Sick Day

Did I miss a Monday?  Of course I did.  Well, I didn’t really miss it. It happened. I was here. I still paid my dues, just not as a blogger. I paid them as a husband.

Yah, the difference is far more labor intensive.

It appears last year I agreed to love honor and cherish. Somewhere around page 37, paragraph 3 of that agreement, there’s a servitude clause. 

“READ IT!” Says MyQueen handing me a snotty Kleenex.  She’s a little delirious. The wedding document is in her other hand. If she’ll only blow her nose on that, I’m a free man. That’s written in the fine print on the next page.

 I shouldn’t complain. I love her, and by all bio-virulent calculations, this cold is my cold she’s carrying.

“Mom! Dad! The Pirate Queen is having my virus!”

“Thanks son. It’s 3am.”

I feel a little guilty. Not about the call. My folks are used to that. I mean about passing on the cold. I’m also a little understanding. I’ve had this thing. It only had her down for four days. It took me over a week to pass it along.  She’s just proving her superiority. I let her.  That’s on page one of our contract.

It’s bad if I ignore page one before our first anniversary.  That’s coming up soon. Did you know?  I sure did.  According to Hallmark, the first anniversary is paper. Yah, I think they have a vested interest in that.

Well this first anniversary I have a little surprise for their marketers. This year I’m bucking their tradition and going vinyl.

“It’s a Cat Woman suit. How thoughtful…”

Shhh. Don’t spoil the surprise. 

Actually, no. I’m not going that vinyl. It turns out that my anniversary is also National Record Store Day. Whoo freakin’ Hoo! Record stores participating in my anniversary will give away Jimi Hendrix posters, and bands like Garbage are putting together special recordings to celebrate my love. Jack White is the official RSD ambassador. That makes him my anniversary ambassador!

That makes this the best marriage ever!

How many other couples can say they spent their first anniversary with Jimi Hendrix and Garbage?  Okay, so Jimi will only be there in spirit. We’re not digging him up, but the Garbage is there and they’re real.

“I thought you were special. I thought you should know…”

This is a big event. Go to your favorite record store, or the Record Store Day website and celebrate both my loves!

I can’t wait.

Until then, I’m handling the less glamorous side of love: the dirty Kleenex.

“READ IT!”

“Yes, my love…”

Another Reason MyQueen Won't Let Me Touch Her Breasts.

Yay!

Science beats cancer in double overtime! That’s what the headline should read. It doesn’t, but that’s probably because it isn’t true.  Science hasn’t beaten cancer yet—but it’s getting closer. 

This week a team of University of Minnesota scientists announced that they’d found the enzyme the causes breast cancer.  According to the scientists, the U enzyme (what, you didn’t think they were gonna call it the “Me enzyme?” Nope, we’re blaming this one on you.) mutates breast DNA and that allows the cancer to set up home.  Think of it as a traditional zombie movie, with the U enzyme playing the role of the accidentally uncovered zombie toxin. The cancer cells are the doomed teenagers, and your breast is the ravaged town.

“I’ll be back.” 

Wrong zombie movie.  That was the California gubernatorial election.

Now, scientists can monitor the U enzyme for early detection, and that should also lead to a way to stop the mutating enzyme in the first place. 

It’s a great day for breasts!

It’s also a good day for other cancer fighters too, because the scientists are saying there’s a good chance that this U enzyme could be the cause in up to one-third of all other cancers.

Wait.

“good chance…could be…up to…”  Translation: “We have no frackin’ clue.”

Still, it could be. It might be, and some days we take what we can get. Especially when other news reports are telling us that cases of Alzheimer’s are expected to triple by 2050.

If you read these reports together and apply the rule of media guestimated statistics, you see that while one-third of cancers will be cured, three times more people will get Alzheimer’s Disease.

Yay Cancer! Wha—?

So that means that if I dodged a cured cancer bullet, I’ve got a new target on my brain that says “Alzheimer’s.” I gotta tell ya, that blows.

It blows really bad.  Here’s the thing: Cancer sucks. Nobody wants it. It’s a slow painful death, and most current cancer “cures” suck as bad as the disease. People don’t hold up banners saying, “I’m a cancer survivor,” because they want sympathy. They hold up the banners because they can. Because they looked death in the eye and said, “not today” and death said, “Uh, okay. Can I interest you in some Avon on my way out, then?”

