I kayak therefore I am

Humor me. What do the following things have in common: an ex-boyfriend from high school/college… kayaking… writing… male pattern baldness… and Facebook.

Before I tell you, there’s a very real part of me that wants each of you to post your guess. However, there’s also a little voice in the back of my head saying, “That first voice is the one that got you sold for sheep in Italy (which is a completely true story). DO NOT LISTEN TO IT. Instead, keep in mind that some of these people actually know you and are armed with information about your life that you do not want shared via the Internet (you know who you are). Control the message and cut to the chase.”

So this is me getting to the point… kind-of… because, before I can tell you that part of the story, I have to tell you this part first. My name is mkromd, and I am a Facebook idiot. No really, it’s true. I don’t know how to post private comments, play games, or subscribe to feeds. I know how to “like” things and “poke” people. Seriously. Given all that, you can imagine my shock when a guy I dated twenty years ago found and friended me. 

Now, to be clear, he’s not just any guy. He was the first guy I ever actually cared about, as well as being the first guy to ever break my heart. And as I sat there, debating whether or not to accept his request, my friend (a large, beautiful, twenty-four year old, African American man who played college football) walked into my office,  so I asked him what he would do, and I swear to God, this is what he said, “Oh HELLLLL no. This is exactly why I don’t have a Facebook account. My wife thinks that I only slept with ten women before we got married. I don’t know why she thinks that. I never told her that, but she does, and who am I to kick a gift horse in the mouth. I don’t need girls from my past finding me, or - worse yet, finding her. Let it go.” 

But I couldn’t and alas… I succumbed to the temptation. Honestly, I didn’t care if he was married and happy. In fact, I wanted him to be. I also simply hoped that he would be bald. So I accepted… and I was vindicated… because he is… which, oddly enough, is a good thing. If he hadn’t been, I would have posted, “Oh no… Damn it. Are you working a twelve step program for creepy porn addicts and need to make amends?”

For the record - he was never a porn addict… but he is a college professor on the East coast now… and a lot of his students are linked to his page… and that would almost have made up for prom… almost. But I digress.

The point is that we started chatting, and honestly - I have NO idea what we saw in each other. He still whitewater kayaks like we did in high school and college; whereas I simply paddle in, sleep on the beach, and paddle out... He’s bald, while I – however - have hair… He grew up to be an English Professor who is writing the way too serious all-American novel; whilst I am a hack-blogger who hopes to get published one day… He looks like Mr. Clean, and I am lucky enough to use shampoo every morning because I need to - not simply because I miss it… He’s still pretty athletic and built like the Hulk; whereas I exploded out of my dress two weeks ago because I ate three doughnuts in a meeting (also a true story). He’s… what’s the word… bald? And I’m… well, not. Well, not yet anyway. Karma is a bitch. So, as much as I’m enjoying this… and I am... I have to stop or he and I will finally have something in common… other than the fact that our lives worked out perfectly and we’re both happily married to the people we were meant to find.

Talk to you later.

Mark Twain said it best, "If I had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter."

This month I've had a hard time writing. Between the violence in Syria, a mass shooting in Colorado, and the execution of an Afghan woman by men screaming, "God is great," I haven't had much to say. Instead, I've tried to be silent and I've tried to listen to the silence, hoping that the human race was worth running. Then, as fate would have it, I watched “A Thousand Words” with Eddie Murphy and figured out what I wanted to say. Spoiler alert... This post isn’t funny and I'm going to tell you all about that movie. 

First of all, let me say this, I apologize in advance for breaking my own blogging rule and preaching at you. I’m sorry if it’s offensive. I mean that. It’s not my intention, but - as they say about intentions… the road to hell is paved with them. Secondly, please feel free to take everything I say with a grain of salt. And finally, if you haven’t seen “A Thousand Words,” you should. It’s become one of my favorite films of all time, and it basically goes something like this... Through a simple twist of fate, Eddie Murphy's character becomes linked to a Bodhi tree. And, each time he talks, a leaf drops. When every leaf is gone, he dies.

