Tuesday evening.

Wife: “Idiot…..if you can find some time in your ultra-busy schedule tomorrow…can you do my laundry….and can you wash our bedding?”

Idiot: (Blows dust off day planner, opens day planner…spreading cobwebs which have called the planner home for years) “Uh…I think I can just squeeze that in…..my schedule is pretty full…..”

Wife: “Thanks Idiot…..and very important…….Hey Idiot!…Look at me as I explain this!!…..very important….. I have a black T-shirt from Work in my laundry basket…..Do NOT dry it in the dryer under any circumstances!!! Take it out and let it dry over the back of a chair or something…..the last time you dried it, it shrank…..that is my favorite T-shirt and I don’t want you to ruin it!!! Do ya got all that??!!”

Idiot: “Dry the black chair over the back of a T-shirt and let it dry in the laundry basket….got it”

Wednesday morning.

I strip the bedding and all the pillowcases.

I run into one minor issue.

I am a well-insulated walrus at night. As such, I like the bedroom cold and like having the ceiling fan on, irregardless of what the temperature is inside or outside the house. My wife is the opposite. She is a tiny twig of a woman with no insulation whatsoever. She likes sleeping in a SAUNA, irregardless of the inside or outside temperature. I would sleep like a baby at 55 degrees, while she would happily doze at 85 degrees.

Well, we “compromise” with the temp usually hovering in the mid 60′s. Even in the 60′s, I am usually sprawled out atop the covers, baking like a loaf of bread. The wife, on the other hand, has added 2-3 extra blankets to her side of the bed and is cocooned deep inside her bedding like a mummy.

Recently, she added a new little throw blanket to her layers….

The fuzzy little green blanket from Hell.

This blanket is literally comprised of MILLIONS of little fuzzies….. how it is all held together is beyond my comprehension.

I peeled back the layers of bedding from our bed and then came to the layer on top of, and just beneath, the green fuzzy blanket.

There were little green fuzzies everywhere up and down my wife’s side of the bed!

No problem. I peeled everything off, drug it all to the utility room, and mashed everything into the washer.

A half hour later, I went in to transfer the bedding to the dryer.

My God!! A green fuzzy bomb went off!!

I started pulling bedding from the washer and EVERYTHING was covered in little green fuzzies!!

I hurriedly shoved everything in the nearby dryer, though I dropped about a pound of fuzzies on the utility room floor as I did so.

I started the dryer.

Before I knew it, both idiot cats had come into the room and were sniffing around by my feet. Sure enough, both idiot cats were soon covered in green fuzzies! The stuff was like fuzzy glue…literally sticking to everything it came into contact with.

I looked in the washing machine.

Sure enough, the interior sides of the washer was covered in a thin coating of little green fuzzies.

Gah!!!

Think idiot…… if you put a load of laundry in, that will force more water through the washing machine and will wash the remaining fuzzies out of the washer through all the little hole thingys on the side of the washer.

I got my wife’s first load of actual clothes laundry and dumped it in the washer.

About an hour later, the buzzer on the dryer went off, indicating the bedding was now dry.

I was terrified to even open the door.

I slowly opened the door and peered inside.

Just as I suspected, EVERY article of bedding, and every pillow case, was covered in green fuzzies.

Gah!!!! What the Hell?????

I carried a handful of bedding out to the living room and dumped it on the couch.

A green and gray cat, that just used to be gray, slowly walked past me, sneezing uncontrollably due to the wad of green fuzzies stuck to it’s nose….

I grabbed one of the bed sheets.

Maybe I could get the fuzzies off by violently shaking the sheet.

I violently shook the bed sheet…

and a beautiful little rain of green fuzzies tumbled and floated through the air and coated EVERYTHING in our living room within a 10′ radius.

Gah!!!

I sat silently on the couch and silently cursed my tiny little wife for her need to have this Satanic green blanket from Hell on her side of the bed in the first place.

Then, I shuffled off to eat lunch in the kitchen.

I opened the fridge and saw a Tupperware container full of spaghetti that we had eaten a few nights earlier for dinner. I opened the container to see how much spaghetti was left.

There was a good sized portion, BUT, as you would guess, it had a couple green fuzzies perched atop the spaghetti! Gah!! This stuff goes THROUGH Tupperware!!

A short while later, the buzzer went off on the dryer. My wife’s first load of laundry was done!

Just as I feared, EVERYTHING was coated in green fuzzies.

Her pants, blouses, undergarments, socks, yes, even the tiny Barbie Doll Black T-Shirt that had somehow made it’s way into her laundry basket.

Wait a minute…

The wife does not have a Barbie Doll….

Oh Crap!

The Barbie Doll sized shirt was THE shirt that I was NOT supposed to dry.

I had shrunk it down to Barbie Doll size and had coated it, and everything else in the house, in little green fuzzies.

The phone rang.

It was the wife!

How could she know????

“Hello?”

“Hey Idiot….what’s for dinner?”

“Uh… I don’t know yet…I was thinking something green….”

“How’s my laundry coming?”

“Just fine dear…no problems….”

“Did you do the bedding too?”

“You mean the sheets, blankets, and pillow cases?”

“No idiot…I mean the sheets and the pillow cases….You don’t wash the blankets…..good Lord man….do you know what kind of mess would occur if you tried to wash those blankets? Those have to be dry cleaned! Any idiot knows that!!”

“Oh sure…I knew that….I was just testing you…..see you in a bit…..”

“Bye Idiot…have dinner ready when I get home….I’m hungry!…..and make sure my good t-shirt is ready to go, I’m wearing it to work tomorrow…”

“Sure thing my pet”

Click

beep boop boop

ring ring

“Hello 911 What’s your Emergency?”

“Yes, I’d like to report a Murder”

“A Murder? Did you say a Murder sir?”

“Yes ma’am”

“Who was murdered sir?”

“I was ma’am…..in about 43 minutes from now”

“Sir…is this a joke?”

“No maam…in 43 minutes, my wife is gonna come home and is going to kill me until I am rendered dead”

“Why would she do that sir?”

“Well ma’am…it all started with a fuzzy little green throw blanket…and our washing machine….”

“Oh sir…tell me you didn’t wash the fuzzy blanket in the washer….”

“Yes ma’am…yes I did”

“Sir… what Funeral Home would you like us to call on your behalf?”

It all sounded simple enough.

Mow the back yard on Tuesday afternoon.

Weed-eat the back yard.

And then, “dig out” the above ground pool.

By “dig out”, I mean clear a 18″ wide perimeter around the side of the pool, so that the grass that has now grown right up to the edge does not produce killer spiked weeds that will poke a hole in the pool liner and cause a leak that will flood our yard with tens of thousands of gallons of pool water.

Got it? Simple enough.

I mowed the yard. I have NEVER had to mow our yard in February prior to this year in that our grass is usually dormant and brown all winter long. But, seeing as how it is pushing 80 degrees this week, the idiot grass thinks that Spring has arrived and has been growing like a madman in recent weeks.

I weed eat, no problem.

I head over to our back patio to get the HOE in order to start clearing a perimeter around the base of the pool. No Hoe. Where’s my Hoe? Who took my hoe? It is usually right here in this corner of the patio!

I look around the back yard.

And there it is……

On the trampoline!

Why the heck is my hoe on the dang trampoline?

I head off towards the far corner of the yard where the Trampoline resides.

This area has very little grass and is still pretty muddy from recent rains. Due to our not wanting our idiot toddler of a High School Freshman to fall off the trampoline and hurt his little heady poo…. we have one of those “cage enclosures” which provides a nylon and net prison about 10′ high around the entire jumping area of the trampoline. Of course, with the Hoe being IN the trampoline enclosure, this means that idiot me is going to have to go into the dang trampoline cage to retrieve my hoe.

I slosh through mud and reach the “entrance”, a narrow little area that unzips to allow the kiddies to enter and exit the trampoline version of Thunderdome.

Like a good little idiot, I remove my shoes, remembering vivid visions of the wife yelling at the kid…”Take off your damn shoes before you go in there!!! Your shoes will POP the trampoline!!!”

I pull myself up onto the edge of the trampoline with my head and shoulders already poking into the Thunderdome cage.

The whole trampoline begins to slide in the mud, ever so slightly.

I guess this is to be expected when an overweight Walrus climbs onto a toy meant for a toddler.

I wiggle my body in an attempt to pull my body the rest of the way into the cage and so that I can pull my idiot legs up off the ground.

The trampoline slides some more in the mud.

Good grief….I could have sworn this area of the yard was flat!

All of a sudden, the trampoline really starts sliding…and also starts spinning ever so slightly.

I yank my legs into the Thunderdome and watch as the yard and back of the house slowly spin by through my netted line of sight.

Suddenly, the trampoline thumps to a soft stop….against our 8′ privacy fence.

The sliding Thunderdome Idiot Cage has nowhere else in which to slide.

It is done.

I crawl across the trampoline and retrieve my hoe.

Me and the hoe crawl back over to the exit zipper door…and face a shocking site.

Fence.

The damn trampoline, in my supposedly FLAT backyard, has slid and twirled its way up against our backyard fence so that the exit “door” is right up against the dang fence!

I reach out through the zippered door, place both hands on the fence, and press as hard as I can, hopefully causing the trampoline to slide back uphill enough that I can escape.

Nothing.

It does not budge.

I am trapped in Thunderdome!

In my backyard… On a school/work day…. with the wife and kid not due home for hours…..

I lay on the trampoline and stare up at the tall netted barriers that are imprisoning me. There is no way to climb my way out. I look at the hoe. I could hoe my way out, slicing a huge escape hatch into the netting with the hoe, but that would draw a death penalty from the wife and kid, and the grandparents that actually purchased this prison. As far as I remember, the damn Thunderdome enclosure cost the grandparents about double than what they paid for the actual trampoline itself.

I hear a little girls giggling voice off in the distance.

I turn my idiot head trying to figure out from which direction it is coming.

I hear more laughing and giggling.

I hone in on the direction of the little girls voice.

About 150 yards behind our home is a Church. This Church has an outdoor play area. The little girls giggles have to be coming from this play area!

How can I be sure?

I have to see!

I toss the hoe across the trampoline and try my best to wobble myself to death as I try to stand up. I finally do reach my feet, only to be staring through net and straight at fence. I need to get a little higher to see out of the yard.

Bounce idiot!!! Bounce!!

Oh yeah, I am standing on a damn trampoline aren’t I?

I try a little weak bounce and end up bouncing about 3″ into the air.

The trampoline did not break and I did not break, so bounce higher idiot, bounce higher!

I bounced ever higher.

Two months after having tendon transfer surgery on his left foot, and still going to physical therapy for that foot, three times a week, and now the idiot is BOUNCING on that new foot on his kids trampoline! The Doc would kill me if he saw this!

I finally bounded high enough to where I caught a quick glimpse of a young girl playing on the swings at the Church.

Another bounce revealed an adult woman seated in a parked car in the parking lot about 30 feet away from the girl. I assumed that this was the girls mother, sitting in the comfort of the car as her little girl played on the playground.

Another series of bounces showed that the car windows were up. The woman in the car would have a hard time hearing me. I would have to yell loud.

I bounced up as high as I could..

“HEEEEELLLPPP!!!!”

Bounce

“Laaadddddyyyy!!!!”

Bounce

“Laaaaddddeee!!!!! Heeeeellllppp!!!!!”

Bounce

It was no use. The lady could not hear me. I did notice however, that the young girl had stopped swinging and was now staring at the backyard fence from which a gray-haired Santa Claus lookalike popped up every few seconds…

Bounce

“Liiiiitttttllleee Giiiiiirrrrrlllll!!!!”

Bounce

“Come here littttllleeee Giiiiirrrrlllll!!!!”

Bounce

(OK Idiot, maybe this is not the best plan in the world. Trying to entice a young girl to come into my backyard from a neighborhood playground is going to look pretty bad on my profile on “America’s Most Wanted”)

Stop bouncing.

I can’t win.

I just laid back on the trampoline and stared at the sky.

I could hear the little girl off in the distance, hurriedly trying to explain to her Mother that Santa Claus’ head had been calling out to her as it bounced up and down on top of THAT fence….. but, thankfully, it sounded as if the Mom did not believe a word the child was saying.

I laid there for about three hours. A lonely idiot and his faithful hoe.

Then, I heard the car pull into the driveway.

The wife and kid were home.

A few minutes passed.

I head muffled screaming of my name from within the house.

Finally, my phone rang.

“Hellooooooo?”

“Idiot!!! Where the heck are you??? We’re hungry! What’s for dinner?”

“I’m out in the backyard dear…”

“What the heck are you doing in the backyard? It’s dinner time!!”

I watched in horror as the back door slowly opened up to reveal the wife, standing in the doorway still clutching her cell phone to her ear.

She closed the cell phone.

“What the hell are you doing on the trampoline??!!!! You know you can’t be on that thing!!!!”

She slowly walked across the yard, pausing to notice the deep indentations of where the trampoline legs USED to be…and then looked at the skid marks leading to where the trampoline now resided.

She slowly looked at the trampoline enclosure and zoomed her attention to the “entry door” which was now flush up against the fence.

She quickly realized what this all meant.

“TYLER!!!!!TYLER!!!!!! GO INTO MY BEDROOM AND GET THE VIDEO CAMERA OFF OF THE DESK AND BRING IT TO ME!!!”

I heard a muffled reply from in the house.

“Why???? I’m playing my Playstation!! Can’t you get it??”

“GET THE CAMERA NOW TYLER!!!! YOUR IDIOT FATHER IS TRAPPED IN THE TRAMPOLINE!!!!”

I just laid there and stared at the sky, accepting my fate.

Why me Lord? Why me?

Monday Morning.

I had my 3-month follow-up with my Skin Cancer Doc. Dad tagged along with me so that we could eat Chinese Food after my appointment.

After eating, we had a little shopping to do….. rather, HE had a little shopping to do…

At Mutant-Mart.

I was tagging along with him as he slowly wheeled through the produce section, and was obviously annoying the daylights out of him due to my constant begging for him to let me ride IN his basket, just like when I was a little kid. Just like when I was a kid, he gave me a dollar and told me to go wander around the store like a good little boy until he was done shopping.

He caught up to me about 20 minutes later, in the Wine Section of all places.

Good Lord how far have I fallen in my dreary life to have ended up in the Fine Wine aisle of the local Wal-Mart?

What a selection! They had the “good stuff”, which went for about $10 a bottle, and which was in actual bottles.

They had the $7 “Discount” wine which came in a cardboard box with a picture of a wine bottle on the outside of the box.

And finally, they had the $5 “Budget” wine, which came in clear glass mayonnaise and pickle jars, emblazoned with yellow packing tape with the words “WHine” scribbled across the tape.

I have to admit, I am a total novice at Wine. Here I am, pushing 50, and I have never been a Wine drinker. A few months ago, I saw a report on the news about how drinking a glass of red wine each day was supposed to decrease your risk for Alzheimer’s, having been shown to improve your cognitive skills and memory, so I promptly completely forgot about that report until just a few weeks ago, when it suddenly popped back into my idiot head, prompting me to go out and buy a bottle of Red Wine, though I know nothing at all about Wine.

So, My Dad sees me scoping out the selection of fine wines at Wal-Mart. He about has a cow, instructing me that Wal-Mart, aka Mutant-Mart, is NOT the place to buy fine wine in the city.

For that, we need to head next door…

To Sam’s Club.

Sam’s Club…..where the classy rednecks and riff-raff shop!

Dad took me next door and we made a B-Line straight for the Fine Wine section, neatly wedged in between 500lb bags of dog food, and half-price Klansman Robes being passed off as “Full-body hooded Terry-Cloth Bath Robes…..with a Confederate Flag on the back”

Dad was right.

Sam’s Club IS the place for idiots to buy fine wine.

Sam’s is nice enough to provide little placards above each selection of wine, with the placards allowing the customer to easily decide which wine is best for their particular wine knowledge and tastes.

Dad pointed me towards some Red Pinot Noir Wines and told me to check out the placards.

The First Selection had a series of placards which the customers were to flip. The first card on the placard said “What is your knowledge of Wine?”

I flipped the card. It had something written in French.
Nope, that’s not me.
I flipped the card again. It said “I know a little about Wine”.
Nope, still not me.
I flipped the card again. It said “I know Jack Squat about Wine”.
Bingo. It instructed me to proceed to the flip card directly beneath the “Jack Squat” card.

It proceeded to tell me, in terms I could understand, what this particular brand tasted like, and what it would go good with. I read on….

“This fine RED wine comes from the Fertile Dog’s Collar Holler area of Eastern West Virginia, and has an aroma of strawberry, blackberry, oak, vanilla, leather, shoelace, athletes foot, spice, and vinegar. It goes good with Beef, Fowl, Fish, Domesticated House pets, Squirrel, Frogs, Rabbit, Jerky, and Road Kill. It is suitable for parties, barbecues, Church Communion, Ritual sacrifices, Tractor Pulls, Stock Car Races, and for use as barter in Federal and State Penal Institutions”

Yee Haw!!

We have a winner!

I bought a bottle AND Dad bought a bottle!

I WILL get the hang of this wine thing yet!

Oh yeah, as far as the Doctor visit went, not too bad…..for me…..

Only three “Precancerous Spots” this visit! After 37 Skin Cancers in recent years, and with my body looking like I have been machine gunned to death, I finally had a visit with no actual new full-blown cancers! The Doc did chew me out for having tan lines on my legs, in February, a clear indication that I have been running around outside in shorts all winter, but hey, an idiot will be an idiot……

Now, where’s that classy pickle jar full of West Virgina Merlot?

I knew Saturday was going to be bad after my wife told me what I had to do while on our weekly shopping expedition into civilization.

I cringed at the thought of what she was telling me, even though I knew it had to be done.

We had a nice quiet lunch, just the two of us, but my mind was on what was to follow, so much so that I cannot even remember what I had to eat.
(Hint: It was an animal, and I could still see signs from where the jockey had been hitting it with the whip)

I was quickly getting nervous, very nervous.

So nervous that I actually walked out of the restaurant, did the keyless remote to unlock the car, and then proceeded to try to climb into the WRONG car.

This gave the wife a good chuckle, but realizing that I was totally wigging out over my little “chore”, did she have compassion and let me off the hook? Heck no.

We drove across town and before I knew it, we were there.

The building loomed over our car and cast a huge shadow over everything. To me, this building has long been associated with pure evil and darkness. Nothing GOOD ever comes about when I visit this building.

I started to visibly shake and was gritting my teeth so tightly that little wisps of smoke were coming from between my pursed lips.

The wife, holder of TWO degrees in Psychology, was not amused and had no sympathy.

“Get out Idiot! Get out like a man….go in there….and do what you gotta do!!”

There was no need to even think about arguing with the woman.

I got out, head hanging down, shoulders slumped in defeat, wounded puppy dog look on my face, but all to no avail. The little lady slid over into the drivers seat and sped away on her way to Kohl’s.

Yes, there I was, staring up into the spine chilling terror of the giant LOWES sign sprawled high above the building.

Yes, the Idiot, the most mechanically inept man on the planet, was being left on his own to once again venture into the hideous abyss of the local LOWES store.

You see, the Idiot had endured a small little “accident” a few days ago in which his attempts to lower his massive undercarriage softly onto the toilet seat, went slightly arry, thanks to him temporarily losing his balance on his surgically repaired left main landing gear, causing the behemoth of a man to slam down onto the toilet seat with such force that said seat was permanently dislodged from it’s moorings. Yep, the idiot broke the toilet seat. Go ahead, shoot me. I think it was still useable, though the wife quickly made it clear that she did not like sitting on a “swivel chair” while she tried to use the restroom. Because of my unfortunate little accidental murdering of the toilet seat, I was assigned the task of going into the dreaded LOWES of death, in search of a replacement seat.

Not content to just send me into my immenent death in search of a toilet seat, the wife also sent me in with instructions to get lawn fertilizer/weed killer for the grass surrounding our home. Two things I know absolutely NOTHING about….Home Improvement, and Lawn Care. This was just the icing on the cake, the woman definetly wanted me dead!

I shuffled into the entrance of LOWES and grabbed a cart. I had not made it even 3 feet inside the door before the first blue aproned droid approached me, begging me to let him assist me.

“What can I help you with today sir?”

I lowered my head in shame.

“I broke da terlet seat” (When in shame mode, I often go into Archie Bunker mode and slaughter the English language)

“You mean the TOILET seat sir?”

“Yeah…da Terlet seat”

“No problem sir, follow me while we head over to the bathroom area…….I just have a few questions before we get there…”

(Crap! Here it comes! Time to put on my I’M A FREAKIN IDIOT!! shirt!)

