Optimist

Someday I’m a be peaceful again / Till then keep speech to a min

Something about this song moves me.

Deeply . . .

I pick a lotta locks, rock a lotta shows

Build with the moms, hang with the broken crow

Been hurting the same heart since I was like two

I use sarcasm freely, bark at the greedy

Bite what feeds, shy from the seedy

I’m bold in approach, so rely on my hope

That the average emcees can’t fuck with the sound like me

I never been down with the king

It’s never something I wanted to be

Never better than the work than the toil and the reap

But the work for the wants, not the suffer for the needs

Nothing’s tougher than the… dreams and good sleep

Trying to teach my son to reach, damn right

Cause it gets a little darker every night

And the rent goes up, they gon’ cut out the…

Dead ends to chase, feelings to fake

New hearts to break, amends to make, they all so

Afraid and safe, in need of space

But hugging that crowd, only shake with the quake

And uh, times like this are up

We break their stride cause we break our mirrors

They hugging that pride like it’s all there is

We make our own and if they don’t feel it

Then we are not for them (and that’s cool)

Yo, I made this beat for Alegra Oxborough

She showed me how to do the thing with the cups

I wrote the verse on a triple double Tuesday

Riding in the van in the back lot

I never made it in, never really can tell the friends these days

Find More lyrics at www.sweetslyrics.com

Telephone don’t sleep some days

Someday I’m a be peaceful again

Till then keep speech to a min

Shed a little skin, I’m a bet it all and win

I’m a set it off and run, I’m a kill it till it’s dead

I’m a do it till it ain’t fun and words don’t come

Then I’m gonna find another hobby

Probably find love, probably find trust

Eighty-one young with a little bit of rust

Clean interior, Minnesota plates

Money in the bank with a lot of you to thank

Relate to the…

Dead ends to chase, feelings to fake

New hearts to break, amends to make, they all so

Afraid and safe, in need of space

But hugging that crowd, only shake with the quake

And uh, times like this are up

(Up for whatever, how are you?)

We break their stride cause we break our mirrors

They hugging that pride like it’s all there is

We make our own and if they don’t feel it

Then we are not for them, we come wild

Dead ends to chase, feelings to fake

New hearts to break, amends to make, they all so

Afraid and safe, in need of space

But hugging that crowd, only shake with the quake

And uh, dead ends to chase, feelings to fake

New hearts to break, amends to make, they all so

Afraid and safe, in need of space

But hugging that crowd, only shake, that’s it

I pick a lotta locks, rock a lotta shows
Build with the moms, hang with the broken crow
Been hurting the same heart since I was like two
I use sarcasm freely, bark at the greedy
Bite what feeds, shy from the seedy
I’m bold in approach, so rely on my hope
That the average emcees can’t fuck with the sound like me
I never been down with the king
It’s never something I wanted to be
Never better than the work than the toil and the reap
But the work for the wants, not the suffer for the needs
Nothing’s tougher than the… dreams and good sleep
Trying to teach my son to reach, damn right
Cause it gets a little darker every night
And the rent goes up, they gon’ cut out the…

Dead ends to chase, feelings to fake
New hearts to break, amends to make, they all so
Afraid and safe, in need of space
But hugging that crowd, only shake with the quake
And uh, times like this are up
We break their stride cause we break our mirrors
They hugging that pride like it’s all there is
We make our own and if they don’t feel it
Then we are not for them (and that’s cool)

Yo, I made this beat for Alegra Oxborough
She showed me how to do the thing with the cups
I wrote the verse on a triple double Tuesday
Riding in the van in the back lot
I never made it in, never really can tell the friends these days
Telephone don’t sleep some days
Someday I’m a be peaceful again
Till then keep speech to a min
Shed a little skin, I’m a bet it all and win
I’m a set it off and run, I’m a kill it till it’s dead
I’m a do it till it ain’t fun and words don’t come
Then I’m gonna find another hobby
Probably find love, probably find trust
Eighty-one young with a little bit of rust
Clean interior, Minnesota plates
Money in the bank with a lot of you to thank
Relate to the…

Dead ends to chase, feelings to fake
New hearts to break, amends to make, they all so
Afraid and safe, in need of space
But hugging that crowd, only shake with the quake
And uh, times like this are up
(Up for whatever, how are you?)
We break their stride cause we break our mirrors
They hugging that pride like it’s all there is
We make our own and if they don’t feel it
Then we are not for them, we come wild

Dead ends to chase, feelings to fake
New hearts to break, amends to make, they all so
Afraid and safe, in need of space
But hugging that crowd, only shake with the quake
And uh, dead ends to chase, feelings to fake
New hearts to break, amends to make, they all so
Afraid and safe, in need of space
But hugging that crowd, only shake, that’s it

Fishy

There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won’t, and that’s a wife who can’t cook and will.

