don of all trades

Four day weekend…

Posted on July 8, 2013 by donofalltrades

Lol, I just reread this and decided fuck it, I’ll go ahead and click publish on this piece of shit anyway. Have fun!

Well, that four day weekend went by way too fast, but that’s typical.

C’est la vie I guess, so let’s get on to the business of boring you with my weekend.

St. Louis has a great 4th of July celebration, which is even better when I don’t have to work the event. The last time I worked it I was standing in the middle of an intersection on Washington Avenue around 10 pm in the still sweltering heat. It was asshole to belly button with cars not going anywhere because there were thousands of them trying to leave downtown at the exact same time. I recall some numbnuts rolled down his window to voice his displeasure with me at the gridlock and then asked me if I was in charge of the event. I laughed and laughed until my stomach hurt before douchey McGee asked me what was so funny. Uh, well, do you really think if I was in charge of this nonsense that I’d put myself at an intersection on Washington Avenue that was asshole to bellybutton with cars occupied by hot, angry and probably semi drunk fucktards like yourself instead of in the air conditioned command van or something? Idiot.

Anyway, I was off this weekend and the parade organizers invited police department employees to walk in the parade so the DOAT clan jumped at the chance. The kids had fun throwing candy at to the onlookers and the wife and I got a little exercise pulling the boys in the wagon for what felt like at least 157 city blocks.

paradin’ around downtown…

I wasn’t very comfortable during the parade because I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do with my non wagon clasping hand. Do I wave and walk the entire distance with a goofy Ms. USA smile on my face or what? I didn’t, so I hope I didn’t appear not to be having a fine time, because I was. It was nice to be applauded when a parade announcer mentioned the police department. We get to dealing so often with people who are angry because they were in an accident or had something stolen or are suspects being arrested, so it’s nice to have a chance to be around folks when they’re pleasant and at least pretending that they like the police for a change.

The parade is a very good one as far as local parades go, and I think the kids had fun. If nothing else, it wore the boys out and that’s always a good thing.

beaten by the heat…

Aside from the parade, there’s a great air show and lots of booths and what not to keep your family entertained. Here’s a small taste of the start of the air show. I’m not ashamed to admit that a little Coming to America by Neal Diamond choked me up a bit. Shut it!

Thursday night we got tanked and shot fireworks because that’s what real ‘Mericans do on the fourth of July! That wore us out pretty good, so Friday was a good day for a whole lot of nothing so that Saturday we could get after things again.

While we had our carpets cleaned for the first time in the three years we’ve lived in our house, my stupid ass decided to be a kind neighbor and mow not only my own yard (which is far from a regular occurence), but my two next door neighbors’ yards as well. They were both out of town enjoying the beach while I was not.

As if that wasn’t unpleasant enough, we decided to torture ourselves by cooling off at the Six Flags water park on Saturday afternoon.

Holy fat people with tattoos all over!! I mean really, I guess I never appreciated how many folks are tattooed all over their bodies with things that aren’t even cool to look at and otherwise make no sense to perfect strangers whatsoever. One guy had a giant baby’s face tattooed all over his entire back. In his defense, it did look just like the baby he was holding, but c’mon, just look at a picture for God’s sake! What if he has another baby? Where will he find a place to put an equally huge tattoo of another spawn?

Anyway, here’s my gripe for the day.

You can buy what is called a Flash Pass at Six Flags that basically lets you fuck around while not waiting in line until your little pass tells you that it’s nearly your turn to ride so you make your way to the ride in the special Flash Pass line. Let me tell you how neat it was and how not pissed off I was at the Flash Pass users who kept showing up and getting a raft right away while I was standing in an hour long line with two prattling 10 year old girls surrounded by other fat, sweaty and increasingly aggravated people. It was awesome!

I shouldn’t have been so judgmental though as there was nothing preventing me from spending $15 more on passes for each of my own clan, but I guess I suck like that.

I will, however, judge the white trash couple who showed up with 12 other people in their group and got to butt in line not because she had a Flash Pass, but apparently because she was in a wheel chair. While I know that people can suffer from many debilitating things requiring a wheelchair and look otherwise healthy, this woman was just plain trash. Her boyfriend who was pushing her around was even worse, and the others besides them each got progressively worse still. One may have had a tail even.

They got to butt in line to get not one or two, but six fucking rafts!! The rafts were coming down one at a time, so we’re talking at least 15 minutes being added to my wait to accommodate these inbreds. The raft is a large, cumbersome four person number and not easy to carry even with two people doing so. She had no problem getting out of her chair and carrying it with her man friend the 70 yards they had to walk to get to the eight flights of stairs they climbed on foot with no problems to get to the start of the ride.

FUUUUUUCK!!!! I thing the heat was making me delirious.

Still, even if she was cripple, the other people most certainly were not. Well, not physically at least. They could have waited in line just like the rest of us jerks had to.

Geez, let’s wrap this up, right? That was the only ride I ventured upon as the boys were too small to ride every single ride in the water park and were driving Wife bonkers while I was away with Ace for the nearly two hours it took to ride that one ride I just mentioned.

Long story short, get a Flash Pass and bring a camera. I did not and I regret all the photo chances I missed. Between the fat and the tattoos and the general insanity that comes with any large crowd, it’d been nice to have some pictures to share with you all. We’re going back next Saturday, so maybe next time.

Posted in Family, Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged dads, fourth of july, fun, humor, parades, six flags, st. louis, water park | 56 Comments

Summatime and stuff…

Posted on July 3, 2013 by donofalltrades

Happy Birthday, ‘Merika! You’re fucked up in a lot of ways, but still one helluva great pal to me. I’d not trade you for any other country. Well, maybe Italy or someplace tropical? I’d not trade you for MOST other countries for sure!

So I was just sitting here cramming a delicious fucking donut in my face hole when I figured I may as well write another blog post about nothing since I’m too distracted by sugary goodness to work. It’s really good, or I’d not have cursed to prove that point! See? This is donut number one; I’ll spare you pictures of the others, er other.

Black and white getting along just fine here.

Summer is going splendidly, if I may say so even though none of you asked. Wife and I work, come home to wrangle the kids some grub before laboring to get them into bed, watch a little TV, fall asleep and then repeat it all over again the next day. It’s sort of like winter and fall and spring, now that I see it in words. Sigh…

Fret not for us though friends as it’s not all work and no play for the DOAT clan. Now that T-ball is over, there’s one less thing for me to deal with. Did I mention that I coached Cool’s T-ball team? I don’t know why I always think it’s going to be fun, because it’s really quite a pain in the ass to coach a little league team, even T-ball. I may have felt guilty because I coached Ace’s team way back when.