To me, Alzheimer’s is worse.   I don’t want to forget who I am. What’s more, I don’t want to forget people like my PirateQueen. I love MyQueen, and that love may have come easy but it was also an earned love that was hard fought for. Every day she and I find ways to love, honor and remember each other over ourselves. I don’t want to forget that, and I definitely don’t want to think of her suffering through me forgetting that.

“Who are you?”

“Here, read this blog, it’ll explain everything.”

“Who wrote this crap.”

“You did. It was part of your charm…”

I don’t want her to live through the horror of my writing every day.

I’d rather have my cancer back.

Disfunctional Locationships

Ever notice when a locationship ends, the imperfections of the offending location glare brighter than Las Vegas neon?

Detroit and I, we still hang out. Really, it’s because we have to. I have nowhere else to go. Although we’re uncomfortable around each other, we smile and muddle, until we can afford to separate.  It’s in this time that bad locationships, are the same as bad relationships. This is that phase where everything the other person does wrong reminds you exactly what pushed you over the edge in the first place.

My reasons for disillusion should be filed under “irreconcilable differences.” Detroit isn’t abusive, overly violent, and it rarely cheats. It’s not perfect, but it tries…sometimes, and for some people, that’s enough. For me, it’s like stealing a kiss from Jane Krowly in junior high. She was beautiful when she didn’t speak, but once you kissed her, you had to talk to her.  It was doomed from the start.

Same with Detroit. Despite it’s rugged reputation, I wanted to believe in the city that slept with a gun under her pillow. She’d lived through a lot; now was her underdog comeback.

We all love underdog stories. MyQueen and I watched “Rudy” last weekend. Even she chanted “Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!” in the end.

“Alright honey, can I stop now?”

“No! you gotta keep going! Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!”

“You are so going to Steel Magnolia hell for this…”

Underdogs remind us that we all have a shot. I’m in a very underdog susceptible place these days. You know what we all love even more than underdogs though? We love redeemed underdogs. That’s right.  Look at the prodigal son. Who didn’t cheer the young rebel come home to make good?

“Detroit! Detroit! Detroit!”

That’s right. Detroit’s been a bad boy. We all want to believe that this is its time to come home and make good: to apologize and accept the reward of grace, and not the reward it deserves. We’re ready, Detroit!

Unfortunately, if Detroit were the prodigal son, our story would end with Detroit coming home, suffering from a raging case of herpes, turning to its father, and saying, “Ya know, I think I want to go out whoring some more.”

The latest prodigal efforts by Detroit involve the island of Belle Isle.  When I moved here, I knew nothing of Belle Isle. MyQueen was quick to educate me though, she’d grown up with Belle Isle history.

According to Wikipedia, it’s a 982-acre island on the Detroit River that houses a race track, aquarium, and a conservatory.  According to MyQueen, it’s a kick-ass piece of Detroit history.  Belle Isle has been a park since the mid 1800’s, although during World War II it also served as a staging area for the military. This is that part of the Detroit personality that first attracts you.

Until you find that it’s a part of Detroit that she just squanders.  Belle Isle, through the bad years has suffered as much as Detroit itself. The bathrooms don’t work and have been replaced by porta-johns. The paths and trails are littered with branches, leaves and other discarded debris. And despite the natural beauty of the park, everything seems to be buried beneath the gloom of disregard.

On the one hand, you can’t blame Detroit for the disregard of Belle Isle. Maintenance costs are roughly $6 million a year, and that’s just keeping it at its current state. That does not include building it back up and repairing what needs to be fixed. Last year they had to stop the Belle Isle Grand Prix because the road patch came up mid race. Belle Isle needs some pretty expensive TLC that the Detroit can’t afford to give itself, let alone one park. In Detroit’s state, fire and police departments are luxuries.

“Ya know, I think I want to go out whoring some more.”

That’s where the State of Michigan comes in. Not the whoring part. Michigan is the father; try to keep up. Michigan offered to take care of Belle Isle, to maintain it as it does any other state park.  The state offer wasn’t to buy the park, but to lease it for 10 years. After 10 years, Detroit could elect to take back Belle Isle, or leave it in the hands of Michigan. This wasn’t an adoption program, as much as a foster parent arrangement.

