Laura-ism #1 - That's how I roll...

I told my wife I was going to chronicle all the great sage advice or words of wisdom she gives me.

On Monday, I was off of work, which I am the whole week. The night before, Laura said to me about the coming morning.

"Oh by the way," she said. "I normally sleep in on Monday mornings (she goes in after lunch on Mondays), so don't wake me up."

She said this last sentence with a flair of her hand.

"That's how I roll..."

I puke all over myself: A touching holiday story...

When I was in college, I worked for Pizza Hut as a delivery driver. I first started there as a cook, but after a few years of toiling in minimum wage hell while my brother, Bill, lavished in tip heaven, I was finally allowed to deliver pizzas (once I had gone two years without an accident).

Delivering pizzas was a pretty sweet gig. We drivers would stand around, fold boxes and wait for deliveries to come up. All you had to worry about as a driver was knowing which way to go, bringing everything the customer asked for and getting there in a timely manner. This is pretty simple, but not as easy as it sounds. Often, you are so swamped with deliveries that you have to decide the best multi-stop route and hope that you didn't forget anything at the store that the customer wanted. Then there are the things that the customer asked for, but didn't make it on the ticket, getting lost, getting stuck behind a train, wrong address given, wrong address typed in by the phone person, slow traffic, the weather, losing your first born, or any other problem.

In the winter, not only did you have to deal with all of that, but you often had to do your job while you were sick.

This brings me to my story for today. It was a very cold December, kind of like this one, in which I had been struggling with a bad cold. I was coughing a lot, but trying not to do that in front of the customer. Usually, I would try and hack up some stuff prior to getting out of my car and delivering the pizza to the door. Or I'd suck on a cough drop while driving.

I was working all day, as I usually did on a Sunday, and I grabbed some lunch at Taco Johns. Since it was Christmas, I thought I would try the Nachos Navidad, which is Taco Johns' annual Christmas special. It's basically just the same old nachos they always serve, but with red and green nacho chips. After all, those are the official colors of Christmas, so it's only natural that you'd want to stuff your face with things of that color.

I ate them at the little break table and coughed a bit while I was doing so. I had a little tickle at the back of my throat, and it was driving me crazy.

I started delivering again. It was cold and windy. I had three deliveries to take. The last one was several miles away and near the edge of our delivery area. I looked at my car's clock and noticed that it was overdue by about 15 minutes. I sped up a little. I finally got to the driveway of the townhouse that wanted the pizza. I stopped the car in the driveway. I coughed. I felt that tickle in my throat again. I coughed again. It was a quick rasp followed by a BLECH! Regurgitated Nachos Navidad streamed all over my jacket, all over my shirt, all over my pants, all over my seat and all over my console.

I had just vomited in the driveway of a customer, and I hadn't even delivered the pizza yet. I looked at how late it was on the clock again. I surveyed the mess all over me. It reeked of nachos covered with bile.

What in the hell was I going to do??

It was already pretty late delivering the pizza. I momentarily thought about turning around, which is what I should have done, and changing clothes at the store. I'd be clean, but the pizza would really be late by then. Also, I was afraid that I'd walk in and have to explain why I had puke all over myself, why I was suddenly wearing a clean uniform, or why I had to go back out to deliver something that I should have dropped off a while ago.

Panicking, I looked around for a stash of napkins that I kept in the car. I had them because there were many times when people would ask for them. Having them on hand almost guaranteed a tip. But on this day, I only had a handful. I grabbed whatever I could find and started wiping off my shirt and jacket. I looked down at myself. I didn't look cleaned up. I looked like a guy that had just vomited all over myself. Now I was starting to get paranoid that the person inside the house had noticed that I was there and was wondering why I had been just sitting there when I should have been delivering the pizza.

I decided to get out of the car. I zipped up my hooded windbreaker to cover up the stained shirt, but the jacket had its share of unsavory stains. I examined it trying to think of a strategy. Then a really dumb idea hit me. The left side of my jacket was clean because I had puked all over the right side. Why didn't I just ring the doorbell and stand there with my left side toward the customer? That way, I could get the money and hand off the pizza without the customer knowing the wiser.

It seemed to make perfect sense to my panicked brain, but the execution was not that smooth.

I rang the doorbell and turned with my left side towards the customer.

