Life Imitates Blog.

I just got an email from my father. That in itself isn't a bad thing. My dad loves me, and he likes to keep me updated on the life of a RobBlog-father and RobBlog-mother. He tells me about life in the old homestead, and I always ask for money. That is our relationship.

In an interesting note of serendipity, This week in Journalism, we studied journalistic law. I'd never been that interested in law, but as a blogger, I took special interest in words like "libel," and "slander." Especially after my Rita Coolidge comments earlier this week. I mean, I didn't bash her, but I could see where somebody named Rita Coolidge could read my blog and go, "That's not nice."

It brings me back to the days of Mom and Dad, when they used to say, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I took that to heart; that's why I blog silently . Still, I did dedicate a whole blog to Rita, and I normally don't do that to celebrities. Oh, I may poke minor jabs at, but never do I stay on topic. You know my blog better than that! The thing was, she fit my theme, and no matter how bad I ramble, I adhere to my theme like it's made of taffy. Luckily for me, it usually is, and is kinda tasty too...

Today it tastes like crow, and not Sheryl either. I am happy to say that after careful deliberation over articles of libel, I discovered that, no, I hadn't de-famed Rita. Time did that.

Just like it defames all of us. Time makes us who we are, and we can't always be popular. If you're reading my blog, then you know exactly what that means. I am the bloggy black hole of popularity. Popularity comes in, and somewhere, in a distant galaxy, divine justice comes out.

That's why, when my father told me about the upcoming Prescott High School choir concert. I rushed to my blogging keyboard to say a few words about the wonderful and incomparable Rita Coolidge. See, tonight, Rita and her band will be accompanying the PHS singers. I'd rather she not take out her blog wrath on the innocents. She has a wonderful voice, and a great repertoire, she could vocally gut them--or make them sing "All Time High" just to punish me.

Rita, I'm a blogger. I'm not worth it. Please, step away from the children.

So, I'm apologizing for any unintentional cruelty. In fact, if you didn't gather it from my previous blog, I actually DO like Rita Coolidge--Mostly her early 70s stuff. It reminds me of being a kid. I love "You," as well as her versions of, "One Fine Day," "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher," and "The Way You Do the Things You Do." My favorite Rita song is "We're All Alone," even though it wasn't until my 20s that I realized that it was a woman singing it. I always thought it was some mid-toned man like Kenny Nolan.

So, If you're anywhere near Prescott Arizona tonight, see Rita, save some singing children, and defame a blogger. It's all for a good cause.

The President Cuts a Single, and Other Reasons for Appendage Pulling

Do you know what the day after President’s Day is? It’s Cautionary Blog Day. That’s right, go back to your history books. Look it up. Cautionary Blog Day was established shortly after president Rita Coolidge traded a stone face place on a South Dakota rock for a career in adult contemporary radio. In hindsight, a poor career move: everybody remembers the four mountain foreheads. Nobody remembers a Rita Coolidge song.

“Without you, there’s something special about you…”

Ok. Some of us remember more Rita than we’d care to admit. We remember all kinds of bad things. It’s not by choice; it’s just there in the back of our minds like a Jar-Jar Binks pop-up. I remember lovely Rita, when she was a meter maid, but this blog isn’t about her. It’s about me.

No, it’s not about me either. This is Cautionary Blog Day. This blog is about a writer friend of mine with a cautionary tale. And no. “writer friend” isn’t Rob code for “this blog is about me”—not this time.

This time, this blog is about an unemployed writer friend of mine. No, once again, I’m not the only unemployed writer out there. There are bunches of us. Why? Because the out of work actors have stolen all the good wait jobs. Besides, we’re writers. If we were happily employed, we’d have nothing to write about. We’re happiest in our self-absorbed misery.

“We’re all alone. We’re all alone…”

Preach on sister Rita!

Writers alone are easy targets--especially the unemployed ones. Unemployed writers need to eat. Writers are not starving artists. We’re usually well fed. Either by eating our words, or eating porch kibble left out for neighborhood cats.

“The doggone Meow Mix is mine!”

Rita didn’t write that. I did. It’s part of a cautionary tale told by writers to cold nose cats trying to nibble our kibble. That’s another cautionary tale though. This cautionary tale happened when my writer friend applied for a job.

