Category Archives: Fun & Humor

We are not granite people

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Zion, Aurora Borealis, Orion, Cosmos, Golden Sun, Copper Canyon, Golden Crystal, Espírito Santo, Purple Dunes, Emerald Green, Kashmir Cream, and Lapidus.

This was one of the most interesting granites we found. But even we don’t have the courage to go with a style choice like this. Fear of looking outdated overruled this choice and the fact we’re going with browns, oranges, yellows, etc. But still, this is one cool-looking slab of rock.

We spent Saturday walking granite yards.

It was dirty work and in areas of Los Angeles my daughter has never seen before. Areas with large power-line transformer towers, graffiti, murals on the sides of buildings, railroad tracks, and apartment buildings with cool-sounding names leftover from the 1950s and 60s.

I tossed  in a teaching moment and reminded her how good we have it compared to others. But it was a really a reminder for me, as I’ve been feeling envy of others in Los Angeles lately – the million-dollar home owners and those who can afford exotic granites with names like some of the ones I started this post with.

I should have no complaints about what we have and our good fortune. Driving through LA yesterday reminded me of this. We are lucky to have what we have, despite life  in Los Angeles and advertising constantly screaming that we don’t.

Another thing I realized yesterday is that I don’t like granite. Or, more accurately, I don’t like granite in kitchens.

Looking at large slabs of it is like looking at nature’s artwork. Beautiful, complex, deep – I love a 6 x 10 feet piece of rock. And if we had a kitchen island the size of a slab, we’d have granite. But we don’t even have a kitchen island. And granite when it’s cut into pieces looks busy to me, which makes me an oddball here in LA where granite countertops are ubiquitous.

If you listen to our real estate agent, everyone wants granite and that’s the only thing to put in for the best resale values. But we’re not going to because both my wife and I came to the same conclusion yesterday: we’re not granite people.

We don’t live in a house fancy enough for granite countertops. It’s not us. And we want a clean white kitchen, which is going against the grain of stained cabinets. Busy granite needs a mellow or white subway tile backsplash. We’re more backsplash people. And we want one that looks mind-blowing and is as colorful as an Andy Warhol painting or English garden in spring.

We want something fun. Not something serious and maybe a bit too proper or adult.

This slab is more in line with the colors we’re thinking. Goldfinger (completely random reference to James Bond who probably wouldn’t give a sh** about granite countertops, as he lived he life on the road away from home and ate in restaurants all the time.)

So, we going with quartz,  the number one choice of Consumer Reports for countertops. A nice neutral shade and solid color. And it will be nice and smooth like granite, which we don’t have right now with a crumbling-grout tile countertop.

If I had any courage at all, the quartz countertop would be colorful – orange or red. Or we’d paint our cabinets a color. But that’s not going to happen. We’re still adult enough to realize we will have to sell the house one day, which could be tomorrow knowing how much I want to move every time I deal with some of our neighbors and their demons.  We need to create a kitchen that appeals to a wider range of buyers. Or so conventional wisdom goes.

So, white it is with quartz countertops and an eye-catching backsplash. And though I’m not enjoying the remodeling process this time, I’m doing my best not to sweat it because I know how lucky we are and how many others are not. Kitchens are, after all, just kitchen cabinets and stone. They are not life.

My new pet peeve: really long receipts

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I guess this has been going on for a while, but really long receipts drive me nuts.

I wonder how many trees take a fall each year to make them. Did someone from the logging community suggest this to companies? “Hey, email is killing us. How about making receipts excessively long to make up for it?”

In the picture below is one receipt that deserved to be 17.5-inches long, as it includes the groceries we purchased for the week (and getting through that week wouldn’t be possible without two boxes of chocolate-covered gummi bears).

37 items in the shorter receipt. 9 items in the long receipt, if you count the 4 sprays of balloon juice. Oh, and the 4 identical balloons. So, really, three different items.

