A Funny Thing Happened On My Way...

So, maybe not so funny in a Zero Mostel kind of way.  But it was just funny/weird.  Saturday afternoon found me in the back yard pulling a huge patch of Yellow Nutsedge from right in front of the deck steps.  Our yard needs mowing and the Yellow Nutsedge only exaggerated that fact since it was growing about four times the height of the regular grass.  Plus throw in that it's almost a neon green color and it get's pretty noticeable that we've been neglecting our yard for the past few weeks.  Okay, month.  It's just been too hot to even think about doing any yard work, let alone actually doing it.  What's so sad about that is we have a riding lawnmower which the only effort or physical labor required is to haul one of our keasters up onto the seat and turn a key.  Yes, it has an electric starter.  I know.  Pathetic. 

The Daughter was a big help.  She was out there helping me pull the Nutsedge and 99% of the time she pulled the weeds instead of the grass.  But like most three-year-olds she quickly tired of that game and wandered back inside to see what the other daddy was doing.  She may become a manager when she grows up as she would wander out every few minutes or so, look over my shoulder and ask "What doin' Daddy?"  After about the sixth bagillion time of her asking me that same question, I finally wised up and started asking her "what is Daddy doing?"  Her answer?  "I don't know."  After a while, neither did I.

I quickly filled a 13 gallon trash bag with the Yellow Nutsedge and then headed around the deck to see what weeds were coming up in the small rose bed around one corner of the deck.  A mere inches from my destination, I stepped on what can only be described as a railroad spike in our back yard which is surprising because I'm sure I would have noticed something that large sticking up out of the ground.  Within a fraction of a second, my foot was buzzing like I had stepped on the queen mother of all angry hornets and I went flying into the house to run cold water over said foot in a futile effort to numb everything from the ankle down as best as could in the absence of any narcotics in the house.

Four hours pass and it feels like a 50 pound weight has been dropped on my foot.  Daughter is ready for bed and I hobble of to the local Doc-in-a-Box to have things checked out.  You know, just to make sure that some rogue spider hadn't laid eggs in my toe.  Or that I wasn't going to die from tetanus.  (And just so you know, none of this is the funny part.)  I fully expected to get there and have to wait for at least 10 hours to see a doctor, but I didn't think it was anything worth an emergency room visit just to have $150.00 extracted from my bank account.

My wait was less than 10 minutes.  A nurse came out to take me to an exam room, get some initial readings: blood pressure, temperature, heat rate and asked me a few preliminary questions.  Reason for visit, what medications I take, and am I at risk for HIV or hepatitis?  I paused for a second and said "Well, I am gay. And according to the blood banks, even though I've been in the same relationship for the past ten years, that puts me in a high risk group."  And here's the funny part, she laughed.  She said "that doesn't put you at an higher risk automatically.  Your behavior does."  Wow.  So there are thinking people in Indiana.  They didn't all move out to the coasts.  Or Chicago.

The doctor came in shortly thereafter and had to get magnifying goggles to see what ever it was that was in my toe.  She worked something so tiny out that I couldn't see it on her finger.  It seems that whatever it was had directly hit a nerve ending.  Boy did it ever! Waves of something akin to an electric jolt would rack my foot every few minutes.  There was also talk of a puss pocket forming in just four short hours.  Glad I didn't wait until the next day to go have it checked out.

With a prescription for vicodin and and an antibiotic in hand I drove over to the 24 hour pharmacy to get myself drugged so I could at least sleep that night.  And the next day, and the day after. And the day after that.  Yes, today was the first full day of work I've done all week.  Only six more days of antibiotics to go.  The painkiller went by the wayside after the second day.  Footwear while out in the yard... here to stay.

Eleven?

Recently we were in Michigan for the wedding of a friend Robbie had grown up with.  It was a great wedding, traditional Catholic wedding mass followed by a huge Italian wedding reception.  It was a little unusual in that the wedding was on a Friday afternoon.  Plus the priest felt he needed to give a history of their church before the bride came down the aisle. Plus he gave a play by play of what was happening and why.  Um, 90% of the people in attendance were Catholic.   And of the other 10% most have been to Catholic weddings before.  We really didn't need a John Madden voice over of the proceedings.

But that wasn't the weirdest part about the trip.  No the strangest was the mini van in front of us with the window stickers representing the members of the family.  We were stopped behind them at a red light and I started counting the little stick figures next to the dad and mom ones and came up with eleven. Eleven!  All I could think was "I hope to god they aren't all in that car!"

