Missa in Angustiis

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 30, Verses 2 & 3:

"I am too stupid even to call myself a human being!  

I cannot understand man, let alone God."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Orson Welles once said, "I don't pray because I don't want to bore God".  I guess I feel kind of the same way.  I suppose, in some sort of perverted, disorganized and unfortunate way, these blog posts could be construed as a type of prayer.  Something is created, if you want to be kind and call it that, and it is sent out, maybe sent up.  Prayers are pleas, right?  They're missives intended to be heard, if not heeded.  

Hear us, O Lord.  We beseech you and so forth.  

I'm doing the same thing, if artlessly so.  Hear me, O Best Beloved.  I beseech you and so forth. 

Whether we're secular or pious, we've been sending things out, and maybe up, for a very long time.  Whether it's been psychotic scribblings on walls or Haydn's "Lord Nelson Mass", a tumultuous and terrifying play about Vietnam by David Rabe, whether it's an Excel spreadsheet on a deadline or a whistleblowing expose of greed or incompetence or worse-- it's all prayer.  Every raspy, erotic exhalation and every turn signal and each creak of the rocking chair and each diaper change.  Every cough and every tear.  

Every, every minute.

And I suppose that's why people think they need religion because, without it, we don't know what the fuck we're doing.  We're like fumbling with buttons in the dark.  We're too stupid even to call ourselves human beings.  We're lazy and scared and there's a mess on the desk and dog shit out back and twins tenuously asleep in the next room and everything is precarious and we're all holding it in or holding back or waiting for the next thing.  

What is the next thing going to be?

I remember when my brother-in-law died of cancer.  He was thirty-four.  And the babies had just been born.  And I was thinking, what could it be?  The next thing.  Even in the couple of months from his diagnosis to his death, there were many "next things".  More MRIs.  More scans.  More tumors.  More texts.  More calls.  Every time the phone rang or went "bleepboop" it was bad.  It was so bad.  And I don't think I ever prayed for him.  Not formally.  No Hebrew.  I mean-- he wasn't Jewish, so maybe it wouldn't have gotten translated right anyway.  But there was plenty of prayer.  My kind of prayer.  

This.

DO YOU HEAR ME UP THERE YOU FUCK?

I love it.  You pray to the guy who did it. Hilarious.  A scream.  A howler.  Crazygonuts.  Fucking phonies.

The high holidays are coming again.  They always do.  We're going to go to services and march around with the children behind the torahs.  It is what it is.  I don't believe in it any more than I believe in Santa Claus.  Hell, I believe in Santa Claus more-- at least I get to play him at the psych hospital.  And read "A Christmas Carol".  I love that.  There's no prayer more prayery than that.  Dickens in the Day Room.  

It doesn't heal a soul.  It doesn't do a thing.  But it does what art is supposed to do: take you out of the place you are in, for a moment or two.  Take you out of yourself.  Out of your own psyche.  Your own troubles.  Your own shit.  It does it for me as much as it does it for them.  

My children are having what my wife calls "The Language Explosion".  In laymen's terms: they're talking their little asses off.  

mamadadacarshoessipcupuppacrackercookiewatercookieavodacoballbeepbeepbearblankieandalltherestofit

One day, they're going to start asking me about God and religion and humanity and why people use nerve gas on each other and why the former president put a cigar in that idiot's vagina and why the neighbor doesn't like us and why are there little shiny bits in the street that glisten like diamonds and why diamonds are a girl's best friend and why they don't have any friends and what were we like before they were born and what happens when we die and why do birds suddenly appear and bluebirds say.

What the fuck do they say?

What the fuck do I say?

What will I say?

I'm kind of hoping they befriend an old man.  Not a creepers old man with a dirty trench coat and a comb-over and a ubiquitous white van, but a wizened old man, all crinkly behind his gold-rimmed glasses and his well-worn wingtips and his faded corduroys who'll sit on his porch and tell them stories about the way it was and he'll have clever, quaint, slightly biting, deadpan and droll way of looking at the world.  And they'll soak in his words and his wisdom and they'll repeat his aphorisms at school and their teachers will call them "old souls" and they'll know things-- they'll just know.  

You know?

Because I don't.  I just don't know.  And I know that's supposed to be one of the bravest things you can possibly say, but these are troubled times.  They're always troubled times.  And I just don't know.   

With Stern Judicial Frame of Mind

HI.  Sorry about this fucked up color shit.  

Something happened.

Deal.

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 25, Verse 8

"Don't be hot-headed and rush to court!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Are you fucking kidding me?

