Red Boxer Shorts

 

How I imagine him

Other than the parking lot of Wolfy's hotdog stand across Peterson Avenue, it is rare to see a Chicago Police car cruising the streets around here. That's because we don't have a very high crime rate compared to other neighborhoods in the city. Unless you count the lady who was murdered, cut up, and stuffed in her freezer by a disgruntled tenant half a block from my house. (I try to be very good to my tenant, Dennis. At least he pays his rent on time.) Anyway, I noticed yesterday that at least four police cars had slowly cruised down our street in the morning. When I talked to my upstairs neighbor about that, he dismissed it as probably nothing. Just cutting through on the way to Dunkin' Donuts. I was skeptical because Dunkin' Donuts is the other direction. So I checked the neighborhood Facebook page. Sure enough, everybody was talking about it. A man in nothing but a pair of red boxer shorts was going around ringing people's doorbells. One lady even mentioned that she had seen him sleeping in her backyard on one of her garden chairs. Apparently the guy was a bit nuts, and when they caught up with him they took him off in an ambulance. So we're safe from guys in red boxer shorts, for the time being. All I want to know is, what's wrong with my house? Why wasn't I included? After all, it's been a long time since a man in boxer shorts has rung my bell.

What he probably looked like

Dumpster Fire

 

About four years ago the building immediately to the north of me was sold and remodeled. It was gutted to the bricks and redone in a clean, characterless manner. Very well done, but with none of the beauty of what had been there for a hundred years. While that remodel was going on there were a series of dumpsters parked on the street in front of that building. I didn't mind. It meant somebody was trying to make the place better. A month ago the building immediately to the south of my building was sold. My wonderful neighbors had to move out and that building was now being gutted down to the brick walls. Once again, there is a dumpster sitting in the street filled with plaster, shattered wood, and other debris. I like it because when I walk the dogs, I can now toss the shit filled plastic bags right up into that dumpster. I don't have to go around to the alley.

Yesterday, my friend and tenant on the second floor put a frozen pizza in the oven. It was a Nick and Vito's pizza, which I highly recommend. The problem was that there was something else in the oven that Dennis forgot about and that something else started burning. Smoke filled the apartment, the smoke alarms went off, and Dennis came downstairs to inform me that there was a fire in his oven. There wasn't any fire, but his apartment was thick with smoke. I opened all the windows, turned on the ceiling fans, and waited for the smoke to dissipate. While waiting, another smoke alarm went off. "Beep, beep, beep, beep...." But it was not in the apartment. I went downstairs to see if it was in my apartment. No, not there. I went into the basement to see if the smoke detectors down there were beeping. No, not there either. Yet it continued, "Beep, beep, beep, beep...." I finally figured out where the hell the beeping was coming from. It was out in the dumpster that was full of all the debris from my neighbor's building. Apparently the guys who were doing the demolition had ripped the smoke detectors out and tossed them into that dumpster. There had been a lot of smoke from Dennis's pizza, but I had no idea.

Dog Time

 

I don't really like Daylight Savings Time. It's stupid. Really, what's wrong with Standard Time? The sun comes up earlier in the morning, which is a good thing for people trying to wake up and go to work or school. Also, who the hell needs daylight at nine in the evening? We have streetlights and electricity everywhere. Anyway, that's not what I'm going to bitch about here.

It's the dogs. My plan was to let them continue to think it was still pre-Daylight Savings Time so I could sleep an hour longer. Scout and Daisy would have no idea the crazy humans had turned the clocks forward one hour. So that was the plan. Two weeks into the time change and it has turned out that at least one of my dogs is very smart. I'm not sure which one figured it out, but for the last few days Daisy has been getting up at five thirty in the morning, walking across my legs and jumping down off the bed. This wakes me up. When I look down at the floor, there's Scout sitting there staring at me while Daisy sits in the hallway making her, get the fuck out of bed, noise. "Hurumph.... hurumph...  I fucking said, hurumph! Now get the fuck up and take us out and feed us." (Yes, my dogs curse. Not sure where they learned that.) I don't know what tipped them off. I figure at least one of them can count, or maybe can tell time. It could be the old wind up clock on the fireplace mantel. It has a gong that counts out the hours on the hour. My guess is it's Scout that can count and knows what it means when the windup clock gongs five times. But then again, Daisy knows that when Alexa tells me my breakfast is ready, it's time to run into the kitchen.

Pizza Day

 

Wednesday has become my pizza day. I usually buy a good quality frozen pizza at the Jewel while doing my weekly shopping. When I get home, I bake it, and then eat the whole damn thing. I start out with good intentions. Eat half of it for lunch and then save half for breakfast the next day. (You know you've all had leftover pizza for breakfast at least once. Don't lie.) Seriously, there are a few very good frozen pizza brands out there. Nick and Vitos, Corner Pub, and the one I had today. Brew Pub pizza. All thin crust, Chicago, old school style pizza. I even cut it into squares like I did when I worked for Ray's Pizza almost sixty years ago.

I was fifteen years old when my neighbor who owned Ray's offered me a job. One dollar an hour and all the beef sandwiches and RC Cola I could consume in one shift. I was fifteen, so that was a lot. A lot of money, RC Cola, and beef. Thinking back I realize what made the pizza taste so good. Part of my job was mixing the pizza dough. Flour, eggs, yeast, oil, and water, mixed in a big dough mixer. Before turning on the big mixer, I would have to pre-mix the ingredients in by hand. When the dough was finished in the mixing machine, I had to dig it out of the giant mixing bowl by hand and plop it down in an oil soaked wooden box. There it would sit to rise for awhile before putting it in the refrigerator. Later I would have to take the dough and measure out little balls of it to a certain weight, each one a future pizza. Yes, the pizza from Ray's was very good. Only a couple of problems. Fifteen year old Alan did all the prep work with no hair net, no mask, and no latex gloves. That was my sweat, my hair, and my sneezes in that dough that made it so delicious. One more thing. I loved the well done mozzarella cheese on top of the pizzas as they came out of the oven. So I would snatch a big gob off the top of the pizzas and eat it right then and there. Sadly a few of Ray's customers got pizza with half the cheese missing. Fifteen year old Alan was a little asshole.

