Misadventures in cooking

One of the joys of living by yourself is that you have to make and eat your own food. 

Now, obviously as I’m still at least ten pounds overweight, I’m managing to do alright in that I’m feeding myself with some success.  So, tonight I decided to take on a new challenge. For the first time in my nearly 47 of existence I tried to make an omelet.

How hard can it be? I mean, it’s eggs, right?  Drop a couple in a bowl, mix em up, throw them in a pan and fold them over. How tough is that?

Oddly, tougher than you’d think. I’m going to give myself an out and explain first that when I left Virginia, Shadow didn’t give me any real frying pans. You see, these little excursions on my own are her chance to divest herself of all the bad cookware she doesn't like; the cookware that’s just worn out or the stuff she says I forcibly ruined by using metal implements in, or by burning stuff in, or just by being in the proximity of in the kitchen. 

Apparently, I ruined a sauté pan at some point, because that’s what I have to use – for pretty much everything, and I blame the failure of the omelet on the tool. (The pan, not me.)

But aside from the pan, there’s a lot that can go wrong with an omelet. If the stove isn’t level – which it’s not – the butter doesn’t distribute evenly and parts of the egg stick. If you put in too much chopped bell pepper it doesn’t let the egg firm up on the bottom – which it didn’t. And if you don’t know how to cook an omelet, you inevitably ruin it – which I did.

The silver lining to all this of course is that a ruined omelet is still scrambled eggs. It’s the food equivalent of a non-working escalator. They aren’t as cool to look at but they're still stairs.

At the end of the day, those kinds of food misadventures are probably what has kept me functioning for the better part of the last five years, so I won't be too sad I failed to make an omelet on my first try.

I know the old saying, 'it’s a poor cook who blames his tools.' In this particular case, that’s absolutely true. And to fix this, the next time I go home to visit Shadow and the kids, you can be darn sure I’m going to ruin some good cookware before I leave.

At last! A name that removes the stigma and shame

There’s a lot to be said for a name.

This week I, like millions of other men between the ages of 20-54, have received the news, from an official millennial source confirming what men of a certain age have known, or tried to believe, for years. The ‘Dad Bod’ is a ‘thing.’

As we all know, of course, ‘things’ in this era come and go quite happily in the blink of an eye. What makes this thing different is that it’s always been with us – we’ve just never had a good name, nor a viral marketing push that has helped us graft it into the mass consciousness the way it has since being branded in late April.

Personally, I think this is wonderful news. It has given those of us in Gen X who have not been gifted with a natural ability to blame others, societal affirmation that maybe it’s not me. Maybe my dear Shadow is wrong on this one; maybe my slightly pear-shaped figure isn’t something to be winnowed down to meet some ‘ideal body size’ – maybe the dad bod is ok!

Now, to be fair, this new-found manly idealism doesn’t come without some effort. I have to continue to do a little because, like so many other good-to-great things in life, there are limitations to the Dad Bod. First, is the duly noted age limit which means I can only legitimately throw out the Dad Bod card for another 7 years … kind of like a Statute of Limitations for Lazy.  Plus, thanks to a handy chart in the Washington Post, there are other limitations as well.

For instance, 174-202 pounds is my sweet spot for the Dad Bod zone based on height. Do too well on the Advocare 24 Day Challenge (click the link!) and come in under 174 and you fall out of Dad Bod-Zone and into “really good shape for his age” obscurity.  Get above 202 pounds and well, you’re just fat like everyone else.

No, the Dad Bod is something that needs to be carefully crafted, like a banzai tree. Just enough exercise and diet where you’re willing to go shirtless at the beach but you’re still not quite comfortable about doing it.

Too much exercise and you risk going shirtless all the time and looking like Creepy Old Dude who is trying too hard. Not enough exercise and you pack on extra arm pits rolls and start complaining about things like flop sweats. You run the risk of losing Dad Bod and replacing it with Dad Boob.

This body shape requires some effort to maintain good physical health while not worrying about washboard abs or skinny jeans – both of which are kind of ridiculous. The guy with the Dad Bod will not win any race or athletic endeavor – but he will be there to compete and enjoy the challenge.

For one, I’m glad this thing has been named and no longer has to be a matter of guilt and shame for me and millions of others. However, while I bask in the formalization a name brings, I can’t help but think that credit for it goes to a 19 year old college student – which, as a demographic, has never been known as a harbinger of good taste or aesthetics.

I’m just as sure, regardless of what it’s called, Shadow won’t mind at all so long as I’m barely eligible and not at the part of the scale that puts me in danger of entering Flop Sweat/Dad Boob territory. That portion of the chart is in desperate need of a name change. 