I'd rather get a teddy bear stuffed with Ricin.  But, alas, no such luck for me.  It's Jury Duty.

They tried this on me once before.  Back before I had a smart phone that I dutifully put appointments and important things in, my life was a haphazard, disorganized mess of scraps of paper in my trouser pockets or in my glove box or on my bureau.  When we were getting ready to dump my wife's PT Cruiser in favor of my Volvo S-40, I was cleaning out the door pockets and found a piece of paper that looked strangely similar to the paper pictured above.  My heart dropped immediately to my bowels and floated in a pool of half-digested lunchmeat.  I stared at it, hoping it would go away, like a neighbor I don't want to talk to-- but that never works.  Things and people don't just go away because you stare at them.  

I would know.  Can you imagine just how many people have stared at me, hoping I would go away?  And fuck if I'm not still here.

So, I grabbed the juror notice and the date I was due to report was three months prior to the date I had the paper in my hand.  I immediately expected a Sheriff's Department van to pull up in back of the PT Cruiser and have a cadre of deputy dawgs cuff me an' stuff me.  Certain that there was a warrant out for my arrest, I shakily called the number on the paper and rambled some crazy mess of excuses for why I didn't show.  The clerk on the phone was actually pretty nice about it.  She said I was "fine" which, I guess, meant that I wasn't in contempt of court and didn't owe a $1,000 fine and that the police weren't going to rappel through my bedroom window that night and whisk me away to Night Court to face that annoying magician judge.  

This time, my Jury Duty notice is pinned proudly to the kitchen cork board and the reminders are in my Outlook calendar at work and my iPhone.  I was going to have September 24th tattooed to my forehead, but I didn't want everyone thinking I was publicly raising awareness of the birth date of my two favorite people: the Ayatollah Khomeini and Jim Henson.  

While the idea of earning roughly the daily wage of a Chinese factory worker, while doing none of the actual arduous physical labor, is oddly appealing to me on some twisted level, I'm not altogether excited about the prospect of serving on a jury.  I guess lots of people feel this way, but for different reasons.  They don't want to miss work, they "don't have time for that", it's boring and annoying and you can't talk about what you're doing, etc.  

Me?

I just don't fucking like people.  

And, when you're on a jury, I expect, you have to deal with people.

LOTS of people.

I mean, you're all crammed the fuck up in that jury box with at least eleven of them.  The attorneys.  And the bailiffs.  And the stenographer.  And the goddamn courtroom frustrated Rembrandt with her little oil pastels and artsy glasses.  And there's the suspect, looking like a shithead.  And the victim, looking all victimy as hell.  And the families.  And the orphans.  And the vendors selling T-shirts and the cops and Jem, Scout, and Cousin Dill up in the balcony and Sam Watterston with his fucking eyebrows and 

For these kind words accept my thanks, I pray. 

A Breach of Promise we’ve to try to-day. 

But firstly, if the time you’ll not begrudge, 

I’ll tell you how I came to be a Judge.

It's never like it is in the movies.  Or on TV.  Or in the Victorian operetta. 

It's middle-aged women farting in the sequestration room and cold sandwiches on stale bread and people wanting to get home before "Jeopardy!" and if justice was ever served at an American court proceeding I'm sure it was by complete accident.  

Please.  Don't put me in a room with those people.  Whoever they are.  Women.  Men.  White, black, plaid, I don't give a fuck.  I'll tell them my daddy's daddy's daddy was a cop.  I'll tell them I collect Jim Crow postage stamps.  I'll pee my pants.  I'll pee the guy next to me's pants.  I'll come on the 24th wearing a Hitler mustache and no pants.  I'll wear a bra, on the outside of my shirt.  I'll faint.  I'll shoot fake blood out of my eyeballs.  No-- real blood.  I'll steal the gavel.  I'll call myself "H. Rap Brown" and I'll do the black power fist thing when the judge walks in.  

Please.  I'm scared.  I'm too dumb to decide someone else's fate.  I can't even decide my own.

Saying Yes

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 24, Verse 6

"Don't go to war without wise guidance; there is safety in many counselors."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

A few months ago, I found myself at the library where my mom works, dressed up as the Cat in the Hat, reading Dr. Seuss stories to a bunch of kids.  

These things happen sometimes.  

One of the books I read was "Green Eggs and Ham".  I guess, when reading Dr. Seuss stories, you don't really trouble yourself too much thinking about what internal struggles the characters are going through during the course of the story.  But try it some day.