Ace could always swing a bat really well.

Ace is a really good hitter.

Defensively, she’s always focused and never distracted or dancing to her own little beat.

Ready for action?

They were a great bunch of girls so I coached their soccer team as well. It’s basically a herd of kids running after a ball at that age, but it was fun.

Watch out for the herd!

Well, it wasn’t ALWAYS fun…

I hate my coach…

Ace and I butted heads a LOT during soccer for some reason. She didn’t care to listen and she’s mostly anti-running. Unfortunately, there’s some running that must be done in order to play soccer. She tried goalie and liked it, but I don’t like kids playing goalie the whole game at that age because they’re not getting any exercise that way and they should experience all the different positions. She didn’t care for that philosophy.

My assistant coach wasn’t all that helpful either.

Hi Don, I’ll stand over here with my beer even though it’s 10am, ok?

Anyway, it all worked out in the end. The girls played hard, learned to play the sport, and more importantly, how to be good sports.

Everybody shakes hands…

They all get trophies at that age, and I’m fine with that. There should be an age where trophies and medals are reserved for those who’ve actually won, but that time isn’t right now.

The smile is worth the headaches…

Boys are completely different than girls on the field. As preschoolers, they’re very similar with respect to their skills, but the boys are a little bit crazier. They were more difficult to control and spent much of the time diving on top of each other and rolling around in the dirt. Still, they were better on the last day than they were at the first practice, so that’s something.

Look at that tiny Cool!

They do stand still sometimes, but you have to move them around manually to get them where you want them.

Cool, like his sister, was a natural with the bat. For a boy who developed very, very slowly physically, and is still tiny for his age (19th percentile now) he’s a pretty good athlete.

Practicing at home and also in the sporting department at Walmart after they pissed me off by taking so long to change the oil in my truck really paid off.

Booya, all the way to the electronics department.

Anyway, we finally got to enjoy some sno cones. That’s summer to me, a good New Orleans style snow cone with the shaved ice. I always get half banana and half watermelon. Why try new flavors and risk hating it?

Ace tries new flavors sometimes. How’s that working out for you, Ace?

Um, yummy?

Yeah, that doesn’t look like a girl who’s enjoying her sno cone to me either. Ha ha, should have stuck to your beloved Tigerblood, Ace!

The boys liked their sno cone just fine. They’ll suck down any frozen treat and like it.

Whooooo! Ice cream!

We also managed to make it to a Cardinal’s game, but Ace was at camp that week so we’ll need to do it again with her in tow. It just isn’t the same without her around.

Still, Cool got to walk on the field.

Standing under Ozzie on the wall…

And G$, well, G$ was himself. He found something new he liked.

Pffft, it don’t need a lime, daddy you putz…

I think Wife and I have finally decided that we’re going to take the kids to the beach this summer as well. Everything is so expensive nowadays, but these kids aren’t going to be able to tolerate each other much longer so we figure we may as well take advantage of the fact that they mostly like each other still while we can.

I wish I could say the beach will be ever sooooo relaxing, but it won’t be. It’s a bit of work keeping an eye on all three of them at once. Plus somebody has to haul all the crap to and from the beach, etc. Still, as long as there’s some time for a couple of cold ones in the sun, it’ll be worth it.

Don’t judge me!

I hope your summer is going well. Go out and do something fun, if not! Do it!

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged baseball, coaching, dads, fun, humor, little league, parents, sno cones, soccer, summer, t-ball, youth sports | 39 Comments

A pretty slow weekend…

Posted on July 1, 2013 by donofalltrades

I got nothin’ of interest to talk about, so I’ll just talk about my weekend and high five myself for having posted something.

Friday night I worked at the fried chicken palace, but it was fairly uneventful. It was the last week in the month, so most of the folks who use their government assistance to eat out had already blown through it by eating out and buying liquor during the first 10 days or so of the month. Seriously, it’s a thing! There ought to be lessons on how to budget that money so it’s spread out all month long, but what do I know? Don’t fret though, fair readers, today is the first of the month again so there will be fresh shenanigans I’m sure.

Saturday was graduation party time. My godson graduated high school and will be off to college in the fall. He’s such a good kid! His mom and the Dude really did a great job with that boy.

We were a pretty cool duo back in the day, that boy and me. I like to pretend that some of his awesomeness comes from me, but that’s not so likely.

Godfather and godson back in the day…

The boy is a wiz with numbers somehow, but I’m going to try to steer him towards dentistry or pediatric medicine so that I can live vicariously through him, just in case my own kids decide that they’d rather not work for a living since they know they can still eat at the chicken palace on the government’s dime instead. They’ve been exposed to too much I fear.

Before we left for the party on Saturday though, I decided to take the training wheels off of Cool’s bike so that he’d have no choice but to either ride it sans wheels or walk wherever it is 4 year olds go when they’re outside playing.

He hated it, of course, but he’d been riding a Strider bike since he was 2 and could get along really well on it since day 1. Have you seen these little bikes? They’re supposed to teach balance and what not so that the kids can basically go straight to a 2 wheel bike once they’re ready. It’s just a bike with no pedals and the kid scoots around on it ala Fred Flinstone with his own two feet. Cool was able to balance on this thing, so the trick was to convince him that his “big boy” bike was the same thing only with pedals. He didn’t pick it up after two tries, so he became frustrated and swore he was done riding bikes forever.

Look Ma, no pedals!

God love the little scamp, on Sunday morning he had a change of heart and was itching to try the bike without training wheels again. He and Wife hit the street once more to try their luck.

So, with sandals on his feet and nothing on his head (yeah, screw you, child safety experts, that’s how we roll) Cool had another go at it.

Nice work, Kiddo! Learning to ride a two wheeler is another of those milestones that makes me a proud parent. While it’s not THAT big a deal, he is only 4 and this is the boy who didn’t walk until he was twenty months old!

Ace was so proud of him too that she followed him around the circle about 492 times filming him in action on her little iPod device. Anything that brings the kids together to play nice is ok by me.

White trash baby…

G$ was less impressed, but he likes to be included in these posts.

