I'm Off The Skag!

I quit. I'm a quitter. I hope, anyways. I've quit smoking. I plan on employing the Sick Boy Method. No patch, no gum, no throat lozenges. I'll have none of it. Instead I've armed myself with reasons. There are tons of them, but the three that stick out the most in my mind are these: 1. D and I have a baby. 2. My uncle had a heart attack recently and almost didn't make it. The doctors attributed it to his smoking. He quit, he's been at it much longer than me, so why can't I? 3. A good friend of mine recently got pneumonia. He's been in the hospital for three weeks. He hasn't come off of the oxygen yet. The doctors are attributing his slow recovery to smoking. He quit, with help from the patch, he has been at it much longer than me, so why can't I?

It's going to be hard, I know. D wholeheartedly recommends the gum, but again I'll be having none of it. The self imposed smoking embargo begins now. And, I'm going gumless!

I've seen my immediate future, and it is bleak to say the least. It includes an on the job nicotine withdrawal freakout where I takle one of my coworkers like my name was Shawne Merriman. Suffice it to say that in the coming days I may be fired from my job. But know this, I have smoked my last smooze because win lose or draw I'm officially off the skag.

Pabst Blue Ribbon

I drink PBR. It’s been that way for awhile now. I was drinking PBR before all those little emo hipsters jumped on my bandwagon and brought the mood down. It’s a fact that I don’t particularly feel the need to defend, so I won’t. Besides, that’s not my purpose here (like I even have one, really). Instead, I want to focus on a little development in my life with regards to my PBR, err, fetish.

Since about a month ago, I made a switch. Mind you, this was not a brand switch, but more of a style change, really. I’ve flirted with that mess before, back in 2003, when I briefly toyed with the notion that Milwaukee’s Best might, indeed, be the best (turns out that Milwaukee’s Best is actually swill and that PBR is still the champ in my house). No, this switch is different. Lately, I’ve been going with the tall boy sixer. Sometimes, when I’m feeling it, I’ll even rock a Rainier tall boy sixer, ya know, just to change it up. I know what you’re thinking, that’s a lot of beer. And, well, it is. But look at it my way. Instead of making three trips to the kitchen, I now only have to make two, and any way you do that math I’m coming out ahead.

Plus, this means more play time with the Bean. I can sit her on my lap and play patty cake for the time that it takes to drink one and a half beers instead of just one. That’s called bonding. I.E. Quality time.

It really is all about the Bean. I promise.

The Foot Powder Follies

The combination of sweaty feet and a job that requires that I stand approximately 90% of the time requires that I use foot powder. It’s a weird thing to talk about on a blog, I know. I use Dr. Scholl’s. Religiously, almost. It’s my brand. It’s not unlike my preference in pop. For me it’s Dr. Pepper or no thank you. There’s no in-between.

The other day I ran out of foot powder, and D, being the observant girl that she is, took it upon herself to replace my depleted supply. It looked the same as always, the Dr. Scholl’s logo displayed on the front, the 10% more claim directly beneath it, and the bold yellow colored bottle I’ve come to rely on.

Yesterday morning, as I readied myself for work, I put generous amounts of the powder in my work shoes and was on my way. The day started off the same as most as me and my morning co-workers readied ourselves for the day ahead. It wasn’t until about a half hour after our real work had begun that I noticed the cold tingling sensation in my feet. I brushed the feeling aside at first, chalking it up to being in a air conditioned environment and promptly forgot about it. Soon I noticed it again, but this time my feet were tingling even more than before. My feet were getting colder and the tingling sensation made me begin to worry.

Heart problems run in my family and while I don’t really know much about the warning signs I imagined that a tingling sensation in any of my extremities could indicate a circulation problem. I was getting worried now, but brushed the feelings aside in favor of getting some work done. I was, after all, on the clock.

By the end of the day, with my feet still cold, I made my way home privately worrying that I may have a much larger problem than just cold feet. Upon arriving back at our house, the first thing I did was remove my shoes and socks. So after I did it, my feet warmed to their usual selves and I decided that I had probably just tied my kicks on to tight. The next day, my feet were cold again, and this time I really started to get worried. But in keeping with the previous day, when I got home and removed my shoes and socks the feeling had, again, quickly subsided.

Finally, on my third morning, I happened to look at the bottle of Dr. Scholl’s foot powder, when I made a little discovery. It seems that D had bought the mentholated version, and since hot feet are not my problem, the powder just, instead of counteracting the heat, made my feet cold. While the worry I had felt for the past couple of days gave way to laughter, I could only shake my head at my reluctance to explore what the cause of my symptoms might have been. Really, the first thing I should’ve done was to inspect the bottle, but in my private worry, I didn’t want to discover that a larger problem existed.

See, I’m afraid of the doctor’s office. I believe that if you want to catch something then the waiting room of any Doctor’s office would be a good place to find it. I’m also afraid of what the Doctor might say in regards to whatever malady brought me in. So I tend to worry about things until they become so dehabilitating that nothing short of a visit to the Doc will suffice.

Sammy Says . . .

