April's Starch March

Despite my firstborn son status, I survived Passover. Eating matzoh for a week and a day didn't help. When I got on the treadmill the Saturday afterwards, it felt like I had accidentally worn my combination gym shorts/X-ray lead apron. Energy bled out of me. I refused to extend the ban against leavened foods to my diet beverages. To all for whom Coca-Cola is banned from kosher-for-Passover foods because of its corn syrup, I say, "Suckers." Still, the twelve miles was very, very hard. They say your body has about two thousand calories' energy stored in its muscles. This is your "gas tank" and when it goes empty, that's your "wall". Runners like colorful metaphors. I hit the wall at about seven miles. Now I know why runners like to eat a big dinner of pasta the night before.

Brandi and I celebrated the end of Passover by eating most of a Chicago-style deep dish pizza with extra cheese and tomato sauce. I can't help but wonder if Moses and the Thirteen Tribes did the same when they reached the Promised Land.

The thirteen miles I did the next weekend went much quicker. My secret: a giant Jewel-Osco cookie, with frosting, and lots of sleep.

My dad used to talk about exercise giving him energy. I never had any idea what the hell he was taking when he said it. Exercise bums my body out. I work out and I need lots of rest. At least, I usually do. After my thirteen mile run, I was wired. When I came home and tried to burn a DVD for my friend Bob, the computer crapped out. "Stupid computer," I wanted to shout at it, "I'm ready for more. Run, dammit!" But like so many things in the tech industry, just punching it did more harm than good.

I didn't actually punch my computer. I haven't seriously abused my electronics since the time I took my iMac's keyboard and slammed it into my recliner as hard as I could. A couple of "shift" keys came off, as I recall, and a bunch of the numeric keypad. So, if you ever wonder why I consider re-attaching keys that have popped off the keyboard, consider that my start. I also once punched my computer so hard the processor popped out of the motherboard. Boy, did that scare the crap out of me. "Disconnected?!" Slam. Computer goes blank. Matt tries to remember how much money a new computer would cost and how soon he can get one. As a lark, he opens up the case of his computer, looking to see how much silicon he's going to have to solder together to get the old thing to work. To his surprise, he discovers the heat sink and processor have dislodged from the motherboard. He plugs it back in. The computer powers up. Matt hears a silent reply from the gods of computing: it was not her time; it was too soon.

I have trouble sleeping sometimes. What doctors call insomnia, I call "cats". We saw an animal behaviorist to learn why one of our cats held her feces so long, she began throwing up because her digestive system literally could hold nothing more, and why the other one sometimes uses what he likes to think of as the literbox and what we think of as "pillows". Apparently, there is a silent power struggle in our home. Also, cats' noses are 3500 times more powerful than our own. I suspect that number. Wouldn't that mean if a cat smelled a flower, he would explode? Regardless, we have to clean the litterbox more often. We also need to devote 20 minutes a day to getting them aerobic exercise. Twenty minutes each. I joked about one of us quitting our jobs to become cat parents. Brandi said, "You told me getting a cat would be a lot of work." Being right sucks when it doesn't get you out of anything.

Brandi also swapped around bells to deal with the issues of dominance - one cat seems to have developed a dominant streak in addition to the permanent PMS she seems to be suffering whenever she meows. I swear when I hear it I want to write a symphony of nails on a chalkboard, just to have something more pleasant to hear. Rio, our orange cat, now has three bells to Patrick's none. Whenever she bounces it sounds like the opening strains to "Jingle Bells". Unfortunately, cats are nocturnal, so while they do like to sleep on top of us for part of the night, they also roam in the very early morning. I've woken up at four in the morning two days in a row only to look at the clock and groan.

I did have an interesting dream this morning. Last night, Brandi and I joked about quitting our jobs and moving into our garage to eliminate 90% of our rent and most of our utilities. My sleeping brain must have been listening because in my dream we had downgraded to exactly that and the cats were driving me absolutely nuts there. I also had terrible flu-like symptoms. I woke up - in the dream - and tried to find the computer or the phone to call in sick to work. Eventually, probably when the alarm went off, I realized it was a dream. I opened my eyes for real... and felt okay. I was only dream sick. I think it was my unconscious phoning in sick because the dream wasn't very good or original. It was the best it could do.

Brandi asked me the other day if I had goals. I rattled off a short list of them, including, "make the best Chicken Parmesan ever" since, coincidentally, I was making Chicken Parmesan at the time. I want to lead an interesting life. A long time ago, in eighth grade, I thought I could lead an interesting life by writing one. I think that dream lasted until I saw "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", and I realized that writers trying to lead interesting lives either a) burn out or b) lie. The honesty bug makes lying painful and socially awkward for me, so I opted out. Sure, I still write and love it, but it's something I want to make part of my life, not something I want to carve my life out of. Perhaps the distinction is semantic.

Regardless, I want to make elegance. Sometimes I draw. Other times I perform improvisational comedy. Alarmingly, I haven't found a good way that also brings in a lot of money, although, strangely enough, the ways I have found wound up costing us a lot in taxes every year. You won't catch me saying this very often, but thank goodness for George W. Bush and the repeal of the marriage tax. Whoa. That hurt more than I thought it would. I think I had less trouble running a half marathon.

Brandi and I wisely chose to do both our laundry and taxes on the same night. I won't imply there was friction, but I will say it's a good idea we didn't soak anything we owned in anything flammable. We owed. Between the two of us we had at least a small child's body weight in clothing. Several highlights of the evening: 1) sending that letter off with the taxes, our payment, and a middle finger aimed squarely at a conservative government bent on spending my money on crap like Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, 2) the hauling, 3) laundromat television blaring really loud Spanish soap operas at us for three hours, 4) thanking the woman at the counter at the post office for staying there late to handle us last-minute stragglers, whereby decreasing by 0.000004% the chance that someone in the near future will "go postal", 5) did I mention the hauling?, 6) pretending the change machine was a slot machine, sticking a twenty dollar bill and "winning" twenty dollars in quarters. Hey, I get my entertainment where I can.

The nice thing about getting laundry done is never having to gamble that you're going to walk under a black light while wearing your favorite pair of pants for the eleventh time. This has happened to me and it was not, not, not pretty.

There but for the grace of God go I.