Try it, try it, and you may!

I was thinking about how much I identified with the poor stuffy bastard in the crumpled top hat with the big furry ass who doesn't want to eat the green eggs and ham.  

I mean, I get it.  That's me-- my ass is even furry, though big it's not-- and that's how I've always been.  Anyone who's ever tried to convince me to have an alcoholic beverage or watch "Titanic" can tell you that I'm as truculent as they come.  When I try to convince my children to ingest even just a small morsel of food at dinner time when they don't want to, and they twist in their chairs and swipe off every comestible speck from their trays and defiantly shout, "NO!" I have that sinking feeling that tells me unmistakably that, yeah, they're mine.  

"NO!" is my middle name.

I say "NO!" a lot.  To social engagements-- I've said it so often that the inevitable has happened: people stop asking, stop inviting-- stop.  There are no texts that come in saying, "Let's hang out".  And I'm not crying in my Caffeine Free Diet Coke about it, it just is what it is.  

If a solution to a problem is offered to me, "NO!" is generally how I respond, even if I never petulantly come out and say it.  I've learned to at least behave polite, but I might as well be standing there with a frowny face and my arms crossed in front of my chest peeing my pants just to make the point that I want you and your solution to STAY AWAY FROM ME.  

STAY.  A-WAY.

I don't like you.  

In therapy, I've said "NO!" to mindfulness, to meditation, to alternate ways of thinking, to behavioral modification.  I've said "NO!" to homework, and even to something as simple as "give this some thought for next time".  I just... don't.  

But, after three years, I'm finally saying "yes" to medication.

Why now?  Because I am an absolute anxiety-ridden mess.  And I'm depressed.  I am so consumed with panic that some days I can barely function, barely focus.  Barely get through the day.

Now that I have a desk, it's very tempting to just curl up into a neat little ball underneath it.  That space underneath desks makes a great hiding place.  No one will try to feed me green eggs and ham if I'm all folded up like a pretzel in there.  Especially if I'm peeing my pants.  

My therapist is happy, my wife seems happy, but I'm not happy.  Maybe that's because I haven't found an in-network psychiatrist yet.  Maybe it's because I haven't looked for one yet.  But I have made up my mind to try it.  While I am extremely apprehensive about taking medication that "the way __________ works is not completely understood", I've resigned myself to it.  It's the best we've got at this point in time, and clearly what I'm doing for myself (saying "NO!") isn't working terribly well, so it's time to try something else.  And if I go running down the street naked while ululating and playing the triangle, we'll know I probably need to, um, not be on meds.  Or different ones.  Maybe it'll take some fiddling and some switching and some tweaking and-- hopefully not THAT kind of "tweaking"-- we'll see what happens.

He was so gentle in his suggesting.  He's quiet.  His tactics were barely perceptible.  But I noticed, and I pushed him off.  Away.  

No.

And he would yield, and be quiet about it-- for months sometimes.  And it wasn't because I'd be doing well.  I wasn't.  I don't.  I don't do well.  Not in therapy.  But he knew when to be quiet and when to speak up.  It's a dance, you see.  He leads, I lead-- it's a whole thing.  

"But I shouldn't need it.  I should be able to do this on my own."  He raised an eyebrow.  "Well, with you."

And maybe I could.  But how much longer would it take?  Five years?  Seven?  That's a lot of $50 co-pays. Maybe I'll be paying those forever regardless.  Who knows?

One thing I do know, though, is that every day feels like I'm going to war.  And that may sound a trifle dramatic, but it's how I feel.  And even Robert E. Lee didn't feel like that every day.  That's too much.  You get tired.  And I need to not be so tired.  I have 20-month-old twins that I need to be awake and alive and silly for.

Thoroughly silly.

I was rolling around on the bed with them kissing their necks and their ribs and they were laughing so hard that I wanted to eat the world, hug the globe, kiss the sun.  Go to war-- but in the good way.  The lusty fife-blowing, drum-banging, button-gleaming bagpiping your brains out up and down the square way.  

Cannons.

Sabres, glistening in the sun.  

Left wing, right wheel.  

BAYONETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Charge.   

Sausage Fingers

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 24, Verse 5

"A wise man is mightier than a strong man.  Wisdom is mightier than strength."

