Let there be a feast of properly prepared meats and cheeses for all

So the Bears are going back to the Super Bowl.  It's been twenty-one years since they were there last.  And I am just all a-tingle.

Well, no I'm not actually.  I proclaimed my allegiance to the Saints a few days ago, if I recall.  And when they creeped within two points of the Bears early in the second half of today's game, I thought the choke was on.  It was on, it was just the wrong team that choked.  New Orleans started giving the ball away.  You're not going to win championships doing that. 

I was eighteen in January of '86 when the Bears beat the Rams by 24 to get to Super Bowl XX.  I watched the game at home, and it was never close.  Towards the end it started to snow, just like it did today.  Two weeks later they were champs.  It was the first Chicago title of my life-we were still five years away from the six titles in eight years stretch of the Bulls.  I am still waiting for the Blackhawks and the Cubs (we don't recall anyone else in the city winning anything, especially October 2005).

No one could have been happier than I was when they won.  I used to be a complete Bears fanatic and I admit that once I experienced the feeling of them winning a Super Bowl that it changed the way I felt about them, but it took a few years after that for it to be complete.  I remember being miserable when a team that should have won more than just one title was knocked out in the playoffs on their home field the next two years, so I was still as into them then as I was before they were champions.  But by the late 80's, my level of interest in the Bears was forever altered.

Blame the media first.  They started sucking up to the team after the Super Bowl win and spent the next decade with its nose inserted squarely up the proverbial backside of every person involved in the organization.  I swear if the Russians had nuked London in 1989 on the day that the Bears played a pre-season game, the game would have been the top story on the 10 o'clock news.

Your "average" fan in this town adds to my chagrin.  Within minutes of the game ending today, the "news" was reporting live from some bar, because, you know, it's essential that we know what Dave, a 26 year old bookstore worker from Rogers Park thinks.  And it's always something witty like "Yeah, I knew they were going to win.  Bears!!! WOO!!!  We're going to the Super (BURP!) Bowl baby!" 

Man, I've really gotten old.

As I write this, Indianapolis just beat New England, so it'll be the Colts and the Bears in two weeks.  Two weeks!  What torture!  Every top story on every local news show for the next fourteen days will be about the Super Bowl.  And then there will be the bet between the mayors.  Gee, what's Daley going to put up?  Millennium Park? The Sears Tower? Meigs Field (oops. wait a tic...)?  How about this: if Indy wins the Super Bowl, they get the White Sox.  If the Bears win, the Indy 500 is forever run in the Windy City.

In '85, the Bears only loss was to Miami.  When they Bears won the NFC championship, Miami was just kicking off the AFC championship against New England in South Florida.  Everyone wanted Miami to win, so that the Super Bowl would be a rematch.  New England won that game, and then lost the Super Bowl 46-10, and it was more lopsided than that score shows.  Everybody moaned about the missed opportunity, about how the Bears would have avenged their only loss of that season.

One of the Bears' three losses this year was to New England.  I bet by nine tomorrow morning I will hear someone moan about not being able to pay back New England.  Personally, I'm glad it's Indianapolis.  Now we don't have to hear all about the '85 Super Bowl.  Plus, Colts-Bears is a better match up.

It should be a good game, and yeah, I guess I want the Bears to win, but it certainly won't kill me if they lose.  It's a game where I will be happy with either team winning.  And for the sake of my sanity I will do my best to ignore the hype, lest I spoil the fun of everyone else who will live and die with this team.  I remember how it feels, and everyone should go through it at least once.

I just remembered that two days after the Bears won Super Bowl XX, the shuttle Challenger exploded.  That kind of put a damper on things.  And then my nephew was born one month later.  Time does fly.

Go ahead and call me Grumpy McGrumperson, and remember how superficial and hypocritical all this is when I go batshit whenever the Cubs get to a World Series.