Yes, the state would reap the profits, and those profits would go back into the park system, but Michigan is in a much better state than Detroit is—figuratively speaking, of course. Michigan can afford it. Belle Isle is our prodigal son’s love child, and Daddy Michigan, is more than willing to look after her, while Detroit gets it’s private parts cleaned up.

Like any deal, this deal did have a downside. For the city, the downside included a clause written into the contract saying that although the state would maintain the property, it would not maintain the utilities, which would be lighting and plumbing. So the toilets would probably still on Detroit to fix. It also said that the state may, but is not obligated to continue any contracts, or construction affiliated with the park. That meant that the state could let go of people, bring in their own people, and even hire new teams for construction or maintenance projects. 

The downside for the visitors?  The state would charge an $11 fee to visit the park. That’s $11 you’d pay to visit any state park, and once you’ve paid the fee, you could visit any state run park within the year for no additional charge.

At the mention of a fee, the city of Detroit balked. First the city said, a fee is outrageous! This is a public park, for the public of our fair city. Later they amended that to say, unless the city gets that fee.

A city fee is a not as good a deal as a state fee though. First, a visitor won’t get to visit other city or state parks for proposed fee. Second, according to the Detroit Free Press, the proposed city fee will need to be a per visit fee, to potentially break even with the $6 million per year maintenance. Even with that fee, Detroit mayor Dave Bing, says the city will need to close 50 other parks, and limit the maintenance of 19 other parks, to support the costs.

Translation: we’ll create 69 new locations for our limited vice cops to patrol.

So did Detroit get greedy, seeing that the state would charge a fee, or was it the part of the contract that endangered deals they’d brokered with local companies, or was it something completely different? Whatever the cause, the city has said, “no thanks” to the state’s deal, and the state took their money to play somewhere else. Now Detroit will need to find a new way to staunch its financial bleeding.

Detroit: It hurts when we pee.

That’s not the official city slogan. The PR team is discussing alternatives. They do say that the state offer wasn’t all that. That’s all they are willing to say. That, and that they will have their own plan…soon. Soon, but for now nobody’s sure of anything, except that the city wants to charge an entrance fee to the park, and that they’re talking of revising a previous plan that was rejected in the 1990’s because it would cost $180 million to implement. Where is the city getting $180 million when they can’t even keep Belle Isle toilets open?

The only thing anyone can be sure of is that, with Detroit, it’s hard to be in a dysfunctional locationship.

Sources: Detroit Free Press mlive.com.

The Great White Caboose

Today’s blog, begins with an excerpt:

I am the caboose of the great white American locomotive.

Whoo! Whoo!

Here, take my hand. Climb aboard. I’ll give you the tour.

Let’s start with engine.  That’s where the power is. You’re looking at history’s generator. Feel your thighs rattle like you’re straddling a jackhammer set to “thrill?” That’s 200 years plus of phallic power thrusting this sleek beast into greatness. George Washington, Tom Edison, Bill Gates, they’re the coal and steam, the insatiable hunger and the lust lunging the great white head toward the Eve of manifest destiny.

That’s one monster dynamo of locomotion! It has to be! That’s what it takes; hauling all these bloated white cargo cars at immeasurable speeds.  Don’t stand in its way! The full weight of white wrath will knock you back like a tribe of Indians—but that’s another history stop along the way.

Let’s go to the next group of cars. Here you’ll find the robber baron boxcars. They supply fuel to the white machine. They only take up a few cars, but these are the primo luxury cabins, so slip on your white gloves, and don’t even knock without donning a day coat.

The other cars? Oh, they’re loaded with the apathetic, lazy and voyeuristic masses, yearning to be carried for free by the steam of other’s greatness.

Step quickly to the caboose! The languor here is contagious!

Woah!  

Watch your step! A history hic-up, has uncoupled my great white caboose from the great white train. Quick! Wave to the baby boomers as they hurtle into the pasty sunset.  See them smile? They made the train.

