I was talking with my wife today while my 20-month-old daughter was watching old He-Man episodes (the same ones I watched as a boy) and I said, "You know, it took me a long time to understand that there's no magic sword that can transform you from being Prince Adam the Douche into He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe." I used to think that just by being intelligent and talented, that I would be rich and never have to worry about money. I thought that being smart was just like He-Man's sword, just hold it aloft, say "I have the power!" and you would become He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe.

It took a LONG time for me to figure out that even though I was smart and talented, I still had to WORK. I'm still pissed off about it. I didn't realize when I was young that if I wanted to be the most powerful man in the universe, I needed to pick up a barbell and drink a lot of milk every day. For me, the hardest thing in the world is to do a small step toward a large goal every day over a long period of time. It's so hard for me to be patient with a process. I have this delusion that because I'm smart, everything should just be easy and should just work for me. So anything that takes time, or a lot of dedication, or a lot of consistent effort, I just get frozen up and say, "Aw, fuck it." I have so many unfinished projects, I don't even like to think about it.

And writing that last sentence reminds me of an insight I had recently. I had a clean office for awhile (I work from home) and recently it was junky in a bad way for about six weeks. I slipped into depression and just ignored it. I felt more frantic and anxious, and it got to where I just kept the door to my office closed all the time, and I just went upstairs to the t.v. room, and took my computer up there to work.

For one reason or another, I finally decided to clean the damn office. I told my wife, "I am going to..." and she said "clean your office. Blah blah blah." I realized that I had said I was going to clean my office about half a bajillion times in recent days, so I said, "if my office isn't clean by 10 pm tomorrow night, I will give you $100." I wanted that deadline to be painful. It worked! Office is now clean.

And now the insight: a part of me actually likes the stress feeling that comes from clutter. I feel like I don't deserve to enjoy what I'm doing, so I distract myself from enjoying it and being fully present by leaving a bunch of junk around that makes me feel guilty for doing something I enjoy. I look around and say, "I really want to read a book, but I can't really because I should clean. But I don't want to clean." So I read the book, but only for a minute, because I feel guilty, so I go watch t.v., but only for about 20 minutes, because I feel guilty and feel like, boy I really should be working right now, so I go read reddit.com. I click a few articles, read a couple, and think, "Man, I should clean right now." and this goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on until I can't keep my eyes open at night. I wake up at 3 am and think about what I should do tomorrow, so I get up and make a list, then I'm awake, so I go on reddit, read a few articles, watch a South Park episode, then it's 7 am and I'm exhausted, so I go to bed, sleep for an hour, then everyone's awake and I feel guilty for sleeping, so I get up, exhausted, and start the stupid procrastination process all over again because I LIKE torturing myself. I don't know why yet, but I have figured out that there is a part of me, a powerful part of me, that feels like this is the life I deserve, so I keep myself here. Distracted, not really enjoying anything, surrounded by clutter with a calendar full of missed deadlines.

Read Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe and it’s officially added to my reference library. I will refer to it often. I also read Strong Enough? by Mark Rippetoe right afterward and enjoyed that just as much.

I am ready for a switch, so I picked up Glory Road by Robert Heinlein. I have thoroughly enjoyed every Heinlein book I’ve ever read, with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress being my favorite so far. I look forward to reading Glory Road and I’ll let you know what I think of it when I’m finished.

I just read a fantastic essay by Patrick J. Buchanan titled “The Party is Over”. You can read it here.

As the credit party winds down, the drunk frat boys call cabs, and the haze starts to clear, one thing is clear: the house that our parents (and more importantly, our grandparents) left to us is covered with all the relics of a drunken party. Vomit, half-empties and broken consumer electronics are lying everywhere and there’s only one thing to do: get cleaning. Yeah, it kills your buzz. Sorry.

