Surfing or Storm Doors

Comedy is based on tragedy and you can laugh you ass off on the fact that I am seriously debating the title of this post. I'm up in the air between a short jaunt to somewhere warmer, sunnier and more disposed to scantily clad women than this place and a new storm door for the knob and tube palace.

Of course, along with the portal would come a replacement hardwood floor for the upstairs bedroom and the raw materials for a new garage door.

Are we living it up, or what?!

I'm either getting older, or sensible or both. And I like neither option.

To top things off, this morning's cholesterol screening puts my BP in a happy place, HDL/LDL numbers below where they need to be and triglycerides circling some far M class planet because, let's face it, the damn things sound like an alien race. I don't know what they do and I ain't interested enough to tap into web MD.

In short, my ten year heart attack risk is one stinking percent. Average risk for bunnies my age is seven percent. Just going to have to find a new way to kill myself. Maybe the Ethopian Space Program is still looking for volunteers.

So I thought I'd celebrate my newfound longevity with a short jaunt somewhere.

But where?

Naturally, first thing in my mind is sun, surf, pool girl attendents and open bars. Uh huh, Margaritaville.

Then the house gives me a quizzical look that seems to say "You gonna leave this pressed Budweiser can on my front door all summer, boy?"

Uh, no.

"Git a move on down to the despot."

But I wanna go somewhere.

"The despot is somewhere. Now go!"

Aw geez.

See the trouble is that every conspicuous purchase right now looks like a big fat case of middle age crazy. Cars? Forget it. I've been looking at a ballsy, black Mustang for the longest time because in winter it snows here and the abject terror of a heavy rear wheel drive gets my blood pumping. If the ticker won't give out, can I ride the automotive razor edge in January?

Right. Like I can't see the fingers pointing now with pursed lips muttering "All he needs is some blonde he rented for the hour."

Wrong-o!

I'd rent to the half hour. No sense in falsely impressing anyone for a full sixty minutes.

Hell, if I came home with a toaster oven right now, I'd be middle age crazy for the first sourdough slab I put in. I can't win.

So I'm measuring door openings instead of melting down an Orbitz or Travelocity server.

Sigh.

Bunny on, and hand me that phillips head, would you?

Caveat Annie

Beware today, the ides of March.

My sister's husband is having an operation tomorrow and she is, understandably, worried.

I fret as well and offer this caution:

It's not the pre-op.

It's not the anesthesia.

It's not the procedure.

It's not the post op, or initial recovery.

Fear the longer term recovery.

There are sponge baths.

It'll be harder to evict that boy from the hospital than it is to get fat Uncle Murray out of the guest bedroom after two weeks once he's tasted your cooking and realizes you've got expanded basic cable.

Apart from that, everything will be fine.

Bunny on.

Oh, and tell Murray to keep the volume down.

Year One Bunny

My friend Susan sent me a .jpg of her son at his first birthday party and I thought about posting it here and then thought better of it.

Susan likes her privacy.

I like being star of the show.

With my luck, one of my two readers would glue onto the kid and say things like "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" and "How cuuuuuuuuuute!" and "Kitchy koo" and "num num" and the next thing you know I'd be chasing Magazine Man's ass for "Dad of the year" blog which is NOT where I want to even think of going.

I'm caustic.

And a bunny.

We're not known for our parenting skills.

I'm the poster child for that. I may have said it before; somewhere in my head the wire marked "paternal instinct" is forever dangling free. Every once in a while, as I move around, the dangle causes the wire to make brief contact with another terminal and things really go haywire. Usually, it's the "drive faster" or "have a beer" or "make a snide comment at a corporate function" retaining screw and I invariably both get into trouble and dig up more material for my readers.

You. And you over there, hiding behind the .url.

But I digress, and how surprising is that?

There's a photo of me at my first birthday party that Susan's shot reminded me of. I compared the two, side by side. There are differences. Susan's photo was shot in 2006. The kid is in his toxin free, plastic ergonomically correct no sharp edges instill positive self worth absolutely won't tip in an elephant stampede high chair. I'm sitting on some chipped wooden thing coated in nitrocellulose lacquer with an asbestos stuffed seat cushion tacked down with hat pins. A fart will knock me over. In 2006 the cake is made from free range eggs raised organically with no growth hormone with gently sifted insecticide free flour, organic two percent milk in a convection oven. I'm being fed cake that is colored with pigments not normally found in nature. Whatever is going in my baby formula is later banned for human consumption but found in 1978 to be a dandy industrial abrasive. A toxin neutral heat pump is keeping today's kid warm. We're burning Christmas wrapping paper.