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I don't know if you and your father played like this, but, sometimes, when I was a little boy, I would try to inflict pain on my father.  I'm sure there's some Freudian out there who will stumble across this blog long after it's been abandoned by its author-- say, you know, in 2 months-- and he'll go, "Ah-HAH" and imagine me wanting to sleep with my mother and Hamlet and soaked pajamas and all that other shit, and that's fine.  But, the fact remains that, for whatever it was, sometimes that's how we would play.  He would tense his muscles in his abdomen and invite me to hit him, which I gleefully did, typically in the basement.  That's where we did our WWF shit.  Sometimes I'd try to get all his fingers in my hand and squeeze them as hard as I could, to try to crush them.  

When I was a little boy, my father's fingers seemed proportional to sausage links.  Looking back on it recently, I assumed that this was because I was so tiny and he seemed like such a leviathan to me back then, and that that's just how I was remembering things.  And it was only a couple days or so ago that I really looked at his fingers closely and noticed that, yeah, that's what they really look like.

My father has fucking sausage fingers.  The man is immense.  

I mean, he's not-- he's maybe 5'8" or so, but he's huge.  

At 6'0", I tower over him, but only as height is concerned.  In every other way, I'm a bit like a balloon that's had its helium surgically removed.  The man's a giant.  And, yes, once upon a time, he was an Israeli soldier.  He rode in tanks and he killed people and he defied authority and he was punished and played practical jokes on bunkmates and he endured a brutal field operation on his hemorrhoids after collapsing during a march, which I'm sure he'd be delighted with me writing about on a blog viewable by Freudian assholes.  

He didn't get very far in the ranks, and I'm sure his attitude problem didn't help.  Samal rishon, or "staff sergeant".  His rank looks like this:

This is a picture of an Israeli army uniform shirt with my father's rank on it.  I stole it from some website.  I had to do it because this isn't actually my father's uniform, and I think that's been permanently lost.  He doesn't know where it is.  He doesn't care.  I once asked him if he had any of his old medals, because I was playing Sir Joseph Porter, KCB in a production of "H.M.S. Pinafore" and the more medals I could have on my uniform the better.  So I called my father one night and asked him if he knew where his old medals were.  All these calls begin innocuously enough.  He replied,

"You think I give a FUCK about some stupid piece of shit on a goddamn fucking ribbon from those assholes?!  I don't fucking know where that shit is!  Yeah, I got medals.  BIG FUCKING DEAL!"

I could envision his sausage fingers gripping his cellphone with strangle-worthy intensity as he shouted, not at me, I understood, at Israel.  At the place that almost took his life and his chance to have a family, a place that has made so many of its young expendable for some might argue dubious reasons.  

Every boy, I think, in some way, even if not in a big way, wants to grow up and be like their father.  I think, from a very early age, I knew that I was going to be maybe the furthest thing from my father imaginable.  My fingers are, and have always been, long, delicate, slender, graceful.  They're not sausage links.  I had to get a woman's wedding band, for Christ's sake, because no man's ring I tried on even came close to fitting.  But I have his temper.  I have his body hair, and his dark skin.  I have his skin tags, and I expect I'll only get more of those as time ticks by.  And I have a fierce love and dedication to my family, which, I guess, is more important than what my fingers look like or whether I could have withstood torture by Palestinian forces.  

He's strong and he's wise.  I'm not sure, most days, that I'm either, but I think it's a lot to ask of a thirty-three-year old to be "wise".  We'll check in again after my hair has gone white and my olive-toned face is covered in skin tags.

I wanted to wear a uniform because he did.  I wanted to become a cop, and maybe I would have risen to the rank of sergeant and stopped there, too.  Or maybe not.  I was an EMT for a couple years, but that was just play time.  I wanted to be something more.  Crisp.  Clean.  Proud.  Pained.  

After all, there is just something about a man in uniform, isn't there?

RARRR!

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 4

"Jealousy is more dangerous and cruel than anger."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

"I'm not really sure I understand," I said to my therapist, crossing my legs like a girl the way I do, "that I understand the point of getting angry."

He raised his eyebrows at that.  He's a good eyebrow raiser.  He doesn't raise one, quizzically, like a therapist might, he raises both at the same time, making him look rather like an eight-year-old Macaulay Culkin whenever I say something even remotely surprising or unexpected in session.  He intimated that I was angry at him, which I wasn't but, the moment he said that, making the session about the interplay between me and him, I got angry.

"I noticed that, when you got angry at me, your attention wandered away, and you got quiet and sort of shut down."

I stared at the wall-hanging on his, well, where else would it be-- his fucking wall.  Hanging there.  It had frayed edges, like a little rug, and I didn't like how the fringes at the top sort of just flopped over like a bunch of spaghetti noodles.  It looked silly.

"What?"

