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Heat Stealing Dog

Heat stealing dog

Growing up in Arizona, I have never appreciated the cold Kansas winter. Seriously, I could do without winter all together. Spring and summer work for me all year long.

So, it’s no surprise to my family when I drag that little space heater out when temps start getting below 50 degrees. Yeah, I guess I am a wimp when it comes to cold weather. But I challenge anyone to a heat contest. Lol!

My favorite thing about winter

I remember the days of my youth. Growing up in what I call a boy’s paradise. I have often regaled my children with stories of my childhood and the area I grew up in. I lived in the desert, about two miles outside a tiny town in southeast Arizona. There were hills behind my house and a river in front of my house. All summer long I would leave my house shortly after dawn and spend the day hiking, hunting, fishing, swimming, etc. I grew up really enjoying the outdoors and the warm summer weather.

After moving to Kansas at 16 years old I quickly found that the winter here is frigid! I’m talking below zero! For days! Sometimes weeks! What do people do when it gets that cold? They go outside! No kidding! Native Kansans are used to these blistering cold winters and they embrace them. They break out the snow sleds and have a ball. I’ve seen people attach a rope to the back of a truck and sit on an old car hood that they had removed and hold on to the rope and go sledding around town. They have really made an art out of enjoying this cold stuff.

I really don’t blame them. If you are going to live in it, you might as well enjoy it. And I try to enjoy it. I go sledding. I go sliding around on frozen lakes and ponds. I’ve tried ice fishing. One thing remains the same through all of it. I am constantly thinking “Wow, it’s cold!” I just do not enjoy the cold like the rest of the people I am with.

So here I sit, inside, next to my little space heater, waiting for April to roll around.

Just waiting for Spring

Just like two children fighting for the attention of a parent, I have an adversary fighting for the heat from my little heater. My dog Angus is wimpier than I am when it comes to cold. He was born and raised in Kansas but he doesn’t like the cold any more than I do. He has actually learned how to cover himself up with a blanket! He will drag the blanket out from the basket it is sitting in, hold it in his mouth, walk around in a circle to wrap it around him and then he crawls under it until only his head is stick out. Then he looks around at everyone and pulls the blanket up over his head! Ha ha! On really cold morning I find a crumpled up blanket in the floor and my dog is no where to be seen. When he hears me I see the crumpled up blanket move as he starts to slink out from under it.

He IS under there...

The space heater has three switches on it. You have to throw all three switches to get the best heat output. These switches make a profound “click” when thrown.

So I come into the living room and see the crumpled blanket in the floor. I quietly and cautiously carry the heater from its little spot in the corner. I set it down near where I will be sitting. Even though I try to be quiet I see the crumpled blanket start moving. I sit down near the heater and throw the first switch… “CLICK”. Angus pops his head out from the blanket!

Did I hear something?

I pause, hoping he won’t realize what I am doing. He waits. I throw the second switch… “CLICK”. Angus comes out from under the blanket and sits, staring at me. We have an unspoken mental conversation between the two of us.

I know what you are doing

Angus: “Well, are you going to throw that third switch?”

Me: “Go back to what you were doing. Nothing going on here”.

Angus: Come on man! It’s cold. Throw that switch!”

Angus: “Come on, I’ll share the heat with you this time.”

Me: “Go back to your blanket and let me get warmed up here!”

“CLICK”, I throw the third switch and before the heat even starts pumping out of “MY” heater, Angus is all up in it.

He's quick to find the heat source

The problem is he sits right up against the vent that the heat pumps out of. His hair is black and really course and he soaks up every bit of heat coming from the heater. I am completely blocked out in the cold. He turns and looks at me like “What?”

What? Were you sitting here?

So begins the battle of the heat! I’m sitting near him and I will push him out of the way so I can get warm. Before long I notice, “Hey, why am I cold?!” I look down and there he is again, blocking the heat. I’ll nudge him to the side and begin to feel the sweet warmth once again. But my warmness is short lived as, once again, Angus move to block. Back and forth, back and forth, the whole time the heater is on.

It is a stubborn rivalry for the ages. But in the end, we are just two beings trying to make it through another cold, Kansas winter without freezing to death.