Today appears to be something special to Canadians, so Happy Canada Day to my Canadian readers. I haven’t had time to read any of the posts, so I must confess I have no idea what it is. Isn’t every day Canada Day to you people? I hope you people get off work or something on this day. Do you?

Anyway, I’m not Canadian and thus, have to go to work now.

Happy Monday, all! Have a great week.

Posted in Family, Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged bike riding, dads, graduation, kids, Parenting, play | 39 Comments

The week i worked out, sort of….

Posted on June 27, 2013 by donofalltrades

So, true to my word, I decided to get my fat ass back into shape by working out with weights and doing some running. Well, maybe some jogging….walking? I’m going to get moving for sure.

In a show of force to convince myself that I was serious, I even decided to get started on Sunday instead of waiting for my normal Monday put off day.

So Sunday night, I put on my workout clothes, grabbed my phone and made my way into the basement. Sadly, I have a decent workout bench and dumbbell collection that mostly collects dust in the basement. I don’t even have to leave my house, but I’ve still managed to not workout for over a decade while these pieces of equipment go unused.

I plugged my phone in and pressed shuffle on the music app and started to stretch a little bit. After 12 seconds of stretching, I was ready to begin.

There were already plates on the barbell from a time long ago when I was in better shape, but I figured what the hell, I can’t have lost that much strength, so I kept them all on the bar.

I settled onto the cold weight bench and clutched the bar with both my hands. It was cold and heavy and I already dreaded the five sets of bench presses that I was going to do. I successfully hoisted the bar from its resting position and held it aloft for a couple of seconds while I prepped my mind to count out the 18 reps I planned to do.

One, ugh, TWO, errrrrr, three, ohhhh what was that popping noise? Fffffffffour, fuck it’s cold down here, and that’s enough for that first set.

Ok, maybe that was a bit too much weight for the first go. I felt pretty good after those four reps though. I guess anything really is better than nothing, right? I stretched out my pecs, removed about 50 pounds from the bar and laid back down on the bench for set number two. I hoisted the bar again and just as I was about to lower it for my first rep, an Alvin and the Chipmunk’s song came out of the speakers. Those damn kids and their songs!

“Well, this will not do,” I thought to myself. I lowered the bar back into the bench arms without having done any reps in my second set and pressed the fast forward button on the phone. Thirty-two presses of the FF button later, I finally found a song that I wanted to listen to. How can all those songs, which I put into my phone my own damn self, be songs that I never want to listen to?

Back onto the bench, I stared at the wood planks that run across my basement ceiling as I prepared to lift the bar again.

“I need water,” I told myself.

I went upstairs and poured myself a nice big cup of water.

I went back downstairs with my water, laid my back on the bench and closed my eyes while listening to Brad Paisley drone on about alcohol.

I suddenly wanted some alcohol.

I gripped the bar again. It was cold.

I removed my hands from the bar and crossed my arms on my chest. I closed my eyes again to listen to the music while I pumped myself up.

I’m single and I’m rich and I got a set of six pec abs that’ll blow your mind…

“Sing it, Brad!” I remember thinking at some point before I drifted off to sleep right there on the bench.

Thankfully, the dog meandered downstairs and licked my face, possibly to make sure I wasn’t dead. I awoke to the sound of a slobbering tongue against my forehead and Johnny Cash lamenting the fact that his deadbeat dad had gone and named him Sue! I had no idea how long I’d been asleep, but clearly Monday would be the better day to get started on this workout stuff.

So as to not make the session a total loss, I did grab a couple of 35 pound dumbbells and did 15 curls. 15 curls and 4 bench presses! FEEL THE BURN!!!!!!!!

Monday:

Hellbent on getting stuff did, I stopped by a gym and talked to a guy named Jim. For real! Jim’s gym had a free two week membership sign (no purchase necessary) out front and that sounded like it was right in my price range.

Jim was very enthusiastic and I knew right away that I wanted to push him down a flight of stairs or possibly hold his head underwater for several minutes. He was jogging in place while we talked. Seriously, dude, PLEASE STAND STILL!!

Jim asks how he can help me while bending over sideways at the waist with an arm bent over his head and two and three and four.

“Uh, if you’re busy exercising, I can come back. I just want to try the two week membership.”

“That’s AWESOME, MAN!” said Jim as I thought about how fun it would be to use his face as a tether ball.

“You’re a pretty big dude already, do you workout?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I just worked out last night in my basement.”

“AWESOME!” says this putz named Jim. “Well let’s talk about membership options so we…”

“Nononononononono, you’re not listening to me Jim. I’m interested in the two week free membership trial and nothing more right now.”

Jimmy looked puzzled so I walked to the window and pointed directly at the sign.

“See? It’s facing away from us, but I can read that it says 2 Weeks Free Trial Membership in really big letters, and then in smaller ones it says no purchase necessary. I’m looking to not make a purchase right now but still take part in the two week trial membership as per the invitation on the sign.” I was mostly pleasant sounding and not condescending at all.

“But I can totally ma…..”

I cut him off “Ok, Jim, I actually see that it’s later than I thought it was, do you work tomorrow or Wednesday?”

“Uh, Wednesday is my only day off, Dude.”

“Alright, I’ll be back on Wednesday then.” I said and left the gym just as unfit as I was when I’d entered.

Tuesday:

I was going to run at work on Tuesday but I forgot to bring any workout clothes. I’ll start running on Thursday.

Wednesday:

Back to the gym, and thankfully, there was no Jim as he had promised. There was a buxom young lady named Tiffany working the desk. The sight of her pulling on her chewing gum and talking on her cell phone while I stood there like an idiot for an entire minute made me want to slap her upside her head with her own giant tits.

“Can I, uh, help you or somethin’?” Chesty finally asked.

“Uh, like I hope so, uh, Tiff. I uh like, uh, want to try your free two week membership n’ stuff. Is that cool?”

“Awe, that’d be totally doable, but the computer is uh, like not workin’ right now so uh, I can’t get you in there n’ stuff.”

Well, this is fucking great, I thought to myself. I suddenly missed Jim of the gym.

“Well, I brought my clothes, can I try a workout anyway?” I asked.

“TOTALLY!” she said. “For $5 you can workout once, yeah.”

“Oh, boy,” I sighed under my breath. “I didn’t bring any money. The sign says Free Trial Membership.” I walked over to the sign as I had done Monday and pointed to it for Tiffany’s benefit.