Now, I don't pretend to be wise, but to me the movie makes the following point, “If we only had a handful of words to speak in one lifetime, we’d be far more judicious in how we used them.” We wouldn’t waste them on insults, cruelty, or arguments… and neither would anyone else. In other words, it wouldn’t just impact what we heard but also what we said. And that’s important. After all, wasn’t it Gandhi who wrote, “Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.”And really, who am I to question Gandhi? He was little, but he changed the world.

With that, I shall try to take my own advice and apply that philosophy to this post. Wish me luck. Disclaimer: When I talk about God, I mean the God of your faith, and when I say, “Him” it’s because I went to Catholic school, not because I believe that God has a gender or a skin color or a favorite religion, nationality, or politician.

This month, we proved Higgs boson. That’s right. The world spent three billion dollars to understand how particles acquire mass. However, please don’t misconstrue what I’m saying, I think that’s fabulous. But it makes me wonder… if it took ten years and that much money to learn about a God Particle, how can anyone think they understand God. And if you don’t understand God, how dare you invoke Him to advocate war on this planet, tell you how to discriminate against people in the United States, or murder someone in Afghanistan. That’s hate. Own it. And where hate exists, God does not. I’m not a Christian, Jew, Muslim or Hindu, and even I know that.

So if God isn’t in random acts of hatred, then where is He? In my opinion, exactly where Bono once said you'd find Him, “God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.” So if you aren’t willing to acknowledge that possibility, then at least acknowledge that if I can interpret Him one way and you interpret Him another, that no one can corner the market or be His mouthpiece. 

Otherwise stated, your view, words, and actions are yours. If you murder someone, it’s you. If you deny people access to health care or discriminate against someone because of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender, it’s you. And… to be clear, I don't pretend to know anything let everything about God, but to me - the little voice in your head called your conscience is a small piece of His divinity. That's why I listen to it instead of politicians, religious leaders, or anyone else. That said, I'm not knocking their role or the value they bring. Faith and dogma are hard, and I'm the first person to say thank you for a lesson worth learning, but if they're preaching hate or inciting violence, you should gut check their words with your conscience and wonder if that’s God or an agenda.

With that, let’s hope that as the Olympic Games begin we remember the human race is a relay. You must get from people and give to people. Otherwise, we’re all in last place. Sorry for the rant. I promise, next time I'll be myself. And I truly am sorry if I offended anyone.

They say yard work can't kill you, but why take a chance.

Do you remember in college when you had a car and your friends would ask for a ride, so you'd say, “Cash, ass, grass, or pass - nobody rides for free.” Well, at forty, that phrase doesn't mean anything even remotely close to what it did back then. These days it means that you pay thousands of dollars to an asshole who landscapes your yard, which causes you to suffer a small stroke, because you spent so much fucking money on actual grass. That’s what it means. And, that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that the yard he planted is full of weeds and the neighborhood association is going to fine us if we don’t get it under control. In other words, I have to start doing yard work… which doesn’t just irritate me… it genuinely horrifies everyone around me… and with good reason. The last time I tried to do it, I sent the following text to my best friend:

mkromd, “OMG. I broke the hot tub. The side wall thing fell off.”
TB, “HOW in the HELL did you break your hot tub?”
mkromd, “With the lawn mower. Hellooooo. How else do you break a hot tub?”
TB, “Do you need me to come fix it?”
mkromd, “No, I need you to come and cut the fucking grass. We’ll call a handyman to fix the hot tub.”

Honestly, I hate doing it so much that it makes me cry. Granted – not as much as it makes the neighbors cry, but still – there are tears. It’s so bad that passersby rapidly usher their children past our home and the people on our street won’t even make eye contact with me when I’m in the yard. And that’s where our story begins.