Just two cold fellas trying to get warm

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to move a dog over. It’s getting chilly in here

Tragedy on the high seas

Tragedy on the high seas…

I recently went on a dinner cruise. You get on a giant catamaran and dine and watch a show while the boat is cruising about the ocean. You can also go up to the top deck and take in the view. This dinner cruise is highly touted for its excellent show after you eat. Here is my recount of the events of that evening.

4:30 pm: We arrive at the docks and just kind of hang out until the cruise people finish setting up and open up. There are eight of us in our party and we are happy and ready to enjoy a great dinner and show.

Happy group ready for a fun night

4:45 pm: A very friendly young lady welcomes us and takes our tickets for entry. She gives us a special ticket in which she says we can get any drink from the menu with.

Let's get this party started

4:50 pm: We board this giant vessel that they claim to be the world’s largest Polynesian catamaran and are shown to our table by a very friendly and handsome young Hawaiian man. My wife and I are happy to be celebrating our 20 year wedding anniversary and we sit across from each other so we can be face to face.

Large, spacious and seaworthy this three-level, 170' x 50' vessel

which holds as many as 500 passengers is built for both comfort and island viewing.

4:51 pm: I realize “Oh, this boat is a little bouncy…” and we are gently swaying back and forth. We sit for about ten minutes as the rest of the guests for this evenings adventure board the boat.

5:00 pm: I watch as the dock workers release the ropes holding this big behemoth of a boat to the dock. “Whoa, it’s a little more than a bounce thing… more like a mild tossing back and forth”.

5:10 pm: We are off! Sailing away on our glorious adventure for the evening! Everyone is excited to see what is for dinner and the highly anticipated show after dinner.

5:15 pm: We are approached by the handsome young Hawaiian man that seated us. He is to be our waiter on this lovely evening. He asks us each if we would like to redeem our “free drink” ticket for an alcoholic beverage. I decide I better hold off and order water. My stomach is just a tad bit queasy. I should wait a bit and get my sea legs and then I fully plan to redeem my ticket. I will probably break out the wallet after that and have a few more.

5:20 pm: We are given the directive to head to the buffet. What luck, our table is the first to go. I walk past several tables of happy, smiling people ready to enjoy a perfect Hawaiian evening just as I am.

5:20 pm: I arrive at the buffet. I decide I will eat light as the queasiness in my stomach has moved to my head and I am a little dizzy and lightheaded. The buffet is pretty magnificent. It is filled with amazing foods. Prime rib, salmon, mashed potatoes, salad, tuna, rolls, and much more. Maybe I should eat a little more than I had intended. Maybe my hunger is what is adding to my stomach flip flopping.

A bountiful buffet

5:25 pm: I get back to my table with a plate of food fit for a king. I though I might have to call our handsome Hawaiian server to help me carry it back to the table it was so full. There were so many choices, and even though I opted for just a small piece of this and a small piece of that, I had food stacked on top of food! It was a meal fit for a king!

5:30 pm: Maybe I need some more water as I have downed my glass of ice water to try to alleviate the sweat beads on my forehead. The queasiness in my stomach has become substantial and my head is starting to spin pretty badly. As much as I don’t want to, I should finish off my plate of food and hope this helps.

5:45 pm: I am not feeling so good! That’s when I realized, I get seasick! What was I thinking getting on this boat for a dinner and a show?! Oh well, it is not unbearable. More like a minor inconvenience on an otherwise glorious Hawaiian evening. I look across the table to see my sister turning the same color green as her shirt. “Are my eyes playing tricks on me or is she going into camouflage mode?” I ask her if she is ok. She just slowly and deliberately shakes her head back and forth in a “hell no” fashion.

5:50 pm: Oh boy! I am realizing that eating the giant plate of food was a really bad idea. “How long does this cruise last?” It seems like we have been at sea for a while now and we have not turned around yet.

6:00 pm: We decide to get up and explore the ship. It has open sides on it for amazing 360 degree views. We are on the bottom floor. There is a second floor above us and then a top deck where you are actually out in the open.

