Second Effort

Non-frequent visitors are going to have some catching up to do. I just posted yesterday, but I have the night off and with Sara at work despite the new edition of Playboy waiting for my attention, I have been inspired.

It’s funny, I often waver between my preference between the finer things in life and the tried and true blue collar versions. A timely example would be the Skyy vodka mentioned in a recent post while my Dad has always had an affinity for the absolute cheapest swill known to man. He would drink Hawkeye, out of the bottle, heated to warmer than human body temperature, as long as he knew it would get the job done. Likewise, I still have a certain dedication to Bud Light. While I know that Boulevard will taste better, there’s a certain satisfaction to knowing you’re, well, slummin’.

Which brings me to Washburn, the town in the ditch off 218 in which I grew up. This little reminiscence came up a bit ago while talking on the phone to Sara during her dinner break at work. I farted into the phone, which prompted her to ask if I had to poop. I don’t know why, but after nearly two years of living with me, she thinks gas means there’s excrement up there. Apparently it’s a hard lesson to learn.

So I said no, and then explained that I had been sitting on my ass in a desk chair all day, and that tended to stop things up until the requisite morning coffee and cigarette. Which reminded me of the olden days, back in Washburn when I was a little kid and my sister or I got plugged. She had far more problems with this issue than me. Even at that age, I really appreciated taking timeout for an hour and a half to sit on the pot, flip through outdoor life and ponder life’s greater mysteries. I clearly remember one of my favorite trains of thought, counting how many swear words I knew that my parents would kill me for uttering.

So anyway, if my sis or I ever got plugged, Mom kept this dreaded little blue jar in the cabinet. You know where I’m going, but here’s the thing, this is a word so rarely uttered or written, I have no idea how to spell it. The suppository. Microsoft Word says: “That looks ok, No. 3, but what the fuck are you writing about?”

I won’t go into the gory details, but when I told Sara about the “dreaded jar” (much like he whose name shall not be spoken), it led to an argument. The memories were so painful that I said to Sara I wouldn’t do that to my kids, I would do what I do to myself now. Give them coffee and a cigarette. She had her doubts about this parental theory and said that kids couldn’t have those things. I pointed out that all kids drink soda, but I would give in to her smoking gibberish. She said she wasn’t allowed to have soda as a kid. I said, that her parents are German Nazis while my parents (at least my dad) is Polish, and our people had been persecuted enough without being deprived of a fucking Diet Coke.

Which brings me back to the finer things. Back in the day, my parents always had Diet Coke on hand, still do. But that wasn’t good enough for me. Even then, back in Washburn at the age of five, I knew I was better than my surroundings. So I would budget my weekly allowance and any other funds coming in. I would budget exactly $2.25 for each day of the week. Every day I would ride my bike with the plastic thing that made it look like a motorcycle up to the Kum and Go. You had to keep your eyes out for thugs in Washburn, but me and my motorcycle bike, we could burn some frakin’ (one of my 17 swear words at the time) rubber, so we always made it to and from the K&G safe.

Once inside, I would saunter proudly to the back of the store and the softdrink coolers, on my way picking up a pack of Upper Deck baseball cards, not the shitty Donruss or shittier Topps, only the best. And there it was waiting for me, refreshment in a 10 oz. crystal clear bottle. Clearly Canadian. That shit cost a dollar a bottle, and back then that was some serious cash, let me tall you.

Kathy, the bitch manager of Kum and Go, would watch me all the way, knowing that I hung out with that crowd of ruffians that was oftentimes busted with packs of BubbleYum in their pocket. But not me, baby, I was better than that, I could pay for my top of the line soft drink imported from Alberta, I could pay every nickel, and I rubbed her nose in it sometimes by paying to the penny.

For the rest of the night I could be found riding the streets of Washburn on my Motorcycle bike, usually one handed, with that crystal clear bottle dangling from my free hand. I would ride by all of my friends’ houses without stopping, only waiting for them to come out and beg for a sip. Then I would say no, they would get pissed and go inside, and I would ride on.

Then I would go to the phone company building on the corner and smash the empty bottle against it or throw it on the roof to get rid of the evidence. Cause my Mom would kick my ass if she knew I was buying soda for a buck a bottle.

I was particularly fond of the Strawberry flavor.

A few funny things to tell you about.

First, Say Anything has been infiltrated. While attending the District track meet on Friday evening I bumped into a fellow sports journalist who had actually been offered my current position before they opened it up to other applicants. He elected to stay in his current position at another area newspaper, but told me he was curious about who they had hired for the job he turned down and googled my name. While I have tried to eliminate this very possibility with my new mysterious moniker, No. 3, I’m afraid there’s still a Baran or an Owski out there somewhere that points hapless internet searchers in the direction of this blog.

His reaction to this finding: “It was… … …interesting.” Note the triple elipses signifying a truly long and uncomfortable silence. He also said that one of the reason he stayed in his current slot was because his boss matched the offer. But I remain undaunted, I invite this new fan, and I call him a fan because how could you not be after one read?, I invite him to leave comments and soak up the… … …interestingness that is Say Anything. After hitting the blog, he apparently took up the country club membership issue with the boss man.

Speaking of the club, I got an invitation in the mail at work today for the grand opening of the new clubhouse. “Take a tropical tour of the new clubhouse!”, it said in emphatic italicized lettering with unnecesary quotation marks. Either that or they were quoting the tropical Iowa golf gods.

It seemed harmless enough, I even talked with Sara bout going. I mean, it’s like a couples mixer with all the important people in town drinking and swapping wives for turns in the 6th hole porta-potty. Good times, right? Plus, they include on the tropical themed flyer the menu for the evening: Steak DeBurgo, Vegetable “Medley,” the quotes are mine this time, Herbed Red Potatoes, Salad and Dessert.

