Because nothing actually happened at the stroke of midnight around here, I am left with nothing to write about except everything else.  I’ll do my best.

6:30 pm

I finished moving the last of the junk out of the apartment.  All those things that should go straight into a dumpster.  Let’s face it, all the stuff that is unimportant enough to be avoided on each and every trip back and forth except for the very last trip really has no place in our lives.  It ends up being just like that pathetic little kid from our childhood who was always picked last for everything.  Maybe it was you, and I suppose I should say sorry, for making a comparison between you and my most worthless junk, but I don’t think it would come off very sincere.  Let’s face it, we live in a world where some things are more important then other things, and I’m afraid this rule applies to people just as easily as it does to things like old frisbees and broken (but could be fixed someday) desk lamps.  We live in a country that throws more trash away then any other nation in the world, and yet, we’ve somehow been raised to not want to throw anything away.

What does any of that have to do with being the last kid picked for a game of kickball?  I don’t know.  I wasn’t expecting to start writing about trash.  You wouldn’t think that trash has anything at all to do with my new year.

6:45 pm

I stop by a tavern to celebrate the final load of trash with a quick beer, which ends up turning into two beers, which given the reason to celebrate, isn’t such a bad thing.  A girl named Emily works behind the bar, a friend of my brother’s wife, and I watch her work her way up and down the bar, tending to the other people there.  Not watching as in stalking, or anything like that, but as in what-else-am-I-going-to-do watching.  Watch college football on a small television with my neck turned up at some uncomfortable angle?  No, I don’t think so.  Besides, Emily is pleasant, and I kind of like the way the small Roman numeral “IIV” tattoo between her shoulder blades moves around when she carries three or four drinks at once.  At least I think that’s what the tattoo is.  I don’t ask and really have no reason to ask.  I’m content to watch it just the way it is, even if it is an incorrect Roman numeral.

Emily’s tattoo reminds me that I like a lot of things in life to remain secrets.  Mystery is good.  There’s no need for any of us to know everything.

7:45 pm

I return home and think about moving in the last carload of junk, but don’t actually think about it very long.  It can wait until tomorrow, I tell myself, and go inside.

8:00 pm

I start the shower and get undressed just as someone starts pounding on the door like there’s just been a horrible, twenty or thirty car pileup just outside of my front gate and they need to use my phone.  No, it can’t be, I think.  Nine year olds also knock on doors this way, but he’s not supposed to be here until 10:00 tonight.  It can’t be him.

I wrap a towel around my waist to go unlock the door, listening to the other children that are with my son and his mother giggle at me.  It’s dark and the porch light isn’t on, so I can’t see them.  Only their giggles.  Later my son will tell me they were laughing because “I was naked under my towel.” This whole phase about becoming aware of their bodies and the bodies of others around them is something I’ve never really understood.  But I know it’s just a phase, and will begin to pass in roughly thirty years.  Good thing for them.  Can you imagine what I’ll look like with a just a towel wrapped around my waist in thirty years?  There won’t be much snickering going on then, I bet.  Well, maybe.

9:00 pm

I fall asleep.  My son wakes me up.

9:15 pm

I fall asleep.  My son wakes me up.

9:30 pm

I convince my son that we should set an alarm to wake up just before midnight, and both go to sleep.  I’ll even lay there with him, waiting for the alarm, I tell him.  He is very adamant that he should see the ball drop in Times Square and hear the countdown.  I don’t know how this has become so important to him, and because I just feel completely worn out, don’t really care to try and find out right at the moment.

We set the alarm and fall asleep.

10:45 pm

Son pops up, waking me up.  He is afraid he will miss it, although he is also exhausted.  He has gotten sick during the last couple of days and hasn’t slept well.  He blows his nose every few minutes, just like I did around Christmas.  I love that boy.  We share everything.

We fall back asleep.

11:15 pm

Son pops up.  I wake up and tell him, not yet.  We fall back asleep.

11:55 pm

Alarm goes off and I wake up.  I roll over and tell him to wake up.  I shake him.  I talk loud.  I talk louder.  I turn on the television.  I shake him again, harder and harder until his head is rattling all over the place.  I raise him up into a sitting position and talk loud again.  “Wake up!” I yell.  Nothing.  I’ve always wondered how it is kids can sleep like a drunk adult, but only drunk adults can sleep like drunk adults.  There is no waking him.

Oh well.  I lay him back down and turn off the television.  At midnight I hear neighbors fire off a couple of fireworks off in the distance, then the older dog jumping frantically against the garage door.  She’s the coward of the family and hates any loud noises.  Guns, fireworks, shrill whistles, even the whining sound of my son’s electric scooter sends her into a panic.

I fall back asleep.

12:45 am

Son pops up.  “What time is it?” he asks me.  I try to explain what has happened to him but he won’t accept a word I say.  He is way over-tired on top of his being sick, and now this.

“How can I see the countdown?” He keeps asking me, over and over.  He is irrational, mad, and sad, all at the same time, and begins to cry.

“How can I see the countdown?” He’s out of bed, pacing the hallway, then back in bed, his question coming to me over and over in the dark.  “Did someone record it?  Can we rent it at Blockbuster?  Will it be on again?  How can I see the countdown?” It’s now one in the morning and I’m laying in bed with a crying boy who wants to see a countdown that he will never be able to see.  Try explaining that one away sometime.  I think we’ve all somehow raised a generation of children who think they can either rent anything they need, or at least buy it used on Ebay. 

It’s strange, to hear him cry like that.  He’s never been one to cry much, no matter what, so I let him cry.  It’s good for him, to get it out like that.  Besides, it’ll help clear his head.  He has a box of tissues over on his side of the bed, but because the bed is against the wall, and I’m on the outside, I hear him blow, then faintly see the tissue fly over my head as he throws it towards the floor.  In the morning it’ll look like it snowed a good foot in the room.  I let him cry for what seems like two hours, but is probably more like fifteen minutes, then somehow coax him to sleep.

5:30 am

I wake up.  It’s a new year and I live in only one house.  I have a carload of junk waiting for me.  A cat is laying on my chest, purring.  Over on the next pillow, my son’s breathing sounds more relaxed and less stuffy.

I get up.

8:00 am

I write this.  I’m not sure what will happen when he wakes up.  I know he’ll be bent out of shape about missing the countdown.  He’ll hold a grudge and be grumpy.  He’s like that.  It’s part of his nature, unfortunately.  But we’ll move into this year just like we’ve moved into all of the others.  And maybe I’ll even try to explain to him that watching the ball drop wouldn’t have been that great anyway.  I mean, Dick Clark wasn’t even there.  In the two or three minutes I watched, they kept saying that he was ill or something, but I think he may have just begun to finally age and wasn’t comfortable with the idea of going on television, even if it was New Year’s Eve.  I mean, if I hadn’t aged for nearly half a century, and then suddenly started to just before I had to go to work, I might think about calling in sick too.

But I don’t have that problem.  I’ve aged fairly steady all along. 

And yes, if you’re younger then forty, I am naked under my towel.  I’ll admit it.  Go ahead and giggle, I don’t care.  Hell, even if you’re older then forty, go ahead and giggle.  Consider it my gift to you.

Happy New Year.

A new year calls for some new pictures. 

Behold the beginning of the all-new Life On The Cold, Wet Farm series.

Click, click.  Where’s Barncat?  Did he even make it home last night?  Never trust tomcats, even fixed ones.  I don’t care what anyone says, they’re just up to no good.  Here kitty, kitty, kitty.  Come and scratch the photographer’s hand up.

Just because Orionoir wanted to steal something to help start the year off right.

At exactly 7:35 am this morning, I turned on my computer and was reminded that I was to report for jury duty by 8:00 am.  I’d forgotten all about it, and still had a small boy fast asleep in his bed.  Get up, I told him, or I’ll be arrested for evading my civic duty.  I may be paraphrasing.

Right before noon, I heard the judge say, Mr. Ecklund, you are excused, and I am not paraphrasing that.

Everything in between will have to wait until I catch back up with my lost half of day.  But all in all, it’s been a fairly uneventful morning, although for the briefest of moments, I was juror number 4, and seated directly behind a self-confessed, Vietnam veteran, government trained, killing machine.  And no, I’m not paraphrasing.  I was that close to the real thing.  I could have reached out and touched it if I’d wanted to, although, of course, I knew better.  After all, the judge had told us not to throw away our common sense, just because we’d walked through the doors of his courtroom.

An impossible Monday.  Jury duty, followed by my discovery that high-speed internet is closed in Salem on Mondays.  Who would have guessed.  The first cafe - system down.  Second cafe - closed on Mondays.  Library - closed on Mondays.  Parked outside the Apple store - more battery required then I had, plus the sun was way too low and the reflection was impossible.

