Big Papi Wants You!

I'll save everyone from the epistles of late. Instead, I'd like to give a few updates since it is once again the first of the month (Cue the Rap song by a bunch of miscreants about getting their welfare checks....honestly the song exists, I was and am still a fan of it, the artists are "Bone Thugs and Harmony").

1) Learn to be more honest

This is a lifelong lesson I struggle with. I'm a "Yes" man, and I'd rather go out of my way to do something nice than create a potential rift of conflict. But, after a nice conversation with my father-in-law Mike, I resolved to at least try and tell it like it is.

Case in point...there is someone I know who is so full of shit all of the time, who hasn't done a lot with their lives personally, but finds it necessary to tell everyone else how to live. At one of these philosophical junctures, my friend said to the person, "You're so full of shit".

Those five words shut that person up, saved some excess Carbon Dioxide, and really honestly probably saved both the parties useless time spent on crap. I'm a pragmatist, it works, I think I'll try it.

2) MacBook

Fuck Microsoft, I decided to finally be the "Cool" kid on the block. Meghan and I are scrapping our PC's and Laptops and we went in on ONE brand new MacBook. Awesome, convenient, and to go with the theme, pragmatic.

3) Loseit

In my effort to finally confront my guilty eating habits, I downloaded "Loseit" from Apple. It's on my iPhone, and I get to count calories and exercise with a daily limit of what I can intake. Being that I'm ultra competitive, it's like a game...sorta like taxes..."Let's see how much I can win against the system today". Stay tune to how much I actually lose. My goal is roughly 6-10 pounds.

4) Marathon

I officially declare my plan to race in the Baltimore Running Festival this October. Five months is plenty time to procrastinate....er....train. Plus, it helps me with the aforementioned category. Meghan tried to feel guilted into training for the half marathon. However, I think she does better with cross-training. Not that she is a bad runner, but she HATES running. And her family has osteoarthritis like Michael Vick has debt. I don't want to help spur along my wife's ambulatory demise at an early age. She's too hot for a limp.

5) Birthday

Shout out to my pop, who's turning 54 in 3 days. Goddamn, can you believe it? Something to say about having a son when you're 24. I'm 30, not at all ready for a child. My dad keeps laughing saying, "You wont be able to chase your kids around because you'll be too old".

6) Big Papi

Last but not least, I bid a premature but appropriate melancholy farewell to David Ortiz, better known as "Big Papi". I love him dearly, he carried the Red Sox on his back during 2004 and 2007. However, it looks as if his career has come to an end. Yeah, he's still playing, but it's sad the way we watch his tired bones creak as he slowly hacks at pitches. His bat speed is nill. It's like watching my grandfather slipping into dementia, or your old dog with arthritis attempt to limp over to the tennis ball it used to fly to. No one wants them to go, we all hope that they turn it around. And to be honest, we'll all keep them around until it's time, but it's just sad to watch the end of an era, sad to watch that lovable spirit hurt so badly as time starts to pass them by.

It's a song and dance we all must wrestle with as we watch our loved ones slip away, and then we have to finally dance that dance ourselves. We have to be vigilant to enjoy our time now. It's too easy to never be satisfied and always want more. It's the double edged sword of living the American Dream. I want more money, I want to lose 10 pounds, and one day I want to live in a nice house somewhere on the water with a boat. But honestly, I have so much already living with student loans and a mortgage in the beginning of my career with a beautiful wife. Both of us are starting where everyone else does...square one.

The other night, my wife and I had steak outside on our porch at dusk, great music was playing, there was a slight breeze, and at that point in time there was nothing wrong with the world. Total perfection, two whole hours of it, not a want or a care, just an existance of satisfaction.

How many of us can find perfection within our day? It's so much easier to bitch about our "tough times" here in America, but really, are we constantly scrounging for food, are the readers of this blog moving their family from refugee camp to refugee camp? Did our houses get bombed, or did our village get pillaged by another tribe seeking genocide for their beliefs?

You can answer that yourself, but I profess we are mostly a nation of fat cats, spoiled and complacent, too worried about minimalist imperfections. Yeah, Big Papi is losing his swagger, he's the old dog who can't run to the ball anymore. And yeah, my grandfather is slowly slipping into the grips of dementia. Personally, it hurts to see one of my best buddies fail to remember who I am, or never really acknowledge my beautiful wife. But as my Aunt Ingrid said in her broken English (she now takes care of my grandfather in Sweden), "It's Life". And goddamnit she is right, it's not perfect. In these cases both parties have long ago reached their summits, but we still love them because there is no other way to feel.

As always thanks for indulging yourself in work avoidance for the day.