Writers tend toward work-from-home situations; they adhere to our habitat. Unfortunately, most of these situations are either multi-tiered marketing schemes or multi-fool scams. Finding a work-from-home career is harder than finding a dirty needle in a haystack, but more people are searching for the job, meaning you’ll stick yourself with the dirty needle long before you get a job that lets you work from your house. That’s right, even Rita had to tour.

The work my friend applied for was a data entry job. Supposedly, he downloaded some special super secret database software, and then tallied up all the data they could find. My friend isn’t a fool. He knows his Mount Rushmore from his Six Grandfathers Mountain. He knew to ask questions, and to not hand out any money up-front.

After a few weeks of reciprocal online interviewing, my friend signed up for the data entry program. There only seemed to be one catch: for my friend to do the job asked of him, he would need to pay for extra special software. This isn’t too outrageous. Look at my resume; I’m schooled in several thousand dollars worth of software. Sure, writers use Microsoft Word, but to keep the kibble wolf from the door, we train in a variety of multi-functional programs. I speak to the spirits through Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, and many other mediums.

“Close the window calm the light…”

Extra software did little more than raise my friend’s eyebrow. Besides, his would-be employer promised to reimburse him for any out of pocket expenditures. Of course the trick was that the out of pocket expenditures went to that employer, because this was magic bean counting software. So my friend worked out a way to wire the software people money after the employer had sent him a cashier’s check.

When my friend received the check, he Western Unioned his payment. I’m not sure how they worked this simultaneous payment plan. This was a murkier part of the story. What became crystal clear in the tale was that shortly after my friend deposited the check, his bank closed his account. When he questioned why, they told him “We don’t do business with people who deposit fraudulent checks.”

Thus the cautionary tale reaches a climax. My friend needed to cover two paths at once. He needed to file a police report, and he needed to talk to Western Union. Luckily, he went to WU first. They told him that nobody had received his money yet, and that they would stop the transaction before somebody did. In his best Rita Coolidge, my friend sang Western Union praises.

“Your love keeps lifting me…”

The other path was less fruitful, but it needed to be handled. The reality is that in 2008 the Internet crime complaint center received over 275,000 reports of online fraud. Most online predators shed their skin so quickly that they don’t get caught. That said, it’s still important to report fraud, because criminals rarely act once and they rarely quit. Someday, if they do get caught, your report will be one more nail in their coffin. Besides patterns are easier to follow when there are more breadcrumbs.

My friend felt pretty crumby. To make matters worse, when the bank closed his account, they froze his funds. There was still real money in my friend’s account. Real money my friend still can’t touch until the bank investigates things to their satisfaction.

So that’s this year’s cautionary tale. It’s not as funny as President Rita’s Facebook faux pas of 1930, but then again, what is? But just like Rita’s mistake, it’s important to investigate facts thoroughly. Just because somebody says something you’d like to believe, doesn’t make it true. Ask Rita. She’ll tell ya.

Metaphorically Speaking

So, last Monday was Valentine’s Day. The preceding Friday? That was “final pack your crap and go Day.” Yup, it was the time my mortgage company chose to slam the door on my metaphoric clutching fingers. Ok, maybe not metaphoric. They were quite real, and they really, really hurt.

For those of you who know—metaphorically speaking or not--my mortgage woe story is an epic tale. My mortgage company, Cenlar, and I have had a Beowulf/Grendel relationship. Well, except I’m not really Beowulf, and…well… they’re not really Grendel. I’d say that I’m more of a five-year-old with a Millennium Falcon and Cenlar is my father. Dad and I agree that as long as I do certain chores, I get to keep my toy.

My chores are established by Mom. This works great until mom decides to have more kids. Then there are more kids than chores—cuz apparently mom is prolific in the kid department. Mom is also a little arbitrary and drinks a lot, and that influences her ability to fairly deal out workloads. She decides the best way to handle this is to line us all up against the wall and let the Beebee gun of fair employment decide our fates.

Pump. Blam!

“Ow!”

That’s my little brother Charlie. He gets to water the horses. It’s a pretty easy job since we don’t have any horses.

Pump. Blam!

“Ow! Waaah!”

That’s my baby sister Gertrude. Mom asked her to go to the store and pick up some smokes. Gertrude pulls the power motor on her stroller and putters out. Gertrude may be young, but she’s got engine-uity. Yeah, all I’ve got are stupid puns and my Millennium Falco--

Thunk!

“Missed! No jobs for you, Rob!”