6:05 pm: I leave the rest of my party and head toward the bathroom. The giant plate of food is not sitting well and maybe if I can…you know… use the facilities, my stomach will settle down a bit. As I approach the restroom I smell a smell that, I swear, is worse than any outhouse or Johnny on the spot I have ever smelled! I can not go in there or I will relieve my stomach from the other end and I hate throwing up! I take a deep breath, hold it in, and walk past the bathroom and shoot up the stairs to the top deck.

6:15 pm: Standing on the top deck, taking in the cool breeze and fresh air helps just a tiny bit. Ok, not really helping but I can’t go back downstairs to the putrid smell of the bathrooms. I look down into the ocean water. “If I just jump in right now and swim for shore, surely I could make it back in an hour or so. And maybe the cool water would help me to feel a little better.” The thought of sharks, jellyfish and other sea-dwelling creatures quickly overtakes the thought of swimming back to shore.

I think I can make it

6:30 pm: “Hey! There you are!” My family says as they rush up to me. “We have been looking for you!” “Stand there like that and let me get your picture” my brother says. I really don’t feel like pictures right now…or people…or living…

Me no feel well

6:30 pm: I humor the group with a picture. Then they want a group selfie! I am starting to re-think swimming back to shore! “If I just climb over this bar… I think I can clear the ship and get into the water…” “Smile, on three, one…two…three…

Let me die

6:45 pm: My family decides to go back downstairs for the show. I walk back down with them and take a seat. My brother asks if I want to go to the desert line with him. “DESSERT?!” I think to myself, “Disgusting!” I almost hurl just thinking about it! I politely decline.

6:50 pm: I realize that going to downstairs was a bad plan. I need to poop bad, I feel like throwing up, my head is spinning out of control. I excuse myself from the table and start toward the bathroom… NOPE, I turn at the first whiff of disgustingness coming from that horrible, horrible place. Again I take a deep breath and hold it as I go around the bathroom and up the stairs.

6:55 pm: I arrive back to the top deck gasping for fresh, cool air. I look around and there are people sitting, laying down, leaning over the side… ah ha! I have found “my” people! These poor souls were sweating and heaving and looking pretty rough. I fit right in. I find my place and sit down and put my head in my hands and began to pray that this evil, wicked ride ends soon!

My people

7:00 pm: I hear uproarious noises coming from below. The show that I paid $95.00 to see is beginning downstairs. “Hell no! I won’t go!” “Screw the show and anything else that takes me away from this spot where I will remain until my death from sea-sickness is complete!”

Sick, sick, sick

Eternity later: I look at my watch and realize it is 7:05 pm. “Why has this boat not turned around yet?! Are we still heading out?!” I begin contemplating hi-jacking the damn boat with a kitchen knife and forcing the captain to turn around and take us back as quickly as possible. I imagine saying “Just keep driving! Don’t slow down! Run it right up on the ground, forget the docks!” As if on cue, the boat starts to turn. “The captain wasn't reading my mind was he?”

8:45 pm: We are nearing shore. I can not hold on much longer! I rise up and go downstairs as the $95.00 dinner show is coming to an end. My family asks the obvious question, “Are you ok?” “Shut the hell up!” I think to myself as I say “I’m fine”. I look at my sister who is in worse shape than me. I have heard the term “turning green” before but this is the first time I have actually seen someone turn green! I thought she was about to jump up and smash the table while screaming “Hulk smash!” But she just sat there motionless, with her head laying on the table.

9:00 pm: It takes forever to dock a damn boat! I am positive that I can leap the few feet from the boat to the dock if these people would get out of my way and let me go! Then comes a horrible, decimating blow… They announce that everyone should be seated and that they would start unloading the boat from the upper floors and work their way down to my floor. It appeared we were to be the first ones on and the last ones off. I was certain I could not make it much longer.

9:05 pm: They are about to start unloading the boat….from the top down… I see a worker motion to a very sick looking lady a couple tables away from us. He says to his co-worker “We should let her off first she does not look good.” His co-worker agrees and asks if someone in her party can assist her off the boat. THIS IS MY CHANCE! I look at the worker and motion towards my sister. I say, in my most polite and humbling voice possible, “You may want to let her off too.” Thinking to myself, “Come on sis! Give him your most sick and nasty look you have in you! We’re getting off this boat now!” The worker nods his head and starts to say “Is there someone that can assist…” “I GOT THIS!” I grab my sister and we run for the exit! Moments later we are on sweet, precious dry land!