How to be a Nuisance

Walk in the middle of the street.  Talk to the actors while sitting in a crowded movie theater.  Smoke 'em if you got 'em.  Spit in a drinking fountain.  Sing along with your i-pod on the train.  Say "it is what it is." Answer your  cell phone in the library.   Tell a friend you'll give them a ride to the airport and forget to show up.  Leave the copy machine out of paper.  Sit on someone's eyeglasses.  Say "baby needs a new pair of shoes" at a craps table.  Yell "bingo" when you get blackjack.  Eat the last Twinkie and leave the box in the cabinet.  Root for the Cardinals.  Poke holes in bicycle tires.  Tell your nephews that there is no Santa Claus.  Wear baseball caps sideways.  Answer "What?" to every question asked you.  Swipe your neighbor's Sunday paper.  Talk about your bowels. Turn the bass way up.  Yodel.  Don't replace your divots.  Drink milk from the carton.  Buy the wrong flavor ice cream.  Pick your toenails.  Be that person in the group that never makes a decision.  Write in library books.   Leave your clothes in the washing machine.  Belch in church.  Take pennies out of fountains.  Burn the toast.  Hide the remote.  Carve obscenities into pumpkins.  Don't squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom.  Never use turn signals.  Be late for everything.  Lick envelopes right after finishing an Oreo.  Cite Oprah.  Scoff at the idea of global warming. Forget to pay the electric bill.  Talk down to waiters.  Call yourself a rebel.  Ask people how much they weigh.  Don't use coasters.  Interrupt.  Sneeze on the neck of the person in front of you.  Throw snowballs at moving cars.  Leave the windows open when it rains.  Vote Republican.

This is Not the 99% I Wanted to Be a Part of...

I spent a majority of last week in Overland Park, Kansas, partaking in matters of both business and pleasure. Throughout my visit I kept having the same thought over and over: "Why am I so tired?" For whatever reason, I could not get my engines going. No amount of caffeine in the morning nor sleep at night made me feel any different. 

I must be getting old.

By five-thirty Sunday afternoon I was in my car and on my way back to Chicago, determined to make it home with as few stops as possible-one for gas and dinner, and one or two for a restroom.

I only made one stop, in Des Moines, Iowa. I stayed for two days. And it probably saved my life. 


I feel off.

I've made this drive a dozen or so times before: I-35 north to Des Moines, then I-80 east into Illinois before catching I-88 for the last 100 miles or so home. It takes about eight hours, and is at least an hour faster than taking I-70 across Missouri to St. Louis and then I-55 to Chicago. On the way down to KC five days prior I was annoyed by the construction on 88 west, so much so that I considered taking the longer route home until I realized that it really wouldn't save me any time.


Kansas City to Des Moines is almost exactly two hundred miles, and for most of it, I felt weird. I've found that I cannot adequately describe what I mean by "weird." If you've seen the Jodie Foster movie Contact you may recall the scene towards the end where she is traveling at the speed of light and her face seems to separate from her body. That is how I'd describe how I felt, and it is not adequate.


I'm gonna pass out.

An hour before or after and I would have been in the middle of nowhere (the ride from Des Moines to Iowa City is especially void of civilization) but for reasons I will forever be thankful for the extreme nausea and dizziness arrived just as I did into the outskirts of metropolitan Des Moines. By the time it felt like someone behind me was stabbing me between the shoulder blades I was in the city itself.

I would very much like to know the person who came up with the idea to affix the large blue 'H' symbol to highway exit signs so that I may buy him or her several drinks. At around 8:45 PM, in the twilight of an Iowa summer night, I was certain that I was having an emergency, and had I not seen that H I don't know where I would have ended up. Most likely I would not have ended up at Methodist West Hospital in West Des Moines.


I hope I'm wrong, but I believe I'm having a heart attack

As it turns out, I was wrong. I was not having a heart attack. I didn't find this out until Tuesday morning though because the cardiologist on call in the ER Sunday night wanted to assume that I was, so after being treated for several hours I was admitted, and early the next morning underwent an angiogram, where it was determined that I needed a stent in my proximal left anterior descending coronary artery.

As I said, I did not actually find out until Tuesday morning that I never had a heart attack. I also found out that I needed a stent because my artery was 99% blocked. Technology is a wonderful thing: I saw a video of my artery before, when the dye used during the procedure was barely passing through, and after the blockage was removed, when the dye flowed freely towards the rest of my heart, as oxygenated blood does now.  

I'm a lucky man. I dodged a bullet. But I fired the bullet, too.


I recently turned 45. I'm 5' 9". I weigh 235 pounds. I don't exercise regularly. I'm married to a wonderful woman. I have two beautiful sons under the age of five. What the hell was I thinking?


It's hard to convey but even when I was most alarmed, most frightened by my symptoms while driving, I never felt like I was going to die. It was more like a feeling of "uh oh, something's wrong and I gotta find out what." However, once I heard that one of the arteries that supplies blood to my heart had been 99% blocked, all I could think of was how did I not die, be it that night, or the day before, or the week before. Who knows how long I was walking around with this? The day before I left for KC, I spent a few hours in my backyard cutting up and hauling out large pieces of a tree that we lost in a storm, and I brushed off the slight twinges I felt between my shoulder blades as just fatigue on a hot day.


It's been very hard facing my kids since I got home Tuesday night, simply because every time I see their faces I am reminded of what could have happened, how I could have just disappeared from their lives forever. I feel the same when I look at my wife. I almost abandoned my family. It's the worst feeling I have ever experienced in my entire life.