But that's not the point.

The point is I'm at the head of a table, gently being stuffed with cake by my mom. I'm the fat dollop wearing dinner. Surrounding the table are young girls. Literally. Young ladies who look between eight and twelve, all dolled up in their early sixties party best. Delicately holding forks, waiting for milk to be poured into teacups, looking expectantly at the fat dollop consuming most of the cake and spitting over the rest of it. They will defer to the plate of cookies also offered.

No, the point is perspective. When I was five or so and my mom showed me the picture, usually to the phrase of "you were so cute when you couldn't walk or talk and we could strap you down for a few hours..." my reaction was "Gee, that cake looks good." Food generally looked appealing in black and white. I mean, how else can you explain Graham Kerr? "Wish I could remember what that cake tasted like. Wish I could remember anything from that day. I know I got presents, where did I put them?"

When I was twelve and mom trotted the picture out again, this time to the tune of "six more years and I can legally bounce you out of here and then I'll frame this and refer to you as my son who was kidnapped by space aliens..." my reaction to the picture was: "Yeurghhh! Girls! Where did all those prissy girls come from and why did you invite them? Where are the guys? Where's the soda pop and football and dirty jokes. Those girls want to look all made up and perfect and not have any tolerance for fart and booger jokes and look down their nose at us. How could you do this to me, Mom? Glad I can't remember that party. I'd have hated it."

I didn't look at that picture in my twenties when I was dating for fear that my girlfriends would say something like what my sometime to be wife said which was "Cute kid. Who'd have thought, but I guess he was a lot like Frankenstein; it all started out so promising and went so horribly wrong."

She's right of course but we still divorced.

Now here I am again and mom has trotted the picture out saying "I think you actually had more hair then..." and my reaction to it is thus:

Look. For heaven's sake, I'm being fed and by the looks of me, appetite wasn't a problem. I'm being fawned over by my family and that ended right quick and moreover, there are six, count 'em six women I'm breaking bread and frosting with who want nothing more than to get close to the little dollop and go:

"Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!"

"How cuuuuuuuuuuute!"

"Kitchy koo!"

"Num Num!"

What a wasted youth! If anybody needs me, I'll be wedged into a high chair with a flammable paper hat on, drooling over a slab of red dye 14 cake with a candle in it.

Bunny on Annie, as they say, bunny on.

Carrots are so fine, you get a dozen for a dime...

It's shopping night.

Groceries. Victuals. Staples. A nightly hike up the food pyramid which somehow is capped with blue cheese stuffed olives. Tasty? Who knows. I may just wrap a martini around a few one of these weekends and see. I figure any food that has my friend Jim rolling his eyes into the back of his head has to be on my shopping list at least once.

Besides, I re-opened a jar of olives this weekend passed only to find what was left of them floating around in a moldy brine. Ok, so, can someone explain to me how something that is pickled can go bad? Isn't that the point? Isn't that why most sixteenth century sea captains who read the wind badly and wound up spending too much time on open water because they could fart harder than the wind was blowing, got tossed overboard eventually? The men wanted to land. The food sucked out here. It was pickled, salted and preserved. So now at the start of the twenty first century not only does a car trip up interstate 95 to New England take as long as a sail to Holland, the pickled and brined food goes bad!

What gives? I once kept ketchup for five years. Now I have to read the "best before" labels on olives? Niblets in a can gonna come with an expiration date? "Hey, hurry that Armageddon thing up will you, my bomb shelter food is spoiling."

I'm sure there's a chemical reason for olives going bad. I just don't want to know it.

Anyway, I have cheese stuffed olives that I picked up tonight from the upscale food place across town. I shop there. Pretty much exclusively. Couple of reasons: One, you can get cheese stuffed olives. The more pedestrian place near my place really only has cheese stuffed children filling up the aisles grabbing whatever Twinkie like concoction comes just a little too close. Two, I'm a food snob and snobby food lives there where as the other place carries brands along the lines of "Cholesterol Maid" and "NASCAReios." Finally, and here's the real nitty gritty: The women are better looking. Not that I'm trolling although I really am in a nice, standoffish sort of way. But frankly, I'm also tired of being harried by some octogenarian with a can of Purina Tuna and Cheese bits pressing me for my take on it's digestibility.

"I'm sure the cat will love it. Oh, it's not for the cat?"

Nothing to really comment on at the store tonight. I resisted buying chicken because I already have a freezer full of chicken. To the point of give me a suture needle, an elevating slab and a stormy night and I'll give you Frankenpullet.

Couple of kids running around the parking lot in a Mercedes Benz. Ok folks, all I can think of right now is some endocrinologist in White Plains muttering to himself "I know I parked the fucking thing around here somewhere..."

