Driving to work, something strange caught my eye. There was a car parked well off the highway.  A car for sale.  An old car.  An ugly car.  This car was dark brown.  The kind of brown you would only find in the early 80s.  There was something about this old ugly brown car that intrigued me.  Could it be?  Perhaps.  It looked vaguely familiar to the first car I ever owned.  Yep, it looked a lot like my 1983 4-door Ford Escort hatchback.  The car of my youth.  The car of freedom and frivolity.  The car that smelled just like sweet and sour meatballs, when sunlight hit the backseat and the temperature was just right.  Sure, this car was an ugly brown, while my Escort was an ugly baby blue, but it could be painted.  I kept driving.

Several days later, the car still sat there. Beckoning me.  Asking for me to take a closer look.  Driving up, I could see that the car was in pretty bad shape (much like my Escort), also it was not a Ford, but rather a 1982 Chevy Chevette diesel with somehow only 90,000 miles.  This car was indeed a first cousin of my Escort.  A portal to the past.  A gateway to carefree days.

Then came the kicker, the price. $1,100.  Really?  I was thinking 50 bucks.  $500 tops, but $1,100?  The owner had detailed all of the repairs made over the years, but still $1,100?  When I had purchased my beloved baby blue Ford Escort it was for $300, back in 1990.  Adjust for inflation and you get $554.43 or almost half the price.  Boy, my $300 Escort was looking like a great deal.

Standing there, off the side of the highway, contemplating a negotiating price, reality struck me. What the Hell was I doing?  In an instance, I had stepped out of my car onto the side of the highway right smack into the middle of a midlife crisis moment.  This car could never recapture my youth.  This car was not even sexy or sleek.  It was an early 80s hatchback.  Good lord, this was not good.  I had not been drawn to a Corvette, but rather a Chevette.  The worst of all situations, my midlife crisis had been embodied in the form of an ugly little brown car that could barely sit my whole family.  What would my wife say?  What would be the look on her face?  A mixture of grief, anger, and bewilderment, I imagine.  No, walk away from the relic.  Turn my eyes from the past.

Climbing back into my Ford Freestyle cross-over family wagon of this century, I realized I was worse off than I had ever imagined. Midlife crisis?  No problem, but mine was in need of a serious upgrade.  “Siri, where is the closest Harley Davidson dealer?”

Getting ready for a run outside, I surveyed my clothing. For once in my life, I had actually set out some clothes that fit me well, matched, and were weather appropriate.  Yep, I was taking my hefty self out to exercise and I was going to look good doing it.  Oh yes, I was feeling fine.

I put on my running gear and headed for the backdoor. Picking up my house keys, I went to put them in my pocket, but there was a problem.  There were no pockets.  Well, the shorts had pockets, I just could not access them, because much to my surprise, my shorts were on inside out.  To make matters worse, they were compression shorts.  Don’t get me wrong, they do feature an outer shell, so the compression part usually keeps all of me in the right places and the outer shell makes the shorts acceptable to the world.  Unfortunately, now I was a mess.  Reversed shorts compressing the shell into nether regions and unnatural bumps and folds allover.  The seams showing were the least of my worries.  My grand fashion triumph had instantly turned into a fashion failure of epic proportions.  Nope, no running away from this reality, plus the reversed compression shorts probably would have prevented me from running very far anyway.

Me pictured in one of my better running moments.

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“The best of both worlds, the ‘Chocolate Chip Pie’ is a pie that tastes like a cookie. It really is like getting a big slice of chocolate chip cookie, in a piece of pie portion.  Yummy, easy to make, and innovative.  Pie perfection.  Also, I know it sounds wrong to use the frozen store bought pie shells, but I have tried these before with a homemade crust and trust me, these pies just taste better using the store bought frozen crust.”  – Cookie Dave

CHOCOLATE CHIP PIE

2 (9 inch) unbaked frozen deep dish pie shells

4 Eggs

1 cup Flour

1 cup Sugar

1 cup Brown Sugar

1½ cups (3 sticks) Butter, softened

2 cups (1 bag) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Begin to thaw frozen pie shells. It takes about 20 minutes to thaw.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix the eggs on high speed until foamy.

