Hamstrings From Hell

I love yard work. I always have. When I was ten years old, my Dad gave me the job of cutting the grass of our rather large yard. The first time I cranked up that lawn mower, something clicked. When my own son turned ten, I wouldn’t let him near my Toro, something for which he must have been eternally grateful. The last time my wife cut the grass was from atop her Dad’s brand new John Deere riding mower, wearing a bikini, trying to jumpstart her tan back in high school. No, at the Dunnevant estate, the yard is my thing.

Part of the attraction is the simplicity of the work. I advise people about where and how to invest their money. I implore them to plan for the future, to protect their assets from the risks associated with life’s unknowable variables, like an unexpected disability, or untimely death. It’s all very complicated and the pressure of all that cajoling, and the inherent possibility of error combine for a high stress existence. Yard work, on the other hand is gloriously straight forward. See grass, cut grass. See weed, pull weed. The best part of it is that after a couple of hours you can stand back and admire the completion of the thing. There is a marvelous sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing something.

However, not all yard work is created equal. Recently I scheduled my annual aeration and over seeding with the good people at Virginia Green Lawn Care. They gave me the following instructions: “Prior to our arrival, please try to rake out any moss you find in the back yard. This will insure proper seed growth.” My back yard has quite a bit of shade so moss does have a tendency to accumulate back there. So, Saturday morning I stepped off of my deck at 8 am, rake in hand, to get the job done. Three hours later I had a hand full of blisters and 7 fifty gallon trash bags full of moss stacked against the back fence.

I consider myself an extremely fit 56 year old. I spend close to four hours a week on a tread mill. I do curls and bench presses. I sweat profusely on the hated abdominal crunch machine. Nevertheless, when I woke up Sunday morning, both of my hamstrings were on fire. The simple act of getting out of bed sent waves of pain through my legs. It was as if I had spent ten hours being tortured by a sadistic guard at Guantanamo. Apparently, the motion of bending over to scoop up armfuls of freshly raked piles of moss was just too much for my 56 year old hamstrings to endure.

It is now Monday morning, a full 48 hours has passed since all the moss raking and I’m still moving gingerly, sitting and rising very carefully, closely resembling a much older man. The last time the back of my thighs hurt this much was after I got paddled by the principal in junior high for flying a classmate’s pants up the flagpole.

So, I suppose this is how it’s going to be going forward. Routine physical labor will visit extreme discomfort upon me the older I get, is that how it’s going to be? Well, let me tell you something. I will never give up yard work. I don’t care if it sends me to the ER, no teenager is going to touch my yard…EVER.

I think I’ll buy some Advil stock.

Meeting Denise

An idea sprang forth out of the dark corners of my imagination a week or so ago to gather together all of the blog posts that I have written over the last two years about death and dying, and format them into a book, (tentative title, “Losing My Parents”). Having just read that sentence, it sounds like a terribly depressing project, but it actually isn’t. It’s more like family history. In the past two years, I’ve lost my mother, my father and my dog. My way of dealing with it all has been to write. Some of it was born of frustration and anger, but much of it was out of admiration for not only my dying father, but the resilience of my amazing family. Gathering it all together into a narrative form might serve two purposes: to preserve an informal history of my parents for our family, and to give aid and comfort to other families who might be struggling with their own dying parents.

To that end, I reached out to my biggest fan and proofreading Nazi from North Carolina for help in getting it all organized. It just so happened that she and her husband were going to be in town this weekend for a family celebration in Mechanicsville. We decided to finally meet, for lunch at Rock Bottom at the Short Pump mall. What a delight.

Denise and her husband Herb could not have been any nicer. Up until yesterday my conversations with her had been limited to emails and texts. It’s always a bit nerve-wracking to meet someone in person with whom you have had an ongoing business relationship. I always worry what they will actually think of me. I have been told more than once that I am an acquired taste. Maybe she will discover that the quirky aspects of my personality she finds so endearing in writing will turn out to be annoying in person! And what about her? Maybe she will turn out to be a creeper/stalker type who thinks my writing is a portal to the mother ship of new consciousness! Turns out that the two of them were the nicest things ever and disturbingly similar to the two of us. We are all pretty much at the same place in life, with kids getting married and leaving the house. So we have officially made some new friends, not a bad way to spend a sunny afternoon.