Scratch that. All I’ve got are puns.

Chewbacca wails from inside the ship.

Dad, being the benevolent father that he is, gives me time to find other chores before he takes away my toy. “You’ve had that toy too long. I can’t return it to the store, but you better get a job, or I’m gonna sell it to the gophers.

Damn gophers!

“Watch your mouth!”

“But I didn’t say it aloud!”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m Dad, now get a job.”

So I set out with my Millennium Falcon to search of a circus. Why a circus? Because, when I was three, I trained as a clown. The problem with three-year-old clowns though, is that they’re all terrified of other clowns. Why would a clown fearing three-year-old clown look for circus work? I don’t know! It’s a metaphor! Work with me! Let’s just say that that’s why I returned to work at home. Now I’m five. I’m a big boy, and I’m no longer afraid of clowns.

The problem is, there are a bunch of clowns looking for jobs out there. I’ve got the red nose and big shoes, but so do they—they have that and big-top experience: something I don’t have. Oh, I have entertained myself, but that hasn’t gotten me anything more than fuzzy hands. Even worse, I’m five and the prime funhouse hiring clown age is four-years-old. To them, I’m an over the hill ex-mama’s boy wannabe-fool.

Carnival after carnival I get tent flapped in my face. “Out of my way clown,” cry boorish barkers chasing after rube rabble cash. They don’t see my talent. They don’t see that I need work to save my Millennium Falcon. Nobody takes this crying on the inside clown seriously. I hang my whiteface in shame and return to my father.

“I can’t find work.”

“I know. “ he says, rubbing his chin. He’s eying my Falcon. It’s a little banged, and there’re makeup smudges on it. The landing gear doesn’t even pop out all the way anymore. I know he’s thinking about how disappointed I’d be if he took it.

Shaking his head, he says, “I’ll never get anything back for that piece of crap. You need to clean it up a bit.”

“I would, but I can’t afford the soap and sponge to clean it.” I spit on the plastic gun-bay windows, wiping it with my shirt. You can almost make out Han using Chewbacca as a dust mop inside. “See?”

Dad sighs and shakes his head in his usual, “I love you” fashion. “Ok, look. You write this twenty-page report on why I should let you keep the Millennium Falcon, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Ugh! I’m a joker not a writer! What choice do I have? I write the report, then I spend an extra three days correcting errors. Clowns can’t spell. I know that, so I give it to a girl at school. She looks it over, makes some suggestions. After she returns my paper, I make the final corrections, place the report in a nice folder, and bring it to my dad.

I find him working his front yard Star Wars spaceship sales emporium. He’s taking a tie-fighter from a brother and sister couple. “I’m sorry,” he says, handing their ship to my uncle Ted. Ted rents out spaceships. He hands my dad some change, and tosses the fighter in a pile marked, “fix and flip.”

I rush to Dad’s table. “Dad! Dad! Here’s my report!” I proudly extend the folder towards him.

He shakes his head. “I need you to mail it to me.”

“What?”

“It’s the rules. Mail it and then wait for my reply.”

So I mail it. Within two weeks I get a reply in the post box: “I did not receive pages 10-20. You’ll need to rewrite them.”

My floppy shoes hung low that night. Still, I’d done it once, I’d do it again--and I did! I mailed my new pages, and two weeks later I received my reply: “I need you to rewrite pages 10-20, we never received them.”

Wha?

This time I went out to talk to Dad again. I found him at the paper shredder. I thought I recognized my pages going in. Maybe I did. I knew that if that was the case, he was doing it to teach me something. I just needed to find out what it was. “Dad, I sent you those pages, why do you need them again.”

He continued shredding without saying a word.

“Dad?”

Silence.

“I see my pages right there, what’s going on?”

Another page enters the shredder.

Now, I’m clenching my fuzzy palmed fists. How frustrating! I’m doing all this work, and I’m not even guaranteed that I’ll keep my ship. I storm back to my room for another try at pages 10-20. Once again, I work them to perfection, and I send them in. My reply comes the next day.

We of Dad-lar are sorry. You have refused to complete our requested material in the allotted time. We have no choice but to move forward in our claim of your toy.

Love you bunches!

Dear ol’ Dad.

While dad slept, I tiptoed into his room. I wanted to show my love and appreciation for all he’d tried to do. Slowly, I undress. When I’m completely naked, I hop on his bed, both legs straddling him. Shocked, he sits up.