---------------

I don't know how to be angry, and I don't really think anybody else does either.  Sure, you can take anger management classes, or teach them, but I don't think that means very much.  Once, a patient told me "you're not allowed to get angry inside a psych hospital" and I went all therapist on him and talked about how anger isn't the problem it's the expression of it and how there are appropriate ways to be angry but, really, he was right.  Pace angrily, and we're going to watch you.  We'll "give you space", but we're putting a plan in place.  Go to your room and slam your door, we're telling a nurse.  Yell and scream?  Well, guess what.  We have ways of dealing with that, too.

Early on in my confused adolescence, (I know, whose isn't?) I tried using my precocious nature and facility with the English language to express my anger through letters, when I felt slighted or like there had been some sort of injustice.  At fourteen, that got me dis-invited back from a summer theatre program.  At twenty, it almost got me thrown out of college.  

Every time I get angry at my wife, it feels disgusting.  Sometimes we're "fighting fair", sometimes we're not.  I don't think that really matters a damn.  It's still disgusting and hurtful and shameful.  When I scream at my father, it feels great.  It's cathartic.  I'm releasing endorphins and testosterone and triptophan or whatever and that's great but it always feels horrible afterward.  Like, I expect, drinking feels, you know, after.  Or sex, you know, with the wrong person.  Or the wrong hole.

Whoops.  Went too far.  That happens sometimes here.  But you knew that.

Of course, holding it in doesn't feel so hot either.  I know, because I've done it my entire life.  And letting it out in a very controlled, precise, measured way feels, well, very controlled, precise, and measured.

And that's not so good.  What's the point?

"The point," my therapist said, "is that people get angry, and that's okay."

Wow.  Can I have that on a bumper-sticker?

---------

I got angry after reading this today.  I get it.  The author got 6.7 thousand Likes on Facebook and 217 people tweeted it and 469 people shared it.... some other fucking way.  And he's an internet phenom and I'm an internet schmuck-nom, and that's wonderful and all.  And I remember when I was dumb enough to write, um, a whole book to my then-unborn children.  And it was full of the unfettered depths of my psyche and it exposed them to all of the awful stalagmites that grow unchecked in my head, the depravity and the heat.  And I said provocative things to them, these then-unborn children of mine and isn't it droll to say something like "Dear Daughter: I Hope You Have Some Fucking Awesome Sex" but, God, do I see through you, you meme-machine.  You hipster.  You Friend of the Like.  You wouldn't know the first thing about being a father, even though I know you are one.  SO.  I don't care.  I don't care if you've fathered a veritable gaggle of girls.  Your self-righteous, better-than-thou attitude is sycophantic and cloying and playing to a breathless cadre of twenty-something girls on Facebook you want to fuck who think you're SUCH AN AMAZING DAD and gee if only YOU'D sired my children everything would be going fine.

And everything is going fine.  

So, I got angry, and I'm not sure there was a point.  Maybe I'm jealous.  Maybe that's worse than anger.  Or maybe I'm right.  Either way, I'm definitely hungry.  I wish I had a peach to eat, but there's just goddamn Granny Smith apples.  

Tomorrow will be better.   

And One More Leading Nowhere, Just for Show

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 23, Verse 4

"Don't weary yourself trying to get rich."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I saw "Fiddler on the Roof" on Sunday.  Licensed, American Jews are required to see this play performed live at least six times in their lifetime.

(The Good Book says.)  

At 33, I can say I've done my Semitic duty twice.  I'm on my way.

Jews born after 1971, the Good Book was amended to read, must be subjected to repeated, innumerable viewings of the film-- at least until the Betamax or VHS tape wears to the point where the wedding procession for Tzitel and Motel goes fuzzy.  Then you can say you're ready to become a man, or woman.  In our faith, the bar/bat mitzvah means nothing.  It's all about the wear on the "Fiddler" tape, which must be checked and documented by a rabbi or his designee.  

And notarized.

On Sunday, I sat in the audience, in the second row, mind you, of a large summer theatre organization of which I used to be a part many years ago, to see this production of "Fiddler".  It was a strong, ambitious, energetic production.  As my wife pointed out, to see "Fiddler" as a Jew is kind of an uncomfortable experience-- you really have to allow yourself to get over the schlockiness of some of the stereotypes, particularly nebbishy Motel and shrill-as-a-pill, up-in-yo-grill Yenta.  I was okay after about twenty minutes.  And then it took me another ten or so after intermission to get back into it.  But I was thoroughly along for the ride.  I got caught up in the swell of the Bottle Dance at the wedding, even though I could see the outline of the bottle rest inside the black hats, which ruined some of the illusion, but who cares?  When I saw the production at my old college-- the first time I'd ever seen "Fiddler" on stage-- one of the bottles dropped, which made it even more exciting because you're sitting there going, "FUCK!  They're really DOING it!"