So I’ve retreated to the living room couch to watch Napolean Dynamite, relax, and laugh a little.  Supposedly the movie was made by some boy right here in Salem.  I can believe it, although I highly doubt he got much of anything shot on a Monday.

I’ve been thinking about the things that might have gotten me dismissed from jury duty.  My best guess is my reply to the question: List the jobs you’ve had in the past.  Good lord, I thought, an essay question for jury duty?  I wrote Too many to list, but never an attorney. In hindsight, I suppose this might have been taken as a jab at the legal profession and gotten me the boot.  But at the time, I wasn’t even trying to be funny, let alone a smart ass.  Oh well.  I guess I’ll never know the real reason, but then, didn’t I just say the other day that life should be full of mystery?

I’ve also been thinking what it feels like to go through life calling yourself a killing machine.  How can you take yourself serious?  Or is that the problem, you’re already taking yourself too serious?  Another guy on the jury claimed an overall distrust of the whole court system.  He’d had his own run-ins, but no one elaborated.  Two people claimed they didn’t want to stand in judgment over anyone else because when they got to heaven they would be judged tenfold over, or something like that.  I’ve actually forgotten the number of fold overs.

But like I said earlier, I made it to juror chair number four but no higher.  Maybe the judge saw I’d brought Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and thought I was there to challenge him or was just all wound up tight about injustice.  But like everything else about today, it too shall remain a mystery.

My brother had committed some crime by flying remote control airplanes and missiles into empty buildings and hillsides next to some obscure city, then retreated to a mountainside cabin.  I’d found him, sitting on the kitchen floor, staring into an empty refrigerator, saying over and over that things had just kind of gotten out of hand.

“Stay away from the door,” he told me.  “There’s snipers everywhere.  Look at this.” He shows me a fresh bullet hole in the refrigerator door, just inches from his hand and head.  “I hate this,” he says.

I try to hold him to comfort him, but we are no good at it, so we walk around the cabin, trying to appreciate everything that is so good about the place.  We try not to think about it, but he will be dead the second he walks out the door.  We both know it.  We look out the windows at the clouds passing across the points of distant mountains.  Birds chirp and sing.  Two deer run by, right next to the cabin, and the dog, laying just outside the door, only looks up at them as they jump over her curled body.

“Maybe I can get you out of here,” I tell him, and try to come up with some plan to sneak him off the mountain.  I have a remote control plane in the back of my car, and somehow think that maybe we both can squeeze onto it and fly down to the city below, avoiding the snipers and military jets we see circling the mountain.  It is an impossible plan.

We continue to stare out the windows, the breeze blowing in through the open front door.  The trees sway back and forth, and except for what is waiting for him outside, my brother and I both agree that it is a perfect day.

I need a new burst of accomplishment.  Too many things cannot be found since the move.  After some searching, I found the battery charger, but not the rechargeable batteries.  My cordless mouse has no patience for the disorder around here, and doesn’t understand the packing methods of a nine year old.  Winter hats and gloves were nowhere to be found, and yet the animals, too lazy to lick an ice block to survive, needed water.  And where is the spare battery for my camera? 

The garage is a disaster area and needs my full attention, but then, aren’t the photo albums coming along nicely?  I’ll upload more pictures over the next couple of days.  Maybe a whole album devoted simply to pictures of myself.  Wouldn’t that be something?  Maybe a few of me posed with a sandwich or a cup of coffee, like I’m some wild bird that’s been snuck up on while feeding.  I better practice my surprise face.  So photo albums or clean garage?  What’s it going to be?  We can’t have it all.  Not all at once.  A show of hands, please . . . and it looks like . . . photo albums.  Well, that really was no surprise.

I do have a question that I know can never be answered.  Who taught me how to call the cows in to eat?  Come On in a loud, booming voice that carries much further then my normal, everyday squeak.  Am I mimicking someone I heard years ago, growing up?  Did I make up my own call?  Did cows respond when I was just a boy and it sounded more like just a kid calling over to some other kid to come and play, and not like ‘get over here now because there’s hay waiting for you’?

Sitting in that room yesterday, waiting for the jury to be called, I couldn’t help but think of how lazy and demanding everyone has become.  Every single one of us.  No one wants to move, and if we do, we roll our eyes and make faces and act like the world is about to come to an end.  So what if we have to sit around and wait.  What’s the big deal?  Does everyone actually think that they’re up to something so important that it can’t wait? 

I think it may all boil down to choice.  We’re given so much room for choice.  Everyone gets a choice.  You should have seen the inefficiency of the court employee as she was forced to run continuously back and forth across this giant room to gather up juror questionnaires as another employee read off our names.  Two state employees to organize a stack of papers?  And the thing is, I know she was just reading them in the order of our juror numbers, so why not just put our numbers on chairs and make a sign that says “Sit on the chair with your number” and be done with it?  Are people not capable of that?  Would that be so hard for us?  The answer is, of course.  Someone would start bitching and moaning about not being able to sit wherever they choose or some such nonsense, and because we have this bent out of shape attitude about personal freedoms and choices, someone else would file a lawsuit, and the whole simple idea of chairs with numbers would be scrapped.  I saw the same thing when I went to the movie theater with my son and the entire second and third grades of his school.  The teachers had the kids lined up when we entered the theater, which of course was a necessity just to fit through the door, but then once we entered the theater, it became a twenty or thirty minute madhouse as all the kids zipped around looking for the perfect seat.  It was crazy.  No one in their right mind gives two full busloads of eight and nine year olds freedom of choice.  What’s so wrong about marching them in like ants and plopping their skinny little butts down in own seat after another, filling one row, then the next, until everyone is sat?  What would be so wrong with demanding a little order from ourselves?

Update: My title isn’t quite accurate, is it?  People line up nicely for coffee.  And sporting events, I guess.  There’s always a nice line there.  Oh, and the bathroom, but then, mostly only at sporting events.

Striking up a bargain to ignore both nail holes and painting for the time being, Molly and I get on with our day.  Look!  Art on the walls!  Something for an earthquake to shake loose.  Yes, that’s what we need around here - a good earthquake.  A real shaking so that my house makes perfect sense.  I’ll blame it all on the earthquake.  Oh my god!  Look!  The earthquake rattled all of the clothes right out of the dresser drawers and onto the floor!  And who can believe it?  Who would ever guess that an earthquake could generate so many dirty dishes?  Not me. 

In a perfect world, everything can either be classified as an insurance claim or a workable solution for world hunger.  It’s either one or the other.

The cat, by the way, is much better at ignoring nail holes then me.  But then, she’s also not bothered if her crap drops over the side of the litter box.  I’d have a hard time with that one.  Not that I use a litter box or anything.  I’m just saying.

I may run out of money sometime this afternoon, so everyone be on their toes.  There’s no telling what will happen if we reach that point.  Have you ever heard of anyone buying a house when they don’t have a job?  I don’t think I have, or at least, I hadn’t.  Will she ever find a job?  Will she ever take her hands out of my pockets?  I’m not made of money, you know.  Anyone who knows anything knows I’m made entirely of packing peanuts.  You can’t spend packing peanuts.  You can’t buy a house and forever count on the goodwill of a man made of packing peanuts.  It just doesn’t work very well.

But neither does the cookie recipe I tried last night.  Yes!  I made cookies!  Hurray, except that the baking instructions are written as fiction, and the ending was all wrong and burnt.  Who writes fictional baking instructions for cookies, that’s what I want to know?  It’s downright cruel, that’s what it is, and makes me rethink this whole fiction writing dream that I harbor inside my big round head.  And I have only one afternoon to get it right, because my son has a friend coming over after school.  Fresh cookies and a play date all in the same week!  Look at me go!  There’s no room at all here for tiredness and depression.  Well, except for briefly when the cookies were all bottom burned.

But don’t get me wrong, I ate the cookies anyway.  I’m a survivor, that’s what I am.

The funny thing about money, or even about running out of it, is that it has very little to do with play dates between kids.  But the snacks will be important.  It’s all about good, afternoon snacks.  I can at least remember that much from my childhood.

I’m all out of time.  Two different banks, the post office, and then zip over to the school, where the hooligans await.  I’ll feed them flattened out fruit, cleverly marketed to make the kids think they’re getting a whole foot of goodness.

I think I’ll invent a gum that comes wrapped in a tiny spool, spread so thin that it’ll be called Mile Long Gum.  The commercials will show happy moms and dads, watching as their kids blow bubbles so big that they float off into a happy sunset.

I still haven’t told everyone about my revolutionary new idea to redesign all houses to include hidden rooms that only adults will know about.  Kids will be given the scare of their lives when they are told that adults can disappear at will.  They will come to respect our presence much more.  It’ll work, I’m telling you.  I’ve built a demo, installing a false back in every clothes closet here in the house.  Would anyone like to donate some babies for me to raise, so that I can accurately test my new system.  I’d use my own son, but he’s already useless, having grown up thinking that I am always within distance of his yelling.  What I need are fresh babies.  Three or four should do.