A lady answered the door. She took one look at me and got a shocked look on her face. I'm no reader of faces, but it seemed to say, "What in the hell did this guy just roll in to look like that."

Getting paranoid, I decided that I had to get out of there as fast as I could.

I handed the pizza to her. She reluctantly handed me her check (Thank God!), which I'd normally tuck into my waist pouch, but seeing as how I'd have to turn to do that, I just clutched the check in my hand and took off for the car. I jumped in the car and drove back to Pizza Hut.

I obsessed on the way there about how stupid that was, but now I had another problem. What was I going to do with my uniform?

Pizza Hut came into view and I resolved to avoid coming back if other drivers were back. No way in hell did they not notice that I had something all over my front.

Thankfully, no one was there. To my great luck, no one was at the front as they were at the back making a pizza. I sprinted inside and downstairs. I looked in the uniform stash and found a new uniform shirt. I ran into the bathroom and changed.

I came outside to cash in my orders. The shift manager came over. She took a look at my new uniform and asked, "What happened to the shirt you were wearing?"

I shrugged.

"I had to change it because it got dirty."

I try to make salsa...

A Friday night in August was Julia's birthday, so we invited my brothers that live nearby and my Mom, who couldn't come. I didn't want to make a big deal about it, but seeing as how my brothers are within 40 minutes of driving from me, I thought I might as well invite them.

On Independence Day, our Hispanic neighbors brought over soft tacos served traditional style, which entailed shredded pork, corn tortillas, cilantro, onions, red salsa and limes squeezed over the taco meat. It was a big hit. Laura wanted to find out how to make it, so I asked. Turns out the pork was from Famous Dave's (where the husband works), but the salsa was homemade.

The salsa recipe was to get several roma tomatoes, a hot pepper and a clove of garlic.

For the pork, I decided to try it myself using my brother Paul's famous (among our family) seasoning, some mesquite powder and sea salt. At Famous Dave's, they smoke their pork for eight hours, but I didn't have access to a smoker. So I put the pork with the seasonings in the slow cooker and let it go for about seven hours.

I then started the salsa. The recipe called for me to roast the tomatoes and pepper under the broiler until the skins can be peeled off, which I did. I then took my head of garlic and peeled the whole thing. The garlic I stuck in a blender with the pepper and blended. Then I added the tomatoes to the blender.

What was produced was very strong in the garlic department. It was good, but it was like garlic took over the flavor brigade. I think if you look closely in the above paragraph, you can easily tell where I went wrong with the salsa recipe.

I made the same mistake when I made chili one time. I had recently come up with a chili recipe that I modified from one in a cookbook. The recipe called for real garlic, but for the first two times I made it, I used dry garlic from a jar. At work, we were having a chili cook-off for charity so I decided to one up myself by entering my recipe. Then I got cocky and thought about using real garlic. The recipe called for two or three cloves of garlic, so I bought two whole heads of garlic, peeled them, cut up all the pieces and cooked them with the ground beef, as per the instructions. I was immediately done over by the intense garlic smell that smothered the room. I finished the recipe and took a taste. I was met with the most intense garlic tasting chili I've ever tasted.

I thought, "Is this right?"

I added more tomato sauce to try and dilute the taste, but it wasn't helping much. I put the chili in the freezer anyway and decided to test my luck at the cook off. That day came and karma dealt me a huge hand by allowing me to completely forget to bring my chili that day. By the time I remembered, it was two hours until the competition started. Seeing as how I lived 30 minutes away and the chili had been frozen when I made it a few days before. I knew there wouldn't be enough time to retrieve the chili, defrost it and warm it up again. So I gave up my chili table at the cook-off, which as you read later, was a very good thing. Unfortunately, I had made two large pots of it and had to finish it myself.

The problem was, every time I ate the chili, Laura would kick me out of the bedroom. She's very sensitive to garlic and can always tell when I've eaten it. Normally, she just groans and says, "You've been eating garlic haven't you?"

This time, she said as I neared her, "Jesus! What in the hell have you been eating? A garlic patch?"

I assured her that I was not.

"Well whatever you've been doing, you REEK of garlic! It's like it's oozing out of every pore and orifice!"

I would try to kiss her and she'd shy away with a "Aaaggghhh!"

I hate to waste things, so I tried to doctor the chili up some by draining out the juice and replacing it with plain tomato juice, but even that didn't help.

