I’ll even find myself pretending to twist the “throttle” on the stroller’s handle and revving the engine under my breath as the baby looks up at me completely clueless about how much of a complete goober he has for a father.

Please tell me I’m not the only guy that does this.*

*I’ve also fantasized about staging races in large shopping malls and through the vast corridors that run the length of the cabin levels of a cruise ship.

I’m going to assume that other guys pushing strollers down pathways are also ignoring the reality that they are a minivan-driving suburbanite being forced by their wives to carry a diaper bag created from the most embarassing flowery fabric ever created, and are instead imagining themselves as leading the final lap of a Can-Am race, flawlessly fishtailing out of the final corner and hurtling towards the finish line with the 12-cylinder Ferrari engine screaming just inches behind their heads, and giving the stroller an extra little push in the process while their wives walk beside them, oblivious to the intensity of the situation.  

I feel safe in this assumption because I know how men act when they have the opportunity to drive a golf cart.  No matter how calm and rational a man is in normal situations, when driving the cart they almost all turn into 17-year-old assholes once they get past the second hole and away from the wary, watchful eyes of the course marshal.  That golf cart is instantly transformed into an F1 road racing machine—at least until the battery starts to run down.

It appears to be exclusively a guy thing, because Corrie doesn’t seem to show the same tendency to pop wheelies and “peel out” when she’s pushing the stroller down the sidewalk.  And I never catch her doing the “RRRRrrrrrRRRR” noise as she drifts her imaginary Audi R8* through a tight corner, endangering her child by tipping the stroller on its outer two wheels in the process.  

*Phantom Black Pearl coupe with carbon-fiber inlays, 5.2L V-10, automanual sport transmission and Quattro AWD.  Not that I think about these kind of things.

So there is certainly some testosterone-based reasoning for the stroller-as-racecar daydream, but I propose that for me, it’s more likely caused because my current primary driving options are comprised of the following:  A blue minivan that—structurally—consists of petrified cheerios and french fries as much as it does steel and aluminum; a 15-year old BMW with odometer mileage equivalent to more than seven complete trips around the Earth’s equator; and a 22-foot-long diesel truck that exhibits the handling, acceleration and maneuverability that you would expect in a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.*

*While they’re certainly not glamorous and as a car guy I’m not enthusiastic about any of them, but there is one great quality that all these vehicles share:  They’ve been paid off for years.

There’s a quality that all the imaginary example cars I’ve listed in this post have in common:  None will accommodate three child seats, unless you strap at least one of the them to the targa roof or the trunk lid.*

*Which every parent, at some point, has considered doing.

Thus I’m stuck with the van for a while, at least until the housing market booms back to pre-2005 values* and I have no other choice but to fill my garages with 500 horsepower supercars.

*Current estimate: 2053.

In the meantime, watch out for me on the stroller paths.  You have no idea how much of a skilled driver of a high-performance machine you are dealing with.

Vroooom.

A Hard Question

• Lukas, age 5: How did the Earth get made?
• Me: What do you mean?
• Lukas: Who made the Earth?
• Me: Well, a big cloud of dust came together in space, spun around in a circle, and formed the sun and the planets around it.
• Lukas: (Thinking.)
• Lukas: Who made the dust?
• Me: (Pause.) Ask your mother.

An Eviction Story

The sheriff stood on the concrete porch and knocked a few times on the door. 

Silence.

A few more knocks, followed by several more seconds of silence.  The air was brisk, the sun shining low in the sky on this late November morning.

“Go ahead and open it up,” he said, backing away and directing me towards the dead bolt lock.  I pulled out my brass master key and unlocked the door, opening it slowly as we were unsure as to what we would find inside.  Before the deputy arrived I had been able to peer through the frosted glass on the door and knew that the house was mostly empty, but you just never know what surprises may lurk in the shadows.

We went in with the sheriff, who quickly glanced through the whole house to determine that it had, in fact, been vacated, and he indicated which items of value were required to be set out on the curb.  In his opinion, the only abandoned items of any magnitude were a dresser, a nightstand and headboard in a bedroom, and a few dirty yard toys in the garage.  We carried these items out to the curb to comply with the Missouri eviction law that states that any abandoned property in a repossessed home must be “set out” on the property, where the evicted party has 24 hours to reclaim the items before they can be hauled off or sold*. 

