Christmas is here!!?!

Okay, Costco won.

Every year, starting in early August, I go on watch.

I watch and see who is going to start with the 'seasonal' decorations and sales first. For years, Walgreens always won with Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations out during the hottest month of the year. They, again, were way out in front with ghosts and goblins, and other crap that goes bump in the night. But Costco took the new prize for distance in the fact they had CHRISTMAS trees and decorations next to the sofas.

Christmas trees, that's right.

I think the theory is that as the market circles the proverbial toilet, the earlier you can open your warehouse and pull the stuff out from last year and sell them, the less of a likelihood you will be stuck with them for another year.

Actually, I like it. there is a feeling this time of year that winter is just three months away. That life might actually survive another Arizona Summer-Spring-Fall Heat-o-Rama. When Halloween is here, I actually have on a sweatshirt. Sure, I still wear shorts but I have a sweatshirt on. Oh, and I have turned off the A/C., saving thousands of millions of dollars. Plus, there is the attitude of the season. I still worry about money but its in conjunction with stuff and not having anything to do with making my water bill payment.

I guess I have to ask myself why I think twice about businesses doing this. I guess I really don't care. It just kind of amazes me and stops me to wonder about it, kind of like the fact that I learned from my kids this week about your foot being the exact length as your forearm. It's true, kick off your shoe and stick it up there next to your arm and you'll see. Weird stuff like that. But during this season, even if it is only in my brain pan, it brings a little hope. I don't feel so bad when my eyes are scalded out of my head by the driving heat as I ride my bike home from work.

So, there it is. Costco has the trees out and soon it will be the dancing Santa and those big blow up things you put in your front yard with the blower and they inflate so people have something other than your bedroom window to aim at with their "gat."

So break out the sweaters and parkas and reach for the thermal socks. Its that time of year for ho ho ho's and ha ha ha's.

Oh, you might want to pop a salt tablet or two, just in case the heat comes back.

I want to complain.

Look, I don’t complain a lot. As a matter of fact, you’ve never heard me complain in a general forum like this. We get and do enough of that so I figured we didn’t need to hear some middle-aged guy start ramping up about a bunch of stuff, but there are things—
Like chocolate. When I was growing up, you ate chocolate anyway you could get it with the staunch knowledge that it WAS going to make you fat and your skin break out. Now, it’s suppose to be good for you and has nothing to do with your acne. That now is genetic.
Another is mayonnaise; the sixth major food group in the line of Williams men. We kept our mayo on the second shelf up, just to the right of the sink, right next to the peanut butter. We opened it, put some on our bread (we always used spoons, never a knife) and put the lid back on and then back to its nest on the shelf. Only when I got married was I told of the vast error of my ways. Now, the FDA has come out with a report that refrigeration for mayo is not needed. To this day, I count this dietary formula for the strength of my white blood cells.
Whatever happened to the “family doctor?” When I was growing up, we all went to one guy. Now, actually for decades, we go to an internist if we’re over 18, a pediatrician if we’re under 18, women go here, men go--, I don’t know. One guy. Of course, his wife eventually died of undiscovered breast cancer. Hmm
When was the last time you got CPR certified? Now, its 32 compressions and forget about putting your lips on the poor smuck. We’ll just beat on his chest until help arrives. Last week it was 15 compressions and 2 breaths. Before that it was 2 rescuers. Geez.
See what I’m saying? Look, I’m not asking a lot. Just get your tail down to the Coffee Shed just off of Route 9 near the Berinth Avenue exit and take a left. The coffee (no lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, etc) are going to be there. Consistency, that’s all I’m asking!!!

A Good Day!

I had one of those days middle-aged men have where we go to the doctor and hear words like "some discomfort" and "a small amount of pressure" both, after the doctor tells you she will send you home with a prescription, if you want one, of a mild pain relief medication; which turns out to be a synthetic morphine in an IV drip. The words and the meds linger in your mind because the two aren't making sense in the same paragraph until the procedure is over and you find yourself cowering in the corner sobbing like a French longshoreman with a stack of wet-wipes and wondering why your Aunt Millie didn't bake you a birthday cake when you were seven. All of this leads you into a mental study of the human body.