There were six of them in the Merc. Together, I think their ages approached thirty. They were parking as I walked in and as I was done and loading groceries into the trunk so that they could go skittering out of their bags and into the farthest reaches of the car once I turned the first corner out of the parking lot, the Mercedes orphans returned.

I was afraid I was going to be assaulted by them.

"Like, give me, like, your money."

"Don't want my credit cards too?"

"WHAT-ever!"

"Hey, is that a scratch on the car's bumper?"

"Ohmygodomygodohmygodohmygod!!!"

Good thing I've mastered the martial art of Tae Bo Guilt. My accusatory inflections are registered lethal weapons.

"It's maaagic!"

Bunny on.

Bunny Bits (Part One)

Once when I was a proprietor of great tracts of land it occurred to me to build a shed to house the various quasi agricultural machines I needed to keep up the estate.

Having no clue on how to build structures other than to contract with a guy named "Louie" from Jersey City who smokes cigarettes through clenched teeth and repeatedly says "Smaddawidyou?" I got on Amazon to see what sort of books there were on shed building.

Apparently a lot. And I not longer get on Amazon because my current favorite list includes "Modern Pole Barns", "Outdoor Annexes", "Sheds for Every Season" and "Structures that Save".

Embarassing, to say the least. I can only thank good fortune that I didn't mistakenly click over from some porn site on my first visit to the venerated on line retailer. Or e-tailer. Or dot-commer. Or dot-commercer. Or guy with a website who managed to make it through the early milennia meltdown that had the rest of us wondering just where the fuck all that money got off to, it was here a second ago?

Remember sudden wealth syndrome?

I don't. But continual impoverishment affliction. Yeah. That one I know.

Swiss rolls. During the occasional grocery shopping jags I go on I might just pass by the tasty chocolate and sugar confections aisle and feel a little sorry for myself and there are the Swiss Rolls; yummy chocolate thingys with cream filling that just beg you to take them home. And since I forgot to adopt a third world child again this week, I figure what the hell? Somewhere as I'm scarfing these things down after another arduous grocery excursion, I'm actually reading the ad copy on the side of the box. You know, the extraneous stuff that someone has poured his or her heart and soul into just so it can be resolutely ignored by the great unwashed on the run to another plate full of temporal satisfaction? Sort of like this blog.

Anyway, here's what it says: "A favorite treat of the Swiss brought to America more than thirty years ago..."

ARE YOU FOR REAL?????

Look, I've been to Switzerland. They eat an incredible amount of cheese there, suck on hard candies once in a while and drink marginally sweetened soda. They have no idea of what this tasty crap is. Let's face it, Swiss Rolls are no more Swiss than Belgian Waffles are a product of Opp, Alabama and not Brussels. Swiss Rolls were concocted in Patterson New Jersey by some guy who had cake and cream filling left over and might have had a cuckoo clock in his basement bar. They don't get no more Swiss than that! Don't lie to me. This isn't a Swiss treat. These are instant fatty-makers among America's youth and if you keep sucking them down mercilessly we're going to have to put Crisco on the door jambs to make sure you get out next week for a little fresh air.

Did you ever notice that in some folksy paintings of Switzerland, you've got a bunch of idyllic little wood houses and barns, quaintly decorated and there are rocks on the roofs? What are the rocks there for? I can only suppose that this is some clever Swiss ruse to confuse potential avalanches in winter. See? Rocks down here. Not houses. Nothing of value to bury. Go careen down some other idyllic valley and suffocate its inhabitants in tons of snow. Nothing but a bunch of rocks down this one.

But I really didn't want to talk about Switzerland. I want to talk about the weather.

It's March. It's cold. Last January there were days when we'd go run at lunchtime in shorts and a t-shirt. January! Now here we are in March and it's shrinkingly and retractably cold. What's going on here, please? Enter like a lion, leave like a center cut of veal? Or is it enter like a diesel back up generator, leave like a cross town bus?

Whatever. I'm having Punxatawney Philburgers for dinner because this is the third year running that that little son of another goddam rodent has saddled us with six more weeks of this miserable season. Temperatures in the low sixties are my current favorite wet dream, that's how bad its gotten. I've foresaken Sandra Bullock and Michele Pfeiffer and handcuffs for a marginally warm day.

But right now we're running five miles in temps that will barely scratch thirty so it'll all be so cold there's no point in fantasizing about anything other that being boiled in oil.

Like a Swiss Roll. In a pole barn. With rocks on the roof. Whatever.

Bbbbbbunny on.