“Sir, what size seat do you need?”

(This is a trick question! The fella is trying to mess with me!)

“Uh….just an adult size will be fine”

(Awkward pause)

“Uh sir…do you have 13.4″ seat or 15.8″ seat?….those are the two most common sizes…”

(Act like you didn’t hear him idiot! play deaf!!)

“Uh sir….when you sit on the toilet….is it like you are sitting atop a BARREL or a TIN CAN?”

“Uh….barrel….definetly a barrel….kind of an odd shaped barrel…..”

“OK Sir….. it sounds like you have an elongated toilet so you will need a 15.8″ seat”

(This is easy….piece a cake!)

“Sir…after we find you a seat, is there anything else you are gonna need today?”

“Uh yeah….lawn fertilizer/weed killer….. the kind that looks like sand that you put in the little plastic buggy thing and then wheel all around the yard…”

(I thought that sounded like a damn well formed explanation……considering I am an idiot….”

“No problem sir….what kind of grass do you have?”

(Easy one!)

“Green”

“Uh…no sir….what species of grass do you have?”

(Crap!)

“American green?”

“Alrighty sir….let’s try this….what type of weeds are you encountering that you are wanting to kill?”

“Uh…uh….there’s little stringy ones with the stalks that have the little fuzzy balls on the end that blow away when it gets windy….and then there’s the ones that are all spiky and hurt your feet when you step on them….and then there are the little green ones that kinda look like someone threw up spinach mixed with little pieces of corn…..”

The nice sales associate flagged down one of his co-workers that was walking in the opposite direction.

“Excuse me Carl, could you do me a favor and go over to lawn and garden and get this gentleman a 50lb bag of the SCOTTS brand “American Green Grass Fertilizer with Little Fuzzy Ball Killer” please?”

I smiled a contented grin.

This trip was easy!

Soon I would have my oddly shaped barrel worthy terlet seat, and would have my large bag of green grass fertilizer with fuzzy ball killer.

The wife will be so impressed.

I am actually getting the hang of this!

**Maybe that last statement was a little hasty. Apparently, my numb butt did not realize that our old toilet seat was handcrafted out of reindeer antlers by artisans in the Lapland area of Finland, and utilized Nordic Tempur Pedic cushioning into the heated seat body area. This WAS the Rolls Royce of toilet seats. After just one sitting, it was made loud and clear to me, by the loving little woman, that I had just purchased a paper-thin sheet of plastic not fit for use in a Motel-6. The wife said I would have been better suited to just cut a hole into the center of a Frisbee and then glue the thing onto the toilet bowl ***

——————————————————————-

**** 2012 Crawling my way ever faster back to the Pacific Bike Tour ******

Miles this year: 333
Days on Bike: 14
Avg miles per day: 23.8

Location: The Idiot is pedaling westbound on Interstate 30 just outside of Mount Pleasant, Texas.

**** 2012 Crawling my way back to the Pacific Bike Tour ********

Total Miles: 300
Days on Bike: 13
Avg Daily Miles: 23.1

Current Location: After being sidelined for a few days with Bronchitis, the Idiot is back on the road and has now crossed into his adopted homeland, and is about 30 miles west of Texarkana, Texas.

A quick quiz…

When I came home from the Doctor, diagnosed with Bronchitis, did the wife say..

A. “Bronchitis??? How the Heck did you get Bronchitis?? You never go outside!!”
B. “This wouldn’t happen if you’d wear some damn long pants once in a while! It’s freaking Winter ya idiot!!”
C. “If you so much as look my direction, I WILL kill you!!”
D. All of the Above

Texarkana sits literally ON THE BORDER, with one side of the main street being in Arkansas, and the other being in Texas. Cruising around downtown looking for a parking spot can have you going in an out of each state multiple times within one city block. From here, I am headed for the Dallas-Fort Worth area and will ride through the town I currently call home. You will also get a glimpse of just how big this state is, seeing as how I will riding within Texas for about the next 3 weeks or so. From here in Texarkana, I live what we would call “Down the road a piece”. Here in Texas, we have unique ways of classifying distances, just in case you happen to stop and ask for directions to somewhere and a local tells you one of the following…

“Down the road a bit” means anything from 2 blocks away, to 100 miles away.
“Down the road a ways” means anything between 100 miles and 200 miles….as the crow flies.
“Down the road a Piece” means you better gas up now, cause you got a LONG way to go.
If you have out of state plates and are asking Directions, EVERYTHING will be “down the road a bit”. The locals love to make out-of-staters think that their destination is just around the next bend, even when they are still 500 miles away.
If you are from Oklahoma, we will tell you that your destination is “down the road a bit” but will make sure to point you in the wrong direction before you leave.

The Answer to quiz was D. All of the Above. Congratulations! I’m sure ALL of you got it right!

1986

London, England

The Idiot, serving in the US Air Force, had just arrived in England days earlier. After in-processing on the base, some fellow servicemen take him to London for the first time.

This will be the Idiot’s first opportunity to experience authentic English Cuisine for the first time.

Visions of consuming mass quantities of sheep’s stomachs, blood pudding, and greasy newspaper wrappings filled with tiny amounts of undercooked fish fill the idiots mind.

He takes the train to London, then, the Tube (subway) to the heart of the City at Piccadilly Circus, comes up from the tube station, and surveys about 300 places in which to eat.

He heads straight for Burger King.

Yep, the Idiot’s first ever meal in London, was at Burger King.

2010

Bolivia

The Idiot is flying to Bolivia with founder Don Davis as part of the Global Mission Readiness Charity. The Charity, comprised of Emergency Responders, has taken on the Idiot to be their photographer, videographer, and blogger for a 16 day trip to Bolivia and Peru in which they will be instructing local Emergency Responders.

This is the Idiot’s first trip to the exotic continent of South America.

He is determined to branch out and explore the culinary options available in Bolivia, the least visited country in South America.

Folks at home have filled his head with visions of plates filled with Monkey, Python, Water Buffalo, and even…..gasp…..Alpaca.

The Idiot is open to trying ANYTHING on this trip, but draws the line at Alpaca. They are simply too cute to eat. Everything else is fair game.

We land in Bolivia late in the morning.

We are first taken to our small hotel where we are able to grab a small nap after the 24 hr trip from the USA. While trying to sleep, I hear shrieking of an unknown origin coming from the trees surrounding the hotel. I take these sounds to be monkeys. Monkeys that may soon be occupying my plate.

After the nap, we spend endless hours visiting with the local emergency responders. They take us all over the city of Santa Cruz De La Sierra, showing us their operations and facilities. It is now well past 9pm local time and we have yet to eat since arriving in Bolivia.

Right now, the monkey on a plate sounds pretty good. In fact, I am so hungry that even a properly fried Alpaca might be worth trying.

Our hosts ask us if we would like to go out and eat at a popular local restaurant. We eagerly nod “Yes”.

We pack into vehicles and make our way through the city.

I can already taste the smoked monkey on my tongue as I eagerly anticipate an authentic Bolivian meal.

We arrive at the restaurant.

There are lots of pictures of plates of food plastered on the walls, all with Spanish subtitling. I have no Spanish knowledge other than asking where the Bathroom is located. I assume these are pictures of the plates containing the monkey, Python, water buffalo, and possibly a cute little Alpaca.

Our hosts are kind enough to order for us.

We sit at an outside table, eagerly anticipating the authentic Bolivian meal that is soon to be placed in front of us.

Before we know it, it has arrived.

There it is.

Staring up at me.

Yep…

Pizza.

Pizza…….

My first “authentic” meal in South America…

is Pizza.

Though, in my defense, we had a “Supreme”, and what kind of actual meat was being used on the Supreme was a source of great debate. For all I know, we did, in fact, consume Monkey Pizza, or Pepperoni,Sausage, and Python….. or even what they called the “Alpaca Lovers Deluxe”…with extra cheese and extra Alpaca….

Who knows….

The following day, while out and about in the city, we were treated to a delicacy that the locals called “The Creature from the Mountains”.

Being from Texas, I had little doubt as to what creature I was now consuming.

Yes, I travelled all the way to the Jungles of South America….to eat an Armadillo.

(It tasted like Pork Chop by the way…)

I am majorly ticked off at WordPress at the moment.

I pulled up my blog and was going back through the archives, looking for a suitable post to repost.

I was NOT logged into my wordpress account at the time.

I pulled up an old post and found an advertisement at the bottom of the page. This was an ad that was on a YOU TUBE video. Hmmmm….. interesting….seeing as how I don’t put ads on my blog…..seeing as how I thought that WordPress does not allow us to put ads on our blogs…

I pulled up another post. The same thing happened. This one also had an ad attached. I pulled up a third post…..yep, there was yet another ad!

I did some checking….

I found this on the WordPress site…

At WordPress.com, we sometimes display advertisements on your blog to help pay the bills. This keeps free features free!

To eliminate ads on your blog entirely, you can purchase the No-Ads Upgrade.

The No-Ads Upgrade costs $29.97 per blog, per year.

Oh, I see now…… we are not allowed to generate any money off of our original material, by displaying ads of our choosing, but WordPress is free to run ads for whatever they see fit, on OUR BLOGS, and we are powerless to stop it, unless of course we pay $30 a year to keep our blogs AD-FREE.

All that original material you and I are putting out……. Well, someone is making money off it, and it is not us!

You might want to log out of your WordPress account and then pull up your blog, just as if you were surfing the net, and see if they have added advertisements onto some of your old content.

The thing that really ticks me off is that I don’t remember seeing any kind of notice from WordPress that this was going to be taking place.

I personally do NOT want ADS on my blog! Even ads of my own choosing. I used another site before coming to wordpress, a site that actually allowed ads, and I did not choose to use ads. Personally, I hate websites that are crawling with ads, just like I hate watching commercials on TV.

So, now, I have to either swallow my indignation and allow WordPress to continue to advertising whatever the Hell they want on my old posts…

Or I can pay them to stop putting ads on my old posts….

Or I can just drop WordPress altogether and switch to my own website where I can have MY BLOG the way that I want it.

This is just totally wrong. I have no control over the ads that THEY are placing on MY blog, unless I pay them to stop!

The old saying is right.

Nothing in Life is free.

Is this ad info new to anyone else out there, or I have been living with my head in the sand? This really ticks me off!

“Watch the Hell where you’re driving!! You almost hit another carhop!!”

—- Was the screams that I heard as I tried to navigate my way out of the Sonic Drive-in parking lot in Denton today. Denton is a college town. The carhops at Sonic, with Denton being a college town, are…….attractive college ladies that look like they are all on the varsity bikini and modeling team. Not good when you are a middle aged dude trying to navigate your car out of the parking lot, with family in the car, without being distracted and hitting something.

I tell ya, ya just “slightly” run over one cute little carhop, years ago, and you’re forever labeled a menace to every other girl on skates out there in Sonicland!

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Went to lunch at Red Lobster today. (Alert the media)

The waitress asked for my order. I told her I wanted the Highly Poisonous Japanese Blow fish with a baked potato and extra Blow on the fish.

Then, for the second time in a month, it happened.

She looked at me and asked if I wanted the “regular” portion……or the “Senior” portion…..

I don’t remember any of what happened next. The wife says I leaped up, through my table, shattering it into a thousand pieces, (I was wedged in that booth pretty good) ran across the floor, tackled the terrified waitress (who was attempting to flee to safety), and then reaching on to a nearby plate of a petrified elderly patron, I started to severely thrash the poor girl about the face and shoulders with a large piece of blackened Sea Bass. The Sea Bass assault when on for about a minute, with me mixing in hysterical pounding from a shaker of Sea Salt that I had in my other hand, until I was apparently knocked unconscious by a swift clobber to the side of the head by a huge plastic swordfish that a young male waiter had ripped from a nearby wall. Next thing I know, I am laying out back, by the dumpsters, and awaken to find myself staring at a couple dozen boxes of “Gorton’s Fishsticks”, empty cans of “Starkist Tuna”, and empty bags of “Sams Club”-brand Shrimp laying all over the pavement next to the dumpster and my idiot body. I stood up, brushed myself off, pointed down at the empty fish stick boxes and started yelling “I KNEW IT!! I KNEW IT!!!”.

Eating with me is never a dull experience.

Loud, painful, filled with screaming, people running in terror for the exits, babies crying, and the sounds of things breaking, but never dull.

***From the Archives, Aug 2010 ********

Time to revisit a feature that I have not done in quite a while, the local crime blotter. Yes, these are actual Police calls as reported by our local Sheriff’s Office in my area of Rural North Texas. This is always the funniest read in the online edition of the paper, in that these calls are completely real. The offenders and callers are all assumed to be complete idiots until proven otherwise in a Court of Law. (Most all plead guilty to being Idiots before ever going to trial)

2800 BLOCK OF U.S. 81/287 NORTH – A woman advised her ex-boyfriend was harassing her via calls to her cell phone. She later complained that her current boyfriend is too controlling.

(She sounds like a real catch)

200 block of Rook Ramsey Road – A woman reported that her husband hit her in the hand with a Kleenex box.

(I can picture it now, the county SWAT team has the house surrounded, with the lead negotiator calling out over a bullhorn… “Come on out Leroy! We got ya surrounded!! Toss the Kleenex box down onto the floor and come out with your hands up and no one has to get hurt!!”….. This is Texas. Assault with a Kleenex box can get you 40 years to Life in the State Pen. If you are a Minority, or a Democrat, it could get you the Death Penalty)

500 BLOCK OF OAK HILLS DRIVE – A woman said someone urinated on her porch and then rang the door bell.
100 block of County Road 1111 – A man exposed himself to his neighbor by urinating through a hole in a privacy fence. He was arrested.
300 Block of Prairie View – Woman complained that her husband had killed all of her houseplants after discovering he had been urinating on them within the home.

(Obviously, we have a large criminal element in the county that uses the human bladder as their preferred weapon of choice. Of course, there is the slight possibility that this is all the works of the same Urinary-Deranged man, and we, in fact, have a serial Urinator on our hands)

200 block of Private Road 4476 – A man said he was being assaulted by mutants. He was taken to MHMR.

(I will have to check the address, but I am pretty sure this is the address of our local Wal-Mart. The man was obviously trying to dig through the $5 DVD bin at Wally World while fighting off the cheap DVD Mutants trying to get that last copy of “Ernest Scared Stupid”)

200 block of County Road 3799 – A man reported that his ex-wife shoved a Ding Dong in his face.

(I sure hope it was not her CURRENT husbands Ding Dong…… if you know what I mean…. And good grief! What kind of able bodied human male actually makes this call to the Police? You could eat least say she came at you with a chainsaw or a hatchet, but to actually admit you were assaulted with a DING DONG? Good Lord man!! Grow a pair!!)

100 BLOCK OF COUNTY ROAD 3690 – A man reported seeing imaginary people on his lawn.

(Now now….let’s not rush to judgement. Maybe the poor man really did see Sarah Palin shooting Liberal Ducks from the lawn adjacent to the man’s swimming pool…)

Tuesday Evening.

One of the things I dislike about Texas…

It’s too damn big!

The Kid had his last basketball game of the season on Tuesday evening, against a district foe, TWO HOURS south of our town! TWO FREAKING HOURS! EACH FREAKING WAY!!

The boys lost the game, but did much better against this opponent the second time around. All in all, Tyler had a good year of Freshman basketball, ending up being one of the starting Guards for the last dozen or so games of the season.

No rest for the weary as he starts Golf practice on Wednesday afternoon.

After his basketball game, we set off in search of food.

We came across a Chili’s.

The kid wanted Chili’s.

Their were a hundred people milling around outside the entrance, but the kid still wanted Chili’s.

The wife muscled her way through the crowd and signed us up on the list. It would be about a 2-3 day wait for a table. I whined about wanting to actually eat dinner like TODAY……but the kid insisted that he wanted Chili’s. My wife took one of those little flashing thingamabobbers that lights up 2-3 days later when your table is ready…and we started looking around for an open space within the herd in which to stand for 2-3 days.

Much to our amazement, after only 16 hours or so, a tiny little bench opened up just inside the main door.

The wife and kid bolted for the bench, plopped down, and them motioned for me to sit on the 3″ wide patch of open bench beside them.

There I sat, teetering on the edge of a tiny bench, cramped in amongst a herd of about 200 people standing shoulder to shoulder waiting to be seated. I literally had a mans butt just inches from my face and another dudes butt brushing up against my left shoulder. Let me mention again just how claustrophobic I am. I AM CLAUSTROPHOBIC!!!!!!!! I had my wife pinned up against my right shoulder, her face busily scanning the IPHONE in her hand, had a male butt in my face, and another butt on my other shoulder. I could not move!!

A group of about 5 adults started muscling their way through the crowd towards the hostess. They signed in and were given a flashing thingamabobber before being told their table would be ready sometime this weekend. One of the members of their group was a lady who looked to be about 150 years old. A lady of about 110 years old, who I took to be her daughter, started looking feverishly around…… for a place for old Granny to sit. She immediately zoomed her attention in on me…… the pale, sweating, nervous looking idiot sitting on a nice comfortable bench…

Of course, she starts fighting her way through the crowd, coming directly towards me.

She does not go for the MALE teenager sitting on the opposite end of my bench, she comes for me!

“Excuse me sir…..do you mind if my Aunt were to sit in your spot on the bench? She just had hip surgery and is not supposed to stand for any length of time…..you look like you would understand…..”

Normally, this would be true. Normally, I am overly polite and a true Southern Gentleman, and would have already jumped up, insisting that the elderly lady indeed take my seat.

But, I was in the midst of a horrific bout of overwhelming claustrophobia, and this lends me to sometimes slip into a semi-catatonic state in which I am known to just blubber all kinds of random gibberish which has no rhyme or reason.

I looked at the smiling woman, smiled broadly, and proudly proclaimed…

“I poop in the big boy potty!”

The lady froze in her tracks, gave me a sympathetic smile which indicated that she immediately realized I was a Special Needs person out for dinner with his loving family, and she retreated off to look for another location in which to plop down her aunt.

My wife, who had heard most of the exchange between the woman and I, glanced up from her phone, and asked “How did you manage to hold onto your seat this time idiot?”

I just leaned over and whispered… “I told her I poop in the big boy potty”

The wife snickered… “Yep idiot, that one works every time for ya doesn’t it?”

And with that, I went back into my claustrophobic semi-catatonic state with a guys butt in my face and another on my shoulder.

I am typing this on the Wife’s Iphone. We hope to have our table by Friday.

Wish us luck.

Today, I would like to feature a guest post from my great blog friend Beth Ann at It’s Just Life. Beth Ann, as you will read, is one of the readers who just missed out on winning the Two Millionth View contest. Beth Ann is a very unique human being, something that will become readily apparent when you visit her wonderful blog. I still remember the first thing that caught my eye the first time I visited her site. She was raising money for charity. She was doing this not through asking for donations from her readers, rather, she was donating money of her own each time someone left a comment on ANY of her posts. Just by visiting her blog, and leaving a comment, a charity was being helped through the generosity and huge heart of Beth Ann. To my amazement, she continues to do this EVERY MONTH! She picks a worthy charity and then makes a donation based on each comment that her readers make, anywhere on her blog. This has to be one of the most heartwarming gestures I have ever come across in the blog world, correct that, it IS the most heartwarming gesture. Beth Ann, in the little time I have known her, is truly one of a kind. PLEASE visit her blog. You will not be disappointed. She is a great writer, her blog is wonderful, and with each comment, you will be helping a worthwhile charity. Thanks!

My Hopes and Dreams Have Been Dashed

I almost had a brush with fame. I came within 10 hours of it. I must admit I was kind of giddy with excitement about my possible famous status. I had been practicing my parade wave and had my crown all polished up. I had the fountain pen and fancy paper out and was practicing my signature. Time was almost standing still as I prepared for the impending change in status from lowly blogger to rising star. But alas it was not to be.

So thank you, Mark aka The Idiot, for allowing me to be a very minuscule part of your life, for sharing yourself with your fans and for allowing me the opportunity to share a bit of myself with others. If you are so inclined please stop over to www.bethannchiles.com and leave me a comment. I would love to meet you. After all….I was almost famous……and we all want to meet someone famous, right?

Sunday evening.

I am TRYING to watch the Grammy Awards in the living room.

The Kid keeps walking in front of the Television, on his way to the front door, where he loudly rips the door open, storms out onto the front walkway, and then screams out at the top of his lungs…. “STICK TO THE ROADS!!! STICK TO THE ROADS!!! PLEEEEASSSSEEE!!!!!”

You see, it is snowing in our little corner of Texas, and while the grass and bushes are lovely and white, the roads and sidewalks are still just wet.