My dad went through a bankruptcy, and he said, “Jeremy, bankruptcy is the biggest blessing in disguise you can imagine, because it forces you to live within your means.” I now understand. EVeryone keeps asking, “What are we going to do, now that credit is drying up?!” It’s called, walk away from your upside-down mortgage and buy a house that was built 40 years ago, before everything got so goddamn big. The average house in 1945 was 800 sq. ft. The average house is now 2349 square feet. Food portions, vehicles and credit card balances have become huge, engorged pulsing boils that are just starting to burst, one by one, spreading pus and disease everywhere. Not pretty.

Two years ago I interviewed a former governor of Utah, Norm Bangerter. He was in the home-building business for 30 years before getting into politics. I asked him about what he thought of the housing boom that was going on at the time. He said, “I think it’s terrible. It’s terrible because 25-year-old kids are buying houses that their parents can’t afford. They’re building houses that are filled with luxury items, like granite countertops and marble bathrooms, and everyone thinks it’s normal. We have too many people spending way too much on their mortgage payments every month because they can’t imagine moving into a small, older home. They all want a brand-new house, a brand-new car and 5 TV’s. It’s not going to last, and I think we’re not teaching young people the right ideas about finances and expectations.”

The interview was for a homebuilder’s promotional DVD, so that part ended up on the cutting floor.

Look, kids. 75% of people kept their jobs during the Great Depression. 80% of people kept paying their mortgages. Yeah, things were tight. No more XBOX Live, no more NetFlix, cut back on the nail salon and on the gym membership (buy a weight set! or a kettlebell!) and maybe eat at home more often. Turn off cable or satellite. Trust me, you won’t die, and your kids will remember a childhood filled with laughter and books instead of it all being lost in a blur of American Idol and Hannah Montana. Why did your grandparents only need 800 sq. ft. for their family with five kids? Two reasons: they spent most of their time outside and kids shared rooms/beds. My grandpa told me that the five boys slept in one bed on the back porch until the oldest two were in their teens. Then they moved out to the barn.

My great grandpa bought one new pair of Levi’s per year, whether he needed them or not. Remember when there were shoe repair shops? Soles worn out? Take them to the shop. My grandpa said that when he got a new shirt, he wore it until he started getting holes in it. Then his mom would sew up those holes, and she had a whole jar full of buttons that she would use to replace lost buttons. Well, it got to where there was more patch than shirt, so he would put it in the rag bag. Once the rag bag filled up, his mom would make a quilt. He said those were handy, because when he woke up in the morning in January, there was a thin layer of frost across the top of his blanket, so he wanted as many of those quilts stacked up as he could find. There was one fireplace, in the kitchen, but it didn’t warm the rest of the house very well. Anyway, he’d use that blanket until it got holes and lost some of its filling. Then it would go out to the barn to be used as a saddle blanket. And eventually it would kind of just disappear, like a little bar of soap that you have to glue to another bar of soap to get a lather.

My grandpa told me that they didn’t have toilet paper: that’s what Montgomery Ward catalogs were for. The pages were printed on thin tissue paper, so you kept the catalog in the outhouse, read it while you were doing your thing, then tore off a page, crinkle, wipe, and get back to playing or working or whatever. My grandpa also told me that they only got pop (or soda or Coke or whatever they call it in your suburban cesspit) once a year, at the 4th of July picnic. He said they brought in big washtubs full of orange, strawberry, root beer, grape and raspberry pop. Nickel got you a pop, and a quarter got you a cheeseburger and a pop. They pulled ice out of the icehouses (ice that had been cut out in heavy blocks and carried to the icehouse in the winter from the river that ran through town) to keep the pop cold. He said he loved strawberry, and that he looked forward all year to that pop.

I know, I know. Nostalgia and all that bullshit, but here’s my point: we can do this. Our grandparents did it. My grandmother still saves money even though her monthly income is only $400 per month. And she doesn’t save it in a bank, btw. Not most of it. She said only a fool keeps all his money in one place. Bruce Lee said that most self-improvement programs don’t work because they require you to add things to your life, and people get overwhelmed. He said that if you really want to change your life, you should try removing things. The sudden disappearance of credit will now force us into that mindset, but I’m here to tell you that things might just get better, not worse. Turn off the t.v., tickle your kids and have a strawberry pop.