The Civil War hadn’t been over more then ten years when my great-grandfather, Peter J., became suspicious one day.  Newly arrived in the United States, battling a language barrier and attempting to support his growing family on his meager teacher’s salary, Peter J. would have little spare time for any investigating, but would, it ends up, pass on his suspicions to his youngest son, Simon Olaf, my grandfather.

Born late in the year 1900, Simon Olaf would enter the world at a time when nearly everything felt magical.  From radio to indoor plumbing, electricity, the telephone, the automobile, and the acceptance of flight.  Simon Olaf would witness a man walking on the moon, and would shave daily with an electric razor.  If his coffee grew cold, he could warm it up in a microwave oven, and if his heart ever gave out, he could have it repaired.  And in the mornings, if his home felt cold, he could warm it up within minutes without the need to split a single stick of wood.  Simon Olaf’s world was much different then that of his father, and with each passing year, life in northern Minnesota became easier.  Life had never been more convenient.

So it should come as little surprise that Simon Olaf, the youngest son of Peter J., never felt the need to explore the suspicions of his father.  Surrounded by so much convenience, curiosity would become a thing left to others.  And while I can imagine that there were times when he’d look in the mirror at his own reflection, thinking about the things that his father had said, I imagine that those times were most likely few and far between.  Because in spite of all the conveniences born in his lifetime, Simon Olaf still remained, at heart, a working man.  A carpenter and construction worker, the man built bridges and roads and houses his whole life.  He would father seven children and marry two women.  Life would consume him, just as the conveniences would soften him, and there would be little time to explore the suspicions of a now long dead, Swedish school teacher.  Simon Olaf, through no fault of his own, would take the suspicions to his grave with him, not once uttering a single word of them to any of his five sons or two daughters. 

They say that some things skip a generation, like the probability of having twins, or heart disease, or even baldness.  I’ve heard jokes about good looks passing up entire generations of Swedes, although it’s almost always a Norwegian doing the telling, if you’ll notice.  I never did understand this friendly animosity that existed between the Swedes and Norwegians in my life.  My grandmother, a full-blooded Norwegian, would make some joke about the Swedes never wanting to take off their snowshoes, and my grandfather, a full-blooded Swede, would retaliate with some joke that had a punch line involving Norwegians eating nothing but fish. 

None of it made any sense to my young ears, but I would laugh anyway, right along with everyone else, never knowing that it was all just a test.  I know now that my grandfather was testing me, seeing if I measured up, finding out if I should be trusted with the suspicions.  I should have known this all along.  An old Swedish man never utters a single word without some purpose in mind.  Words are not something to be wasted.  My grandfather knew this, no matter how many conveniences life threw his way.  Life may be good, but you don’t waste time talking about it.  No, you keep things to yourself.  My grandfather knew this, just like his father before him.  You keep your mouth closed.  You tell no one anything.  Secrets are secrets, and there’s a reason that emotions are on the inside, where no one else can see them, and things should be kept that way.  My great-grandfather passed this onto my grandfather, who in turn passed it onto my father, who in turn did his best to pass it onto me.  Some things, it ends up, do not skip generations.

The blog world is abuzz with awards talk, but I’ll tell you, all anyone needs is a Santa robot to be the center of attention.  Just you and your Santa robot, walking the halls of the elementary school.  Just you and your Santa robot, standing in front of a roomful of third graders, their small mouths not knowing whether to smile or gape, their small but growing minds still struggling with whether they should believe or not.  And when you plug in your Santa robot, well, let’s make it perfectly clear, there’s no blog award in the entire world, either now or ever, that will compare to that moment.

I don’t mind going grocery shopping, or even giving all my money away just so we can eat, as long as there continues to be magazine headlines waiting for me at the checkout stand.

A couple wants two split their two-headed baby, with each couple receiving one head.  That sounded reasonable to me.  Downright Biblical.  Old Testament, of course.

And I see that Saddam is being whipped into shape by a giant woman.  And wearing a diaper.  Hmmm.  That’s a little questionable.  I mean, I think we would have heard more about this giant woman, don’t you think?

Anyway. 

Kelly Rippa lost weight and according to the revealing cover photo, now has a bony chest.  Big deal.  I spent a good third of my life with a bony chest.  If I could get all of these boxes unpacked, I’d show you a photo.  I’d like to tell you that I looked just like Kelly, but of course, you’d see right through that lie.  But once in eighth grade, at a basketball game, all the guys came running up to me and said that the visiting schools girl’s team had a girl on it that was a dead ringer for me.  A lost twin or something.  Reluctantly, I followed them over to the court for a look, and sure enough, standing there in front of us all was the eighth grade girl version of me, bony chest and all.  Try living that one down.

And so and so might get back together with so and so, which doesn’t interest me in the least.  And a midget serial killer has finally been caught apparently.  But with no time to read, I have no idea if it’s someone killing midgets or a midget killing someones.

Oh the sweet mystery of living in America.

I do sometimes wonder if that girl grew up to look just like I do now.  I mean, wouldn’t that be something.

Good morning.  Today I’m going back to the dump to rid myself of some excess.  The things in my life seem to have come in and out of my life as easily as air.  But I fear some of the things are sticking to me, like phlegm or fear, accumulating, trying to take over, and I need to cough it all out before I become sick.

With my things I am a cold dictator, and hand out death sentences without a second thought.  But don’t weep or pound your chests, because my things are as cold and heartless as me.  If I should pass, this very moment, would a single one of them glance my way as they haul my body out the back door.  I think not.  Besides, like it or not, we are all at war with our excesses, and today is just my turn to take the fight to them.

May the best thing win.

This talk about going to the dump reminds me that I have a speech to prepare about personal responsibility.  Let this post serve as a reminder to me, and a warning to you - pompous gas cloud ahead.

Reminders and Clues:

• My brother fell into the dump pit on his head
• He didn’t land on any old, wet mattresses
• The county has an employee whose only job appears to be keeping children in cars and trucks
• The dump once had no restraining cables around the pit
• An interesting conversation with my son, where I question him about responsibility
• I discover a major character flaw, but offer no solutions
• Brief mention of the woman who runs the weigh scale who looks like a monkey
• Some reminiscing about dumps in general
• An overall, scathing review of humanity, speckled with comic relief
• Wild speculation and finger pointing (possibly)

And it looks like we have some numbers coming in . . . yes, here they are now.  Let’s go now to our correspondent in the field, Fiscal Management Keith, who joins us from the office of Imaginary Keith in Salem, Oregon.  Fiscal Management Keith, can you hear us?

Fiscal Management Keith: Yes, thank you Imitation News Anchorman Keith.  Well, it appears that Imaginary Keith is going to squeak out a living yet another month, overcoming those incredible obstacles everyone was so concerned about back in early December.  But whether or not 2005 will be the year of economic recovery that he’s been trying to predict, is yet to be seen.

Imitation News Anchorman Keith: That certainly is good news, especially for those banking on the continuing success, or should we call it luck, of Imaginary Keith.

Fiscal Management Keith: Whether you call it success or call it luck, the story here this afternoon . . .

**door opens**

Mailroom Boy Keith: Mail call!  And sweet Jesus it looks like you raked in the bills today.  You trying to break my back, old man?  Huh?  Are ya?  Come on, fess up.  You are, aren’t ya?

Fiscal Management Keith: Why you little shi . . .

Imitation News Anchorman Keith: Thank you Fiscal Management Keith for that informative update.  We’ll certainly be checking back with you as that story unfolds.  But right now, let’s go over to Aquarium Cleaning Keith, who joins us in the living room for some tips on keeping a clean and healthy aquarium.  Aquarium Cleaning Keith, how’s it going there?

Aquarium Cleaning Keith: How’s it going?  Is that what you asked me?  I’ll tell you how it’s going.  Fuck off.  That’s how it’s going.  Let me tell you, aquarium cleaning is a dead end job.  It goes nowhere!  Did you hear that?  Nowhere!  Take some advice from me.  If anyone ever tells you how fun, relaxing, and educational having an aquarium can be, you just take a firm grip on your bottle brush and . .

Imitation News Anchorman Keith: Well, well, well.  We can certainly see that the excitement from Imaginary Keith’s recent financial survival is spreading quickly around the house.  So stay with us, because after the break, we’ll be joining Cooking Keith in the kitchen, where he’s promised to show us some of the secrets of cooking up a delicious ham, cheese, and mushroom omelette, utilizing only the bent and and broken pans left in the house after a divorce.  So stay with us and we’ll be right back.

Imaginary Keith has been corralled into painting a bedroom over at the ex’s new house, and right now he’s off gathering supplies.  At the moment the room is bright pink, with a cute little top border of dancing girls, which I think is just fine.  I mean, doesn’t every growing boy enjoy being surrounded by dancing girls?  But if he wants to waste a perfectly fine, cold, wet, and rainy morning painting someone else’s house, who am I to stop him?