9:10 pm: We are standing and waiting for our family to disembark the boat and I am feeling MUCH better! I reach in my pocket and find the drink ticket I was given at the start of this nightmare. I tear it up and throw it into the trash can. My sister is telling me her nightmarish story of seasickness on the high seas and I listen intently. It went much worse for her than for me. I state “It wasn’t so bad really” as I am mentally crossing off “Alaskan cruise” from my bucket list...

Hawaii will never be the same...

“The entire Clark family on one island? Ok, I need to know two things. Where’s the police station and where’s the hospital?”

I muttered these words to myself as we stepped off the plane in Oahu Hawaii last week. I love my brother and sisters a lot but let’s be honest; we put the “fun” in dysfunctional.

There were five of us growing up in a small house in a small desert town in Southeast Arizona. Our family could not afford to do things with all of us so it would become a competition. If my mom was going 30 miles to the nearest big town she could only take one or, at the most, two of us. So the game began. The game was to do whatever it took to call attention to ourselves, or negative attention to the others.

This pattern has followed us our whole lives. We now live our lives trying to call attention to ourselves. Fortunately for me I have a wife that loves me and doesn’t mind feeding my ego and showering me with attention.

So began a week full of selfies and craziness to get attention from each other. It was tremendously fun and quite a bonding experience between us all.

We actually didn’t need the police or the hospital but we did have a few close calls.

Chinamans hat:

My incredibly smart and beautiful wife found, on the internet, an island just a few hundred yards off the east coast of Oahu. It was only minutes away from where we were staying. Supposedly, you can wade out to this island during low tide and explore it and come back before high tide arrives. They said the low tide waters should only be waist deep at the highest point and ankle deep in some parts.

My brother checked the tide conditions (again, on the internet) and we learned that low tide would be at 9:00 am. So we set out to WADE out to this island at 7:30 and that would give us ample time to get there, explore and get back. The internet had said that if we did not come back during low tide the journey would be quite treacherous.

Well… we did not take into account the hurricane that had just passed through the day before. We began our journey to wade across to the island. I decided to take my boogey board that I had purchased the night before just in case. Right away I knew something was amiss. The water quickly came up to my neck.

My brother and one of my sisters were already ahead of me and was swimming. My wife and I chose to stay together and use my boogey board as a flotation device to help get us through the waters that was over our heads. Several times my wife told me we should turn back but, much like everything in my life, once we had started I could not turn back.

I could drag this story out for a long time with edge of your seat details but the highlights are: Large waves, deep waters and…MAN OF WAR! One of my sisters got stung by a Portuguese man of war on the swim to the island. She had some gnarly looking welts from it.

On the way back across another sister got hit by a man of war!  She panicked and screamed for help. I was the only one close to her. I set off swimming towards her thinking, “I’m swimming INTO a group of these things! Who does that?!” Well, fortunately my sister freed herself from the man of war and continued toward the shore. I turned and went around them.

The Chinamans Hat island was beautiful though and, as far as I am concerned, well worth the hazards of getting there (but I wasn’t stung by the man of war).

North Shore:

The North Shore of Oahu is famous for large waves. Even larger after a hurricane but that didn’t stop the Clark clan from jumping in head first! The waves were big! They were breaking really close to the shore. We were standing in the water and the wave would come and pick us up and slam us right into the sand! We called this fun!

After a few minutes of getting beat up by waves and sand the life guard made a general announcement to everyone about how the waves are big and breaking close to the shore and novice surfers and swimmers should avoid the water at this time. I’m pretty sure he was directing that last part towards us.

Anyway, my brother-in-law got slammed into the beach and it hurt… a lot! He came up from the surf, covered in sand, staggered to the beach and sat down. He was zoned out and covered in sand. He just sat there. When asked if he was ok he replied, “I’m done!” And, he was. Luckily he was not seriously hurt but he felt it for a couple days.

