11/29/19 Laziest Thanksgiving Ever, For Us?

    Wife warned us that we would be heading to San Antonio at noon, so I planned all my night time shenanigans accordingly.  I got up to do my usual at 3:00am and was up paying bills and doing blogs and learning more and more about these snowflakes on liberal arts colleges ruining the country with their whining.  The more I hear, the farther to the right I am afraid I am going.  But that is for another day.
    I knew I had to get some sleep, so I turned off the laptop at 7:30am and went to bed, figuring I had already slept about 3-4 hours.  I was glad to have woken up at 10:50am, Wife was still in the bathroom and hadn't yet started being a pain in the butt about waking up.  We got going and dressed in very relaxed clothing, I mean warm-ups and t-shirts, we are not fancy peeps.
    We were on the road by about noon and surprisingly, it was very crowded on the highway, but traffic was moving quite fast. so we got there in good time.  I made it at least to New Braunfels before falling asleep, but I think Wife might be drugging me as she turns on my seat warmer, wraps me in a small blanket and tells me shh, close your eyes.  I only do as I am told.
    We got there and everything was already done.  It is quite nice that the younger sister is an actual cook and she likes to take charge of the kitchen.  It was a pretty standard Thanksgiving meal with turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, cranberry jelly (from the can), and green beans.  Oh and some crescent rolls that were so good, just loaded with butter flavor.  We did the usual little prayer while we waited for one of Wife's cousins, then we sat down to eat.
    I guess it's true that the turkey meal makes one sleepy, I wasn't even done and I knew I needed to lay down and fast.  Wife saw it in my eyes and pointed me to her parent's room where I promptly napped for the next 3-4 hours.  Wife made Javalina come wake me at one point so we could sing Happy Birthday (for his birthday) and I did not react well to it.  We sang, I threw the finger at Wife for waking me, and I went right back to sleep.  Wife knows me too well and hardly reacted.
    It was nice to just lay and sleep until I got tired of it.  I woke up when Wife was starting to talk about leaving and had some of the desserts.  For some reason, this whole family that has never shown any interest in sports, was all wrapped up watching the Cowboys lose to the Bills.  I sat on a smaller table over where they have the television and ate the cherry topped cheesecake, and the pumpkin pecan cheesecake and some black forest cake.  The pistachio pudding is something Wife makes all the time, so I didn't get any but I did cut a piece of regular pumpkin pie and swallowed it whole.
    The drive back was shockingly easy, for me.  I sat down in the car, wrapped my legs with the little blanket and fell asleep before we made it out of the neighborhood.  I woke up just as we got off the highway and turning into our neighborhood, so the trip was very nice.  I ran in to poop and shower and then we stayed up watching TV shows we recorded and eating leftover turkey and desserts.

11/28/19 Five Years Now?

    I have now been writing a blog a day for five years straight.  I am glad I am doing it, even if my readers have never gotten to more than about 100 or so on any particular blog.  After doing it for two years, I considered stopping or at best cutting out the weekends.  I still sometimes think of it and it is not the weekends, but the nights in which I work that seem the best candidates to cut, but I can't do it.
    There are some nights that just suck and I can't think of anything new to get on about, but usually one of my boys is keeping me abreast of something new in their lives.  Javalina is closest to me right now as he relies on me to pick him up and feed him after school.  Some days I don't even see Boy, he is so busy with school and his love life.  Still, eventually, we all end up back together.  These next few weeks are the best.  Wife and I are off Thanksgiving week, then we work for a couple of weeks and then another two weeks for Christmas and New Year's week.  Three weeks off in the timespan of about a month and a half is great.  I would hope for colder shittier weather to keep us tucked in at home, but it is Texas and we get what we get.
    Javalina has now just turned 15 and he is on his way into becoming a young man.  He is still very immature, but he is a good kid and means well.  Boy has just been made an employee where he was an intern, so he is at a pretty interesting part of his life, almost reaching adulthood without dropping a kid.
    Wife is taking some classes and we are hoping that she will be able to move back soon as all this back and forth on her part has gotten quite old.  I can tolerate being without her all week, but then she comes in HOT and Bitchy sometimes, accusing us of not cleaning enough or keeping up with the house.  It is a lot of house to keep up with, first of all, and I do work a full week too, it's not like I'm home all week fiddling with my gonads.
    Girlie and her BF will be out in the next couple weeks, they have an apartment lined up in Kyle.  It'll be interesting to have the house to ourselves and this year I also plan on replacing the floors, possibly room by room, to stay on budget.
    So let's start another 365 days and see where we go.  We have had too many brushes with hospitals and sickness, here's hoping we can stay healthy in 2020.