Mix in the flour, sugar, and brown sugar.

Mix in the softened butter.

Stir in the chocolate chips.

Pour half of the batter into each of the pie shells.

Place the pies onto a cookie sheet.

Bake for about 1 hour and 20 minutes. For the first 50 minutes, have the pie crusts covered with shields, in order to avoid having the crusts burn.  Remove the pie crusts and finish baking.

At about 1 hour, begin checking on the pie by inserting a knife halfway toward the middle. If the knife comes out clean (or mostly clean) and the top of the pie is brown, your pie is done.

Place on a cooling rack and enjoy warm (or room temperature).

Makes about 8 pieces of pie.

Revised Source: Nestle Toll House

Behold the beauty of four freshly baked Chocolate Chip Pies!

Recently, my wife Charlene has showed a subtle, but ever so noticeable, increased interest in the band Coldplay. For instance, “Hey, Coldplay is on Letterman tonight.” or “We could watch ‘Saturday Night Live.’  Coldplay is the musical guest.”  Things that make you go hmmm.  I must admit, I understand.  Lead singer Chris Martin does appear to have it all going on.  The looks, the voice, the rock star mystic.  Fine.  Watch all you want honey, I won’t get in the way.

Well, a few weeks ago the new issue of “Us Weekly” arrived in the mail. Let me first explain that we have never subscribed to “Us Weekly,” one day it just started arriving in the mail.  Honest.  Then a few months later, they asked us to renew our subscription.  I ignored the request and for some reason, “Us Weekly” keeps arriving.  Oh well, you know I cannot get enough celebrity gossip (note sarcasm).  I especially like how “Us Weekly” makes me feel extra old, since the oldest age of any celebrity pictured is usually a few years younger than me and I don’t know half of the celebrities, in the first place.  There, I am a grumpy old man.  I guess that must be the target audience for a free “Us Weekly” subscription.  Sorry, back on track.  Well, the new issue of “Us Weekly” arrived in the mail and I discovered that Chris Martin (age 37) of Coldplay has started dating Jennifer Lawrence (age 24), after splitting up with Gwyneth Paltrow (age 41).  Okay, first off, if it had not been for Charlene’s unusual interest in Coldplay, the article would not have been on my radar.  I probably would have skipped to the movie reviews, but since Mr. Martin seems to be of interest to Charlene, I put myself in his shoes.  In his breakup and rebound, his actress (Shakespeare in) love interest became seventeen years younger.

Glancing over at my wife, I asked, “Isn’t it kind of wrong that Chris Martin is dating Jennifer Lawrence? She is so much younger.”

My wife, who continued reading the paper, gave sort of a shrug. Passive approval of the Martin – Lawrence romance.

Foolishly, I continued, “I mean, if something happened to you, would you be okay with me dating Jennifer Lawrence?”

My wife. My poor, poor, wife then could barely contain her mocking (jay) laughter, “You?  Dating Jennifer Lawrence?”  [Insert more “wife chuckling” (term patent pending).]

Okay, okay, I get it. Point made.  No need to linger on the subject.  I guess that I deserved that response, because in that moment, my wife appeared to be a shooting star “in a sky, in a sky full of stars.”

I don’t want to look too far into it, but writing “Buns – Hot & Ham” on the grocery list makes me smile. That is all.

One of the many benefits of my current job: not a lot of night meetings.  Sure every now and then I have a night meeting, but these days are so different from when I was starting out.  When I was a young professional, night meetings were a few nights per week occurrence and the duration was horrible.  It was not uncommon to head home well past midnight.  Tiring?  Yes, more like exhausting.  Do I miss it?  No, not a smidgen.  So now that I only have a night meeting or two per month, no problem.

Last night was one of those meeting nights and it was my first time attending, as well as my first time visiting that particular building. Well, I figured I would be uber-prepared.  Sitter?  Reserved.  Directions?  Printed out.  RSVP?  Done.  I was golden.