That's what live theatre is.  Waiting for the bottle to drop.  

We're all waiting for the bottle to drop, I think.  At plays, in life.  Wherever.  For some of us, it's thrilling, for some of us, it's an inevitability and we drolly congratulate ourselves when it happens.  I know which camp I'm in, and I wish I was in the other.

Don't you?

I was listening intently, as if I was hearing it for the first time, the lyrics to "If I Were a Rich Man" and, even though I hate it when people say this, I hear it differently now.  Now it's not just some fat schlub throwing his arms around in the air going "yebbadeebadeebayebbadeebadeebaDUH!".  Now it's someone with whom I identify a little bit more, and not because he's Jewish.  Because he's fantasizing.  He's allowing his mind to go there, which is a dangerous thing-- far more dangerous than dancing around with a bottle on your head or, for Christ's sake, on a roof with a goddamn violin.

Dreams are ballsy.  

My wife and I are dreamers.  We just had a contractor over to talk about ripping the shit out of our bathroom.  Why?  There's nothing especially wrong with it.  Everything's functional.  The faucet does its faucet thing.  The tub fills, and it empties.  

Oh, but it's all disgusting and we hate it we hate it we hate it we hate it.

We're people who hate our bathroom.

I guess there are people out there who don't quite have that luxury-- to hate some inanimate porcelain things-- but we do.  We are that.  And, if I were a rich man, I'd do marble this and granite that and stainless this and rip that out and re-caulk that and strip off this and slap on that and wouldn't have to work hard yebbadeebadeebaDUMB.

You know?  I would.

We look at listings on Zillow.  We call it "Real Estate Porn".  Look, but don't touch.  Can't touch this.  Is this the little home I purchased it?  When did it get to be so small?

So.  Fucking.  Small.

We can't sell our house.  We can't get a bigger one.  But we gaze.  We ooh and aah at exposed beams.

Mmmmmmmm... yeah, EXPOSE THOSE BEAMS, LOVER!  SHOW ME YOUR COPPER FLASHING!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH  OOOOOOOOOOH!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Sorry.  I'll just.... clean that up..... later.)

Everything's so small, everything's so precarious.  I joked with some woman a few days ago.  I joke with women.  Call it flirting-- I don't care.  She was saying that she's terrified of zombies.  I furrowed my brow at her.

"How old are you?  Listen, I don't need zombies to scare me.  I wake up every morning terrified just that I've woken up."

Work is terrifying.  Coming home is wonderful, but also terrifying.  Making money is terrifying.  Making so little of it is terrifying.  Making so much of it is terrifying.  And, all the time, that bottle.

That fucking bottle.  

Sunrise.  Sunset.  

Amen.

Dante's Playroom

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 20, Verse 16

"It is risky to make loans to strangers!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Those babies are getting big.

My wife, who's a Speech-Language Pathologist and who consequently knows about these things, keeps a list of all their words.  She has 57.  He has 46.  

"Two-word combinations should be arriving.... NOW" she told me as we were re-assembling the kitchen together tonight.  Every day, somehow, the kitchen gets disassembled.  Like a puzzle.  Or an autopsied cadaver.  Every night, we put it back together.  It's rather tiresome.

I suppose if, one night, we simply collapsed in each other's arms in a torrent of sexual profundity, or, more likely, if we just plain collapsed in each other's arms and neglected to re-assemble the kitchen, it would start out the next day pre-disassembled, and maybe that would be better.  

Certainly less futile.  

So, anyway, those babies are getting big.  Did I mention that already?  Sorry.  I'm a bit absent-minded, and, by this time of day, my brain has yet to be re-assembled.  That happens while I'm sleeping.  When I sleep.  If.  It never gets put back exactly the same way but, somehow, each morning, pieces are reasonably where they're supposed to be.  I take precautions to fill holes.  People call this "compensation".  I used to compensate for those holes in my brain by writing myself notes on little slips of paper that I'd put in the pocket of the trousers I knew I was going to wear to work the next morning.  Sometimes the notes to myself weren't very nice.  Here's an example from a few years back:

"Dear Asshole,

Don't forget to call the painter to get estimate for upstairs.  He's a fag and so are you.