My favorite item on the short receipt is “battered halibut.” I love this name. Someone has a sense of humor at Sprouts. This is the fish half of “fish and chips,” not something hit repeatedly with heavy blows, though who knows what the fishermen did to it when it was caught. It’s possible it was netted by really angry fisherman and spouted off in its fish-way with some attitude, “Kiss my fish tail, ugly humans, for ripping me out of my cozy, cold Atlantic home.” Fishermen to rude halibut: “Batter that fish until it shuts up, men.”

The second receipt, Party City, was for balloons for my wife for Mother’s Day, because nothing says “love” like helium-filled rubber. Not only did Party City give me this super-long 21.5-inch receipt for purchasing five balloons and four sprays of a chemical to keep the rubber ones healthy for more than a day,  they delivered what I would call “less-than-friendly” customer service. Yes, the employees who worked at this location appeared to be “less than enthused” about working Sunday morning after a fun Saturday night of beer pong, Xbox, and borrowing the Party City helium tank to speak in mouse-like voices.

Nothing says “torture” for kids in their early 20s quite like filling up and tying 100s of balloons before the clock strikes noon (the latter action would be enough to make me go mad if I worked there for more than a day, as tying balloons is an action I’ll have to repeat for eternity when I’m working 24-hour days in Hell).

So there you have it, a tale of two receipts. And, yes, I’m quite mad.

The parenting gods deliver another lesson to moi

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I should know better.

My wife and I like to have a “clown night” once a month. It makes us laugh and keeps the relationship fresh. (This photo may or may not make more sense later in the post.) © pirotehnik – Fotolia.com 

Fresh off the letter I wrote to my daughter the other day, and thinking about the person she became this year, I decided to surprise her with American Idol tour tickets. We hadn’t planned to go this year, but then I thought, what the heck, she deserves it (and how many concerts can you take a 10-year-old to these days?). So, I bought tickets. Three bills, including parking and ticket insurance.

When my daughter came home from school, I let her know we had a surprise for her and would reveal it during dinner. She asked for two guesses. Clothing? No. My little pony? No.

Off she went to guitar and singing lessons where she told both instructors about the coming surprise of surprises. I don’t think I made it out to be that big. But once again I underestimated the mind of a 10-year-old and the things she can dream up in a section of her brain called, “Cave of Super Cool Surprises.” Evidently it’s quite a spectacular place. No adults allowed.

“All she talked about in the car was the surprise,” my wife said.

Still optimistic, delusional, and blind, I sat down at dinner and started telling my only daughter how we thought she really grew this year. My wife added some nice words and we both realized none of it was sinking in. We were the adults in the Charlie Brown holiday special, “wa wa wa, wa, wa wa,” speaking unintelligible words to a child.

I handed her the piece of paper with the concert information on it.

Then the parenting gods sent in The Clown. And he delivered a large pie to my face. Smash. Cream filling up my nose. “You should have seen that coming,” the Gods said.

My favorite pie to be hit in the face with. © xmasbaby – Fotolia.com

Disappointment on my daughter’s face. I never learn.

She was polite, but we could tell she had something else in mind.

“What were you hoping for?” we asked.

After 30 seconds of not wanting to say it: “an iPhone.”

Send in another clown. Smack, brick to the face. Is that my blood dripping in my pasta?

An iPhone? Hello, left field, are you kidding me with that one?

Oh, yeah, she’s 10. It came from the “surprise” cave in her mind.

And then we had the painful “gee, we sound like parents” conversation about how she didn’t need an iPhone.

“Who would you call?” Silence. “You can use your mother’s iPhone.” Silence. Clearly, she’s a government agent and needs her privacy. Can the government not afford the cost of iPhones for their agents?

I ate my dinner and we talked about the upcoming concert. Once again, I felt like a chump. And my wife salted the wound by reminding me of the bike at Christmas (see post in Dec 2011) and the pain of that unwanted gift.

Lesson learned: Never surprise a child with anything other than the exact gift they want. (In other words, don’t surprise them.) Otherwise, the parenting gods will serve up a harsh lesson delivered by an imaginary clown.

But it will feel like the real thing.

