Do they give out Prozac Light?

So I've been out of work for almost a year now. As it gets closer and closer to my EI running out, I'm getting a greater and greater feeling of unease. Nothing specific, just a general, oh-crap-what-the-hell-are-we-going-to-do kind of ....panic? Panic seems so in the moment, such as when you're spinning out in your car, or the condom breaks, or oh-shit-he-actually-HEARD-that panic. No, this is more of a nagging, general malaise. What is a boy to do?

I've also noticed I've been starting to get short-tempered, whereas I usually have the patience of a saint. I have two kids, 5 and 2, and I play hide-and-seek with them, in the car. I have been known to put two different Cat in the Hat videos on two different DVD players because they remembered to say 'please'. And I can usually listen to their knock-knock jokes for up to an hour, but lately, I've had this near-overwhelming urge to scream "IT'S YOU! IT'S ALWAYS YOU! STOP KNOCKING ON THE FUCKING DOOR AND COME IN ALREADY!"

But of course, that would be inappropriate.

So what do we have? Let's see;
Lethargy? Check.
Irritability? Check.
Change in appetite? Check.
Weight loss? Check.
Loss of interest/pleasure in activities you used to enjoy? Check.

Well, slap my ass and call me Spanky, I'm depressed! Shocking, I know, given that I've been unemployed for a year, am still having unresolved issues with my father and they recently made it impossible to actually fix little mechanical objects that I used to be able to repair with MacGyver-like ingenuity, rubber bands and duct tape. But even my depression is half-assed, not the clinical, so-bad-you-can't-even-get-out-of-bed type, more of the kind that just allows you to be a pain and a burden to your loved ones, because you're generally in a bad mood.

Oh, did I forget to mention feelings of inexplicable guilt? That's on the symptom list, too. Check!

So what do you do when you're kinda, maybe, sorta a little bit depressed? Do they make Prozac Light? Will I feel better if I eat seven pounds of chocolate? Will kicking a small dog break the cycle and bring a deep, satisfied smile to my face and lighten the landscape going forward? Couldn't hurt to try, right? Well, OK, the dog would get hurt. Obviously. That's the point, making something else feel bad so that I feel good! And dogs just deserve it, with all the yapping, and the false exuberance, and the phony oh-I-love-you-so-much-and-you're-the-whole-world-to-me licking of the face. Hell, I'd like to kick a dog on a good day. So maybe I should find some other outlet.

Guns? Do they let depressed people have guns? That seems like a pretty bad idea. Not that I'm in a place where I would use a gun to hurt myself, just that there are some out there who, in my mentally weakened state, would prove WAAAAY too tempting targets. Hookers? Bad for the pocketbook, even worse for the marriage. Recreational pharmaceuticals? Potentially expensive, plus, if I do get a job, it may involve a drug test, which I would then presumably FAIL, which would lead to more depression, and more drug use, etc.

I suppose I could try to turn this thing around by reaching out. I could volunteer at a homeless shelter, and see what it's like to be really down. Perhaps by viewing first-hand the issues faced by people with real problems, I could get some perspective, and shake myself out of this self-pitying slump. Maybe the joy that I would get from selflessly serving others would counteractive the negativity, and lead me to better brighter things, to be a better husband, better father and a better person all around.

Naaaah. Somebody bring me a dog.





Thanks for reading!

Fairy Tales for Urban Youth: Jack and the Beanstalk

Yo, one time, back in tha day...



There was this sad little homeboy called Jack, whose momma was so poor, she couldn't afford to pay attention. His crib was bare, like his old lady hit 'im up, and his life was in need of some pimpin', yo.



So Jack's momma decides that she's gonna sell her cow to buy more rock, so she tells Jack, "Yo, take this mo-fo cow to the market and bring back some Benjamins." And Jack is all like, "Aiiiight".

So out on the street, Jack meets this playah who tells him he can give him some magic beans for his cow, and Jack is all "Fer real?" and the playah's all "Fo shizzle, my nizzle."

So at home, Jack's ol' lady wuz all up in his grill, saying, "Are you trippin'? This shit is whack, dawg," and she threw the beans out the window.

Next day, there was a bigass beanstalk growing up into the sky. Jack climbed the beanstalk and found a giant's castle. So he B&E'd a little and found a goose that laid golden eggs. When the giant came home, Jack busted a cap in his ass and took the goose home, and lived with bitches and bling for the rest of his life.