Love,

Asshole"

You believe I used to run self esteem groups?  AND THEY PAID ME FOR IT?!

Since I got a smartphone, I fill the holes in my brain with little reminders that make the phone go DOING and BONG and BOO-BEEP at me until I do what it says.  It's rather like the stupid fucking noise your car makes when you don't put your seatbelt on.  Not like anybody doesn't put their seatbelt on anymore.  Except my father.  What an asshole.

Where was I?  

Right.  The babies.  They're big.  Or, getting there.  

At some point, they will be sleeping in something other than a crib.  They will be cribless.  Riblets.  They will be in spiderwebs.  Hammocks.  Hamhocks.  

BEDS

Clearly, I am not equipped, emotionally or financially, to handle this.  

Renovations will have to take place.  Massive ones.  Think, facial reconstructive surgery for Nazis fleeing to Buenos Aires to avoid the Mossad.  

They're gonna have to move heaven and hell to prep this fucking house for these kids and their big boy/big girl beds.  

Not only that, we're going to have to take out a loan.

This wouldn't bother most people.  It bothers me.  I don't like loans.  Taking them out or repaying them or having anything to do with them really.  I've never given a loan.  I've paid bills and I've bought things and I've given to charity.  But I've never paid a woman to lick my peen and I've never bought a ferris wheel ticket and I've never taken out a loan for anything other than a car or school.  School gets auto-debited so I don't have to think about it even though it's gonna happen every month till my teeth turn gray and my hair gets pulled and the stupid car I own outright because I wrote a big boy check to the dealer AND

the office is going to be his room, or hers.  The room I'm typing in right now is gonna be hers.  Or his.

I'm going to the basement.  This is what happens to parents.  They get relegated.  Delegated.  Obfuscated.  Obliterated.

No, that's what happens to parents' checkbooks.  

Oh, God, I'm scared.  Hold me.  My phone is going boop bop beep and my wallet is sweating and the nightmares are starting and they've never really stopped and I had bags under my eyes in my second grade picture and is it any wonder that sometimes at work I sit frozen at my desk and stare into my laptop screen in absolute terror and I feel like there's hands clutching at my throat or maybe I just wish there were and it's all going but I don't know where and fear is a beautiful thing because it keeps you moving and falling and stirring and pulsing and beds.  

Beds.

They're going to sleep in beds.  

Cuddled.

Snuzzled.

Schmuggled.

Love.

I can do this.  

No.  

Okay.

They have words.  

Working on It

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 11

"Hard work means prosperity; only a fool idles away his time."

 

---

 

CHIPPED WISDOM:

 

(Apologies, all.  I left work today approximately two-and-a-half hours late.  This one's gonna be small.  And that's what she said.)

 

 

 

HOW I HATE

WORKING PAST THE POINT WHERE ONE WOULD NORMALLY STOP WORKING

 

When you get home late from work,

At least nobody treats you like you're a dickhead.

 

When you're stuck in a long line of cars,

You feel like you're stuck behind prison encasements.

 

When your higher ups don't seem to care,

That you're shitting a brick in your underclothing,

 

You have to question why,

You're wearing a nice shirt and cravat.

 

You're staring at the clock on the wall,

And you know some people are having a festivity.

 

Your nerves are rattled and wracked,

And you feel like you're being assaulted.

 

You know your family should come first,

And you feel like you're going to implode.

 

Working late is for the birds,

Who make sloppy, white little droppings.

 

I feel like my time is going straight down a manhole,

And I feel like a really big troglodyte.

 

If only I got paid overtime,

It'd be worth every last nickel and ten-cent-piece.

 

You might have noticed that this shit doesn't rhyme,

And that's because that would have taken far too many combined increments of measurements that record the passing of one moment to the next.

 

So.

 

There.

 

 



My Grillrection

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 18, Verse 20

"Ability to give wise advice satisfies like a good meal!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

On my commute home from work, NPR is typically what prevents me from killing at least seven people.  Many would say that's a pretty compelling reason to donate during their fund drives, but I don't.  I did just donate $100 to the psych hospital I work for, but that's because I do development, and haven't netted us a single cent yet, so I figured I should be putting some money in the old coffers.  

Guilt, paranoia, and fear are amazing elixirs, and that's spoken from one who drinks of each.  Heavily.

Today, on my drive home, I was listening to that Terry Gross show and she had on two delightful pedants from "America's Test Kitchen".  They were delightfully droll, answering culinary questions culled from "Fresh Air's" production staff.  