Parody of Mad Libs – Cystic Fibrosis Version

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It’s time for some big fun, or a bad experience if you choose _______(adjective) words. © kennykiernan – Fotolia.com

[Remember the rules – ask someone else for the missing words. Be careful, I’m not sure what I was thinking when I wrote this, or which direction the experiment will go.]

Having cystic fibrosis requires ________(adjective) treatments and regular visits to the ________ (place). I force myself to cough up  _____(color) ______ (plural noun) every day in order to keep my ______ (plural noun) free of _______(adjective) _________(noun).

If I  catch a _____(noun) or _______(noun), I get very sick and have to _______(verb) to the _______(location) Once there, _______ (adjective) nurses ______(verb) my _________(noun) and make me ________(verb) until I faint.

I _____(verb) the doctor at the _____(adjective) clinic at least once a(n) _______(noun). During every visit, I blow into a _________(noun) to test my  ______(noun) function. My face turns ______(adjective) and I ______(verb) until I catch my _______(noun).

Sometimes, the _______(adjective) technician x-rays my _______(noun) to make sure I don’t have a ________(adjective) infection or ________(noun) in my ________(body part).

My least favorite _________(noun) to inhale is made of _________ (noun) and ________(noun) and tastes like _______(animal) brewed in ________(bad-tasting liquid).

Thanks to _____(adjective) medicines many of us with cystic ________(exclamation) fibrosis will ________(verb) longer and lead ______ (adjective) lives. We also have a ______(adjective) perspective of life and know that every _______(singular noun) counts.

Stay healthy, my wonderful _______(plural noun).

Mini-rant: 30-second internet commericals

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“Patient” is not a word my wife would use to describe me. I’m allergic to standing in line, and waiting more than 10 minutes to see a doctor makes me want to go “rock-star in a hotel room” with the chairs and old magazines. And if scientific studies on impatient “want it all now” individuals are correct, then it’s one of the primary reasons I’m such a huge failure.

This is what I see when I see a line of any size. © Mike Kiev - Fotolia.com

But self-flogging aside, there’s a new villain when it comes to making me feel like a big chump: the 30-second internet commercial.

I go out of my mind when I have to wait 30-seconds while an Internet commercial plays. It feels like 30-minutes. I think it’s all about the “ratio” of the commercial time to the video clip length.

If I watch a 60-minute show, then a 30-second commercial doesn’t push me over the edge. But if I’m waiting to watch 15 seconds of “Labrador puppies playing poker,” the ratio of commercial to clip is too much to bear and I shut down the page.

A conventional hour of TV contains approximately 1/3 of the time devoted to advertising – or more for a popular show (American Idol feels like 50/50 while I’m skipping through the commercials on our DVR).

And, to watch a 15 or 30-second clip on the web, I’m forced to watch all of the commercial time up front. Can you imagine being forced to watch 20 minutes of commercials before watching 40-minutes of a TV show? You’d run screaming from the house by minute 8.

That’s what watching 30-second commercials is like for me. I can’t do it. Even if I click on another browser tab while it plays, it still feels like a huge waste of my time.

Companies need to get off their rear-ends, buy some imagination, and create 5-second commercials for the web. Until then I’m boycotting the companies who are too cheap to create ads that don’t make me feel like an idiot, which isn’t hard to do, as I’m really good at feeling that way every day of my life.

That’s it. I’m done ranting here. I tried to capture my frustration with this topic in a tweet or two, but I couldn’t do it. I’m glad it’s finally off my chest.

I’ll try to be more patient in life. [the Universe laughs]

Caillot de sang sur mon derriere

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The Universe tossed me a bone this week.

Hello, Universe, what do you have planned for my backside today?

And yet, at the same time, it delivered another painful lesson to remind me how stupid I am and that I am here for its own amusement.

I visited the cancer hospital, which was an experience in itself and humbling, and met with the colorectal surgeon to fix my rectal prolapse, or what two doctors agreed was a rectal prolapse – first the ER doctor, then my gut doctor, whom I wish had taken a closer look. Maybe he’s dealt with one too many assholes, me, to deal with another.