Smack! That’s the sound of a Millennium Falcon against his forehead it’s broken the door, but I feel better. Why am I naked? I wanted to make sure he remembered. And with that, my Falcon and I are out the door.

I’d run to join the circus, but I can’t. So, I take my Falcon, and flop down in an empty field. Dad is going to be mad. He’ll even come down hard on me when he does. It’s fine. I’ll enjoy my remaining time until he does. I begin motoring my ship around the field, dandelion fluff billowing in my wake.

Six months’ play time passes before Dad finally finds me. In the meantime, I’ve showed a little pirate girl my little spaceship.

“I always thought they were bigger.”

It may be small, but she likes it. She decides that she’d like to help me keep my Falcon. As a full-time pirate, she makes better than clown change. When swollen head dad stomps through my dandelion field, he’s got a little mini-note he tacks to the fuselage. It’s not the 95 theses. It’s a notice of auction. He’s gonna sell my toy to the highest bidder.

I knew this was going to happen. At least I have a little time to get Han, Luke and the rest of the rebels out before the ship goes on the block. My pirate girl offers to let me keep my toys on her Weeble ship to, and I call some friends from school to help me move them there.

That brings us to last Friday. Last Friday Dad called me and said “Send me twenty pages about why I should let you keep your falcon, and I’ll see what I can do. I wanted to hit him with the Falcon one more time, but the pirate girl said, “No, don’t. Send him the twenty pages.”

So I did. I’ve completed the packing, and Dad’s pushed the auction date back to March 15^th.We’ll see what happens.

That’s my situation in a chocolaty metaphor shell. Everything I own is packed up and waiting, just in case I need to move. Everything except this book I found, “Expressing life through allegory.” Maybe I can find a use for that…

Love Me!

It’s Valentines Day! Did you get your valentine something special? If you say, “I don’t have a valentine,” slap yourself twice before continuing with this blog.

No, I’m not kidding. Do it.

I can wait all day.

Okay, now harder.

Once more, with feeling.

Okay, that’s better. Here’s the thing. Just because you don’t have some lovelorn fool salivating over your every hip-shimmy, doesn’t mean you don’t have a valentine. First and foremost, you have yourself. That’s right. Now give your valentine a big hug.

No, I’m not kidding. Do it.

I can wait all day.

Okay, now harder.

Once more, with feeling.

Thank you. Now since it’s Valentines Day, I suppose I could tell you all about what I’m doing for the Pirate Queen, and carry about it for a blog self-indulgent “look at me the cool blogger” kind of way. I could, but I won’t. See, I don’t want you to feel like I’m rubbing her in your face. I mean that’s kind of weird, and she’s not into the whole, rubby-rubby thing anyway. So forget it, even if that is what you want.

Some love is private.

So what’s left to talk about on V-Day? Well, we could sip and spin our traditional Kool-Aid cooler topics. Did you watch the Grammy’s? What about that Lady Gaga? What did you make of that pointy-shoulder prosthetic production? Kinda odd, huh? Still, that was her point. Speaking Valentine’s Day language, she’s saying “love me, cuz I was born this way.” Ok, well that’s not really true. I mean, it is what she said, but the fine lady was born a normal coo-coo goo-goo baby. She calculated her evolution into the crazy Gaga icon we see today.

“Look at me and love me! Talk about me! Talk about my egg!”

The PQ and I talk about her eggs, but we don’t put them on the stage for all to see. The intimacy of privacy adds legitimacy to our love. Gaga fans, don’t get me wrong; we all have a closet gaga. Well, I did, but the PQ threw mine out, along with my closet Stevie Nicks. Okay, she didn’t throw out Stevie. She just untied her from the chair and let her go.

“I’m sorry Miss Nicks, Rob isn’t really good at expressing love.

The PQ says there’s only room for one love in our house—and two cats. Our cats would love Gaga. They like anything they can play with. They can’t play with lady Gaga, but I’m sure they’d love to. See Gaga screams, “love me!” but you need to do it from afar. As a public figure, her private time is for self-love.

That’s fine. Don’t get me wrong oh Gaga-ites. She’s ”Born This Way.” I get it. It’s a nice song, and even if we’ve heard the message before (and it sounds uncommonly like Madonna’s “Express Yourself)”, I think it’s good message.

“Love me.”