No snow and ice on the roads means SCHOOL in the morning.

I have been sick this weekend and have been cooped up in the house like a good boy.

The ONE TIME, I swear, ONE TIME that the little woman comes out of the bedroom to check on the hysterical screaming of her child outside the front door, is the ONE TIME that I am standing out on the front sidewalk, in the snow, in my Batman Underoos and a T-Shirt, as I am hacking up a lung in a coughing fit.

The wife just smacks me upside the back of my idiot head and yells out “Good Lord Idiot!! At least TRY to set an example for your son!!”

I shuffle back in, brush the snow off my Underoos, and get back to my Wine and Cheese.

Yes, I might be an idiot sitting in his living room recliner, watching the Grammy Awards in my Underwear and a T-shirt, but at least I’m doing it like a CLASSY IDIOT, with some Australian Red Wine and some truly fine exquisite cheese…

And by fine exquisite cheese, yes, I mean I unwrapped a string cheese segment of Pepper Jack Cheese and cut it up into cute little bite size nuggets that I can nibble on as I sip my finest Imported Australian Wine that Target currently sells in the “Under $10″ aisle.

(Thank God for Spellchecker, cause with all this wine, there is NO WAY on earth that I could ever spell exquisite on my own)

This Aussie wine is pretty good….. not too harsh, slight hints of Oak, Vanilla, Dark Chocolate, and just a small whiff of Wet Kangaroo….

Yes, you can get a small glimpse into the intimate seduction techniques that the Idiot used all those many years ago to ensare his young soon-to-be bride into his twisted web….

I had her over to my apartment…

I turned off the lights and lit the room with candles…

I started a fire in the fireplace…

I threw a couple huge throw pillows on the floor in front of the fire…

She reclined on her pillow, her body silhoutted in flickering firelight against the far wall…

I walked into the room in my expensive Italian hand-sewn silk smoking jacket…

Placed an expensive bottle of Wine down in front of her…

Extended my hand towards the beautiful lady and whispered..

“More string cheese my dear?”

Yes, us Idiot’s are smooth operators folks!! Smoooooooooooth operators!!

Anywayyyyyyy……….

The Grammy Awards are interesting.

Two performers really had my waterworks in action..

I stood there, mouthing hanging open, glassy-eyed…..as the wife walked past and yelled out “Close your mouth Idiot! Yer Droolin again!” (Katy Perry was singing)

I stood there, tears streaming down face, lower-lip quivering…. (as Jennifer Hudson was singing her tribute to Whitney Houston)

I don’t get how they pick some of the unusual duets on the performances.

Tony Bennett and Metallica? Together? With Tony singing lead on “Enter Sandman”…alrighty then…

“Snoop Doggie Dog” and Barry Manilow singing “Copacabana” had me dancing on the coffee table though…

But my wife insists that duet only happened in my idiot wine-soaked mind, so I guess I’ll just shuffle off and look for some more string cheese.

**Monday morning…. not enough snow stuck to the roads, sorry son, the kid had school***

I hit Two Million at about 2pm on Sunday the 12th of Feb.

First of all, I would to dedicate this post to two very special ladies out there in Blogville, Cheryl H. and my cousin Whitney. Whereas my wife, children, parents, and In-Law’s have been reading me since day one, back in 2006, sometimes because they HAVE TO, Cheryl and Whitney have been with me since the beginning, by choice. Thank You Cheryl and Whitney! How you both have kept your sanity all these years is a real mystery.

I was going to do one of my usual goofy posts in recognition of hitting the TWO MILLION milestone, but I decided to go semi-serious for a change of pace.

I have been ill the last couple days and have spent a lot of time awake at night, with plenty of time to think about this blog.

As you know, I am writing my first book at the moment. It deals with the surgery that disabled me, the legal aftermath, and eventually, with how this blog saved my life.

It sounds goofy, I know, but this blog actually did save my life.

This goofy blog allowed me a brief respite each day from a life that had sunken to a pretty dark, depressing, lonely, and angry place. Nearly a year and a half ago, I went into therapy to try to rid myself of those demons. I used this blog and actually blogged about the reality of each of my therapy sessions. My Therapist quickly realized that this blog was indeed my only outlet from much of the Depression, and he encouraged me to blog everything out so I could crawl up out of my darkness.

Well, it worked. I blogged about all the painful things going on in my head and I got myself to a much happier place in my life. I still suffer from Depression, but thanks to this blog, I am much better able to handle the down times when they do strike.

I was always a goofball in my working life, and used humor in every profession that I ever held. When I got disabled and ended up at home, with very little social contact outside of our family, I thought I had lost that goofball part of my personality forever. That goofball is the “The Idiot”.

Well, this blog allowed “The Idiot” to once again come to the surface. Instead of The Idiot being inflicted on my co-workers and patients, The Idiot was now being inflicted on new blog friends from around the globe.

One of the things that I discussed in my therapy sessions was my “What Now?” syndrome. I am disabled. I know that and accept that. I will never get better. I will be a stay-at-home disabled househusband for the rest of my life. I will never work again. One major question that had always haunted me was “What now?” “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”

I had no purpose in life.

And then, some great members of my blog family pointed out the positive effects that this blog was having on me and on many of my blog friends. At home alone during the day, I was “Mark the Depressed guy”, whereas on here, I became “The Idiot”, the happy-go-lucky goofball with no brain that stumbles his way through life ending up in all kinds of ridiculous adventures along the way. Prior to my getting crippled in 1999, I truly was “The Idiot” in every way. This blog became the way for me to bring that part of my personality out in a way that I had not been able to since the injury. My wife jokingly says that she has to read my blog in order to find out what is really on my mind at any given time. This is actually very true. I have the ability to pretty much write anything I want on the blog, where I would actually have trouble telling people the same things in person, including members of my own family.

This blog allows me to be the goofball that has been buried for so many years. Without this blog, I would still be in an unbelievably dark place in life, still filled with hatred towards those who hurt me, still majorly depressed, still bitter over the hand that life had dealt me, all with no signs of anything improving in my future.

I need this blog.

It is the best form of therapy that I could ever hope for. The Two Million views milestone is astounding, but truthfully, it really does not even matter anymore. For the POSITIVE changes that this blog has created in my life, it has been a wild success, no matter the number of views it has gotten over the years. Two Million is really unimportant. The real gift of the blog is the number of great human beings that have come to be my friends through this blog. That is the one stat that I am really proud of.

The book will go a long way to explaining on how I got into such a dark place, and will cover in great detail how I came out that bad period, but continuing on with this blog will go a long way in helping me to stay on the right path.

A sincere Thank You to all of you for reading. I do not write my posts for nameless and faceless folks scattered all over the planet, I write the blog for my friends, and I count all of you as my friends.

Blog friend Christina is the winner of the TWO MILLION views contest. She correctly guessed the 12th, with today being her Birthday! Happy Birthday Christina! As far as I know, Christina is just a reader and does not have a blog of her own that I can promote on this grand occasion. I’ll be emailing her to go over the details of her prizes from the contest. Congrats Christina!

The Road to 2 Million

Views by year:

2008: 65,416
2009: 242,685
2010: 594,459
2011: 905,475
2012: 192,787

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****** 2012 Crawling my way back to the Pacific Bike Tour **********

Miles this year: 214
Days on Bike: 10
Avg Miles per day: 21.4

Current Location: The Idiot is pedaling just outside Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

My wife will provide you ladies with just a hint of some of the tortures of living with the Idiot for over 20 years. I’m sure many of you can relate to her pain.

Just SOME of my crimes…..

1. I can never remember if the tapered end of the toilet paper roll is supposed to hang down in the front, or the back. All I know, is that whenever I change the roll, the wife ends up having to change it back to the opposite of how I had it. As long as the product reaches it’s desired destination in a timely manner, does it really matter? I can’t remember actually sitting in there, doing my thing, while thinking…”Ow! this kinda hurts like I am going against the grain or something….I must have the TP upside down!”

2. I can still not fathom how to keep small plastic drinking cups from turning upside down and filling with water in the dishwasher. My wife can run the washer, with not a single item out of place once the cycle is done, but me… I load the thing and then open the door and it looks like a bomb went off inside.

3. No, I cannot still EVER remember to put the pot scrubbies back in the little basket in the sink. You should attach elastic bands to them so that they will be snapped back into the holder once I am done using them.

4. You know all those lovely little plastic bags they give us at the grocery store, Wal-Mart, Target, etc? Well, we have a huge hanging cloth bag in our utility room that all those bags are supposed to be stuffed into once the bags are empty. That way, we have plenty of bags if we ever need them, and the kid uses them for putting scooped cat litter into. Well, I can NEVER unload a car load of groceries and get even one bag into the proper spot. I stuff empty bags into drawers, into our pantry, into my hoodie pockets, you name it….. I will hide empty plastic bags ANYWHERE in the house, except where they are supposed to be stuffed.
If you sit on our couch, you will most likely make a “crinkling” noise as you sit, due to all the bags secretly stuffed between and behind the cushions by yours truly.

5. I still can’t fathom darks and whites when doing laundry. What the heck is my white and red striped “Where’s Waldo?” shirt? Is it a white or a dark? It all hurts my head. And it says on the tag, “Wash with like colors”. How in the heck do I know what other colors that shirt likes? Or….do they mean that I am supposed to wash the shirt with colors that I MYSELF happen to like? Fine! I’ll wash it with my Teal Hoodie next time!

6. For 21 years, my wife has sent me to the store with orders to buy the solid cubed dishwashing detergent tablets with the little red ball in the middle. That’s exactly how she describes it, no brand name or anything, just “Idiot! buy the solid tablet with the little red ball in the middle”, yet I ALWAYS come home with the little “dissolvable baggie” type detergent dishwashing thingamabobbers….which always results in the wife throwing them at me, asking if they are
A. Solid
B. if they have a little red ball in the middle.

Even if she does not catch me in the act, she knows….trust me, she knows. She can lift a glass out of the dishwasher, hold it up to the light, eyeball it real good, and then will scream across the house…. “Hey Idiot!! Ya used those cheap little dishwasher baggie things again didn’t ya!!”

7. Drink coasters? Nope. I Still have no clue on how to use them. They do however do a wonderful job of hiding the coke can rings on the end table and coffee table.

8. Yes, I know there are 129 old messages on the answering machine. No, I do not know how to delete them.
Yes, I know there is a “DELETE” button on the machine, but I thought that was to delete the voice greeting message.

9. What is the potato chip bag clip thing you keep ranting about? I have no clue what that is. Why would you clip a potato chip bag?

10. Spoons are spoons. Just because I put small spoons and big spoons in the SAME slot in the silverware drawer does not mean the end of the world. How many visitors come into your home and open up your silverware drawer, only to whisper “My God! These people are savages! They have intermingled their large and small spoons!”

____________________________________________________

Today will be the day that I cross the Two Million views milestone, barring a major slowdown. It appears that blog reader Christina, who guessed today due to it being her Birthday, will be the winner. I’ll post again after the milestone, but Happy Birthday Christina.

Whitney Houston is a Grammy Award winning Singer and Actress.

Her early career found her working as a backup singer and model. She sang backup for acts such as Chaka Khan, Lou Rawls, and Jermaine Jackson.

As a Model, she appeared in Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and was the first African-American to be on the cover of Seventeen.

Her debut album “Whitney Houston” was released in early 1985.

I remember buying that first album and thinking that this woman had one amazingly powerful voice!

She quickly became one of the most popular female recording artists of the 80′s.

She was the first African-American Female singer to recieve heavy airplay on MTV.

Whitney Houston has won 6 Grammy Awards during her career.

Her hits have included:

You Give Good Love
Saving all my Love for You
Greatest Love of All
How Will I know?
I Wanna Dance with Somebody
Didn’t we Almost have it All
So Emotional
Where do Broken Hearts Go?
Love will save the Day
One Moment in Time

I’m your Baby Tonight
All the Man that I need
Miracle
My Name is not Susan
I Will Alway’s Love you
I’m Every Woman
I Have Nothing
Run to You
Exhale
Count on Me
I Believe in You and Me
Why does it hurt so bad?
Step by Step
When you Believe
Heartbreak Hotel
My Love is your Love
I learned from the Best

Eleven of her singles have hit #1 on the Billboard Top-40 Charts.

At one point, from 1985-1988, she had SEVEN consecutive singles reach #1 on the Billboard Charts.

As an Actress, her credits include “The Bodyguard“, “The Preacher’s Wife” and “Waiting to Exhale“.

From 1992-2007 she was married to singer Bobby Brown.

The lady has battled many personal issues over the years, but she will always be remembered for having one of the greatest voices in music history.

Whitney Houston is now 48 years old and is still active in the music industry. She is currently reviving her acting career and is planning to star in a film called “Sparkle” co-starring American Idol star Jordin Sparks. She will also produce the film.

***Update Feb 11th 2012. Whitney Houston passed away today at the age of 48. As I said earlier, she will long be remembered for having one of the greatest voices in Music History. *****

The evening started off innocent enough.

The wife and I drove down deep into the “Hood” in inner Fort Worth in order to watch the kid and his teammates be slaughte…. I mean, PLAY, another basketball game.

As is usual, the boys lost a squeaker by about 65 points, with everybody on the Fort Worth team, including the elderly female custodian, scoring at least 10 points.

With the game now over, we grabbed the kid and took off in the car in search of food.

It was somewhere in the hills of Northwest Fort Worth that it happened.

We were driving along a winding road, high atop a hill, with a great view of the city lights spread out below us. I was in the passenger seat and had just motioned for my wife, who was driving, to try to catch a glimpse of the astounding view if she could.

Prior to that, as is my custom, I was totally astounding the poor woman with yet another display of my keen idiot intellect, calmly informing her that the common Bolivian Three-ringed Mountain Squirrel has not two but three, yes three, testicles.

My wife, as is her custom when I am astounding her with my keen idiot intellect, was repeatedly smashing her skull against the steering wheel, praying with all her might that a fatal anuerysm might indeed strike her down at that very moment to deliver her out of her life of misery.

All of a sudden, I felt a tremendous pressure in my chest as if an elephant had just plopped down on it. I was struggling to breath. All of a sudden my peripheral vision started to blacken and darkness started to envelope my line of sight from each side of my head.

I looked over at my wife. Her head was thrown back against her headrest, she had her mouth hanging open..gasping for air, and her eyes were beginning to roll back in her head.

I tried reaching across to her with my left arm, to shake her, but was unable to lift my arm from it’s slumped position dangling alongside my seat.

My wife let out an eerie gargle and moan that sent a chill down my spine and then I watched in horror as the poor women began to have a massive seizure…

With her arms in the midst of seizing, the steering wheel jerked violently and the car started careening across the oncoming lane of traffic…

I tried to scream…..but nothing would come out…

I just sat there, frozen in shock, mouth open, watching as a flurry of headlights suddenly filled the windshield of our car….

My head turned slightly and I caught a glimpse of the kid, seated in the left rear seat, headphones on, eyes fixated on the tiny glowing screen of his Iphone, totally oblivious to the horrific nightmare that was unfolding in front of him….

Within a second, the headlights had disappeared from view, but were quickly replaced by a sudden glimpse of bushes and the guard rail that our car was now crashing through…

Our car smashed through the guard rail and flew out about 100 feet, over the side of the cliff, before seemingly in slow motion, beginning a death dive straight down to the floor of the canyon below.

My wife, still seizing, managed to let out a blood curdling scream….

The kid looked up from his phone long enough to let out a blood curdling scream…

Even though my mouth was hanging down to my lap, I could still not muster a single sound….

And then it was over.

The fireball was seen for miles.

Emergency responders were only able to identify the charred wreck as being our car through two things… the VIN number found on the drivers door, which traced the car to us, and a single athletic shoe, which DNA analysis would later show belonged to the kid.

Yes, as you guessed, it was one of the athletic shoes that he had TAKEN OFF, IN THE CAR, WITH NO AIR CIRCULATION, as we were driving to dinner.

The Noxious cloud of paralyzing gas that these now-removed athletic shoes created within the car was enough to instantly incapacitate the boys aging parents.

Yes son, if you are reading this, this story is indeed about you and those toxic basketball shoes.

If you EVER try to remove them again, in the car, with innocent victims trapped in the vehicle, your shoes WILL cause the car to fly off a cliff and explode into a fireball! It’s only a matter of time. Our deaths will be on your hands!

Yes folks, they are THAT bad….

Who needs water-boarding and torture? The US Military just needs one of my sons used basketball shoes in order to pull information out of wartime prisoners. Trust me, a few whiffs and they will be singing like birds!

—————————————————–

The Two Million View Contest is in the home stretch!

Less than 14,000 views to go!

We have a TWO lady race at the moment.

Will it be Beth Ann on the 13th…

or Renee on the 14th…….

One lucky winner will walk away with untold riches and joy, while the other gal’s life will simply never be the same…….. left with a life of wandering in a daze, wondering “What if?”……..

Good Luck Ladies!

I swear, I cannot win.

Someone please just put me out of my misery. (Form an orderly line behind my wife..)

Many of you probably read this blog and wonder, “Is he really that much of an idiot?”

(Ohhhhh Yeeaaaaaaaaahhhhhh)

“Can anyone really be that much of an idiot?”

To put your minds at ease, I offer even more evidence to answer those questions for you.

KOHL’S

Yes, the Department Store Kohl’s.

My wife’s favorite place on EARTH.

For her, the perfect vacation would be an all-inclusive 7 night trip, all by herself, to the largest Kohl’s in the world, wherever that my be located.

My Medical Malpractice lawsuit lasted over eight and half years.

This is still less time than my wife usually takes to walk through and try on EVERY single article of female clothing in her local Kohl’s.

The other day, we went to Kohl’s.

It was my first major outing since the foot surgery in December.

I did pretty well.

I went in to Kohl’s, shuffled off to the shoe section, bought a new pair of tennis shoes and a new pair of hiking boots for this summer, and then I shuffled back out to the car in order to wait for the wife to finish her shopping.

It was chilly outside.

I was wearing a hoodie sweatshirt, and shorts.

After three hours of waiting in the car, I began to get a little warm in the sweatshirt.

My Idiot brain informed my idiot hands to take the sweatshirt off.

Easy enough for you “normal” people.

Even though I was sitting in the parking lot, in the passenger seat, with no ability to actually drive the vehicle, there I sat …..with my seat belt on….

Why did I have my seat belt on?

I’m an idiot….that’s why!

So…… I start to take off my sweatshirt, as I sit in the front seat of the car, with my seat belt still on.

I am a 46yr old man-child. I take off my sweatshirt like a 4yr old. I would have to demonstrate it for you to get the full picture, but I go through the whole routine where there comes a stage to where my head and both arms are actually INSIDE the sweatshirt, creating a little “man cave” of darkness that momentarily gives me the scary willies….

Well, anyway….

I am going through the motions of struggling to pull off my sweatshirt, and I manage to get my head and arms into the dark cave, and then ….. I can no longer move….

I try wriggling my arms free…

Nothing…

I try poking my idiot turtle head up through the neck hole….but the hole has mysteriously gone missing.

I try leaning forward to see if I can adjust my position…..but the freakin seatbelt is on!!! I cannot move forward!!

ARRRRGGGGG!!!!

This is it!!

I am literally TRAPPED inside my damn Minnesota Twins sweatshirt in a damn Kohl’s parking lot!!!!

I try wriggling free with all my might, so much might that the car is rocking violently from side to side.

Nothing!!

I am trapped in my damn shirt!!!

Did I mention that I am claustrophobic with a huge Capital “C”?

Yep, you might remember that I am the idiot that got stuck in a hole the diameter of a basketball, in a cave, while employed as a CAVE GUIDE in a National Park Service cave! I get freaked out, even now, when my bedding gets too tight at night….

So, this sudden entrapment by the Idiot-Eating Hoodie of Death, inevitably led to my letting loose of my patented high-pitched Girlie Scream of terror…

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE………..HHHHHHEEEEEELLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP….EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!”

Which, of course, was muffled by the killer shirt.

I am just about to hyperventilate and pass out when…

I hear voices outside the car.

Muffled voices.

Shuffling past.

I can swear I here giggling.

It dawns on me.

I am parked in the handicapped spot, right outside the front door of the store! Everyone wanting to go in or out of this establishment is walking past the violently rocking Toyota Highlander with the headless idiot trapped in his own sweatshirt!!!

Gah!!!!!

I decide to quit fighting fate and I give up my struggle.

I huddle in embarrassed shame deep within the dark recesses of my sweatshirt cave for about another hour until the wife comes out.

I hear the tell-tale “click” as she remotely unlocks the doors as she approaches.

I sense someone standing just outside the drivers side window.

I can hear her through the window.