The Can

 

So three weeks ago it started snowing around here and we were buried under one and a half inches of wet snow. Oh the horrors. To add to the misery, for a whole week after that the temperatures never got warmer than ten degrees above zero. Thank the Lord, or Tom Skilling, after that the weather changed and we've had nearly two weeks of temperatures in the mid thirties to upper forties. It's like we're in Florida, but without the flying cockroaches. Of course that means all the snow has melted and piles of trash have appeared in my front yard. Yesterday I went out with my orange Home Depot bucket and my "Grabber Reacher Tool for Seniors" as it is described on Amazon, and picked up all the trash.

Let's go back to the one and a half inches of snow and sub freezing temperatures. On the first day of that terrible time I took in a friend's dog, Eddie. That means I had three dogs needing to poop and I was not going to take them out for a walk. No way was I going out in that mess with those dogs. So I would open the back door of the porch, let the little fur angels run out there, and watch them poop and pee all over the place. One good thing about Eddie, he always poops in the same spot. Bad thing about Eddie, his poops are gigantic. But never mind because all the dog poop would immediately disappear as their turds melted down through the snow. Unfortunately, snow melts and dog poop will still be there.

I have a six gallon trash can out by the alley. When I clean up the dog poo in the yard I put it in the can. Yesterday I cleaned up the yard. The six gallon can filled up fast, which meant I would have to transfer it to the big garbage bin so the City of Chicago could pick it up today. It was heavy and the bag I had lined the can with ripped open. Let's just say the shit almost hit the fan. Luckily I came prepared with a giant black trash bag that captured it and I was able to get it all in the big bin for the truck to pick up today. This is the reason we tip the garbage men around the holidays.

Comfort

 

I was in a doctor's office waiting room last week, helping out a friend. While he was in having a procedure, I took a seat in one of the very comfortable looking chairs provided. For the first few minutes I was fine. Then I realized the seat was canted forward, maybe one degree off the level. You see I have a very sophisticated sense of comfort and I can feel such things. A grain of sand in my shoe feels like a rock. If I sleep in the same spot in my bed too many times, I can feel the divot I have created. I have a very good mattress, but I can feel it. Anyway, sitting in that waiting room became unbearable after awhile. It reminded me of going to parties when I was young. One in particular, thrown by one of my crazy friends, came to mind. I had never been to his apartment before, so how was I to know he had no furniture. He had a stereo, a cat, and a mattress on the floor. That was it. I didn't stay long. Besides, like I said he was crazy. He was known for bringing his cat to gay bars and dancing with it. Also, he spent some time in jail for threatening to kill a United States Senator. I asked him to never call me again after that.  

I find that in my older age I need comfort and won't put up with hard seats, bad shoes, and parties with no furniture. Yet for nearly one whole year I lived on a farm with a bunch of hippies. We all slept on what you might call 'roadside' mattresses in one big room, on the floor. Seriously, I have no idea where those mattresses came from. I slept like a baby back then. That was over fifty years ago. Now I avoid being on the floor for any reason. Mostly because of the intense effort it takes to get me back up on my feet. Besides, that's where the dogs hang out. Lots of hair down there.

Merry F***king Christmas: Yogurt Edition

 

When I was a kid, my brothers, sisters, and I loved Christmas. The anticipation, the lights, the nearly two weeks off from school was special. Life seemed so wonderful in those days immediately before the big day. However, it was not so great for my dad. We didn't know he had to pay for all of the stuff that showed up under the Christmas tree. I never thought about what a bitch it was to lug that big tree home, set it up, and then drag all the decorations down from the attic crawl space. So at some point in the days before Christmas something would set him off. Dad would blow his top and in his thunderous big man voice, burst into a symphony of profanities. It could be a burned out string of lights. It could be something that happened in traffic on his way home from work. It could be me saying just the right thing in front of him. All I knew was to get the hell out of the way. I'm not much different. I've had my Christmas disasters that have turned me into a raving maniac. Disasters that send me screaming every foul, nasty curse word I can muster at the top of my lungs. One year in Florida it was an open window that allowed the tropical breezes to topple Mark's beautifully decorated Christmas Tree.

I make my own yogurt. Every eight days or so, I pour twenty four ounces of milk into the six hundred dollar Vitamix blender that Mark made me buy for him one Christmas. Then I add my live yogurt starter and blend it at the very lowest speed for a minute. It takes about eighteen hours to cook and then you have yogurt at a third the cost of buying it pre-made. Today was yogurt day. After pouring the milk and the live yogurt starter into the blender, I turned to throw away the yogurt carton. At which point some part of my body brushed against the blender and flipped the on/off switch to on. In a panic I flipped the wrong switch and turned the speed up to 500,000 rpm blasting all the milk and yogurt straight up onto the cabinets, walls, floor, and me. Immediately the dogs came running in to help clean up the mess. Just as immediately they ran as I burst into my impression of my dad.

It took about an hour to clean it all up. I think I got it all, but it's hard to tell. White milk, white yogurt, white kitchen cabinets and counters. I may have missed some. I'm sure I'll know if I did in a day or so. That's when the aroma of sour milk will make it known.