“That’s a different deal than a single day membership, sir. You want to workout once and that’s $5.”

“No, I want a two week free membership trial, but you said that your computer is down. How is that my fault?”

“Uh, it’s not your fault or my fault or anybody’s fault, sir, but I can’t let you workout if you’re not in the computer system. Those are the rules.”

Exasperated, I rubbed my temples and wondered why the fuck I was standing here instead of sitting on a barstool.

“If I gave you $5 would you be able to put me in the computer?”

Tiffany looked puzzled.

“When does Jim work again?” I asked.

“Uh, like tomorrow I think,” she responded.

“Ok then, I’ll come back on Friday. Hopefully, the computers will be functional again.” I said in the most aggravated voice I could muster.

When she replied “TOTALLY!” I nearly turned back to push her face through the wall.

Thursday:

I was pretty proud of myself as I started walking to the locker room with my gym bag to change into my running attire when it dawned on me that I completely forgot my running shoes. I had loafers and some flip flops to shower in but no running shoes.

“Fuck.”

Friday:

In the hopes that the third time would be a charm, I made my way to the gym and, sure enough, Jim greeted me at the door with a nice handshake and an “I remember you, dude!”

Way to go, Jim! What has it been, like four fucking days?

Anyway, he managed to get me into the computer and I was good to go!

I changed out of my work clothes and into some workout clothes in a locker room filled with old man balls. Seriously, why are you people just standing around talking to each other naked? I was disturbed, but not completely demotivated.

I pushed my way past several ladies ogling themselves in the mirror and a couple of guys in stretchy shorts. Hey assholes, stretchy shorts? Really?

The bench press station was being used by a couple of meatheads yelling and grunting and spitting all over each other, but my OCD doesn’t allow me to do another workout first. Getting the bench out of the way first is mandatory, so I waited. And waited. And I waited some more until Thor and Conan finished lifting and then chest bumping each other enthusiastically to communicate their happiness at having lifted.

I asked if they were finished and they grunted yeah and started making their way to another contraption when I said, “Really?”

“Wha?”

“You’re just gonna leave the weights on the bar and your disgusting sweat all over the bench like a couple of fuckin’ troglodytes?”

Beavis and his pal looked at each other and made sad faces that I recognized as the one my daughter makes when she’s stumped by a math problem.

While they deliberated over who last had the towel, I’d decided that being around these gym people was more than I could bear. I returned to the land of droopy balls and liver spots to get my clothes and leave.

“You done already, Dude?” asked my main man Jim as I was leaving.

“Is this place built on an old Indian burial ground or was it recently repainted with extra leaded paint?” I asked just less than sarcastically enough for him to recognize it as such.

“Uh, I don’t think so, why?

“No reason. Just curious is all.”

I left Jim and the gym and headed to the place next door for a beer.

The number of 12 ounce curls was astonishing and if pain is really an indication of gain, then this pain in my head indicates that I gained more from those curls than anything Jim could have ever offered me at his gym.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged exercise, fitness, gyms, health, humor, weight lifting | 66 Comments

Dandy Randy and some other ramblins’…

Posted on June 24, 2013 by donofalltrades

Here’s a post just to be posting.

So that guy walked across the grand canyon on a two inch cable. Did you see that? I watched it with my daughter and we enjoyed the spectacle. It took some huge balls and apparently some assistance from Jesus, but he did it.

Then there was a show right after it that involved the Discover Channel dumping a man and a woman in a Costa Rican jungle for 21 days butt naked. “Who watches this crap?” I asked myself! After watching the entire show in spite of the fact that I wanted to go to bed, I had my answer. Spoiler alert, they made it out alive by eating a turtle and a snake and drinking river water. I’m sure there are native people out there in jungles who do that stuff everyday, but when white Americans have to live like that for 21 days, it’s entertainment.

A few of you have inquired about how my fitness or weight loss program is going and, bless your hearts, I appreciate you asking. Unfortunately, “I’m going to start that program on Monday” has been my answer for several weeks now. So again, for those of you who’ve recently asked, I plan to start it next Monday for real.

The BMI says that I’m too heavy for my height, so I’ve been trying different things to make myself taller so my current weight would be ok. So far, I’ve had no success with this plan and I’m beginning to realize that losing the weight is probably the best way to go. The good news is that I haven’t gained any additional weight, so that’s something to be proud of, right?

The other day at a graduation for a relative, I was hanging out in the pisser with my four-year-old while he was taking a leak.

So here’s a semi-serious question.

Is it strange that my four-year old son pees sitting down and then wipes his business when he’s finished? I seem to remember as a kid that I’d always pee standing up, even at home. In his defense, he learned it from me. I pee sitting down at home even though I stand up to do it everywhere else.

That’s TMI, but you pee sitting down, Don?

Yes! I’m a man of average to above average height, so when I pee standing up, the water and piss splash all over the rim and the floor of the bathroom. That’s fucking disgusting when you have babies crawling around. That’s disgusting even if you don’t have little ones crawling about. Why create an extra mess where it can so easily be avoided? Plus, I much prefer sitting whilst doing most any activity and it gives me a few minutes to catch up on Ruzzle and WWF matches. Still, if people think I’m turning him into a Nancy boy, then I don’t mind standing him up now that I think he can reach where he needs to be to hit the target.

Here’s another character I met while policing, since many of you enjoy such tales.

I was reading through some old correspondence and came across a name I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. It was a message about one of my regular homeless folks. His name was Randy P. I’ll call him Randy though.

Randy is dead now.

Randy was an alcoholic and he was one of those people who didn’t want anybody’s help. He was fairly young when he died, 47 by my math.

Randy drove first responders crazy because we got many, many calls from people about his behavior. He hung out in a very populated neighborhood with a mix of renters and homeowners. It was a decent area with a fairly low crime rate, especially for violent crime. There is a church that feeds and shelters homeless people, so they’re always nearby. Randy didn’t care for any shelters. Randy slept in Aboussie Park in St. Louis. Its claim to fame is that it’s the smallest park in all of St. Louis. It is pretty tiny and is situated alongside a major interstate to the west and a row of houses to the east.

