Home, Rancid Home...

What a wonderful Spring Break I had... Five days in sunny San Diego and Los Angeles, California is AOK with me! I was however happy about coming home. After all, I'd get to sleep in my own bed for once but the drawback was having to go to school the next morning... ANYWAY, let me play this whole story out for you:

It's 3pm (LA time) on monday and I call the peeps to alert them that I am ready to get on the plane and to make sure to pick me up at the airport at 11pm. Sounds all fine and dandy right? Well, what my father was about to tell me would change everything, so much that it almost made me skip my flight entirely...

Apparently he had been spending his whole weekend in our attic... Why you ask? I'll tell you why. Well, APPARENTLY there is a DEAD ANIMAL ROTTING somewhere in either our attic or walls... YES. DEAD. And ROTTING. So Dad, "Does it like, smell a LOT?" I ask. "Umm... YA." Are you KIDDING ME?! He went on to further explain that he had already lost both his lunch and dinner and would probably never eat again. So my first thought was "Well, I guess we'll just have to move?" Apparently that wasn't what he was thinking. So he continued, unsuccessfully, to search the attic for what was either a dead squirrel, raccoon, possum, or armadillo. Now, I ruled out armadillo because let's face it, I've NEVER seen one in real life. And then I'm gonna go ahead and also cross out raccoon or possum because I cannot bring myself to accept the fact that a dead one of those could be somewhere above my head (in the ceiling), bound to fall on my as I sleep at night... So I decided that the rodent in the wall must be a squirrel (it seems the most harmless, although the one from Christmas Vacation STILL gives me the creeps)...

SO fast forward to monday night. Land in Dallas, get home. I walk in the door, very surprised that I really can't smell ANYTHING. So I'm like, alright, this dead animal thing might not be so bad so I go to bed, not once smelling any foul smells. Tuesday morning, still nothing and I head off to school. OK so really, this ISN'T as bad as my dad made it out to be... Tuesday afternoon, get home from school. I walk in and I kid you not, I ALMOST hurled. The smell finally hit my like a sack full of marbles. I fell to the ground, grasping to find anything to hold and stabilize my self with until I realized that I didn't need to be stabilized. Instead, I ran to the bathroom to get the can of potpurri Glade. I sprayed it not less than a foot in front of my and could smell NOTHING. The rotting smell was so powerful that a can full of Glade couldn't stop it. Eventually this led me to eventually go to the store and spend $50 on air fresheners including an Oust fan, spray, and wall mounted sprays, and enough incense to qualify my as a Buddhist monk. My house now smells like a cocktail of the finest air fresheners this world can give you and also that store called Earthbound at the mall (not REALLY a good thing). I also sleep with a gas mask on at night in order to not get contaminated...

Bad news is: Dad called all the exterminators and they can't do anything... Good news is: the smell should go away in two weeks... OK let's face it. There ain't no good news. So for now, it's Oust, incense, and gas masks for me!!! Woohoo! There's nothing better than coming home from California to a house that smells of decaying varmint...

PS: 1,000 points to me for using the word "rancid" in the title...

If you don't know the definition of "rancid," first, slap yourself for not knowing your vocabulary, and then check it out at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rancid

High Hopes

It's always good to look on the "bright" side of things. I mean, there's not much else you can do when something bad happens to you. Take for instance, you get in a car wreck one day. Look on the bright side! At least while you're recovering from a broken leg and bruised face you'll be showered with "Get Well Soon" gifts and now have an excuse for lying around all day watching TV... Now, I'm not saying that I want to get in a wreck or anything. I'm just trying to lighten the mood a bit.

But let's go to a real-life situation I witnessed just last week. As I was driving to church (20 minutes late, I might add) I was stopped at the light at Wynn Joyce and Broadway. I saw an All-American family, mom, dad, and son posting a MISSING flyer on the telephone pole (it might still be there, I'm not sure). At first I thought how sad that must be for all of them with their dog or cat missing and all, but then I looked closer at the sign. I noticed that the sign wasn't for a dog or cat. The sign was for a freakin PARAKEET. I'm NOT even kidding. WHO in their right mind thinks it's gonna be easy to find a BIRD that has gotten loose. Do they honestly think that someone will see the sign, see their bird, catch it, call the number, and give it back??? I have a hard enough time getting my own dogs back inside from my YARD. I ain't gonna try and go catch someone's pet bird; that's too difficult. Now, I think it's actually pretty cruel of the parents to let their kid think that it's bird is gonna be miraculously found... If I were them I'd go to the pet store, buy a bird that looks like the old one, and none's the wiser...

Another SAD Missing Pet sign that I saw this week was one for a dog. The description read, "MISSING DOG. Old, Blind, and Needs Medication"... I uhh, I really don't have much to say about this, just that well, I admire this person's optimism... At least they tried.