The rest of us on the caboose? Take a look over my shoulder, to the barren tracks stretching to the American wasteland. That’s my future. That’s the white train legacy: a trailing generation birthed in the last car of a runaway train and raised on the promise that the tracks of the manifest blessing of the great pale birthright would go on forever.

And so it does, even if we’ve stopped.

It’s a history that was good enough for generations before, and damn-it, it would be good enough for me. If only I had made the train. If only I wasn’t the uncoupled caboose in a generation sitting dead on the tracks. Left behind to be a white dot on a statistical map.

You are here.

            Our choice is to walk the rails and hope to catch up, or strike out on our own, setting our own destiny. We chose neither of these. We chose a different path; a road less traveled by the on-the-go generations that came before. We chose to wait for another train to come along while whining about our horrible mistreatment by fate.

———

And ends with a whimper:

That caboose ending is how a happy go lucky book I began writing a few years ago started. It was good. It was true. It was exceptionally whiney.  Nobody needs that, not even the great white caboose. We need a call to action, and when I started that book, I didn’t have one. Which, seemed to prove the point I was making by writing the book, really.

But I’m a hopeful guy. I wanted a better ending, so I shelved the effort.

I was told that somebody else has since written the book, using different words. Good for him. I hope he caught the train. Me, I eventually struck out across the wasteland forging my own path.

Funny thing is that along my path I tried becoming a cog in the great machine, and the machine has found me wanting. Not because I’m some mal-shaped malcontent Robcog, but because the machine looked at my gifted teeth and said, “No, we don’t need you.”

Luckily the machine loves MyQueen more than it loves me. Still, life would be a lot easier for us if, for my part, we didn’t have to wait for the occasional writing job that paid, like desert wanderers waiting for rain.

“Oh, look, the vultures are leading us to prosperity!”

I could go back to retail and such, but MyQueen has already said, “no,” and I breathed a sigh of relief when she said it. I hate that work, but I would do it.

The pill that gags me is the big oval one that’s supposed to relieve the angst I get from failing to use the skills and training I’ve been given. 

My skills? I’ve got a face for radio, and a voice for mime. No, that’s not true. Well, not the voice part, anyway…

Back in my high school fast food days, I worked the drive through. A simple, but high pressure task for a fast food place, because there’s one row of hungry drivers needing to get back on the road before they realize the food they’ve waited for is a flat bun beef-puck and a soft drink, sans straw.  Me, I had a great voice. I worked it. Seriously, ask the ladies, they loved me, until they drove to the window and saw Opie-boy Robby. Then they felt like dirty old ladies.

“Oh my gosh, you’re young!”

“Oh yah, baby.” I’d say in my Barry White best, flipping my mullet through the windy air. Oh, ya, those women were butter baby.

I had a gift. After high school I thought I’d use it for good, in radio. I loved music; it seemed like a perfect fit. One year of broadcasting school, and four years later to complete my BA in Mass Communications, I was a trained communicator.

Then life transmitted something else.

If one excuse is a train leaving Chicago at 150 mph, and another excuse is a super-train fast thingy leaving L.A. in one flash per second, they’ll explode into nothingness somewhere around Omaha. But the bottom line is I took a different track. I used my skills in a non-traditional sense and that train hummed along pretty good until all tracks vanished.

Which left me with ten-year-old non-traditional experience baggage filled with my traditional communication skill set. So now I’m walking a wasteland trying to MacGyver my collective media skills into a career.

“I can take this microphone, switch it through a TV mixer, and take the “CNTL” key from a computer, a Photoshop image, some HTML code, and wrap it all together with three strips of duct tape…and there ya go: a career.”

I continue my free writing, which I enjoy immensely, but my years of riding the great white rails are deeply ingrained; I feel the guilt that my skills are not providing for my family. So I continue looking to other work to pay the bills. Other work that uses the skills I’ve learned over 44 years of life experience. Except when employers see my non-traditional experience baggage, and compare it to the traditional baggage they’re looking for, it doesn’t match. Funny, the baggage and experience always worked for me.

They got me here.

Wherever here is, I’m there, with MyQueen, and my great white caboose, snuggling together in my hand woven American Dream blanket.