Randy wasn’t violent as a general rule, but if I’d spoken to him 400 times, he was completely sober maybe three or four of those times. I think he said he had a daughter and possibly an ex-wife. He suffered from seizures very regularly. That’s what most of our calls on him were about. EMS would show up and say “Randy, I should have known it was you!” They’d take him to a hospital where he’d get some new meds, he’d be released, run out of medicine, have another seizure, and the cycle would repeat itself. Randy mostly minded his own business and police officers appreciate people who mind their own business.

One night, my partner and I were nearing the end of our shift when we noticed a Dodge Durango with a broken window nearby. The windows were tinted so we couldn’t see too well inside the car.

Well, it turned out that the car was stolen so we just followed it around for a little bit, no lights on or anything. It drove very slow down a few streets and then into an alley where it stopped for a moment. Nobody got out and the car continued on. We’re not really at liberty to chase cars just for being stolen, and turning on the lights may have caused the driver to take off dangerously, so we continued to follow it while discussing what we were going to do. Well, the car turned into a gas station and all four doors opened while nearly simultaneously, four homeless guys staggered from the car and collapsed onto the parking lot. They were all too drunk to stand up. Were it not for the fact that the car was stolen and the driver was apparently driving drunk, the scene would have been hilarious.

Randy was a passenger in the car.

They all reeked of booze and piss and vomit and whatever else it was that they rolled around in and I felt bad for whoever owned this car and was going to get it back because that stank wasn’t going to be removed without a fight.

I saw Randy a few months later and it was one of the few times he didn’t appear to be drunk, even a little bit. He had no recollection of the night in the stolen Durango and about being a total douche about being arrested (I forgot to mention he acted like a total douche that night). He apologized and we laughed about it, because what more can you do but laugh about such things?

We talked about his seizures and about what a frequent flyer he was with EMS. He was always passing out or having seizures at the worst possible times, it seemed like when we were at our busiest and didn’t have time to deal with another of his episodes. I remember telling him that when he finally did die, it was no doubt going to be in fantastic fashion and disrupt something horrendously.

That something turned out to be traffic on I-55.

Before I tell how Randy died, there was this typical Randy tale as well. Randy somehow ended up in the county one evening (out of my jurisdiction) and was sleeping in a dumpster when the trash man came by to empty the dumpster of all it’s trash, including Randy. I don’t know how, but somehow the driver heard Randy screaming and stopped the machine before killing Randy. He may have broken a bone in his arm or leg, I don’t recall, but he seemed to have nine lives.

Having survived the dumpster scare, Randy was back in the City doing his thing. A clerk from the Shell station said that she had sold Randy 5 tall boy cans of beer, including a Keystone Light and that he appeared to be in good spirits.

Shortly thereafter, there was a dead man found on the highway, not too far from a bunch of personal effects, including an empty can of Keystone Light.

The first driver said that he thought something fell of the overpass and then he hit it. The second driver to hit Randy drove over his body after the first car had already struck it.

His luck had run out.

My partner the night of the Durango fiasco was working when Randy was killed; I was not. We didn’t work in the same area anymore. I vaguely recall him telling me that Randy was struck so hard that his heart was many yards down the highway from the rest of his body. I felt bad that Randy had finally succumbed to his hard lifestyle.

It appears he was drunk and wandered onto the highway for who knows what reason.

My former partner has never called me to tell me that anyone else we knew in common was dead, but he did for Randy because he was one of our regulars, and in some perverse way, we liked him.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged boys, discover channel, homeless, peeing, police stories, potty training, stories | 66 Comments

Hanging out at black box warning today…

Posted on June 20, 2013 by donofalltrades

So Le Clown, who needs no introduction to my blogger friends, invited me to share some thoughts over on Black Box Warning. It’s a long post, but I think my writing is easy to get through and I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it.

It’s not a humor post, so if you’re in the mood to laugh, pass on this one.

A law man’s thoughts…

Posted in Stories, The not meant to be funny stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged abuse, black box warning, helping, law enforcement, police, st. louis | 25 Comments

Striking out officer don; me thinks not…

Posted on June 18, 2013 by donofalltrades

When I was a young police officer, I was once touched to see one of my fellow police officers in the projects buying ice cream from the ice cream truck for any kid who wanted one. That officer was short, but built like a brick shit house. He was a former Marine and proudly sported a gold tooth on one of his incisors. He looked a lot like Mike Tyson in many respects, minus the face tattoo.

That officer was with me on my first Code 1 call and we became fast friends. The unfortunate end to the story is that his police career died after he wound up in a federal prison for a non-violent offense (I’m not trying to trivialize what he allegedly did, and honestly, I’m not 100% sure of the details, but it involved helping a family member).

Anyway, that he wound up in prison is neither here nor there. He was a good person at heart and even got in trouble because he was trying to help somebody in a way that he obviously shouldn’t have been.

Seeing him buying poor kids ice cream on a hot summer day surrounded by drug dealers, drunks and some of society’s other misfits was a real eye opener for me and an image I’m fond of recalling from time to time. I took it to heart and tried to do the same thing whenever I could. My beat had homeless people everywhere. After awhile, I got to know the good eggs as well as the rotten ones. There was a thrift store in the area where I patrolled that sold everything a person could want. I’ve bought my share of gloves, socks, sandwiches and yes, I’ve bought them beer and booze as well. You’d be amazed how much information a man will share for a tall can of cold beer. Is it right to buy beer for folks who are obviously alcoholics? That’s what the negative Nancies will harp on, but the fact is that they were going to drink something whether I bought them a fresh beer or not.

Anyway, another thing I enjoyed doing was watching kids play ball. I’d often pull my cruiser over and watch a soccer game in the park or a pickup basketball game on a playground. On rare occasions, I’d catch kids playing fuzzball in a parking lot.

I loved playing fuzzball as a kid, and one afternoon I noticed three kids playing the game with a tennis ball. One was pitching to another while a third was in the outfield. Balls not hit would bounce back to the pitcher off the brick building they were using as a backdrop.

I love watching kids play baseball related sports so I pulled my cruiser into the lot and watched the boys play for a little bit. After a few minutes, one of the boys came over and asked if they were ok to play there.

“Of course you kids can play on this lot, there’s nobody else around.” I said.

“Cool, officer, you wanna play?” asked the pitcher.

I laughed and assured the boys that I was content to sip my tea and wait for the dispatcher to send me on my next call. Well, the boys got to razzin’ me and insisting that the pitcher of the group could strike me out on three pitches. After awhile, it was too much for my manhood to resist.