11/27/19 I Need To Quit Trying To Flip Over?

    My folks were here this past weekend and although I seem distracted and out of it, I do enjoy having them here.  I get a kick out of my dad being himself, kind of a pain in the ass possibly realizing it and doing it for fun, or oblivious to his actions, but still somewhat funny.  His best one this time was at Logan's.  He orders unsweet tea and while the waiter is trying to get the next drink order my dad is pointing at the middle of the table yelling "pinkies!"  "Pinkies!"  The waiter is trying to figure out what and my mom says he needs Sweet and Low (they come in the pink packages).  This is funny even if my mom is embarrassed by her man spouting nonsense.  My problem is only exposed when I have to interact with them because they are the only people I try to flip my way of living for.
    I work nights and that has been the case for the last 20+ years.  I don't mind it, I like sleeping during the day, I like being up in the middle of the night.  When it is just my family, meaning Wife and my boys, it is easy enough.  Wife knows that I like to go eat and she knows that like a big baby after I eat, I like to take a nap.  I will normally get up earlier than anyone and write these blogs and look at YouTube videos and whatever crap that interests me until the rest of the family joins me.  This is when I am usually looking to fall asleep.  I worked Sunday night (and I am a whore, if there is OT I will take it even if I am on vacation), but had told my mom I would get up and join them for breakfast/lunch.  I got home at 7:00am, then I was up until 9:00am hoping my folks would get up.  Once I laid down I didn't get up until noon.  I barely caught them packing and leaving.  My mom wasn't upset, she said to go back and get more sleep, but I still felt like I ignored them on their way out.
    Once they were gone, we got together and went and had lunch at Chicken Express.  Of course, when we finished I just wanted to come home and lay down.  Honestly, I had only slept three hours, so I wasn't really being selfish or trying to sleep the day away, this is one of the sacrifices of working nightshift.  I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon/evening away.  Wife wanted to sit and watch TV in the living room after we cleaned up our bedroom a bit, but I just dropped on the mattress where my brother slept and I was out.  I woke intermittently, to eat dinner, wife made a great spaghetti, and I watched a little TV as Wife came back and forth.  As soon as everyone went upstairs (after midnight) and Wife sent Javalina back down to get me, I woke and then I was up for the night.
    I ironed like 6 shirts for the boys, then I sat where Wife normally sits, it was a bit stuffy (she was asleep, it was around 3:00am).  Then I started thinking of our bills and came back down to make sure everything had gotten paid.  After this, I started watching YouTube videos and before I knew it, it was 8:00am and I forced myself to go to bed.  It is about 1:00pm, Wife is making potato and sausage with eggs and depending on where we might go after, I might just take my big baby nap.

11/26/19 Just Mentioned This Snowflake Society?

    Even before Carolla's article, I had mentioned a few weeks ago about the pussification of sports because of mama's protecting their babies from harm's way.  I think that has bled into other aspects of the sports world.  I wasn't even looking for anything in particular, just how bad the Longhorns lost this week after it seemed like they had their shit together for this season.  The tragedy that had to be reported by one "Nancy" named Nick Bromberg of Yahoo Sports (really?  Is that a thing?) was Volunteer's (Tennessee) Coach Pruitt Grabs Player's Jersey, Scolds Him After Penalty.  Who gives a shit, first of all?  Would you rather he pull him over and offer him a hot tea and they have a chat about his feelings and why he would reach out and grab a player of the opposite team in such a nefarious manner?
    What the fuck?  These players are playing at another level than you can imagine when you go out and play your Ultimate Frisbee, Bro.  They have their ears pinned back and they are out there to kill, hoping to be seen as aggressive enough to get to the next level and play in the NFL where they can make their millions.  Occasionally, a coach has to dial back a player and that is alright.  By this point in the season, these players have spent the last 4-5 months living under the teachings and philosophy of these coaches.  The coaches are a bigger influence and measuring stick for how these young men will turn out and contribute in the real world than their families back home, any coach that has run a program for awhile, probably hand selected the players on his team, he doesn't want to see idiot behavior on the field.
    I was never a jock so I can't speak firsthand, but my younger son has been playing football for three seasons and even in the off-season him and his teammates "love" hitting each other as a means of showing love and affection.  I get "bum-rushed" by my son who really seems to have too much testosterone in his teenage body at least once or twice a day.  The boys of fall as they are called in that Kenny Chesney song don't feel pain like you or I do.  Someone pulling on their jersey or even helmet is what they need to slow them down, sometimes.  I asked my son specifically about a coach grabbing you by the jersey and pulling you, he said "in a game you are so jacked up by adrenaline and excitement, you might have a finger twisted back or a ripped nail and you don't really feel it.  A coach has to grab you and shake you sometimes to get you out of that 1000 yard stare on the field."  Would you rather the kid keep hitting the opponent's QB illegally over and over again?  If we look you up, Mr. Bromberg, you are a Missouri alumni, so you have an interest in making the Tennessee coach look bad, shame on you.
    The offending player probably benches 200-300 pounds, and has been playing since he was in pee-wee league, a combined 12-14 years of football, think of all the collisions and kick-offs where they just smash into each other and your candy ass is worried about a coach tugging on a jersey?  Get the fuck out of here and let a coach coach.  You go write about Thanksgiving dinners and how things are "heating up in the kitchen."