Dinner Out

“So how do you plan on letting Detroit know you’re dumping her?” That’s MyQueen.  She likes to play along. I’m just happy she reads my blog. She’s already seated at the table.

“I dunno.  I figured I’d just let it go. She’ll get the idea over time.” Yeah, I’m a classy guy. I take off my coat, throw it over the chair next to her and sit down.

“You can’t do that! You have to sit her down and let her know.”

“Uhm, are you guys ready to order?” The waitress is giving us the look. You know the one. The “I know what’s going on here, but I don’t know what’s going on here,” look.

I give her a look back that says, “I do know what’s going on here and you have no clue.”

“Sir?” The waitress looks a little panicked, and turns to MyQueen, “Should I call him a doctor?”

Maybe that wasn’t the right look.

MyQueen sighs and sips her wine. “No, he’s okay. That’s his normal face.”

The waitress hangs out while I look over the menu. When she has our orders, she leaves and we continue our 50 ways to leave your location conversation.

“Slip out the Ren Cen, Glen…”

It’s been a long week, for both of us. I found my dreams like Ralphie found his glasses in A Christmas Story: crushed under foot. MyQueen had an interview with Cagney and Lacey, except Lacey didn’t even care enough to show up, and Cagney might as well have come drunk.  Yeah, I lost my dream, she dodged a bullet and yet we’re both mixed—we both hoped for more, and we both need a drink.

“I think it’s okay, I don’t think Detroit is that into me. I think she’s trying to distance herself.”

MyQueen takes another drink. “Mmmm,hmmm. What happens then?”

“What do you mean?” I’m pouring more wine into my glass. I’ve already chugged the glass she had waiting for me.

“Well, if you leave her, you end up in Denver, LA, wherever.” She swirls the wine. Fruity goodness climbs up the glass as if it’s drawing to her voice. “Where are you if Detroit leaves you?”

“Wichita?” I shrug.

“Ain’t that the truth.” She downs the rest of her glass, then dangles it before me, in a “Fill!” fashion. “I think we need to avoid that.”

I nod, and fulfill my responsibility by refilling her glass. We’re gonna need more wine at this rate. I make a subtle motion. The waitress may not be able to interpret table banter, but roll an empty bottle across the floor at her, and she takes a hint.

In the meantime, my wife grabs a crayon from the table. Yeah, we’re eating in that restaurant.  (I’d mention their name, but they refused to pay for adverting.) “Okay, so where do we want to move?” She writes down “LA” in blue wax. 

I shake my head. We’ve both been there, done that. She draws a frowny face next to it, then pulls a crayon line across the letters.  Next word: “Denver” I nod.  It might be cool.  It’s kinda like where I grew up, except 10 times the population and none of the relatives. “Actually it sounds pretty good.”

“Okay,” she nods and puts a smiley next to it.

“Rotelli?”

“Where’s that?” I look up.  It’s right here. That was our waitress. I point to MyQueen. She gets the plate slid before her. I get the other plate full of cheese red sauce.  I think there’s meat underneath.

As we eat, we unwind and continue our conversation. She mentions Vegas, and then says “Scott!” cuz she likes watching “Flipping Vegas” and believes we can move in and become instant friends with the stars, Scott and Amy.  MyQueen’s “Scott” is a perfect imitation of Amy whining.  It’s sort of like Mary Tyler Moore saying “Oh, Rob” to Dick Van Dyke, except MyQueen’s mouth is full of pasta and it sounds like “Scoh-waht!”

We laugh. It’s ok. You don’t have to. It’s not funny to anybody else but us. Later I draw a US map that looks like wounded dog. We laugh some more, and the waitress calls the manager.

“So you folks having a good time?”

It’s true. We are. We need it. In truth, we need each other. When things get rough, it’s good to know we can come together at the table and laugh. To know that sometimes life kinda sucks, but things will get better. We’re here. We have each other and we’re in this together. I down the rest of my glass, take MyQueen’s hand, we pay the check, and leave.

“What about Chicago?”

“Isn’t that like kissing Detroit’s sexy sister?”

We haven’t got everything figured out yet, but we’re trying, together. And no matter where we land, I know we’ll have fun in the process.

Now I just have to work up the nerve to tell Detroit.

MyQueen in my official "Happy Hat."