What an amazing piece of machinery. You know this thing we call a "body" was never meant to die? Sure, we do, but we weren't meant to. Forget your belief system, this body does everything it can to adapt and live in this contaminated world. Think about it. The body has a pancreas that is there just to process ice cream. Who would of thought that? After a while, your hair falls out just as your life is getting complicated and you need fewer things to maintain. How about your feet and hands, an engineering marvel. More than half the human bones are in your feet and hands. Dogs, our favorite friends in the whole world, don't have that. Or your eyes that pick up atoms of light, reverse them, send them to the brain via chemicals, where they are deciphered in a milli-second.

Even in sickness the body is amazing. If you get too fat, it tells you by making that spandex look like sausage casing while somewhere in the back of your mind, as you look at the light atoms entering your brain via your eyes reflected off the mirror, you're saying to yourself "Huh, not bad but did these things shrink?"

Since the world is the way it is, I don't mind helping it out by taking it to the doctor every once in a while an getting checked out, looking for skin cancer, getting a physical, or wondering why this thing is doing that thing. The doc looks at you attentively, takes a few notes, nods their head, then in their best pirate they wink and you and softly say "Aye laddy, stand by to be boarded."

That's fine too. It makes you think thoughts that you wouldn't otherwise think of, like Aunts and birthday cakes.

Come, sit a while and try the meat loaf.

There is a place we go, to escape, or maybe just to catch our breath. Sometimes its with friends on a boat, fishing for bluegill. Sometimes its reading a good book with a glass of wine on the front porch overlooking Puget Sound. But sometimes, the demons that occupy a space in our brain leak out and need more to suppress them and drive them back in to the box we keep them in up on a shelf in the back of the closet in the corner of our brain; waiting there until we are brave enough or just tired enough to face them. Welcome to Moreno's Bar. Just one of those places found in Holy Ground.

Originally due out this Christmas, we might linger a bit, do a bit more tweaking and sipping if you get my meaning. Oh, it will have legs and walk, the question is, what kind of legs and can we get her to run? We predict pretty strong legs at that. But while we wait, we want to give you a little taste of the story and let you linger, yourself, with our hero. He's tired-worn out, but the greatest moment of his life is yet to be. Come, pull up a stool and try the meat loaf.

Nights played one into the other and about every four months or so, as far as Moreno could figure it, Cooper would drink enough and think enough to walk over to the pay phone in the corner of the bar and ‘drunk dial.’ He never used his cell phone and in his well-oiled logic, why would he? He didn’t want Allison, his ex, to know it was him calling, although after receiving a dozen or so of his calls from Moreno’s Bar as it came up on the caller ID, she figured it was him calling—again. “You calling a cab again, amigo?” Moreno queried him.

“I don’t need a cab,” Cooper slurred.

“I wouldn’t drive if I were you,” Moreno returned without looking up.

“Lucky for me, you ain’t me. I walked here, remember?” Cooper mumbled under his breath.
The marriage crashed after five years, and it took an additional two years to put out the fire and carry away the wreckage. It had been years since the final disillusionment and eventually, Allison remarried. This one also didn’t want kids and was a federal marshal who traveled three days out of the week.

Cooper would sit and let old thoughts of Allison come to the forefront of the lubricated brain pan. Random thoughts of old times, old things, old ways. He never called her before midnight. That would be too convenient. He always knew the husband’s schedule, whatever his name was, so Cooper missed the inevitable confrontation for awhile. Allison never told him her ex-husband had been calling in the middle of the night over the past few years. Why—she never said and Cooper never asked. He dropped the coins in the phone and dialed. She picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hello.” Her voice was gruff. She cleared her throat and said it again. “Hello.”

It took a second for the voice to register as hers. She sounded different, and for that second, he thought he had dialed the wrong number. “Allison? It’s me.”

“Coop?” She sighed. “Of course, it is.”

“I was just calling to see how—”

“Do you know what time it is? You’ve got to stop calling here.”

“No, I didn’t know it was late. Hey, I’m sorry okay? I thought I’d just give you a call. I, ah …” He paused for moment. “Just wondering if you still had that baseball I caught at Candlestick Park when we were on our honeymoon. I remember you had on that green paisley dress.” He had to come up with something to talk about, and this subject came up between the third and fourth scotch.