11/25/19 A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood? (Movie)

    I really expected this movie to attract more people than it did.  It was a very meager audience of maybe 5-6 people total in that theater (although it was the 9:30pm showing).  I thought we were alone in the theater, just Wife and I until the end of the movie when both sets of people up on top started looking at their phones and one could see the glow of their screens.
    I expected the movie to be about Mr. Rogers and his path from young nobody to TV personality.  Instead, it was really about a guy tasked with writing about him and through him, we see how great a person like Mr. Rogers really is.  My initial observation of the man tells me he has a little OCD or something where he isn't "normal", but probably touched by something and him being a bit on the spectrum, as they say.  Time and again, they show him fascinated with any human that is a little different, but the attention he pays to them is not the kind of attention regular people give you.  He really listens, like his focus goes 100% to that person or thing in front of him.  He even has to have a "handler" to keep him moving in a crowd, otherwise it seems he would lock eyes with a person and want to stay there all day hearing their life story.
    Lloyd works for Esquire magazine and he has been tasked with interviewing Mr. Rogers, of PBS fame.  He thinks it is a fluff piece and he seems to be a kind of guy that only writes the "truth" in which he digs up the dirty reality and makes people look bad, was my interpretation.  Mr. Rogers was warned and gladly accepted and even insisted on him interviewing him.  They have a few different meetings, the first one leaves an incomplete feeling in Lloyd's mouth as it is between filming of the PBS show, but he wants more and in the subsequent days, Mr. Rogers calls his house and has a conversation with the wife who he has remembered all the details of their conversation and she is star struck.  Mr. Rogers has noticed that Lloyd is not well, showing up with a bruised nose and upon finding out he was in a fight with his dad kind of goes on a mission to help him mend this broken relationship.
    Lloyd wants to keep his life private and only focus on Mr. Rogers' story, but to have him open up, you must give of yourself too.  Talking intimately with someone means you have to share too, it is not just a one way conversation.  We are left wondering a bit about Mr. Rogers, he never really opens up about his "anger" and he seems to split his emotions into different puppet characters.  The one cat that is shy seems to have a lot of interesting stuff "to unpack" as they say, but the story doesn't get into it.
   In the end, Lloyd is better for meeting and getting to know Mr. Rogers.  He mends his relationship with his dad who walked out on his mom when she got sick, admitting he was afraid and immature at the time.  He is now trying to mend fences as he is sick and nearing his death.  After briefly fighting him away, Lloyd accepts his father back into his life and seems because of that to loose the angry edge that has plagued him all his life.
    It was touching and Tom Hanks was terrific, but it also played a little hollow to me.  We didn't get to see Mr. Rogers lose his shit, throw any tantrums.  He mentions that sometimes he feels blue and a way to feel better is to play all the "low tones" on a piano.  In the end scene, he is sitting on a piano and after playing a delicate little tune, he moves over and smashes the "low tones", so there is something deeper to Mr. Rogers, but I guess that will remain private.
    I ended up standing up since I thought it was just Wife and I (the other people were on the top most row and I didn't notice them until they had their phones light up after the movie).  I think if I had sat through the whole movie, I probably would have fallen asleep, it was a little slow and although there were touching moments, you could see them coming, so I did tear up, but never got to bawling.

11/24/19 FInally Celebrated Mijo's Birthday?