You see, this month, DB went fly-fishing in Montana, so for the first time since we moved in, the yard actually has fallen to me, and I know that’s wrong. I do. I know that we’re partners and the work should be more evenly distributed. I get it. But it’s one thing to process that logically. It’s a whole different ball game to process it emotionally. Because honestly, you might be surprised to know what I’d do for a Klondike bar, but you’d be downright horrified to learn what I’ve done to get out of yard work.

So, there I was, resolved to take the high road and do my part, when the automatic sprinkler system went off and nailed me. Thank GOD I wasn’t wearing white shorts… just a white tank top. Yup. Once again, my life was like, “Girls Gone Wild,” the mid-life crisis edition. Next time, I’m going to do it in a Burka. Why not? After all, like my dad used to say, “Dear Lord, please give me a sense of humor. If you give me strength, I may need bail money to go with it.”

Talk to you later.

For God's sake, get me to the chuch on time.

A few weeks ago, DB and I headed home to Appalachia for a wedding, which - unless you're a local - is like nothing you've ever seen before in your life. Because, not only are the Blue Ridge mountains home to the world's best Bluegrass music, they're also a Mecca for blue eye shadow consumers and preachers who handle snakes... all of which you're likely to experience if you're there for a special occasion.

Now, don't get me wrong. Where I grew up is honestly one of the most beautiful landscapes on Earth. So-much-so that the natives say they only inbreed to, "keep outsiders from coming in and ruining it." But, like everything in life, it has its pros and cons. Pro... mountain people definitely know how to party. I've actually attended receptions where the bar served homemade moonshine then handed the empty jugs over to the band so the music could start. Con.. after too much moonshine, I've played the jug... on stage... and there's a fine line between being so drunk that you go blind versus being just drunk enough that you're willing blow "whoo whoo... whoo whoo" into a bottle while a large bearded stranger in overalls sings, "Billie Jean is not my lover." Yes. Really.

That said, the saddest part of this post is that you think I'm joking. Actually, scratch that. The SADDEST part is that it didn't just happen to me in Appalachia. It also once happened to me in Mississippi at a barbeque festival. Though I remember neither incident, I've been told that I'm a natural. But I digress. The point is that two weeks ago my sister and I had to get our seventy-two year old mother ready for the wedding. However, before I can tell you that part of the story, I have to tell you this part first.

My mom is my hero. Several years ago, during open heart surgery, she acquired a Staph infection that landed her in a coma for three months. After "coming to" and spending a year in physical and occupational therapy, she was able to breathe, talk, walk, and live without assistance. Any lesser soul would have given up or died trying. She has done neither. But clearly, she’s not at the top of her game physically.

My sister is a school teacher who is built like a Barbie doll and suffers from Pollyannaism. She is annoyingly positive. Me, not so much. I’m short. I’m chubby, and I’m cynical, but only on the inside where it matters. So there we were - the realist, the optimist, and the pessimist trying to plan the work and work the plan. And that’s when it happened. My sister and I were no longer grown women. We were seven and fourteen again… playing rock-paper-scissors… in front of our mother... figuring out who was doing what.

After best-out-of-three devolved into best-out-of-five, and I STILL lost, my beautiful, perfect sibling got to help our mom into her silk suit while I got to get her into her pantyhose. Ironically, my mom and Aunt had to do the same thing for our grandmother years ago, and that’s when she let us in on a family secret. Booze doesn’t just help you take your nylons off, it also helps you get a pair of nylons on. So, after a bottle of wine and an hour of laughing until we cried, the three of us were ready to go.

The moral? Whether the glass is half full or half empty... there's still room to add alcohol - at least according to my mother. No wonder she's my hero. Talk to you later.

Nad's Hair Removal ©

Let me say this, I'm Irish. We are not a hairy people. In fact, we're so NOT hairy, that the two times my brothers attempted to grow beards, they simply looked like they had mange. Me? Not so much. I would honestly look like Frida Kahlo tomorrow if I stopped tweezing tonight.