Of course I had to send a pic message to a few friends.  We decided that they were either Catholic or rabbits.  One friend suggested that they just might be Catholic rabbits.  Or maybe they just like sex.  From what I understand, no form of birth control is 100% effective.  Something like 99% effective would place them at having sex at least 1100 times.  That seems feasible for people without kids, but man, when would you ever find the time after the third or fourth baby?

The logistics of eleven children is what boggles my mind the most.  How do two people handle that many kids?  Wouldn't they need a small bus for all those kids instead of a mini-van?  Hell, how do you manage any more than two?  It seems to me that if you go beyond that you're blowing a man to man defense.  Beyond that, you're just outnumbered.   Would you have to rely on the older children to help take care of the younger ones?  And if you're one of those older children would you want kids of your own when you move out on your own and get into a relationship?

On some days we wonder how we could ever manage more than the one we have.  And she's not a difficult child.  We're asked all the time if we plan on having more. We would like to, but it's not as easy for us as the couple who own the pictured min-van.  Obviously.  Plus we keep going back and forth on various questions.  Such as: Would another girl be better than a boy? (Not that we have a say, it's just a consideration)  What happens if the process takes another 2 1/2 years?  I'm quickly approaching 50 and the thought of having a child still in high school when I'm ready to retire is just mind boggling.  If that birth mother wants to be involved how that would make Riley feel later on in life?  Can we even afford another child?  One thing is certain, we definitely won't be needing eleven kid stickers on the back window of our car.

What? It's August?

Where in the hell did my summer go?  I know that technically we still have a few more months left, but damn!  Wasn't it just yesterday that I was planting sweat peas by the chain link fence in hopes of making it look a bit more attractive?  For the record, the planting of the peas was about 10 days after St. Patrick's Day.  In my boggled mind I seem to think that my great grandmother planted hers on St. Patrick's Day.  Maybe that's why mine didn't do so well.  Or that they are planted right at the end of our asphalt driveway.  What little actually bloomed smell great though.


We've had a very busy summer traveling almost every weekend.  We've been to graduation parties, birthday parties, weddings or just visiting out-of-state friends.  It's been a rarity that we've been home and when we are, we seem to have things planned out the wazoo.  (Wow! Wazoo must be a real word now as spell check didn't highlight it.)

Two weeks ago, we took a short drive - if you consider 5 and a half hours short - to Tennessee to visit my friend Sher and her family.  Most of her family anyway.  Her oldest daughter was away at drama camp.  It's the first time that I've actually spent any amount of time other than dinner or drinks with her since meeting her over at a friends blog.  And every time I've been around Sher or chatted on line I'm always amazed at what an incredible woman she is.  Don't take my word for it, check out her website.  You can find the link over to the left or just click here: http://www.sherfickart.com/ and find some of her amazing work.  But I'll tell you this right now, viewing them on a computer or in photographs does not do her work justice.  Especially her encaustic work.  It's akin to trying to describe the subtlety in the details of a DaVinci painting.  There is amazing depth to her work both figurative and literal.

I've also taken a sabbatical away from here to examine what exactly it is that I hoped to accomplish.  Well, if nothing else, it's a vanity thing.  But I hope that it's more than that.  It's like everything else in the blog-o-sphere, a place where hopefully I can shed some illumination on the world around me.  And that's the key word... me.  I can't make this about anything else because quite frankly I couldn't if I tried.  It may seem like the above references to Sher is about her, but really it's about my perception of her as an artist and as a friend.

I've written a little about my family life growing up.  The truth is that it's a rosy version, while truthful, isn't exactly the whole truth.  There were times so bleak that I can't dwell on them.  Doing so would give them a new life that would destroy the person I've become as they drag me down through the depths of despair.   I've seen how deep those waters are and friends I'm here to tell you that's one ocean I never want to sail over again. 

I've had people whom I haven't heard from or spoken to in years comment on their perceptions of those posts and that's what's kept me from writing here for so long.  To answer those people (who didn't actually ask a question) I am going to paraphrase what a friend of mine said:  You don't get to rewrite my history to make yourself feel better.  I know what happened and just because you don't or maybe you do and don't wish to acknowledge things doesn't make those times any less real.  I lived through them and could tell you things that would only make you feel worse in that you have only a small sliver of knowledge. It's like a magician uses slight of hand to keep your focus on one hand while the other is doing something else.  Actually a more apt metaphor would be of a pick pocket bumping into you and stealing from you while brushing the dust off you shoulder.

I do want to keep things somewhat light here.  As I do in my everyday life. It just makes the journey so much more enjoyable.   Sometimes though,  in order to explain why a rosebush has so many gorgeous blooms, you just have to talk about the manure that caused it to thrive.