What's the safe amount of time to keep potato salad outside at a picnic.

Two hours!  Except in extreme heat!  And it's really the POTATOES that are the problem, the mayonnaise is just the vehicle for the bacteria-- the carrier, if you will!  WHO KNEW?!!!!

Got too much zucchini from your hipster CSA?  

WELL.

Did you know a cold zucchini salad, using just olive oil, herbs and Parmesan is the PERFECT way to get rid of two pounds of zucchini as long as you're ready to serve it to a party of six as a first course and you're able to slice it very thin with a mandoline that you can get from ANY HOME GOODS STORE!!!!

POOF!  There's the solution to your zucchini problem!

My.  Word.

My attention was piqued, I must say, when the subject came to grilling hamburgers.  There was a very in-depth discussion of thickness, and how one should make a divot in the top of a burger, because it expands when cooked and if you don't make a divot then the burger becomes quite round and NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to put toppings on top of or put on a bun

#areyoufuckingkiddingmealreadywiththisshit?

and to be perfectly honest I sort of tuned out at that point even though, as I just said, my interest was piqued, but it really wasn't my interest, per say, it was more my jealousy factor.  

My ineptitude factor.

My dunce factor.

IDIOT.

See, I don't grill.  

Grille?

Get outta my grill, MOKAY?!

I would, I think, maybe enjoy grilling.  But I don't.  I don't do it.

Why?

I don't know how.

Maybe it's not a Jewish thing.  I don't know.  When you imagine cookouts, or at least, when I do, there's a good looking guy (Jews, by the way, aren't good looking-- at least the guys aren't-- sorry, Etan), at the grill in a KISS ME, I'M GOYISH apron and maybe he's got a highball in one hand or the latest edition of Whale Shorts Quarterly in the other and in the other (yeah, he's got three fucking hands-- so what?) he's got the sterling silver spatula engraved with his ancestors' escutcheon and he's flipping the most delectable, divot-embossed burgers you've ever seen, lovingly coated in Worscheschestichercheshire sauce or Bearnaise or Hollandaise or HappyDays sauce and his ex-field hockey star princess trophy wife with the impossible curvatures and the Jackie O sunglasses is bending over to inspect the Kentucky Bluegrass and, well, you get the idea.

My uncle grilled when we were kids but he never showed me the ropes.  And the chicken was always dry anyway.  

Maybe I just wasn't interested as an eight year old.  That's probably it.  I was into three piece suits and bagpipes-- what the hell did I want to know from burning the shit out of meat on some contraption that looked like a crematorium?

Well, now, of course, I wish someone had shown me the ropes.  Because, when I see people grilling, I feel incompetent, inept, impotent.  I have no grill potency.  

Where is my grillrection?

My wife, a couple years ago, bought some dumb tiny charcoal grill for eight bucks or something-- it looks like a huge bowling bowl on tiny stilts-- you've seen the type.  It's what Christian kids use to play grillmeister when they're four.  Anyway, I was terrified of this thing, because I don't know what to do. Nobody taught me.  There was no handsome non-Jew to give me advice.  To take me under his slightly powerful arm, hold me close and say, 

"Now, see here, son-- these, these are the tongs.  Can you say 'to-n-gs'?"

"Thhhuhnges."

"Good!" he'd beam, the stem of his pipe jutting out from betwixt his gleaming, jail bar-straight teeth, "and this, this is roast pork.  Can you say 'roast pork'?"

"Challah!"

"Good!"

But, no.  It was not that way.  Not for me.  For me, there is only mystery, and anxiety.  A bad marriage.

I mean...

Charcoal?  Bricks.  They look like dog turds.  What do you do with them?  I know, the bag has instructions.  I can't read.  

Do you pour gasoline on it?  

Do you spray it with hairspray and light it?

How long does it burn?  Is it safe to do on the porch?  Are there laws governing what you can do with these things?  How long does meat cook for?  Bacteria.  Salmonella.  E-coli.  Lysterium.  Listerine.  I've Got a Little List.

I'm scared.

Hold me.

I don't want to be scared of food and food preparation mechanisms that seem backward and counter-intuitive, but I am.  Like I'm scared of, you know, everything-- from getting fired to getting Typhus to getting a bill I can't pay to getting insulted or assaulted or attacked or loved or denied or spit on or shit on or eating raw or undercooked food that may increase your chances of turning into a learning disabled tuna.  

If "American's Test Kitchen" has an on-staff fucking psychiatrist, I want a turn.  When's my turn?

Tag.  I'm it.