I was in much better shape back then, but still, the bullet-proof vest would make swinging the bat awkward. I grabbed the long corkball bat from one of the lads and took my place in the batter’s box as the other boys took their positions.

I hadn’t played ball in some time, so I was preparing my pride to accept being struck out and then mocked by a trio of 12 year old boys. The scene was tense, it was young versus old (though I wasn’t that old), man versus boy, citizen versus police! I had to give this my all. I’m not sure who in this scenario was Jackie Mitchell and who was Babe Ruth, but this encounter surely rivaled that scene, minus the many onlookers, of course.

As I knew would be the case, the first pitch came right at me. It was a freebie for him to throw at a cop, so I knew it was coming and let the tennis ball hit me harmlessly in the side. It wouldn’t have hurt without the vest, so there was no malice intended. He was just being a ham.

“Now you can’t strike me out with three pitches, young man!” I told him.

He looked perplexed as though the math didn’t make any sense as he tried to figure it out in his head. Ah, the city’s public school system is amazing.

“Oh, I still can and will, officer!” He said anyway.

Sigh….

“Ok, kid, I’m ready for your best stuff!”

My new little friend fired pitch number two nowhere near the strike zone.

“That’s ball two, son. Are you scared?” I taunted him.

He laughed and got ready again. “I ain’t scared of you!”

He wound up like he was really gonna let this one fly and threw a pitch that was going to obviously be a strike. I squinted my eyes and gritted my teeth while preparing to softly swing at his offering just to be able to say, ha ha, you didn’t strike me out, but the competitor in me had some sort of flashback and I raised my front foot to time the pitch just right. Before I knew what I was doing, I had ripped a line drive that bounced right off of the boy’s forehead and 30 feet into the air.

Oh fuuuck, I thought as one of the other boys came sprinting in to try to catch the ball before it hit the ground. He dove through the air and onto the concrete parking lot and came nowhere near catching the ball. Despite his valiant effort, he missed the ball by several yards. He did manage to scrape the shit out of his elbows and knees, however.

One swing of the bat and I’d downed two preteens while the third stood in the outfield with his mouth agape. I wasn’t sure whether he was going to laugh or cry, but he soon busted out laughing and I felt like a heel.

The other two boys were writhing in pain, probably overly dramatically. I looked around and was relieved to not see another human being in sight. The boys were still on the ground with the third one now laughing hysterically while standing over his friends and taunting them as only boys can do.

I didn’t have kids of my own yet, so I wasn’t as confident as I would be today that they could just shake it off. While the scrapes on the one boy’s knees were nasty, they were his own fault. The other boy looked fine, though clearly embarrassed.

“That was a great pitch you threw; I was lucky to hit it,” I lied to him.

“Yeah, that wasn’t my best stuff either,” said the lad trying to maintain some dignity in front of his pals.

When it was obvious that everyone was going to live, I offered to meet them (they had bikes or I’d have given them a lift) at a Taco Bell down the street to buy them some food.

I didn’t get a chance to stay with them long, but I enjoyed their company for a few minutes. These were some of the “good” kids in an area with a lot of “bad” ones and I was glad to have met them. They were appreciative and respectful beyond that of most 12 year old boys you’d meet anywhere.

While I’m sorry that I beaned that boy in the head, it’s still one of my favorite workplace memories.

Posted in Humor, Stories, Uncategorized | Tagged baseball, fuzzball, humor, kids, memories, police, sports, stories | 77 Comments

Father’s day, i’m their dad…

Posted on June 14, 2013 by donofalltrades

While I like to joke about them, I love my kids, of course.

I’m their dad.

I suck at showing it all the time.

I don’t say I love you enough, I’m sure. I do try to say it everyday, but it never seems like enough.

I often go to bed after not seeing my kids at all during the day because of work. I miss them on those days and I sometimes find myself wondering if I’m doing enough to make sure they know how I feel about them.

The boys are small enough that they probably could care less at this point, but Ace is a big girl and soon she’ll have big girl issues. I want her to be able to come to me with those issues knowing that I’ll do my best to help her and love her in spite of whatever is going on.

My love for the kids is unconditional.

Do you know how I know that I love my kids?

I would die for any of them.

I’m their dad.

I would literally drop dead on the spot to give any of my three kids even just 10 more seconds of life.

I’d take the bullet for any of them or my wife. It’s not debatable. There’d be no pro versus con list to consider. I know this because I’ve thought about it before. Is that morbid? I don’t think it is. I get to thinking sometimes when I’m at work all alone at night. A man alone with his thoughts gets to thinking about the ones he loves and misses, it’s just how it is with a brain, I guess. Morbid or not, and for whatever reason, I’ve thought about whether or not I’d die for my kids and the final decision is always the same.

If the only choice is death and the grim reaper isn’t going to leave without somebody’s soul, I’d offer mine up in a heartbeat.

One of my favorite quotes comes from the Bible, John 15:13, to be precise:

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.”

I don’t regularly read the Bible. I don’t even read it sometimes, really. The only Bible I’m aware of in my family’s possession belongs to my parents, and, I’m not lying, was last seen under the leg of their pinball machine to keep it from wobbling.

I’m honestly only familiar with the above quote because it’s prominently used in many Backstopper advertisements. The Backstoppers is an incredible organization here in St. Louis that provides assistance to families who’ve lost a loved one while that person was working as a first responder. They’ve paid for homes, tuition and other necessities for way too many police officers’ families just in the near 15 years I’ve worked in this city.

I know when I put on my uniform that there’s a chance I could be killed at the next car stop or domestic dispute I show up to. It is what it is. I don’t give it much thought and I doubt that others do either. It’s just something that’s a part of the job I love and it’s why we make so much money.

I hope this doesn’t come out the wrong way, but I wouldn’t choose to die for any of the citizens I serve beyond the four people who live under the same roof as me.

That’s not what you want to hear from your police officers, is it?

I hope this makes sense.

I will do my best to help protect anybody.

Where there is chaos, I’ll head that way.

I will race towards the gunfire.

I will run into a burning house to save your loved one, even your dog, as long as I believe there’s a chance that I’ll make it out alive.

I’d jump into a raging river to save you because I think I’m an ok swimmer.

But, if my own death was guaranteed by doing something to help you?

Sorry, but if you’re not Wife, Ace, Cool or G$, I won’t do it.