*The reality is, of course, that most of the time anything we remove is immediately picked over by neighbors and other random passersby, and is usually gone within a few hours after the setout. I’m always amazed at the truthfulness of the old axiom “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” 

The air in the house was stale; the furnace hadn’t been running for more than a week. I was lucky that the temperature hadn’t been low enough to risk frozen and bursting water supply pipes. After moving the furniture to the end of the double-car driveway, I signed the sheriff’s paperwork that legally gave me full, legal restitution to my property.  He advised me to change the locks before I left* and gave me a wry smile while he half-jokingly quipped “see you next time.” 

*Duh.

Some backstory: This particular tenant had a good qualifying income, a long tenure on her job and a decent credit history when I approved her rental application in June.  Everything went fine for several months and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She had nice furniture and other personal belongings, and she seemed content to be living in a nicely-configured 1,500 square foot 3 bedroom home.

After a few months, she simply stopped paying rent.  No explanation, no attempt at making partial payments, no response to my letters and phone calls; nothing. all communication had abruptly been terminated.

I do know that she bought a used Lexus SUV during that time.  Priorities…

When it became apparent that she had no intention whatsoever of paying any of her current or past-due rent, I formally evicted her.  I analogize deliberately not paying 3 months of rent at $1,000 per month as being no different than breaking into my house and stealing $3,000 from me while I sleep, so I have no qualms about making someone homeless in those situations.  It sounds harsh, but it is a business and I have a mortgage lender that isn’t going to show me much leniency if I stop making payments either.

After the eviction, she refused to leave the home and continued to duck phone calls and letters requesting an explanation.  After two weeks, I had to file the restitution paperwork to forcibly remove her from the house with the sheriff’s assistance.  She stayed until the day before the sheriff was due at her doorstep. 

I’m sure her thought was: Asshole landlord…

The next step after the sheriff’s deputy drove away was to start shoveling up the random piles of abandoned belongings that were scattered throughout all three levels of the house.  I have become quite desensitized to the clean-out process after a bad tenant experience.  I am robotic in the way I collect everything into 55-gallon contractor garbage bags:  Dirty clothing, leftover pizza boxes, paperwork, CD cases, lamps, bathroom supplies, dog shit, towels, dishes—everything gets bagged up, thrown away* and forgotten about.  I have no interest in saving anything, since my goal at this point is to re-rent the property as fast as possible and to move on emotionally after the failed tenant.  There is no point to keeping relics from bad experiences, no matter their value, as it will only serve to remind you of the mistake you made.

*Exceptions for clean clothes and canned food, which is all donated.

Within two hours the house is empty, save for the 12 black garbage bags in the garage waiting to be thrown in the back of my truck and taken to the landfill.  I’m making plans to have the bathrooms cleaned, the yard raked up and a “For Rent” sign placed in the yard.  I take a few pictures for the ad that I’ll run on craigslist. Business as usual. 

Except for one disturbing thing:

Hanging on the wall in one of the bedrooms was a personalized, framed Kindergarten Graduation certificate that had been given to one of her children.

I looked at if for a while and it made me sad.  Not in a deeply mournful or despondent way, but just momentarily depressed.  I’m not sure what the hell I’m supposed to do with it.  Probably nothing, since the tenant with the misplaced priorities didn’t seem to think it was worth saving, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it in the garbage with the other junk. 

In the grand scheme of things, the piece of paper is not important.  Hell, I’d have to think for a while about where my high-school diploma or my University degree certificates are.  I have no idea if I even received a Kindergarten Graduation certificate, much less be cognizant of its whereabouts. 

But to just leave one behind, hanging on a wall at a house that you’ve chosen to desert?  Reprehensible.  I don’t understand. 

Life marches on: The trash will go to the dump.  The house will be leased to a new tenant.  A different crisis will arise somewhere else:  A furnace will not fire up on a bitterly cold day.  Gutters will need to be cleaned.  A garage door opener will fail.  In the rental property business, every day is a new adventure, and thus, when bad things happen as they occasionally do, my memory for those events are—and must be—exceedingly short. 