I tried to tell him that we should just leave it pink.  I thought it would make for a nice experiment, with most of the work already done.  Just throw the boy in and see what comes out in ten years.  “Let’s just leave it pink and see what happens,” I tried to suggest, but he wouldn’t have it. 

I swear.  Imaginary friends are such hypocrites.  With his eager willingness to experiment on other people’s babies, but not his own, about half the time it feels more like I’ve conjured up a politician to share my time with, and not the big, lovable oaf I had in mind.

With great fanfare and discussion that bordered on argument, the painting was completed.  I was reminded once again that there is no true Democracy, and that even within families, it’s all about the electoral vote.  Some individuals are powerful while others have hardly a voice.  Some may vote, but if their opinion is not popular, they will be drowned out by the others.  Stomping off angry does little good, and in the end, everyone must toe some sort of party line.

But the pink room became the blue room, and in the end, everyone that mattered was happy.  I rushed home for a nap and a quick reminder that I’d mostly forgotten about the movie Uncle Buck.  Then it was off to pick up the boy and a friend, who were coming down from a birthday party sugar high.  All the boys had won enough tokens to buy blow-up hammers, and were busy pounding each other on the heads.  The slapstick continued as we drove home in the dark, each hit accented by a high-pitched squeak!.

“Not the driver!  Not the driver!” I repeated as the occasional blow glanced off the back of my head.

But this morning’s painting party partially inspired me to do a little painting for myself, and I grabbed up a handful of samples when I was at the store. 

The day begins at 4:30 with some vomiting.  Not mine, but the boy’s.  A couple of minutes over the toilet, I wipe his mouth, then he climbs into bed beside me, forcing me to sleep on my side.  I love him, sure, but I don’t love his breath.

The day begins again at 4:45 with some more vomiting and a small bit of carpet cleaning.  Oh well, the carpets needed cleaning anyway, I just didn’t think I’d be getting such an early head start.  Another wipe of the mouth and back to bed.

Then again at 5:15, but this time, no carpet cleaning.  It’s funny how when we sleep time doesn’t seem to exist.  How we just slip from one point directly to the next without any feeling of the passing.  When we climb back into bed this time, I find myself trying to imagine death as just sleep - just another one of those passing through times.  But I can tell that it isn’t working.  That I’m not buying into the idea somehow.  I can almost feel myself becoming unnerved one small bit at a time and I know I need to think about something else.  It’s too early for all this.  Life and death wasn’t meant to be thought about in two minute spurts in between fifteen minutes naps, all highlighted by the vomiting of a small boy.

We try sleeping one more time, this time making it all the way to 6:00, then get up for another round.  By now he has a fever, and we just give up on the idea of getting any sleep, just like I’ve forgotten about the idea of thinking about death.  Each time we head back to the bathroom, I step on the wet spot on the carpet, and it helps keep me grounded in my current reality.  I sometimes wonder if we surround ourselves with an endless amount of these “realities” simply so we don’t have to think much about the end possibilities.  With too much to do, there simply isn’t time to contemplate the alternative to living.

The dentist cannot be put off.  I did that last Friday at the last minute and you could hear them scowl right over the phone, so I thought I better keep my appointment.  It is agreed that the boy’s mother will come over to watch him while I’m away.  A good thing, considering that each attempt by him to get up and move results in either throwing up or another pair of soiled underwear.  Before the day is through the house will look like the barn - in need of a good mucking out.

The dentist is fine - a cleaning by the young, freckled girl, seven months pregnant.  Her belly continually pushes up against my head and I feel for any sign of kicking through my thick skull, realizing that I am getting some sort of mild pleasure by the contact.  Is it just the human contact?  The thought of new life?  An unusual diversion from the usual routine?  It has been a long time since I’ve felt a pregnant belly, although whether I’m actually doing any “feeling” is questionable, considering I’m using the top side of my head.  But you take life as it comes at you, and besides, being knocked around by a pregnant belly is a nice relief from vomit and diarrhea duty.

I arrive home and my son pops up from his nap on the couch.  “Dad!  Mom’s cleaning us out!” Apparently she’s been picking her way around the house in my absence, loading up her car with things that strike her fancy.  Oh well, less for me to worry about, I think.  Besides, anything of importance can always be stolen back.

“Good thing I got back when I did,” I tell the boy, “or she might have taken everything.” I almost make a joke about her leaving the sick boy here with me, but think better of it.  It can go nowhere.  There is no good punch line.  Historically, I have always been the one left to tend the sick, and this is in spite of my hidden aversion to all sick people.  It’s the truth - deep inside I have no patience for the sick.  Deep inside I wish for some ancient Indian tradition that demands the sick to crawl off and lick their own wounds.  But that’s all deep inside, where no one can see, especially not the sick.  It’s not their fault, after all, that they need tending.  Besides, tending the sick, especially one’s own child, can only score me points for later in life, when I’ll be needing a bit of tending.  Some days there is no way in the world that I can imagine myself in diapers with uncontrollable bowels, but then, other days, it just makes sense.  Serve the world right, somehow.  I don’t know how, but somehow.

What the hell.  The boy is sleeping on the couch, I’m steaming rice and vegetables, and am going to watch some monster action on my laptop while wearing headphones.  You know, so I don’t disturb the sick.  I rented Resident Evil 3 (I know it’s not just “3”, but I don’t really care enough to be exact), simply because I saw a preview while I was in the rental store and saw Milla Jovanawhatever run straight down the side of a building.  I’ve always liked Milla ever since she saved the world one other time with Bruce Willis in some other movie whose name escapes me at the moment.  I think it had “Five” in the title.  Doesn’t matter.

Ding! Lunch is ready.  The boy sleeps on.  I’ve untangled the gob of headphones (a twenty minute job just in itself), and am nearly ready to kill monsters.  Well, not me, but someone else.  If I actually wanted to kill monsters, I’d go out and work on the garage.  Now there’s your resident evil for you.  Did you know that parts of both Apocolypse Now and The Village were filmed right here in my garage?  I’m not kidding.  If you ever see either one of those movies, and you get to the part that scares you the most, well, that’s the part they shot here in my garage.

But I digress.  It’s lunchtime, that’s what it is around here.  And look, the boy is stirring.

It took me almost all day to realize that the house was too warm to really get anything accomplished.  I was all out of whack and wobbly after my short stint as Nurse Keith and had a hard time keeping my eyes focused on anything for more then five minutes at a time.  I tried reading, then writing, then wandering around outside, tending to animals and reacquainting myself with things I’d been away from for nearly three years.  Rusty come-a-longs and shovels, piles of one gallon pots, extension cords and sacks of wild bird seed, all still hanging on nails or sitting in the exact spot they were I’d left them.  With the exception of a divorce and a thick layer of dust and cobwebs, it’s almost as if nothing has happened.  Almost like the sleep I talked about the other day, where falling asleep and waking up take place at the same moment, yet hours apart, with nothing at all happening between the two.  No passing of time and nothing lost or missed.

But it’s not the same, I know, and walking around, taking it all in, I know this.  Everything needs to be picked up and touched and somehow set back in motion, because before I’d left, that’s what everything around me had been - motion.  There’d been plans and dreams and when something was moved or set down in a place, it was because it was on it’s way there.  Everything had been a part of something bigger, whether it knew it or not, and was eager to get wherever it was that it was going.  Even me.  So walking around now, seeing what happens when everything is ignored for so long, it becomes easy to understand why I have been so slow and depressed.  I am covered with dust, all of me, every bit of my surface.  Cobwebs cling to my dreams and everywhere you look there are mouse droppings, thousands of them, scattered along every wall and piled in every corner.  I walk around and see myself in the piles of dust and window panes, thick with webs and the hollow shells of moths and flies and anything else that thought it could make it to the light.  I hang unfinished like the door to the hay loft, off it’s rollers now for more then a year, and I reach out and touch it as I pass.  Soon I tell it.  Soon. We will all heal together, slowly, wiping away at the dust, sweeping up the droppings, and mending one another, one board at a time until we are complete.

But like I said, it took me so long to realize that it was just too warm in here to think, so I turned off the furnace and sat there, watching the temperature slowly dropping on the thermostat, making myself feel the cold that was all around me.  You turn off your furnace and you take away one of life’s cushions.  The cold pushes at you, and you are either forced to give up or push back.  There is no other choice.

Sure I’m a quiet guy, but if I’m quiet for too long, it’s a safe bet that I’ve been sick and experimenting with complete stillness.

But I think I’m getting better, and may even chronicle the adventures of my illness for posterity’s sake.

Two days on the couch gives a guy time to think. 

I realized that you know you’re getting older when you find yourself looking up medical conditions on the internet.  We’re all about answers, aren’t we?  We love our answers.  Always searching for some kind of answer.  I would think that between religion and the internet, we’ve pretty much just about got our fascination with answers covered.