But I have to forgive myself, because I now have work to do. I have to change the way I live if I want to stay alive, and I cannot do this if I am caught up in the guilt of my prior selfish lifestyle habits. Frankly, it has been easy this week avoiding food that I have eaten before that I now know is horrible for me; I don't miss it. Yes, it's only been three days, but the choice is simple, isn't it? I change. Or I die.


I will have a much harder time conquering the challenge of getting in shape. I have never been in shape. I need to lose at least fifty pounds. Five-zero. That's a lot. And it can't be done all at once, which means it will take dedication, persistence and time. 


I'm nervous, but not scared. I'm nervous that I've already done too much damage to my body and have sealed my fate of an earlier-than-expected grave. I'm nervous that as time passes I will become someone who is convinced that every little ache and pain is the harbinger of something much more threatening. I've always been aware that some day I am going to die, so this is not the sort of thing that will trigger a midlife crisis. Still, I have to be realistic: I could already have died. The fact that I did not means that I'm still relevant and I can still gain control.


Blockages in the left anterior descending artery are commonly referred to as widow makers because the heart attacks they trigger are usually sudden, massive and fatal. I struggle reading that, knowing that this whole experience could have turned out much differently for myself and the people I love the most.


It's great to be alive.

I'm not someone who is going to start lecturing others about the way they live their lives. All of us to some extent choose what we are, what we become, and what we will be. I thought I was lucky before for reasons unrelated to this health scare. I had no idea what luck really is; luck is knowing that you could have lost everything in the flash of a second, and now have the ability to avoid something that terrible with just a little resilience and dedication.


I am amazed at how simple it all seems sometimes.

  
 

Get it on a stick.

Happy Thanksgiving

Today happens to be my favorite holiday of the year. I love that there is no hype, no expectation other than hang out with family and eat yourself into oblivion (if you so choose). Plus it gives me the opportunity to post this, the best Thanksgiving story ever, again. My mother is a wonderful person, and the fact that she readily admitted her "error" also shows what a great sport she is. Believe me when I say we laugh WITH her about this, not at her.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, especially Mom!

(The following was written in late November, 2004)

Is that a neck in your turkey, or are you just glad to see me?

I would like to apologize to my mother in advance, for being unable to resist the urge to tell this story...

My fiance and I had Thanksgiving dinner at my mother's home this year, with the rest of my family. My mother is an excellent cook and has prepared many wonderful holiday dinners throughout the years. This year was no exception.

Wednesday afternoon I was home as Mom placed the frozen turkey in the sink to began preparations to cook it. At one point as I was walking through the kitchen, I heard her say that something was missing.

I don't know anything about cooking turkeys.

I looked at the turkey in the sink. Mom had removed two packages from inside, which I assumed to be giblets and something else, a liver maybe, since it was dark. My mother and I then had the following exchange:

Mom: Doesn't it look like it is missing something?

Me: Um, the head? I hear they usually get rid of it before they sell them.

Mom: I mean from the inside. There should be something else.

Me: I don't know what's normally inside a turkey.

Mom: It's male parts, it's missing it's male parts.

Me: WHAT?

Mom: The male parts of the turkey aren't inside like they usually are.

Me: (Just now understanding what she is talking about) What? I'm never eating turkey again...

As I said before, I know nothing about cooking turkeys. I can identify the parts of the turkey after it is cooked, but I have no idea how one is packaged. So I did a little research and found that when you buy a turkey, there is supposed to be a package inside containing the giblets and the liver, and also the turkey neck. For all I knew before, I thought the neck was still attached and you just cut it off when you prepared the bird. I don't even know what the point of including the neck is.

Then it hit me.

My mother, who later told me that she has been cooking turkeys for over 40 years, has always thought that the neck that is normally included inside the turkey was instead, um, "something else."

That something else being what puts the "Tom" in turkey.

This explains why the neck has never been part of a holiday meal in her house.

And why I will never not laugh at the sight of a turkey, live or dead, cooked or uncooked, again.

Don't stand so close to me

Potentially, I may be about to tick off God, so be warned about lightning strikes.

Evan's baptism was Sunday. We had the christening in the chapel of the parish I attended when I was growing up. I had all of my "C" sacraments there-communion, confession, confirmation-and I bet I've attended close to one thousand masses there in my life.

But not recently. I have a tendency to encounter "falling out" situations with churches. I grew tired of this particular parish over a decade ago, because they played the city in which the parish is located for fools, acquiring a valuable piece of land (in the name of creating a "badly needed" parking lot) and demolishing an historic building. Guess what? The lot is nothing but grass, and has never been anything but. I have had a falling out with two other parishes in the area over what I believe are blatant political endorsements-more on this later, promise.