Yet, occasionally something will nag at me when it comes to questions about human nature that I am unable to logically explain.  It’s happened before at different houses over the years and I never comprehend why:  A white wedding dress, hanging carefully in a garment bag.  A book of baby photos, left to mold in a box in a damp garage.   The kindergarten graduation certificate.  I don’t understand:

How do you leave something like that behind?

Playing in Traffic

Yes, I’m sometimes that guy. 

Occasionally there will be a traffic bottleneck where three highways lanes condense into two because of road construction.  The Department of Transportation is helpful enough to strategically place plenty of distinctive, bright orange signs giving ample notice to motorists that the lane is ending within a certain distance, and most people do their best to merge over as soon as they can, leaving the soon-to-be-closed lane vacant.

Forget what you’re thinking, I’m not THAT guy; I’m the other guy.

I’m the guy that has the 7,000 pound Ford F350 supercrew that will pull over into the ending lane and perfectly pace along with traffic, effectively blocking the lane and not allowing anyone else to drive past.

Now, if that pisses you off because you like to use that wide-open lane to blast down the road and cut in at the last minute, the following statement is for you and your ilk:  You’re an asshole, and if I’m ever elected President of this great nation, I will mandate that the punishment for said crime will be life in prison without the possibility of parole.*

*Unless you’re a fat, middle-aged white guy driving a Range Rover or a high-end Lexus: You will be subject to the electric chair.

The only exception will be extreme medical emergencies involving chainsaws, ninja throwing stars or vicious shark attacks, and frantic young men driving cussing, laboring women to the maternity ward.*

*With our three boys, Corrie only went into labor once and it happened with our last son, sitcom style; she woke me up at 6 am by saying that her water had broken.  I looked at her, somewhat dazed and confused, and asked what we were supposed to do—should I pack a bag or do you think they’ll send you home after checking you out?  She said something to the general effect of “Are you fucking stupid??  We’re having a baby today!” so I packed up our stuff, called my Dad to come out and watch the bigger boys and we drove to the hospital.  I was hoping to have the opportunity to recreate the cliched Hollywood scene where the idiot husband drives his wife to the hospital at 100 mph while weaving in and out of traffic while she pants and groans in pain, but in reality there was a lot of rush-hour traffic and Corrie was calm and it didn’t seem like she was going to have Sam right there in the car, so it was kind of a letdown from that standpoint.

So if you’re just some jerk that doesn’t think you need to wait in traffic with everyone else, I’m going to pull in front of you and make you ride my bumper for several excruciating minutes until the cones finally force you behind me in the bottleneck.  When I look in the rearview mirror, the more I see your face turn darkening shades of red and the more you gesture wildly with the one-finger salute will only serve to reinforce how resolute I am in the decision to screw with you.  I enjoy it.  And go ahead, threaten to bump into me.*  It’s a paid-off work truck with 180,000 miles and fair share of dings, scratches and such.

*I should point out that I generally restrain from doing this if I have my kids with me.

I know it sounds like Internet Tough Guy talk, but I feel like I’m doing the Lord’s work of shaming people who have no concept of the fact that they are not really important.  Try it sometime, it helps to even out the karmic balance of the universe.  Also, it’s really fun to watch them turn purple while they clinch the wheel and shout obscenities as if I’m the one doing something wrong by not letting them act like a self-entitled knucklehead.

And don’t get me started on tailgaters…

Snowplows out and about. 

Really?

Your tax dollars at work.

Five Short Years with Lukas

Imagine sitting in a chair, silently, without an iPad or a book, and waiting for an hour to pass.  Then multiply by 43,824.  That’s five years; 1,826 days.  A long, interminable amount of time when considered in that manner of thinking.

It can also pass in an absolute blur.

Five orbits of the sun ago, I was a 28-year-old who had never changed a dirty diaper and was not responsible for any human being other than myself.*  I was clueless to how babies worked:  what they ate and how often, why they cried inconsolably for no discernible reason, or what I was supposed to do during the next two decades to attempt to turn a nine-pound screaming, helpless infant into a fully-functional, productive member of society.  I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.

*Corrie is pretty self-sufficient.

Nevertheless, the hospital let us take him home. 

That boy turned five years old yesterday. 

In five short years, he went from being a drooling, helpless shit factory with only the the smallest suggestion of consciousness to being a smart, polite little boy who can make rational decisions and has started a pre-reading program at his school.  He can dress himself*, he can make a basket with a regulation ball on a basketball hoop set at 8 1/2 feet, and he and he can identify a Corvette from a hundred yards away.

