July 2009

Is Summer Over Yet?

Everyone has their favorite season.  Some people love winter because of the snow and the cool crisp air.  Some people love the spring when all the flowers come out and the trees and grasses turn green again.  Some people love the autumn leaves falling to the ground.  I happen to love summer.  I love the hot days.  I love the long days.  I love the warm evenings.  Why am I ready for it to be over?

When school gets out for summer, there is a collective sigh of relief from everyone.  The school year is a grind for everyone.  The teacher’s have had enough.  The kids can’t take it anymore.  The parents are worn out from helping kids with homework and end of year projects.  The first day of summer is usually a beach day.  The kids are excited.  Mom gets the cooler out and loads it up with snacks.  The beach chairs and boogie boards go into the back of the car.  Everyone has a great day at the beach.  You come home a little sunburned and a little salty and there’s no homework for 10 weeks.  Yeah!

Where has all the goodwill gone?  The last I saw it was under a pile of laundry by the garage.  The time before that is was under a couple of dirty dishes that were found on the ground outside’s someone’s bedroom door.  I didn’t realize we had room service here.  There has been a complete break down of society in the last six weeks.  The school year brought structure to daily life that doesn’t exist during the summer.  It’s hard to have structure when you get up a 10am, watch tv and then eat breakfast at noon.  I don’t know what’s going on anymore.  People are coming and going out of this house and I can’t seem to keep track.  When you’re at the beach until 10:00pm at night and it’s your turn to do the dishes, they don’t end up getting cleaned.  When you’re spending the night at a friend’s house and you didn’t fold your laundry, it just ends up on the floor.  Help!

The worst part is trying to re-assert your parental control.  The wife and I were happy it was summer also.  We know the kids need a break.  We want them to do fun things during the summer, but you can’t have fun every minute of the day.  We still need some dishes washed and some clothes folded, but they are resisting.  Six weeks of no daily routine and the kids have gone feral on us.  Finally, this past Tuesday, I had to wield my fatherly powers and get everyone’s attention.  Yesterday, Karen finally had enough and whipped this place into a frenzy.  I almost had to leave for a couple of hours:)  We had a family meeting and the kids even admitted they haven’t been doing their chores and promised they would get better.

Hope you’re having a great summer.  I’ll see you at the beach after I wash the dishes.

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Stuff in the Garage

Hi Everyone!  I’m beach camping and I’d like to introduce guest blogger, Jerry Huber.  Enjoy.

2 or 3 times a year, I make an obligatory, yet totally futile attempt to clean out my garage.  I always start out determined to get the place organized but the job seems to overwhelm me and I just end up moving stuff from one place to another.  It’s not that the garage is too small.  It’s a 3 car garage and it’s never actually had a car parked in it.  The place is bigger then a condo we use to lived in.  No… the problem is that I have a lot of stuff.

The logical, right side of my brain knows that I don’t really need half the things stored in the garage.  But when it comes time to throw something away or drop off a couple of boxes at the Goodwill, I seem to find a reason not to.

My wife is a fanatic when it comes to the holidays.  She has boxes of decorations for every holiday celebrated in North America.  These seasonal knick- knacks usually spend 2 weeks on display in the house and the other 50 weeks stored in the garage.  We have 8 boxes of Christmas decorations… 9 if you include the artificial tree we bought at Costco last year.  The box for that thing is the size of a refrigerator.  Any time I’ve even suggested that we get rid of some Christmas decorations my family acts like I am the Grinch and I am committing a personal affront to the baby Jesus.

Halloween is another big holiday at my house.  In addition to several boxes of Halloween decoration, I have 6 boxes of costumes.  Six boxes of Halloween costumes may seem unnecessary, but you’d be amazed how often my family and friends will call me when they need to dress up as a dinosaur, a butterfly or a prostitute.

Scattered throughout my garage, I have a set of tiki torches, 2 grass skirts, a grocery bag full of plastic leis, 3 strings of lights shaped like palm trees, an inflatable Polynesian totem pole and a set of limbo poles.  There’s a certain sense of pride that comes from knowing that at a moments notice I can throw together a very respectable backyard luau.

There seems to be a lot of sports equipment in my garage.  Baseball, softball, soccer, basketball, volleyball, horseshoes, tennis, bowling, skateboarding… if it’s shown on ESPN, I’ve probably got the equipment for it.  I’m not sure yet which sports my kids are going to excel at, but I would hate for them to miss the opportunity to be a pro athlete and sign a lucrative endorsement deal with Nike or Gatorade just because I threw away an old baseball mitt.

