Free Tanqueray

Mrs Ozzy and her best friend were planning their first wedding. The lady that does their hair was getting married, and they were in charge of making things run smoothly, getting the photographer, dj, etc. They were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and they thought it would be "fun." I'm not sure how planning a wedding would be fun, but to each their own. I wasn't thrilled about attending the wedding since I wouldn't know anyone, but I was going to support my bride. Well, the wedding went well, and the reception was a cash bar, and some pretty good heavy hor'dourves. Well, Mrs Ozzy's payment was free drinks at the reception. She told me they were serving Tanqueray just for me.
Well, I couldn't let them down, so I had a couple drinks. Danced a couple of dances, drank a couple more drinks. Then it occured to me that each of the 12 tables at the reception had a disposable camera. Put there for the guests to capture their experience at the reception. So, I went to every table, took a picture of myself with their camera and encouraged them to use up the film. Throughout the night as people left and tables were empty, I took the camera from the table and used the remaining film. Then, get another drink.
We stayed till the very end and did a little cleanup, and Mrs Ozzy drove us home.
I woke Sunday morning with a headache, and a fear that I had embarrassed myself, or worse, embarrassed the wedding planner. I didn't get an earful when I got up, so I must have behaved pretty well. I hope that is still the case when the film is developed.

Like, why?

I have a few pet peeves. One is the improper use of the word "like." I can handle an occasional "like", but it drives me insane when a person can't convey a thought without a blue streak of "likes." So, I very seldom watch "LA Ink", but a friend of mine is going to appear on the show soon, so I tuned in tonight. I was 5 minutes into tonights episode, when I had to rewind it to the beginning in order to accurately count the "like's." A 60 minute show (which is actually about 44 minutes less commercials) had 112 instances of an incorrect use of the word. That's like one "like" every like 23.57 seconds. Good Grief.

Being Old Sucks

I am 43. Usually I don't feel old. Then, I go to work where there are 128 people in my dept. the average age is 33.4 (the median is 29.8) and its 60% women. There are FIFTEEN people that I work with that hadn't had their first birthday when I started my career at this company. And this wasn't my first job.

So, this year I started dying my hair. I use women's hair dye (the cheapest I can find) rather than men's. I tried that men's stuff once and it lasted about a week. The one thing I did like about it is the gloves are bigger in the men's dye. I have to really be carefull not to rip those little gloves that come in women's hair dye boxes. Other than that, its just a pain in the ass to leave that crap on your hair and moustache for 25 minutes and keep it off your skin.

There was a time in my life when I would try to keep stuff like dying my hair a secret. It is more fun to just make fun of it.

Fixing Things

The pull cord on my weedeater broke. It was true pain to replace the spring that retracts the cord. It reminded me of a time when my old man and I took the oven door off at Teddy's house. The thing came off real easy, but putting it back on was quite another matter. We aren't stupid, but we certainly felt like it as we screwed around trying to get this thing back on. That is how I felt with this cord spring on the weedeater. The thing came apart very easily, but getting it back together was pure hell. So I had to call my dad to get some sympathy. The call started something like this:

Me: Hey Dad, you remember that oven door we had such a hard time getting back on?

Dad: Ya, I remember.

Me: Well I'm having similar problems with this weed eater that I'm working on. It is driving me crazy, so I stopped to drink some beer and give you a call -

Dad: That's how you tell if a man's tough.

Me: Huh?

Dad: That's how you tell if a man's tough, if he trims the hair around his nuts with a weedeater. (Dad remembers every joke he has ever heard. He is a joke remembering/telling machine. Jokes are so engrained in his personality that he sometimes just blurts out punchlines. We'll be driving to Lowe's and he'll say, "cunning runt" or be telling a story and say, "the fantom rides." These are punchlines to jokes that you have to stop him and ask to hear the joke to you understand what he is talking about.)

Me: Oh.

Dad: You know how to tell if a woman is tough?

Me: Huh?

Dad: If her vibrator has a kick start.

Me: Oh. pause Back to the weed eater...

When my old man gets on a roll, he is a really funny guy. Sometimes I laugh with him, sometimes I openly laugh at him. We talked for another several minutes about his health and his upcoming trip to Montana.

I ended the call by saying, "Dad, I love you." I planned to say that when I made the call. I had to plan it, because I can't remember saying those words to my dad in my life. Never. When I was young my dad would say he loved me, but as I recall, it was in the context with the other kids. Like, "I (or we) love you boys." Never to me as an individual. I'm certainly not blaming my reluctance to sharing feelings on my dad. I know without a doubt that his dad never told him he loved him, although I'm sure he did. My grandfather, the son of immigrants grew up on the streets of New York in the depression. Expressing love was not something he ever learned.
Before hanging up Dad said he loved me as well.