“Good Lord Idiot!! Really? REALLY?? You have got to be kidding me!!!”

I hear her door open.

I hear rustling.

I hear muffled little clicks….

Muffled little clicks that would be associated with a Cell Phone Camera…

Gah!!

The Idiot, being eaten by his own hoodie, is about to be plastered all over the wife’s Facebook page.

Before you even ask…

NO!!!! She will not share the pics with you!!

Written promises of unlimited future shopping trips to Kohl’s have assured that much for me.

Come on now Ladies….tell me that I am not alone…

Please tell me that some of you have come out to find your husband, boyfriend, or toddler son, struggling while being eaten alive by his hoodie.

I’m not alone am I?

Hello?

Anyone?

Anyone?

————————————————–

***** 2012 Crawling my way back to the Pacific Bike Tour **********

Miles this year: 166
Days on Bike: 8
Avg miles per day: 20.7

Current Location: The Idiot is now pedaling near Benton, Arkansas.

The Mechanically Inept Idiot strikes again.

Late last week, our garage door ceased operating.

Of course, being the “man” of the house, I was tasked with getting it fixed.

I called a Garage Door Repair company in a neighboring town.

I told the guy on the phone that my Garage Door was broke.

He asked what the problem was.

“It won’t go up”

He asked what happens when you make it try to go up.

“It goes Reeeeerrrrrrr Reeeeerrrrrrrr”

He asked what happens after it goes “Reeeeerrrrrr Reeeeerrrrrrr”…

(The guy has a short attention span) I reminded him yet again… “It won’t go up”

He asked if I had a “Sectional” door, or a “Single-Piece” door.

(My mind swirled, heck if I remember…it’s a garage door for goodness sakes!…wing it idiot..wing it!)

“It won’t go up”

(It’s all I could think to say)

“Sir, do you know if your unit uses Torsion Spings or Extension Springs?”

pause

“Say what?”

“Yes sir, your door……does it use torsion springs or extension springs?”

pause

I had no clue what to say, other than..

“It won’t go up”

pause

“Sir….did it make any strange noises before it stopped working”

I thought real hard.

“Yeah…a couple days ago…it went AAHHHOOOOGUUUUHHH!!!! AAAAHHHOOOOGUUUUHHHH!!!..whenever I hit the button to raise the door”

The guy on the phone sounded concerned.

“AAAHHHOOOOOGGUUUUHHH you say?”

“yes sir”

“UH OH….that can’t be good….”

The man continued on…

“OK Sir…I can have a man out there on Friday morning sometime between 6am and 8pm…..our standard service call for “It won’t go up” is $2,540 plus $450.00 per hour for labor….”

Pause

With my limited knowlege of all things mechanical, that sounded perfectly rational to me.

“Okey Dokey….see ya’ll on Friday morning”

Click.

An hour goes by.

The Wife calls home.

“Idiot! Did you call about the garage door?”

“Yes Maam”

“Did you tell them that it won’t go up?”

“Yes Maam”

“Are they gonna come fix it?”

“Yes Maam….Friday”

“You didn’t get ripped off again did you? When the porch light burned out you ended up paying a guy $1,350 to replace it….remember?!!”

“Uh….crackle…crackle….Uh…..I…crackle….can’t hear you dear….crackle crackle….I’m going into..a…crackle crackle…tunnel!….crackle crackle…..”

——————————————————————————————

**** 2012 Crawling my way back to the Pacific Bike Tour *********

Miles this year: 136
Days on Bike: 7
Avg Miles per Day: 19.4

Current Location: The Idiot is now pedaling through Little Rock, Arkansas. With a population of just under 200,000 residents, the city is the largest city in Arkansas and is also the state capital. The city holds an important place in the history of the Civil rights movement due to the “Crisis at Central High” in 1957. At that time, nine African-American students enrolled at the all-white Central High School as part of the Federal Governments new law on Integration. The Governor of Arkansas dispatched Arkansas National Guard troops to prevent the enrollment as a mob of over 1,000 white residents also protested outside the school. In turn, President Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to ensure the students safety and to ensure their rights to enroll at the school. Troops were stationed inside and outside the school for the remainder of the school year in order to protect the nine students.

Discharged.

Done.

End of the Road.

The Fat Lady is Singing.

Today was my 7-week follow-up with the Surgeon.

Verdict:

I am officially discharged from his care.

The Foot is doing fantastic. He worked it over real good and determined the range of motion is now back to where it was prior to my surgery (which was already crappy due to the paralysis), the foot looks great, the circulation is as well as can be expected, physical therapy is coming right along with continuing to stretch out the ligaments, so the Surgeon feels like I have reached the end of the line with him.

What was supposed to take 12 weeks to fully heal and recover, only took 7.

He gave me a prescription for a new leg brace that I need to take to an Orthotics place in Fort Worth, and then that is it. He said that once I have been fitted with the new brace, I can “Take off hiking!”.

Which is what I am going to do. (Along with biking the heck out of my stationary bike!)

I’ll call the Orthotics place, try to get an appointment for next week, hopefully get fitted for a new brace, and then hopefully within a few weeks after that, the new brace will come in, and then I can get outside and start walking the streets of town in preparation for the big hike to Lost Lake, New Mexico this summer.

I know what the wife will say when she hears all this upon coming home from work later today…

“Congratulations Idiot….that yard aint gonna mow itself! Get to it mister!!”

Tuesday Evening.

Idiot Household.

Earth.

The Idiot is laying on the couch “resting” his eyes. (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

He is awakened by the deafening silence of people staring at him.

A lot of people staring at him.

He opens an eye.

There, in the middle of the living room, stands the wife, the kid, the Daughter,the Dad, the Mom, a Cat, family friend Teresa, another Cat, and the Homeless Dude that hangs out down behind our local gas station.

The Idiot groggily tries to speak.

“What’s goin on?”

The group all stares at the idiot with looks of compassion as the Wife speaks.

“Idiot….you need help….. you have a problem….”

It took the idiot a couple extra seconds to comprehend what he was hearing.

OH CRAP!! This was an intervention!!

The wife came over and put a loving hand on her husband’s shoulder.

“Idiot…it’s time to stop…..enough is enough…..

The idiot began to sense the reasoning behind this intervention.

“But I don’t wanna stop….. I like it like this!”

The Mom shuffled over and stood in front of her son.

“You have to stop Marky….. it’s getting embarrassing for all of us…..”

The Dad piped in his two-cents worth from across the room.

“Don’t be an idiot son!”

A cat strolled up, coughed up a hairball “Aaaacck!”, and then said “Meeeooww”m before strolling away, plopping down, and commencing licking itself.

The Kid walked up and glared down at his Father.

“Ya gotta stop Pops!!! The guys on the team are laughing at me every time you come to one of my games!”

Soon, everyone in the room was chirping away in unison at the Idiot.

It quickly became apparent to the idiot that this mob was not going to let him walk out of the room with things as they currently were.

He was going to have to change.

No matter how painful it was going to be.

The idiot looked at his Daughter.

“Do it! Do it quick and painless!”

The Daughter grinned as she reached into her bag….

and pulled out her stylist scissors.

Her Father’s BOZO THE CLOWN hair, carefully grown and cultivated during the 7 weeks of rehabbing his foot, was about to be history.

The glorious gray/red mop of hair, with one curly horn pointing to the right, another pointing to the left, and a shiny bald patch on top ..was soon to be gone.

The Family could no longer stomach being seen in public with BOZO THE IDIOT.

A few short minutes later.

The family stood smiling as they stared at BALDY THE IDIOT.

And once again, things were calm within the Idiot family.

————————————————-
Contest Update

Less than 30,000 views till 2 MILLION

As of now, it is still on target to hit on the 14th. Renee at Life in the Boomer Lane had picked the 14th, so she is sitting pretty good at the moment. Also in the running are Beth Ann (13th), Christina (12th), and Andi (17th). Once the predicted date passes, each person is eliminated, so if the date happens to slip to the 15th, then Andi would win the contest and the extravaganza of wealth and riches that go to the winner.

————————————————–

I am off to the Surgeon on Wednesday afternoon for my 7 week follow-up on the foot. I am hoping to be cleared to resume jumping in children’s bounce houses, on trampolines, and on pogo sticks. Keep your fingers crossed!

—————————————————————

My wife was forced to make a frantic call to our family doctor late in the evening on Monday.

(Yes, we live in the sticks, where you can still call your Doctor at their home after hours..)

My wife got our Doctor on the line and explained that she was worried about the Idiot.

My wife had gone into the master bathroom and had noticed her Idiot husbands closet door half open.

She did what any wife would do, she cursed, launched herself through the air in a fashion usually seen in a Jackie Chan movie, and she kicked the closet door closed with all her might…

Not knowing that her idiot husband was on the inside of the closet, hunched over, looking for his wallet amidst all the clothes on the floor, with his head perched precariously close to the actual closet door…

Which had just been kicked, with great violence and force, right into the side of his skull.

The wife heard and felt the telltale signs of wood door impacting idiot skull and immediately ripped open the door to find her idiot husband sprawled on the floor…..singing….

Yes, singing.

This is when she frantically called the Family Doctor..

Explaining that the idiot was now endlessly singing….”Hey Mickey”…..

He had not spoken a word, had not blacked out, had uttered no complaints, he had just been singing “Hey Mickey”, nonstop, ever since the door impacted his idiot head.

The Doctor inquired…

“You mean Hey Mickey…the cheesy 80′s song?”

My wife held out the phone towards the closet…

“Oh Mickey, what a pity, you don’t understand
You take me by the heart when you take me by the hand
Oh Mickey, you’re so pretty, can’t you understand
It’s guys like you, Mickey
Ooh what you do Mickey, do Mickey
Don’t break my heart, Mickey“

The Doctor cringed. This was bad. Real bad.

My wife was at her wits end. “What do I do?”

The Doctor asked if the idiot was still in the closet.

“Yes, yes he is”

The Doctor then gave my wife instructions for her to place my head near the door and give it another good solid Kung Fu kick, making sure it made good contact with my skull in the process.

The wife happily obliged…

“Kung POWWWWWW!!!!! THUD!!! SPLAT!!!!”

You could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

The Doctor was frantic..

“Well???? Did it work????? Well??????”

The wife held out the phone towards the closet.

“I’m walking on sunshine , wooah
I’m walking on sunshine, woooah
I’m walking on sunshine, woooah
and don’t it feel good!!”

The wife was distraught. “Now it’s even worse! He’s singing Katrina and the Waves!!

The Doctor thought for a minute.

“Mrs Idiot…. Just keep thumping his head with the door until he either stops, or until you get a song you like!”

So, the wife happily obliged.

“Kung POWWWWWW!!!!! THUD!!! SPLAT!!!!”

“I’m a Barbie girl in the Barbie world
Life in plastic, it’s fantastic
You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere
Imagination, life is your creation”

Ugh! Now the idiot was singing “Barbie Girl” by Aqua…

This was gonna be a LONG night….

“Kung POWWWWWW!!!!! THUD!!! SPLAT!!!!”

“I didn’t mean to treat you bad
Didn’t know just what I had
But honey now I do
And don’t it make my brown eyes
Don’t it make my brown eyes
Don’t it make my brown eyes blue”

Gah!! Now he’s singing old Crystal Gayle!!

Serenity Now!!!

——————————————————————-

Once again, I apologize for all the psychological trauma that I caused with yesterday’s posting of the autographed Sarah Palin photo. As part of my hobby, I often to write to Political figures from both parties, and it’s usually the nutjobs that will happily oblige me with a signed photo. I have learned my lesson. For now on, I’m sticking with celebs from Movies, Music, and TV. To make it up to you nice traumatized ladies, I shall offer up a photo of another celeb that I have that I think most of you will like.

————————————————————————————–

**** 2012 Crawling my way back to the Pacific Bike Tour ***********

Total miles: 91
Days on Bike: 5
Avg miles per day: 18.2
Current Location: The Idiot is now pedaling just outside of Hazen, Arkansas….heading west.

New blog friend, writer Christy Farmer, was kind enough to bestow the “Kreative Blogger Award” on the Idiot. (Bestow might not be the best description, I actually had to beg, grovel, and bribe, for weeks, before she coughed up the award..)

Apparently, the rules of this award are such that I am required to list 10 facts about myself, and must then pick 10 worthy recipients to pass this award on to.

Listing 10 things about myself that most of you do not already know, is going to be a tough one.

Oh well, here goes…

1. If I were to sing the National Anthem 10 times in a row, I would mess up the words 10 times in a row. I could however, sing the Donna Summer classic “Hot Stuff” 10 times in a row without a single flub.

2. One of my cats is smaller than the other. Now, trust me, with this gnawing at your brain, the next time you see us, you will be secretly trying to catch glimpses of my kitties without being noticed.

3. I have a slight “Rain Man” type issue when it comes to Math. I flunked Algebra in High School, have never passed anything above “Bonehead Math”, yet can do Math equations faster than any calculator we own.

4. I wear shorts about 330 days out of the year. You may equate this to my living in Texas, however, when my wife and I lived in Utah, I wore shorts about 330 days out of the year. Yes, I do actually own pairs of “snow shorts” for those extra wintry days.

5. The lower back pain that eventually led to my having spinal surgery, which led to my becoming disabled, was not actually a result of a football or battlefield combat injury. Sad to admit, but I initially hurt my back by incorrectly lifting a basket of laundry. I can never remember if you are supposed to bend at the knees, bend at the waist, flex the hips, flex the knees, flex the back, bend at the elbows, bend the neck, or what…… whatever I did, I did it wrong.

6. Nearly forty-seven years old and I still have trouble pronouncing the word “Sunshine”. Just like when I was a toddler, I still want to say “Sun-Sine”, and that’s usually the way it comes out….

7. Yes, I am indeed as mechanically inept as I portray myself to be on the blog. If you ask me the difference between a Phillips and a Flathead screwdriver, I still have to think it over for a minute or so before giving you an answer, which will undoubtedly be wrong the first time I tell you.

8. If you took away Math, what subject did I hate more than anything through High School and College? Writing. I HATED writing, with a passion. Hated it! For decades, the longest thing I wrote was a check.

9. Interesting tidbit about our Master Bedroom. It contains a bed, a bookcase, an armoire, a dresser, a TV, a desk, a worktable for my wife to sit at with her computer, and…..about twenty empty shoe boxes stacked atop each other. I think we have a small empty shoebox hoarding issue.

10. I have a skeleton in my closet that I am truly ashamed to reveal. To all my loyal friends and readers, I apologize in advance for having to dim your view of me. We all make mistakes. We all are human. We all have moments of weakness. Well, a couple years ago, I had such a moment of major weakness, a breakdown in my sanity and judgment that still makes me cringe to this day…

Please forgive me….

I am so sorry….

It won’t ever happen again! Honest!

Now, I am required to bestow the prestigious Kreative Blogger Award on 10 worthy recipients.

By Idiot Decree, I bestow the award on:

Kathy at reinventing the event horizon
Mafia Princess at The life of Jamie
Lahgitana at Rockin’ the Purple!
Lorna at Lorna’s voice
Ann Marquette at Ann Marquette
Heather at whatimeant2say
Queen of the Courtroom at Just my Life
Sylvia at Sylvia Morice’s blog
Kewsmith at randomreasoning
Brain at Brainrants

These nice folks were not chosen as part of any popularity contest and do not represent any kind of supposed hierarchy within the idiot blogging kingdom, these are merely the folks that provided me the most monetary bribes in order to receive the award, or in a few cases, (Brain and Ann) these are the folks that threatened me with the most physical violence if they were not chosen.

Congrats to all you winners!

And thanks to Christy Farmer for the kind award!

**For the record: I did not, nor would I EVER vote for Sarah Palin for ANYTHING….. I merely wrote to ALL of the major political candidates of that election, and only got photos back from SP and John McCain. My dearly beloved DEM candidates totally snubbed me **

Super Bowl Sunday.

The Idiot’s parents house.

Also known as Crash Daddy and Whiplash Sally Manor.

First of all, my battered and bruised parents thank all of you for your kind words and prayers after their little vehicular mishap on Friday evening. Dad reads the blog and all the comments and was blown away by the concern shown by my blogging friends. He wants everyone to know that A. They are fine and suffered no lingering effects from their accident. B. Yes, their idiot spawn, the man-child that writes this blog, did in fact stop at a McDonald’s drive-thru before coming to check on the welfare of his beloved parents.

The wife, daughter, kid, and I all headed up to the Manor at about 5pm to watch the game with my parents.

They are indeed doing fine.

Dad still has a little lingering back discomfort, but I utilized my Nursing skills to fashion him a makeshift back brace out of an old ironing board and two rolls of duct tape. Dad now waddles around with what looks like a surfboard taped to his back, but he is doing great.

Mom was still mumbling about some cervical soreness in her neck, so Nurse Mark went into action and fashioned her a makeshift neck brace out of an unused automobile oil filter and, you guessed it, two more rolls of duct tape. Her brace is certified for 5,000 miles before it will need changing.

One thing our family does well for family gatherings, is eat. We will eat most anything as you will see by the 100% true menu of what was laid out on the counter in my parents kitchen.

1. Chicken strips
2. gravy
3. Mashed Potatoes
4. Rolls
5. Cole Slaw
6. Cheese dip
7. Chili Cheese Dip
8. Carrot Cake
9. Tortilla Chips
10. Crackers
11. Cheddar Cheese
12. Pepper Jack Cheese
13. Salami
14. Shrimp Cocktail
15. A Giant Chocolate chip cookie iced with the logos of the Patriots and Giants
16. Sugar Cookies

Looking at the menu, I can assure you of one thing…

Sunday night/Monday morning will be LOUD and quite Odoriferous.

The game was great.

By the end of the game, the Giants were driving for the game winning score and the whole house was electric with excitement, as evidenced by this photo of the parents wildly enjoying the action…

All in all, it was a fun night.

As we left after the game, we stocked up on leftovers, said our goodbyes, and we drove away, happily waving as Surfboard Daddy and Oil Filter Mama waved goodbye from their front porch.

(From the Archives: July 2007)

Today I was sitting in my bedroom, staring at the wall, drool flowing freely from my mouth, when I had the bright idea to load the family up into the family truckster and head off to an afternoon at the Fort Worth Zoo.

Having just bought a new digital camera to replace the one that became a Coke Float a few weeks ago, I figured this would be a great chance to break in the new camera in before my Idiotic Tendencies led to some kind of horrific demise for this new toy, just like it’s predecessor.

My deceased camera was a 5 Mega pixel camera whereas this new little fellow is like a 5,000 Mega pixel model which results in my no longer being able to squeeze 550 photos onto my memory card and I am instead now reduced to three or possibly four high-quality photos on each card.

Armed with the new toy, we lubed up with sunscreen, forgot all of our cash at home, at headed off to the Zoo.

First of all, we arrived at the Zoo at 1pm only to find out that the place closes at 5pm. What the heck? This is Texas! It’s daylight until 9pm and it remains about 115 degrees outside till nearly midnight so why close so early? So, here we were with 5,212 animals to see, and only four hours to squeeze it into.

Pressed for time, I soon noticed a major difference in Animal Viewing etiquette between my wife and I. I figure that in order to see all 5,212 animals in that short period of time, you basically have to follow the following guidelines.

1. Walk up to the sign that identifies the animal.
2. Look for the unrecognizable ball of fur curled up in the fetal position in the farthest shady corner of the animals enclosure. This will be the animal mentioned on the sign.
3. Snap quick digital photo of the unrecognizable furball.
4. Move onto next animal pen and repeat.

My wife has a different philosophy. She is a college-educated, highly intelligent, little lady that wants to LEARN everything about EVERY animal in the Zoo. EVERY informational sign is to be read, memorized, and digested into her hungry mind. I find it irrelevant to my daily existence that the Peruvian Red-Legged Mudbat is able to survive on a diet consisting of only it’s own feces, but my wife finds this information fascinating. This quest for all-encompassing knowledge of EVERY animal leads to my wife spending about 10 minutes in front of every single Zoo resident.

Me? I’m like Clark W. Griswold in “National Lampoon’s Vacation”, I just walk up to an animal, bob my head a few times, and move on!

So, we approach a sign. I look, snap, and shuffle on. The wife lingers. I shuffle off about 3 animals ahead then plop down and wait the 30-40 minutes for the little lady to catch up. Hannah is usually with me as she is also a quick glancer, whereas her little brother is a reader like his Mom, so Tyler is usually with my Wife.