So, I will let you all know how this project develops. I know how to write, but little else. The nuts and bolts of the publishing side of writing overwhelm me to the point of exasperation and dismay. Be in prayer for Denise!

Being There for the Kids

This morning my son sent me a text with a link to a story about some high-flying hedge fund manager who abruptly resigned his nine figure job after being presented with a list of twenty things he had failed to show up for by his ten year old daughter. Patrick went on to thank me for always being there for all of his games and concerts. I have been thinking about this all morning. I can’t get it out of my head. Did I really do the right thing?

It is easy to jump to the easy conclusion that, “Of course you did the right thing!! You were there for your kids!!” Part of me has no regrets since watching your kids play baseball or hearing them perform beautiful music is about as good as it gets as a parent. But, the truth is, I have always jumped at any chance to get away from the relentless pressure of my job. Having active children was a convenient and admirable excuse for walking away from the pursuit of my career periodically.

I have always fought an internal battle with myself over, for lack of a more descriptive term, success. I don’t know where it comes from, but being judged to be successful and relatively well-off has always brought with it a strange tinge of embarrassment. Growing up, I never much cared for rich people. They always seemed to be the ones who caused my Dad the most trouble at church. At school, especially college, I always resented the rich kids from New Jersey who all drove BMW’s around campus and threw their money around on the weekends while I was slaving away in a freezing cold warehouse building pallets 30 hours a week.

So, there grew up within me a raging battle between the guy who desperately wanted to make something of himself, and the guy who promised himself that he would never ever be like those New Jersey boys. The battle still rages.

So, yes, Pam and I never missed events in our kids’ lives, great and small. But I can come up with my own list of things I missed because of my choices. Had I been more committed to my job perhaps I could have:

1.     Had enough money to pay for my Son’s two year grad school degree, saving him that debt.

2.     Been able to have built that lake house in Maine by now, a place where my kids and one day their kids could gather for vacations.

3.     Been debt-free myself by now, giving me the freedom to devote more time to writing

4.     Taken my family to Europe over the summer to tour the great capitols of Western civilization.

5.     Given more money to charity

Decisions we make have consequences. For me, choosing to underachieve has had many up sides. But, these five consequences add up to a formidable down side. And they are just the first five that have come to mind. I’m sure that if I thought about it longer, the list would grow.

No matter, I made my choice. There are no do-overs. I got two great kids out of the bargain, and despite my ambivalence, having money is better than being poor. Just as being rich does not bestow goodness on the rich, there is also nothing noble about poverty. So, I suppose that if I had it to do all over again…I would.

Hannah Graham

The horrible story of Hannah Graham took an ominous turn this morning with the arrest of a suspect in Galveston, Texas. The UVA girl is still missing. It doesn’t look good.

I have watched this sad story play itself out on the news and on social media over the past couple of weeks. As a father who nervously sent his daughter 7 hours away to attend college, I know a little of the anguish Ms. Graham’s parents must be feeling at this moment. But in my case, the anguish lasted only a few minutes after I received a telephone call from an Ohio State Trooper informing me that he was with my daughter at the hospital after she had slid off the road and crashed into a guard rail off of highway 35. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest, all the air rushed out of my lungs until the moment he told me that she was unhurt and that his call was merely to verify her ownership of the vehicle. I only had to endure 90 seconds of terror. I simply cannot imagine what Hannah Graham’s parents have endured for over two weeks now.

Unfortunately, I have seen more than once an opinion expressed by people on Facebook which I think is quite disturbing. It goes something like this, “Well, it’s horrible what happened to that girl, but, for goodness sakes, any 19 year old girl dressed like a slut who gets herself all liquored up is asking for trouble.”