No really, it's true. Without a diligent daily hair-removal regimen, I could grow a uni-brow that a Chia pet would envy. It's so bad that, even though I get my eyebrows waxed every five weeks, I still have to pluck them every evening. It goes something like this… I wash my face... brush my teeth... crawl onto the bathroom sink... stare into the mirror... and manically attempt to maintain my mono-brow for ten minutes straight... all the while hearing Rod Serling do Beat poetry in my head, "landscaping your face is a journey *pause/tweeze* to the land of the different *pause/tweeze* the bizarre *pause/tweeze* the unexplainable *pause/tweeze*… a journey that knows no limits.”

And that's where our story begins. In the space between our master bathroom (where I very recently had my first truly psychotic thought) and the salon (where I honestly just learned that men actually get Brazilians), a space, no doubt, eerily reminiscent of the Twilight Zone.

However, before I can tell you that part of the story, I have to tell you this part first.

The other night, as I was reading about electrolysis, I accidentally stumbled across a blog for women who suffer from Hirsutism, a rare condition of extreme hairiness. And, although it was mostly one heart-wrenching post after another about expensive and painful procedures that failed to produce permanent results, some of the stories were simply bizarre… including one about a woman who became so obsessive-compulsive that she took tweezers to work so she could go into the bathroom and pluck all day long. At which point, I found myself thinking, “That woman’s brilliant.”

Now… just for the record, I fully understand that wasn’t the appropriate response. I do. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t even the worst mental note I made. That went something like this, “I’ve been tweezing since I was twenty, and I probably pull five to ten hairs a night, every night. To do the math, that’s three-hundred sixty five (days) times twenty (years) times ten (hairs)… or 73,000 pieces of eye brow that I have removed from my skull.”

And instead of thinking, “Go me! I should have been an Algebra teacher because I rocked that word problem.” I thought, “Imagine if I’d put each one of those hairs into a jar. It’d be the size of an Ewok by now.” At that moment, the world slowed to a pause, and I realized that I was only one traumatic life event away from having become a serial killer. Because, let’s be honest… they’re the ONLY people on this planet who think about storing hair in jars. But… that’s still not the worst part. This is… I actually wondered, “If I HAD a jar of hair, to whom would I bequeath it when I died and what would the note say?”

The list of possibilities was long but distinguished.

Later, when I was at the salon, telling my stylist about it, we agreed that it was a slightly fucked up thought but definitely agreed that the world was an unkind place. Men… men can get blue boner pills for things that damage their self-esteem, but women… we just have to deal with waxing and tweezing. Minus Xanax, there is no magic pill for our problems. And that’s when it happened. A man began screaming at the top of his lungs. Every woman in every chair in that salon immediately stopped what she was doing and looked at each other wondering, “What the hell was that?” Until my stylist, whom I adore said, “He’s getting his nuts waxed.”

The universe may be unkind but at least it’s just. Talk to you later.

This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.

So, last week I got my wisdom teeth removed, and I almost died – and not because of the drugs... but because I'm an idiot. You see, after the surgery, I went home, took a nap, woke up starving, and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Turns out, my tongue was too numb to let me swallow and my jaw was too sore to open wide enough to let me scrape the food from the roof of my mouth. So I stood at our kitchen sink wondering if this was how it would end, if this was how I'd meet my Maker (or at least the paramedics) – unshowered, slightly stoned, and wearing a Clash t-shirt with drool all over it… a fear that I honestly have not had since college.

And that made me think of whippits.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you’ve probably never been to a Grateful Dead show… and you could not only pass a drug test… you probably never actively studied for one… unlike some of the people I knew when I was a sophomore at Penn State, but I digress. The point is that a whippit is when someone sucks nitrous oxide out of a can of whipped cream to get high. They call it hippie crack, but you probably know it as laughing gas, which is what oral surgeons give to patients to relax them before and while their wisdom teeth are being removed. Having had it last week for the first time, I honestly don’t understand how people become addicted to it. Really. It may not have ruined my life, but it damn sure ruined one of my favorite albums for me, Appetite for Destruction.

However, in order to tell you that part of the story, I have to tell you this part first.