Seasickness:

We went on a dinner cruise one fateful evening. Now I have always known that I get motion sickness pretty easy. Well… it runs in the family! Three of us got pretty ill on the dinner cruise. I have dealt with this before so I knew to go above deck and just sit and breathe in the fresh air. This meant I spent $65.00 to sit above deck and be sick while everyone else enjoyed the buffet and show but I was ok with that!

Three of us are so sick in this picture

My sister was not so lucky! She became violently ill and had a pretty rough time. I am sure the employees that had to clean up after her had a rough time too... Sorry about that…

All in all, it was a fabulous vacation and I have so many cool stories about it but this blog is already way too long. Maybe for another time... 

All in all I had a fabulous time and highly recommend both a Hawaiian vacation and a get away with all your siblings. It is easy to drift apart over the years and enjoying something like this together will bring you back together. I realized, while on this trip, how much I love these dysfunctional people.

  

Spider Wars

I live in a somewhat rural area. A lot of trees and a little creek surround my house. This is really a lovely place to live. We also have different types of wildlife around. I have seen foxes, deer, raccoon's, possums, and a wide variety of snakes, bugs and spiders. The lastly mentioned one (spiders) seem to be pretty bold and not afraid of me. With good reason because I figure live and let live. As long as they stay outside and leave me alone I will leave them alone.

However, I swear that one of these giant spiders is hunting me! It started out innocent enough; I am walking along in my garden one day, minding my own business and boom! I am face to face with this big spider! My nose is less than an inch away from him!

Now I remember watching “The Matrix” and I remember seeing that guy getting shot at and he is all in slow motion and bending around and bends over backwards to avoid the bullets. I remember thinking to myself, “That’s not real! A person can’t maneuver like that!” (Nevermind that I was watching an incredibly unreal movie and thinking those thoughts!) Well, I was proven wrong that day! A person can move like that if they have the proper level of motivation! Like a spider in the face!

This spider knows that I walk through that same path four or five times a week and I believe he strategically placed his web there.

I can read his mind now, “I’m tired of catching flies and other insects every day and not knowing when my next meal will fly through! I’ve seen that big guy out here a lot… I bet he would taste good… If I could bag that guy, I will never have to work again! I could retire and live good off of him...” So yeah, I guess that makes me like hitting the lottery for a spider.

Well I didn’t fall for that trap so he had to get a little more creative.

One morning I went walking out my front door and WHOA… I walked right into his spider web! He had built his web in front of my front door! Now I know he has been watching me take my dogs out that door every morning around 5:30.

Now, if you have ever walked into a spider web, you know that a person can do amazing moves with their body that they normally couldn’t do at this point. If you have ever worked out your leg muscles at the gym, you know that every task is a difficult one after doing so. Well that morning I had just worked my legs and after barely surviving the climb up from my gym in the basement I walked out the door and into this web.

So take that video of Bambi trying to walk on the frozen pond… and ad into that the little crazy mouse, Speedy Gonzales and this is what I imagined I looked like that morning. Although the words I said were not "¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!" and they sure as heck were not suitable for a Bambi movie.

He almost had me that morning but, somehow, I barely escaped with my life! A few days later, I was sitting on the front porch telling my wife about the incident and this spider just comes descending down on his web in broad daylight. He was heading right for me! I felt like Miss Muffet! Except… I wasn’t eating curds and whey… actually, I had just drank a whey protein shake… interesting…

The spider wants me and wants me bad! I have not seen him for about a week. This makes me nervous. I know he is hidden away somewhere in his secret war room laying out the perfect plan of attack! The next time I see him, may be my last.

As the weather gets colder, I see less of him and the other spiders out. If I am seeing less of them OUT, they must be coming IN! If you need me this winter I will be in my bedroom with a can of raid in one hand and a can of deep woods off in the other…

On the bright side, my house is already decorated for Halloween…

Human Compassion: How making someone's day made my day.

Human Compassion

When I am not writing I am a district manager of a chain of convenience stores. Through some bad luck I find one of my stores without any management. This means I must step in and be the manager while also taking care of my other stores. This can cause for some rough and stressful times.

On a particularly crazy Monday morning this week, as I was working on several different things, a woman came to me crying. She appeared to be mid to late 30’s and of a Hispanic heritage. She was a beautiful young lady but obviously very upset. Too make matters worse, she could not speak English.

