Irony

This past weekend was consumed by cleaning and repairing. We met with a realtor yesterday, and we hope to have our house on the market by Tuesday. And yes, you'll all be glad to know that I finished painting the porches on Saturday, the project that I began in early September!

A realtor from Las Vegas called on Friday night. I'm not sure how she's going to work out. I told her OUR MAXIMUM PRICE. So what did she do? She added $50,000 to it and said she would start looking for houses in that range!!! I should meet her in person this weekend, so I'm thinking this might be a trial period.

I leave for Las Vegas on Thursday. Since I'm going on short notice, I'm coming back home for a 4-day weekend after I've been out there for 8 days.

And now to the irony.

I worked outside in my yard for 4 hours on Sunday. Keep in mind that I have a Jack Russell Terrier named Jack Pete who uses the backyard as his master bath. That being said, life has been so crazy lately that I haven't gone out with my plastic bag and picked up his poop for over a month. As you can imagine, my yard is a doo-doo land mine.

During this whole time I did not step in any dog crap. After the yard work, I had to go to Petsmart. While I WAS INSIDE Petsmart, I stepped in dog shit . . . . . . TWICE!!!. How does this happen?

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN.

My big news

The MoN is moving to Vegas. My company has offered me a position at our facility there, and I just can't pass it up. I'll be going in the next few weeks, and my family will be joining me once our house sells and we can find a place out there--probably late January.

I've never lived in the desert, or anywhere that's not in the South. I'm excited.

The funny story that I promised deals with my breaking of the news to my grandmother. This tale will be up soon.

I promise I haven't vanished. . . .

. . . .I've just been on the road non-stop with work, and now our cable modem is out at home. I'll be back soon with BIG NEWS! and a funny story to boot!

October 13

In an hour, the date will be October 13. Four years ago on October 13, there were tornados and rain storms all throughout central and northeast Mississippi. I was a bundle of nerves and the phone was ringing off the hook with friends and family members telling me that they would not be able to make the journey to Jackson due to the weather. On top of this, one of my friends had started the journey from Birmingham, and I wasn't sure if he would make it due to the weather. As I'm continuing to freak out, I call the cell phone of the star of that particular Saturday and ask how she is making it. I'm anticipating crying or anger at her mother, but my bride to be in a few hours is calm as can be getting her hair and make-up done with some of her bridesmaids.

That's right folks, 4 years ago the wife and I were officially about to start the journey of marriage.

4 years and it seems that it could just have been yesterday. Along our journey, we got a dog, moved to a new city where we knew no one, bought our first house and just this year brought our beautiful daughter into the world. And with career progressions and the daily new tasks brought on by raising a child, it's good to have a constant like my wife around.

Happy Anniversary Mrs. MoN!

PS, to everyone else: Superstitious people will tell you that it's good luck to get married on a rainy, stormy day. You'll get no arguments from me!

What in the hell do the birds and bees have to do with it anyway???

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in a household with strict rules about things “not talked about.” My parents were so busy teaching me those guidelines that they forgot to tell me what those things that we were not going to talk about actually were. Not that I was too anxious as a budding young man to have that talk with my father, but by the end it would have been worth it, as I felt like I was the last person on earth to know what sex was all about!

Figuring out early on that I was very unlikely to have the aforementioned heart to heart with my dad, I decided that finding out what this universal mystery was all about would be up to me alone. And so the journey begins. . . .

Fourth Grade

My curiosity with human reproduction is starting to bud. My first source of information: the school bus. I figured I had learned all kinds of unusual facts during my 30-minute afternoon ride home (everyone was too asleep in the mornings), so it was just up to me to pay attention. I had already learned that you could ignite a hairspray bottle stream with a cigarette lighter and that a very scary girl could eat half of a husky first grade pencil for $3, so why not give it a shot.

Just a few days later, I heard some of the older kids at the back of the bus talking about what I presumed was sex—I was too scared to go to the back of the bus, for God’s sake, there was a girl back there who ate pencils. So, I nervously looked back only to see them laughing hysterically and one of the guys making a hand gesture. Well, you can imagine what crazy theories this led me to. I went home to absorb what I had seen. After a few hours, I deduced that this could not be sex.

Fifth Grade

As school started back, my trek for knowledge was back on. It was fueled by hearing my older cousin who was in high school talking about some couple who “did it” five times over the summer. I eavesdropped all I could, but I could never quite figure out what “it” was.