Also, one other thing about all these great little creatures that I see and photograph. I must have a suppository-type effect on the animals I encounter because once I get home and pull up the digital photos on the computer, I quickly notice that virtually every animal I catch on camera is in the process of relieving itself in full-color glory. It never fails. A gorilla sees me coming and it drops the bananas it is eating so it can wander over towards me and start to completely empty about a months supply of colon material right in front of me. It never fails! Who knew that Turtles could make piles larger than their own bodies? I sure didn’t. I have photos of what I thought were turtles, but upon close inspection, are actually turtle PILES. Yuck!

So, we did our 4 hours at the Zoo. Hannah and I saw about 2,000 animals, I think the wife and Tyler saw about 6 or 7. All in all, we had a good day. If anybody needs a photo of a Bulgarian Tree Ferret popping a squat, let me know.

I have plenty of pix!

Idiot’s Father: “Son, if you so much as even THINK about putting any of this on your blog, I WILL kill you!”

Idiot’s Mother: “Please Marky, don’t talk about this on your little blog thing…your Father will KILL you!”

Idiot’s Wife: “Idiot! You HAVE to put this on your blog or I will kill you!”

Idiot: “Yes Dear…as you wish”

Friday Evening.

Tyler’s last home basketball game of the season. My parents and I meet up with my wife at the school. We all watch the game without incident. After the game is over, the parents leave to head home, while I stay to wait for Tyler, and will then ride home with him and my wife.

About 15 minutes after the game, Tyler comes out of the locker room and we leave, heading off across town to hit a drive-thru on the way home.

We get to an intersection about a mile from the school.

There has been an accident in the middle of the intersection.

There are three cop cars with lights flashing, along with multiple vehicles all pointing the wrong direction, blocking the intersection.

Tyler remarks that one of the cars looks like my parents car. I quickly brush that off, that wrecked car looks nothing like my parents car! He adds that the people standing amid the wreckage talking to the cops actually look like his dear beloved grandparents…. I also brush that off….

We are forced to turn right and have to go down to the next intersection in order to make a U-Turn to head back the way we are trying to go.

After u-turning and heading back, we race past the accident scene yet again.

As we fly by, I peer out the window and get a good glimpse of dear Mom as she is standing talking to one of the Police Officers at the scene.

About 1.7 miles further down the road, it hit me…

“Hey!! that WAS my MAMA!!! MY MAMA WAS IN A WRECK!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!”

So, we immediately did what any normal, rational people would have done after realizing that his parents had been in a car accident…

We went through McDonald’s Drive-Thru before heading back to check on them.

While waiting in the drive-thru line, we had the kid calling both of my parents cell phone numbers, all to no avail. Obviously, the impact had destroyed the phones.

After getting our food, and happily munching on fries, we headed back down the road to where the accident had occurred.

The area was clear. No cops, no wreckage, nothing.

Still unable to reach them via phone, we headed for home, figuring they must have been able to drive their vehicle away from the scene.

As soon as we got in the front door of our home, the phone rang.

It was Crashdaddy Pakulak, wanting to know if we could come down to the Police Station and pick up him and Whiplash Sally, his loving wife.

Oh the joy of getting a call from your parents to come pick THEM up at the jail!!

The wife and kid jumped back in the car to go retrieve the parents from the jail.

As it turns out, they were not actually in jail….. (Darn it!!)

Their car had to be towed to car heaven from the accident scene and the nice officers had given them a ride to the station so that they could call someone to come pick them up.

Dad had been in the processing of wanting to turn left at this particular intersection. There was no stop light. It was on a 4-lane divided highway. He just had to make sure no one was coming from the left, drive out to the center island area, and then could turn left as he desired. He looked to his left and saw a car indicating that it was turning into the road that my Dad was parked on. Dad did not see that there was another car, in the adjacent lane, due to the headlights of the turning car blinding him. Dad pulled out into the lane and right into the path of the oncoming, hidden vehicle, which hit him at 45 mph in the left rear tire area of my parents car. The impact spun my parents car all the way around.

They are fine. Dad is complaining of lower back pain, while my Mother is complaining of a stiff neck.

Hence, their new names, Crashdaddy and Whiplash Sally.

I will MAKE them go to the Doctor if they are still feeling bad in the next day or two. Right now, they insist they are fine and are just sore.

The car is terminal.

I asked how their first-ever ride in the back a police car was and Mom chimed in with “Oh my Lord! The seat was covered in plastic and reeked of urine!”

Dad complained of the lack of legroom.

(If I had been with them, I would have been begging the officer to do the lights and siren as we drove through town)

But again, for all the family members that will read this, the old folks are fine.

And our McDonald’s was good as well.

Never a dull moment in the Idiot family, even when the old folks are involved.

As you can see by my view count, I am now less than 50,000 views away from the TWO MILLION views milestone.

(My onboard computer predicts it will hit on the 14th! Valentines Day!)

Obviously, I don’t have Two Million readers, it’s probably more like a few dozen readers that just like to click on my blog THOUSANDS of times a day each.

While my blog has introduced me to new friends all around the globe, from the US to Canada, from Japan to Australia, from New Zealand to Mauritius, From England to South Africa, From Germany to India, …… you get the picture….

One thing has remained constant.

Outside of one close friend and her family here in the area, NO ONE in my community has known about this blog. I have friends here in Texas that read the blog, but outside of the one close friend, the next closest reader is an hour away.

But, my cover has now been blown.

We rent a storage unit here in town. The owners of the storage unit also run the popular store here in town. Friday, I opened up my monthly bill for the storage unit.

Across the front of the bill was a handwritten note….

Linda, the owner of the store and storage units, “likes my blog…..”

How she found my blog, I have no clue.

I did a quick Google Search under our town name, and my blog did not show up on any of the first dozen pages or so.

Surely, I did not actually catch a random blog surfer from my own tiny town of 1,000 people did I?

Actually, I am flattered that another local has now found the blog and enjoys it.

Linda was actually kind enough in her note to indicate that she would be happy to distribute my blog at the store if I was interested. Just think, I could gain dozens of new readers right here in town!

My wife is going to have a cow!

She has put great effort into ensuring that none of her co-workers are aware that her dear disabled husband is in fact, known worldwide as “THE IDIOT!”. She has long feared the day that her co-workers would learn of the blog and would start reading it on a daily basis. She would quickly become the laughingstock of her office. How a bright, educated, seemingly rational woman could be married to such a self-professed Idiot would just tear my wife’s self-esteem to shreds.

Her co-workers all know “Mark the Husband”…

But they don’t know about “Mark the Idiot”.

But, this is a small rural area….

The shell is beginning to crack…

Linda, the owner of the store down the street, is now a reader of the blog….

and who knows…..

She tells a few people about it….. those people tell a few people…… and before you know it, my wife’s boss is sitting at her desk, laughing her head off, telling everyone in the office about how big of an Idiot D’Aun’s husband is….

Her co-workers will read of my exploits, my wife will be humiliated, will resign, and before I know it, we are moving to Barrow, Alaska or some other remote outpost on the planet.

I say all this in jest…

Welcome Linda! It is actually really cool to have someone here in our tiny town, that is not related to me, reading the blog. I appreciate it!

Once my book that I am writing is done and published, it would be awesome to possibly have copies for sale at your local store.

So, welcome to Linda, and for my wife, “NO, we are not moving to Alaska!”

——————————————————

**** 2012 Crawling my way back to the Pacific Bike Tour ********

Miles this year: 40
Days on Bike: 3
Avg miles per day: 13.3
Current location: The Idiot is pedaling just north of Forrest City, Arkansas.

D-Day has arrived.

I got a small box in the mail on Thursday.

It was from our phone company.

Yep, the new wireless modem has arrived.

I opened the box, keeping in mind what the technician had told me on the phone… “You are getting a new type of modem…..your old model has been completely phased out…..so don’t freak out when you first open the box”

Somebody telling me that I should not “freak out” about something, all but ensures that I will indeed freak out…

It’s like the pilot of your plane coming out of the cockpit, getting on the intercom and then announcing “Hello, this is your captain speaking….first of all….no one freak out!…..”

Me, I would have been hysterically screaming the moment he got on the intercom….

“No one freak out” is never a good thing.

There will be freaking, and I will be leading the way.

I brought the box in here to my computer desk. I looked at my old modem. It about the size of an Ipad and has three lines going into the back. One line for the phone line, one for the Ethernet cable, and one for the power cord. That’s it. Three lines in, a bunch of pretty flashing lights on the front, none of which I know what the Hell they mean, and a nice little Ipad sized box. Simple. Even an idiot can figure it out. (Though it took my kid hours to get me to understand it all)

I open up the box containing the new modem.

OH MY GOD

Was this thing made by the Cylons? (Battlestar Gallactica Talk for you Sci-Fi nerds….)

Good Grief! This thing has like 25 holes, ports, slots, hubs, and orifices on it!! Not to mention, look! They give me like 13 different types of cables and cords all wound up and bundled in the box, right next to the microwave sized modem.

I got three cables right now! That’s it! What the heck am I gonna do with 13 cables? Good grief! I only got one phone jack and one power plug! What the heck is the other crap for?

I flashback to Thursday night. I had begged the kid to install the new modem for me. He’s a teenager… he can install this crap with one eye closed. Me, I’m old, frail, and an idiot…… but nooooooooo….. the kid laughed and said that I needed something to keep me busy on Friday…

Friday! Ha!

The Jokes on him…

It will take me till June to figure this sucker out!

But, I’ll give it the old idiot try….

I took the Cylon Microwave out of the box.

It had a small instruction booklet taped to the top of it. Of course, the first three pages of instructions are all in French!

Apparently our little rural phone and Internet provider has branches in Quebec or actually in France!

I find the English version of the instructions.

***WARNING******

“1. Ensure the Manningsworth Slide Trolley USN Fission Slot is in the OFF position before continuing install process. Failure to complete this step may result in explosion, fire, or other cataclysmic event.

“Other Cataclysmic event???????”

Good lord!! I knew it!!! This thing is Nuclear! I have a dang NUKE WIRELESS MODEM!!!

Oh my God! Look at the stickers all over the box!! Those are RADIOACTIVE stickers!!!

I hurriedly try calling my loving wife at work…

She’ll know what to do.

I get her answering machine.

“Hi! This is D’Aun, I’m away from my office at the moment but leave your name and number at the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible……..if this is my husband…. 911 is #1 on the speed dial”

Doh!! She knows me too well!!

I start hurriedly flipping through the instruction booklet….

“Do I need to suit up for this????”
“Should I get into my hazmat suit????”
“Do we even have a hazmat suit????”
“No Kitty!! Don’t lick that box!! You’re gonna start glowing now!! Back kitty!! Back!!!”

I look at the booklet….

It has a diagram that shows this Nuclear Fission slot thingy is in port #12.

I pick up the potentially highly radioactive Nuclear powered Wireless Modem and gingerly flip it over to reveal the long row of ports, holes, hubs, and orifices on the back.

Gah!!

Everything is in French!!

What the heck is twelve in French?

Damn those French!!

“Douze”

Wikipedia says it is “Douze”

I grab the Nuclear Modem and gently feel around the “Douze” slot, feeling for the ON/OFF switch which may, or may not, result in my community being obliterated in a Nuclear Holocaust within the next minute or two.

Wait a minute Idiot! Wikipedia is written by people!! People like YOU! People that are idiots!!! GOOGLE it idiot!! GOOGLE it!!!

Whew! GOOGLE confirms…. the Wikipedia idiot was correct….

OK, I feel the switch….. I’m supposed to make sure that it is in the OFF position before continuing….

No problem…

OOPS…one small problem…

There is no label for which way is ON and which way is OFF!! There’s nothing there!!! Not even in French!!!

OK, idiot, think this over. Surely they would not ship it out with the Nuclear Explosion switch being in the ON position right? Surely they always ship it out in the OFF position. They are just wanting me to make sure that the switch is indeed off….before I accidentally obliterate half the State of Texas….

But, wait a minute Idiot!!

We are talking about the French!! The deranged American Hating French!! OR WORSE YET!!! DERANGED FRENCH CANADIANS!! YOU CAN’T TRUST THE CANADIANS!!! THEY WANT TO RULE THE WORLD AND HAVE EVERYONE SAYING “ABOOT” AND EH?”….. Damn those devious underhanded French AND French Canadians!!!!!!

They want me to blow up!! It would be just like some little conniving beret-wearing, wine guzzling Frenchie to want to blow up every innocent American Idiot that they possibly can!

The Idiot’s Hierarchy of Deranged Lunatics

1. The French
2. French Canadians
3. People who would have voted for Donald Trump for President

Now my head hurts…

Which way was good again? ON or OFF? Cripes!! I can’t remember now!!

Damn you France!!!

(or Damn you Quebec!!…in case the French are innocent….)

Oh well, I’m just gonna flick the switch, plug the Cylon Microwave in, and if I die, at least I’ll die like a man…

(a man who just wet himself a tad)

I flip the switch, plug the sucker in, and wait for a blinding white flash of light.

Nothing happens.

No mushroom cloud.

No skeletal outline of the cat and I blasted onto the wall.

Nothing.

Whew!

Back to the instructions…

“Once the Manningsworth Slide Trolley USN Fission Slot is safely in the OFF position, ensure that nothing is EVER plugged into this slot. If you should accidentally plug something into the slot, seek medical attention immediately. Flush your eyes with water, remove and burn all clothing. Apply repeated enemas to your rectal area. And drink copious amounts of Ipecac syrup to induce prolonged vomiting”

Oh crap!

There is a cable plugged into the slot!

Did I do that?

OOPS!

(Maybe I’ll blame the cat)

This is gonna be hard to explain to the wife and kid when they get home….

Why is nothing ever easy for me?

Damn you France!

Or Quebec!!

What is true love?

True love is when your wife is a Coke addict.

No, not that kind of coke, I’m talking Coca-Cola coke!

My wife is a Coca-Cola addict. (That sounds better..)

True Love is when your beloved wife gets a massive headache in the middle of the night, a headache that only a Coke will cure.

And, of course, our hotel does not carry Coke.

True love is getting out of bed, getting dressed, heading out into the hallway of the massive hotel, heading down 21 floors in the elevator, trotting through a huge casino that takes up about 200 yards, heading outside, crossing the street, hiking another half-mile through another casino, taking an escalator down to the basement food court area, waiting in line at 2am at a McDonald’s counter, buying a large coke, heading back up the escalator, hiking back through the first casino, out to the street, crossing the street, back through our Casino, to the elevators, back up 21 floors, and then hand delivering a fresh Coke to my new bride.

If it’s not True Love, when your bride tells you that she needs a coke, in a Pepsi establishment, you tell her that this is a Pepsi place….it’s either a Pepsi product or nothing….

True love has you hiking a mile in the middle of the night to find your wife a Coke, at all costs.

This scenario actually happened during our 5 day Honeymoon in Las Vegas in 1991.

Today is our 21st Anniversary.

Through all of our ups and downs over the past two decades, my wife knows one thing in her heart.

I’ll still hike a mile in the middle of the night to get her a Coke. (Though I have slowed down quite a bit so much of the ice will have melted…)

What better sign of True Love could a woman want?

Happy Anniversary D’Aun!

I love you!

Seaside, Oregon

In January of 2011, I embarked on a “unique”, and what some might say was a “crazy” journey. I had gotten a stationary bicycle for Christmas a few weeks earlier, something I that I had really wanted, so that I could exercise, lose weight, and get healthier.

I assembled that bike and took off riding across the country, virtually of course. Looking at the map of the USA, I started in tiny La Push, Washington on the northwest coast of Washington State. I took off with the goal of pedaling all the way across the country to New York City, over 4,100 miles away. I had never had a stationary bike before and had no clue on how long it would take me, in fact, I didn’t even know if I could even make that kind of distance.

I hoped to be able to make it cross country within the calendar year, and ended up making it to New York City in May. I still had more than half the year left to ride, so I continued onward. I headed up into Canada, toured around for months, and headed back down into the US. I was making it my new goal to make it back to the West Coast before years end, having hopefully logged more than 10,000 miles over the course of the year.

I got to Memphis, Tennessee, (virtually of course) and was in the process of crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas. It was Oct. 28th. I had completed 8,574 miles to date for the year. It was going to be close, but if I logged about 55 miles per day, I could make it back to the Pacific coast.

That particular day is the moment I climbed off the bike and felt a sharp pain in my right foot. This was the pain that turned out to be a result of having broken that foot. While off the bike, and while being seen by the Ortho Specialist for the broken foot, that Doctor decided he could try a surgery on my crippled left foot. Once the broken right foot was healed, it was into surgery on the left foot.

I have not been able to get back on my bike since Oct. 28th, 2011. Obviously, I never did complete my journey, making it back to the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to virtually ride back through my current home in Texas and eventually end up the year in my Home State of Oregon. I wanted to finish the ride in Seaside, Oregon, the site of the first ever Marathon I ran, in 1981, when I was just 16yrs old.

I thought it would be pretty symbolic that I had ran a Marathon at 16, and then logged over 10,000 miles on a Stationary bike, at the age of 46, with both events concluding in the same tiny town on the Pacific Coast.

Wednesday evening, I went into our living room. I went into a corner area and dragged the bike out into it’s usual resting spot where I could see the TV as I rode.

I got out the small step stool that I used to help me get on and off the bike.

And then, using my cane for support, I stepped up onto the stool, and climbed onto the bike. I did as my Physical Therapist instructed and placed my left foot as far forward in the stirrup as it would go, and then I started pedaling.

I am going to finish my trip.

As of today, I am resuming my trip. I am on the bridge over the Mississippi River in Memphis, TN. While rehabbing my foot, I will be able to do only real short distances each day, so I won’t be updating my progress each and ever day for a little while. I will update my progress once I roll into a new town on the map. Hopefully, within a month or so, I’ll be back to cranking out my usual 40-50 miles per day with daily updates.

I am once again pointed west and am heading for the Pacific Ocean in Seaside, Oregon. Once I reach the coast, I’ll take a couple days off, rest a bit, then will pack up the bike and will fly to some yet unknown location in Europe (virtually of course) and will start a new bike trip journeying through Europe.

So, those of you new to my blog, don’t freak out when I add a notation at the bottom of my post that I am now in Podunk, Arkansas. I am actually just pedaling away, in my living room, while listening to Disco on my Ipod, while watching muted Soap Opera’s on the TV.

Lord knows I need the exercise.

Three months of chocolate, cookies, and Skittles, while laying around on the bed all day, has truly made me look like Santa Claus.

So, if you are out there on the highways and byways of the US this year, and you seem some idiot on the shoulder of the highway pedaling a Stationary Bike….

That would be me.

Honk a few times as you fly past me!

———————————————————————

******* 2012 Crawling my way back to the Pacific Bike Tour ************

Miles today: 7
Miles this year: 7
Days on Bike: 1
Avg miles per day: 7
Current Location: The Idiot is pedaling on the western outskirts of West Memphis, Arkansas.

A blog friend posed this very question in her comment on yesterdays post.

“What did we do before the Internet anyway?”

This caused me to flash back to my own High School years in the early 1980′s so that I could compare my own life without the Internet, to my youngest son’s life today with the Net.

1982:

If I wanted to talk to my friends, I had to either call them on the one and only phone we had in the house, or I had to pile into my POS 1976 Ford Pinto and actually drive to their homes, the mall, or wherever they happened to be, so that I could spend time IN PERSON with them.

2012:

MY son has 100 “Friends” on Facebook, and on online gaming sites, of which 90% he NEVER physically sees in person.

1982:

If I wanted to know more information about any subject that you could imagine, I would have to dig out an encyclopedia, a dictionary, or would have to go to the school or public library to check out books to research the subject of my query. This always resulted in my having to physically open a book and READ.

2012:

My son GOOGLES the subject and everything is brought up in a nanosecond. He does not even have to know how to spell the subject of his query, since autocorrect will handle that chore for him.

1982:

My friends and I used to love to go the movies. We used to love the 2-3 hours of freedom away from our parents, loved pigging out on popcorn and candy, trying to sit in just the perfect seats, loved watching the trailers for coming attractions, loved running into friends, and if the movie was great, we loved just staying in our seats so that we could watch it again.

2012:

My son has the joy of instantly watching or downloading films online, can watch trailers for thousands of movies online, and never has to leave his bedroom. My 15yr old son has yet to go to an actual movie with his friends.

1982:

I had a girlfriend that I tried to spend every available minute with, in person. Because of having just one phone in each of our homes, we were unable to tie up the phones for hours on end due to other family members being in our homes. Thus, we actually got to know each other in person, and went out and had fun together.

2012:

My daughter spends every waking moment of the day night texting, facebooking, or emailing, her boyfriend. She actually spends very little time in person with him. When they laugh, cry, have deep conversations, or fight, it is via the Net, versus in person.