So, with the opinion of two doctors, I felt confident to make the following statement to the surgeon’s young, highly-attractive doctor in training: “I diagnosed it myself before going to the ER.”

Yes, I looked right into her brown eyes and I said it, selling it with confidence and pride. I should have added: “Give me a mirror and scalpel, hot stuff, and watch me repair it right now. Yes, that’s how awesome and brilliant I am.”

Hello, I’m the Universe. I love it when this idiot gets overconfident. Nothing like a good backhand to the head to teach him a lesson. Wait, it’s about to happen. 

After five minutes of talking about my medical history, it was off to the exam room and getting on my knees and bending over a custom-made, tilting exam table for having your rear-end examined or praying. Or both.

Now I have to mention at this point, as a reminder, as if you needed one, I’m a polarizing person in medical situations that some might consider to be stressful. People either think I’m Mr. Funny Guy dealing with a life of doctors, hospitals, and medical tests, or, on the flip side, the biggest jerk in the world.

Door number two, please.

Many doctors find Home Depot’s tools useful for surgical procedures. And they include a 2-year warranty.

Is there a more appropriate place than an operating or exam room for a joke to lighten the mood? I think not.

Like when the doctor tipped the table forward and my ass raised high in the air for the crammed, standing-room-only crowd of nurses: “Where can I get one of these for my bedroom?”

Dead silence.

Or, how about this classic to the doctor after the scope went in and out and I pulled up my shorts up and faced him: “Well, that happened.” [Confused look by the doctor.] So, I tried to explain the joke: “That’s what Alec Baldwin said in the movie, State and Main, after he drove drunk, crashed with an underage girl in the car, and sent her walking home with a bad injury, then left the scene of the accident himself. ‘Well, that happened.'”

Clearly, I didn’t deliver the line correctly. More silence from the crowd.

This is the universe again. You are such a prick. You never learn. Time for your self-esteem buster. 

“You don’t have a prolapse,” said the doctor.

“What did you say?”

“You have a blood clot, not a prolapse”

“Do I need surgery for that?”

“No.”

Yes, my dear reader, I’ve been walking around for three days thinking I had a backside in need of surgical repair. Perhaps, a symptom of something worse, the C word. But at that moment, happiness flooded my brain and I could have kissed a few of the onlookers (you know who you are).

However, it occurred to me that two doctors had looked at my rump, “my lovely manly rump” (hey, a similar line was good enough for the Black Peas), and confirmed the diagnosis.

Or had I, super-idiot-pretend-doctor, planted the seed in their minds and they followed along?

And then I thought of my wife following the ER doctor’s directions and trying to push it back in place two times a day for the past three days, which according to the surgeon was about the worse thing you could do for it other than stabbing it with a rusty knife.

Hey, it’s an Edvard Munch painting. Oops, it’s just you in looking in the mirror.

Put me back on the bench and whip me for being too stupid to walk the planet.

Agreed. “I diagnosed it myself.” That’s rich. You’re not very bright. That does make me laugh and it’s not easy to make me, the Universe, laugh. Good one. 

But the best, most deflating moment came when I walked out of the exam room and looked down the hall, waved to the doctor and his two assistants, only to have them not notice because they were standing around laughing.

By the way, recounting this story now makes me feel icky inside. It’s one thing to be an idiot, it’s another to know you are and not be able to do anything about it. [hands on head; head hitting the desk over and over. Thud.]

I am like watching a train full of circus clowns derail and explode into a mushroom cloud of fire, flesh, and flaming red rubber noses falling to earth like meteors.

So, it’s two baths a day, four more days of suppositories, some ice packs, and a return visit in two weeks for my next bombing performance. I can’t wait.

Well, that happened.

Yes. Yes it did.

If given the choice between having low PFTs or getting hit in the groin with a baseball bat, I’d choose . . .

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. . . maple over aluminum.

This will only hurt for the rest of your life.

Yes, even if it were swung by Sammy Sosa in his steroid-induced prime when he blasted home runs over the walls of baseball parks around the country.

Batter, batter, swing. Oh, that hurts. Fill my diaper with ice again, please, Honey Bunny. 