Some people feel alone and unloved. I’ve felt that way before. It’s a bad place. Especially since we’re so blinded by the need to feel loved that we miss those reaching out with love. Sure, that last person who needs to worry about getting love is Lady Gaga. I’m sure she gets all forms of love in her mailbox every day.

“Uhm yeah, could you move that to the ‘rubber gloves only’ stack, please?”

We all deserve love, and on Valentine’s Day, and I think “Love Me” a great message. Let’s get it up on a billboard in bright letters and cram our love need down everybody’s throat. It’s better than all the plastic surgeon and divorce lawyer signs trying to cram themselves down my throat. Those signs are based in love insecurity.

“Who can love me?”

And if there’s something we Americans share in abundance, it’s insecurity. Maybe it’s the way we scream, “Love Me!” rather than whispering, “I love you.” Maybe that should be the next hit the next sincere artist. Not three-minutes about how cool I am that you’ve got to love me, but what about thirty seconds about how cool it is to share my love with you.

It is you know.

So if you’re reading my blog, thank you. I know that sometimes I come across as sarcastic and self-indulgent. That’s because I am. I’m a blogger. But, I love others too, and, yes, it’s a good and healthy love. So if you’re reading this blog, print it out, cut it in the shape of a little heart, and stick it to your fridge with that pizzeria magnet.

Me, I’m just a jobless blogger, but you, you’re loved.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Of Paws and Persistince.

Bee-boop.

What the..?

Bee-boop.

Something electronic…

Bee-boop.

It’s eight am and electronic intrusions are unwelcome. Let’s face it, at eight am, there are very few intrusions that are Rob-welcomed. Pirate Queen snuggle. That’s a good thing…

Bee-boop.

Ok, but this noise isn’t. Persistence: It’s great when we have it, but when other things show ability to persist, it gets real annoying—

Bee-boop.

Real quick.

What the heck is the noise? I’m running down my list of annoying electronics and finally register the answer: PQ’s cell phone. It’s dying. It’s a painful waiting death, and it wants me to share. I should plug it in. That’s what it thinks.

Bee-boop.

I can’t help but agree. Hopping out of bed to find the phone, I find something better: cat yak. It’s now between my toes.

Great…

Bee-boop.

Into the bathroom I hop, foot held high, as to not stamp stomach jetsam all over the carpet. My toes feel gross. There’s a special goosh to cold cat yak that can only be experienced through spin shivers and chilled convulsions. Those spasms mingled with my manual dexterity add to the degree of hopping difficulty, so that my hop is more of a wall slam-dance really. There’s no worry of the feline goo dropping free. It’s good and stuck. I hit the bathroom linoleum with my good foot and slip-fall onto my bad ass.

Ow.

Bee-boop.

Mrowr.

I recognize the new noise: It’s a cat. It sounds like PQ’s. She’s probably letting me know that her tummy doesn’t feel good. My butt isn’t doing too great either, let me tell ya.

Mrowr.

“Shh! Cat, give me a se—“

Bee-boop.

For a phone ready to die, this one’s got enough charge to let me know for quite a while. It’s the martyr phone. I could make a PQ joke here, but she reads my blog. I’ll abstain. I’ll run with “Maybe the phone should save its strength.” You’ll laugh and we’ll pretend nothing happened.

Ix-nay on the artyr-may.

Mrowrrrr.

Well except for maybe that one.

I scoot to the toilet paper roll and pull a few sheets. Removing what ick I can from between my toes. The toes welcome the new dry feeling. Except my queen buys this cheap toilet paper, it’s sticking to the yak part it won’t remove. I’ve now successfully tarred and paper-fiber-feathered my foot.

Bee-boo—

Mrowr.

Great. I think the cat is telling me that there’s an annoying noise in the living room. Next step is to stand up. I need to wash my foot. I’m still half asleep, so I choose the sink over the tub. I know. Not a wise choice for the uncoordinated, but I’m persistent. With one hand I scrub my foot while the other hand clutches death tight around the sink basin and counter top.

Mrowr.

“Yes. And thank you too.” Some days are long before they even start. Some days we just have to push through like an unwieldy Rob-blog. I don’t mind them (the plow days—Unwieldy Rob-blogs are like watching an Earnest P. Worell film festival). Sure they’re annoying, but at least I know what I’m dealing with and I know that there’s an end.

