Bar B Que that stuff Son!

One day Loo came home with a huge box and asked me to help her carry it into the garage--that's Loo talk for carry it into the garage by the way. I set it down out back and started asking question about it. I knew Loo's mom wouldn't approve of a second bbq, (but this one was charcoal instead of gas, and way better). I voiced these concerns to Loo and she said that she bought the BBQ for me (because I voiced my dislike of the other grill. It is too hot.) I freaked out because that meant Loo's Ma would get mad at me, and she has been mad at me for so many things in the recent past that I think I have developed a psychosis as a result of it. I spend a lot of my thinking time worrying about how not to make her mad. It bothers me, a lot. I exploded quite suddenly at Loo, who thought she was giving me a thoughtful gift to me, and she was I just couldn't see it then. That bothers me, and it made me wonder if perhaps I might be manic depressive because I have these sudden extremes of happiness/euphoria and sadness/anger/frustration/rage, or perhaps I think I do. I don't get them much, but one of Loo's epithets for me is 'bipolar bear,' which always makes me aware of a perceived random occurrence of a negative emotion, be it anger, or sadness or something. Anyway, I said some unjustifiably mean things to her and apologized to her right before she went home. I felt bad the rest of the day. Why do I do that?

And today, a day or two later, I started to assemble the grill. As I removed the pieces I became aware of the absence of instructions for the grill. There weren't any. It must have been an item at walmart or home depot that someone got and turned into Goodwill, where her friends works, did I mention he gets great deals at Goodwill? The box was devoid of instructions. I ventured online for a grill instruction sheet pdf, but it was in vain. They must have the instructions at the original place of purchase. With no other option left to me I did what any sensible man would do. I did what my dad and brother would surely do. I put it together by the seat of my pants with the box picture as my guide. I have a good mechanical aptitude and spatial reasoning skills. In a couple hours I had it together. The hardware was missing one lock washer and had an extra flat washer, so I made due. And then we used it to grill some burgers.

Loo found a recipe online for these fiesta burgers which were really good. Let me tell you how to make them because it is so easy. First you take a packet of taco seasoning mix and mix it into one pound of ground beef, I did this like it was clay or dough and kneaded it in there, breaking it in half and starting over until its all mixed in the raw meat. I wash my hands at this point for some reason. Then you start making little patties, and by little I mean thin, as thin as you can make them, eight in number. Then you take a 1/4 cup of chive and onion cream cheese and a 1/3 cup of cheddar and mix it together. Then take a quarter of that mix and put it in the middle of four patties. I wash my hands at this point for some reason. Take the other patties and place them on top of the cheese filling ones forming a sandwich of raw beef. Pinch the edges closed and seal them up real well. Grill like you would grill a burger and put them in a bun. And on that bun put some salsa and some avocado. Enjoy. I had two, plus a regular hamburger (the package of ground beef had almost 2 pounds in it)

I see now that it is getting late and I should go to bed and get up early for work tomorrow.

It has been really uncomfortable here, weather wise. It's been in the 90's with high humidity, which I have never really experienced before. It's like sucking in the same air you breath out.

I found some article in Harpers about carrying a concealed handgun on facebook that I printed out. I think I'll read it now. Knight.

You Tell her Mel Gibson!

While I drove along Stadium dr. in Loo's Maxima--because she doesn't like to drive--I enjoyed the cold breeze from the vents of the air conditioner I just fixed. While she used my electric razor to shave her legs we listen to tapes of an irate Mel Gibson yell at his, well, I don't know who she is because I don't follow famous people, but I think she was his wife. His messages had a time stamp and Howard Stern would say, "and this is Mel at 2:17 am," and play the tape of him breathing heavily into the phone before he said, "...Whore! I don't need you any more! I don't want you any more. I hope you can't sleep. Youuuuuuuu fuck..."