1982:

When we were out driving, and happened to get lost, we had pull over and ask an actual human being for directions.

2012:

Now, my family just pulls up a GPS app, or Mapquest, on their I-Phones which they carry in their hands at all times.

1982:

If you wanted to shield your kids from Porn, you had to make sure you had none in the house, or made sure it was hid good and high up in the master bedroom closet.

2012:

Now, no matter what you may think, you cannot shield your kids from Porn. It’s on the Net, easily accessible, and no matter how hard you may try, your kids will always know how to get around your safeguards in order to view it anytime they want.

1982:

When I wanted to go out somewhere, and did not want my parents to know where I was, I lied about where I was going to be. Plain and simple.

2012:

My son could try to lie about his true whereabouts all he wants, but thanks to tracking applications on his phone, we can get on the Internet and track where his PHONE is at all times. Seeing as how his phone is permanently attached to his hand, he has no place to hide from us.

1982:

I could lie and BS all I wanted about the grades I was getting in school. My parents had no proof of how I was actually doing until I brought home my report card, or unless a teacher happened to call them at home.

2012:

We can get online any time we want, 24 hrs a day, and can view all of our son’s current grades, his remaining lunch money balance, and can actually see what he ordered for lunch. He can tell us that he ate pizza and milk for lunch, but we quickly see that he actually bought junk food and cokes since everything purchased at his school is tracked online.

1982:

If you happened to move away, especially a great distance, you would eventually lose contact with your friends and would have to make new friends. You might talk to your old friends occasionally on the phone, or via letter, but most of them would slowly fade away.

2012:

My son now plays online games against friends that he had 7 years ago when we moved and relocated to our current area. It effects us old people too. Remember that High School girlfriend of mine? She’s reading this post at this very moment, with her being a regular reader of this blog, despite the fact that we have not seen each other in person in 30 years.

1990:

My wife and I made excited phone calls to our families to tell them of our engagement.

2011:

My daughter informed the world, and her parents, of her engagement, via Facebook. The engagement was later ended. Thankfully we found out the old fashioned way, in person.

1982:

If I wanted to write of my thoughts, feelings, adventures, and experiences, in order to share with hundreds of people around the globe, I would have to write a book, or spend an arm and a leg in postage to mail out tons of letters.

2012:

I type this post and instantly reach those hundreds of people.

1982:

On weekends, I actually left the house and went OUTSIDE.

2012:

Thanks to the Internet and online gaming, my son sees less daylight than most incarcerated prisoners.

It was a sad and somber evening here in the idiot household last night.

I had just gotten off the phone call that no one ever wants to get.

We had to face the facts…

The kind gentleman on the phone had given us the news we all feared..

Our lives our about to change..

She is not going to make it.

She is dying.

She has put up a great fight, but her time has come.

She has lived a happy, full life…

Given us years of joy…

Become a vital part of our daily lives…

But, all good things must come to an end…

The circle of life continues…

I walk out into the living room to find the wife and kid stting silently on the couch.

I tell them the grave news.

They both sob uncontrollably.

They ask how long she has.

I tell her the gentleman said it was hard to say..

Days….maybe a week…

The end is near.

I tell them to take advantage of the few good times she may have left.

Just as I am doing at this very moment.

Yes, as you have guessed, we are in mourning because our beloved wireless modem is indeed on it’s last legs…

Our Internet access this past few days has been horrific.

The old gal is dying.

The Technician tried a bunch of tests in order to save her, but she is indeed terminal.

A new modem is on it’s way.

But until then, Internet access will be sporadic at best.

Resulting in a dark, bleak shadow being cast over our lives.

I will try to quickly post this during one of her brief moments of consciousness.

Then, it’s back into the darkness.

What will I do?

With “All my Children” being cancelled, what else am I to do in the middle of the day?

What a dark day.

Monday.

Therapy day.

I show up and sign in. After a few minutes in the waiting area, a Physical Therapist shows up to drag me back to the torture table.

I get a lump in my throat.

It is Straight shooting Steve.

Straight shooting Steve is a former US Marine. According to him, he was a Special Forces Interrogator on various battlefields throughout the Middle East. According to him, his personal skills of physical and Psychological torture were such that he could have even the most hardened male enemy combatants willing to confess that they were actually women within mere minutes of the start of one of Steve’s “sessions”.

Steve looks like he eats bullets for breakfast.

After getting out of the service, Steve needed a new outlet for his skills, hence he became a Physical Therapist.

Steve gets his nickname due to the fact that he is brutally honest.

There is no beating around the bush with Steve.

Soon, I found myself sitting on the torture table with my newly-healing injured bare foot resting in his hands.

“OK Sir…..first I am going to start out by performing a dorsiflexion maxi-stretch and rotation maneuver. This exercise will pull at your newly attached tendons to a degree of which you have not experienced since your surgery. You are going to feel an intense, almost unbearable burning pain at the sites of tendon reattachment, followed by the distinct sensation that the tendons are indeed being ripped from the bone. This intense pain will travel up your leg, causing nerves and muscle to involuntarily convulse, with pain radiating up into your spinal cord, causing such severe neurological trauma that you may end up losing all control of your bowels and bladder, therefore sir, I’m gonna need you to use the restroom before I begin. Also, I’m going to need you to place this ball gag in your mouth during the exercise so that your uncontrolled screaming and hysterics do not disturb our other patients”

He motioned for me to head off to the restroom.

I hobbled across the room, cane in one hand, shoes in the other, looked back to see that he was not watching me, and the I hobbled faster than any human in recorded history, out the door, and down the street…..to freedom.

My Father, who had driven me to therapy, and whom I had blasted past as I bolted out the door, finally caught up to me about 3 blocks later.

As I stood next to his car window, huffing and puffing, I tried to explain the reasons for my hasty escape, but dear Dad was quick to point out that he could not understand a word I was saying, thanks to the ball gag still in my mouth.

This month of therapy is going to be real interesting to say the least.

**Time for another flashback post, way back to 2006**

My wife was the valedictorian of her High School in the bustling metropolis of Chillicothe, Texas. After graduation, she chose to attend the University of Texas in Austin,(National Champs!) a somewhat surprising choice since most students in her area of West Texas would have chosen Texas Tech University in nearby Lubbock. By all accounts my wife had a normal and joy filled childhood and a stellar school career in Chillicothe. She was crowned School Queen (I knew I would marry royalty), was a Cheerleader, and was active in a number of groups and organizations. After deciding to attend UT-Austin she made a fateful mistake that would forever ruin her life and drive her emotionally to the edge of insanity…..she chose to be a Psychology Major! I can say with all honesty after living with this wonderful little woman for 16 years now, that persons with degrees in Psychology are the most confused, messed up people walking the planet! These poor students have it drilled into them for four long years that in the world of Psychology, “everything has a purpose” and “everything has a meaning”. This leaves these poor souls aimlessly trying to discover the true purpose and meaning of everything on the planet. They cannot intellectually accept something as simple as “it is what it is” without trying to overanalyze everything. I myself only have about 40 hours of college credits, accumulated at a Community College and a small “Wannabe” college in Oregon, a fact that my wife is not hesitant to remind me of. If I can’t open the pickle jar, she rips it from my hands, twists it open with ease, and then will give me a sarcastic “That’s what a degree will do for you…you weak, worthless wimp!”. Of course my wife might just be suffering from sort of genetic anti-social behavior since the mere existence of actual Psychology has been challenged my many renowned scientists and experts like Dr. Tom Cruise. (Run Katie Run!) Getting back to the warped world these poor souls live in. Whatever you happen to say to a Psychology major, he or she will try to figure out “what you really meant”, often driving themselves to the edge of madness in the process. Do not ever try to argue with a person with a degree in Psychology, especially a woman with a Psych degree. Just remember that the woman has the last word in any argument and that anything a man says after that is just the beginning of a new argument. An Argument that you will NEVER win. Ever. Example:

Wife- “How does my hair look?”
Husband- “It looks fine”
Wife- “What’s wrong with it?”
Husband – “Nothing..I said it was fine..”
Wife – “You liar!..You hate it!….”
Husband – “Ok..I’m sorry…your hair looks nice….”
Wife – “no it doesn’t..you’re just saying that so I won’t be mad at you..”
Husband – “No really…it looks nice!”
Wife – “What are you REALLY trying to say….Nice?
Husband- “Dear, nice really does mean good…honest”
Wife – “Liar!…I look like a troll!”
Husband- “Can I go now?”
Wife- “Fine! Just think about yourself and ignore my feelings you selfish idiot!”

Again a rule to remember, you will never, ever, win an argument with a person with a degree in psychology. And don’t under any circumstances say that anything about your wife is “fine” or “nice”, these words will not be in her vocabulary if she happens to wield a degree in Psychology. Again, they will always try to read way too much into everything that goes on around them. When our son was a baby he often had the rude and unusual habit of waking up and crying in the middle of the night.

Baby- “WaaaaaaaWaaaaaWaaaaaaaa”
Wife-” I wonder what’s the matter with Tyler?…..”
Stupid Husband – “He’s hungry…..”
Wife – “No..that’s not it..something else must be bothering him….”
Baby – “WaaaaaWaaaaaa(I’m Hungry!)”
Husband – “I tell you honey…the boy is hungry……”
Wife- “are you implying that I don’t know the needs of my own child?”
Baby- “gooo goooo fooood fooooood gooo gooo “
Husband – “No dear…I’m just saying..he hasn’t eaten in 4 hours and he’s probably hungry”
Wife – “You ignorant slob…..you think I’m a bad mother!……..”

See my point, you will never win. One final example:

Husband-” You know honey I was reading up on Psychology and was wondering something…if the what that we are is all that we can be then what we strive to be is irrelevant and useless in this modernistic world of free-thinking and self-assurance….I was wondering then, If this all that I am, and that if this all I want to be, then haven’t I reached my full potential in a psychological and physical sense?……”

Wife- “What the heck have you been smoking? You stick to reading the funny pages and leave the Psychology to us that earned actual degrees from an Institution of Higher Learning…..knuckle dragging spineless jellyfish!”

In all honesty, being married to my wife and her treasured degree, has had a huge impact on my intellectual well-being. Before I met my wife, I was an emotionless, boring slug. I often sat motionless at my desk, a blank look on my face, and had an endless supply of drool trickling out of my mouth. I had no sense of humor, no sense of purpose, no ambition in life, and was not even concerned with maintaining
any consistent form of personal hygiene. This is true, just ask my friend. (singular) Being the subject of such intense psychological scrutiny and humiliation for the past 16 years has helped me come out of my confining shell as helped to me to grow immensely as a human being. In fact, if you weigh me on the scales right now, you will see that I am growing a whole new human inside of my body as we speak! I would guess that the “New Me” will probably weigh about 50lbs when he comes into the world seeing as how that correlates to the amount of pounds I have gained since I entered into therapy. (marriage) Thank you honey for all your help over these years! Just imagine how twisted my mind will be in another 16 years! And what is she doing with her degree in Psychology these days?

She is an Elementary School Special Education Teacher.

Run kids….run!

(From the Archives: January 2006)

I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.

Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.

The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.

Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.

Life is sexually transmitted.

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

Some people are like Slinkies. Not really good for anything, but you still can’t help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to?

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

In the 60′s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, “I think I’ll squeeze these dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out?”

Who was the first person to say, “See that chicken there? I’m gonna eat the next thing that comes outta its butt.”

Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?

If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him?

Why do people point to their wrist when asking for the time, but don’t point to their crotch when they ask where the bathroom is?

Why does your OB-GYN leave the room when you get undressed if they are going to look up there anyway?

If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?

If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?

Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?

Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog’s face, he
gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head
out the window?

Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?

Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

(Original Authors unknown)

Time to hurt your heads.

Try to keep up.

There will be a quiz later.

Tyler informed my wife and I that Hannah is now secretly communicating with Tyler again.

You remember Tyler, yep…that’s right, Tyler Hannah.

Yep, Hannah, according to Tyler, is again stirring things up with Tyler Hannah.

Lost yet?

Tyler is our son, you know, “The kid”.

Hannah is our daughter, aka, Hannah.

Tyler Hannah is our daughter’s former boyfriend.

Yep, that’s right, his name is Tyler Hannah.

Yes, it’s true, marriage would result in our daughter becoming Hannah Hannah.

We would have a son, Tyler, and a son-in-law, Tyler.

Our son Tyler would have a Brother-in-law Tyler.

To make life simpler, Hannah would be then known just as “H-Squared”.

Don’t worry, the whole thing hurts our heads too.

Tyler = Son
Hannah = Daughter
Tyler Hannah = Hannah former B’Friend

Quiz:

What is a one word definition for the day before the day after yesterday?

A. Yesterday
B. Today
C. Tomorrow

Thursday.

Bridgeport, TX.

Earth.

It’s time to begin therapy on the new bionic foot.

I go to the Physical Therapy establishment for my initial evaluation.

The Therapy place is right next door to a new Chinese Buffet that my Dad and I will be assaulting once my evaluation is complete.

The two businesses share a common wall.

The reception area of the Therapy place must border the kitchen of the Chinese Buffet, as evidenced by the continuous muffled sounds of dogs barking and monkeys shrieking.

I check in at the front desk.

The gal hands me a mountain of paperwork to fill out.

The first 10 pages want me to detail my entire health history from the time I was born. I decide to get “creative” just to see if they actually read this stuff.

After 20 minutes of paperwork, the lead therapist comes to get me. She leads me back to an exam room and has me sit on a table as she pulls up a rolling chair and starts to pour through my paperwork.

“Mr. Packawack… What exactly led to the injury on your foot?…..it says VABFAB on here but I’m afraid that I don’t recognize that abbreviation…”

I tell her that this is the standard globally recognized abbreviation for “Violent Attack By Flightless Antarctic Bird”.

She looks up at me.

“Huh?”

I need to put it into layman’s terms for her.

“I was attacked by a Penguin“

“You were attacked by ….a penguin…..an actual penguin…..little cute guy in a tuxedo type of penguin?”

“Yes, though I wouldn’t say he was real cute….look at what he did to my foot!”

“And this happened where exactly?”

“San Antonio“

“You were attacked by a vicious penguin in San Antonio?”

“Yep…..at Sea World“

The girl rolled her eyes. Obviously she was dealing with a clearly deranged or severely psychotic idiot.

“Moving on Mr. Packawack….. Under your medical history, I notice a few more entries and abbreviations that I don’t recognize…. what is this “ATCOS” entry back in 2005?”

“That is ATROPHIED TESTICULAR CIRCULAR OBJECT SYNDROME“

“Huh?”

“In Layman’s terms it means shrunken Kahonies“

She rolls her eyes and moves on…

“And in 2007….you have marked down…SHC X2?”

“Yes Ma’am….. That is SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION…..TWO EPISODES“

“You spontaneously burst into flames….twice?”

“Yep“

“Alrighty…moving on…Under chronic conditions, you list CNPFUF…..what is that if I dare to ask?”

“Yes Ma’am….that’s CHRONIC NOCTURNAL POTENTIALLY FATAL UNCONTROLLED FLATULENCE“

“As in fatal to you?”

“No Ma’am….fatal to my wife….”

“Moving on…….under your medications, you list Coumadin, Neurontin, and FV (1W,1B,2BB Daily)… I don’t recognize the FV 1W 1B 2BB medication”

“Yes Maam…. that’s FLINTSTONES VITAMINS, 1 WILMA, 1 BARNEY, AND TWO BAM-BAM’S DAILY“

The gal sat motionless, mouth open.

Just then, another therapist, a guy who had treated me before, saw me and entered the room.

“Hey Mark! Wassssup!!! You’re not giving Michelle a hard time are ya? What has he told ya Michelle? Last year, he came in after supposedly being bitten by a rabid moth that he was sure was actually a vampire…. what goofy reason did he give you?

“Penguin Attack…”

The guy high-fived me.

“Penguin attack! Niiiiiicccccceeeee!”

Suddenly, the muffled dog barks from behind the wall stopped. That could only mean one thing, Fresh Kung Pao Shihtzu was soon to be carried to the buffet table. It was time for lunch! The therapist made me a schedule for therapy on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday for the next month, I retrieved my Dad, and off we shuffled to the Chinese place next door.

And yet another innocent therapist has been introduced to the warped world of the Idiot.

My wife and I’s lives as seen through the eyes of Hollywood.

May Hollywood have mercy on our souls…

“I don’t care how much you sweet talk me Idiot!….I am not putting on the Princess Leia costume again tonight!”

“Good grief Idiot!! Put the damn toilet seat down!! It’s like sharing a bathroom with with an epileptic gorilla!”

“Hurry Idiot!! They’re coming!!”

“Yes information, I need the number for 911 please…and hurry!!”

“Now look out there Idiot….there’s lots of people wearing that same goofy leotard you got on….no..it does not make you look like a girly man….”

“Idiot…”

“Yes Dear…”

“This usually works better without the Batman Underoos on….”

“Damnit Idiot!! I told you that you could get a Kitten!! not a damn monkey!!!”

“Really Idiot??? Did your mother not teach you how to brush your teeth? Good lord…did you eat a camel for lunch?”

“For the last time idiot!! Let go of my hand!! You are pulling me down into the water!!! let go!!”

(Wife screaming from out of frame) “Good grief Idiot!! I told you that I don’t like KC and the Sunshine Band!!! Quit blasting that crap!!”

“I’m leaving you Idiot!”

“Why my dear?”

“Pot scrubbies! You just can’t seem to learn to put the damn pot scrubbies back where they belong!”

“Ya know Mrs. Robinson, I know a good physical therapist that could improve that dorsiflexion for you..”

“Nope Idiot! You still missed it….that sucker is huge…how could you not see that? Do I need to get you new nosehair clippers for Christmas?”

The Idiot’s wife has to sneak home from work in order to retrieve some reports that had left sitting on her small table in the bedroom.

She comes in from the garage and finds the living room quiet and empty.

There is no sign of her idiot husband.

Obviously he is in the bedroom, lounging on the bed as usual, milking those pathetic Doctor’s orders for all their worth.

She quietly walks through the house and into the bedroom.

The idiot is face down on the bed, sobbing uncontrollably, with his face buried in his pillow.

He is unaware of her presence in the room.

The poor man seems to be having a major breakdown.

The wife feels guilty.

Obviously, the stress of her husband’s health issues have finally come crashing down on him. He can no longer shoulder the burden of trying to remain upbeat and happy through so much turmoil with his health and future.

The man has simply broke.

The wife walks around the side of the bed and approaches her sobbing husband. She puts a loving hand on the back of his shoulder.

“It’s OK Idiot… It will be OK….. what’s the matter? What’s bothering you so badly today?”

The Idiot is startled to find he is not alone.

He quickly sits up and hastily wipes the tears from his face.

“Uh…Nothing…I’m fine…sniffle sniffle….it’s just allergies…..I’m fine….”

The wife knows her idiot husband is lying through his teeth, but also knows that he never discusses his true feelings. Like everyone else on the planet, she will have to read his next blog post to find out what it truly bothering him.

“Alright then Mr. Stubborn….I just will get my papers and go back to work…. you can go back to bawling like toddler all by your lonesome…”

The idiot places his face back into his pillow and his low sniffles and sobs are quickly drowned out.

The wife gets her papers and heads back out into the house.

She freezes just feet outside the bedroom door.

As she was leaving, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that the bedroom TV was on…. yet she distinctly remembered hearing no sounds while she was in the room…

Her curiosity is peaked.

The Idiot had the TV muted!

She turns and heads back into the bedroom, stopping near the end of the bed.

Her idiot husband is blubbering something into the pillow….

It sounds like …

“I’ll never let go…I promise….I’ll never let go!!”

She glances back at the muted TV.

“Good Lord Idiot!!! Not again!!! For the love of God man!! Grow a spine and quit watching that damn movie every time they replay it on the satellite!!”

She throws up her hands and storms out of the room.

Yep, you guessed it, the idiot has fallen prey to watching a replay of “Titanic” for the umpteenth time…..and it still turns him into a spineless bowl of jelly whenever Rose lets go of Jack’s hand and lets his lifeless body slip into the icy water…

sniffle sniffle

Call me a romantic…

or do as she does, and just call me an Idiot.

————————————–

Today is the start of Physical Therapy. Happy Happy Joy Joy! Better yet, the therapy place I will be going to is right next door to a…..

Chinese buffet!

Thank you Lord!!

Five weeks with no Chinese Buffet…

Until today.

They can torture my foot all they want, cause I’m pigging out afterwards!

———————————————————————————–

I have been using Dr. Quack as the temporary fictional name of my Quack Surgeon in my book. I think I’ll just keep it at that name. A few of you have suggested a cartoon duck that could be illustrated and used in the book to portray the good Doc. This is a great idea! Anyone out there able to draw a good evil duck? Please let me know if you have any cartoon character drawing skills.