Bee-boop.

See, the last few years were flying a holding pattern for me. A jobless foreclosure is not quite the storybook ending I was looking for, but at least I’m landing. Persistence is tough, but it’s nearly impossible in the face of the unknown. It’s easier to despair. I once read about a long distance swimmer who was trying to cross from Hawaii to California. She swam and swam, and then she hit a fog bank. She couldn’t see her goal. Thinking she couldn’t make it any further, she signaled her spotting team and she gave up. They pulled her into the boat just a few feet from her goal. If she could have seen how close she was, she could have made it.

Mrowr.

That’s me--Not the Mrowr. That’s the cat--I’m the guy trying to blindly reach my goal and for the past few years, I couldn’t see a thing.

Bee-boop.

And now with dry foot on the floor, I’m scanning the living room. I can’t see my queen’s phone either. Where the?

Mrowr.

“Shh cat! I’m waiting!”

And waiting…

And waiting…

Ever notice when you want something to happen it takes forever to transpire? Now that things have started happening, I’m feeling better. Sure they aren’t the things that I wanted, but I know how to react. I know what I need to do. There are other things out there too There’s—

Mrow—

Bee-boop.

The phone is over by the couch. I can’t see it, but it’s cornered. One more beep should do.

Mrowr.

“Sorry, not the same thing, cat.” I just need to be patient. Patience rolls in on cat feet and yaks on your floor, and makes you stand in it till it dries. I hate patience, but now there are time limits on things I can see them. I’ve applied for grad school. If I get in, I’ll find out by mid-April. If I don’t, well, I’ll find that out too, but then it’s on to plan b. I have a plan b.

Bee-boop.

I’m right! It’s by me, but where?

Between the cushions?

Now I’m tearing the couch apart.

Mrowr.

The cat’s standing by the kitchen door. It looks like she’s hungry. After what I cleaned off my foot, I can see why.

Bee-boop.

Behind the couch?

No.

Where?

It’s in the kitty tower beside the couch. How did it get there?

Bing-bong!

That’s the door. What the—

“Pizza! I have your anchovy special!”

Now the cat is standing by my leg purring. The morning fog is becoming cat-paw clear.

Bee-boop.

At least I’ve found the phone. Now I need to find the cord to plug it in. Maybe the cat will show me where that is, after I pay for the pizza.

Maybe.

It’s all a game of persistence.

You Don't Bug Me

Last weekend was movie weekend at the Rob and Pirate house. The Pirate and I wanted to watch this year’s Oscar hopefuls, but too poor, we snuggled beneath blankets, and bathed in the glow of previous Oscar nods.

“What about Dances with Wolves?”

“Naw, let’s do Avatar. The effects are better.”

Who said which? It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. Unable to find either movie, we settled for Return of The King--well, sort of. See, my queen doesn’t believe in watching series movies out of order. It doesn’t matter if it’s Indiana Jones, Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings: you can’t appreciate one movie without watching them all. That’s great, and I do agree in a certain level of elevated appreciation, but sometimes I don’t want to dedicate my whole weekend to a marathon of one movie. When it comes to Lord of the Rings, the only things more epic than Peter Jackson’s middle earth vision are the couch sores on the middle of my butt. I can’t sit still that long.

“It rubs the ointment on my butt. It puts the lotion on the coffee table.”

The queen refused, so we moved further down our epic quest for Oscar edification. Having nixed cinematic quality, we settled on Jerry Maguire. PQ and I cuddled in under our blankets, blurting famous quotes on cue. We both hate when other people do that, but when it was just us, we ramp up the dialog to melodramatic proportions, creating our own cine-sofa interpretation.

“Show me the money!” Screams the pirate queen jumping up on the coffee table, smushing my ointment tube under her toes. White ooze envelopes her toes and splurts across the table.

“I hated myself! No, I hated my place in the world.” I say bursting into tears.

“That was good!” The queen smiled wiping her feet. “I actually believed it. Baby? Baby? Aww, baby it’ll be ok…”

Some movie lines are too close to be funny. Both Jerry and I are redefining our place in the world. Dramatic shifts like that take tectonic efforts. My queen didn’t give me much time to dwell on it though, because our place in the movie had shifted. Jerry’s now in the middle of the man-hater circle chumming his guts over the waters, until finally he says, “I love you…You complete me. “

“Shut up! Shut up!” says Renee and my queen, then the movie freezes. I look to the pirate. She’s clenching the remote. “What a bunch of crap. Do you believe that?”