“Baseball? You called me to ask me about a baseball?” She opened her eyes to look at the time. It was 12:34 . “I don’t know. I don’t remember any baseball.”

“You don’t know?” There was a sense of frustration that his wife—his ex-wife— didn’t remember the baseball he caught on their honeymoon. “I thought it was on the bookshelf next to the pictures of—”

“That was years ago, come on. There are different people here now,” she said with a cut. “It’s late—is that why you called? To ask about a damn baseball?”

“Yeah, I guess it is a little late … no, no. Look, I’m sorry all right? Jeezus, why does everything have to be a battle with you? I don’t care who I’m waking up … Hello? Hello?” He thought for a minute about calling her back. He always thought about calling her back. After all, it was just a simple question about a baseball, his baseball. It wasn’t hers. She didn’t catch it. She didn’t care about it. She didn’t need to be rude about him calling, he thought. Yeah, he was sorry it was so late, but it’s not like she couldn’t go back to sleep. He went back to his stool.

“You call her?” Moreno asked.

“She doesn’t care how my day went.”

“She cares about you, my friend.”

Cooper nodded while he held his glass with two hands. “Nah, I stomped on her heart too many times while we were married for that. The only thing she wants to know is when I’m dead.”

“You underestimate that woman.”

“You underestimate this man. Now shut up and pour. I can still feel my lips.”

AN EPIPHANY!!

Why do we not change our work hours to early morning? It's 5:45am here in the frying pan of the southwest. I got up this morning to take my daughter, her husband, and my granddaughter to the airport. It was cool enough to roll down the windows and open the sun roof.

I got up and took the dogs for our traditional morning walk at about 4:30. Sure it was dark but the sun was starting to paint the sky and besides, we had street lights, frankly, the less light for what the girls have to do, the better. It was beautiful. The bats were out and ducks were flying. That's right, you heard me-bats. Those cool dudes make no noise when they fly, none. And ducks, flying in formation anywhere, are just flat out bitchin' because they talk to each other while they fly.

"Quack?"

"Quack, quack, quack."

"Quack."

I was thinking while driving home from the airport that if we switched to, oh, I don't know, 2:00am to 8:00am we would actually improve our disposition. I was happy this morning. George Strait came on with "River of Dreams" and I turned it up, a happy, jaunty tune. I actually wanted to live here. I came home and turned off the A/C and flipped over to evap for at least a little while.

We just have to be open-minded about it. We'd have to go buy some aluminum foil to cover our windows so we could sleep during the day and get use to watching Oprah instead of Two and a Half Men on TV. That, alone, might be a deal breaker.

Anyways, it was just a thought. When I was a kid, I remember the summer rains would cause me to build my aircraft carriers out of a 2x4's, some smaller pieces for the island, and nails for the RADAR. I would go out front and float it down the street in the gutter tracking behind it in my bare feet. Yep, that was a lot of rain and frankly, there was probably lightening involved that I wasn't fully cognisant of the full ramifications of standing in water during a lightening storm. But who cared. It was great. I can remember those happy times.

So, as I finish, the sun is coming up. The shadows are still filling the back yard and the doves are sitting on the phone lines behind the house. The ducks are, hopefully, at the lake in Steele Park or in the canal to our north and the bats are where ever bats go. It's Sunday morning and the music on the radio is gentle and soothing. The coffee is some of the best I've ever made. Yep, we need to really think about this. Sure, we make fun of old people who get up early, eat dinner at 4:30 and bed by 8. We scoff at them. Problem is, there is a real draw to that at my age of 51. And you have to ask yourself, part of living longer and having a lighter step in our strides might actually have something to do with beautiful dawns.

Running for freedom!!!

School rolled up this week for the first five days with a gaggle of high school kids/men/women/mothers/fathers and the ever present-missing school desks.

Every summer our staff, probably much like the staff of hundreds of schools across the state and country, spend their summers working to prepare the buildings and individual classrooms for the upcoming school year. They usually strip all the contents out of the rooms that touch the floor, take it into the hall, then go back in and re-wax floors or clean carpet. The rooms look good when their done. Then, they put the stuff back in the exact location it was in when they took it out, or close to it. Every year, when the teachers return, someone is missing something. Sometimes its personal gear like a radio or their favorite sweater. But most of the time its school furniture.

