Soup and a Goddess

Last night was very cool. Wednesday night, Pam goes to her Yoga class from 6 to 7:30. She’s been doing it for several years now and we have developed this routine where I prepare dinner on Wednesday night. Back when she started with the Yoga class, she would actually make the entire meal herself and leave me a note telling me when to put it in the oven. But, as time has passed, she has allowed me more responsibility for the meal itself. At this point, I probably should add the very salient point that as a Dunnevant man, I come from a long line of witless cooks. My father couldn’t boil water without a tutorial. My brother, Donnie, recently retired with time on his hands, has taken it up and scored some impressive dishes...if doctored photographs on Facebook can be believed...but this doesn’t change the fact that I can recall a time when Donnie couldn’t identify the working end of a spatula. So, my genetic pedigree in the kitchen is marred by generations of ineptitude.

Luckily for me, Pam is an amazing cook. Since the kids have moved out of the house, I have taken to watching her prepare meals. She is organized and precise, one of those recipe following cooks who take great care in doing things right. She measures things out, none of this pinch of this and dash of that business. Watching her lay out the ingredients, assemble everything expertly, then pull the finished product, hot and gurgling out of the oven is quite therapeutic. So, when she asked me what I wanted to make for last night’s meal, I said that I wanted to attempt her lemon chicken orzo soup...from scratch...a first and quite a step up from the old days. I posted the before and after videos on Facebook last night which chronicled my triumph. It was amazing, if I must say so myself...and, I must.

But, here’s the thing that struck me most about the experience. By the time Pam walked through the door at 7:40, I was throughly whipped. Cooking an entire meal from scratch is like juggling chainsaws for me. I’m constantly setting off timers and watching the clock. Beep beep beep...wait, what is that one for??!! Wait, do I add the garlic before, after, or simultaneously with the other spices? And, when it says “boil for ten minutes, does that include the ten minutes the silly thing took to come up to a boil? Beep beep beep...crap!! What the heck? Oh yeah...add the orzo and half a cup of lemon juice from the two lemons...YOU FORGOT TO JUICE!!!

As the dish began to actually take shape and I glanced at the clock and realized that I was going to pull this off the thought occurred to me...Pam does this every night. But, not only does she prepare a meal every night, she decides what to cook, makes out a list of ingredients, goes to the store and buys the ingredients, then cooks the meal...every stinking night for 35 years. After what I went through last night, that is a staggering thing to comprehend. My wife...is a goddess.

Blame Shifting

...that feeling you get at 5:15am when you open the bank app on your iPad and see a negative number on your business account, then realize that you forgot to press send on that transfer from your personal account last night.

But, we will not let a simple mistake ruin our day. We will not allow a simple oversight cause us to question our mental acuity. We will not succumb to despair over the ravages that time has visited upon our faculties. We will simply accept this unfortunate incident for what it is...a miscue, a mishap, a flub, if you will...something that could happen to anyone. We will place this entire business behind us and not give it a second thought. Why, I imagine even Warren Buffet has forgotten to press send a few times in his life:

Warren: Gee Whiz...I wonder why my Coca Cola stock has dropped 65% this morning? Oh!! What the heck? I pressed the sell a million shares button instead of the buy a million shares button. Dang it...

So, we will move on quickly from this unpleasantness, knowing that what we experienced at 5:15am this morning is not uncommon in the affairs of men, even the best and brightest of men...mistakes will be made. We will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and continue to advance. And we will also continue to employ the plural first person pronoun...we...when referring to our mistakes, since it makes us feel better to include the rest of you as equally at fault. Collective guilt is more palatable than shouldering all of the blame yourself.

So, be careful out there today everyone, and don’t let this happen to you again, alright?

Bracket Dilemma

Yesterday, Bland Weaver, our office bookie, handed me an NCAA bracket to fill out, attach a twenty dollar bill to it, and get it back in his hands in 24 hours. We have done this every year that I can remember and a few years ago I even won the thing. But with each passing year I feel slightly more clueless than the year before. The reason is simple...I have not watched even one college basketball game all year. 

This is a perplexing turn of events. There was once a time when I never missed the ACC game of the week. I used to be able to tell you the names of at least one player on every important team in college basketball. Back in the day, I never would have dreamed of missing even one game of March Madness, in fact, I scheduled an annual Myrtle Beach golf trip around the first weekend of ...The Tournament. It wasn’t just college basketball either, I was well-versed in the statistical minutia of college football, the PGA tour, the NFL, and even NASCAR. Now, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, my only remaining sports obsession is Major League Baseball and Alabama football. The weird thing is I don’t even miss it...except when Bland hands me that bracket. Then, all of a sudden, I feel disconnected...and I begin asking myself, What the heck happened?