For real.

All Things to Two People

Of all the things I've been to my kids,
grammarian
engineer
coat rack
guru
chauffeur
triage nurse
art critic
math teacher
botanist
wallet
shaman
gardener
accountant
gossip columnist
trail guide
astronomer
urinal
theologian
handyman
arbitrator
music teacher
physicist
jungle gym
Santa Claus
pack mule
judge
marketer
drill sergeant
chemist
speed bump
Easter Bunny
painter
police officer
video producer
tour guide
biologist
crash mat
carpenter
advocate
photographer
maid
hairstylist
news anchor
and
nail technician,

I think I like pillow the best.

She's lucky she's cute....

So, it was a good morning. The weather was crappy, but I got up before the kids, which meant I didn't have to corral them, or beg for ten minutes to have a shower. I was able to start on my schedule, which is always nice, rather than having to hit the ground running all the time.

So after I got William to school, I was back in the bathroom, when Abby came in and wanted a bath. She has her bath at night, before bed, so I gently told her that it wasn't bathtime. Still, she decided that she was done with her shirt. I took her shirt off, then she decided pants weren't her thing this morning, either. Then she started tugging at her diaper, saying that she wanted IT off as well. Any parent will tell you, kids love to be naked for some reason. I got tired of saying no, and I thought those words that can only spell disaster for the parent of a small child: "What harm can it do?"

Parents have already guessed what harm can be done when you let your two-year-old run around for longer than fifteen seconds without a diaper on. My daughter took a dump in the middle of the living room floor.

I apologize if anyone is reading this while eating lunch at their desk. But when you have kids, all of your stories involve poop one way or another. My daughter had decided that it was perfectly acceptable to relieve herself where she happened to be when the urge struck her. So I came downstairs, and got a whiff of that all-too-familiar smell.

Now most people would be upset, at finding poop in their living room. I tried to get agitated about it, but you see, my daughter is just so damned CUTE. And it's the worst in the morning. I think there's something to this whole "beauty sleep" idea, because my daughter is at her maximum cuteness factor between nine and ten in the morning. She recharges her cute cells overnight somehow, like her dimples are lunar-powered, or something. This phenomenon has saved her life on more than one occasion. Since it took her almost ten months to learn to sleep for more than two hours at a time, there were several mornings that her disarming smile was the only thing that kept her from meeting a horrifically violent end, probably involving every drop of blood leaving her body and one if not more broken windows. That's one of the things they don't tell you when you have kids -- you have vivid, full-colour fantasies about visiting grievous harm on them when they mess up your sleep. That's WHY they're so cute. If they weren't, you'd kill them.

So I cleaned up the poop, and we lost one of her toys in the process, because it was not anywhere near popular enough with the kids to warrant any kind of salvage effort. My position is, if she wanted it, she shouldn't have pooped on it. That seems reasonable to me. And I went on about my day. There was probably a teaching moment in there somewhere, like when you rub a puppy's nose in their business so that they learn not to do it any more. And it crossed my mind to have a little heart-to-rectum with my daughter about the most appropriate time, or for that matter, at least a less INappropriate time to void her bowels, but she had already moved on, and was lounging on the couch, watching Thomas the Tank Engine. And she was so cute, and it's such a short time she'll be two, that I decided to let it go.

But if she's still pooping on things when she's fifteen, I'll DEFINITELY say something. Probably.

After lunch.


Thanks for reading!

No more new jeans

On the advice of my wife, I went this week to the mall looking for a new pair of jeans. I have lost a fair amount of weight over the last year, mostly because of eating breakfasts and lunches that consist of only the food left behind by my two- and five-year-olds. If my wife didn't come home and feed me at dinner time, I suspect I would look like an Olsen twin with a beard. I'm now six foot two, a hundred and eighty-three pounds, which means that I have only just now, according to the universally accepted Body Mass Index, reached 'healthy'. So my jeans are a little loose now, and my wife suggested that I should buy a new pair, presumably something more flattering to my butt. Or perhaps a pair that makes me look like I might actually have a butt in there somewhere.