I have been reading these comics for a long time. There are about 700 online, and they are hilarious! Drew takes clip art and adds hilarious captions. Love it! He is also known for his first comic site, Toothpaste for Dinner, that he updates daily. Love it!

Here are a few of my favorite Married to the Sea comics:


marriedtothesea.com


marriedtothesea.com


marriedtothesea.com


marriedtothesea.com


marriedtothesea.com


marriedtothesea.com


marriedtothesea.com

That’s enough for now. Enjoy!

I have a new resolution: I’m going to finish a book when I start it, and I’m only reading one at a time. I have a bad habit of skipping around, reading three books at a time and never finishing any of them. I have decided that if an author and editor have taken so much time and care to write a book, I will probably enjoy it a lot more if I read it in the order intended and planned out by the author. I’ll share with you what I’m reading so that you can track my obsessions and judge me from afar.

The book I’m reading now: Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe

I am almost finished with it and really enjoy it. I have learned more about weightlifting from this one book than all the other sources I’ve ever read or been exposed to. I had a great strength coach in high school who was great about programming and the basics of lifting, but didn’t really take the time to work through the nuances of each lift. I then got mired and overwhelmed by the half-bajillion programs that are in Muscle and Fitness, and unfortunately I just gave up on it. I didn’t want to be a bodybuilder, because those guys weren’t “tough” in my book. They were just big. I didn’t really know where else to look for actual strength training, so I gave up and got lazy for the next ten years or so.

When we found out Banu was pregnant with Sapphira, I decided then and there that I was going to get my ass back in gear and get in shape. Right around that time is when 300 came out, and I learned about “functional strength”, kettlebells and high-intensity-interval training. I was hooked. I’ve been working hard for two years now, and I feel a lot better. Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe is really helping me get dialed in on the major lifts and I love it.

So I have had an idea for awhile that I wanted to get Sapphira’s hand over my heart, but I wanted it to be like paleolithic cave art. I think of this as some of the first graffiti. It’s just a way of leaving a mark and saying, “Yeah, I was here.” I really liked the idea of having Sapphira’s hand over my heart in that spirit. I searched the internet for examples and came up with these:




As far as I understand it, the artist would fill up his mouth with some pigment, put his hand against the wall, and spray the pigment through a reed or straw around his hand. “Why are you assuming the artist is male?” Because women actually do productive things with their time.

So I have wanted this tattoo for awhile, but my impulsiveness got the best of me, and I didn’t really research local tattoo shops very well. I just dropped in, pics in hand and with a photocopy of Sapphira’s hand.

This is what I ended up with:



The problems are obvious. And this is after I told the guy once that I wanted to feather out the edges more and that I wanted it rounder, like someone sprayed it from their mouth. Now, he had the same pictures in his hand that I have included here. But the image below shows me that this isn’t the guy that I want to finish the job. He asked me three times to “Look at it. I think we’re pretty much done.” I kept trying to explain that I wanted it to spread out and fade on the edges, and he just wasn’t getting it. I finally gave up, made a few phone calls, and found an artist who totally understands what I’m looking for and can help. Unfortunately, they can’t work on it until the work I have done is healed. It’s fixable, and the first guy did a decent job of getting it dark along the inside line, but it will take some work to get it right.

So, kids, when you’re going to get a PERMANENT piece of art INDELIBLY imprinted on your body, slow down, take a breath and do a little research. Don’t go walking into the first strip-mall joint that is a thinly-veiled excuse for selling drug paraphernalia that you find. Ask around, do a little googling, look at their galleries and make an informed decision. Here’s the place that will be fixing my tattoo: Lucky Bamboo.