Part of my disinterest stems from what has happened to sport in this country. Insane amounts of money have overpowered every organized sport in America, making each unrecognizable to me. College basketball, in particular has become a one and done proposition, whereby juniors and seniors have disappeared from college rosters. Just about the time fans get interested in a player...poof...he declares for the NBA draft. The term Student Athlete should now be erased from the Webster’s Dictionary, since it no longer has any meaning. With the PGA, as soon as Tiger fell from grace...what’s the point? NASCAR? Who are those guys? And why are there so many empty seats in the grandstand? Where the heck are Jeff Gordon and Junior? The NFL? How many players have been arrested for beating up their girlfriends this week? Wake me when it’s over.

So, I will fly through my bracket in a few minutes, picking the likeliest winners, being careful not to overdo it with the upsets, knowing that in reality there are always only 6-8 teams who are capable of winning the thing. Then I will turn it in and hope for the best.

Less than two weeks until first pitch!!=

The Dynamic of The Yard Sale

After several weeks of a packed itinerary of appointments, this week is starting out lighter on the scheduling. This will free me up to get started on that list of projects Pam and I had determined to do in the first quarter of 2019. Yes...I am aware that there are only 14 days left in said quarter...but better late than never. There’s mulch to put down, the outside of the house needs to be power washed and painted, the gutters need to be cleaned out, and the deck stained. Then I’ve got to get the guys from the Mosquito Squad to come and rid my yard of that blood-sucking pestilence. If there’s any time left, I will need to do a deep dive cleaning out of the garage where I will identify items to add to the...ominous music...YARD SALE PILE. Yes, boys and girls, it’s that time again, that glorious Dunnevant family tradition which rears its hideous head every two years with all the warmth and expectation of an un-lanced boil. Long time readers of The Tempest know of my hostile feelings about this particular tradition, so I will not regale you further on the subject, except to say that in less than a month, Mechanicsville will be the site of a ponderous pile of worthless knickknackery being picked through by the oddest collection of bargain hunters, antique sleuths, yard sale junkies, rednecks, and high society women out for a day of incognito slumming ever assembled in eastern Hanover County.

Enough about the Dunnevant yard sale...but what about a few observations about yard sales in general? I have never quite understood the attraction of walking through a collection of someone else's rejected junk, cash in hand, ready to pay money to take it off their hands. Listen, I know that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, but in my twenty years of yard sales I can tell you from personal experience that the definition of treasure has been bastardized beyond all comprehension. I saw a guy pay two bucks for a box of Fram oil filters in odd sizes that fit absolutely no engine that he possessed on the reasoning that for two bucks, they were cheap enough to use as something to throw at his neighbor’s barking dog! I’ve seen a reasonably intelligent looking woman buy literally the tackiest sculpture of an angel dressed in a firefighter uniform, an American flag firmly in her mouth, with the burning Twin Towers in the background, with the burning question...I wonder of my nephew will like this, I think he’s a fireman...I’ve seen a old man pulling his own oxygen tank on wheels around ask me what a box full of strips of metal in random shapes with slots hither and yon cut out of them were...to which I replied, Sir, if I live to be a hundred years old, I will never have an answer to that question. Then I watched him gather up the box and pay my sister 5 bucks.

I have no explanation for the dynamic of the yard sale. All I know is that there is something in the human spirit that loves the illusion of the bargain, the idea that you are getting over on the other guy. That moron just sold me a first edition of To Kill a Mockimngbird for 50 cents!! Everybody likes paying as little as possible for things...see Amazon, Walmart...and I get that, but paying as little as possible is one thing. Paying as little as possible for a Walkman cassette tape player without the headphones is something else entirely. But, it is this type of free exchange that has been the backbone of the Dunnevant Family Yard Sale success. We have averaged over $800 a year in revenue in the fifteen or so times we have staged the affair. That money has paid for the groceries for twenty people at fifteen beach weeks now. So, we keep doing it. And they keep coming...in teaming hordes, they keep coming, with their change purses, bulging wallets stuffed with one dollar bills, the official coin of the yard sale realm. And we keep taking their money and stacking it in our metal cash box until it is full. Then we stumble back home and stand under a hot shower for half an hour trying to clean off the detritus of hundreds of human interactions and regain the feeling in our extremities, secure in the knowledge that we will eat like kings on the Outer Banks yet again.

A Wonderful Saturday

March the 16th was a good day here in Short Pump, Virginia. It was a Saturday, for one thing, and it wasn’t cloudy, windy, wet and cold. It was sunny and 58 degrees, and I almost wore shorts before my wife did that eye-roll thing and reminded me that if it was 58 degrees on the first day of Fall I would be wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Be that as it may, I spent most of the morning working in my yard. It was glorious.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking...what’s so glorious about gathering up sticks, raking up leaves, cutting the grass and gathering three months worth of Lucy’s bowel movements out of the backyard?? I’m glad you asked that question...