I won’t choose to die for you.

I will choose to do things that might cause me to die for you, yes. 100 times over I’ll run to help you when I’m able.

Does the distinction make sense?

I hope it does and that you understand.

Whose life is worth more than mine outside of those four people?

I have three kids.

I’m their dad.

I’m needed by those little people I’ve brought into this world.

I have a daughter, Ace.

I taught her to ride a bike and tie her shoes. She still has much to learn.

She will need to know why boys can be such jerks and have somebody to walk her down the aisle when she finds the one who isn’t.

She’ll need to know what boys are thinking and how to drive a manual transmission.

She’s going to need to know how to defend and stand up for herself when the going gets tough.

I’ll teach her those things and more. I’ll be there to listen and share what I know about life and what she can expect based on my own experiences.

I’ll be there with hugs and kisses when the bruises and scrapes are on her little heart instead of her knees. I will tell her that I understand how she feels because I remember how it feels to be a teenager. I know what it’s like to lose a friend or fail a test. It’s not the end of the world, but to her it will seem like it is. It was a long time ago, yes, but I remember my first “love” too and how it hurt when she left me.

I’m their dad.

Life can be hard, so having a dad is a real bonus. Moms are great for sure, but dads can be great too.

I have two boys who are small right now.

I’m their jungle gym and short order cook.

They need their dad perhaps even more than Ace does.

They will need to be taught how to shave their faces and tie those neck ties. Against the grain is ok in my book, in spite of what Sergeant Murtaug said to the contrary.

They need to be taught to hold doors open for strangers and how to throw a curve ball. Hitting a lady is never an option, no matter how angry you get, and you will get angry at a lady at some point in your life. They will never be able to start a sentence “I remember that time dad hit mom…”

I will lead by example but point out to them that I’m not perfect. Where my example sucks I will explain how I wish I’d have done better and give them the tools and know how to succeed where I’ve failed.

They’ll need to know that they’ll have to work hard and pay for dates and gas and their own car insurance.

They’ll all need reassurance when they think that they’re ugly or dumb or will never be good at anything.

I’m their dad.

I’ve been there. I was ugly and dumb and wasn’t ever going to be good at anything. I’ve had terrible acne and been cut from teams. I’ve gotten F’s and been fired from jobs. I’ve also made the team and won championships. I’ve made the Dean’s List and been employee of the month.

Life is like that. Sometimes you’re the fly and sometimes you’re the fly swatter.

You win some and you lose some. I will teach them that. That’s what makes life so exciting.

They will all grow up with manners and respect for others.

They will be taught to respect themselves and to always be proud of what they do. They will know that I love them and will do so whether they are neurosurgeons or fast food employees.

If collecting trash becomes their job, they will do it to the best of their abilities. They’ll go out of their way to pick up a wayward napkin or milk jug that was left on top of the can instead of just leaving it, because that’s going above and beyond what a trash man should have to do. They will know that I’m proud of them for being such great trash collectors.

They will all be taught to be sure of themselves. They’re lucky to be beautiful; all three of them are. Life is easier when you’re beautiful so I will always remind them that they are.

They’ll grow to root for the Cardinals and to support the underdog. They will never be bullies and will go out of their way to help those who are oppressed. They’ll stand up for others but never lose their sense of humor. They’ll be sharp witted and funny and be able to take a joke.

They’ll probably be sore losers, but I’ll teach them that we can’t win ’em all. They’ll be gracious in victory and be able to hold their booze at the celebration.

They’ll never lack in confidence and will try things that are difficult.

Gay or straight, rich or poor, it won’t matter.

I’m their dad. They’ll know I’ll always have their backs and try to make them happy in life, even it means having a knife shoved into my own.

Posted in Family, Parenting, The not meant to be funny stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged dads, family, father's day, fathers, kids, moms, Parenting, police | 96 Comments

The fried chicken palace adventures…

Posted on June 11, 2013 by donofalltrades

Believe it or not, this post began as a seed in my tiny, atrophied brain as a post offering parenting tips to first time parents. As a father of three, of course I’m qualified to help others become great parents, just like me. However, I somehow got sidetracked and that topic never got fully fleshed out. Lucky for you, I plan to revisit my parenting tips post later. Instead, enjoy a couple of my favorite restaurant’s finest characters.

Who doesn’t love fried chicken, or fried anything for that matter?

One of my many jobs is moonlighting as a glorified security guard at a restaurant in the city that offers large portions of food, mostly fried, at very reasonable prices. They’re known for their fried chicken, but serve many different types of dishes, nearly every one of which is delicious and terrible for your health to eat more than once a month.

Because it’s so affordable and the food is good and plentiful, the customers come from all walks of life. Human being-like creatures who would never ever eat out in public anywhere else will come eat at this restaurant because they can do so in their sweat pants and tank tops or even just in whatever it is they wore to bed the night before. The first of the month crowd that I touched on in this post is a favorite customer of this restaurant. Here is a recent customer as an example:

I’m just gonna sit here in the fucking doorway a bit…

Go ahead boys, fall in love, because she was single. Bertha VonMilkshakes here was in this exact position when I showed up at the restaurant one night. She had ordered not one, but two plates of fried food for herself, a half chicken plate and a fried catfish plate. That’s a whole lot of food for one person! That’s a lot of food for three people, really.

This is the chicken plate:

A half a chicken and 2 sides should be enough for one person.

The catfish is the same thing, but with fried catfish, duh.

Anyway, Bertha ordered her food and then decided to go outside to have a smoke while she waited the entire 7 minutes or so it was going to take for her food to arrive at her table.

Not only is she morbidly obese, but she’s a smoker, has a mustache and chin hairs, and worst of all, a shitty disposition! Look, if you’re going to be obese and not tend to yourself in any way to make yourself presentable physically, the least you can do is try to be pleasant so we can laugh with you and not at you. This woman was none of those things and didn’t give two shits about it. I guess that’s something to admire about her at least. Oh, and she STANK something fierce!

Anyway, her food comes to the table while she’s outside, but suddenly she realizes that she’s not able to navigate her fat ass up the 5 inch step to get back into the restaurant. Having left her cell phone at the table, she YELLS into the restaurant to her family that they have to leave. She is literally stymied from going back inside to eat by her inability to lift her fucking cankle 5.1 inches off of the ground! She had apparently used the handicap ramp to get in originally, but that door was now 14 yards away and entirely too far for her to attempt to reach at this point.

