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Month: July 2018

Moo

Moo

To the couple in Row Q who felt it necessary to stand up through most of the Jason Isbell show at Wolf Trap last night, thanks from those of us in rows R through U.  We definitely enjoyed watching you guys shake and shimmy more than the performance we came out to see.

When I got really hungry before the show I convinced myself that it was okay just for tonight, to go to the concessions and order that big quarter pound beef hot dog and an order of tortilla chips and queso.  Go ahead live a little you are out on a date.

But when I got to the concession stand and read the menu guilt overtook me.

“Can I help you sir?” the girl asked from behind the counter.

“Yes, I will have a Mezze Platter (Hummus, Tabbouleh, Peppers, Cucumbers, Marinated Olives & Tortilla Chips) and a Deluxe Black Bean Burger (Aged Sharp Cheddar Cheese, Pico de Gallo, Chipotle Mayo & Arugula) please,”  I said with disappointment.

“Let me check to see if we have a Black Bean Burger left,” she said as I began to imagine the taste of that quarter pound beef hot dog once again.

A swift confirmation from the back confirmed the bad news.

“Yes, we have one” she said with a big smile.

“Oh,” I said.  “That’s great.”

And off I went to share the good news and my newly discovered concession fares with my wife waiting at the picnic table.

The best part of all this is, that between the biking and the eating changes, I am at weights I haven’t experienced since I had two colon resections back to back twenty years ago.  And of course even eating plants is much more fun than having two colon resections.

The worst part of it is, when the bouquet of barbecued meats wisp across my yard from my neighbor’s grill to my nostrils,  while I am rotating the plant based ears of corn on my grill, I am convinced that between the amount of corn I am eating for dinner and the amount of oats I am consuming for breakfast, that I will surely be mooing by the end of the summer.

It was really nice to be back at Wolf Trap again.  We used to go see many shows every summer, this summer, Jason Isbell may be our only one. Though Kim thought the lyrics sad and maybe a bit depressing; “I like to look at the glass half full,” she said.  But writing about real life is sometimes hard, sometimes it can be a bit depressing.

And we had fun in spite of the nice couple standing and shaking and head bobbing a few rows up.  I guess it’s like having your French bread snapped in half, some people just don’t understand.

But they were having fun too, and it didn’t rain, and the show was really awesome, and I had a Black Bean Burger (with Aged Sharp Cheddar Cheese, Pico de Gallo, Chipotle Mayo, and not to forget… Arugula).

And that is the glass half full.

It’s Not the Fourth of July Until You Have Had a Carrot Hot Dog?

It’s Not the Fourth of July Until You Have Had a Carrot Hot Dog?

If you are familiar with Max’s hot dogs on the Long Branch, New Jersey boardwalk, or the Windmill in Long Branch’s West End, or my sister’s Fourth of July parties for the last gazillion years, you know Jersey hot dogs.

Man those are hot dogs…

This year I had a carrot hot dog on the Fourth of July.  It was awesome.

 

The first part of the summer is always a bittersweet time of the year for us.

It starts on Mother’s Day; then Memorial Day; Hayley’s birthday; includes Father’s Day; then my birthday; Kim’s birthday; our wedding anniversary;  the Fourth of July; then July 19th, the day of Donny’s accident; and ends with Savannah’s birthday on July 20th; then we breathe again.

And I always find myself reliving that summer.

We had some good times in the early part of the summer of 2002.

I have shared this photo before, its one of my favorites, and these are the three girls who were rightly so, my competition.

On June 20, 2002, Donny and I headed off to Wolf Trap to see Jo Dee Messina and Brad Paisley after Kim couldn’t go.  It was his first and only concert.  I had seats in the first row, but the three girls he knew sitting in the lawn turned out to be tough competition for the old man, but Donny didn’t leave me hanging too long and finished out the show sitting next to me in the front row.

That Fourth of July 2002 we spent in Jersey at my sister’s and got down to the beach.  He used to mess with me and quote the line from the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore, “You want a piece of me old man?” whenever we were doing anything sports-related like throwing the football at the beach or mixing it up with the soccer ball on my sister’s lawn.

I didn’t want a piece of him but I surely wanted badly to have something I could show him.

Donny was a natural-born athlete.

I am a natural-born non-athlete.

He beat me in everything.

One vacation at the outer banks, I knew he had never played golf, so I took him and his friend Chris golfing. Finally, I thought, there was something I could teach him, some sport I could role model.

Something I could maybe even beat him at.

By the end of the day though, I guess I had passed on as many good golf tips as I possibly could and it must have paid off because he beat me again.

 

The funny thing was, I never made the Adam Sandler connection until after Donny’s accident.

I never used to like Adam Sandler movies.

Now I can watch them all day long.

 

When we ride bikes now on the bike trail Kim always says “c’mon old man.”

I like that.

 

I don’t know what I will do on this Thursday the 19th but maybe I will ride my bike.  And maybe my wife will say “c’mon old man.”

And it will be okay.

Because winning doesn’t matter anymore, it never really did, it was having some meaning in that young man’s life that was really important to me.

And maybe, I realize now, in this old man’s life…

So I guess maybe in some way I have won.

At least I can tell you, Donny, that I still have your Mom’s back and she has mine.

Heck, I am even eating carrot hot dogs on the Fourth of July.

That has got to be love.

 

Happy Gilmore: “You like THAT old man? You want a piece of ME?”


Bob Barker character: “I don’t want a PIECE of you, I want the whole THING!”

 

I want the whole thing too…

But I would settle for just a piece of you right now.