Now I have always had a fascination with the Spanish language. I grew up in a small southeastern Arizona town where there were many Spanish speaking people. By the time I was in Jr. High School I could speak all the cuss words in Spanish (mostly because I had been called them all, and partly because of my fascination, at the time, with anything that I was not supposed to do). My fascination with the Spanish language led me to enroll in one year of Spanish in high school. During this time I learned the basics of the language.

Life went on and I used this very little and eventually forgot most of what Spanish I did know. Many years later I enrolled in an adult Spanish class and took three years of Spanish followed up by a two week trip to Mexico City Mexico. I learned a lot about the Spanish language through this experience but even better, I learned about the Mexican culture and made some great friends in the process.

Fast forward twelve years later, and a lack of using what I had learned, and here I am with this young, beautiful, Spanish speaking lady standing in front of me crying and trying to communicate with me. With what little Spanish I could remember, I could understand some of what she was saying but was pretty useless in trying to speak back to her.

Through the little bit that I could pick up, she was heading from her home in Iowa to see family in Texas. She stopped in my store to use the restroom along the way. As she was in the restroom she accidentally dropped her car key in the toilet. When she moved to grab the key from the toilet the automatic flusher thingy did its job and flushed the key down the toilet.

This is when I needed help in communicating. I pulled up the “Babel Fish” website on my phone, which is an online translator, and would type what I wanted to say and then translate it to Spanish and let her read it. This was mildly effective and quite amusing to those watching. I found a Spanish speaking customer and was hoping she could help translate but alas, she could not speak English either! It was nice though to have her there for a moment as she did put the woman at ease a bit. Finally I phoned a friend. Someone that speaks fluent Spanish and English.

While my friend was talking to this lady, I was on the phone with a plumber to get him out to take apart the toilet and see if the key was caught in the “P” trap? “S” trap? Whatever they call that trap! We shut down that toilet and began to wait. Hours went by and the plumber did not show up. I called back and he was stuck on another job but assured me he would be here as soon as he finished up. In the meantime I had gotten a comfy chair for this poor woman and bought her a fountain drink and tried to make her as comfortable as possible. I had a lot of work to do this day and so I went back to it while we were waiting on the plumber.

It was a long day and every time I would look over at the lady she was crying and sobbing. I would occasionally go over and offer her drinks and food and just a reassuring “everything will be ok”. I called a locksmith so that we could have a backup plan in case the plumber could not get the key. Unfortunately, her car is a Volkswagen and they do not sell the rights to their keys. After a few phone calls I found that the local VW dealer here would have to order the key, program it and match it to the car. This meant a $100.00 tow charge to get it to the dealership, a $250.00 charge to make the key AND a three day wait for all this to happen!

When I communicated this news to her she really began to cry. I gave her a reassuring hug and told her I’m going to see this through and she will be ok. I figured, at the very least, I could pay for her hotel while she waited for the key.

Seven hours later, the plumber arrived. He spent 45 minutes, with me being his assistant, pulling the toilet from the floor and searching for the key. Unfortunately it was not there!

At this point the Highway Patrol had arrived. I briefed them on the situation and they said they would take it from there. I explained to the lady that my shift was up and that I would leave her in the very capable hands of this officer. She looked very scared at that point and gave me a long, strong hug and began crying again. The officer assured me that he would take care of her and I left for home.

The next morning I came to work and, after a couple hours, I look up and there is the lady at a register buying a cup of coffee! She looks at me and gets a big smile on her face. Through our terrible knowledge of each others language we talked and I found out that she had stayed the night in her car. The highway patrolman had unlocked her car somehow and she contacted her family in Iowa and they were going to FedEx a key to her on Wednesday. Today was Tuesday!

Meanwhile, the Highway Patrolman had contacted the maintenance supervisor for the travel plaza and found out that anything that goes in the toilet travels down a long pipe and about a hundred yards later there is a filter of some sort. The maintenance man spent the day Tuesday down in this manhole sifting through to locate the key.