Did I ever mention that I’d already worn out a housekeeper, after only one visit, and that she’d sent a replacement?  I’m not sure.  I’m not even sure if I ever mentioned the housekeeper stopping by and winning a place in my heart for cleaning my two bathrooms.  But of course, it doesn’t matter, because like I said, that housekeeper wore herself out on my two bathrooms and won’t be back, so what does it matter if I mention her now or not?  That, I guess, is my real question.  Does anything I or you say actually have any real significance?  Do our words matter?

Wait, wait, wait, that’s way too big.  I’m not the man for that job.  Let me be the first to admit it.  But then, I don’t want to get into any sort of discussion either about what job I am the man for.  That will certainly get us nowhere.  I’ve had a lot of jobs, but can’t honestly claim that I was the man for any of them.  In a few of the jobs, I was even put in charge.  If I wasn’t the man for the job, then I was at least given the job of finding the man for the job, but even then I’m afraid I came up short.

Can you tell that I’m trying to talk about disclosure?  I am.  It’s true.  Full disclosure.  It’s clear to me I’m talking about this because I’m inside of my head.  I can see it all from right in here, and it doesn’t matter what I say because in here, inside my head, everything is crystal clear.  It doesn’t matter what I say about the worn out housekeeper or the fresh from prison replacement she sent over, just like it doesn’t matter if I’ve ever been the right man for the right job, the point is, inside my head, I only hear what I want to hear.  And here’s the dirty little secret that I think you and I both already know but don’t talk very much about - I think the same thing might be true of you.

Are those attack words?  Am I trying to start a fight?  Have I gone insane from my fevers or lost all sense of propriety because I’ve run out of money?  Maybe I just don’t give a shit.  Oh, here’s another - a flying fuck.  How about “stirring up the pot”, or “rattling the cage”, or here’s a good one -"playing with fire”.  But maybe we need to strike that last one, because someone who plays with fire might very well be an arsonist, and if they enjoy what they do, they might very well be the right man for the right job, and I’ve already admitted that I wasn’t one of those.

No, I’m not trying to fight, just trying to figure out full disclosure.  What is it?  Would you or I even recognize it if we saw it?  Would God be full disclosure?  Is there even such a thing, and if there is, how would we ever have enough time to embrace it?  If you want to know everything about me it will take an eternity, but even then, I’m afraid there won’t be enough time.  Because, like I said early, you’re only going to hear what you want to here, and I’m going to have to talk or write my way around two eternities, at least, trying to find the right words and the right order, so that you might understand even the simplest thing about me.

I’ve been sweating a lot at night.

Now, some might say that this borders on full disclosure.  Not only have I now told everyone something that they didn’t know before, but something that is true as well.  I’ve disclosed something about myself.  Of course, others might say that I’m still just trying to stir things up.  You can’t just tell us that you’re sweating at night and call it full disclosure, those others might say.  You need to tell us more. Of course, those others would be just as correct.  While I am trying my best to talk about full disclosure, the fact remains, there is no end to full disclosure.  It is a bottomless pit, as endless as the number of questions others might imagine or ask.

But even if we could somehow fully disclose something about ourselves, I can’t help but wonder where it would get us.  Anywhere?  I doubt it.  Take, for example, my disclosure that I am sweating a lot at night.  Where has that gotten us?  Are we any closer to understanding one another now then we were before?  Do you know me better?  Do you have a clearer image in your mind of who I am?  Do I suddenly make complete sense? 

I think friendship is about as close as we can ever get to full disclosure.  Friendship happens when we decide to take a chance and live a small part of our life outside of the gray area that most of life is played out in.  You know the gray area I’m talking about.  The small talk and sidestepping.  The politeness and watching out for toes.  The fear to stare at anything.  It all exists within the gray area.  Almost everything we do exists within the gray area.  Like when the worn out housekeeper sent the fresh from prison replacement over for me to meet.  We moved about the house and talked about cleaning, moving safely within the gray area.  Questions and smiles, body posturing, everything.  “Thank you for stopping by,” I told her.  “I’ll let you know what I decide.” Not a lie, but not the truth.  A gray answer.

The older I get, the more tired I am of the gray area that most of life plays out in.  It doesn’t seem that there’s much gray area when we’re born, just like there’s no gray when we die.  What happens to us between the two?  How do we get so lost, that’s what I want to know.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been sweating about at night.  Maybe once you step outside the gray area our bodies don’t know whether they’re too hot or too cold.  Maybe the body needs this gray area like some sort of cocoon, and it’s the body that tricks the mind into joining it for the duration of our lives.  But who would imagine that a body could possibly trick a mind?  It doesn’t seem possibly, and yet, I was a young man once, humping my way through the days.  It is possible, somehow.

You know, the more I try to write about full disclosure, the further away I seem to be from getting there.  Maybe I’m just not the right man for this job either, which wouldn’t come as a surprise to me at all, given my history.  And this doesn’t bother me, even though you’d think it might after so many failed jobs, but I still like to think of myself as someone on the search.  A man looking for something.  An explorer, if you will, although from a historical perspective, you might have a hard time convincing anyone of this, since almost everything I might possibly discover will happen when I’m flat on my back on my own couch in my own living room.  I’m no Christopher Columbus and will discover no new world.  No, not in my life.  But then, I won’t hunt down and chop off anyone’s hands either in a desperate search for gold.  I won’t be that Christopher Columbus either.  You see how almost everything we do or say exists in that gray area?  We even write our histories within the safety of it.  Full disclosure not only seems impossible on a day to day basis, but from a historical perspective as well.

But this isn’t what I’m trying to say, is it?  I’m trying my hardest to fully disclose something to you.  Trying my best even though I’m pretty sure it’s an impossible task.  And I can’t tell you why I decided it would be about my night sweats.  I have no idea why.  No idea in the least.  Why would I talk about sweating?  I should have written dreaming instead of sweating.  That would have been so much more interesting.  Dreaming is romantic.  Everyone loves a good romance, but no one loves the idea of a man tossing and turning in bed, sweating up the place.  No one.  If you can give me the name of one person, either fictional or nonfictional, who is looked fondly upon because of their ability to sweat at night, not only will I stand corrected, but I will mail you a free gift.  You wouldn’t believe the number of things I’ve found around the house as I’ve cleaned that I have no use for.  Things that I had no idea even existed.  I throw them all into boxes and think about all of the lovely parting gifts that are now mine to give away.

When you get this far into a ramble, it’s really easy to lose your train of thought.  I know.  I am an expert at losing my train of thought.  You might even say that as far as losing a train of thought goes, I am the right man for that job, but of course, losing your train of thought is not a job.  I’ve never heard of a job where someone is paid to lose their train of thought.  Have you?  I’ll tell you what, if you have, there’s another excellent gift just sitting here in a box with your name on it.

I looked up night sweats on the internet, and of course, found something right away.  Everyone apparently already knows about night sweats and there are volumes upon volumes of articles written on the subject.  Everything is just a click away, waiting for me, but of course, the more I look, the more I discover that almost everything I find is about women.  Article after article about women sweating their way through menopause.  Of course I’ve heard of this, but like so many others, having never come face to face with such a thing, have put it to the back of my mind.  Women sweating uncontrollably, who would ever imagine such a thing?  I find my mind drifting to Jonathan Swift’s poor Strephon, who found himself confronted by the mortal qualities of his new wife, Chloe:

from Stephon & Chloe

TWELVE Cups of Tea, (with Grief I speak)
Had now constrain’d the Nymph to leak.
This Point must needs be settled first;
The Bride must either void or burst.
Then, see the dire Effect of Pease,
Think what can give the Colick Ease,
The Nymph opprest before, behind,
As Ships are toss’t by Waves and Wind,
Steals out her Hand by Nature led,
And brings a Vessel into Bed:
Fair Utensil, as smooth and white
As Chloe’s Skin, almost as bright.

STREPHON who heard the fuming Rill
As from a mossy Cliff distill;
Cry’d out, ye Gods, what Sound is this?
Can Chloe , heav’nly Chloe piss?
But, when he smelt a noysom Steam
Which oft attends that luke-warm Stream;
(Salerno both together joins
As sov’reign Med’cines for the Loins)
And, though contriv’d, we may suppose
To slip his Ears, yet struck his Nose:
He found her, while the Scent increas’d,
As mortal as himself at least.
But, soon with like Occasions prest,
He boldly sent his Hand in quest,
(Inspir’d with Courage from his Bride,)
To reach the Pot on t’other Side.
And as he fill’d the reeking Vase,
Let fly a Rouzer in her Face.

But I digress.  I’m trying to write about full disclosure, not Strephon’s ability to let fly his so-called rouzer, although the two, it might be agreed, share certain, simple similarities.

