Thoughts of a Common Man

I pulled up at the gas pump at a rest area between Rochester and Syracuse. I was pumping my gas when a man pulled up at the pump across the way. I'm not sure why, but I pegged him at about ten years older than me. He was nearly bald and what wasn't missing was grey. He had a bit of a paunch too, and he looked road-weary. His wife exited the passenger side of the car and offered to wash the windows while he pumped the gas. I knew it was his wife because they were speaking of their three boys and how they wished they lived a little closer. "What're you bitching about?" he asked. "I've driven every mile." "Cause you think I drive too slow," she said. I sort of chuckled because I definitely have had the same conversation with my wife. She dunked the squeegee in the water and leaned across the hood of the car to clean the windshield. The man whistled at her and said, "I have a good view from here." His eyes were trained on her backside...

All right. I will be the spokesman for the City of Buffalo. I appointed myself to the task and then seconded the nomination. We want LeBron to stay the hell out of here! We don't want him taking up our valuable billboard space because we need to advertise for our lawyers and we need to save space for the moments when we ask Ralph Wilson to fire the entire Buffalo Bills team. We don't have enough money for LeBron anyway. Word on the street is that he wants to be a billionaire. If we pooled all of our money we probably couldn't come up with a billion. We can't pay you. We don't have a basketball team. We used to, and they were good, but they skipped town for some reason. Probably to save us from having to pay the King the ransom. Our night life won't be classy enough for LeBron. Unless he likes to go bowling and drink shots in between rolls, there isn't a helluva' lot for us to do. He could go down to Chippewa and run down bar patrons with Marshawn, I supp...

I swear to God sometimes I read things on the 'Net that simply blow my mind. Like today, for instance. I just completed reading a story about a contested will. Seems a man about my age, Bret Carr, is contesting the will his mother left behind to distribute a pretty size able amount of cash. Bret was all set to cash in when his mother left, but he found out that there had been some changes made. As an only child, there wasn't a lot of competition for the nest egg, but he lost anyway. Seems his Mom left a bit of the cash to others. Namely her three dogs. Three million bucks, actually. One mil for each Chihuahua, so that they can live as they are accustomed. They also get the run of the mansion until their deaths. Bret got kibbles 'n bits in comparison. Can you imagine? Your mother cuts you out of the will so that she can provide for the dogs when she's gone? And these dogs had a grand time of it while mommy was still kicking too. Conchita had a $15,000 necklace that she r...

The 4th of July weekend is mere days aways and we are struggling with the idea of what to do. The boys want to head to New York City for the weekend with the promise of possibly meeting up with friends and a Yankee game hanging in the balance. I'm sort of in for that, but I drive a lot during the week. Do we need to sit in the car for that long? Really? I'm thinking a water park somewhere, with food cooked on a grill, a few beers with friends, and chasing the kids around. We used to go to a Six Flags Park each year for the 4th, but we stopped when the whole trip became too exhausting, but I'd be up for that sort of fun again. Fun. In the words of Chevy Chase, "We're going to have so much %&*king fun we're going to be singing zippity-doo-da out of our ass---es." No matter what happens there has to be some sort of fun had, right? Think of the 4th of July celebrations of your youth, for instance. In the town where I grew up there used to be a festival of ...

...life turns grey...like the skin on a dying man. And night after night, we pretend its all right. But you have grown older....life has grown colder... And it is so easy to get down about things... and so hard to keep treading high above the rising tide. As a growing man I loved Pink Floyd and their music, but wondered about how down the writer was...I studied Roger Waters through the years and gained a lot of respect...but... I spent the evening with Sam and his constant giggle. The Yanks were getting spanked but we raised an app on the droid and answered questions about music. And Sam was giggling because I knew the answer on every single John Denver song. "Who's John Denver?" He asked. "Was he like the Rolling Stones?" "Not exactly," I said, but there was so much good music back then. So many different ways to hear the songs. "And you had one radio that got three channels?" "That was it." And it has to be like the stone ages to...

Saw the Adam Sandler movie Grown-Ups last night for Sam's birthday, and it was a lot of fun. Smiled a lot of the time, particularly when remembering doing some of the goofy, innocent things as a child. We most certainly swung on a grapevine in the back woods, clearing the dry creek and landing on the other side. I recall being afraid to make the swing, but doing it so I wouldn't be targeted as a wimp...or more of a wimp. I also thought about all of the big games we played as kids, little league, backyard baseball, and on and on. I couldn't help but consider those friends from long ago, and I could also sympathize with Sandler's character who is almost begging his kids to go outside and play instead of playing video games. And most of all, I couldn't help but think about how fast it all goes. Sam turned 10 yesterday. I clearly recall laying in my bed on my tenth birthday, in disbelief that I had already been around for a decade! I kept saying the word. Decade. Decade...

Watched a truly disturbing report last night about the women who are chasing that VanDerSloot Monster around. It seems that since he's been arrested for the murder of that girl in Peru, he's been receiving 50 letters a day ranging from women who want to get to know him better, to women who are proposing marriage. Now to hear me tell it, I was always something of a ladies man myself. I often tell Kathy and the boys that: Chicks dig me because I very rarely wear underwear and when I do it is something usually erotic. Of course I stole the line from a college roommate who remembered it from the movie Stripes , but I use it to make a point that I was a well-sought after man. Of course, it's a lie. I made the whole thing up. I was a very pathetic dater who was not so vigourously pursued by anyone. If Kathy hadn't of seen something very few others did, I'd be the Nicholson character from As Good As It Gets about now. But I fail to understand the women mailing their underw...