The things he said to that woman, wow. You can learn a lot about people from the irate messages they leave on your answering machine from one am to four am. We laughed at some of the things he said. He seems obsessed with sleep as his main and repeated insult was he hoped she couldn't sleep, but as was evident from leaving a message on the machine, his curse wasn't working because, apparently, she was sleeping well. He would say he didn't need to talk to her and hang up and call back 3 minutes later and ask if she was there before taking off on a verbal tirade again.

He mentioned something about a placenta and a tree ceremony that she didn't smile for. A Stern Show listener had to call up and explain how some people take the birth placenta, dig a hole, bury it and put a tree on top of it. I think those people have way too much time on their hands. Anyway, if you ever do a tree ceremony for yourself gentle reader, make sure you smile, apparently it's a BIG deal if you don't.

Loo and I listened and I checked to see what parts she found funny, most of what she laughed at I did as well.

I like listening to out of control celebrities. Its as though they fake being human for so long that when they do something truly human, losing it for example, it's a big deal. Oftentimes after they lose it they have to do a lot of damage control or lose sponsors, contracts, agents, etc. Behind their famous face they throw tantrums like the most annoying of us. I like that, breaks the wall that separates them from us, which they are quick to put back up.

I liked Tiger Woods' fiasco more. He was the poster guy for everything wonderful--for golf, for Nike, for inner city kids, you name it. And then he is txting porn stars about how he owns their pussy looks forward to sucking their ass, and he wants to pee on them. Hilarious. I wasn't surprised when those txts came out. The way I saw it he was hiding something huge, he seemed to successful to have it all together, because if he wasn't a sex fiend he might quite possibly be in the running for best human ever. Right? Name one thing Tiger woods did prior to his fiendish sexual infidelity.

I don't follow celebrities, or gossip, but when it comes up on Howard Stern and they have psychologists analyzing the celebrities it is truly fascinating.

Just wanted to share the image of Mel Gibson yelling at his un-wife while Loo shaves her legs with my razor and I drive her car to the doctor. Funny stuff.

another update

Great googly moogly it has been awhile!

I been away for awhile. Loo had to go to the ER for a fever and 7day long head ache. It took all night and they did a lot of tests, and needle sticking, which she hates and cried through. I felt so helpless but I did the hand holding thing and the "don't worry the doctors will fix you right up," thing. They found nothing wrong with her. We have gone doctor to doctor with more tests and more negative test results. She was ordered to lay down flat and not get up until they could rule out a spinal cyst. She was literally bed ridden for a month, with an unending headache that got worse if she sat up. She was miserable. And her mom... I don't know, its like she could only care about it for a week or so because after that week her mom wanted her to do chores and clean up after herself and

it was like she totally forgot about doctor number five saying, "Lay down and do not get up until we can rule the spinal cyst out." It made me mad that her mom would do that. Loo wanted to die so the pain would stop. I spent all my time around her to help her, but I couldn't make the pain go away. Finally mom and Loo exploded into an argument with me in the middle. It was awkward for me, but I didn't leave her side as they hashed it out. Mom wanted the room more organized, Loo had to explain it was beyond her ability to do that, neither one of them were listening to eachother. So loo exploded in a fury of pain and anger and screamed at her mom, and the level of pain finally registered in mom's brain and she stopped and cried and had to get the brother involved as mediator. I have had experience with people in constant horrendous pain, nobody else in the house has. You cant do that to people in pain, they can't get away from an argument... im just rambling. It was bad.

But for the first time in a month Loo has been vertical and mostly pain free. Doctor (neurologist) number seven changed from pain medicine to preventative medicine and supplements to great effect. Loo is mostly back to her old self, and I have been able to return to writing.

Before all this I went without Loo to her family's cottage on drummond island in the upper peninsula near Canada. It was a good time. I drove a '54 chriscraft, I sailed and I explored a bunch of tiny islands by kayak. Loo had to go to school and she told me I should go without her because it would be fun and it was. Ill write more about it, for now im just filling in the gap.

Our lizard is doing well, growing and eating like a healthy Savannah monitor lizard.