The male form of menopause, I discover, is andropause, with a whole list of symptoms that I pour over with that desperate, quiet attention that somehow comes naturally to just about everyone at one point or another in their life.  If you haven’t reached that point yet, you might not be sure what I’m talking about, but if you’ve reached it, you do know.  You know you’ve reached it when you find yourself looking up medical conditions on the internet, or thinking that every sharp, shooting pain is going to be your last.  If you find yourself staring in the mirror, and you’re past the point of looking away because you don’t believe what you see, you’re probably there.  But it’s different for everyone, I’m sure, and how you begin to recognize your own mortality will certainly be different then the way I do.

But there is was - andropause, which curiously, didn’t show up as a word in dictionary.com, although was frequently mentioned in many of the internet articles I encountered.  I did find the word climacteric, which was close, but found the definition that related to men to be somewhat vague.

Climacteric

n 1: a period in a man’s life corresponding to menopause 2: the time in a woman’s life in which the menstrual cycle end

What do they mean, the period of my life that corresponds to menopause?  Do they mean my own form of menopause, or my indirect or direct relationship to some woman’s menopause?  It’s easy to see that these are very different beasts indeed, although I liked the list of synonyms that came along with climacteric.

change of life, climax, crisis, critical, critical point, crucial, desperate, dire, midlife crisis

But what about the symptoms for andropause?  Could this possibly explain my sweating?  Is andropause part of my full disclosure, that’s what I needed to know.  How could I possibly tell you about myself if I didn’t understand the full meaning of andropause?  Full disclosure, I think everyone can agree, should never mislead or deceive anyone.  It was important that I understand andropause.

Of course, the first false road to understanding is always the definition.  We love definitions almost as much as we love answers.  We even love answering questions, when we can, with definitions.  If someone says something we don’t understand, the first thing we almost always say is, “What do you mean by that?”, which is just another way of forcing someone to define something. 

Andropause, by definition, is the time in a man’s life when the hormones naturally decline.  Well, that seemed simple enough, I thought.  Besides, reading further, I found one article to also say “it is also a time where there is a change of life that may be expressed in terms of a career change, divorce, or reordering of life.” This made slightly less sense, considering I’d met most of these conditions many times over and had never found myself in the sweating position I now found myself.

And then there was the list.  The List.  I repeat it because anytime someone has compiled a list of things that will somehow sum up you or your life, don’t you think it should be capitalized and repeated?  But there it was, The List, trying to sum me up, if in fact, it was andropause causing me to sweat my way through two or three t-shirts a night.

1. Loss of armpit and genitalia hair
2. Shrinkage of testicle size
3. Loss of libido and impotence
4. Tiredness and depression
5. Muscle weakness and bone loss

Do you start to see why full disclosure will never really catch on?  Why it’ll never be as popular as television, no matter how uplifting, self-healing, and soul freeing it might feel?  When it comes to full disclosure, at least in men, it seems that somehow all roads lead back to the testicles.  How could this have happened?  Could it possibly be like I suggested, our bodies, forcing us to live out our lives in the gray area?  I’m serious.  Why this continuous stream of hormonal reasons for everything?

But a mental explorer like me, snuggled onto his couch under a blanket, doesn’t dismiss anything without wasting at least an hour deep in useless thought.  So I went through the list, one by one, giving each and every symptom a fair and honest chance, all the while thinking about full disclosure, of course, wondering how I would even begin to approach something like “shrinkage of testicle size.” But if full disclosure was what the world wants, then full disclosure is what the world gets.  Besides, it’s not like I was going to post pictures or anything.  For all the lies I’ve ever written, I certainly don’t ever recall claiming that I was putting together a medical journal.

The list was fairly easy to dismiss.  I seem as hairy as ever, possibly even more so then ever before, so the first symptom flew right out the door.  Any tiredness and depression that I’ve been feeling over the last couple of years I think can safely be attributed to the failing of my relationship, and the events surrounding that, and is, I think I can safely say, beginning to fade.  I no longer feel nearly as tired as I once was, and actually feel more contemplative then depressed.  The andropause list made no mention of contemplation, at least not directly, so I decided to throw that symptom out as well.

Muscle weakness and bone loss is a little tougher.  I have no way to measure my bone density, at least not that I know of.  And I’ll have to admit the loss of muscle over the years, but I think this is only natural.  The beasts I wrestle these days are more mental then physical, and muscle tone just isn’t as important as it once was.  So let’s strike that one from the list.

Okay, now the tough ones - loss of libido, impotence, and testicle size.  Good grief, are we sure we want to go through with this?  Is full disclosure really your thing?  Will you somehow get through your day a little easier if I tell you these things?

How can I talk about libido without making some joke about it?  Libido?  That’s just not a word that I think I spent much time thinking about, although my body certainly did it’s fair share.  A share, maybe.  Who knows what’s fair?  Certainly not me.  Anyway, I think my libido is nearly nonexistent, but not gone.  It’s still around because I can feel it’s presence sometimes, nudging me, reminding me not to forget.  I think it is packed away somewhere, in a box out in the shed maybe, under a pile of other boxes marked Office Files and Misc.  One day I will dig it out and it will surprise me the way a box of old books might surprise someone who loves books, or an old photo album might surprise the person who forgot that they were once a child.  One day my libido will surprise me and I will feel all giddy with unspent energy.

And let’s cross off impotence right off the list.  While I haven’t had the need for an erection for quite some time now, I still find that I keep one around, just in case.  What can I possibly compare this too?  I suppose it’s kind of like the way we keep a shave ice machine in the back hallway closet, because, well, you know, you just never know when you’ll need a good shave ice.  Can you compare erections to shave ice?  I have no idea.  But I suppose you can try just about anything when you’re going for full disclosure.  So yes, I can still enjoy a good shave ice, but like I also said before, this is no medical journal.

So at this point I’ve crossed off just about everything from the list except for that tricky “shrinkage of testicle size” symptom.  Tricky?  What could possibly be tricky about testicle size, you might ask.  Well, I’m going to tell you, and I’m going to try and give you my best outside-the-gray-area answer.  Full disclosure demand its.  You demand it, if you’ve read this far, and yes, even I demand it.  Let’s face it, if a man can’t talk about his own testicles, then what’s the point?

So here’s my answer.

I don’t think there’s a single man in the world who could tell you if his testicles are shrinking.  Let’s face it, men don’t pay that much attention to things.  I don’t think most men would notice something like that until they’re rolling around on the couch one day, and it suddenly dawns on them that those crazy things aren’t constantly getting in the way, or needing adjustment, or a good scratching.  It won’t be until that very moment that they look down and realize that their testicles have shriveled completely away that your typical man will notice anything.  You’ll know it when it happens to the man in your life because you’ll hear him say something like, “What the hell?” In man-talk, “what the hell” can mean quite a variety of things, but one of the least used definitions, or should I say, the least talked about definition in this gray world we live in, is “Where’d my testicles go?” It should be noted, however, that most men will feign nonchalance, even if caught staring at their missing testicles.  “Sure I said, ‘What the hell?’” will be their most common response, “but I was simply being rhetorical.”

Well, like I said earlier, two days sick on the couch gives a man plenty of time to think, just like it gives a man plenty of time to roll around uncomfortably.  And yes, I did get uncomfortable, and I did need some adjusting.  Nothing took me by surprise (except maybe the complete lack of anything interesting on television), and I didn’t once utter the words “what the hell?” So I think we can safely scratch testicular shrinkage (what fool writer could resist such a setup) from the list, which leads me to believe that I am not, in fact, suffering from andropause.

I think I could kind of get used to this full disclosure thing.  It has a certain charm to it, and ends up being, I just now realize, a perfect way to waste a good part of the day.  If there’s anything else you need to know about me, just ask.  I feel like an open book right now, ready to tell anything.  And if you’re entitled to any of those prizes I mentioned, just say the word.  Not all prizes, it should be noted, come in all shapes, sizes, or colors.  Some may be inappropriate for children.  Under no circumstances whatsoever can prizes be substituted or returned.

With renewed strength, I force Imaginary Keith out into the garage with the dogs and piles of . . . piles of . . . no, no, no . . . not dog stuff, but everything else.  The garage may be free of dog crap, but I’m serious when I say that everything else is out there.  And I mean everything.  Everything that hasn’t either been touched in ten years or was just recently touched, stuffed into a box, and then somehow balanced precariously on top of the ten-year untouched stuff.  Looking out through the peephole, it is easy to see the hopelessness sweep over his big, plain face.  What a mug.  There’s no doubt about it, cleaning the garage will be a big job.

“Do you need any help out there?” I yell through the door.  Opening it would be foolish at this point.

“Sure.” Even through the hollow core garage door, his voice sounds weak.  He hasn’t lifted a hand and already he sounds whipped.

“Alright.” It is the least I can do.  No one wants to wear out an imaginary friend forcing them to clean up too much of life’s mess.  That would just be cruel.