    It took an extra day, but we finally celebrated Mijo's birthday, he suggested going to eat at Pappadeaux for lunch.  We went and ate probably around 3:00pm, and it was a good time, because everytime we have gone, that restaurant is always full.  I think a lot of the normal people that would be eating there were distracted by the UT/Baylor football game.  The game had started at 2:30pm, there were couples at most booths, most of the tables were empty.  We got the biggest round table, which I like because you can see everyone, but it leaves the appetizers in a weird no man's land where they are just too hard to reach for.
    Javalina took two of his friends that spent the night, which I enjoy doing, specially when you hear from then that they have never eaten at a place like this and they are just left saying "wow."  Even cooler, the two guests were not playing around like girls that wouldn't taste anything.  They were sampling everything they could get their hands on.  I got fried oysters on my plate and they looked a little too gross for me, but the boys had them and one of them liked them so much, he took the half that my mom bit and put down when she decided she didn't like it.  They also tried gator bites, squid and octopus on an appetizer plate, and then their meals.  I thoroughly enjoyed everything, I try not ordering a fried platter, but then I am left liking the way they look.  I ordered that and there were just too many fries making the plate look big.
    We sang Happy Birthday there to Javalina and we left.  He wanted to come home, but we went to Central Market to get some sort of cake to celebrate at home.  We ended up getting individual pastries for everybody, which is a little weird because it ends up being mostly cupcakes and a few small round cheesecakes.  It all worked out and by the time we were finished eating that delicacy, it was about time to go to the movies.  Instead of going to Fiesta Texas, the boys opted to go watch Frozen 2.  It seemed a little "gay", but the boys are still young at heart and they did have a good time.  At the same time they were watching Frozen, we went and watched the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood movie.  I thought Tom Hanks did a great job with the role, but I will talk about it on my next blog.
    My mom did have one slight meltdown and ended up yelling at me and my brother.  When we got out of Central Market, it was already dark and she asked (very casually I thought) if I wanted to drive.  I thought it was more to save her from following Wife, but I figured we were already at Ben White, so she should know more or less how to get home.  After I eat any big meal, my eyes just close by themselves.  After awhile, I wake to panicked voices and mom had missed the turn at Slaughter Lane from Manchaca and then she was upset and felt lost.  She said at home that at night she has a hard time seeing.  I thought it was a suggestion of "do I want to drive?"  that is more of a required "someone else needs to drive."  Anyways, we all got home safe but a little bit yelled at.

11/23/19 What's My Age Again?

    I rushed home yesterday to take Javalina to school.  Mijo turned 15 and it was his birthday, and I wanted to drive him to school since I usually leave that to Boy but I do enjoy hearing him go on about anything, the boy can be entertaining.  We usually listen to whatever but really I bounce between the alternative station and The Bridge, which plays soft rock of the 70s and 80s.
    Yesterday, we were on the Alternative station and Blink 182 came on with "What's My Age, Again?"  It is a cool little song about being in your early 20s and being a douchebag, not having matured yet to an adult.  The song starts out with the protagonist making out with a girl....

I took her out. It was a Friday night
I wore cologne to get the feeling right
We started making out, and she took off my pants
But then I turned on the TV

And that's about the time she walked away from me
Nobody likes you when you're 23
And are still more amused by TV shows
What the hell is ADD?

My friends say I should act my age
What's my age again?
What's my age again?

After he pisses her off, he leaves and as he is driving home, decides to once again, be a jerk...

    Anyways, this got me thinking and I told him now that you are turning 15, you are about to join the most hated human form, the male teenager.  From a baby to an old man, male or female, there is no more despised version of human than what you just joined.  Because of testosterone, you will be doing stupid shit for about the next ten years.  All your little outbursts of "fuck you" and "fuck that" are just little baby steps of you going in that direction.

    He responds with an "I'm not so bad.  I say those things because I am in my safe space with you and I can be myself."  I wasn't sure if he was fucking with me or being honest, but then he goes on a little rant cussing about the traffic and people around us and he catches himself "oh, that's what you probably mean, I get it now."  I just said "mmm-hmm.  I know I have a good ten years of stupid coming from you, amongst moments of brilliance, hopefully."  We were then close to school and I dropped him off.  He did have a good day, which I was glad, plenty of his friends seemed to know it was his birthday.  And here is the rest of the lyrics to that song, it really is a great catchy song with the perfect 90s angst feeling...

Then later on, on the drive home
I called her mom from a pay phone
I said I was the cops, and your husband's in jail
This state looks down on sodomy

And that's about the time that bitch hung up on me
Nobody likes you when you're 23
And are still more amused by prank phone calls
What the hell is Call ID?

My friends say I should act my age
What's my age again?
What's my age again?

And that's about the time she walked away from me
Nobody likes you when you're 23
And you still act like you're in freshman year
What the hell is wrong with me?

My friends say I should act my age
What's my age again?
What's my age again?

That's about the time that she broke up with me
No one should take themselves so seriously
With many years ahead to fall in line
Why would you wish that on me?
I never wanna act my age
What's my age again?
What's my age again?

What's my age again?