Each time I ate it, Laura would groan and kick me to the other bedroom. One time I managed to talk her into let me sleep in the bed after a bowl of chili, but I was jettisoned in the middle of the night when I turned over and breathed on her. That was too much for her to take.

"Out!" she exclaimed.

As I was walking out the door with my pillow, she grumbled, "And throw out that damn chili!"

So I did...

Back to the near past...

So my twin brother, my two older brothers and their wives came over.

Being a little paranoid about the salsa, I put out two different store bought salsas for the pork taco meat I had made, but if they had any qualms about the salsa, they didn't say anything as they ate it heartily. I barely had any left.

The next day, I was talking to my neighbor who had given me the recipe and I asked her if one clove of garlic meant the whole thing or just one piece of the garlic.

"Oh no!" she exclaimed. "Just one of those pieces."

So instead of putting in one of those pieces, I had put something like 10 cloves of garlic into the salsa, which obviously accounted for the major garlic taste.

I called my brother, Bill, the next day to tell him about my mistake. He told me that when he got home and when he got within smelling distance of his wife, she took one whiff of him and exclaimed, "I don't know what you ate, but I want you to get away from me! It smells like you took a job at garlic factory."

She also said, "In fact, if this was our first date, there would be no chance I'd call you back with you smelling like that."

So it took me 37 years to learn that a clove of garlic means just one piece of the garlic and not the whole head. Now I just need to learn what in the hell oleo is and I'll be set.

Now... where's that crowbar?

There are lots of offers lately for home security by several companies. The commercials for these services seem to imply that whenever you're alone, or whenever it's dark, or alone when its dark, criminals are going to get you!

I'm not sure if it's just one company or if all of them do this, but the ads can certainly scare the crap out of any tentative person out there.

One commercial shows a man kissing his wife goodbye as he's leaving the house to go to work. As he's backing out of the driveway, he passes a man who's jogging. Inside, she closes the door and turns on the home security. Just then, the jogger stops jogging, puts up his hood and kicks down the door! She screams, but he's startled when the loud alarm goes off. She gets a call that asks her if she needs help.

So apparently, if you live in the suburbs, criminals are going to kick your door down in broad daylight immediately after someone leaves their house. Wouldn't they try to see if the door was unlocked first? Wouldn't the criminal try to get in without force? You know, by knocking on the door and asking to use the phone because their car broke down? That's how it usually seems to happen on the news.

Another commercial shows a family getting startled out of their sleep by a hooded criminal with a crowbar that has broken a side window and is trying to get in. The family panics, huddles together and breathes a sigh of relief when the burglar runs away and the security company calls them.

Yet another commercial shows a teenager's parents leaving for a night out. She tells them to have fun and right when she arms the house, she hears a noise. Thinking that her parents have forgotten something, she starts for the door when 'CRASH!' a hooded figure with a crowbar is crashing through the window and starting to climb through when the alarm scares him away.

A few things I notice here. In the suburbs at night, criminals are very prone to breaking into houses with visible activity as opposed to those houses that are obviously empty with the occupants out of town. It must be like flies to a bug light. They can't help themselves but to break in. I'm sure the security sign out front was also like bait for the burglar. They see the sign and figure that it's a house that has a lot of stuff to steal, so they take a chance to break in with as loud a noise as possible.

When our family had a break in when I was growing up in Grand Island, it was not a result of having a security system that we had just armed. Rather, it was a direct result of us not locking our doors. It was at night, but rather than crashing through the nearest large glass window with a crowbar, the burglars seemed to sneak in because we didn't hear them. It was only when morning came that we noticed that something was wrong when the sliding glass door to our patio was wide open. That and the television being gone seemed to send that red flag up. I guess they didn't read the stereotyping manual.

For sure, there are reports of home invasions and of people breaking down the door, but like I said, those seem rarer than a silent break in.

Also, one flaw with all home security services is that if your alarm goes off, they call you first to see if you need help. Now if your door has just been knocked down and the loud alarm doesn't scare off the intruder, are you really going to take the time to answer the phone?

It is a kind of odd way to advertise your product, by showing potential customers the worst case scenario.

Also, one of the things that they tell you when you're pitched by the security companies is that one of the biggest deterrents you can have for a home security system is to have a sign out front that tells the whole world that you're protected. That'd actually be a nice commercial...