“Here you go!” I open the door and toss his son out into the garage.  That would surely cheer him up.

“I’ve got the music, Dad!” See, already the two of them are working out their differences, so I head into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine.

***

You know, there wasn’t a wine glass in sight, so I just poured the Cabernet into a pint fruit jar.  Truth be told, there wasn’t a single stemmed glass as far as my eye could see.  Not a stem in the house. 

But with the muffled sounds of polka music, my friend’s anguished screams, and barking dogs, I can’t really claim that it’s much of a stemmed glass kind of house anyway.  Besides, as far as I can tell, the wine goes down just the same, if not easier.  And if anyone shows up, there’s always pretense.  I’ll just hold out my pinky a little before I throw them out into the garage with everyone else.

For those few serious readers, and perhaps those who find hidden meanings in the strangest of life’s places, it is with a heavy heart that I must report that the shave ice machine has been broken.

Seriously.  The actual shave ice machine was damaged last night when one of the dogs, barking at the cat through the backdoor’s glass window, finally drove me insane.  The cat, of course, enjoyed the noise of the dog and wouldn’t move.  But by the end of the day, I’d had about enough, so went down the hall and into the garage to let the dog in.

You know, if you have a house fire, it’s pretty much common knowledge that you should close the doors behind you, in order to contain the fire.  Fire will leap through an open door almost faster then you can blink.  Well, as it turns out, so do muddy dogs with their minds on cats.

So slipping and sliding and hungry for cat the same way a fire is hungry for oxygen, the dog zipped past me and into the house.  It was easy to know what was happening, because the crashing sounds gave most of it away.  And it was easy to find them both, because the trail of mud led me right to them.

But of course, I also thought I should roar something appropriate, so I yelled, “God damn it!” in one of my best frustrated and tired and sick of animal voices.  I don’t swear a whole lot in real life.  Not nearly as much as I do when I write, so you know, I like to think that it made an impact.  I like to think that everyone took notice - that my son looked up and was able to grasp my seriousness, and that the dog stopped gnawing on the cat.  I like to think that maybe even the cat understood what she had begun.  I mean, sitting there staring out the window like that, what was she thinking would happen?

But I calmed down and the dog was scruffed away.  The cat was nowhere to be seen, of course, and the boy even took it upon himself to mop up the muddy hall, although part of my “your dog” lecture might have had a hand in that one.  In hindsight, I don’t think it was the swearing that got anything done.  I usually reserve swearing for things like hitting my thumb with a hammer, or wrenching my back when I misjudge a step.  Oh, and golf.  I tend to swear when I golf.  But even when I do swear, I’ve noticed that most people around me usually just laugh, no matter what’s happened to me.  I guess I injure in a sort of funny way.  I know I golf funny.

Hold on, this wasn’t supposed to be about me.  This was about the shave ice machine.  The broken shave ice machine.

Well, there it was, right where the dog had knocked it to the floor, the handle broken clear off.  My son picked up the pieces in disbelief, clearly sad, and asked me if it would still work.  And I took them into my hands, with my own disbelief.  I mean, what are the odds of picking something by random from your entire house, comparing it to your erection, and then having it broken in two the very next day?  Not good, I’d think.

“No, this thing isn’t broken,” I told the boy.  “It’ll still work.” I gripped the pieces and gave them a small, serious shake, like I used to do with the baseball bat when I was a boy back in Little League and still believed you could get a hit just by being determined.  I looked at the pieces of the shave ice machine like I could determine them back together, and when nothing happend, set them back on the shelf.

“We can fix it.” The working man’s mantra.

You know, of all the nights you might think that I’d break into one of those cold sweats I’ve been having, I would have guessed that last night would be the one.  But no - nothing.  Not a drop.  This morning I’m as dry as a bone. 

And as much as I’d like to go on, throwing more comparisons and metaphors your way, I think I better take the day off and count my blessings.  It’s not like I’m actually religious, or superstitious, or anything like that, but cripes, you have to admit, having the shave ice machine break into pieces like that - it’s a little unnerving.

There’s hardly time for thinking because we’re off to the dentist!  My handsome young son has an appointment with the good doctor to have his genetically crooked teeth shined.  Already he is complaining, yelling from the shower.

“When are they going to start giving me some good stuff?” he wants to know.  He’s referring to the small kid’s toothbrush and swallowable toothpaste.  He’s trying so hard to be a full grown man that anything small, sparkly, or intended to be cute on purpose causes him severe distress.

“I’ll tell them to give you the good stuff,” I assure him.  Who would ever think that free samples could cause so much trouble.

“But I don’t really need any of it,” he yells, the shower still running.  “I’m saving up for an electric flosser.” When he emerges from the bathroom, he demonstrates with his hands how the floss gently shimmies back and forth, relaxing the gums.  Those were his exact words.

“I used to shimmy like an electric flosser,” I tell him.  “Look.” I shake around the room like I’ve gotten myself tangled in a whole spool of dental floss, which makes the boy laugh.

You know, sometimes I think I’ll miss those big, crooked teeth of his.  I think I’ll miss these days when it feels like there’s no other smile like his in the entire world.

I don’t watch much news, so things like a tsunami washing away 160,000 lives take me by surprise, which I guess isn’t saying much.  Things like that take everyone by surprise, not just those who are washed away.  No one is ready for something like that.

I tried to watch little bits of the fundraiser telethon that was on television the other night.  I’m not sure why.  The whole thing is sad enough, I certainly don’t need that pounded into my head, and I don’t really care one bit that movie stars are manning the phone banks.  That doesn’t really impress me that much at all.  Truth is, I don’t know many of them, by name, I mean, not personally, and if I called I would be hard pressed most likely to figure out who was who.

“Is this Meg Ryan?” I might ask, and end up embarrassing someone like Leonardo DiCaprio.  I would hate for that to happen.  I’ve heard he’s already sensitive about his hands, and certainly wouldn’t want to damage his career by getting him thinking about his voice.  “No, no.  You just sounded so perky.  Really, I knew it was you, Leo.  Come on!  Leo, I was just screwing with you.”

But like I said, I kept trying to watch little bits of the show, but each time some famous musician would come on, my son would get all fidgety and talkative, and it was hard to appreciate the music.

“Dad, do we have to watch American Idol?” he kept asking, which at first seemed funny because of how wrong it was, and then became even funnier when I realized how close to the truth he’d actually gotten.  I think I might have even heard Madonna trashing the song Imagine, and thought for a second that my son might confuse the tsunami fundraiser show for The Gong Show, but of course, my son doesn’t know about The Gong Show, so that wasn’t even possible.  But then, only moments before I’d thought that killing Imagine wasn’t possible either, which goes to show you that really anything is possible.

I suppose it’s not right to crack jokes at the same time as talking about the tsunami, but I figure if all the movie stars can get on television and smile and laugh and crack jokes while actually working the event, then I can say just about anything that I want as well.  Who’s to stop me?  Besides, my timing has always been off.  I’ve never been very good at knowing what to say when it comes to things serious way beyond any hope of comprehension, and I’m pretty sure I have no way of comprehending the death of so many people, all at once like that.  Life washes over all of us, all the time, a figurative tsunami so to speak, so you’d think that as a species, after witnessing so much death, we’d slowly become hardened to things like actual tsunamis, and that when they hit us, we wouldn’t feel quite so much disbelief.  You’d think that we’d get used to death, witnessing it every day like we do, but I realize all the time that just the opposite seems to be true.  We hate death, and as much as we might like to, we will never get used to the idea.

And some of us, when faced with death and disaster, just happen to crack jokes, no matter how bad the timing seems to be.  I don’t know why.

Several years ago, I hired the teenage boy next door to work for my company.  Work started at 8:00 a.m., which in the summer, means that the sun has already been up for several hours, so you’d think that it would be easy to get up and be to work on time when all you had to do is get out of bed and walk across your yard.  But for whatever reason, the boy could never seem to be on time, and was always hustling across the yard, twenty minutes late, trying to chase one of the trucks down before it pulled out onto the road.

I only mention this because one morning, quite a long time ago now, an ambulance pulled up in front of the boy’s house sometime around 7:00.  I gathered along the fence with all of the other guys who worked for me and came in early, and we watched as the ambulance workers rushed into the house, which, we’d find out later, was because the boy’s mother had had a serious heart attack.  But I didn’t know this at the time, and it’s important to remember this, because I would never joke around about someone’s mother having a heart attack.  That’s important to remember.

Anyway, we all knew it was serious because the ambulance guys were rushing all around, but then we saw the boy step out onto the front porch, which given the circumstances, wasn’t strange at all.  But in my mind, all I could see at that moment was the boy who was never on time for work up earlier then I’d ever seen, and all I could think to say was, “At least it looks like he’ll be to work on time this morning.”