It is hard for me to imagine, and I have a vivid imagination, that anyone is stealing school desks to decorated their home.

I think this falls under the same category as the missing sock. You know the story. You do your laundry and throw a bunch of socks in the wash, then the dryer, then pull them out and start to match them; there is always one of them that has escaped --always. Where the hell did it go? Did it crack the door open when you were in the other room balancing your checkbook and jump out, running outside through the doggy door to freedom? Okay, so it did that, where did it go when it got to the yard? Florida? You want to disappear, everyone knows you go to Florida.

The theory is these desks, chairs, tables- all commercial grade education equipment, are finding their way to someones living room. You have an art table as a dining room table and a couple of student desks as end tables? Really?

I know our staff. Although they are way underpaid for what they do, they have pride. None of them, NONE, would want Mrs. Turk's table in their house. Nor would they want a desk, covered with years worth of gum stuck to the bottom. Nope, I think there is something even more sinister working here.

These things are possessed. Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy. But was it crazy when the Italians won at Gettysburg, or any crazier than Nero playing the tuba while Rome burned? I think not. These things have been slaves to man for a long time. I think they've just had enough. Somewhere in the Florida Keys, a table and a couple of desks have found new life as patio furniture at a margarita bar, slurping up all that spilled margarita mix and overhearing all those drunken conversations. It makes them laugh.

Yep, a margarita bar in the Keys.

Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all.

So, once again, Monday brings school and the return of students to the track of knowledge. It was funny, last Monday, in the morning, I had an appointment with a doctor and a procedure that I will just say, after I got home, caused me to curl up in a corner, sucking my thumb, and whimpering like a French girl. But later that day, I sent out an e-mail to my department trying to encourage them about the start of school the next day. I didn't have the words, phrases, pictures, nothing. I had no heart to step back into the job that I had been at for almost ten years. But it was funny, by the late afternoon, the heart began to change. Motivation started to come back. Now, I have to admit, it wasn't fast, nor was it a lot, trickling like a leaky faucet. But it was definitely changing.

By Tuesday morning, when all the teachers and staff were to report back, I was ready to go. It was getting exciting, things were coming together, things were moving, shaking, we were in the groove, and for the week, 187 teachers and another 75 staff were 'fuelin' the rocket.'

This Monday, we take possession of your teenagers. Yep, we get their baggy-pants, gum-chewin', cell-phone textin', rap-crap listenin', little hearts. Somewhere over the next 190 days, we get to try to teach them how to read, write, and cipher so when they're forty-seven, a job that pays a dollar over minimum wage is not considered by them as a good job. The world wants their young educated; hopefully, so they live and work enough to contribute to the social security pot so the rest of us can afford canned soup in our old age. The powers measure our success with high stakes tests two years before they graduate and hope that in four years they're wearing a robe and walking down the aisle of the ASU sports arena waving to their family, many being the first high school graduate in the history of their family.

Yep, we're geared to go for Monday. Of course, in order to get to the wood ring (brass is for college, silver is for your masters, and gold for your doctorate) of a high school graduation, we get to deal with literally, sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Oh, I forgot, parent abandonment, not enough food at home, working third shift before coming to school, no shoes, water turned off at home, crap for clothes, not to mention pencils, paper, notebooks, pens, or lunch money.

Somewhere in the magic, a kid gets a scholarship to an ivy-league school, then another, and then another, then someone will go to a military academy, jobs, more education. Somewhere in the magic, they become productive citizens and wake up to the fact that the door to life just doesn't open to them, they have to push on it after they turn the knob.

I ran into a kid at a restaurant a couple of years ago. I can't remember my own name let alone a kid I had for a couple of months. He remembered me and we talked for a minute while I waited for my sandwich. Almost as an after thought, I asked him 'so, what do you want to do after you finish college?' He looked at me like I should have been able to read his mind. "I want to be just like you, a teacher." I couldn't remember that kid's name and barely remembered his face. But apparently, at least once, I did something right.

Tomorrow is game day. The biggest game of young lives. Ready? Hell yes I'm ready.