I can picture the pitch meeting at the advertising agency. One guy gets up and tells about a commercial that shows a dark street with a family sleeping peacefully in their beds. While the camera pans through the house, a burglar is slowly walking down the street. He keeps seeing the security signs in the front yards of potential houses. He stops in front of our potential victim's house. He sees their sign, thinks twice about it and keeps moving. Meanwhile, the family inside sleeps soundly.

Then you have another guy stand up who says, "Picture this: A family gets the living shit scared out of them by a burglar in a hood crashing through their window with a crowbar! It's only the loud alarm and the security company calling to see if help is needed that saves the family!"

Some people say, "Good one!" and "I like it!"

"The message is: get our security system or your family is going to die!"

The president of the ad agency smiles and says, "Let's run with it!"

I guess it would be too boring to show scores of houses not being broken into. Kind of like having an advertisement for a casino that only shows what's more likely, the people inside losing their asses while gambling. Instead, you only see scores of people jumping for joy at all the winning that's going on.

Two things...

We were at Carlos O'Kellys, a Tex-Mex style restaurant, the other night with Julia.

Julia went to the bathroom, which is not an uncommon occurrence I realize.

When she came back, she sat down and said, "Two things. One, the bathroom smells like the pool at the YMCA. And two, the hand soap in there is dark blue."

I'm not sure of the significance, but we laughed at the interesting observation.

People sometimes do bad things, and here's a perfect example, Julia...

We went to the Children's Museum one Sunday, Julia and I.

After the museum closed, we decided to grab a drink at the local gas station near the interstate exit.

I pulled in, got out, and motioned for Julia to join me.

Julia asked, "Can I stay in the car while you get it?"

Sometimes, I will leave her in the car, but only if I'm parked in front of the windows, so I can see her. I was not parked in front. More importantly, it was a gas station in a not-so-good part of town. It's not that bad really. I sometimes eat at the Burger King next door, and I often go to the Walgreen's across the street, but you can definitely see where people might get nervous based on the shady-looking characters that sometimes frequent the area. Laura can't believe that I go to either the Walgreen's or the Burger King there.

"There was a gun fired at the bus stop there! Did you know that?" she asked as if to say, 'What are you thinking? Dumbass!'

I shrugged and said, "I've never seen anything like that. It's not like bullets are flying all the time. I've never had to duck while running into a store around there."

So today when Julia asked if she could stay in the car, I said, "No."

"Why?" Julia asked. "Someone might take me?"

"That and the fact that this isn't a good neighborhood."

"Why isn't it a good neighborhood?" she asked.

"Well, sometimes people do bad things."

"Like what?"

"For instance, did you see the glass in the parking lot? Sometimes, people break things," I said.

"Why?" Julia asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Sometimes they do."

We rounded the corner and walked inside. It was as hot inside as it was outside for some reason. I realized very quickly why when I looked towards my right. There was a guy there scooping big chunks of glass into a dustpan. There was a lot of it to clean up because the right front window pane was busted completely.

To top it off there was a truck outside of the shop that had its front end bashed in a little bit. There were assorted fluids draining from truck in a multi-colored pool.

I pointed to the broken window and said, "And here's a perfect example."

"What happened?" Julia asked.

"I don't know," I said, but it looked pretty obvious that someone had run their car through the front window.

I heard some people asking the front teller, who filled them in on the story.

Of course, I had to find out, so I asked the teller what happened when I was paying for our snacks.

The story went like this. The guy driving the truck lost control for some reason, sped through the parking lot and crashed into the front window of the store. He stumbled out of the truck, walked into the store, grabbed a diet soda, paid for it, went back to his truck to retrieve his stash of whatever drugs he had on him and ran off.

To top it off, the guy was bleeding from several cuts including a cut from a tooth that protruded from his up lip. That didn't stop him from stopping to get a refreshment.

We got back in the car and I said, "So you see. This is why I don't want to leave you in the car... because people sometimes do bad things."

Boris runs away and returns...

Whew! That was a long vacation!

Sorry about the long delay in my blog my faithful readers, all three of you. I've been absolutely swamped at work.

Here's a story about our cat, Boris, running away...


Boris runs away...

I've written about our newest cat, Boris, the one that's really lazy, that belches, that has chin acne, that isn't that bright, that is a bed hog and so on. Actually, I only wrote that he's quite lazy, but add the other stuff to that.