Where to begin?

First, it is a fact that getting drunk impairs our ability to make clear judgments, getting stumbling around drunk, even more so. It is also true that how we dress does communicate to others what we expect from an evening out. Human beings generally dress in black when in mourning, we wear sports jerseys to signify allegiance to our favorite team, and when women want to be noticed by men, generally they dress accordingly, and I for one am so glad that they do. However, was in fact Hannah Graham asking for it when she got drunk and dressed in a skimpy top? To answer yes to this questions assumes several terrible things about men and women. It paints men as knuckle dragging apes unable to control sexual urges at the mere sight of cleavage. It serves to tacitly justify criminal assault based solely on visual stimulus. It also assumes that every girl who steps out in a low neck sweater does so because she wants to be attacked by a total stranger. My experience with women, even the ones back in my college days taught me that tons of 19 year old girls LOVE to flirt, but I never met one who longed to be sexually assaulted. To equate one with the other is insulting.

As far as the drinking goes, there is little doubt that if Ms. Graham had not been drunk, she would have made better decisions that fateful night. Still, a girl who gets drunk does not forfeit her rights as a human being not to be molested. I know of no legal defense for rape that starts with, “she was drunk, so…” Furthermore, all of these accusations of drunkenness and slutty attire tend to take the focus of what really happened that night which is that a girl, someone’s precious child, in all probability got abducted, raped and probably murdered by some lunatic. Let’s save our rage and indignation for the perpetrator, shall we?

Derek Jeter. Number 2.

Derek Jeter. Number 2.

For nearly half of my adult life, he has played shortstop for the New York Yankees, a team that I have grown to loathe over that time period. In fact, it is safe to say that there exists nowhere a sports franchise that I detest more than the New York Yankees. As a Red Sox fan, I suppose this is natural. Over the years I have developed an intense dislike for players in pinstripes. Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Andy Pettitte, Jaba Chamberlain, just the sight of them would raise my blood pressure. But with Jeter it was different.

Don’t get me wrong, I never cheered for him. There was no player in the game who I less wanted to see in the batter’s box with the game on the line. It didn’t matter if he was in the midst of a 0 for 30 slump, when the lights were the brightest, and the pressure at its highest peak, Jeter always seemed to come through.

Derek Jeter will play his last game this week, and that fact has caused me no small amount of sadness. The truth is, Derek Jeter represents everything that I love about the game of baseball. He is a throwback to an earlier era in the game. He’s the kind of player who never ran his mouth, never made news off the field. I never heard him say a negative thing about a teammate, never saw him try to show up an opponent. All the guy has ever done is play baseball at the highest level, while managing to save his best moments for the biggest stages when the pressure was the most intense.

He’s not even in the discussion of greatest player ever. There are many others with better power, more speed, a better arm, and better range. But there isn’t anyone to ever play the game with better instincts, no one who was more clutch.

A game as old as baseball experiences peaks and valleys and right now baseball is in a very deep valley. The game has gotten slow, its popularity is flagging with every demographic except mine…mid-fifties white guy. Losing Derek Jeter could not possibly have come at a worse time for the game that I love. But, father time waits for no man. So, number 2 will hang up the cleats for good after a game against the Red Sox on September 28, 2014.

He will probably hit an opposite field double with the bases loaded, top of the ninth to drive in the winning runs. Damn that guy!

Thanks Derek. Thank you for playing the game the right way, for never embarrassing it or yourself by beating up a woman or acting like a fool in public. Thank you for providing an example for young players to follow, an example of class, dignity and grace under pressure.

Derek Jeter. Number 2.