My ambition led me to the great know-all source of mankind: The World Book Encyclopedia set. All 26 volumes were housed in my living room, so I went and checked a few out. I had to get several because I didn’t want anyway to wonder why just volume “S” was missing. Well, my search for sex, led to "Human Reproduction". Damnit, I had not gotten volume “H”, so I had to make a trade. I finally found it, and the tension was building. Despite the near end of my two-year search, I was still very slow and careful. After all, I didn’t want anyone to notice that the "Human Reproduction" page was wrinkled. All my research brought me was disappointment. Yes, the answer was there. . . IN TECHNICAL TERMS. This didn’t provide much help to someone who had only previously heard “boy parts” referred to as a tallywhacker!

Sixth Grade

Another school year starts and I figure at this point that I can probably lead a fairly productive life as someone who doesn’t know what sex is all about. I can’t really ask anyone. The only thing worse than not knowing is someone else knowing that I don’t know.

One weekend that fall, I spent the night with a friend of mine. It was Friday night, and his parents had taken us to the new Pizza Hut buffet. Once we got home, we found that there was a four-volume set of books in his room called The Life Cycle Library. After some careful investigation, I found out that my friend also was in the dark about sex, and his parents opted to leave this set of books for him rather than have “the talk.”

We both acted like we weren’t that interested, and were only trying to kill some time before Friday Night Videos came on (does anyone remember this?). So, we started glancing through the books. The first two volumes were just more about those birds and bees and pollen that no one really cared about anyway. About halfway through Volume 3 was the real scoop, complete with pictures.

So after three year of searching, I had finally found out what the big secret was. The first thing I wanted to do was to scream to everyone, “I know!” Of course I couldn’t do that because it was on the “don’t talk about” list. However, there was a smug look on my face the next time I saw my cousin and I knew what her friend had “done” 5 times the summer before!

The List

My family had a list when I was growing up. I shouldn’t just say a list, but it was The List. It wasn’t about chores or other things to complain about. The List was what stood in the way of my brother and I becoming the envy of everyone around. The List was an unwritten account of all of those “extra” things that my family—mainly my brother and me—wanted. The List was our year-round Christmas list. It was easy to get an item on The List; all you had to do was tell my dad. He was the unofficial keeper of The List. For an item to be removed from The List would mean that my family had purchased it. Not matter what you asked for, he would put it on that List, even though you both knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that we would be getting it unless Ed McMahon showed up in the near future. If you haven’t figured out, The List kept growing and growing at a much fast rate than we were decreasing it. I think it was my family’s material possessions purgatory.

The price tags on The List’s items ranged from a few hundred dollars to well into the thousands. Most of the items were probably common desires for low to middle-income families living in rural America. As I ramble on about this list, it’s important to keep in mind that it is circa 1984. Here are some of the more memorable items:

• The satellite dish. For those of you young’uns out there, this is before Dish Network or Direct TV. I’m talking about those 8 or 10 foot semi spheres that were off-white or sometimes black mesh. I never understood the black mesh thing: If I had a satellite, I would have wanted the whole world to know, so the off-white number would have been the most conspicuous. Some people would incorporate the satellite dish into their yard by making a flower bed around it or hanging some Christmas lights on it during the season! We never got this item on The List probably because they cost thousands of dollars, but it didn’t help that my mother had heard that when you pointed the dish straight up that you could pick up those “nasty channels.”
• In-ground swimming pool. This was the mother of all List items. I knew we would never get this one because a) it cost a fortune, b) our yard would not have accommodated it, and c) my father would never have made the commitment to keep it up with the chemicals and such. I know this last statement is true because a few years later we would end up getting a second-hand above-ground swimming pool (don’t be envious) and we only kept it for a year because of all the up-keep.
• VCR. We actually got this one when I was in the 3rd grade. It was one of those fancy models that loaded from the front, not from the top. It even had a WIRED remote. It was so great not having to get up from the chair to turn it on—as long as you had moved your chair to be within 5 feet of the thing.
• My 3rd grade year was a biggie because that’s the year we also got a microwave. I didn’t really care about the microwave—it was more of a status thing for my mother.

There were many other items on the list, but I think you get the idea of where I’m going with it. At the time I couldn’t understand why my parents didn’t buy everything on The List. Now I understand they were probably piddling their money away on things like clothes and shoes for two growing boys.