Time for yet the latest installment of

“As the Quack Turns“

Wednesday.

The Attorney Generals Office called me once again.

I have been searching all my files, but unfortunately, I do not have in my possession exactly what they are looking for.

No worry, my Lawyer will definitely have what they need, though he is deathly slow at responding to their requests for records.

As you know, the Quack is being investigated for massive Medicare Fraud. I was not a Medicare patient. So, what does this have to do with me?

I asked the Investigator what my case had to do with their investigation…

and I was told some interesting tidbits.

Apparently, this snake, who had been sued multiple times before and after my case, had always managed to drag things out to where he never actually had to give a sworn deposition. He would settle the cases or have them thrown out in court before he ever had to sit down and testify under oath.

That was his plan. Drag the cases out and hopefully never have to give a sworn deposition in which his lies would be exposed.

Apparently, my case was the first (and possibly ONLY) one in which he had actually been legally deposed on camera. To show you how he would drag things out, depositions in my case did not even start for over 6 YEARS after my surgery. 6 YEARS! Obviously, he was counting on my case being tossed out or settled before he would have to actually sit down and give a deposition.

Thanks to my Attorney, he could no longer stall, and he was ordered by the court to give a deposition in my case. By the time he finally sat in the hot seat, 7 years had passed since my injury.

It turns out, my case, in which we deposed him and caught him in lie after lie, while under oath, and on camera, could turn out to be very beneficial in proving the Government’s current case against him. If he was caught on camera testifying to illegal activity from a surgery in 1999, then the man has been a lying fraud ever since then.

The Investigator let me know that he would be in contact with me if I could be of any more service to them.

I told him that I was writing a book, much of which dealt with this nightmare, and he said he might be able to give me some “free” information for the book.

According to him, the affidavits for the search warrants served on the Quack are on file at the courthouse in Fort Worth and are a matter of public record. I just need to go down there, request them, and then can read all the intricate details of the allegations against him.

So, we know where I will be taking a field trip to sometime later this year!

Even if I never get called as a witness, I take great joy that there may indeed be a day, in his Federal Criminal Trial, where the Government Prosecutor stands up and then requests that the videotaped deposition in the case of Pakulak vs Quack be admitted into evidence!

I can just see him cringing in his seat as he hears MY name yet again. I have been like a virus that he has been unable to get rid of for nearly 13 years.

Who knows….

Maybe a few years from now, I’ll send him a complimentary AUTOGRAPHED copy of my book, for his reading enjoyment while he wastes away in his cell.

That would be totally awesome!

My Spinal Surgeon out for a walk with friends

Today’s regularly scheduled goofy post of utter and complete idiotic nonsense has been temporarily postponed so that I can briefly continue to bask in the joy of the misery of my beloved Spinal Surgeon.

I know that makes me sound like a petty and vengeful person, going directly against the way I was raised, and the way I have tried to live, but right now, it really lifts my spirits to know that this man is squirming like a worm on the end of a fish hook, and, as it turns out, I am one of the lucky souls who got to place his squirming butt on the hook!

As you know, the Attorney Generals office called me yesterday in regards to my fair spinal surgeon.

I hadn’t really thought about one aspect until I was talking to a friend later in the day.

The Authorities raided the offices of the Surgeon last spring based on allegations of massive Medicare and Medicaid Fraud against him.

Well, when I had my surgery in 1999, I had private insurance. I was not on Medicare or Medicaid.

The mystery deepens…

So, why are the authorities contacting me?

Maybe they did not actually find me through the records they had confiscated from the Doctor during their raid. Maybe they found me through a search of court records involving the Doctor.

Even though we settled, out of court, before ever going to trial, we still had to appear in front of a judge in District Court on multiple occasions, and while the evidence of my lawsuit might have been swept under the rug as far as the public is concerned, there are still court records to reflect my long battle with him.

I still don’t know what is entirely kosher to reveal at this point, but I can tell you that the Attorney General is looking for specific documents that I may have in my possession, documents that show the Doc to be the liar and fraud that he truly is. I am hastily digging through my mountain of records, looking for these documents, but have told the investigator that my lawyer will definitely have copies of what he needs.

There was a “smoking gun” type bombshell in his deposition for my lawsuit, a bombshell that we nailed him with that totally destroyed his credibility. But how did the Government find out? It is a great mystery.

I had to tell the Investigator that all my legal documents are kept in a huge bucket upstairs, and that lo and behold, I had just had a surgery last month directly related to the quack he is investigating, and that I am not yet able to climb any steps.

(The Daughter was able to drag the bucket down the stairs on Tuesday evening.)

So, it might take me a couple days, but I am now happily digging!!

The timing of this little adventure just has me blown away.

To be honest, I am in the midst of the absolute hardest chapters of the book at the moment. These are the chapters that deal with the nightmare of the lawsuit. I have just been writing about the Doctor’s depositions and all the lies and total incompetence that the depositions uncovered. It has been far from pleasant in dredging up all these bad memories up and then writing about them.

And then, like a gift from above, the phone rings and the Attorney General gives me this little boost, almost as if to remind me that, while I might be writing about a painful period at the moment, the authorities are still working hard to ensure that my book gets a great addendum to close out my story.

An addendum detailing the conviction and sentencing of my spinal surgeon.

What a great ending that will be.

So, while the quack had so much control over the misery of my life for so many years in the aftermath of my surgery, I feel now like I have a little control over HIS life. I obviously have information that may help, even in a small way, in locking him up in prison, hopefully for the rest of his life.

All us many victims that he crippled or defrauded are now getting a personal bit of justice over the quack.

What goes around, comes around.

He is now learning that. I’m sure the phones of all his other victims are also ringing, and the Government is slowly collecting more nails for the coffin of the case against him.

I already know what I am going to ask of Santa Claus this Christmas. He can keep all the gifts this year, because all I want is to be called as a witness at my Neurosurgeon’s Federal trial.

What a great gift that would be!

I’ll get a new suit for the occasion.

I only wear suits and ties at Weddings, Funerals, and Federal Criminal Trials….

That’s always been my rule of thumb…

My Spinal Surgeon waving Hello

What a great start to Tuesday.

I was awakened by the phone ringing.

It turned out to be the Texas Attorney General’s office.

It was an investigator, conducting an investigation into my quack spinal surgeon.

The FBI raided his offices last spring and hauled away all his files and computers.

Obviously, the authorities have now reached my file.

And boy am I ready to talk!

One thing I did NOT sign when I got my settlement, was a confidentiality agreement. I am free to sing like a bird!

I am elated to think I might be able to play a small part in the Government finally locking him away.

Great day!

**Although we have been experiencing balmy and warm here in North Texas this winter, I know that many of you are finally feeling the cold effects of the season. As such, I would like to flashback to a post from May of 2006 that will warm you up and help you to think of warmer, happier times to come this summer. No need to thank me, I’m just glad to help**

The Idiot’s day at the Pool

After deciding to come out of my depressive hibernation, and being that the thermometer is now nearing 100 degrees (F) on a daily basis, I decided to take the family and head to the City Swimming Pool for a cool afternoon dip.

When we arrived at the parking lot, the kids quickly made fast escapes from the still-moving car, quickly followed by the little wife yelling at the two children to “slow the Hell down…or else!”.

I parked the vehicle, followed the sound of the hysterical cursing, and entered the pool area.

Clad in a full-length, Terrycloth bathrobe that I had permanently “borrowed” from a national Hotel Chain, and wearing a cute little pair of “Bob the Builder” flip-flops that were broken, (they only go “flop..flop..flop”…the flip is broken), I made quite a site wandering amongst all the hundreds of fried-red teenagers, little children, and bewildered housewives who had their noses buried deep in their books, oblivious to their youngsters drowning a mere 10 feet away, right under the watchful, yet diverted, eyes of the adolescent lifeguards who were busily eyeing each other’s tanned bodies and not the bodies of the myriad of people in the pool. (Wow! What a sentence! I have a cramp in my hand now….)

So, I waddle and limp my way through the masses, drawing curious stares from most people, a look on their faces that say “Who let the obese polar bear in?” as I move towards an empty chair in the back of the pool area. (flop flop flop)

I scan the thousand or so young heads bobbing in the water amongst the bodies of those poor unfortunates that had drowned hours earlier, and I notice my two young offspring, expending a lot of energy in not looking my direction so that they can pretend they don’t know me.

The wife has already taken up residence on her favorite lounger and has her head buried deep into her current bit of non-fiction reading, “The Idiot Wife’s guide on How to kill your husband, keep the Life Insurance Money, and not go to prison”.

I reach my lounger, a broken down rusty old relic that only has three legs remaining, but I do not fret over this small annoyance, for I am not here to lay and grow more cancerous growths on my wrinkled, corpse-white skin…..I am here to swim!

And swim I shall do!

I casually kick off the Bob the Builders and begin reaching for the drawstring of the Terrycloth robe.

My wife rolls away to face the opposite direction, knowing the horrors that are about to be unleashed on the unsuspecting public.

I motion towards the snack bar, to the young man who operates the CD player that is providing the entire pool area with the blaring loud music we are all enjoying. I give the young man the familiar “thumbs up” signal and suddenly the “Eminem” rap music comes to a screeching halt and there is momentary silence in the pool area.

All activity and drownings come to a momentary halt and all eyes scan the pool area in confusion. Suddenly the pool area is again blasting to ear-poppingly loud music. The opening chords of the 80′s dance classic “Relax” by Frankie goes to Hollywood starts blasting across the pool.

I reach for the robe. My achy, breaky 41-yr old arthritic hips start rocking back and forth to the beat of the music.

All eyes begin to glance towards the obese Polar Bear wearing the borrowed Motel 6 robe. I grab each side of the robe and with the grace of a 260lb swan, I fling the robe open and it falls with a “thud” to the concrete beneath me.

“Relax….don’t do it…..Relax!….don’t do it…..” blares over the speakers.

Everyone within 100 feet instinctively raises their hands to shield their eyes from the blinding glare.

Kids start to cry.

Blocks away, dogs start to bark.

The “Michelin Tire Man” has been unleashed!

It is not a pretty sight.

This lubed and oiled whale of a body has been kept indoors and covered up for nearly 8 months. The skin that has now been unveiled for all to see, is whiter than white. An Albino corpse, dead for a month, floating in a vat of white paint, would seem downright dark compared the whiteness that I now proudly display.

Not only am I well oiled and lubed, since it is now blazing hot outside, I am already dripping with sweat and am quickly creating a dripping, waterfall of liquids pouring off of my shorts and body that to most observers, would appear that I am, in fact, wetting myself and have lost all control of my bladder region.

My greasy, blubbery body glistens in the hot sun. My breasts, which are bigger than most women’s of comparable age, bob gingerly in the wind.

More shrieks and screams are heard as people’s eyes adjust to the glare and their eyes began to cast downward on my body to the tiny little bit of blue elastic, barely bigger than a band-aid, that is encircling the “Twig and berries and buttockular region”………my trusty Speedo! Yes, my SPEEDO!

Ahhhh……The Speedo…..

A wonderful little invention of Nordic Genius that proudly allows us older, fatter, out-of-shape old guys the pleasure of subjecting total strangers to the disgusting sight of flabs, folds, bulges, and cracks, all where they shouldn’t be, on the human body.

The music now changes from “Relax” to the more upbeat dance classic “Macho Man” by the Village People.

I grab the tube of sunscreen laying on the broken lounger near me and squirt a huge, steaming glob of SPF30 into my hand. By now there is mass panic in the pool as people struggle and fight to get out of the water, a scene of utter chaos not seen since the shark in “Jaws” cleared the beach in a matter of seconds.

I begin to rub the gooey sunscreen deep into my whitened, jiggly, flabby skin. My stomach jiggles and bounces such that my belly button is distorted into looking like a giant, White “Mr. Potato Head” screaming for help…..

The tiny little blue Speedo, creaks and groans, as folds and bulges all struggle to break free. The sweat continues to pour out from beneath me and is now snaking it’s way across the pavement towards the edge of the pool, just a mere few feet away.

“MACHO MACHO MAN……I WANT TO BE..A MACHO MAN…..MACHO MACHO MAN……” the music continues to blare as I now jiggle and shake in rhythm with the beat. I now begin to waddle and drip towards the edge of the pool.

The last few stragglers are just pulling themselves clear of the water when I launch myself into the air and pull into a tight “Cannonball” tuck just before hitting the water with such force that half of the pools water is launched in the sky and drenches everyone and everything within a three block radius of the city pool.

I surface in the center of the pool in about 3 feet of water, which used to be 6 feet of water just seconds before, and I wipe the chlorinated water from my eyes. I scan the pool area. Not another soul is in the water. Those that have not fled for the parking lot are all wimpering and crying, just thanking the Heavens that they were still alive and had not drowned.

My kids cower in the corner of the pool area, trying to hide their embarassed little faces and pretending not to know me. I gently lay back and begin to float on my back, staring up at the beautiful blue sky above me, and I give thanks for being of such large stature and for the genius of the invention of the trusty Speedo.

For I now have the unique ability to go to any public pool, lake, or Ocean and can clear the place out and have the water all to myself within seconds! I don’t worry about crowds at the pool like you body-fat challenged, emaciated little twigs. When I go out to swim, there are no crowds!

**Update. If if any of you blog friends that I visit in person over the course of each summer would like me to empty your neighborhood pools so that YOU may swim in peace and quiet, just let me know. I still have the trust Speedo, and given the fact that I have since grown in size since this post was written, the Speedo should be that much more effective now ***

With my little health issue with the leg, I was unable to take D’Aun out anywhere for her Birthday on Sunday. Some of her friends did take her out to a movie Sunday afternoon, and then we had family come down Sunday Evening for cake, so she ended up having a pretty good day.

Sunday evening, we were waiting for my parents to arrive to that we would have cake and I was doing my usual routine of laying on the bed, doing absolutely nothing useful.

A few minutes later, I heard the sounds of the parents coming in through the front door.

It was time to unveil my little birthday surprise!

I was just getting up out of the bed when the first screams of “Hey Idiot!! It’s time for cake!!! Shuffle your butt out here!!” started bellowing throughout the house.

It took me a minute or two to get to the doorway of the Master Bedroom, which leads directly out into the living room.

“Come on Idiot!! We’re waiting!!! We want cake!!!”

I paused in the doorway of my bedroom and called out…

“OK Everyone….I want you to all freeze what you are doing and I want you to cast your attention into the living room!! I have a surprise for our birthday girl!!”

(D’Aun peered around the corner from the dining room, briefly hoping that she was going to catch a glimpse of a new car in the middle of the living room….)

Still standing in the bedroom doorway, I reached across a dresser and clicked on our CD Player, which had already been pre-loaded with just the right music for my surprise.

As “You should be Dancing” by the Bee Gees blasted through the house, I slowly shuffled out of the bedroom, and into the living room, using only a cane…

No walker, no crutches, and no boot…

For the first time in 5 weeks.

I was walking on my own two feet.

The family looked on in stunned silence with smiles of joy on their faces.

I got to the center of the living room, stopped, and then threw my hands up in the air. “Happy Birthday D’Aun!”

The family was now happily high-fiving each other and were laughing and talking amongst themselves. The Idiot was now walking!

And little did anyone notice that I had actually dropped my cane onto the floor in the process of throwing my hands up in the air.

There I stood, frozen in place.

Right on cue, “You should be Dancing” ended and the next song, “Tragedy” came on and started blaring through the house.

My Wife glanced my way.

“Come on Idiot….come over here so we can start in on the cake”

I just smiled back.

“Uh…that’s OK….I’m good….I’ll just stand here for a minute or two…”

The wife started cutting into her cake.

“I really appreciate this little surprise Idiot….but it really is too soon for you to totally ditch the walker and the crutches…..you just need to eat a piece of cake and then you need to get your butt back on the bed!”

Still frozen in place, unable to move, with my cane, my only means of balance and support laying on the floor, I just smiled back…

“Okey Dokey Honey! Will do!”

The wife was on her third bite of cake when the light bulb went off in her head.

She turned her attention back towards me.

She started laughing out loud.

The rest of the family asked her what was so funny.

She pointed towards me.

“I see it now! Look!! The idiot dropped his cane and now he can’t move! He doesn’t have the balance to be able to pick it up, can’t turn around, and can’t even move…..he’s stuck standing there!!”

My Mother yelled across the room.

“Marky Dear…..did you drop your stick? Do you need your Father to come carry you back to your bed?”

“NO MOTHER!!!! I’m fine!!!! Really!!!! This is all part of my plan!!! Stay where you are!! All of you!!!”

The wife passed around instructions for everyone to move into the living room so that everyone could be seated in comfort while they all watched the rest of my plan unfold.

Soon, I was standing in the center of the room with my whole family seated and happily eating cake all around me.

They all happily ate and chatted…

And I just stood there…..trying to process exactly how I was going to make a graceful exit out of this mess that I had gotten myself into.

And there I stood.

The football game on the TV ended.

The cake was devoured.

My wife opened a few presents.

Laughter and joy had filled the house for well over an hour.

The parents left.

The daughter retreated upstairs.

The kid went off to his room.

and the wife went off to soak in a hot bath.

As I stood in the middle of the living room floor, whispering instructions to one of our idiot cats…

“No Lulu!! Grab it with BOTH paws!!! Good girl!! Now lift it up!!! Quit your griping ya goofy cat..I know you don’t have thumbs and it’s hard to grab…but you’re doing a good job!! good kitty!”

And with that…

The wife ended her birthday, happily soaking in a hot tub, in peace and quiet, as her idiot husband stood in the other area of the house, trying to be the first idiot in history to successfully teach a cat how to pick a cane up off the floor, without the benefit of opposable thumbs.

As “Lonely Days” by the Bee Gees played on the CD Player.

Just a typical day in our household.

**And yes, I am just using a cane now**

**The blog has now passed the 1.9 Million mark…. Time to start the countdown to 2 Million views… You readers who guessed mid to late February can start nervously watching the viewcount grow. Good Luck! **

A little story that I like to revisit each time this year…

It was June of 1990. I was working in an office for Continental Airlines in Houston. I was sitting at my desk one night when a training class of new hires walked past. In that line of men and women, there was a young gal that immediately caught my eye.

The next night, the group again walked past my desk, and I saw her again. I saw them go off into the training room nearby. It just so happened that the trainer responsible for that class was one of my best friends. On my next break, I made a point to go visit my friend in the training room. I sat down next to my friend at the desk at the head of the room. The new hires were doing a test and were handing them in as they finished.

That girl who had caught my eye was seated not too far away. I had no clue what her name was, and knew nothing about her.

I asked my friend if I could help her grade papers. She happily agreed. I would grab a paper, start grading it, and then would read the students name aloud, asking my friend who that particular student was.

What an ingenious plan for an idiot!

I finally got to another paper, graded it, and then completely butchered the pronunciation of the girl’s name.

My friend smiled. “Oh…that’s D’Aun…she’s my best student…. you would just love her….she is just the cutest thing”

She pointed towards “D’Aun”.

Bingo! That was the girl! I now knew her name.

I sheepishly asked my friend if she knew if this girl was single.

The friend indicated that she was pretty sure she was.

My friend could sense that I was sitting all glassy-eyed, staring at this gal across the room, so my friend asked if I wanted to meet this girl…

I did what every idiot does in that situation, I froze up…

“Uh…uh…uh…uh…uh…uh…”

My break was over. I dashed out of the room and back to my desk.

About an hour went by. I was on the phone, when I noticed a large shadow beside my desk. I turned my head. There stood my friend……and the pretty gal I had spied in the training room.

I smiled and finished my call.

My friend grinned. “Bubba..(my nickname at the time)….this is D’Aun….D’Aun….this is Bubba…..enjoy!”

And with that, my dear friend walked away and left D’Aun standing beside my desk.

We had a nervous laugh about what an awkward moment this was, I let her know that my name was actually Mark, and then I nervously asked her out.

A few days later, we were flying down a Houston freeway on our way to a Theme Park for our first date. At 75mph in heavy traffic, I dropped the bombshell that I was recently divorced and had two children that lived in Indiana.

To my relief, she did not fling open the door and throw herself out of the moving vehicle, and, once we came to a stop in the parking lot of the theme park, she did not make a mad dash for freedom.

We made quite a pair. She will kill me for revealing this, but when we met, she was 5 feet even and weighed all of 87lbs. She was tiny. I was 6’2″ and weighed about 220lbs. We were quite the sight walking hand in hand in public.

Working for an airline had it’s benefits.