Maybe it's not too late to turn pro...

I love Sunday when it’s not football season because I have absolutely nothing to do. 

I gave up drinking a long time ago and living in a small apartment really makes me think it would be a good time to get back into it. I used to be really good at it – I would daresay near Olympic Caliber, but that was back in the day when amateurs could compete. Today you’ve got to be Charlie Sheen-class to even register with the Association. I’m sure there is one.

So, instead, I will occasionally get around to banging out a thousand words or so and throw them into the electronic ether.  When last we met I made some vague reference to perhaps giving you more detail on my trip through the vast expanse of nothing that is the middle of our country, so I guess I’ll do that.

From Virginia until about Missouri, it wasn’t too bad. Green, rolling hills, the odd city and a comfortable familiarity. And then something happened. Looking back I don’t even think it happened slowly, it just transitioned like one of those storms where one minute it’s howling wind and deafening madness and suddenly everything stops and you can hear your neighbors alarm clock.

I mention the radio quite a bit because I don’t have satellite radio. And you can only listen to books for so long and I really kind of enjoy sports radio, which there was plenty of between Virginia and Kansas City. It wasn’t difficult to hit seek a few times and come upon an ESPN station, or talk radio, or a variety of music. It was as thing in America are intended to be, good and plentiful.

If, for an odd stretch, there was nothing playing, I could amuse myself by reading road signs and billboards. One great game is to guess how many billboard you will find in a given distance for a chain of adult bookstores. The number is higher than you would imagine.

It’s ironic, actually, that the billboard industry is being kept going in large parts by two competing markets – adult books stores and religious messaging. If you want to play the ‘guess how many religious messaging’ billboards you’ll see, you can do that too. The number in some places is about the same, but overall, religion apparently has much more money to spend on roadside advertising than do their competition.

After Missouri you are essentially left with, in addition to the two aforementioned types of billboards, two types of radio stations, each with an unfaltering ability to make you want to rip your ears off – religious radio and hillbilly radio. The first type gives you a message that one day you can go Home. The second type repeatedly tells you that no, you can’t, because your ex-wife lives there. With your dog.

After Missouri I had only one chance encounter with a sports radio station for 1,500 miles and it came and went within 30 minutes. For someone from the northeast and who has lived a considerable time in the eastern I-81 corridor, not having sports radio is like not having WalMart. Even around Washington DC where the Redskins have sucked for ages, they have plentiful sports radio.

Fortunately, however, I did have books on audio. If you are interested, The Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson is absolutely worth a read; and Freakonomics is worth a listen too. I would say you want to listen to the latter rather than read it. While I was totally taken in by the concept of Freakonomics, it would have been much more difficult to follow reading myself. But maybe that’s a problem with me.  I would stay well away from Tom Brokaw’s “The Time of our Lives” at least in audio format. Despite being a fine broadcaster, Brokaw doesn’t have a good reading voice – there just isn’t enough inflection in it. It might be a good read though, I don’t know as I didn’t finish listening to it. It just sapped my will to live.

I couldn’t very well go around listening to things that could kill me when I was being accosted the entire journey by new and terrible things, such as wind-planing. It’s like hydroplaning but it happens when you get hit by a particularly strong gust of wind. I’d never felt anything like it before and quite frankly, I’ll live a happy life if I don’t again.

Of the other new things I encountered, none were as potentially severe. I did lose what I think were some underwear out of my rooftop cargo box early on, but that was a problem resolved with a roll of duct tape; and I did experience the odd sensation of using a public rest room where the lock was on the outside of the door. I’ve never had to use a loo and felt like I might be standing in my very own Deliverance moment. My only thought was trying to figure out what I would do if the door were to be locked on me. It wasn’t a happy thought at all.

Despite the lack of sports radio, the generally poor building codes of Kentucky, the wind of Nebraska, and the swarms of accountants working for billboard companies who are laughing themselves silly at the dichotomy of their client base, there was one thought about the journey which took over and gave the trip some historical gravitas. The positivism of the American people.

That’s right, it’s not the drive, it’s the righteous feeling of our pioneer forebears 

who traveled west with a pocket hanky and a dream. A dream to not starve to death in the increasingly industrialized northeast; a dream to not be killed by Indians; and a dream to not end up stuck on a mountain top in the middle of winter with only two days of provisions and a the Johnson family, who, truth be told, are carrying a little weight and might pair nicely with some treebark wine.