But it still wouldn’t hurt as much as low PFTs and poor lung function.

After two weeks of prednisone highs, lows, and mediums, and every shade of gray, the moment of truth came today when I blew into the tube for what felt like the millionth time, but did not ring the bell and did not win the giant stuffed panda for my honey.

It’s such a sickening feeling to blow like Popeye, rush around to look at the numbers on the computer screen and lose your breath again. Batter, batter, swing. Oh, that hurts. Sammy, how much of that stuff did you inject?

But I didn’t go to jail.

No, nope. I did not.

My small airways tossed me a “get out of jail free” card.

Yes, they did, showing minor improvement, which was enough to give the doctor, ever the optimist, hope I might be improving after starting the Cayston this week.

And in the surprise of the week, he would not admit me. No matter how I much I tried to convince him (another way of saying “beg”), he would not fall prey to my Jedi mind tricks, or a $20 bill, which always puts a smile on the valet’s face, but failed to sway a man with M.D. in his title.

However, we did reach a compromise that I would start Cipro to see if it could team up with Cayston for a total ass-kicking party of the germ invaders in my lungs.

Next week, I’ll return and blow with all of my might until my face bulges bullfighter red and every vein in my neck turns to rope.

And if by some miracle, my lung function should return, I’ll be so thrilled I’ll whistle for my magic rainbow unicorn, Peppercorn, and ride her to the mystical and distant land of McGriddleVille.

And should my numbers not take a magic leap up, I shall pick up the PFT laptop like a 60s rockstar might pick up a piece of hotel furniture and let it fly, teaching it the greatest lesson of all: if you have nothing nice to say, lie.

3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, blast off to worlds unknown

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Well that happened. 9 days of oral steroids tapering to 1/2 a tablet for another 10 more days.

And what a fun time it was riding the prednisone rocket.

If this were a Monty Python film, the line would be, "It's just a harmless little white pill, isn't it?" Photo: Creative Commons

“Please make sure your seatbelt is fastened, your seat is an upright position, and your head is securely attached.” 

My favorite part was the return of coughing up blood. Nothing more fun than that. I’d really missed it.

But there were other exciting parts too, like the headaches, panic attacks, and anger, especially during the return to Earth’s gravity and tapering doses. Or what I like to call, the “leaving the comfort of zero-gravity” stage.

“The USS Prednisone has reached maximum velocity. Please hang onto your drinks and nuts. Or pour your drinks on your nuts.”

And then there was the detour to my local CVS to measure my blood pressure when my face and eyes felt like they were going to explode. They didn’t. But I did take a day trip to the Cardiology planet with my heart lacking a clear and steady beat (Would the meth-head playing the drum kit kindly look up the word “rhythm”)

Oh, yeah, prednisone can increase blood pressure. Another bonus.

Did this medicine help me at all? I have no idea. All I can say is that I’ve felt discombobulated all week while on it, and have spent a great amount of time at doctors and looking up medical information.

Fortunately, the blood is just about gone. After 30 years of coughing it up, I have not yet mastered the skill of dealing with it. When it happens, it’s the scene you see in the movies when the camera zooms right up to the main character’s face – too close in fact, as you can see every pore in his face – and the background starts spinning around.

“When the rocket ship stops free-falling, feel free to throw up at that time. For the comfort of your fellow passengers, please swallow it until landing. Your pilot and those who have to clean it up thank you.” 

That was my trip. I know it’s not finished yet, but the worst is over. Isn’t it?

We’ll see. There’s still this week’s clinic appointment and a possible hospital stay if my PFTs aren’t improved. Let’s hope the prednisone helped and all of this was worth it.

Some days even the luckiest man in the world feels unlucky

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No doubt in my mind I’m the luckiest man in the world. I believe it. However, nothing rips my luck from me, rolls it up into a little ball and lights it on fire in front of my face like a CF clinic appointment with low PFTs.

I can eat a steak dinner in front of the TV while an open-heart surgery is on, which grosses my wife out. However, there is something really creepy about looking at this plastic head model with half its skull and face missing. Me no likely. Bad dreams for me and my imaginary friends now. Creative Commons.