During the winter months, the elements conspire to reduce me to the confines of the metaphoric four walls of my palatial estate. It’s not that I never venture into the yard in the winter, it’s more like when I do it’s to either shovel snow or stand like a statue in the foul weather begging Lucy to proceed with her business sometime this century....

Me: Alright Lucy, you’ve gone over that particular piece of ground long enough to determine if it is a suitable place to relieve yourself..get on with it!!

Lucy:  sniff sniff sniff

Me: No, seriously...that was the same spot you used yesterday..what’s changed??

Lucy: sniff sniff...waggle...sniff sniff

Me: For heavens sake, It’s freezing, raining, snowing out here!!

But, yesterday I finally was able to reclaim the entirety of my yard. By the time I was through, the place looked great. Then Pam and I went shopping for a new umbrella for the table on the deck, then Pam broke out the bleach to rinse the mold and mildew off the outdoor seat cushions.

When it was time for dinner, Pam decided to go all-in on our Irish heritage by fixing corn beef, cabbage and Irish soda bread...

When doing my Google search on the origins of my last name, no matter what spelling or derivative of the name I used..Dunnevant, Dunnavant, Donovan...I came up with the same thing...100% Irish, largely from the counties of Kilkenny, and Limerick and the meaning of the name in the original Gaelic is translated as black, brown, or chieftain. So, apparently my family is descended from an ancient tribe of, little known and mostly forgotten by history, tribe of black Irishmen!

The Phone Call

Yesterday morning I received a very special phone call. I had just gotten in to the office. It was around 8 o’clock. The caller ID told me that it was a client of mine who happens to be an old friend. I’ve known him almost all of his life. I will try to recall his words accurately. I want to write this down while it is fresh in my mind...

...I’m on the road, driving around on this beautiful morning, and I got to thinking about your Dad, of what a wonderful man he was, of how much he meant to me and my family when he was alive. You know, your Dad was famous for those long invitations at the end of services where he would sing 13 verses of the invitation hymn. Ha! Well, in my case, if he had limited it to just twelve I might never have become a Christian. Anyway, this morning I was wishing that I could call him up and thank him, but I can’t do that. But, I thought...if I can’t call up Emmett, I guess I should call Doug and pass along the thanks to him, instead. Be sure to pass the thank you along to your brother and sisters too, ok?

When I hung up the phone, I needed a minute to compose myself. I sat there in my quiet and empty office pondering what had just happened. I tried to imagine someone, anyone...five years after my death picking up a phone and calling one of my children to thank them for my life and just couldn’t.

So, thank you, Ray Melton. 

Intelligent Design?

Yesterday was a day for the ages. Every once in a while a day comes along that makes you wonder what’s going on. I mean, how many things can go wrong in one 24 hour period? How many things is it possible to screw up between sunrise and sunset? Listen, every day has its own challenges, I get it...but some days it’s like they are having a clearance sale on challenges...buy one, get two for free.

So, yesterday was going along just fine at first. Everything was on schedule, clicking along in a plodding, predictable way. Then the auditor showed up. A surprise, unannounced auditor...which is fine. We get one of these every few years. No big deal. But, getting audited is unnerving. Someone with authority shows up at your office and starts poking around looking for mistakes, and immediately your blood pressure ticks up. I came out of it largely unscathed, but annoyed by the process and its underlying assumptions. From there, things went downhill in a hurry. One setback after another, one foul up on top of another began raining down on me. It was as if, given an opening by the surprise auditor, the dogs of misfortune got loose from their pen and began rampaging through my office, leaving several odious piles on the carpeting.

But, there’s good news, because of the ingenious design of the the 24 hour day. We wake up with the sun, and as it rises, so do we. By noon, we are fully engaged in our work. When the sun gets lower in the sky, we too start to disengage. When it slips under the horizon, most of us retreat into our homes, the comforts of which begin to do their therapeutic work. Our favorite chair awaits. The dog greets you as a conquering hero. Over dinner you tell your best friend about your miserable day. She listens patiently, nods knowingly. She has heard it all before, but acts like she hasn’t. You then settle into your after dinner routine. You read some, you watch a little Grapefruit League baseball. Before you know it, it’s like the day never even happened. Then you wake up to a brand new day, yesterday’s disasters but a memory, and you think...wouldn’t it be horrible if we lived in a world where the sun never set? An incredibly intelligent design, the rising and setting of the sun, and the perfect rhythm it provides to our lives.

...not to mention the glorious views.