Low and behold, about 3:00 Tuesday afternoon the man came up from the hole with…A KEY! HER KEY! I was very excited and we rushed the key over to her and showed her that it was found! She was so excited! We made sure it worked to start her car and I took her inside and got her a pair of gloves and cleaning supplies to clean up the key. I left for the day at this point feeling pretty good for her.

It was quite an ordeal for this woman. For the two days that I was helping her I kept putting myself in her shoes. What if I were stranded in Mexico and lost my key and could not communicate? Eek! Scary stuff for sure! Did I just say “Eek!”? Oh well, whatever. I am so glad that she was able to get on her way and I was happy that I could help to comfort her during this frightening time.

The next day I came to work and one of my coworkers told me that the lady was looking for me after I left. She had called her daughter that speaks English and wanted her to talk to me. My co-worker told her I had left for the day. The lady handed her the phone and the daughter said, “My mom wants to know if that nice, bald man is still there”. {Bald?!} Ok, I’ll let that one go… Anyway, she left a message for me. She wanted to thank me for being friendly to her and helping her through this situation. Her daughter said that her mom told her that without me being there she would have panicked and does not know how she would have made it.

I have no doubt that she would have made it through this with or without me but I am happy that I was able to provide some comfort in this bad situation. I learned from this situation that doing something for someone, without any anticipation of anything in return will return something great. My only regret, other than her having to experience this, is that I never got her name. Name or no name, I made a friend over the course of those two days and it feels good.

Do something selfless for someone today. It will do wonders for you.

Bald?! Ok, maybe a little...

Battle of the breakfast champions

Battle of the breakfast champions

So my morning ritual consists of me waking up, heading down to the basement to workout while everyone else is asleep. Afterward I take the dogs outside for a while, go upstairs and shower and come back down to the kitchen. Up to this point it is a quiet, nice, time for myself.

When I get to the kitchen it all changes. I don my imaginary gladiator suit and prepare for battle! My opponent slowly slinks around me on all fours. Slowly positioning herself for the feast that awaits! She zips up onto the kitchen island and takes her place at the corner furthest away from me. I get in the fridge and pull out two eggs, a carton of egg whites, fresh spinach, tomato, garlic, etc…

I grab a skillet and put it on the stove, turn the heat on and the battle begins. I go for the freezer to get some previously cut up jalapeños and onions. My opponent, quick as a light leaps to the middle of the island and bats at an egg and starts it rolling toward the end of the island. I grab the frozen veggies, whip around and grab the egg just before it plunges to its death. My opponent leaps back to her spot at the corner of the island.

I turn and place my items in the skillet. My adversary is back! She jumps up and runs around the island and then back to her spot! I turn to find a handful of fresh spinach laying on the floor at my feet. 1 to 1 we are tied!

My peppers and garlic are sautéed, time for the eggs. This is where it gets dicey! I crack the eggs in the skillet and begin to stir them. My opponent knows she has me pinned down at this point. She bats the tomato toward the edge of the island, I stir the eggs with one hand and reach for the tomato with the other. She then takes the opportunity to attack my hand as the tomato falls into it. I turn to look for help… My two faithful dogs lay sleeping in the living room, oblivious to it all! Thanks for nothing “Man’s best friends”!

Eggs are done but my opponents attack is just beginning. As I clean the spinach that was previously knocked onto the floor, she goes for the eggs. “No, no, no” I say as I lift the plate out of reach. Timing is everything at this point. She runs back to her spot, I set the plate down and cut the ends off the tomato. I spin around and grab the plate and raise it out of reach just in time. My opponents sneak attack has failed this time around. Back to her spot, quick as lightning.

I quickly dice up the tomato and turn to catch her, full face, in the eggs! My best friends are still slumbering! I run for the plate, she eats as fast as she can, I grab the plate, she grabs one more bite, we are locked in battle! I dump the tomato on what’s left of the eggs and the battle is nearing its end.

I sit at the island and eat my hard earned prize with one hand while staving off my opponent with the other.

It was a hard fought battle, but in the end we come through it better opponents, ready for tomorrow morning, and (after handing out a treat or two) better friends than when we went in...

Keep life exciting! Keep it interesting! Enjoy those around you, human or not!

My opponent...