Tag Archives: the boy

Whatchootalkinbout Saturday: What’s Mine Is Mine

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Don’t say it—I know what day it is (and I don’t even need that damn camel to tell me). I know I’ve been absent. There’s a reason…

Let me paint you a picture: I am standing in the middle of an open field, eyes closed, hands outstretched, communing with nature. Then the sky darkens, suddenly, rain begins falling then strafing the landscape, pelting my face. The wind picks up, sweeping across the land, grabbing sticks and tree limbs, rocks and debris, swirling around me in a roaring maelstrom. One moment I was in the center of peace; the next, in the eye of a hurricane.

That, my friends, is life. My life.

In the last couple of weeks, I fell of my game: my novel rewrites screeched to a halt and, while I tried to uncover the secrets locked within Come Hell or High Water, I haven’t written here like I should have. Sleep is a precious commodity I can ill afford. My gym has filed for divorce and wants alimony. Why? Because, while I’m more than the sum of my parts, each one of my parts needs something. My wife needs my time and attention and I’ve taken to writing her a letter daily to let her know I give a shit about how she feels. My kids need more oversight than I considered: the Honey Badger is actively searching for her Prince Charming (she’s fucking 11! 11! She needs to be searching for My Little Pony). The Boy has renewed his subscription to Doing Dumb Shit magazine and is now a Platinum subscriber—he even got the 64% cotton FuckIt t-shirt. And two suspensions. Two.

Here’s how that ended:

Uh Oh...

Uh oh Spaghetti-oos! This is what “I Hope It Was Worth It” looks like in my house.

wait wait wait—like Kanye West, I’ma finish in a minute but let me tell you watching my wife smash a hammer into an iPhone 4S and seeing that plume of glass was something I will never forget.  It was almost as funny as when she charged into The Boy’s room like Hurricane Amanda and tossed his xBox out the window. Did you hear that? She threw his xBox out of the bedroom window. That it hit an aluminum bat on the way down is another matter entirely.

Anyway, there’s plenty happening. I do have a novel I’m supposed to be updating. I try to write to 2 blogs 3 times a week. I get hungry. I have a dog. You may or may not know it but I’m a professional too and the people who pay me seem to want to sort of return on their investment. I know, right? Asses. Part of that ROI (because that’s how we say Return on Investment at the club *cue rich old man laugh*) means I have to get my Project Management Professional, or PMP, certification. The Boy calls it my PiMP certification. Those snazzy little three letters equal 35 hours of classes plus test prep and an actual test. Yeah, so there’s that.

What it comes down to is me being pulled in a variety of directions on the way to getting where I’m actually supposed to go. Where we’re supposed to go. Navigating this journey we call life really means making a series of choices and investments. Time is our most precious commodity and choosing how we spend it and where we invest it are the most significant choices.

Recently those significant choices, my choices on where I spend my time and invest my talents have come under fire. The return on that investment doesn’t seem to meet other people’s measurements. I don’t spend enough time writing or I’ve made the wrong choices in my professional career or the person I’ve chosen to spend my life with or the type of parent I choose to be, prescriptive or permissive—it doesn’t satisfy their assessment. It doesn’t meet their standards. But here’s the thing: when the ledger of my life is tallied and the accounting is all said and done, it won’t be a single, solitary human being doing the math.

The idea is simply this: live and let live. It isn’t my place to comment on the choices you make for your life because they are your distinct choices for your specific set of circumstances. Where your life is destined to go, who you’re destined to be, is something none of us can see or understand or comprehend. There is always more that pushes us, that drives us, that shapes and molds us and steers us where we’re supposed to go. If we follow the example of everyone else, we’ll simply be everyone else. I don’t think we were made to be same.

I’m learning that it’s okay to not give a shit what other people think. We get one shot at this life. I’m choosing to live mine. Live yours.

And that’s why I chose to be a squirrel for Halloween. Seriously.

How We Broke Disneyworld Part I

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Hey, remember when I said we were gonna see if Peter Pan could really fly? Well…four broken bones, a hyper-extended knee, a fused spine and a fractured pelvis later, it turns out he can’t. He also can’t walk anymore. Ever. Did you know the characters in Disneyworld aren’t actually the REAL characters? They’re people DRESSED like the characters. That’s not what they advertise. I bought magic, dammit, but it’s all strings and pulleys and hot air balloons and secret doors. Yeah, I was surprised too! Well, we found out Disney doesn’t actually appreciate when you try to kill one of their characters. Even the lame ones.

