My High-maintenance Maintenance Man

Monday.


"Hi Bob, it's Paul up in apartment 7B. I went to use my bathroom sink this morning and it started doing that thing where the water sprays directly up in your face when you turn on the tap. I got a face full of cold water and a pretty wet floor, but otherwise things are okay. It stopped when I turned off the -

What's that Bob, you can't come today? Um, can I ask why?

You're having an existential crisis? That's too bad. As a writer I feel your pain, I've had one all my life. I mean, what does it all mean. What are we supposed to do with our lives and so on. What's causing yours?

You lost your big amateur cage fighting match this weekend, and now you are wondering if your plan to switch careers should go forward? That's a tough one my friend. Now about that waterfountain in my sink.

You say you can stop in tomorrow? Great. See you then.

Tuesday.

BEEP: Hi Bob, Paul here again. I stopped by your office this morning on my way to go get some breakfast at the diner, and I saw the sign that you were out at yoga and would be back soon. I have a meeting out of town today and I'll be gone most of the morning and afternoon. Feel free to just stop in and check out that faucet when you get back. It's starting to spray up a little, even when the taps are closed tight. It seems like a quick fix, and I might do it myself, but I have a deadline to meet this week, and this silly meeting today, so I don't have time to go to the hardware store and do the work. Also, I know that you have that room in the basement filled with pluming supplies, so I'm sure you have what you need in there to get my sink up and running again. Talk to you soon Bob.


Wednesday.

Hi Bob, Paul from 7B here again. I got your message - no Bob, I wasn't yelling at you yesterday afternoon on the street out front. I was just calling out to you to get your attention as you were about to cross the street. Hey, I saw you with your yoga mat again.

Oh, you're up to two sessions per day now? That's great. You must really be relaxed and stress free these days. Oh, speaking of stress, my sister and her family are coming to spend a long weekend with me and as much as I don't mind brushing my teeth and shaving in the kitchen sink, I'm really going to need the whole bathroom up and running to accommodate my family's visit.

You can come up right now! Great!

Thursday.

Hi Bob. It's Paul. Look I'm sorry about not offering you coffee or a snack yesterday when you came up to look at the sink. I'm just really focused on this book deadline and I guess the little details of civility are escaping me right now. If you want to come over today I'll break open this great Costa Rican brew my wife got when she was down there last. It's the best Bob. Maybe we can have lunch? I have this great ham from the deli over on Elm Street. It's tissue-paper thin and fantastic on rye.

You're a vegan? Oh, sorry. Maybe I can go get some humus and pita right now.

Have I ever though about animal rights and how we get our food in 21st century America? You have a documentary you'd like me to see?

Sure! I'd love to see it. Why don't you bring it up right now and while you're here maybe you can look at the bathroom sink again. The spray is now arching out onto the floor and I've got to have a bucket there to catch it all. It's not a big deal as long as I'm around to empty the bucket every hour, but it could be a problem if I every, you know, need to go out.

You're coming up now? Great. I'll get the coffee going.

Friday.

Hi Bob. Look I'm really sorry I wouldn't let your dog in the apartment when you came over yesterday. I know he's you "assistant" maintenance man (by the way, LOVE that cute button on his collar that says that), but my wife is allergic to dogs and if little "Fenway" had come in she would be sneezing and short of breath for a week. I hope you can understand.

No, I love dogs Bob! I really do! I had one named "Springsteen" when I was a kid. He was great. It's just when I decided to marry Julie I had to give up the idea of having a pet dog.

Sorry, sorry. I know dogs aren't pets anymore, they would prefer to be called companions. I'm sensitive to these things Bob, but I need to go EMPTY A BUCKET NOW!

Saturday.

Hi Bob. Paul here. Sorry about hanging up on you yesterday. It's been a really long week, manuscript deadline, waking up every hour at night to change out buckets, it's been pretty draining. (Thanks, that was a good pun!)

I did manage to bang out a new short story in my free moments though. It's about a humble maintenance man who follows his dream of being a mixed martial arts champion and yoga instructor. It came out so good that I'm thinking of turning it into a screen play to submit to the next Northeast Film Festival. I could totally see Channing Tatum playing the lead role.

You'd love to read it? That's swell Bob. I just happen to have a draft printed out on some top-shelf parchment I got as a Christmas present from Julie. Since you're coming up anyway, maybe you could bring your tool-belt with you and give that sink the old "look-see."

You will!

You're the best Bob." 

The Real St. Patrick...Way Cooler Than Boiled Food

St. Patrick's Day this year falls on a Sunday, and I can only assume that the partying will be raucous and open-ended, given the weekend schedule and the great weather the past few days. Monday morning will no doubt be a painful time for many celebrants, and the (predicted) sunshine of the day might be painful to many bleary eyes and sore heads. At the risk of being preachy, let me say that celebrating the life of St. Patrick by getting drunk is like celebrating Gandhi by eating a 32 ounce steak or remembering the life of Mother Teresa by buying a McMansion. (And St. Patrick's Day comes on the heels of Valentine's Day, another saintly day where folks celebrate by eating too much chocolate and buying lingerie.)

Now, I enjoy a Guinness as much as the next Irishman (actually Scotch-Irishman, my people have the great distinction of getting kicked out of two countries) and boiled food as much as anyone else. (That is to say "no one".) But the more I learn about the life of St. Patrick himself, the more I want to pass the day doing what he did and not getting snookered in a pup while waving an Irish flag.

Here is a quick primer on the life of this Saint (truly a man worthy of that title). He was born at the end of the forth century in what is now Wales, and at the age of sixteen he was captured by a band of Irish raiders (I'd use the word "pirate" but that just conjures up jolly images of eye patches, the letter "R" and Johnny Depp) and sold into slavery in Ireland. As a slave he most likely wore an iron collar around his neck to show his status and spent six of his formative years in abject servitude, tending sheep for a tribal chieftain before he miraculously escaped to the coast and convinced a ship's captain to bring him back to Great Britain.