Nothing else can explain how this continent is populated on each coast. After about 6 hours of driving without moving the wheel at all, I could imagine what it must have been like to be in a wagon that, on a good day, made 20 miles. They didn’t have radio stations or billboards, or gas stations or duct tape. They had … a very long trip and more patience than anyone in the world has the right to have.

And they were positive about the experience. They had to have been otherwise they most certainly would have just done themselves in or… I don’t know ... turned the hell around and went back east where the people were.

But I’m sure, like now, back then when wagons were rolling, after a few days the wife said, ‘let’s just go back.’ And the kids agreed and when the wagon didn’t get turned around, they asked, ‘are we there yet?’ over and over and over again until the father had enough and threw them all out of the wagon and made them walk.  When the wagon finally caught up to them, I’m sure he sat down with his family and said, ‘I’m sure it’s just a little further, let’s just go another day or two and certainly there will be something.’

But we know now, as I’m sure he knew then, he was lying.  There was never going to be anything until he finally ran out of ground and into the Pacific Ocean. But there comes a point where even his wife must have given in and said, “there’s no point in turning back now because certainly there’s something ahead of us that will take less time to reach than going back the way we came.”

And she was wrong too. Which is why our nation is so empty in the middle. People were positive there was something a little further along. For those few places where there are people, well, I’m sure there’s a reason. Denver for instance, has people just because they had to hole up for the winter and they burned their wagons to keep warm. By the time summer finally did roll around they had already built a house and barn and had a new baby, so it just felt like home.

And I’m sure, while sitting there in his brand new miniscule log home, listening to the wild animals outside and the wife and children cursing his name in their sleep inside, the Positive Pioneer American stared at the fire and said, ‘I wish I hadn’t stopped drinking back in Missouri.”

A great big empty land of awesome

Well, it’s hard to believe, but here I am again, living in a small one-bedroom apartment a nation away from my family. I have to believe this will be the last time I put any of us through this. 

My children are made of sterner stuff than perhaps I give them credit for, as they gamely have listened to the "adult reasoning" for this latest temporary separation. I can’t logically expect them to care about the "bigger picture" when they are forced, once again, to only be able to talk to their Dad on the phone or through Skype; yet they are courageous enough to at least say that they understand. 

I find it hard to believe I will ever be more proud of them. And yet, I’m absolutely sure I will – they are, I am finding, already becoming the kind of people one always hopes adults will be.

The first time I went down this stupid road, back in 2010, it was for a good reason – to save the family the angst of moving and being alone in a strange place for a short time and then moving again. This time it’s not quite so clear. Long term, it’s probably a good thing – no, I’m sure it’s a good thing – but short term… this just sucks. Much worse than last time, for me at least.

So I had to drive 2,500 miles to get here, largely through…nothing. It seems that a whole lot of the middle of America is a whole lot of empty. You can drive 100 miles at a time through a damn good portion of it without seeing a man-made object that is not a car or in support of a car. It’s desolate, monotonous and quite inexplicably…wonderful.

The Eastern U.S. is lovely, especially New England from late April until mid-October. Trees, small villages, dirt roads and a preponderance of charming. It’s small and compact and wild with pockets of tranquility tucked into waves of green so deep you could run around toothless and naked if you wanted and never fear for showing up on Google maps.

The middle and western U.S. offers no such hidey holes. Its expansiveness leaves you exposed. If you’ve ever been lost, even for a little bit, in the woods – really lost – so that your heart races and panic washes across your thoughts … it’s nothing like that. 

Being lost in the woods, always provides the hope that there is someone behind a tree, or that you’ll find a path, or that maybe salvation lies over the hill or around the bend. In short, there is always something that provides a mental lifeline. 

The western plains, in contrast, bare your soul. If you feel lost, you can see immediately that you are, in fact, alone. If you find a path, there is no hope of something around the bend or over the hill for there are neither bends, nor hills.

And yet, it’s wonderful. The sky opens up in way that’s impossible among the close hills of the East. Lying upon the ground, especially at night, when the stars come out in their multitudes, you can look up and see the curve of the heavens – like your sitting in a globe. It’s difficult to describe but you’ll know when you see it. And you will feel insignificant. And you will feel omnipotent. And you will feel the enormity that is the world and the sky no matter how much we say it’s shrinking and you will know it is not. And you will … feel.

Of course, traveling across America isn’t all beautiful views and the awe-inspiring grandeur that is nature. No, there are people and the stuff people bring – in short there is an awful lot of lowest-common-denominator in a 2,500 mile drive. But there’s plenty of time for that later. For now, it’s time to look up at the sky and become the world’s most trivial god.