While I'm not quite a Two-Toed Sloth, I do lay around a lot. I sigh a lot too. With D caring for Bean and Pau at work, I have the whole day to fill. My time is split between laying around and pestering our cat, Lacy. She was rescued from jail, just like me. Don't get me wrong, neither of us did hard time. It, other than my little cage, was quite nice actually. Three squares a day, and all that, hell; they even had a volunteer who walked me. Not as good as a walk with Paul, but a walk is still a walk, right? A lot of my fellow jailed runaways wouldn't shut up, however, and that sucked. But, again, I digress.

Anyway, back to pestering Lacy. I love it. She (the poor thing) is declawed. Apparently her last owners were sadists, because that kind of thing is bad news. Bad News Bears, you know what I mean? She's got it good here though. Plenty of corners for her to hide in, they even got here one of those scratch post things (which I would knock the hell over if I could). But, sometimes, I get bored and go on the prowl, and that's when Happy Hour starts in mi casa, amigo. I like to sniff her out, and then the chase is on. She swipes at me, but I know she can't hurt me. I don't think she realized that I know the claws are gone. I'm not afraid. There is no reason to be. Now, if she had claws? Well I ain't stupid. I like my nose the way it is, in one piece.

About Pau, he doesn't seem to really like his job. I think he'd rather have my life. You know, all footloose and fancy free. But someone has to make the scratch to buy my food! And I ain't no Hollywood dog, I mean why work when the puppy dog eyes and a sigh technique has worked so well?. I saw Turner and Hooch, and I, as a dog, didn't appreciate the way they made fun of Hooch's drooling problem. All this saliva, coupled with such a long tongue can really blow sometimes. You try to keep it under control when someone is dangling a biscuit in your face. Pavlov while obviously a good scientist, really, in my opinion, sold us out. Collectively. If I could talk, do you know what I would say? I'd say, "Hey, stop messing around and just give me the damn biscuit. We both know that I can roll the fuck over; I showed you that shit yesterday. Right now I want my biscuit, and I ain't doing any song and dance routine to get it." I, by the way, prefer the green milk bones. I do. You can take the "beef liver" brown colored milk bone and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. Who likes liver anyways? I know who doesn't. Me. Sammy. Sammy the F'N Bull. That's who.

Now if only I could get in on the cat nip. I've sniffed it, and you know what? It doesn't do it for me. I asked Lacy once what it was about the nip that did it for her. She just looked at me with those crazy Cats' eyes and yelled out, "WHOOOOHOOOO!", and then freaked the hell out. Lacy is crazy, man. I'm telling you. She's cuckoo for the nip. Me? Hell, I'm cool with a squeaky toy. That's hours of fun right there. A lot of people probably think that chasing a squeaky toy around is boring. Hell, after 3-4 throws I can even tell that Pau ain't into it anymore. But, I mean, what's a dog to do? I mean, for shit sake, I got to stay spry, man. If you were fast like me then you'd realize that sometimes you gotta stretch your shit out to keep what the good moon gave ya!

Pablo The Penguin

If there’s one development that I haven’t been able to wrap my head around, it’s my sudden insistence that all of my childhood faves return. Take The Penguin That Hated the Cold, for example. As a child I made my parents put in some serious work with this book, and now I find myself beating it into my daughters’ brain. And that’s not the only childhood fave of mine that I’ve been attempting to stampede into Beans subconscious. There’s my Fox and the Hound storybook record, and my old He-Man toys too. What does a little girl want with He-Man toys anyways? I’m not sure if she loves The Penguin That Hated the Cold or if she just smiles so big because of the faces I make when I read it to her, but it makes me happy just the same. So, what gives?

Listen, don’t get me wrong. I’m not denying that Bean will eventually determine her own favorites completely independent of the things I try to thrust upon her, but still. Surely, The Penguin That Hated The Cold is as good as any children’s book, and as a story whose theme it is to be yourself I could do a lot worse. Thing is, while she seems to enjoy it now, the day will come when she requests her true favorite and I, in keeping with my effort to be a good Dad, will give in and, well, let her be herself.

Maybe it’s because I had such a happy childhood, dominated by favorites that I can still remember fondly to this day. But, things have changed, and the world is a much different place. Take the closing scene from episode 1 of the Wire, where a young boy sat on his steps pondering his part in the death/murder of another kid while a police car raced past his house. Shortly after the fuzz sped by his Mom called him in, and the show ended when he closed the door. The scene continues to resonate with me, in both its sadness and blunt reality. Surely, the Bean’s reality will, hopefully, be much different than his, but still I can’t help but wonder about the world she’s going to grow up in. A world where every system that my parents counted on is corrupt and where most of the institutions that are in place have become so oligarchic that only the whims of the economic and corporate elite are pandered to, while our poorest cities eat themselves from within.

My favorites are good, or at least they were for me, but the Bean will inevitably determine her own. Sadly, she can’t have my reality, but, if D and I are lucky enough she can possibly have one of her own that rivals ours in terms of happiness. That, I’ve decided, is all that I want. A big smile flashed across her face as much as is humanly possible. Besides, what else is there?

Update: I've fixed the, "My Daughter is Afraid of Mike Tyson", post.