The evening started out as planned. Sitter arrived at 6:15PM and I was scheduled to head out at 6:45PM, in order to make the short ten minute drive and actually be there five minutes before the 7PM meeting start time.  Golden.  I had time to fix a pizza for the boys, actually freshen up my work attire, and grab a bite to eat.  Night meeting?  No problem, I’m an old pro at this.  Glancing at my printed directions from Google Maps, I was right on schedule to arrive at 6:55PM.  Just one small problem, the building was not there.  The industrial park had nothing even resembling my destination.  Driving down the side streets, nothing.  No luck.  Google Maps had directed me to the middle of nowhere or right into the middle of the “Twilight Zone.”  Hum, either my map was in error or my meeting had been sucked into oblivion.  If it was the former, I had better find where I was supposed to go and fast.  If it was the latter, then I should consider myself fortunate that I wasn’t really early or I might have been obliterated, as well.  Either unlucky or lucky, hard to tell, when you are sitting alone in an industrial park.

Considering that the building’s address was on a state highway, I figured I would take a chance and drive to the other side of town. Perhaps Google Maps had interpreted East as West and just sent me to the wrong side of town, apparently the Bizzaro side of town.  Driving as fast as I could without begging for a ticket, I soon saw my destination.  It was a building I had passed hundreds of times before, but never noticed.  There peacefully standing East of Burger King was my meeting locale, my night’s work.  Parking the car and turning off the ignition, I glanced at the clock:  7:05PM.  Five minutes late, I could still pull this off.  Blame it on the sitter.  The sitter would never know.  The sitter would never care.

I rushed into the meeting room with an air franticness and confidence, as if to say, “My life is extra busy, but I’m damn good.” Within about fifteen seconds, I fielded my first question.  Ugh, I did not even have time to blame the sitter.  So much for a having a good fictitious excuse prepared.  So much for Google Maps.

Our clock radio usually wakes me up to NPR. This morning, they had some guy on talking about his movie autobiography or some such thing.  The interesting part (the only interesting part) of the interview was that the title was something like “20,000 Days on Earth.”  Since today is my beloved big sister’s birthday, I got to thinking, rather than a birthday number (easy to remember), how many days has she been on Earth?  Turns out the number is 17,532 and I am happy to report that she has spent 15,362 of those days with her amazing little brother, me!  Yep, nearly 88%.  I think that qualifies as a great life and a reason to celebrate (just the fact alone that the Internet makes such stats easy to generate is reason to celebrate).

My sister, Kathy, has always been kind and loving. She has looked after her little brother and took care of me, even though I frequently engaged in annoying little brother behavior and still probably unknowingly do.  Speaking of annoying little brother activities, there was this thing I used to do, where I would put spit by my eyes to make it look like I was crying and then blame things on my sister.  Horrible, just horrible, little brother behavior. Yes, off the top of my head, the only drawback was of course the Notre Dame looking football doll that she used to “tackle” me with in my crib.  There I was confined to a small space and unable to avoid the doll with the golden helmet descending upon me.  Terrifying, but I won’t mention that, because it is Kathy’s birthday.  Yep, other than that one instance, my sister has always been there when I needed her.  Supportive and forgiving.  Patient and understanding.  It has been my honor to share the Earth with my amazing sister for the past 15,362 days.  I will forever be thankful that she has shared this crazy journey called life with me.  So, happy birthday to the best big sister a little brother could ever want, football doll attacks and all.

The worst thing about my head cold isn’t that hazy feeling. It isn’t that the stuffed up congestion.  Nope, not those, but rather the absence of smell.  You see, recently I received a complement.  A complement so wonderful and life altering that my lack of smell is truly tragic.  I was told that I smell good.  Yep, that’s right.  Me.  I smell good.  While I credit the vast selection of “Old Spice” deodorant at the grocery store for this newly acquired attribute, it was still me that purchased and applied the product.  As a result, I deserve some of the credit.  Yep, I smell good, now if only I could verify it with my own two nostrils, life would be good.  Oh well, I will hold high the complement and hold it high with confidence, because I smell good (independently verified).