~ Robert Frost

Settle down there, Bob. My wife reads my blog. She’s going to read what you said and agree with you, for she has this notion that she can’t cook.

Hogwash.

I assure you, Dear Tweaker, no one residing within the friendly confines of The Cheeky Mansion is starving.

Sure her meals sometimes lack creativity; when you’re catering to the likes of four busy and opinionated kids and a husband who simply can’t eat like he used to, the same tired standbys are sometimes about the best she can manage to muster.

I said “sometimes” above because, truth be told, my wife is incredibly creative: she’s a scrapbooker; her flower beds blossom vividly and her vegetable gardens spring forth an annual harvest of awesomely good goodness; she crafts meaningful, poignant cards and attractive yet practical gifts for teachers, neighbors, relatives and friends. She’s busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

The total mama package.

And occasionally, when time permits and the cupboards abound, she serves up a truly inspiring meal. So, for your dining pleasure, I give you last night’s entrée:

Friendly Fish Filets

Ingredients

¾ pound white fish (grouper or cod)
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup buttermilk
¾ cup crumbs (she used Wheat Thins) ground in a food processor or a rolling pin
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley
1 ½ tablespoons canola oil
Can of canola oil cooking spray

Preparation

1. Cut fish fillets into four even pieces (about 3 ½ x 3 ½ inches each). Rinse and dry well.

2. Place the flour in a small bowl and the buttermilk in another small bowl. In a medium shallow bowl, stir together cracker crumbs, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and fresh parsley to blend.

3. Dip each fish square first into the flour, then the buttermilk, then the cracker crumb mixture.

4. Place a medium, nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat. Spread canola oil on the bottom and add the fillets. Use canola cooking spray to generously coat the tops of the fillets. Fry until the bottoms are golden brown, about 3 minutes, then carefully flip with a spatula and brown the other side – about 2 minutes more.

If your family is large, like mine, feel free to double the recipe. Also, my wife claims that tinkering with the seasoning mix might yield something altogether different, yet equally deee-lish. We had our filets on buns with lettuce leaves, slices of cheese (pick one you like) and tartar sauce . . .

By the way!

Dear Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Kroger Supermarket Product Packaging Designer Person,

You, sir, or ma’am, are an imbecile!

Please take a moment to read the ingredients label for your brand of tartar sauce, whereupon you’ll notice the word “Relish.” Relish which, also according to your list, contains chunks of stuff like cucumbers and red bell peppers.

Chunks!

Which are not easily squirted through this masterpiece of a lid . . .

Do all us paying customers, who are weary from fighting and squeezing and pounding, a favor and redesign the damn thing!

Please?!

Respectfully,

The Cheek

[photo credit]

Buoyant

The greatest danger, that of losing one’s own self, may pass off quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed.

~ Soren Kierkegaard

Come with me back in time a decade or two where I am swimming in one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. I’ve had my fill of barbequed meat with all the trimmings. Washed it down with some generic beer from a can. Chatted with all the people I can tolerate. So I’m chilling, way out past the dock, away from the din of myriad related-by-marriage offspring. At over 300 pounds I float effortlessly, my toes tickled by gentle waves. All I have to do is lean back and I’m a pontoon uncapsizeable. I made that word up, according to my spell checker. I don’t care. It’s my blog. I am one with the lake. The water my headphones, a Zen soundtrack playing in my head.

I fall asleep.

Fast forward to this past Saturday. Over seven years since my weight loss surgery. I’m 185 pounds of where-the-hell-did-all-that-weight-go; not lean, yet no longer a whale. I’m with the kids at a pool just south of town. Between sno cones and popcorn, we’re working on floating. For the first time, Zoe gets it. She and the other two have floating contests. Four minutes – give or take, since I got tired of counting around two-hundred-ten-one-thousand – is the new record. “Come on Dad, float with us!” I’m game, so I lean back . . . and damn near drown. I try again, thrusting at the waist, trying to penetrate the surface. Did that sound raunchy? Sorry. No luck. My feet hit rock bottom.

What the hell?