Boris lived on the streets for months before being picked up by the Humane Society. When we got him, he'd shown some interest in going outside, but we didn't want to start that habit. Our old cat, Moe, used to go outside on a leash in the front yard, so we tried that with Boris. He enjoyed it so much that he'd throw a hissy fit if he didn't get to go outside.

At first, he'd walk around and occasionally get wrapped around our tree in the middle of the front yard. Then he started to get more and more adventurous that he started chasing bugs, which usually congregated by the rose bushes right next to the house. I would come outside and find him wrapped in figure eights in the shrubbery. I'd have to unclip him and untangle the rope once or twice a day. It started to get old.

One day, I came out to get him and I found the rope frayed with no collar or Boris attached.

Panicked, I ran around the corner of the house and found him halfway to the back yard. I grabbed him and threw him inside while I tried to fix the rope. It was at least 10 years old and very weather frayed. I got it tied, but knew I had to replace it with a chain, which I did when I got a dog chain at the pet store. It's the kind that's steel encased in plastic with metal clips on each end.

I was pretty satisfied with this setup for a while because it didn't snag on the shrubbery like the rope did.

I should say that I WAS satisfied with this setup until the other night when I walked out to retrievehim. I followed the rope in the shrubbery to the end clip and found no Boris. He must have tugged on the end and it had enough give that he was able to pull himself off the clip.

I ran to the backyard and found no trace of him. I ran around our house a couple of times. No Boris. I got a flashlight and walked around calling his name. No dice. I got in my car and slowly drove up each street looking for flashes of him, but he was gone.

I broke the news to Laura that her replacement cat for Moe was missing and she took it pretty bad. She had just gotten over Moe and now this new cat disappears. In the morning, Julia broke down crying because she was so worried. I stayed home and put out fliers and drove around the neighborhood a few more times, but still found no sign of him.

I tried to cheer Laura and Julia up by telling them that I had a cat that had ran away when I was in college. In the same scenario, she had gotten outside and didn't came back. I walked around for a couple days all depressed because I didn't think she was coming back, but then late on the second night of her being gone, she showed up all dirty and hungry. I still had a little hope that he was going to return like my old cat had, but it was obvious that Laura had given up hope. I think the fact that she said, "I don't think he's coming back," several times led me to this point.

That second night here came and Laura got more depressed. She had just gone to bed when the doorbell ran.

There on the front porch was our neighbor and he had a struggling Boris in his arms. Apparently, he had found Boris walking around their back yard.

So all's well that ends well, right? Well, there is a small funny footnote to this.

The next night, Julia and I went out to eat while Laura was away at a bachelorette party. My phone rang. I checked the number. It said 'Private."

I answered it.

"Did you put up signs that you lost your cat?" the called asked, referring to my Lost Cat signs that I had taped up all over our subdivision.

"Yes, I did. But he came back last night. I need to take those signs down. Sorry about that."

The caller continued, "Is there a reward?"

"Ummm... No. He came back last night."

The caller hung up. I shrugged and hung up.

I started to wonder what that was all about. Who calls up someone before they found their lost pet asking if they are looking for that pet?

Maybe I was going to come home and find that he had been stolen. In his place would be a random note asking for his reward.

Maybe he's a wanted cat and a bounty hunter was distracting me while he broke in and took Boris.

He was still there, but it still strikes me as weird. Finding a cat and calling someone if it's theirs I can understand, but to call before finding said cat?

The kid sounded like a teenager, so I started to picture a kid like Encyclopedia Brown, a young amateur detective profiled in a book series of the same name. The kid must have been walking around the neighborhood with his trusty side kicks. They see my sign and jot down my number. This probably sounds like the perfect case for them. They probably called it "The Case of the Missing Cat." He calls me up and I hire him to find my cat. He does some searching around, but ends up finding nothing. Then a break in the case! He realizes that there is a secret cat stealing operation with the criminals sending the cats overseas for some secret laboratory experiments. He'll get caught while trying to save Boris, but get away through his ingenious McGuyver-cunning in which he cuts through his binds by using his glasses as a magnifying glass to harness the sun's power to cut through the ropes. He'll get the cops to come, the day will be solved and I'll get my cat back. But because I had already found him, he won't have that chance. Shame...