I’m going to be one of those annoying proud parents for a little while here and tell you some of my favorite Sapphira stories from recent memory. If that’s the kind of thing that makes you want to stand in front of a wall and repeatedly bash your head into said wall, go do that while I gush.

A couple of weeks ago Sapphira was standing in front of Banu’s laptop, watching Winnie the Pooh (an activity she begs to do around 2342 times per day). Banu heard a splattering sound on the floor (we have hardwood floors). She looked over, and Sapphira had taken her diaper off and was peeing on the floor. Banu said, “Sapphira! What are you doing?” Sapphira just looked back at her and said, “What?”

Sapphira still eats sand and dirt. Not as much as she used to, but she does.



Recent conversations with Sapphira often go like this:

“Sapphira!”
“What?”
“Come here.”
“What?”
“Come over here.”
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“What?”
“Let go of the cat’s tail!”
“What?”
And so on. She keep asking what long after its use is justified.

Sapphira learned her first swear word. Luckily, no one outside the family has heard her say it yet, so DCFS (Department of Child and Family Services) hasn’t come over yet to investigate. Yesterday we went to this local BBQ joint called Holy Smoke BBQ. Great BBQ, btw. So anyway, we ate outside, and Banu went inside to the bathroom. Sapphira noticed that Banu was gone, got up from her chair, and went over to the window to look into the restaurant. She turned to me and asked, “Mommy?” I said, “She’s inside. She’ll be right back.” Sapphira said, “Bullshit!”

I’m not sure if she meant “Bullshit, you’re lying to me!” or “That’s bullshit! She should stay outside!” but either way the message got through. Don’t yank Sapphira’s chain, or she’ll call “Bullshit!” on your ass.

When Sapphira is drinking a bottle (go ahead and call DCFS on that one. Yes, she’s twenty months old tomorrow. Yes, she still drinks from a bottle. However, she also drinks from regular cups instead of sippy (read lame cups for kids on the short bus (and yes, I’m nesting my parentheses, like a true computer geek)) cups, she knows 23-26 letters (depending on the day) of the alphabet on sight. She knows half a dozen colors and she knows bullshit when she hears it, so call DCFS if you must, but I think she’ll be ok). So when Sapphira is drinking a bottle, she’ll repeatedly rub and pat my back while she’s drinking. Almost makes me cry.

To elaborate on the Winnie-the-Pooh pleading ritual: she’ll walk up to me, put her hand on my knee, or worse, grab my hand gently, tilt her head, smile, pull gently on my hand and say, “PoohTidder? PoohTidder?” All while looking cuter than the legal limit on cute. It works just consistently enough for her to keep doing it, which works for both of us, because I love seeing her manipulate me so effectively already. I’m impressed by her precociousness when it comes to getting me to do see things her way, and she loves watching Pooh.

She still naps every day, and if she misses a nap, EVERY! LITTLE! THING! sounds like it could end her life if she doesn’t get it RIGHT! NOW! She gets whiny and frantic and basically starts looking around for things to freak out over. We have to take great pains to calm her down long enough to read a story and get her into bed.

All day long Sapphira walks around looking at things and doing things, and she says “Wow!” earnestly every time. She’s saying “Wow” all day long, and it helps me remember that there’s some pretty cool shit going on all around us if we just stop, forget that the first game of the football season starts in 10 minutes and that we still have to bring the groceries in and unpack them and get upstairs before kickoff, and instead notice that there’s one of those black and orange caterpillars walking across the floor of the garage and if you put your hand in front of it, it will crawl over your hand and that tickles. Wow!

I took Sapphira to Smith and Edwards a few days ago to wander around and take some pictures. Smith and Edwards saw its prime after World War II, where they ran one of the largest (if not the largest) war surplus store west of the Mississippi. Most of the stuff that’s left now is unrecognizable and will likely sit until it rusts away. I had fun wandering around and taking photos, and Saph did too. Hope you enjoy the photos.