|
"It's all psychological, Martin. You yell 'Barracuda!'
People go, 'Huh? What?' You yell 'Shark!' and we've got a panic
on our hands on the 4th of July."
- The Mayor of Amity Island to Police Chief Brody in JAWS
"A man was running from a ravenous tiger in the jungle.
To escape he came across a vine and attempted to swing to the
other side of a deep chasm. The vine was just short to the other
side, so he decided to hang there for a while. Meanwhile at
the bottom of the chasm an equally ravenous tiger was lurking
and looking up at the man waiting for him to fall. At the top
of the vine a small mouse began to gnaw away the vine sealing
his fate to the tiger below. The man suddenly spied a small
bit of berries growing from the vine, grabbed them and ate them.
He couldn't help but think how sweet they were."
- A Zen Story
March 11th, 2002
I was having a bad day - on a Saturday, no less.
I had woken up Saturday morning remembering that
Governor Jim McGreevey was still in charge of New Jersey and
that was enough to get me into a pissed off mood for the rest
of the day.* Then I also remembered that my company was also
getting set for another round of layoffs and that was enough
to depress me a little more on top of that.
So, while I had the noose around my neck, I thought
I'd jump off the horse.
I decided that today would be a good day to
complete my New Year's resolution and start two of the projects
that I had promised myself. Two of the projects were:
- Build a metal shelving unit for the outside
storage bin and clean out the useless crap out of there.
- Build a new bookshelf for the haunted study**,
plug up the ghost holes in the plaster, clean out the room,
rearrange my books, and put the excess stuff into the attic.
I decided that I'd get started that morning after
my workout at the gym.
22 minutes of a high intensity stairmaster workout,
150 situps (100 on a Swiss ball and 50 on a lower abs chair),
a shave and a shower later and I was almost ready to go out.
I was about to put on my new "Comic Book Guy" Simpson's
T-shirt when I spied that the Hot Topic store security ink tag
was left on the shirt. More fuel for the fire. Some brainless
bong smoking twit of a slacker whose duty to remove security
tags from clothes in a clothing shop forgot to do something
that should've been second nature to her. After hunting around
for half an hour for the receipt, I found it. Add one more stop
to the itinerary. Go to Hot Topic and try not to commit homicide
by use of cruel and unusual punishment.
My wife and I fired up the Jetta (because it
not only had the larger fold down trunk space, but it was also
empty. My wife keeps a clean car, I don't) and started out to
the Freehold Raceway Mall first to remove the tag and then go
to the local Home Depot to get the stuff we needed.
I was in a seriously psychotic mood by the time
I got to Home Depot. I was pissed off by the fact that kids
don't take their work seriously and the consumer was the one
to pay for it with time and money. Also, I happened to see one
brain dead idiot who decided that he was special and elect to
drive with his cocker spaniel in his lap. The dog had his head
and paws outside of the front driver's side window while the
car was in motion. It's no secret that I'm a dog lover, but
even I hesitate to let my dog into the front seat. Dogs are
dogs. They don't know any better. What's to stop a dog from
leaping out of the car window into traffic because they saw
a squirrel? And that's just danger to the dog. At the very least,
pedestrians are in danger as well. When a car goes out of control
because Fido decided it was time to give Daddy a big kiss on
the mouth, how can a driver concentrate on the road? Let us
remember that such stupidity crippled Stephen King.
My wife listened to me rant and then I parked
the car.
I needed one metal shelving kit, one bookshelf
kit, one container of Dap spackle, one new set of screwdriver
drill bits, and one scraper. I also purchased for future use
a "How to" book published by Home Depot because I
suck at fixing things. So, why not have a book to remind me
of the fact.
I would like to have said that my trip to Home
Depot was rant free but I had encountered "Slacker Stupidity
Par Deux - Return of the Brain Dead". When I asked
this 18 - 20 year old kid where I could find a scraper for the
spackle (in the paint department) he said that it would not
be in that part of the store. After checking the entirety of
the store, it turned out to be in the aisle next to where I
had asked him. Mothers remember: don't let your kids eat lead
paint chips. It will affect them for years to come.