Kick me in the groin, stomp on my back, rub my face in the dirt, piss on me like a dog, CF

Yes, after finishing IVs a mere 6 weeks ago and much improved PFTs in the hospital during the IVs, my PFTs were way down. Arghhhhhhhhh, someone stick a Drano IV in my neck and end this misery.

It doesn’t make sense – both my doctor and I thought this at the same time when light-bulbs appeared over our heads.

Then we talked about the problems I’m having with allergies and my sinuses. He thinks the post-nasal drip is draining into my lungs at night. And he heard wheezing in my right lung, which is the side I sleep on at an raised angle.

Then after a look at last year’s CT scan of my head, which showed dozens of loose screws, broken glass, two fat gerbils smoking cigarettes next to a rusty training wheel, rocks of all colors, shapes and sizes, and McGriddle-shaped clouds, he told me it was time for sinus surgery.

And like a good coach, he told me to hit the saline rinses and dual nasal sprays.

And, as a bonus, I got an Rx for oral steroids for only the third time in my life. Now, the three readers of my blog may remember that when they gave them to me in the hospital in 2010, I experienced hallucinations.

Oh, happy days, more imaginary friends to meet the imaginary friends I already have when I’m not downing prednisone.

It’s about to be party time in my head. See you there.

Yours truly,

Still the luckiest man in the world

We are “paint-grade” people

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We’re done with our kitchen. After 16 years of Home Depot cabinets with sagging shelves and broken drawers, a tile countertop with missing grout and a stove fan that circulates air into the kitchen, we are ready to upgrade – to experience the good life of smooth granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, and glass-tile backsplashes.

Nothing like standing in front of the stove while it blows the fumes right at your face. Great design. I am personally going to smash this with a sledge-hammer when we demo the kitchen.

We are ready to stop lying to friends who visit: “we’re planning on re-doing this whole thing soon.”

We are ready for an adult kitchen.

Or we thought we were.

What we believed would be a fun and exciting transformation has a been a self-esteem roller-coaster. And it has to do with living in Los Angeles, where it’s damn easy to feel poor every day.

Yes, interviewing contractors delivered the harsh message: we are “paint-grade” people.

Paint-grade people.

We are the people who don’t choose the stained, hand-picked maple cabinets or the stone mined in a remote area of Brazil, polished with coca leaves, and hauled by donkey to the United States.

We are the people who don’t have the unlimited funds to give the contractor a platinum American Express card and instructions to “go wild.”

Could we afford the maply-goodness of stained cabinets? Probably, it’s all home equity. But it’s still our money, the money we worked for. And we elect to save it for a rainy day. Four-thousand dollars to us is not a trivial amount. We’d like our daughter to get a good education. And 4K in her college fund today may be a big deal to her in eight years. Or we hope it will.

So the contractors have come and left their bids and stories of larger, better jobs in larger, better cities – Beverly Hills, Calabasas, Encino. “We’re doing a 30-million dollar remodel in Century City. Some computer-guy and his wife. You’re much happier than they are though. They agonize over every detail. They love to micro-manage.”

(Translation: Money will buy you a great kitchen, but it won’t make you happy? I have my doubts.)

Or this gem, “It’s good to see construction here in the Valley picking up. That’s a good sign for the economy. It never went away in Brentwood and Beverly Hills. You couldn’t drive down a street there without construction.”

(Translation: The 1% did okay while the rest of the country was hurting, but they weren’t enough to create the jobs for the many. The middle class is needed for that.)

The paint-grade people are needed to get the party started.

So, the search continues for the right contractor, the one who walks into our kitchen and doesn’t tell me romantic stories of past million-dollar remodels and 30K custom-built dining-room tables. Who doesn’t feel the best jobs are in high-income zip codes. A contractor who doesn’t frown when you tell him you want painted white cabinets.

Yep, when I find that guy or gal, I’ll write the check. Until then, life in our paint-grade world goes on. And it’s a good, happy world to be in.*

[*Exception: when remodeling a kitchen.]