I digress. We went to this parish for the baptism for logistical and sensible reasons. My mother still attends this parish, and we thought it would be nice to have her third grandson baptized there (five of her six grandchildren have now been christened there-Desmond is the only one who was baptized elsewhere). I had no problem with going to back to this church.

We arrived at the church about twenty minutes before the start of the baptism, and I snagged a bulletin available in the lobby expecting to see our son listed with the other babies being christened there on this day. To my surprise, there was no mention of forthcoming baptisms.

I was a little disappointed but it was certainly nothing for me to be alarmed at. However, later in the bulletin, there was a half-page block of text, and it began like so:

"We remind our parishioners to vote, and to encourage others not just to vote, but to vote correctly. We all should vote and encourage others to vote for life."

The emphasis is mine. It took a few moments of conversation in my head to figure this out: Vote correctly? What the hell does that mean? And why does the parish want to make sure that I vote for the remainder of my life...wait a tic, that's not what it means. They're telling everyone to vote pro-life.

I wanted to leave. I wish I had the stones to say that I didn't want to be a part of anything this church participates in, but of course I didn't, and we had our son baptized, and I forgot about all this until we returned home.

Look, I understand the Catholic Church's position when it comes to abortion, and I understand why they are so passionate about it. Truly, that would never upset me, but I draw the line at them telling me that I need to vote Republican.

And let's be honest, that is what this was, an implicit endorsement of the GOP because it is the "pro-life" party. And it is completely wrong. As far as I'm concerned, this parish should have it's tax-exempt status removed for making a political endorsement.

(For the record, if there had been an implied message to vote Democratic for any one particular reason, I'd say that was wrong too. However I admit that it would not incense me the way this actual message does, because the entire abortion debate nauseates me.)

The Church is pro-life, and I am pro-choice. By the way, that does not mean that I am "pro-abortion." I wish there never had to be another abortion performed anywhere on this planet, and I am tired of pompous, holier-than-thou pro-life supporters who accuse those of us who are pro-choice of encouraging pregnant women to have abortions no matter the circumstances, like we are all population control freaks or something.

I am pro-choice for one and only one reason: I am a man. I will never know what it is like to be pregnant. I really don't think men should have a fair say in restricting a woman's personal choice.

Obviously, this is an extremely volatile topic, and I could write about it for the next year. To placate my disappointment, I am going to write the pastor of this church a letter expressing my distaste for seeing a thinly-disguised endorsement in the church bulletin. The church has no place in politics unless it wants to pay taxes. I will be respectful and courteous, but I won't feel better about this until I write him. I will be curious to see if he contacts me afterward.

One last point, and I can't express this in any other way, so let me apologize in advance for the way I say this. Have you ever seen a bumper sticker that says "You can't be Catholic and Pro-Life"? I see them around more and more these days, and when I do, I want to tape a large piece of paper next to the sticker and write in big, bold, block letters with a giant black permanent marker:

"The fuck I can't!"

G'night Stimpy

So Bears quarterback Jay Cutler got sacked nine time in the first half of the team's 17-3 loss to the Giants last night, and I think I might know how Jay is feeling.

Am I equating sleep deprivation to being slammed to the Astroturf over and over? Yes. Yes, I am.

Seems lately that if I am not sleeping, I am thinking about sleeping. Yes, I'm thinking about it now. ZZZZZZ.

Evan will be two months soon, and he's a great baby. He has a witching hour, however, that lasts for more than an hour. It's closer to three or four, and it starts around midnight. I did not give birth to this baby. I did not go through the anxiety of knowing that there was something growing inside of me that would eventually have to be expelled. Or excised like a like a fly out of soup. I slept fairly comfortably from the time this baby was conceived until the time he was born.

Thus, I stay up with Evan during his witching hours. We go to sleep sometime before two and three in the morning. Evan is a ball to be around during his nighttime prowl-he's not fussy unless he's hungry-and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy the one-on-one time with him.

Did I mention that we have another son? Did I mention that he gets up every morning by 7? Did I mention that he creates about as much noise as a jet engine at takeoff?

I've taken more cat naps in the last eight weeks than I had in my life up to that point. I have fallen asleep while standing in the shower. While drinking coffee. While watching the first thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

I'm sure on more than one occasion when I've been out in public lately someone has taken a look at me and thought "Yowsa, that guy looks horrible; he must feel awful."

Just the opposite. Sure, I'd love to be sleeping more (or writing more) but if I have to be lacking in sleep, let it be on account of my boys. These days wont last forever.