My wife also wanted us to go to Barnes &
Noble for the one zillionth time to buy EVEN MORE BOOKS. I love
my wife dearly but she suffers from bibliomania.*** Once she
gets hooked on an interest she has to have every book ever written
about the topic and then some. I told her we didn't need to
go. I think she saw the beginnings of a raging psychotic fever
in my eyes and agreed.****
But I digress.
After wrestling with my Jetta to fold down the
rear seat, we got the Home Depot stuff into the car and drove
home.
I took the stuff into the house and I steeled
myself for the task ahead. I put on my Yankee cap and changed
my glasses to the crappier ones (I didn't want to scratch the
new ones I bought yesterday). I decided to start on the metal
shelving unit. I charged up my hand drill and emptied the contents
of the metal shelf kit onto the kitchen floor. I was pretty
sure that I would have all of the materials I would need because
I picked an unopened box, but at Home Depot that really doesn't
mean anything. It turned out someone had attempted to put together
the very shelving kit that I was presently working on, got frustrated
and quit. Not a good sign. But, all the stuff was in
the box. So, now it was just a matter of not letting this kit
beat me.
It was close.
I've heard stories about rational, loving, fathers
on Christmas Eve attempting to put together swingsets, rocking
horses, and the like and were transformed into drooling madmen
by Christmas morning, with a bunch of extra parts left over
after the attempted construction. These kits have been known
to break the staunchest of souls.
Problem numero uno was that the directions were
not really clear. It was like reading a road map of Brussels
written in Chinese. There were several vital steps that caused
me to backtrack many times to install a shelf in a different
position. (Which I think the designers recognized by saying
not to screw the bolts into the unit tightly until the very
last step.)
Problem number two was that because the directions
specified the bolts were not to be screwed in tightly, the unit
had the stability of your average house of cards. Not something
that I felt would hold 250 pounds of tools and equipment per
shelf. Assembling this unit was not giving me a warm and fuzzy
feeling. My wife also noticed that my use of profanities had
greatly increased and had gotten extraordinarily exotic during
the building process. This is known as the "speaking in
tongues" phenomenon that happens to every "do-it-yourselfer".
The atmosphere in our townhouse was rated NC-17 or similar to
the dialogue content of the recently aired 9-11 special on CBS.§
Well, after I had tightened up everything on
the unit, it started to come together and be really stable.
I think the unit is only slightly lopsided but good enough for
government work.
Phase 1 completed. My wife said that she was
ravenous and wanted me to call Dominos for lunch and get a thin
crust pizza. I did a quick inventory of my wallet for funds
and realized that I would have to go out and get the pizza rather
than have it delivered. (Ugh.) One bank trip, extra large thin
crust cheese pizza, and cheesy bread later, I was ready to go
back to work on Phase 2. §§
Phase 2 consisted of cleaning out the shed.
Now, I want you to bear this in mind. I am not
a neat person and neither is my wife. We have been living in
our townhouse since May of 1998. Our actual move from Secaucus
to Freehold was, in short, a disaster. We got screwed on the
mover's price. We got screwed on the labor. And we worked our
asses off trying to put things away during the week of my sister's
wedding. Several of the last steps of packing consisted of shoving
things into boxes 2 hours before the movers arrived after packing
all night. A lot of the stuff we had not really seen since my
wife's wedding shower in 1995. We got the stuff into the house
and threw it into the largest storage bin that we could find.
The result? A bin that I couldn't even walk into.
I started to empty everything out of the bin.
There was a lot of trash, but on the other hand a lot of lost
treasure. We found a waffle iron that we never used, and a toaster
which we desperately needed. We found a food processor that
I will be putting to use in the near future and all of the extension
chords that I will mark for Christmas use. I know now that I
also will not have to rebuy all of the paint stuff that I will
need in the next month when I paint the master bedroom and the
ghost study.