I always thought it was sweet. Right now I’m willing my tear ducts into reverse osmosis. “No. You’re right.” I sniff. “ It’s crap.”

“I mean, call me a cynic—“

“Cynic.” I mutter under my breath.

“…but that’s just not right.” She continues, “Who completes anybody? If you can’t be whole on your own—you can’t go looking to somebody else to fill your void.”

A dirty joke crossed my mind, but I let it go; the Pirate Queen was taking no prisoners.

“You complete me? Please! That’s not even realistic. That’s just a bumper sticker for people who think that love can be encapsulated and sold. “

“Uhm…” I’m a writer. I like bumper sticker speak…sometimes…”Well, ok… What would you rather he say?”

My queen leans back. Her eyes close as her head faces the ceiling thinking through love’s bumper sticker. This lasts three moments, when her neck snaps back and her eyes pop open like some creepy Twilight Zone doll. She says, “You don’t bug me,” and restarts the film.

“You had me at ‘hello.’”

Now it’s my turn. I snatch the remote, jab my thumb into the pause button and ask, “You don’t bug me? What does that mean?”

“It means we get along.” She sighs, scrunching her back into the pillows, my queen sits up. “What causes most divorces?”

“Cheating?”

“No, people don’t get along.”

“I think it’s deeper than that.”

“Is it? People divorce because somebody gets annoyed past the point of no return.”

“What about cheating?”

PQ nods. “If you cheated, that would really bug me.”

“No, the person who cheats, they’re obviously missing something at home, but not necessarily annoyed.”

“I think they are. They’re bugged. Maybe it’s because they’re not getting laid every day.”

Leaning back, I say “That would bug me.” It’s a bluff.

“Yeah baby, I know” she pats my leg, “not gonna happen.”

Now I’m bugged. But I’m not convinced. “It sounds so callus though.”

“You’re the one who wanted the bumper sticker. Some truths don’t make pithy slogans.” The Pirate Queen leans in, resting her head on my shoulder. “Love isn’t a neat package. It’s a bunch of little gives and takes. It’s about, after the big giddy fades, and somebody wants to watch Strange Brew, you love them anyway. “Rocking her head back, she kissed my cheek. “Like I love you.”

Leaning forward, the queen rubs a dollop of ointment from the table, “Now let’s watch the Lord of the Rings.”

And so we did. Why? Because I love my queen: she doesn’t bug me.

Buying Monkeys For a Song

“Let’s buy this one.” Six years ago that’s what MyEx said. And after exploring myriads of SoCal houses, I agreed: We’d found our home. I agreed so strongly, that when we split, I stayed. I knew the risk, but deed was done and it, and the loan were in my name. Why not? At that point, the house was all I had left to lose, and I wasn’t giving it up.

“…and this chair! I’m keeping this chair!”

Besides, selling my home was out of the question. I was a seller in a buyer’s market. Ten other houses on the block were offered, and others sold for a song. No, really, a song. Billy Ray Cyrus had picked up a new achey breaky home.

House sales were that bad.

I put David Hasselhoff on speed dial.

No! I didn’t want to sell. I didn’t have to. I had a job. I could face the music until the house value returned. Two lean years later I lost weight eating my words and ramen, and I lost my job. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret my decision. My pride was just bigger than my wallet—or my luck.

I mean really? Who predicted the perfect financial storm: wife, job, money? I’m really an average guy trying to eek out an average life. I just blog about it.

EEK!

Yeah, sorry readers, you bear the brunt of that decision. My point is, though is that the average guy doesn’t see all these things happen unless he has a serious monkey on his back. And yet, right now that monkey is the US economy and I am the average guy, and my monkey had come home to roost.

Monkeys roost. Who knew?

Half of America found out the hard way. We’ve got a mortgage monkeys on or back stealing our roost and flinging poo on all we see. But I can’t complain too loudly, I’m not the only one going through this. So this is what I did:

“Hello? David Hasselhofff?”

No, I tried weathering it out.

“Tut, tut, looks like rain.”