When she was told she’d have to pay for the 50 plus dollars of food she ordered (no small feat at this restaurant) for herself and her nearly as corpulent family members, she about had a heart attack. She stood briefly and yelled at one random stranger about what a ridiculous policy it was for a place to make a person pay for food that they ordered but couldn’t eat inside because the restaurant didn’t have a winch to retrieve wayward fatasses who’ve become beached in the smoking area outside. Thankfully, before she could mother fuck everyone else, she ran out of breath and sat back down. She was finally satisfied when assured that she could take her fried food, shame and what little bit of pride she had left home and wallow in all of them in the privacy of her own living room.

That was a few weeks ago and is my favorite non criminal incident at the restaurant. While I was working there last night one of the many currently pregnant servers asked me something or other about diapers for her future spawn. This must be where the original helpful parenting tips idea came from. She’s having a boy and wanted to know the best kind of diapers to get. Well, of course the best kind of diapers to get are the cheapest ones!

I was so pleased that I’d answered my friend’s question satisfactorily, that I wondered if others could use my parenting advice to help them not be such loser parents. Is there a need for my parenting advice?

That question was answered later in the night when Tammy Trailertrash and her husband came into the restaurant at two minutes before closing time with their two year old daughter.

Mom tried to assure everyone that her screaming daughter isn’t always a bitch, she’s just tired. No shit, lady, it’s 10 fucking o’clock pm! Take the kid home! Oh, and she may also be crying because she shit her pants. In addition to the stench, we can all see that it exploded out the back of her diaper and up her back. That’s probably uncomfortable on her skin.

Momma was holding the little stinker, and dad finally decided that he was going to pretend to be helpful by grabbing the baby around the waist while mom rooted through the diaper bag. In doing so, dad got baby shit all over his hands. When momma left with the baby for the bathroom, he didn’t follow her even though he clearly had shit all over his hands!

Instead, he uses his shit covered hands to pull out a chair for himself, sits down, and then peruses a menu. All the while, he’s looking at his hands as though they were new to him or as though there was some strange substance all over them. He even sniffed them at one point. Holy fuck! It’s turds you idiot!!! What do you think it is?!! Grrrr. When momma came back, daddy finally, and thankfully, went to go wash his own hands. I guess he had to make sure nobody stole their table or roofied his or his fat wife’s drinks even though there was nobody else in the place but them at that late hour. Their stinky diaper ran everyone else away

I assure you that nobody did steal their table or roofie their drinks though, as I’m an excellent guard and I make sure nobody gets their tables stolen or their drinks roofied, no matter how disgusting the people may be.

Posted in Humor, Stories, Uncategorized | Tagged eating out, fat, fried chicken, gross, humor, restaurants, work | 92 Comments

Jane from Omaha, your lasagna sucks and you’re an unhelpful dumbass…

Posted on June 10, 2013 by donofalltrades

I should start a retread Monday tradition as this is another old one. Well, if 6 months is old. Apparently, it was before I knew what a tag was or had and followers.

—————————–

As I am the bitch of our house, cooking is one of my duties. I don’t mind doing it, but I suck at not following a recipe exactly as it’s written. I like the very specific ingredient list followed by the comforting step by step instructions that I assume were written by somebody who knows what they’re talking about and who has successfully made the recipe many times before.

This inability to deviate from a recipe pisses my wife off at times, because when I’m missing even a single ingredient, she has to stop at the store on her way home from work to bring it to me. That’s one of her sacrifices for the family. She seems to be under the impression that it’s ok to substitute one ingredient for another, or to just go ahead and leave certain things out of a recipe altogether. To that nonsense, I say NAY NAY!

I understand that we all have different tastes, some better than others. I am no snobby gourmet by ANY stretch of the imagination, but there are people in the world who eat at the Olive Garden on purpose and think it’s wonderful. I’m not one of those folks either! The sort of people who enjoy Olive Garden on purpose have no class or taste and their recipes are to be avoided. When a restaurant has terrible food and service, it gives the people all they can eat of something, like bread sticks or salad, so that people won’t care about the terrible food and service!

I’ve had good luck trolling the internet and using recipes that have both good ratings and lots of reviews. When hundreds of people have reviewed a recipe and it has a good rating, it’s generally a good sign that the recipe is at least pretty ok.

One of the things I’ve noticed about online recipe reviewers that drives me bonkers though is that many of them are complete fucktards.

Some reviewers will give a recipe 4 or 5 stars but then explain how they’ve substituted 98% of the ingredients for something else and then cooked it a completely different way than the original recipe said to do it! That’s not the same recipe, asshole!

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that some people are diabetic or whatever and need to substitute an ingredient or two for something similar in taste, or that some people are health conscious (God I hate you people) and insist on using low fat whatever in their dishes instead of what tastes good so that they’ll live to be 85 instead of only 83. Those two years crapping your adult diaper in a nursing home are surely worth a lifetime of depriving yourself of delicious food!

Those reviewers are fine (mostly). It’s people who go overboard with their take on a particular recipe that I want to kick in the vagina or penis, whichever the case may be.

For example, were I wanting to cook my family a nice lasagna and I checked the reviews of a lasagna recipe for suggestions, it would not surprise me one bit to find that Jane from Omaha, Nebraska has written the following:

Hey Jane from Omaha, your kids are cute but stupid!

My family and I just love, love, love this lasagna recipe! We live in the middle of nowhere, so we can’t get our hands on ricotta cheese (even though Jane apparently has internet

access?) or some of the other ingredients, so I made some substitutions. I was all out of Italian sausage, so I doubled the beef. My family likes the meat not to be all crumbled up, so I packed the meat into patties and used American cheese in place of the exotic cheeses I couldn’t find at the Wally’s IGA up the street. I realized that I was also out of lasagna noodles and sauce, so I used ketchup and bread because carbs are carbs, right? We like our buns room temperature, so I added those at the last minute. I took the meat and cheese and cooked it for 30 minutes and then added more cheese after cooking. I didn’t have parsley to put on the lasagna, so I used lettuce instead. I put the patties between the buns to complete the lasagna and served it with french fries. It was delicious. Thanks for sharing this lasagna recipe!

No, thank you, Jane, for being an unhelpful dumbass and wasting 4 minutes of my life!