On the other hand, I found a lot of junk. A LOT
OF JUNK! Who keeps this crap? I found bank statements from 1995.
I found JC Penny bills from 1997. I found LOOSE PAPER CLIPS
AND BOTTLE CAPS. I found 2 whistlepops that had gone bad.§§§
Empty paint cans, empty bottles, empty soda cans, loose screws,
nuts, nails, tape, chewed up dog toys, plastic plant leaves,
and more miscellaneous garbage littered the bin.
Between the start of phase 2 and the end of sorting
all the crap and throwing it out, my wife's "brother"
John paid us a visit.§§§§ He hung around
while we did this and it was good to "whistle while you
worked". We managed to get the job done and the stuff put
away. At the end, I got to walk into the bin, turn off the light
and call it a day.
John hung out with us for the evening, where
he spoke of everything that was going on in his life.
He was still trying to find Ms. Right, get his taxes done, deal
with his parents, pay his rent, worry about Verizon layoffs
and get ready for his next bike tour (as well as stick to a
diet as well).
Sometime that evening, I decided that the last
two cigarettes that I had left over from a particularly stressful
week at work and had been saving in my cigar humidor were going
to be smoked. So, I smoked them. It had been a while and I was
not prepared for the HUGE nicotine buzz that I got. I went outside
with a cup of coffee with Baileys Irish Cream into the uncharacteristically
warm March evening and sat on the cement step outside the house,
alone.
I smoked my cigarettes and drank my coffee.
MY cigarettes and MY coffee.
Suddenly, the thoughts of my company layoffs
didn't appear to be so important and the future of today's idiot
youth didn't bother me so much. I looked out to our two parked
cars in front of the townhouse, saw that the grass was cut and
the hedges were trimmed. I had a wife inside the house that
loved me and two dogs that gave me happiness. I had my health,
my wife pretty much had hers, and the dogs were still young
enough to act like puppies. I was still working and getting
a steady income and I had a roof over my head. I survived and
escaped the worst attack on our country in 60 years and managed
to avoid anthrax in our mail. I still could afford to go out
and get Dominos as well as have money to fix up the house. Both
of my parents were still alive. I had friends, family, and a
life.
That's when I realized that it really wasn't
so bad right now. There were a whole bunch of people a helluva
lot worse off than I was. And in comparison, I was blessed.
Yeah, the little things piss me off, but the big picture was
pleasant at the moment.
Sometimes you have to take the perspective of
being a bricklayer. You work hard for a long time and at the
end of a day, you can see what you've done. Always look at the
good things you've got.
For the first time that I could realize, everything
was okay.
And in the end, I think, that's all any of us
can ask.
* - And if you think his rant is NOT coming, think again.
** - Um..., we have a ghost in the house. Suffice it to say,
that I have enough information on this to write an essay on
this all on its own at some future date. He has caused a minor
amount of damage within the study and hence the reason behind
the clean up.
*** - You should see our house. It is getting to be wall to
wall books. My wife had an extensive library before we got married.
Added to my collection of books, it is almost unmanageable.
Bibliomania is one of the few collections that has been classified
as a psychological disease. The difference between a bibliophile
and a bibliomaniac is the former has made books their slave
the latter has made them their master.
**** - We went Sunday.
§ - If you missed the airing of 9-11 on CBS, aired on
March 10th, 2002, shame on you. People who did might have an
inkling of what went on in New York on that day of infamy. It
was very well done. Obviously, because this was a work of reality
none of the dialogue content was edited at all. So, some of
the things said were "not meant for children".
§§ - Okay, so I'm not perfect. I strayed from my
Weight Watchers diet plan for a day. I'm in no rush. Plus I
worked out that morning and was able to justify it.
§§§ - If you know what it is then you are old
enough to know why I bought them. If you are not, I can't explain
it.
§§§§ - John is a very dear friend of my
wife's and is like her younger brother. He has helped us many,
many, times with tasks that we would be embarrassed to even
ask family (including the aforementioned move from Secaucus).
He works as a phone technician for Verizon.
|