Oops.

So after the Peter Pan debacle, we ran. Or tried to. Disneyworld does have its own security force called the Mickeys—they’re real people with Mickey ears for hats but they are bound by the company to only talk like Mickey, Donald or Goofy. So the four of us are being chased by 6 big, burly guys and we’re hearing Goofy yell, “Gawrsh, you gotta stop right there!” and Mickey shout, “Hey, you little bastards, we’re gonna get you!” We never did understand what the Donald Duck guys were saying.

We break out of Cinderella’s castle but the whole episode happened during the Wishes firework show (yes, we damn near killed Peter Pan in front of thousands of people. Go big or go home, right?). Our exit is blocked! Break left into Tomorrowland. We have two options: Stitch’s Great Escape or Space Mountain. Escape sounds like the plan so we jump on the ride. Booooo! Stitch just laughs and spits on you for the whole ride. But here’s the thing: the Mickeys have to follow the rules of the park while they’re in the park. If we run on a ride, they do too. And they have to stay on it, strapped in and everything. They even get carded for Fastpasses! We don’t get anywhere but, Stitch being Stitch, he does help us out: he spits enough water on the ground that our pursuers slip, fall and collapse in a heap.

On to Space Mountain.

There is a 45-minute wait for the ride and we have 6 Mickeys on our tails. Screw the standby line. We ambush a bunch of teenagers with Bieber hair, snatch their Fastpasses and tear up the line. I’m not proud of what we did but, hey, they had Bieber hair—they deserved it on GP. The Mickeys come up right behind us but they get broken up riding as Single Riders. I should point out here that the title of the Space Mountain ride is a misnomer: it takes you neither to space nor the mountains. We’re right back where we started.

Dammit.

We need a diversion.

The Honey Badger provides.

In Tomorrowland, there is occasionally a walking, talking trashcan named Push. Wrong day for Push. Because that’s what he got: pushed into the yelling, screaming Mickeys. They’re down for the count. We wade into the rush of attendees and strollers, Hoverounds and crying kids, bolt up Main Street and make a break for the Main Gate. It’s almost too easy.

But leave it to Disney to make things harder than they actually have to be. Rather than escape the park into, I don’t know, the PARKING LOT, we are funneled into the ninth circle of Hell—better known as the Transportation Center. This lovely invention is a conundrum of poor signage and bad lighting and arrows that lead no-fucking-where, all trying to direct you to three actual exits: the Tram to the parking lot; the Ferry to God-knows-where, and the monorail.

Everybody and their mama is on the Ferry boat. And they are slow! Not “old-lady-writing-a-check-in-the-grocery-store-line-how-much-are-those-apples-do-you-have-a-pen?” slow. Not even “new-parents-who-can’t-figure-out-how-to-close-the-fucking-stroller-they’ve-had-for-the-last-10-months-so-it-can-fit-through-the-X-Ray-machine-at-TSA-and-maybe-allow-the-1500-people-behind-them-to-make-their-flight” slow. This is something different. Something worse. These people are “I-have-never-been-anywhere-but-my-80-person-town-where-teeth-are-optional-and-what-is-a-dental-plan?-Janey-come-on-Tanner-get-down-what-does-that-sign-say-where-is-the-car?” slow. Fuck the ferry.

We turn to the Monorail. The Boy starts having anxiety attacks over the monorail because he SAW IT SIT ON THE FUCKING TRACKS AND THE RIDE WAS BUMPY ONCE. Once. This was actually a real conversation. Who the hell is scared of the Monorail at Disneyworld? Oh, I know who! My kid. Monorail’s out.

Tram it is. We break for the tram, wade through the crowd, trying to find the one for the Heroes lot (or was it Villains? Shit where is the car?) I hear the operator in the back begin his speech, “This is the tram to—agghhh!” Wife took him out. All I see is his orange and white vest floating in the Florida breeze. Guess the driver is mine. I rush his little cabin, tell him in my best Amityville Horror voice, “Get out!” He does. The tram is ours.

We speed off into the night, no idea where the car is, on a parking tram loaded with 80 tired, angry, confused Disney patrons of all ages, canes and strollers and walkers dribbling off the sides. And as we pull away, I hear over the loudspeakers, still in the Mickey voice:

“…they’ve got a tram into the Villains lot. This is a Code 626.”

Code 626. Fugitives.

But wait! There’s more!