*Lukas likes to pick out his own clothes, and since we have baby Sam at home I generally look for shortcuts whenever I can get them.  If Ben and Lukas want to dress themselves and pick out their own breakfast, I’m fine with it.  To his mother’s chagrin, that sometimes results in Lukas wearing an AC/DC T-shirt a size too small during the dead of winter and consuming a healthy breakfast consisting of Frosted Flakes and Toll House chocolate chips. 

Lack of concern about nutrition notwithstanding, he’s a smart little dude.  A few random things that surprise me about his development: He understands basic astronomical concepts* that were unknown to the world’s premier scientists just 500 years ago.  He can legitimately—without us “letting” him win—whip his mother’s (and to a lesser extent, my) butt in MarioKart Wii.  When Corrie was pregnant with baby Sam he asked probing questions and was not satisfied with our evasive answers about how Sam was created, or how he was going to get out.  This Christmas, he has said on two different occasions that he would like to give some of his presents to kids who don’t have a mommy or daddy.  Yes, the concept was planted by us, but the mentions by him were of his own accord.

*About six months ago he told me—out of the blue—that Uranus was made up of poison gas.  We argued about the pronunciation of the planet’s name (it’s “YUR-eh-nus”), but he was steadfast.

He’s also well-traveled.  He’s been on an commercial airliner five times, been on a cruise liner twice, and can easily identify Florida, Colorado, California, and Missouri and Kansas on a map.  He’s been to baseball games at Royals Stadium, a Chiefs game at Arrowhead, a Tigers game in Columbia, and basketball games at Sprint Center and Mizzou arena. 

He has experienced and learned a lot in his life.  Yes, five years is a long time. 

Glancing through his baby books this weekend, though, it has really been but an instant.  Parents know that this statement is nothing groundbreaking, but it seems like yesterday that we were driving him home from the hospital—carefully using the turn signal to change lanes and obeying the speed limit like there was a highway patrolman shy on his quota following closely behind us—wondering what the hell we were supposed to do when we got home.  Then, in an instant, he’s five years old and he’s asking if he can go to work with you and help you build houses (I, of course, don’t build houses, but I’ll let him think that for a while.)

Five years has flown by.  I know I’m going to blink my eyes, look down, and see that twenty years has passed by and he and his brothers have grown into men.  

The journey will be interesting—I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Thankfulness

To compile a list of everything I am—or should be—thankful for would be an endless task, but I thought that I would jot down a few that stick out in my mind for various reasons. 

I am thankful that the cloud of amalgamated dust, rock and intergalactic debris that coalesced and formed our planet chose to do so at the perfect distance from our Sun, allowing temperatures conducive to the existence of the  liquid water that is necessary for life to have formed, and for it to continue to exist.

I am thankful to have been born healthy to loving parents who worked hard and sacrificed to provide for me and allowed me the freedom to metamorphosis into the man I am today.

I am thankful for the experiential wisdom that I have gained from the stupid decisions that I have made.

I am thankful that as a man, I am able to walk into and out of a department store in less than three minutes and purchase any random pair of 32x32 pants and know with confidence that they will fit, and that I do not have to deal with the process of “trying things on” because some sadistic madman decided 100 years ago that the best way to determine sizes on women’s clothing was to use a random-number generator.

I am thankful to be one of the small percentage of human beings that was lucky enough to have been born in the most advanced, strong and equitable country that has ever, and may ever, exist.  The United States of America is not a perfect country, yet I cannot imagine a scenario where I could ever imagine living somewhere else and having the economic opportunities and personal freedoms that we have here.  Moreover, I am thankful to be alive today, and not five hundred years ago when life expectancy was 35 years and ordinary existence was filled with constant hardships.

Not to preach, but we often forget how just how infinitesimal the chances were that we were born in the age of technology into a country whose “poor” are likely to own vehicles and cellular phones, watch cable television on flat-panel TVs, and have reasonable access to nutritional food.  A small bit of international travel reinforces the fact that we, as Americans, are all part of the 1% when the measuring stick is the rest of the planet.

I am thankful for the mysterious black pipe that pops out of our yard, enters our basement, and supplies us with an seemingly endless supply of combustible fuel with which we can heat our home and cook our food, all for a cost of a few dollars a day.