If that were not incredible enough, what happens next will blow your shamrocks off. He went back to Ireland!

Well, not right away, but after a hearing the Lord call him into full time ministry he trained in Rome for a few years (the dark ages equivalent of Bible College) and, according to his own writings had a repeated dream where he was visited by various Irishmen who pleaded with him to come back and "walk among them".

And he went back!

Now if you take an understandably dim view of organized religion (one of my favorite bumper stickers says "when a religion starts to get organized, watch out!") and particularly when it comes to the Church and Ireland, you can still find much to admire in a man who would willingly go back to a place where he had been formally a slave.

And it was no picnic when he went back; he was robbed, beaten and threatened constantly. Yet he spent the remainder of his life in Ireland, telling anyone and everyone that God loved them and had a purpose for their life. These are no small words from a man who had seen the dark side of life in the way Patrick had.

So maybe we could celebrate St. Patrick's Day by finding someone who we need to forgive. This person might not deserve it or even ask for it, but maybe March 17th could be a day of reconciliation as well as boiled cabbage.

Or how about we celebrate St. Patrick's Day by getting out of our comfort zones? Perhaps you could get to know someone who you might otherwise pass by? Maybe you could serve the community in some aspect or volunteer at a St. Patrick's Day party at a retirement home or a soup kitchen.

Now I don't want to be a kill joy, I'm not anti fun. One of my favorite memories of St. Patrick's Day was seeing the river in Chicago turned green. (I saw it a few days earlier and it was naturally a shade of green that no body of water should be.) And I enjoy Irish music and corned beef (although not every food should be boiled, I've been to Ireland, and I've never seen such grey eats as they serve there) and the color green. In fact I have a daughter named Ireland. (In these pages she is mostly known by the nom de plume "Princess Genius"; now you know her secret identity.) But the more I reflect on the life of St. Patrick, the more I want to be like him and the less enthralled I am by leprechauns and shamrock shakes at McDonalds.

So next year, before planning an evening of inebriation, please take a minute to consider the patron saint of dear old Ireland, and consider how you might uniquely celebrate such a remarkable life.

But make sure to boil the breakfast early

Life In My Skinny Jeans

I have been exactly ten pounds overweight for about 15 years now. This has to be some sort of record for both sloth and consistency. I don't know how I have done it, but since the late 90's I've weighed 165 pounds, give or take the steak and eggs for breakfast or the pizza for dinner.

I just thought my weight was normal, but according to some health metrics I've seen lately, a guy my height (my diver's license says I'm 5 '8', so I'll go with that, though some hair might have been involved in that measurement back in 2003), should weigh 155 pounds to be at peak health.

155 ponds! I'm going to have to give up something to attain "peak health", should it be the biscuits and gravy or the potato chips? (Did you know that "diet" is "die" with a "t"?)

I've always had a pretty high metabolism and combine that with being a fairly nervous (some would say 'twitchy") person, and I've never really had to worry about weight or my eating habbits too much.

What I am finding out is that you can be the same weight for a number of years and still change shape (my dad has a t-shirt that says "I'm in shape! Round is a shape!").

That's right. Things are heading south. That middle-aged-guy belly? Check!

This realization was brought home to me recently when a pair of my favorite jeans didn't quite cinch up as easily as they once did. It was right after the holidays, so I figured that I had gained a few pounds drinking gallons of eggnog (as much sugar in one glass as a candy bar), but when I consulted the family scale in the bathroom, it read exactly the same; 165.

So I did what any sensible American does. I went out to get a new pair of jeans.

As a writer and stay-at-home-dad, my uniform of choice and practicality is a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt (the uniform of my youth as well). I usually get one pair of jeans and one shirt each year, usually around tax return time.

This being that time of the year, I perused the racks for just the perfect style and pair. And then, looking at the price tags, I immediately headed to the discount racks in the back of the store.

There my eyes fell upon the perfect pair. Right size? (The right size being "one size bigger than the ones in my bureau") Check! Right price? Check! (How could you go wrong with a price that was one tenth the price of the neighbors in the next aisle?) Should I try them on?

Nah, all the info I need is right on the tag, and since I'm running late I'll just grab these guys and get out of here. What could go wrong?

Well, the next morning when I went to put them on I discovered what could go wrong. You know a pair of pants is going to be tight when you cant even get your foot through waist of the jeans.

As I stood in my bedroom, trying not to be seen by any other human being, I wondered what was going on. I checked the size again. Seems okay, but what are those tiny word under the measurements?

"Skinny fit!"

I looked like a cross between a tights-wearing extra in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and James Dean (minus the glorious hair and that "I have to go to the bathroom" look on my face).

But what to do? I didn't think that I could face the embarrassment of returning the jeans and having to state "the reason I need to return these discount skinny jeans is that I look ridiculous in them." And come to think of it, perhaps the reason they were on the discount rack to begin with was that everybody else thought they were ridiculous too!

So I did what any other male worth his salt would do. I didn't admit my mistake and went about my day in tights and a flannel shirt. ("I'm sorry sweetheart, I can't help you tie your shoes today. Daddy can't bend over right now.")

If there is a benefit to skinny jeans, they do hide that paunch in the middle of your frame pretty well. I looked pretty svelte, even though I kept having fainting spells all day.

So, I think it's time to go do some sit ups and push ups and perhaps get rid of that ice cream in the freezer.

What's the best way to get rid of unwanted ice cream in your freezer you ask?

You should eat it.

155 pounds, here I come