I am proud that I am the original "dirty old man's" grandson, but there are a few family traditions my old man and I are working to change.

Candy What?

Ozzy Jr asked me an interesting question earlier in the summer, "Dad, at what age can I start cussing?" I thought to myself, "whatthehell kind of question is that?" I didn't have a good answer, just "you have to be older than you are."

Fast forward to Saturday. Beautiful weather, I have a ton of stuff to do, and its Ozzy Jr's job to cut the grass and he finally got busy on it. 10 minutes in he saw a wasp. Last week he saw a wasp and wasn't able to finish the job due to his emotional state. Now, he's too scared to cut the grass because he saw a wasp. I was not happy. Cutting the grass was not on my agenda. At the point of our father/son discussion when I knew he was not going to finish the job, I said words that my father may have said to me. "Well, you just take your candy ass inside and unload the dishwasher!" He disappeared into the house.

Earlier in the day we had the disucssion of doing what you fear to overcome the fear, but obviously, he wasn't buying it. I resigned myself to cutting the grass. 20 minutes into the chore, he came out and told me he decided he could do it. He took over and cut the rest of the yard. I was proud that he overcame his fear and later I told him just that. I also said, "sorry I called you a 'candy ass'." He replied, "I like the word 'candy ass'."

I like the word "candy ass" too.

Only at My House...

People often ask me if what I write here is true. I promise, I'm not motivated enough to make this crap up.

We were spending a quiet evening at home watching a crappy movie we had rented (The Jumper thumbs down), and Mrs Ozzy gets up off the couch and scoots the coffee table out a little. I had Poco (little dog) in my lap and Icee (big dog) was at our feet. Somehow, as she scoots the table out Icee catches his leg in the curled up foot of the coffee table. He starts yelping, twisting himself around, and I look down and he has somehow gotten his leg awkwardly wedged into the table. I feebly try to get him into the right position to free him, but no luck.

This looks very BAD.

He calms down relatively quickly, but he is hopelessly stuck. I tell Mrs Ozzy to call 911 and tell them to send the fire dept. On her way to the phone, she bumps the table and the puppy goes nuts with pain. The dispatcher tells her they will call animal control, but they can't dispatch the fire dept for a non human emergency. She said, "forget it" and hung up. I tell Ozzy Jr. to go across the ditch and get a neighbor that I'm sure has the tools to cut him out. Meanwhile Mrs. Ozzy starts calling other neighbors to come down.

As the first neighbors start to arrive a policeman comes by. Apparently, the police have to be dispatched every time you call 911. He says he'll stay and help. So, John (a neighbor) suggests taking the table top off then using a hacksaw to cut the table leg off. I tell him where the screw drivers are, and I go get my trusty angle grinder. I think, "screw a hacksaw." Meanwhile, John's wife Jody poured oil on the spot to see if there was a way to slide it out. No dice. So, John gets the table top off in pretty short order. There are several points that have to be cut through to get this done and I start with the smallest. 3/4 of the way through, as sparks are flying and the dog is going nuts, I was persuaded to stop. We used the hacksaw to finish the cut. We had at least 4 or 5 cuts to go. I was sweating, and my livingroom smelled like dog crap.

The policeman very adroitly then called the fire dept. They were there in 5 minutes. I guess they believed him more than us. They used the jaws of life to cut the leg off my coffee table. (I can tell Mrs. Ozzy is digging this well built fire fighter). At the suggestion of the policeman, I taped Icee's mouth shut for the protection of everyone. The policeman, fireman, and the fire captain carried him to the car with the coffee table leg in tow. As we put him in the back of Mrs Ozzy's car the table leg came lose. He was stuck in the table leg for about an hour.

Special thanks to our neighbors, the Smyrna Police and Fire Depts.

Talking to God

Every night when Mrs Ozzy and I put 11 year old Ozzy Jr. to bed we have prayers. He came up with the format. One person does the "salutation" one person does the "body" and one person does the "closing." The responsibilities for these are rotated each night. Jr also came up with a somewhat unique "salutation" and "closing" that we use every night. We stress that this is a time to talk to God, so it should be respectful. Here's how it went last night.
Mrs. Ozzy: Dear Jesus and God
Ozzy Jr. : Please don't let Momma find out that there is a Victoria's Secret catalog and a flashlight under my pillow.
(then he squeezes my hand, which means he's finished with the "body")
Me: and be with Ash and Kels and Granpa and Aaron Small.
Everyone: Love, sincerely The Nelsons, Amen.