The Peoples Climate March

So, yesterday in New York City, there was a protest called the “Peoples Climate March.” Whenever I see anything with the word “Peoples” in front of it, I always think of 60’s radicals, those mythical kids from Berkeley who thought Mao was groovy…but that’s just me. No, these marchers were protesting global warming and demanding that something be done about it right away. Judging from the signs held aloft along the march route, the villains of climate change are, in no particular order, capitalism, the Tea Party, the Koch brothers, oil companies, the Republican Party, and the United States. In other words, the usual suspects. These are the same villains in practically any protest march featuring folks fond of the word “Peoples.”

I studied the pictures from the event carefully. More than once I saw Styrofoam cups that had been embossed with the slogan “The Arctic Affects Us All” courtesy of Greenpeace, proving that in the war to save the Earth, irony is the first casualty.

There was Leonardo Dicaprio, looking dapper in beard and beret, whisked to the event no doubt by his private jet. Much was made of the many interviews conducted with participants by skeptical reporters inquiring as to whether or not these climate crusaders would be willing to give up their energy-sucking smart phones and automobiles. No one was, and most resented the questions. Mr. Dicaprio seemed truly astonished when asked about his fleet of private yachts, as if that had nothing whatsoever to do with his demands that the rest of us turn away from our planet-killing consumer culture.

But, this is America. We are the protest champions of the world, and I for one take much pride in this fact. I don’t fault anyone for their passion. I also have no doubt that yesterday’s marchers are sincerely convinced of their cause and its righteousness. Still, whenever this whole climate change subject comes up, my unanswered question hangs in the air like acid rain…what would you have us do? The proposed solutions offered by the true believers would cost unfathomable sums of money, cause unprecedented economic upheaval, with little effect on the actual…planet. Even the rosiest scenarios offered by proponents of this radical recasting of civilization admit as much. Let’s spend 500 gazillion dollars, reshape the relationship between governments and the governed, and take away personal freedoms so we can possibly lower the planet’s temperature by 2 degrees in 100 years? Oh, and if you don’t agree with us, you’re a war criminal.

Have we human beings been good stewards of the Earth? No. Should we as individuals and collectively as governments do more to clean the water and air? Yes. Should we be trying to discover and then develop new forms of energy that might replace fossil fuels? Absolutely

Should we give in to the unhinged demands of the People’s Climate March types and dismantle our entire economy? Slow down, Sparky.

One Dream-Free Night...that's all I ask

Big, crazy, jam-packed week ahead. I don’t have as many of them as I did twenty years ago, largely because I work a lot smarter now than I did then. But this week will be like the bad old days.

I’m not sleeping well lately. Those of you who know me well will recognize this complaint as it has been a lifelong problem. In the past it has been an inability to fall asleep. But now it’s just that I wake up several times during the night, and spend the rest of the time dreaming, not the good kind of dreams, but rather the exasperating ones. These are not nightmares. No one gets shot, there are no monsters. These are the kind of dreams where you’re trying to do the most mundane of tasks but can’t quite get it done. A few nights ago I dreamed that I had a tee-time with three other unrecognizable guys at Pebble Beach. They were standing on the 1^st tee and there I was in the parking lot trying my best to get my act together. First, I couldn’t get my clubs out of the trunk, then, I couldn’t find my shoes. Once I finally found them, I naturally broke a shoelace putting them on. All the while, my friends were yelling for me to hurry or we were going to lose our spot. This went on seemingly all night. When you wake up at 5:15 with this sort of frustration, you’re not going back to sleep!

So, last night I dreamed that one of my best clients was sitting in the reception area of the office waiting to meet me for his annual review. Meanwhile, I was making the interminably endless two and a half mile journey from my house to my office, facing one supernatural obstacle after another, while constantly glancing at the clock, knowing that with each new five car pileup, each new flooded road and each new Biblical plague, I was falling further and further behind schedule. When I finally pull into the parking lot, the dead locusts that had encrusted my car had jammed the door shut. I woke up feeling like I had run a marathon in army boots.

I’m sure that a Psychiatrist would have a field day with all of this. I don’t have a lot of confidence in dream analysis, I rather believe that dreams have chemical origins, not sub-conscious ones. All I want is a dream-free night.