So anyway, the question is: is it OK to be optimistic all the time? Or should we really just be REALISTIC and not fool ourselves.

My REAL Name

Things were much different in my life when I was a child. When I was five years old, my whole family would refer to me as “Lanny”. Now a normal person like yourself would think that this name came from some relation to my ACTUAL name or that there was some clever instance in which the name Lanny suddenly became my nickname. This however, was not the case.

One Sunday morning as we were getting ready to leave for church, my parents and siblings all loaded into the car and were waiting on me so we could go. I was still at the breakfast table trying to down the rest of my cinnamon-enriched oatmeal. Eventually after about 5 minutes of waiting, my father finally rushed into the kitchen and demanded, “Lanny, hurry up or we’re gonna be late for church!” Now, I had heard the funny names my parents would call me before but LANNY certainly wasn’t one of them. I immediately started looking around my kitchen for traces of a random construction worker or hobo named Lanny that my father must have been referring to. Once again though, my father stared me in the eyes and said “LANNY LET’S GO.”

Now, let me just say, I’m STILL five years old. I don’t know WHO the heck is Lanny, but I reluctantly follow my, at the moment, INSANE father to the car and we head on our way to church. The whole car ride I remained silent, wondering if somehow my whole life up to this point had been a lie and I really possessed the riff-raffish name of Lanny. By the time we arrived at church I had convinced myself that it was all just one of the frequent quirky jokes my father tended to play on me. However, once we got to Sunday school, he made sure he told my teacher that it was “LANNY’S fault that we’re late,” as he filled out my Lanny nametag he also added, “Feel free to punish Lanny in the manner which you feel is appropriate.”

This is the point where I had absolutely had enough. I finally turned to my dad and said, “Who in the WORLD is Lanny?! My name is ADAM. At least I THINK it is, unless I have been lied to all five years of my life on this earth!” I felt like the weight of a thousand elephants had just been lifted off of my shoulders as I released all of my anger. I mean, if anyone should have been punished at this point it should be my dad who was referring to his son Adam as a completely RANDOM, and might I add, HORRIBLE name. What came next though, truly shocked me.

After my outburst, I saw my dad’s eyes well up. This was something that I had never seen before. He even looked at me in somewhat of a scared manner. He sat me down and he also took a seat. Now let me remind you we are in a kindergarten classroom so the chair that my father sat in was only large enough for a five year old. It was quite funny to watch him try and sit comfortably on the chair but that was beside the point. He took my hand and began to tell me that my life had indeed been a complete lie. Everything that I had known to be true simply was not. He went on to tell me that when I was born, it had been my mother’s plan to name me Adam but my father wished otherwise. You see, at the age of 10, my dad had a pet turtle that he found off of I-30. He had discovered him right outside of Lanny’s Tire Company, and after he brought the disease-infested creature home, he decided to name it “Lanny”. My father added that Lanny had been abused by his previous owner, Marcie, who left her signature on Lanny’s shell with pink Sharpi… Long story short, my father changed the name on the birth certificate while my mom wasn’t watching to commemorate the life of Lanny. She found out and changed it back, but apparently my dad picked that day to have a fit about it and just start calling me Lanny.

Now, at this point I wanted to confront my dad about going behind my mom’s back in order to name me after his nasty pet turtle but I was never given the chance. As I opened my mouth to begin my second outburst, the world crashed down on me. Literally. At least it felt like it. My dad had exceeded the weight limit on the 2 foot tall chair and broke the chair causing it and HIM to crash down onto my feet. You would have thought I had just been set on fire after the screams I let out then.

I spent the next three days in the hospital suffering from two broken feet. The next three months I split my time between wheelchair, motorized cart, and crutches because I simply could not walk.

Contrary to what you may think, those old people scooters are NOT that fun either. You’d think they would be but they only go up to about 3 miles per hour. There was one time I went up to the Chambrel Retirement Home though at 1am to watch Morice and Velma Drag-Scoot. Drag-Scooting is another form of drag racing. I won $15 for betting on Velma and she then let me drive her scooter for a few minutes. Hers was sweeeet. It went all the way to 7mph. Needless to say I was a bit jealous and looking forward to the day that I’d be old enough to get into drag-scooting. Unfortunately, Morice was angry at his loss and as a result leaked the illegal racing to the police which officially ended the racing and got the 96 year old Velma 4 years in jail which, let’s face it, was basically a life sentence. I told her as I wheeled her into jail that I wouldn’t stop fighting to make drag-scooting legal until the day she died but due to her low blood pressure and food poisoning from a poorly cooked chicken breast, I stopped fighting after only about two weeks.

Ahh yes, all this a result of my name actually being Lanny. My family ended up referring to me as Lanny from then on up until just a few years ago. I guess the story’s not that interesting though…