Yeah, I was a poo writer floating on a balloon payment I couldn’t afford. The writer’s job market is also a buyers market. So was the job market for machinists, carpenters, architects, police, pilots, copy assistants, backscrubbers…

I know. I applied for all of them. Ok, maybe only backscrubber. I heard Scarlett Johansson was needy, and I had a lufa. I did what I could do. Over the last ten months I tried convincing my mortgage company that they could reduce my payments. Maybe something affordable on unemployment? Unlike most of my readers, they laughed.

Monkey laughter still ringing in my ears, I’ve started packing life into u-haul exodus boxes. That’s my job now. This job is hard. Not only is the house filled with six years of stuff, it’s acquired six years of memories too--some with MyEx, some without. This work is like divorcing again. Not like divorcing MyEx, just divorcing, and leaving someone who shared some good times and bad. Someone who was a close companion, and someone who will no longer be a part of my life again. It’s hard.

There’s another familiarity too. Like divorce, there’s the feeling of failure. I told somebody, “Yeah, I’ll pay for this.” And now it’s like, “HAHA! Gotcha!” I’m not that Gotcha kind of guy. I do my best to pay my debts.

And yet my best won’t do.

It’s not even like I’m overextended. I mean other than the mortgage. I pay all my other bills. Everybody’s happy. Except them. So now what? Well like I said, I’ve been packing things into boxes. I don’t want to go, but I need a backup plan. This week I talked to the Pirate Queen on the phone.

“Let me ask you a question.” She says.

“Okay,” I sit down on the ladder in the garage. It’s a good time for a break. My trash barrel is full. The dust from my old shelves coats my hands and cloys my lungs. The sweat runs mud rivulets down my arms dripping to the floor. I won’t get much further today anyway.

“Can’t we use my income to try and keep your house?”

I’m silent. This is the first time we’ve breached this topic. It’s moot anyway. She doesn’t make what I was making with my last employer and even then I was barely making my payments. I spend the next few moments explaining this to her.

“So we talk to your mortgage company. Maybe they’ll reduce your rates.”

“I tried.” I then explain that process with her. It’s a long ugly story that includes them sending me forms. Me filling out forms. Me sending them forms. Them sending the same forms and ask why I never filled out the first forms. Repeating this process twice until I FedExed their forms back, with a signature required. They stopped sending forms after that. They sent me a new letter:

“Hey dude! Since you’re not filling out our forms, we’ve decided you don’t qualify for a loan modification.” Yeah, I paraphrased. Anyway, that is what they said. I sent them another letter explaining my feelings, and we haven’t talked since.

Still, my queen has instilled hope. Maybe with her income, we can do it. Spitting grit, I push the trashcan to the curb. Maybe I can unload my boxes!

As I’m rolling out the can, the PQ says, “I don’t know why we haven’t talked about this before.”

“Which?” I ask.

“The house. Why we haven’t talked about me helping you there.”

“Oh,” I dropped off the can, whipping dust against my pants. “I know I never mentioned it because it was my debt.”

There’s silence, then “What do you mean?”

“It’s my house. It’s something I bought with my ex. It’s something that you weren’t a part of, and I didn’t want to ask you to pay for that problem—especially when I wasn’t helping with more than unemployment.”

“Well,” she said. “We’re getting married, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“That’s something that married people do. Married people talk about these things. I’ve got lots of debt, that when we get married, you’re going to have to take on.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“Right now, you make the money.”

“Trust me. It won’t always be that way. Now what can we do to save your house.”

It was the weirdest feeling. I’d depended on myself for the past three years, and I forgot what it was like to have somebody to lean on.

When I got home, I called Springboard. Springboard is an intermediary. They’re a non-profit. They don’t ask for money. Their goal is to help reconcile relations between lenders and borrowers. After 45 minutes on the phone, they said, “We’ll see what we can do. We’re going to recommend loan modification for your situation.”

Whoo Hoo! I knew it wasn’t a guarantee, but at least somebody was trying to work with me. That felt good. That was my yesterday in the sun.

Today I got my answer. I drove to my house to check the mail. Sifting through my pile of bills and ads I looked up. On my door was a note:

NOTICE OF TRUSTEE SALE.

They’re auctioning my home.

It hurt. I was losing the one thing I’d fought to hold. But my hurt didn’t last. The house wasn’t the only thing I had left anymore. I can let go of the past. I have a future with my queen. I’ve boxed the screaming mortgage monkey and left him on the lawn for some other homeowner. I’ve also mailed a copy of the sale information to David Hasselhoff. You never know what a song can buy these days.