At the mall, I went to several teenager-infested stores with salesclerks with piercings and visible tattoos, and felt old. That doesn't really bother me, when I was a teenager I thought that people who were as old as I am now got their first jobs waiting tables at the Last Supper. So fine, I'm old, I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is that it seems there are no new jeans in existence. All the jeans that are for sale now look as if they have been picked off the carcasses of recently deceased homeless people, because apparently the style is now "distressed", which means "looking as though they have spent five months in a logging camp or commune and were washed once before coming to the store to be resold".



So I came home jeans-less, and I got onto the Internet to find out where all the NEW jeans are, and I discovered a very disturbing fact: no new jeans have been produced since 1995. See, jeans are made of denim, which we get from Denim Buffalo, who were originally discovered by miners near San Francisco in 1835. The great Denim Buffalo herds provided all the denim needed until the California Gold Rush, during which time the herds were decimated and driven north into the mountains in Washington. There they flourished, and their numbers were approaching healthy levels again, until the grunge music movement started in Seattle, and denim was once again required to meet an insatiable demand for clothes from disenfranchised slackers who had no problem with spending upwards of $90 on a pair of jeans and $6 for coffee. The great denim herds were hunted to extinction, the last one being killed to make a bathmat for the floor of Eddie Vedder's tour bus. This fate was very nearly shared by the flannelbeast, whose ranks were driven to the brink by overhunting until only a few specimens remain that are now kept in zoos. A breeding program is in place to try to revive the species, but there is a problem, as it seems that all the flannelbeasts in captivity appear to be lesbians.

So it looks like there will be no new jeans for me. However, on the bright side, it looks like I can sell all my OLD jeans back to stores and recoup my investment. Some of them even already have holes in them. Maybe if I wear them a few more weeks, I could even be 'cool'. Except that I have no butt.

Thanks for reading!

Can I be funny on paper?

I'm a funny guy. This entire blog is based on this premise, so I'm not gonna shy away from that point. There are some cases where I have actually made liquid shoot out of someone's nose. Now granted, that was twenty-five years ago, when we were ten, and a well-timed fart could make liquid shoot out of someone's nose, but I'd like to think that I've retained the ability, even though my humour has gotten more sophisticated than flatulence.

The problem is that my humour is dry. Dry like the desert. Dry like a martini. Dry like your grandma's shortbread cookies that you choke down every year with about three gallons of eggnog because you don't want to hurt her feelings. Now that's fine in person, because a knowing glance, a wink, a particular lean of the shoulders can convey the message that I'm kidding (unless you're my mother-in-law, who has no idea when I'm joking unless I tell her). But will that translate on paper? Here's the first rule of thumb: if there's any doubt about whether I'm kidding, I'm probably kidding.

For example, when I was in the grocery store, I saw a sign on a bulk bin of chocolate covered peanuts that said "WARNING: MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS". Now, if I said that any idiot with a fatal peanut allergy who looks at a box of chocolate covered peanuts and thinks, "Well, if there were peanuts in there, they would put a warning on it," deserves to die of anaphylactic shock, I'm kidding. Barely.

The second rule of thumb: if I offer any advice or instruction, I'm telling you what worked for me personally, and it is not my fault if it causes you pain, heartache or a horrible itchy rash. Any advice is offered on an as-is basis, take it or leave it. I'm not telling you how to live your life. I'm just telling you what I think.

The rest we'll work out as we go along. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the party!

As many of you know I've been unemployed since last June. What you may not know is that when I took a career planning course last year, one of the things that came up as a possible choice for me was "comedy writer". It's something that I would love to be able to pursue, and to that end, I'm starting a blog to polish my writing skills.

I say 'polish', but in truth, I'm pretty much starting from the ground up. Each week, I'll take on a new topic that strikes my fancy, and give you a few hundred words about what I think. Hopefully, it'll be funny. If we're REALLY lucky, it'll make you think, too.

If anyone has any suggestions for topics that they'd like to kick around, I'm open to suggestions. Fifty-two blogs a year is a pretty tall order, and I'm lazy, so if you want to do half my work for me by deciding what I should write about, I can take Mondays and Tuesdays off. There are no subjects I won't tackle, and anyone who writes will get a personal response. Thanks for making my life easier!

So here we go! I hope this is not just an exercise in pointless navel-gazing, and I hope that other people actually enjoy what I write. If you like it, tell your friends! If not, then keep it to yourself, my ego is already fragile enough right now!

GP