Before my appointment, everyone said, “mkromd, you’re a coward. Take your iPod and listen to music. The drugs will stop you from feeling the pain, but the music will stop you from hearing the dentist’s drill.” So, I not only listened to them… I listened to Guns N' Roses… at full volume… before, during, and after the procedure. Now, if you've never had your wisdom teeth removed, it goes something like this: they put the nitrous oxide mask on your nose, they put numbing sticks in your mouth, they inject four shots into your gums (one by each tooth) and another shot into the roof of your mouth, then – after fifteen minutes or so - once you’re completely numb, they start the extractions. So there I was, insanely stoned, with very little jaw control and absolutely no self control, singing Welcome to the Jungle at the top of my lungs, while I waited for the doctor to get started. No. Really. Imagine a talentless Axl Rose, totally baked, with a horrible lisp, screaming, "you're a very thexy girl thath's very hard to pleath..." It was like MTV Unplugged meets Kafka, the Home Edition.

Honestly, the whole experience was utterly horrid… for everyone. I can only imagine small children in the waiting room, crying, and begging their parents to take them home and creepy sadomasochist patients like Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors saying, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

At any rate, it was awful but at least it's done. And, with that, talk to you later (even though it hurts to do it).

Powder to the People

I once read that if more people skied, there’d be less war. And, as crazy as that sounds, I believe it. In fact, just last week alone, we went to Steamboat and broke into someone’s condo, and no one was even mad about it let alone hostile. However… before I can tell you that part of the story, I have to tell you this part first.

You see, even though I lived out West and have been fortunate enough to ski most of the major resorts in North America, I’d never done Steamboat, which was definitely a mistake on my part. Now, I love it - and not just for the elevation or the powder, but because of the culture. Sure, Aspen gets the X Games, but Steamboat is becoming the new Mecca for winter biathletes, people who participate in a sport that combines cross-country skiing with target shooting. To quote the guy in the gear shop, “folks trudge through the snow, stop, shoot a gun, and keep going.” It’s like Chicago… with mountains. 

That said, please don’t get me wrong. I do NOT cross country ski. I wouldn’t even do it if I lived in a smaller country. I downhill, period… but I also digress. The point is that the locals there love their mountains, and I cannot blame them. I would move tomorrow if the stars aligned. As for breaking and entering, this time it wasn’t my fault. 

Unlike previous years, DB and I took the kids and met his mom, his sister, and her family at the resort. And, because they aren’t cheap, the four of them flew directly into Hayden and arrived at 3:00 PM as scheduled. However, because I am, we flew into Denver, got into the rental car, and hit a blizzard on the way to Steamboat. After a six hour drive… through the mountains… in a white out... we made it to the main lodging office, checked in, got the keys, and headed to the condo. Sadly, it wasn’t ours. No really. They gave us the keys to someone else’s condominium. 

Luckily, they weren’t home. We know because we walked through each and every room trying to figure out why we were given a dirty condo that was filled with Jesus art… until finally, after fifteen minutes, I called the concierge who profusely apologized and told me, “Whoa, you’re not in unit 32. You’re in unit 23. Sorry man, my bad.” 

You know, ever since that night, I’ve caught myself wondering what those poor people thought when they got back to their condo. Did they think that someone gently broke in and took something, and did they spend the rest of their vacation trying to figure out what it was? Honestly, I almost took a six pack of beer just to give them some peace of mind. That way it wouldn’t have been so… random. That way they could’ve opened their fridge and screamed, “What asshole steals someone’s beer?” And it would have been over for them. But I didn’t give them that closure, and now they just have to wonder… forever. On the up note, I didn’t break in and leave anything on the counter just to fuck with them either, so they should thank me! 

At any rate, after all of that, we went back to the front desk, got new keys, went to our own condo, then met up with DB’s family. I’m pleased to announce that a fabulous time was had by all. The white out was worth it because the powder was to die for, and trust me about Steamboat. It’s amazing.