Urine the Wrong Bathroom

Very few people think that they aren't nice. I know that I'm a good person, at least within the confines of my own mind. Others might argue that point. After all, as a child I was kicked out of Altar Boys, kicked out of the nun's May Procession, kicked out of the school play that the nuns put on, and I was kicked out of Boy Scouts. I might have even been kicked out of the Catholic School I went to. All I know is that after seven years of nunsense I was suddenly switched to the public school system. And then there are all the people who used to give me the finger when I was driving. They were probably the ones who made phone calls to my boss on the, "How am I driving?" hot-line when I drove the company van. Damn bumper sticker. I suppose that if I thought about it for even a moment, I would recognize that there are some dark thoughts in my head. Usually though, I find that thinking of kittens and puppy dogs make them go away.

Here in Florida republican state representative, Frank Artiles, is trying to pass a law that restricts men from going into women's bathrooms, and women from going into men's bathrooms. Ostensibly his reason is safety. The representative reasons that keeping men out of the ladies room will prevent the rape of women and children. I didn't know that was such a big problem in Florida. Personally, I see it as a way to keep women from storming the men's bathroom when I go to Miami Dolphins games. Yes, that is a thing. I've been to at least a dozen Miami Dolphin games, and every time I have had to endure the presence of drunken woo-hoo women invading our sacred space. According to Artiles' bill you could spend up to sixty days in jail for breaking his law. Woo-Hoo! It all sounds reasonable until you read the fine print. It turns out that the law has all kinds of loopholes, loopholes that would still allow the woo-hoo girls to come and have a big pee party in the men's bathroom at football games. In fact the only people not included in the loopholes turn out to be transgender people. It almost appears that Representative Artiles has proposed a bill that is vindictive and mean spirited, and that he doesn't really care so much about women and children's safety as much as he wants to punish people who make him uncomfortable. I don't know because I don't actually know what is in Frank Artiles heart. But I'm sure if you asked him, Representative Artiles would say that he's a nice person.

This Little Piggy

My left foot

All my life I have walked splayfooted, or as it was commonly called when I was a kid, duck-footed. In other words, I walked with my feet at an angle outward from my body. Here's the horrible news, when I just Googled duck-footed, I found out that there are ways of fixing it. Now they tell me, after sixty five years of walking like Donald Duck. Anyway, walking that way causes other problems because your weight and movements aren't distributed properly. My problem lately has been that my little toes are being scrunched up against the side of my shoes, and it damn well hurts. Earlier this week, as I sat massaging one of my tender little piggies, I noticed what seemed to be some kind of growth on the underside. Believe me, if you have survived cancer even once, every little bump and lump is suspect. So I quickly made an appointment with the doctor. It turns out that I have what the doctor called "a corn". I've heard of that before, but had no idea what it was. My feet have always been pristine. No calluses, no growths, no blemishes at all on the skin. Plenty of problems with neuromas and neuropathy, but the skin was flawless. So you would think that I'd leave the doctor's office feeling good, feeling happy that it was something that simple. But no, I was thoroughly bummed out. You see the nurse had weighed me when I went into the examination room. Two hundred and twelve pounds. Talk about your little piggy.

Hummus me a Tune

I like Middle Eastern food. Lebanese, Syrian, Greek, it doesn't matter, I will eat it. There used to be a nice Lebanese restaurant next door to my place in Chicago. This was back in the 1980's so I'm pretty sure it isn't there anymore. Anyway, a friend and I went one evening for dinner and chose the sampler platter to share. It was just that, a huge platter with absolutely everything from the menu on it only in smaller portions. Still, as small as they were, it was filling.  After about an hour of gorging ourselves on hummus, kibbe, and other exotic dishes we said goodnight and went our separate ways. I, to my home right next door, and my friend to a bar six blocks away. It's a funny thing about Middle Eastern food. It tends to move rapidly through the digestive system. I don't know if it was all the olive oil or maybe some hinky tahini, but my friend only made it five blocks. It's one of my favorite stories that he repeats when we get drunk, how he had to either crap his pants or squat behind a dumpster in an alley. He chose the alley.