I had moved into Loo's mom's house and into Loo's sister's room, we'll call her Beans. I just got a book shelf and organized my room which used to be Beans' room. For the first time it was clean and everything had a place and it was good. That night, not even 13 hours from its new organized state, Beans called from Colorado, there was a problem with her living arrangement with her boyfriend and she was coming back tonight on a last minute flight.

I had to remove any sign I had lived there before she arrived. All my stuff is in the basement again in messy hap hazard piles. For some reason Loo's mom wont allow me to move the two dressers that are down there, so I got a new dresser to handle it.

Loo's mom became scatterbrained and for lack of a better word crazy about Beans returning. She started postulating why Beans would need to come back so fast and she made herself even more crazy with thought of her daughter being beaten, or getting pregnant, or both or something else. It was weird because Beans treats her mom poorly, but Mom bends over backwards to accomodate the whims of Beans, now 20 years old. The silver lining in all this is that the Mom's focus will be shifted from all that I do wrong to Beans and all she does wrong because she is worse than me with the things that make the mom crazy. I think I talked about that in an earlier post about waterglasses and dishes and such. I like to use the same glass of water to drink from throughout the day, and the mom doesn't like that because dirty dishes need to be placed in the dish washer.

Got to go get my teeth cleaned. Wahoo!

God stole my teddy bear

I was seven years old when I stopped believing in God, it wasn't until I was fourteen or so that I stopped believing in the supernatural. But I can not forget the day I stopped believing in the christian God, the god of Abraham, Yahweh.

I was in Carpenteria with my family for the weekend, my great aunt has a place right there near the beach. It was Saturday night when I realized I didn't have my teddy bear. I had had him forever, he had one eye, he was white and his name was Snowy. I took him everywhere. Until one day I lost him, somewhere. I looked everywhere for that bear and I couldn't find him. I was in tears, my family looked everywhere my dad was asking people on the street if they had seen him. Nobody had.

It got to be saturday night, the last night we would stay there before returning home. With nowhere else to turn, and as a last resort, I turned to Yahweh for help. I told him that I realized I hadn't been a very good christian. I skipped out of church whenever possible and seemed to only go for the doughnuts, which were delicious, and I didn't seem to spend much time thinking about Him or doing anything to spread his word and stuff. But, I told him, if he would let me find Snowy, or remember where I had put him, I would be the greatest christian He had ever seen. There would be no end to the wonderful things I would do for him. And it was then with the hot tears streaming down my face soaking my pillow that I prayed myself to sleep repeating the words, "Please let me find him, please let me find him."

The next day I still couldn't find him and we had to go home. I looked up to the sky--for every seven year old boy knows precisely where God sits to ruin your day--and said, "Thanks for nothing jerk-face. It would have been so easy for you to let me find Snowy. I wasn't kidding about before, this will be the last time I talk to you." And I remember feeling so much anger. I wanted to do to Yahweh the worst thing that I knew how to do, the worst thing that any human could do. I waited for the moment when no one was watching and I flung my little arm into the sky and flipped Yahweh the bird.

For years I probably still believed in Yahweh enough to hate his guts while waiting for snowy to turn up. It wasn't until I was about fourteen or so that I came to understand that none of the mythic traditions of the religions of the world or of history were true. I realized it was silly to be mad at an imaginary figure and stopped. Then I started learning about what we know and what we don't, and found that science was responsible for so much and that religion tried to compete with that as though it were on equal or better footing. This made me mad on account of the unfairness of it all and I read a great deal about all sorts of subjects, while religion continued to claim the wonders by saying in essence, "wow, science, isn't that extraordinary? God is more complicated than we thought."

After reading the book of Job I see that this would be my own personal Job story; Satan made a wager with Yahweh that if you took his Snowy away and ruined his day, he would curse you, and Yaweh, ever the sucker, said, "You're on." And Satan won, although since Yahweh knows everything he would have known that I would curse him and he wouldn't have taken the bet, which makes Satan the fool for betting with a guy that knows the outcome ahead of time.

Anyway, that's how it happened. I wish I had a better ending for you, but I don't.

I wonder what would happen if on my death bed someone brought my Snowy to me? Now that would blow my skull.