I wish I had a good defense for the things I say, but I don’t.  Maybe I think that people deserve to be caught off guard when life seems too overwhelming; that somehow it helps people, like throwing them a lifeline so they can pull themselves out of the impossible situation.  I don’t know.  Maybe I just need to grow up.  Who knows.  I suppose it’s a little bit of all that and more.

But until the world ends, or tsunamis wash us all away, I’m sorry to say that there will always be people like me wandering around, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  We’re easy to spot.  We’re the ones who’ve never minded people staring at us like they want to kill us.  You know the ones.  We’re the people who never have anything to say, but then somehow end up talking when everyone else is smart enough to shut up.

The feeling of arriving somewhere creeps over me, so I decide to turn off all the lights and wander around the house with only a flashlight.  I think it’s because I’m alone and experiencing a flash of accomplishment.  It’s the first time the house has been silent for four days, and I’ve always been better at wasting time when it’s quiet.

I decide to pretend I’ve discovered a cave with berber carpet.  I will take pictures of things using only a small flashlight, all the while telling myself how nice it feels to be able to go spelunking with bare feet.  The berber feels nice, although I can tell with my bare toes that the cave is littered with toys, clothes, and what feels to be dishes.  My big toe confirms this, tracing the outline of a plate, then a cup, then another plate.  Yes, a boy has inhabited this cave, and judging by the sickly odor of old ketchup, not that long ago.  The beam of my light bounces off a square of reflective glass, confirming the presence of a television.  We are obviously in the largest room of the cave - the living room, if you will.

“Let’s see if there’s anything to eat around here,” I say out loud.  Unlike most caves, this one doesn’t make my voice echo or bounce around at all.  “Let’s try this way.”

The cat follows me around, obviously thrilled with my choice of games.

“You can take those hiking boots off,” I tell the cat.  “The cave is carpeted.” She looks at me like I’m crazy, then heads off into the dark.

I’m glad cats don’t listen.  Really.  Once I hear the squeak of those four small hiking boots on linoleum, finding the kitchen is a breeze.

When I looked up, my friend Randy was in someone’s yard and had broken off two big branches from an evergreen shrub, and was holding them up to the sides of his face, pretending to have a giant pair of mutton chops.  I smiled, then looked away, searching for my own joke. 

When I looked back, he had not only somehow managed to topple over the an entire brick wall, but had whittled a five foot section of it to resemble a giant, peeled apple.  We both start laughing at the foolishness, but just then a woman drove up and starting chasing us off.  It was her wall that Randy had wrecked, and she chased us down the street, all the way back to the car, yelling nonstop in Spanish.  Neither one of us could understand a single word she was saying.

What a break, we thought.  We can’t be in trouble if we can’t understand anything that she’s saying.

But wouldn’t you know it, we’d managed to park the car directly in front of a translation store.  What were the chances of that?  I reluctantly followed the two of them through the front door, Randy’s ear firmly gripped between the strong fingers of the woman.

“Take a number,” two men at the counter said, simultaneously.  Both were Mexican, and from the sound of it, spoke perfect English.  The woman, with Randy’s ear still in her grasp, rattled off something, making both of the men behind the counter smile.

I knew we were in trouble, but couldn’t resist looking around for something that resembled a giant peach.  Somehow I knew that if I could find something that looked like a giant peach, Randy and I would start pretending that our heads had grown really, really big, just like James’ head in James and the Giant Peach.  And that would be really funny.

Although I haven’t said much about it, I’ve been on the hunt for a Qwest serviceman, because if I’m ever going to get DSL service at this house, I’m going to need a serviceman in my corner.  My conversations with Qwest customer service have been anything but helpful.  Customer service has been anything but helpful.  As far as “customer service” is concerned, I think I’m the only one holding up my end of the bargain.

“I’ll give you a call back in three to five days,” the customer service reps say.  Twice.  Two different customer service reps.  And that was a month ago.  Cripes, you’d think I’d asked them out on a date and they now felt this need to avoid me.  All I want to do is spend some money.

Okay, so spending money is kind of like a date, but that’s not my point.  What is my point?

Oh yea.  I needed a serviceman in my corner.  What I needed was someone who actually knew what the hell was going on, and today, I spotted him, just getting into his truck at the end of my road.  I stopped the car, rolled down the window, and told the man my dilemma.

“Sure.  I saw a free pair in the box just now.  We can do that.”

You see, that’s the kind of thing you’ll never get from a warm body in a headset and ergonomically correct chair sitting somewhere halfway across the country.  You want something done, you need to find the people who actually do the work.  And no, sniveling and sounding irritated doesn’t count as work.

You know, like dating.

No, wait a second.  That doesn’t make any sense at all, does it?  Dating isn’t work.  Dating is . . no wait, that does make sense.  Dating is work.  Okay, but it’s not sniveling or . . . oh hell, forget it.

Anyway, I’m not talking about dating.  I’m talking about getting DSL and having a serviceman in your corner.  At least I thought I was.

“I’ll call them right now and have someone give you a call,” the serviceman said.  “Are you going to be home?”

So yes, if you want to stop by, go ahead.  I’m home.  As a matter of fact, I’ll be home all this month, waiting on my phone call.

You know, it’s a good thing I’m not dating, don’t you think?  A dating man, if I did happen to be such a thing, would never have time to sit around and wait on the phone company.

My attempt at full disclosure isn’t going so well.  I can’t get anything out.  I’m swelling with things to be disclosed.  I’m full of myself. 

I’m thinking about disclosing what I think about my friend who emailed me the other day to say that he and his wife are having a baby, but then I keep thinking that’s not much of a disclosure at all.  It’s not really about me, no matter how I look at.

The email was sent to three of us, laying out a few important details, like when the baby would be born, how happy they were, and that none of us friends would be allowed to name the baby.

As far as I could tell, this last request should be handled like all other unreasonable rules that I encounter in life.  I emailed immediately back with a short list of name suggestions.

Keith, naturally, was on the list.  There aren’t enough Keiths in the world.  Sure it’s not a Bible name, but I don’t think Bob is either, and look how it took off.

And I thought that Gran Turismo was sort of catchy.  My friend loves that game, so why wouldn’t he love a baby named Gran Turismo just as much?  It made perfect sense.  Just think how much everyone will love playing with the baby, I told him.  They’ll spend countless hours trying to figure out his every move.  I say his, but I’m pretty sure Gran Turismo could go either way.  Or maybe just Turismo for a girl.  You know, let her grow into the Gran part.

And that was it.  Having a new baby is hard enough, so I thought keeping the list short and sweet was rather helpful of me.  And I also offered to take any extra babies that his wife might have.  You know, just in case they had twins or something.  I’m there for them, and I wanted them to know it.

I’m still waiting to hear back about the names, but since the baby isn’t due until July, I suppose they’ll wait until the last minute to spring it on me.  Secretly, I’m pulling for Turismo.  I like my name, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t help but think of where I might have gotten in life if my own parents had named me Turismo.

I think with a name like Turismo I would have turned out a lot cooler.  Better hair, a cleaner car, and maybe even a tattoo.  But let’s keep that last part to ourselves.  If they start thinking of their new baby with tattoos, I’m afraid it’ll blow the whole deal.

The problem with too many ideas is that implementing them is just so much of a burden.  Sure a blog is an outlet, but it’s no solution.  What I need is a religion, or maybe a government.  Maybe even a government agency would be enough.

Have you seen the new H&R Block commercials?  I’m telling you, they’re on to something big, and I don’t think they even know it.  What I need right away is my government agency so I can steal the idea and save this country before it’s too late.  Our first campaign will be called - No Dollar Left Behind.

Gambling, of course, is the answer.  Taxes are okay, but if you really want people to give you all their money, and enjoy themselves, you need to make it fun.  Taxes aren’t fun, but gambling is.  H&R Block now has this nice little deal where you can take a chance on doubling your refund.  What a marketing ploy.  You have to love it.

But when I get my government agency, I’m going to crank it up a notch.  I’m so tired of all the government lying that my government agency will simply tell the truth.  Yes, it’s true, my government agency will need all of the money, but everyone, and I mean everyone, has a equally fair and honest chance to win some of it back.  Forget one man, one vote.  Everyone knows what a crock that is.  And forget electoral votes.  Forget campaigning and popularity.  Forget wealth and influence.  There will be no such thing as power ties and television debates will become obsolete.  When I get my government agency, things are going to different.

Like my idea to make April 15 the big giveaway day, when some lucky taxpayer will have the chance to walk away with the biggest taxpayer’s refund.

I know I’ve been asking for free babies lately, but I’ve changed my mind.  What I need is a government agency.  Does anyone happen to have an extra one sitting around they don’t need?  Just about anything will do, although I’d prefer not to start my agency handing out milk or cheese, or anything like that.  But if that’s what you have, I’ll take it.  I’m not picky, just anxious to get started.

Funny, that it should take me so long to realize that Technorati was targeting me for what they think is some appropriate marketing.

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