Yesterday afternoon Mark and I went to Ferdo's Mediterranean Grill in Fort Lauderdale. They have a great lunch special and Mark and I always order the same thing, the gyros platter. As usual, the food was good and the pita bread with olive oil helped me shovel all that lamb meat down my gullet. Lots of olive oil on the pita bread, lots of gyros meat. After lunch we moved on to our next chore of the day, haircuts at the hiphop barber shop. Here's a good rule to follow if you plan to have lunch or dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant. After eating, don't put yourself in a situation where you are confined, like in a barber chair. I honestly tried to stifle the gas that was bubbling up from deep in my guts. I sat there in the barber chair with the apron like smock firmly fastened around my neck, trying my hardest to keep it all in until I couldn't take it anymore. The first one came out silent and strong, I swear the smock billowed up just a bit. As my barber fussed about cutting my hair, I implored him to move a little faster. "How about those eyebrows, you want me to trim them?" he asked. I clenched as hard as I could and told him, "Yes, trim the eyebrows". I figured that wouldn't take too long. Poof, again the smock rippled in the wind. This time I think the guy had figured out what was happening. He put down his clippers, whipped the apron/smock off of me, and announced that he was done. I felt bad for the guy, but I did give him a good tip with a little extra gas tax added on.

May The Road Rise to Meet You

It's 10:41PM on the evening of March 17th, and Mark is out on the town. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem what so ever with that. In fact I look forward to these times when Mark leaves the house in the evening. It's the silence that I covet. No Bravo television shows blaring from the other room. No political lectures that I've heard a hundred times. It's quiet. Just me, the dogs, and the internet. Meanwhile, on this Saint Patrick's Day, Mark is out swilling down green beer, stepping over vomiting drunks, and celebrating his heritage. Yes, his heritage. Remember that post a week back, the one about me getting Mark a DNA test so that he would know his genetic ancestry? Well Mark is six percent Irish. So erin go bragh, top o' the morning, and may the road rise to meet you. But not if it meets you as you pass out drunk. That could hurt. The best part about Mark's DNA test is that now he has so many other holidays to celebrate. He is fifteen percent British, so there will be Boxing Day. I've looked up Scandinavian holidays because he is ten percent Scandinavian, and that looks like it would be Midsummer Day. I may be wrong about that, but I'll still encourage him to go out on June 21st to celebrate. He has a large percentage of East Asian in him, so Chinese New Year's will be celebrated. And then there is that fifty two percent African heritage. That fifty two percent is spread out over a whole bunch of areas of Africa, so some more research will have to be done on those holidays. All I know is that I can look forward to some nice quiet times ahead while Mark celebrates his various homeland holidays. I just hope they don't all involve heavy drinking and vomiting.

Plaid Shorts and Black Socks

Saturday afternoon I noticed that the place across the street had a for sale sign in front of it. What a coincidence. I put my house up for sale on a street that hasn't had a sale in nearly two years, and suddenly the guy across the street gets a bug up his ass to sell. I think he looked up the asking price for my property and his eyes got very big. Of course the first thing I did was to check what the price was on his place. It's a decent price considering he has no pool, no landscaping (just dried out weeds), and no taste in remodeling (I've been inside his building). I'd have been pissed if he was undercutting me.

This whole house selling thing has got me on edge. Last night I dreamt I was in my living room and my house was full of people mocking everything I owned... oh, and I was naked. It's a very personal thing to sell the home you've lived in for over twenty one years. For one thing there is the graveyard outside my kitchen door. I have six cats and a dog buried out in the dog run and it will be difficult to leave them there. I've tried to discourage any future owner from digging around back there. I covered one of the cats with concrete and another has a tree growing from her grave. Besides the haunted pet cemetery, there are my trees. I love my trees. I have two live oaks, one of which I planted the month I moved in, that are now towering over the front yard and dripping with Spanish Moss. As strong as my feelings are for this house and all the good times we've had here, I do need a change of scenery. If I don't do something I will slowly morph into a fat old man who wears pink shirts with clashing plaid shorts, and black socks halfway up my calves, just like all the other geezers here in Florida. I need a real city to liven things up. Mark needs no such thing. He's quite happy here in Florida and would be happy to live his days out here. It kind of creeps me out, especially after watching so many of my elderly neighbors slowly fail and die. I'd much rather go back to Chicago and be the aging hipster, the old fart around town, and die the way my grandfather did. That is, the grandfather who lived to a hundred and two years old, not the one who was murdered on the street right in front of his house in Chicago.