Yesterday, I decided to be spontaneous and take the boys to a matinee showing of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” Arriving early at the mall, I figured that we could kill a little time in the bookstore.  As a result, we parked on the bookstore side of the mall (i.e. the other side of the mall from the movie theater) and took a serpentine path through the mall to the matinee.

Since it was a 4:30PM Saturday showing, I planned on returning to the bookstore, after the movie, and then back to the car. Pop culture, print media, light exercise, the boys would get it all.  This dad was on fire.  When the movie ended, we headed back into the mall toward the direction of the bookstore and our car to be met by a big metal gate.  An imposing and impenetrable metal gate.  The rest of the mall was closed.  We were adrift and carless on the other side of the mall.  Informing the boys of the bad news, we set out on our journey around the outside of the mall by foot.

As we walked along, the boys were a continuous series of statements and stories. Some exaggerated (“I once ran twelve miles-per-hour”) and some sincere (“I liked the ‘Amazing Spiderman 2’ better than the ‘Ninja Turtles’”), but nearly all of them began with a crucial phrase, “Hey, Dad…”  It was a bit exhausting to hear the three of them compete and stumble over each other for the next sentence, but they were so earnest in their desire to talk to me.  To let me know what was on their mind.  To be noticed.  To be special.  To be loved.

It was there, during the long hike around the mall back to our car, that I was reminded of the three young blessings that accompanied me. I was surrounded by love.  A constant stream-of-consciousness superhero-pumped-up verbal-combat kind of love.

I’m not a scientist and I only received average grades in science at school, but a few things did stick. For instance, Carl Sagan was cool for a science dude and “Occam’s Razor” sounds wicked and is pretty useful.  To summarize Occam was another dude, who said that the simplest answer is often correct.  Crazy complex stories don’t hold up well, while using Occam’s Razor, and yesterday, I got to use it next to the fork and spoon at the dinner table.

5-year-old Ben: “When I was outside, Jacob (his 10-year-old brother) threw a tennis ball at me.”

Older brother Jacob: “Yeah, when Ben walked outside, he happened to walk right in front of where I was throwing the ball.”

Competing hypotheses: 1) Jacob threw the ball at Ben…  2) Ben happened to walk outside into the direct path of a tennis ball.  Let’s consult “Occam’s Razor.”  The winner:  Big brother threw a ball at little brother.

Later in the meal, I detailed how I found Kirby the Beagle eating candy on the floor of Jacob’s room.

Jacob: “The candy was getting sticky in the cupboard, so I needed to move it up to my room.”

Grab the razor. Competing hypotheses:  1) Candy was relocated, because it was getting sticky…  2) Jacob likes to eat candy in his room at night.”  The winner:  Fibbing boy with a sweet tooth.

Now, please pass a baked potato and a knife, because Occam’s Razor ain’t good at cuttin’ food.

As bedtime approached, I overheard 10-year-old Jacob discussing the status of a wart on his 5-year-old little brother Ben’s big toe.

Jacob: “Wart medicine really hurts.”

Ben: “No, it doesn’t.”

Jacob: “Yes, it does.  Have you used wart medicine before?”

Ben: “Yes, two times.”

Jacob: “Oh, the third time hurts real bad.”

Thanks Jacob, I see a budding career as a physician assistant in your future.

Later, I arrived upstairs to see 7-year-old Sam close to tears.

Dad (me): “What’s the matter?”

Sam: “I lost my yearbooks.”

All of a sudden, 10-year-old Jacob emerges from his room holding two yearbooks.

Jacob: “Don’t cry.  Here are your yearbooks.”

Dad (me): “Why did you have Sam’s yearbooks in your room?”

Jacob: “When you guys were cleaning, you must have taken Sam’s yearbooks and put them in my cubby.”

Oh, yeah. That’s it.  Of course, your bumbling parents were the source of all disruption and unhappiness.  I should have known.  Duh.

Jacob Paulsen, supplying his own special brand of brotherly love (and trickery), since 2007.