Note the “medley.”

Then off to the side in an even more emphatic star-type deal, it says, again in itallics, No dinner reservations will be taken after may 20 due to the meat preparation process. So when is this shin-dig, you ask? June 11. Listen, I’ve heard of aging steaks, alright, but what the hell are they doing to these things for more than a fortnight to get them ready for my delicate pallet? I don’t know, but reservations are to be made with the local undertaker. Make of that what you may. I will go home and eat chicken or the dog-foodesque corned beef hash from a can.

At the start point of this update I had a third and most funny thing to share with you, but it has since evaporated from my mind. It’ll probably come back to me as soon as I get the hash out of the can.

So the old lady, she loves it when I call her that, came home last night at 9 and we were just about to sit down to watch the final episode of Sex and the City, which makes me cry and Sara barely flinch, when she says, “You really need to update your blog. It’s starting to bug me.”

And so I did.

OK, here’s a hint, if you comment on the stuff I DO write, when I DO write it, you won’t have to be disappointed to find a lack of new stuff for weeks on end.

So where did I leave off? Oh yeah, we were about to move. Well, we did that. I’ve lost track of most everything in between, but I’ll do my best to recount some of the more tasty details.

I wrapped things up back in Tipton three weeks ago today. It was actually fairly sad to leave. I was flattered to have several townspeople write, call or stop by to say they would miss me. One mom even brought a framed picture in for me that I had never seen, but was at one point a column topic and looking back, one of my favorite moments covering sports in Tipton. It was great, but again, the logic of commenting applies, had they been a little more gracious while I was slaving away, it might have been a little more difficult to leave that job.

I was sad to say goodbye to a lot of the kids in my coverage area, though. Track season is the best time of year in this business of mine because when you aren’t chasing the kids around in circles with a camera, you can actually talk to them. And I got to know them pretty well. And I’m going to miss them. And I’m not going to be sappy in this long-awaited update.

So I got some hookers and had a “ruin the apartment” night my last Friday in Iowa City. We rolled in jello and put our stogies out on the carpet. (Sidenote: for those that read Whitaker’s blog, listed as the Peculiar Life in my links, I wrote that line three days before his most recent post.) Speaking of my links list, there’s a new addition, Sara’s high school friend and current New York Socialite, Sheala has been added to the list. She is delightfully shallow and her blog has been hilarious in my short exposure to it.

Sheala trying to explain why she just spilled a full glass of Baileys all over our lovely silver carpet in the old place.

Anyway, I’m three weeks deep in my new job at the TC, and so far it has gone well. You will likely find that this job will be less often written about than the one that came before it. People there have heard of Google. I don’t want to risk it. We have one woman who checks the sex offender registry for every applicant for every job. In my three weeks we have had two sex offenders apply.

As I was saying, it’s going well, but it’s also been extremely busy. Essentially, I do twice the work I was doing in Tipton because we have two papers come out per week. Essentially, that means I don’t have any more afternoons of sitting in front of a computer composing witty updates for this blog. I will, however, try to do better in coming weeks as I get more in tune with my duties.

The hardest part of the move so far has been adapting to a new schedule on two fronts. One, my schedule is no longer set by me. I have regular editorial meetings to attend and am expected to know my shit. I need to be there in the morning, on time, do my shit during the day, cover my shit at night, and sometimes, go back and write my shit that same night. I am told that during football season, I should anticipate seeing the sun rise on Saturday mornings.

The other front is Sara’s schedule. She works from 1-10 Sunday through Thursday. That means I am trying to stave off sleep when she get home at night just so we can squeeze in a little luvin and or fightin in before I die for the night. Then I hug her in the morning after I take my morning dump but before I go to the garage for a morning smoke. It also fucks up our weekends, but this, I keep telling myself, is real life. We have one or two more dues to pay before we are in a situation where everything meshes perfectly and we get to start living that American Dream.

Speaking of which, you should listen to this.

So, without endangering my new situation, I don’t have too many funny storied to tell as most of my time has been spent at work. But there is this one thing.

As is my habit when I either feel a little stressed or have just gotten paid, and both of those things were the case yesterday, I like to spend that money. Usually on food. So I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with the Webster City Hy-Vee. On my first solo visit, I ended up bagging my own groceries. Nothing out of the ordinary, I know, but while I was doing it, the 16 year-old cashier was literally telling me what she had done at school that day.

But that’s just the beginning. As you might expect, the WC Vee is far different from that of IC. In IC they are big on organics, seafood, and anything else you might associate with rich hippies. In WC, not so much. I actually had to search with some difficulty for regular old boneless skinless chicken breast. And that’s when it first hit me, the things that Sara and I like, if we can find them, are actually cheaper here because there is no demand.

On the other hand, I sometimes have a tendency to splurge on a certain delicacy known as the corn dog. In Iowa City, you have to bust your ass to find a gooddamn corn dog in that store. Here, and I’m not exaggerating in the least, there’s a motherfucking corn dog SECTION. I think I saw chocolate corn dogs yesterday, it’s amazing.

Another unbelievable find: as I was solemnly making my way through the beer aisle, and let me tell you, it’s pretty sparse, I got a taste fro bloody marys. So I grabbed up some Clamato and started surveying the vodka choices. I was about to spring for what I thought was their best vitage, an ’05 Smirnoff triple distilled and I made my way to the end of the row. There, in all its big blue glory, was a Texas fifth of Skyy, about 8 dollars cheaper that the far scummier bottle I had already selected.

And that’s when I said to myself, “Self, everything’s gonna work out for you here in Webster City. Now let’s go get ripped on premium vodka and clam flavored tomato juice.”

And so we did.