I pose the question to Chris, a scientist, über-smart, a friend and fellow blogger. Here’s the deal:

As I understand it, it is all about cell density. Fat cells are big and loosely spaced, so fat tissue is not so dense. Muscle cells are all wound up on each other – kind of like a rope – so muscle tissue is much denser than fat. The denser something is, the more likely it is to sink in water. Fat tissue is generally less dense than water, so it floats. Muscle tissue is denser than water so it sinks.

How’s that?

How’s that?! You mean if I find myself in water over my head again, I might have to actually move something to stay afloat? Doggy paddle? Or, worse yet, I might have to resort to some hunter-orange-ugly Personal Floatation Device?

Me?

The Unsinkable One?!

Shit . . .

[photo credit]

And We Danced

Let that day be declared lost on which we have not danced.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Need more storage space? A place upon which to pile the detritus of a life lived in limbo, sort of like the kitchen counter only bigger?

Try a car.

In no particular order of importance, here is a list of the crap I recently cleaned off of my 1987 Honda Prelude:

• 3 mugs half filled with stale coffee and innumerable dead ants.
• 2 pairs of flip flops.
• 14 CDs, a head-banging selection ranging from the new Heaven & Hell to some classic Tool.
• 1 Sony CD/Cassette Boombox with Digital AM/FM Tuner.
• 2 library books.
• 27 letters from various agencies who want my money.
• 7 socks, mostly white.
• 1 winter jacket, no longer necessary.
• 1 roll of duct tape.
• 52 cents in change.

All settled amidst the write-in-it-with-your-finger thick layer of dust that accumulates when a car sits in the garage for several months without its daily trips up and down Indianapolis Road.

To work.

It didn’t turn over, probably because of the little light in my glove box that never goes out, because the door doesn’t stay shut so well anymore, so I had to jump her; she roared to life with a racket punctuated by coughing exhaust and heater vents belching stale air. I backed it out slowly, the metallic grinding a reminder that I need to change the brakes soon, slipped in the brand spankin’ new Dream Theater, reset my Pioneer to deliver power to the subwoofer, cranked it up to 50 to drown out the not-too-subtle clamor old cars make, rolled down my windows . . . and drove.

Blessed normalcy! The familiar tug as it pulls toward the center line. The way my power window buttons rock opposite the way they do in the minivan. The country wind instead of the boxed up air conditioning.

My car and me? We danced.

I start back to work on the 6^th of July . . .

[photo credit]

Sonnet

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.

~ Henry David Thoreau

We’ve been talking sonnets in the Thomas house lately.

See, my oldest son has a girlfriend who, unlike most teens, usually smells really nice. And wanting to be an example for the boy viz a vie how to treat a young lady, I often tell her so. “You smell nice today,” I say. And she usually smiles, perhaps glad that someone took the time to notice her efforts.

The other day, I outdid myself.

We were talking about all this, her and my son and my wife and I, about how ladies appreciate compliments. Not just about their looks, their style, or their bouquet of choice, but about many other things as well. Like their opinions, their dreams. The things that make them tick. And not just compliments, for even those can get old, feel patronizing, after a time. No, they also appreciate it when we engage them regarding things they are passionate about. The give and take, back and forth of honest-to-God communication.

But let’s face it. Sometimes, ladies just want to hear us tell them how much we love them. And why. So, by way of example, I broke into a weak attempt at a love poem. Something straight out of Song of Solomon . . .

“Your hair is like the lilacs blowing in the sweet summer breeze!”

“Your face more radiant than the gentle glow of the lightning bug!”

Yeah. Weak. And embarrassing I guess, because my son and his girlfriend suddenly left the room, leaving that “You’re so weird!” laughter in their wake.

I can handle weird.

Today is my wife’s birthday. And I love her so much that I wrote her a sonnet:

Some say thou art a darling specimen,
And I sometimes begrudgingly concur,
For while thine beauty surely crieth “Ten!”
I see thee with eyes tear-stained and a-blur.

The gallery sees only but a part,
Each tiny glance a fragment of the whole,
Instead I see completeness in thine heart.
I’m blinded by the light within thy soul.

For in thy fullness I am found complete!
A puzzle solved, a masterpiece beheld!
Along a weary path have trod thy feet,
And with each step the demons quickly felled!

So long as I can have thee by my side,
My mind is resting and my pathway wide.

Some piece of work, right? Like me, it’s a work in progress. But maybe someday I’ll be poetically equipped to tell her how much she means to me. Until then, we’ll just keep walking this road together, getting older in each other’s embrace . . .