I am thankful for the opportunity to choose what I do for a living, for the ability to comprehend the risks and rewards that go into the decisions that I make, and for the knowledge that is derived from the good and bad experiences that I have with my business.

I am thankful for Boulevard Single-Wide IPA, Gates and Sons’ burnt ends on bun, please, and Missouri Tigers football road trips.

I am thankful that there is a liquid outer layer of molten iron that surrounds the solid, spinning ball of metal comprising the Earth’s core that supplies a protective magnetic field that shields the planet from the bombardment of charged solar particles that, if it didn’t exist, would strip the Earth of its atmosphere and not allow life to continue.

I am thankful for life-long friends and close-knit family members with whom I have created many wonderful memories.  I am thankful for the time that I was able to spend with the grandparents and others who influenced me greatly and passed away in recent years.

I am thankful for music.  All genres.

I am thankful for the widespread available of safe, healthy and affordable food, and the easy access to fresh, clean drinking water.  It bothers me that other areas of the globe are starving while we subsidize corn that we do not eat, but rather distill into ethanol and pour into our gargantuan SUVs.

I am thankful for three healthy sons who I know will grow to become men that I will be intensely proud of, regardless of the mistakes they will inevitably make or the life paths they choose to walk.

Last, I am thankful for a beautiful, loving wife with whom I share interests, desires, hopes and dreams.  I am also thankful that that same loving wife allows me the time and opportunity to pursue some of my own personal interests independent of her.  She is unquestionably the ultimate embodiment of the colloquial term “my better half.”  Life is fulfilling with such a perfect partner.

Sleeping like a baby

Babies are masters of being lethargic.

Sam is lying next to me, snoring softly, his hands balled up into fists and positioned next to his ears. He hasn’t moved much in the last hour, and I anticipate (and hope!) that he stays in this state for another seven hours so that we coordinate our morning wake-up time. 

I’ve always admired how babies have the capability to sleep through a cacophony of background noise.  A bustling room filled with loud conversations, a reality show blaring through the TV speakers, a random freight train horn echoing through an open window.  Nothing causes the baby to stir from his slumber. 

I am jealous.  I imagine most adults would be delighted to have the ability to completely turn off their brain from the constant barrage of thoughts about whether the bills have been mailed, if the windows are still down on the car in case it starts to rain, has the dog been fed?  Is it Tuesday night or Wednesday afternoon that we were scheduled to meet with the insurance agent?  Did I close the garage door?  How the hell am I going to pay for college?

And so on.

A slumbering infant has no concerns of this nature.  His every need is taken care of for him, and he is free to close his eyes and doze in a sleep so deep that even a doorbell ringing followed by the startling, reverberating bark of the family dog will not cause him to awake.*

*As any parent can tell you, there is a B-side to this record.  Perhaps the single most frustrating event for a new mother or father is when a screaming baby refuses to go to sleep.  Lullabies fall on deaf ears, pacifiers are useless and no amount of rocking will make him close his eyes.  This is probably the time when I have felt the most clueless as to how you work a baby.

When a baby decides he is tired, he has the unique ability to almost instantaneously totally turn a blind eye to the outside world and tell it that it can all wait for a good six hours without any consequence.  Then, he might wake for an hour, survey his surroundings, demand a warm bottle of milk, and then put himself back out for another six hour power nap. 

I’m not sure when the last time I was able to sleep as soundly as an infant.  Well, at least when it didn’t involve a bottle and a half of red wine or a stiff dose of NyQuil.

Maybe it’s better this way.  As I age, I tend to feel like sleep is, quite literally, a waste of time.  We only have so many hours; why spend them staring at the backs of our eyelids when we could be experiencing new things during our waking hours?  Certainly, sleep is a necessary human function that allows the brain to file away memories by building new synaptic connections between neurons.  But, there is a gray area where “enough sleep to maintain good health and sharp cognition” turns into flat-out laziness and lethargy.  Moving on in life, I plan to spend as little time with my eyes closed as I can, while still maintaining a healthy consciousness.

Having said that, it would really be nice—every once in a while—to disconnect my brain entirely and sleep like a baby for a dozen hours or so. 

He just smiled in his sleep; he must be dreaming about boobs.