We live in Southern California and we spend a fair amount of time at the beach.  So naturally, in the garage I have 3 boogie boards, 10 folding chairs, 2 umbrellas, 5 cooler chests, 3 beach blankets and a vast assortment of beach toys.  Before I got married, packing for the beach meant grabbing a dirty towel and picking up a six- pack at 7- Eleven.  Not any more.  I also have 2 surfboards, which is kind of odd since nobody in the family has surfed since my oldest daughter outgrew her “surfer- girl” phase 6 years ago.

There’s 26 cans of paint sitting on a shelf in my garage… 9 of them are subtly different shades of white.  I’m pretty sure 4 or 5 of them were left behind by the previous owner of my house.  I’ll probably never use any of it… but at $30 a gallon, throwing it out would be like pouring French Champagne down the toilet.

I have 2 space heaters just in case it ever drops below 40 degrees here in San Diego.  It could happen, you never know.

Each of my kids has a large box cram- packed with homework, tests, book reports and art projects dating back to preschool.  My wife is firmly convinced that not saving the kids school work would somehow make us horrible parents and that our lack of support will be a reoccurring topic when our kids end up in therapy.

I have a lot of tools… or at least that’s what my wife says.  She may be right.  For me, walking through the tool department of Home Depot is only slightly less arousing then browsing at the F-Street Bookstore.  At last count, I had 27 screwdrivers, 11 pairs of pliers, 9 saws, 6 hammers, 8 measuring tapes, 3 crow bars, 4 levels and 5 crescent wrenches.  There’s a wrench in my toolbox that I’ve never used.  I’m not entirely sure what it’s for but I’m sure I’ll need it someday.  I won’t even get into power tools.  I could probably justify this assortment of tools if I worked in construction but I spend most of my time sitting in front of a computer monitor.  If I’m ever invited to an Amish barn- raising, I’ll be ready.

I have 5 ladders and a fear of heights.  I think surrounding myself with ladders is my way of confronting my acrophobia.

That’s just a small sampling of the things in the garage, but you get the general idea.  Maybe someday I’ll be able to shed my need to hang onto stuff… maybe not.  But right now I wish I had invested my money in Rubbermaid plastic storage boxes rather then General Motor stocks.

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WEIGHING IN ON THE KING OF POP!

Do you remember the day Elvis died?  I remember the day like it was yesterday.  It was August 16, 1977 and I was ten years old.  I didn’t know or care who Elvis was.  I didn’t even know he was a famous singer, but I did know the song “Hound Dog” for some reason.  The day a 42 year old has been, overweight, drug addicted singer died taking a crap galvanized a family memory for me. 

I was two weeks away from starting the fifth grade at Pacific Beach Elementary School.  We lived on Beryl Street about four or five blocks from the beach.  In a lot of ways, it was the best of times.  That summer my grandma and grandpa came to visit with two of my dad’s sisters.  They were taking a long vacation that had started out in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  There last stop before seeing us was in Las Vegas.  They came to town a jovial bunch.  I remember all the laughter and goofing around.  My grandmother went swimming in the Pacific Ocean for the first time and rode a boogie board.  My grandfather(originally from Chicago) slipped me a one hundred dollar bill and told me to keep it between us.  I gave my two aunts a book on every recorded shark attack in the history of the world.  I had just seen Jaws at the drive in and had a fascination with sharks that sticks with me to this day.  After reading the passage of Robert Pamperin’s fatal shark attack at La Jolla Cove in 1959, my two aunts decided to not go into the water the entire week they were here.  The day Elvis died lives in my mind because I remember all of the news coverage and all the talk amongst the adults.  I remember all of the jokes about dying on the toilet.  If Elvis didn’t die while I had family in town would the memories be as vivid?  I don’t think so.

Let me come back to present day and the death of Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop.”  The similarities between the death of Elvis and MJ are eerie to say the least.  Another has been singer, anorexic, addicted to plastic surgery, prescription drugs and allegedly small children dies under mysterious circumstances.  Somehow this has galvanized another famly memory for me and most likely my kids.  You see, every year we go beach camping here locally at San Elijo State Beach in Cardiff by the Sea, California.  For five days it was surf and sun in the California sun.  At one point we had 4 adults, 13 children and 2 dogs at the camp site.  It could have been more, but I’m not really sure.  My youngest Jacqueline had an awesome skateboard wipe out.  She end up with scrapes on both knees, both elbows, her back and her stomach.  My oldest Stewart went to the free Switchfoot concert and in a dollar raffle won a $500 surfboard.  Michael Jackson died and that’s all anyone or everyone was talking about.  My buddy even busted out the “Essential Michael Jackson” cd one night.  Who knew he would have that in his car?  The guys cracked a lot of pedophile jokes and the women lamented the loss of a great talent.  For some reason, I got the vibe from the kids that this was a trip to remember.  Other trips just seem to blend all together, but this one will stand out forever due to the King of Pop.

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