Within weeks after we started dating, we had flown off to New Orleans for the day on a date. The next week, we decided to take a quick trip to San Francisco. We flew to Reno, Atlanta, and back to New Orleans.

A little over 2 months after we first met, I asked her to marry me. She said yes.

Our families were shocked. We had barely been dating but a few months, and I was just coming off a failed marriage.

But I knew.

I would never find another woman like this on the planet.

She has been the best thing to ever happen in my life. Trust me, I am a handful to live with. Yes, I can be just as much of an idiot in real life, as the idiot I portray myself to be on this blog. Obviously, when we met, I was perfectly healthy. D’Aun would have no idea of the health nightmares that I would soon be facing after our marriage. She has stuck by my side all these years without wavering one bit.

Like I have hinted many times before on the blog, she is nothing like what I characterize her to be. She is not a yeller and a screamer, does not beat me, and is not secretly trying to kill me for my Life Insurance money. She is quiet, sweet, honest, has a great sense of humor, is very spiritual, and loves God and her family more than anything in the world.

Today is D’Aun’s birthday. She is one that does not handle birthdays well. To me, She is still the same cute and beautiful little gal I first spotted nearly 22 years ago.

Happy Birthday D’Aun!

I love you more than you will ever know.

Most of my family probably privately thought I was crazy for attempting to go to the Kid’s basketball game on Friday evening.

I know the Doctor would have probably frowned upon me venturing out only two days after he cleared me to gradually start walking by putting small amounts of weight on the foot.

It turned out to be a good news/bad news night out on the town.

First, the bad news..

The Kid had to be at the school one hour prior to the game. Factor in the drive to town, getting there an hour early, the hour-plus that it took to play the game, the half-hour wait for the kid to come out of the locker room, and then the drive home, I ended up being up for three and a half hours straight….about 2.5 hours longer than any previous stretch in the past month. Sitting up seems to be the worst on the foot, pain wise… After an hour, the foot gets real discolored and gets real uncomfortable.

The verdict: I was hurting pretty good by the time I finally got home and logic dictates that I should not have attempted this outing so early in my rehab.

But, in the spirit of “All things happen for a reason”….

I was MEANT to be at that game..

Tyler had the best basketball game of his life!

Just three days earlier, my family had been telling me that Tyler’s game this past Tuesday was the best game he had ever played, and I had missed it, just like I have missed all his games for the past month.

Earlier in the season, Tyler barely got to play in most games and went many games in a row without scoring.

And on Friday night, with me sitting in the first row of the bleachers, he went out and made the Tuesday game look like childs play.

He finished with 10 points for the game, not alot, but on the other hand, most of the freshmen games are pretty low scoring. Most impressive was the fact that our boys were down by 5 points in the final period, and then Tyler scored three baskets in a row to put his team up by 1 point.

The other team called a timeout, as all our fans and parents were yelling like crazy, and all Tyler’s teammates were slapping him on the back and high-fiving him.

It was one of the greatest sights I have seen in my life.

Given his lifelong physical issues, my son has always struggled with self-esteem problems. I would bet that Friday Night allowed Tyler to make the biggest jump in his self-esteem that he has had in his entire life.

After the game, multiple parents came up to us raving about how well Tyler had played.

In the locker room, his teammates voted him the MVP of the game, which we did hold on to win by 6 points over a Fort Worth High School.

It was one of the true feel good moments of his young life.

And I was there to see it.

Because I was meant to be there.

All the discomfort in my foot that I now have, was well worth it.

Way to go Tyler!

Words for every man to live by!

Kind of a down day today with not much new to report.

Last night, I was typing out the chapter of the book that deals with the legal deposition that my quack surgeon gave while I sat just feet away from him. This was the first time we learned all the intimate details of just how badly he screwed up my surgery and my care in the months after the surgery. Typing all that out really got my blood boiling and brought back a lot of bad memories.

So, today I am taking the day off and will just happily lounge on the bed and will watch Battlestar Galactica on DVD all day long…

Until this evening.

I have decided to try to attempt to venture back into the real world.

Tyler has a home basketball game tonight and I am going to try to watch the game. I’ll sit in the first row of bleachers so that I don’t have to do any climbing, but the fun part will be the 100 yard walk from the street to the actual gym.

With Tyler’s great game that he had on Tuesday, that I missed, I swore that I would try to make the rest of his home games if at all possible.

Wish me luck!

And, in other news…… We sold our rental house! The realtor just called and said that she is trying for a closing next Wednesday evening. The closing will be lightning fast because the buyer is paying 100% cash for the house and property. This was the home that we bought when we first moved to this area. It is a small 1,300sq ft home, but is on a heavily wooded acre of land about a mile outside of town. It is a beautiful piece of property, but I just cannot handle being a landlord with having to worry about the phone ringing every time a severe thunderstorm or ice storm rolls through the area. So, next week, it will be off our hands.

And finally, I got to use my amazingly limited and deprived intelligence this morning. I called the Physical Therapy place and they needed me to bring them some documents. With this not being an option, they asked if I had a fax. Like an idiot, I said yes. I do have a fax/copier/scanner/tanning bed/home MRI/light bright combo set-up sitting in my computer room, but I had never done anything with it above making photocopies of the cat’s butt that is always perched atop the machine.

It took me a full hour to figure out how to send the dang fax. I am pretty sure that I inadvertently sent them a scan of the cat’s butt at one point before I think I actually sent the correct papers through. I would call them to see if they got my papers but I am afraid that they may have already called the authorities and reported me for sending lewd hairy photos across the fax…

“It’s a cats butt officer!! honest!!!”

Alrighty then, time to get back to Battlestar Galactica…….

** I am usually not a Sci-Fi Geek……. actually, I watch “The Big Bang Theory” all the time and they are addicted to the show, so I figured I would check it out. It’s actually really good. *** If things don’t work out with my continued stalking of Jennifer Aniston, I may need to switch my attentions to BG star Tricia Helfer. (Above)

Post Surgery Update

Day 30

Having been told I could gradually start walking with ever-increasing weight on my bad foot, while wearing the bear trap sized boot, the idiot is awakened at 7am to find the wife “booting him up” before she leaves for work.

He dozes for awhile and then awakens to his usual deathly quiet house.

He realizes that he has been cleared to actually WALK for the first time in a month.

He climbs down off the bed, grabs the walker, and then places the boot on the floor, and starts slowly walking….making sure to place most of his weight on his good right side.

No problem.

Nothing snapped. Nothing broke. No crippling sharp pains. No sign of bone protruding from the side of the boot.

All systems GO.

He shuffles through the house, walking just a tad slower than DEATH itself, but eventually makes it into the kitchen…for the first time in 30 days!

He had made it to the dining room table on multiple occasions, but this was the first entry into the forbidden zone of the kitchen.

“Snack time!!”

He reaches for the fridge handle and starts to open the door…

The phone rings.

Crap!

He closes the door and shuffles the 5′ to the cordless phone perched on the nearby counter.

“Hello?”

“Idiot!! What the Hell are you doing?!!!”

(Uh oh….it’s the wife!)

“Huh?”

(Stall idiot..stall!)

“You heard me mister!! What the Hell are you doing?!!!”

“(Gulp) Nuttin….I’m just layin here watching TV….”

“(CENSORED)_____ Idiot!!! I know you are standing at the refrigerator!!!! The Doctor said you could gradually start walking…like to the bathroom….not all the way to the damn kitchen 12 hours after you see him!!!”

“How do you know I’m in the kitchen?”

“Good grief Idiot!! You’re the idiot and I’m the wife!! I have my ways!!”

(I glanced around the room and caught site of one of my idiot cats sitting on the counter, tail wagging slowly, as she grinned at me…… I would bet the farm that she was the one who ratted me out…. but who the heck taught her to dial the phone?……oh I see…maybe she used speed dial….yeah…that makes sense…. the idiot cat speed dialed the wife at work to rat on me sneaking into the kitchen….gosh…you know that sure sounds implausible when you type it out…..maybe she has a camera hidden in here somewhere…..but how would the cats work the camera?….oh well….anyway….)

“I’m not in the kitchen honest! I’m in bed…being a good idiot!….honest!!”

“Idiot!! I’m too busy to play idiot mind games with you!!! Get your butt back onto the bed or I will resort to getting real nasty!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…I’m in my bed….you’re freaking out over nothing….”

Click!

(Whew! She hung up…… I wonder what the heck Plan B was?”

RING RING RING

(Crap…there she is again….)

“Hello?”

“Marky!!! Are you really out of your beddie poo?”

(Crap!!)

“Marky!! You really shouldn’t be up out of your bed dear….please go back and lay down…..how is your bottom doing? Are you still having the rash on your bottom? Do I need to come down and put some ointment on your bottom? How are your bowel movements? Have you been pooping regularly? Are your kidneys ok? Have you been peeing like a big boy?”

(Gah!!!!!)

“Dang Mom….I was hungry…. I just wanted a little snack….I can’t believe my wife called you to rat me out….”

“She didn’t call me dear….the pretty little black kitty called me….”

(Huh? What the…..I knew it!!!)

*******

And for your viewing pleasure, hopefully while you are not snacking….

Some photos of the foot…. before surgery…one week after surgery…and 30 days later….

I can actually see ALL my toes now!!

Day 29.

Third post-surgical visit.

The verdict: The Surgeon could not be more pleased with the progress of the foot. It looks “Great”. (His words) I am well ahead of schedule. This laying on the bed for a month has done wonders to speed up the healing process on the foot and ankle. Not being out of the bed, I have not had the opportunity to screw anything up.

Until now.

I can now start walking. (Though he nixed the idea of disco dancing for now…)

He just wants me to walk, with the boot on, and wants me to put ever-increasing weight on the foot as long as I do not have any high degree of pain. He says, if things go well, I should be able to be full weight-bearing, with the boot, by another week or so. He says that as soon as my balance has improved with the boot, I can ditch the crutches and walker and just use my cane to walk.

As long as I don’t feel a snapping sensation, followed by my ankle and foot collapsing into a useless bowl of jello, causing me to crash to the floor, I’ll be just fine….. (My words, not his…)

Needless to say, this foot and ankle, with virtually no circulation, that everyone was worried to death about it not healing after the surgery, has actually healed far faster than even the Doctor expected.

Can I get an Amen! from the congregation?

He is starting me on a month of Physical Therapy, which I will be doing 3X per week. I’ll call the PT place tomorrow to set up an initial appointment.

You know what that means!

Yep, I’ll get to wear a little temporary name tag every day at the PT place

I think I will be ” HI! My name is Hugh Jass” on the first visit….

He will see me back in his office on Feb 8th, three weeks from now.

Best news yet…… when I see him in three weeks, if things are going well with therapy, and the foot still looks good……. we will talk about my climbing back onto my stationary bike….and then I can start the Tour of Europe 2012!

So, you know what this means…..

My “vacation” is soon to be over…

Before you know it, the wife and kid will come busting through the door early in the evening and will once again be screaming “OK Idiot!! Where’s our dinner!!”

I’ll be back to doing all the cooking…

All the laundry….

The dishes…

Paying the bills….

and before you know it, the wife will be screaming…. “Hey Idiot! That yard ain’t gonna mow itself!!”

Who would have thought that going back to being a househusband would actually sound so good.

Later today, I’ll be heading back to see the Surgeon for my third follow-up since my surgery. I am praying that he finally lets me start to walk with some partial weight bearing on the leg. This being trapped on the bed for most of the day got real old weeks ago. Last night, my son played the High School Basketball game of his life, and I missed it as I was stuck home alone as usual. The little guy started the game, whereas he usually comes off the bench, he played about 90% of the whole game, and he ended up scoring about 25% of the teams points. It was his proudest athletic moment of his young life, and I missed it!! Arrrrggggg!!! I need to get back to being able to walk so that I can get back to his games!! I’ll blog about the meeting with the Doctor in the morning unless there is some earth-shattering news that I just can’t wait that long to post.

An update on my book.

What an exhilarating and maddening process this book has become!

I now have the rough version of an introduction and the first twelve chapters typed up and saved.

Initially, I just dove in and started writing my story, as I knew it to be true, using all real names, locations, dates, etc. In doing research on memoirs, I see I have to tread a very fine line when dealing with actual living people. There are all kinds of legal and privacy concerns that I had never considered, no matter how guilty I know the intended targets in my book to be.

Although I have yet to talk to them directly, I fully expect that all my family members will have no problems with my using their real names in the book. In the early stages of my book, the true hero of my story is my Family Practice Doctor who was the first to recognize that the diagnosis I had been given after my disabling back surgery was a total sham. This man sent me to a specialist who proved the diagnosis was a sham, and then this Family Practice Doc of mine actually called a high-powered attorney and got him to take my case.

I have already contacted that Doctor and got approval to use his real name. I then resigned myself to the fact that I would need to come up with fictional names for all the Doctor’s involved in the rest of my book. No problem. In my usual manner, I came up with goofy names like “Dr. Quack” and “Dr. Clueless” to use, at least on a temporary basis, until I get the book finished.

Now, in reading further about memoirs, I find that just using the real name of the hero Doctor, may be enough for people to piece the puzzle together and figure out what the real names for the bad guys are.

So, I read that it is suggested that I make up fictional names of not only the main players in my book, but also make up fictional locations for where these events happened, where I lived, where I worked, etc.

Now, I’m looking at my name being the only REAL name used in the majority of the book….

At least in the chapters I have written thus far.

The main thing is that I want to get my story out there….

I was kind of hoping to be able to put a mug shot of my Spinal Surgeon, smiling in his orange prison jumpsuit, on the back pages of the book, but it looks like that won’t legally be possible…

Sigh…

It looks like I will be facing similar hurdles when I get further along in the book and I end up in the chapters directly related to this blog.

I’ll probably be contacting many of you to inquire about using your real names or blog names in the book.

If you wish to protect your privacy, which is totally understandable, I’ll happily work with you to come up with a fictional name for you, or if you wish, I can just leave you out altogether.

I have found the book writing process to be real similar what I experienced back when I was a runner, and later in life, when I started really riding that stationary bike.

With the running and biking, I initially started out real slow and it was a chore to force myself to run or bike each day. At some point, something internally just clicked, and things really took off. Now, I was running every day, or biking every day, and was always looking to run or bike ever faster or further.

When I first started the book, it was maddeningly slow trying to get things typed out into words. I think the short 3 page introduction took me about 2 weeks to write.

Then, something just clicked.

Now, I have to force myself to stop at one chapter with each sitting. If I had a foley catheter and an unlimited supply of IV Skittles and Chocolate, I could probably type out the rough version of the whole darn book within a week.

I am going to continue to try for a chapter every day or two.

My software outline program is showing me that I will have about 30 chapters in the book once I am done converting my notes into actual chapters.

After the rough shell of a book is complete, I will go back and will start cleaning up and beefing up each chapter individually.

Then, I still need to figure out what to do about illustrations or photographs, and then there is that pesky little annoyance of an actual title for the book.

A great blog friend, familiar with the publishing industry, assures me that the title will magically appear to me at some point during the writing process.

I’m still waiting for that little light to click on in my head.

“The Idiot writes a Book” just doesn’t seem like it would fit in on the tables at Barnes and Noble….

*** This is a re-post of a posting I did way back in January of 2006 on my now-defunct original blog. I had only been blogging for about two weeks, but you can see that the “unique” (warped and damn weird) sense of humor has always been there. ***

A large commercial airliner is in trouble. It’s engines have both stalled and the aircraft is now gliding through the skies and losing precious altitude while flying 30,000 ft above the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Inside, terrified passengers are scrambling to put on their life jackets, not being aware of the fact that there has never been a successful water landing of a commercial airliner in modern history. (Until Sully Sullenberger would render that point moot years later)

Inside the plane, a terrified four year old boy clenches his mother’s arm and asks ” will we drown in the water mommy?” Is this a reasonable fear for a four year old child to have? What if he asked “Mommy will the sharks eat us?” Again, is this a logical fear to have?

My Mother-in-Law would say they both are.

What if the situation is changed ever so slightly. Let’s say the plane is flying over the Sahara desert and the engines go out causing the plane to glide towards the barren sand hundreds of miles from civilization. In the falling plane is a 40 yr old man who grabs the arm of his mortified wife and asks “will the snakes eat us?”
Is this a logical fear?

I sure hope so, because this is me.

If I was on that plane, falling thousands of feet from the heavens towards what is sure to be a horrific and fiery collision with the desert below, the only thing on my mind would be “if I survive….will the snakes eat me?”

As you can see, I have a somewhat irrational fear of snakes.

I hate snakes.

Just typing the word makes me scan the floor underneath my computer desk…..just in case.

I see no useful purpose for their existence on earth other than to scare the living daylights out of me.

I am forty years old. To this day, I hate driving across a dead snake flattened on the highway. I know for sure that the twisted little thing is probably just playing dead and will wrap itself around my tires as I drive over it, only to uncoil itself and attack me when the car comes to a stop and I’m getting out of it.

Come on now, you all have that same fear don’t you?

I could be snowshoeing across the barren frozen arctic wastelands near the North Pole….and I would be nervously scanning the snow around me for any signs of snakes waiting to strike me.

You might think I’m a little crazy, that my dice are missing a few dots, that my elevator doesn’t quite go all the way to the top, and that my wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

I am not crazy.

I once went outside my front door in Chillicothe to check on the mail to discover a snake that had to be 50ft long stretched across most of my front yard.

I screamed like a girl, ran into the house, slammed the front door behind me, and did what every rational man in his mid-30′s would have done…..

I called my Mommy and Daddy!

Of course, when I called them, I whispered in a very low voice, because I wasn’t crazy….I didn’t want the snake to HEAR me!

My father has no fear of snakes but somehow Mother Nature did not see fit to pass that trait on to me.

After they quit laughing for a period of 10 minutes or so, the parents instructed me to get a garden hose and said to try squirting the monster with water to see if it would slither away. I’m not a total wimp when it comes to these matters so I got the hose from the backyard and prepared to blast the daylights out of the beast. It took me forever to get the end of the hose connected to the sink faucet in the master bathroom but I finally got it hooked up and then stretched the hose across the bathroom, out into the master bedroom, across the bed, and I strategically placed the nozzle right up against the screen of the now opened window and proceeded to blast away.

Yes, I was too much of a woos to go outside!

Water sprayed against the screen and proceeded to instantly soak everything in the bedroom but a little bit of water did make it outside and onto the intended serpentine target.

I dried off my face as best I could and peeked outside through the window. The beast still lay in the yard, unfazed, and had not moved an inch.

This was getting serious. If the snake did not move, surely I would have to somehow move everything and everyone out of the house quickly. There was no way we could share the property with this thing… Just then the loving, fearless little wife arrives home from school and sees this monstrous thing lying in her yard.

Much to my horror, she walks over, picks up the beast by the tail, notices me cowering in the nearby window, and says ” did you see this dead baby garter snake in the yard?”

I was relieved. Surely the dreaded garter snake had to be the most deadly of the species and much to my relief, this one was dead.

Curiously in it’s death (by drowning I’m sure) the beast had shrunk from it’s original 50 ft length to the amazing size of being only 13 inches long when my wife discovered it’s body. Isn’t mother nature a mystery?

I once ran over a snake with my riding lawn mower in my own back yard. I was puttering along minding my own business when I saw a large coiled snake disappear directly under the front of the mower. Within a split second I threw both feet up in the air and let out a loud scream as the mower inflicted a direct hit on the huge creature.

To my shock and horror, the dual spinning blades of the mower picked up the snake and ejected it straight out to the side of the mower without chopping so much as inch off the snakes body. It landed about 5 feet away and coiled back up and began to rattle loudly, obviously mad that I had just ran it over.

I can drive across a toy car buried in the grass and the mower will chop it into a thousand pieces. I drive across a huge coiled snake, the thing makes it through unscathed. Go figure.

Well anyway, here I am, both legs still sticking up in the air, again squealing like a girl as I frantically try to steer the mower as far away from the snake as possible. To give the snake ample time to calm down and exit the area, I didn’t finish mowing the yard for about 6 months.

Sure enough, he was gone. Good planning on my part. Now, to avoid this type of situation happening again I have come up with a unique solution. I hired a mechanic to attach the lawn mowing attachments to the bottom of my Ford Expedition SUV. Now, whenever I need to mow the lawn, I do so in air-conditioned, stereo equipped, totally enclosed, snake-proof comfort.

It pays to plan in advance. Now, I have no fears of mowing the lawn, until the crafty beasts discover a way to penetrate the Expeditions defenses and can get into the car and can drag me kicking and screaming from the vehicle.

In case that does ever happen, I keep a cyanide pill in the glove compartment so that the Snakes cannot take me alive.

It pays to be prepared.