I don't know why I'm thinking about this today. Perhaps its the result of having gone to a stag last weekend and seeing a couple of young girls dance. Maybe it's from years ago when on a trip to Florida I stepped into a bar with my brother by my side. A completely nude girl was working her way down the pole in the center of the room. "Wanna' get a beer here?" My brother asked as she landed on the floor in front of us. "Good a place as any," I said. A couple hours later, I sat at the bar with the stripper trying to figure out why she'd do such a thing. "Pays the bills," she said. And perhaps that's why I don't get entirely worked up about going to those places. (Now mind you, there has been a time or two - shut the hell up all of you that have been there with me). But this last time, I felt a pang of sympathy for the young ladies in front of me, groping on the floor for one-dollar bills that drunken guys were tossing at them. Of ...

Decided over a couple of cold ones and good company late yesterday afternoon that I needed an outlook change yet again. Been bottoming out and pulling myself up for months and months now. So, it's nothing new. Woke again before five, but decided not to worry about it. Go with it. Shoot up and out of bed and face the day. All good. Smiling as I wrote a note for the boys so they can do their chores around the house. No note equals no work. I've figured that much out. Got to the first job by seven. Thankfully the crew had started early enough so they were happy to see me and I had a good jump on a productive day. Head to job number two. Still a skip in my getty-up. That's where fate played a hand. I'm checking out the job, still humming American Land to myself when a bulldozer operator called to me. "Is that your silver Escape parked on the street out there?" "Yeah," I called back. "Truck just smashed right into it," he said. Now I've know...

Perhaps I am too busy occupying my mind with thoughts of the oil spill, or the war in Afghanistan, or whether or not Cano can continue to hit over .350, but I have no idea who the hell Lady Gaga is. Is she one of those women who are famous for nothing, like Paris Hilton? Is she one of the women who've flashed me a shot of their most private parts while getting out of a limo? (Those come through my e-mail from time-to-time and since I'm a heterosexual male I might just glance to see what's doing). Is she a great singer? A model? A brain surgeon? I bring this all up because she's been in the news, or on the periphery of the news lately for giving everyone the finger at a Mets game. (If I was forced to attend a Mets game I might be in a foul mood too). She also showed up at her sister's graduation (I don't know her sister either) in a see-through dress, or flashed her boobies, or something. (Didn't see the video clip, would've looked if it came across my e-...

As an adult September 23rd has become a day that has a bit of meaning to me. It's Springsteen's birthday, you see, and as we grew to adults, I would have simply let the day pass with a nod of appreciation, but my brother Jeff turned it into something more. I remember one such September 23rd just a couple of years ago. "Did you have a beer for the boy?" He asked. "What?" I asked missing the moment. "Bruce's birthday," Jeff said. "I just opened one." "Jeff, Bruce has no idea that you're having a beer for him," I said. "He is absolutely clueless that you do that for him every year." "I don't do that for him," he said. "I do it for me. What if he hadn't been born? Do you ever think of that?" So, reluctantly, I gave in. I'd go down, get a beer and think of Thunder Road or Promised Land , and raise a toast to someone who wasn't right there with me. "Bruce feeds off the positiv...

Howard Stern has a couple of guys who walk the street and ask questions of the public. Usually, it's great radio, and worth a few laughs. Sometimes it's downright disturbing. Today they were talking about the oil spill. They asked which body of water was affected. Do you believe that most people didn't know? One guy mentioned the Indian Ocean. Are you serious? How can there be a healthy debate about anything in this country? Shouldn't there be a qualification test that we all have to pass just to have the ability to walk around upright? And there comes a time when I'm left talking to some of these people and debating the issues. Now, I'm no freaking genius. In fact, I'm downright ignorant when it comes to a lot of things. There is more that I don't know then what I do know, but for God's sake! "What country borders the US to the South?" Letterman once asked. No one could come up with it so he added a hint. ---i-c-o. was the hint. Do you kno...

Heading out to see my Dad on Father's Day, I passed the funeral home and saw that the curtain was closed. Of course, I thought of what he used to say when I asked, as a child, 'Who died?' "Some lucky bastard," he would answer every time. And I knew he never meant it, the line was just part of his routine. The millions of great lines that will reverberate in my head until the day when I'm the lucky bastard. Yet seeing Dad at the door today was difficult because without saying anything we are all going through the same pain. The dread, the hurt, the battle...the every day battle to keep our heads above the rising waters. Father's Day is different though because there is an underlying respect in our greeting to each other. I respect the man he is, and the man he allowed me to be, and he respects the man I did become and the fact that he did the best he could. And I'm thankful for that even more than the wonderful sense of humor that he displayed on most d...

I normally golf with a couple of guys that we call Grape Ape for their ability to hit the long ball. One of the usual Grape Apes couldn't make it today so there is only one Grape Ape pictured. (I'll let you figure out which one). Yet the interesting thing about today's outing is that Chuck is holding something in his right hand over my right shoulder. It's the head of my putter. And I broke the bastard on purpose. I went apeshit to be exact. Let me set the scene because every hole was the same. Drive up the middle in the 180-220 range. 5-wood about 150 to put me on the green or the edge of the green, in two, every single time. Then a putt. Then another putt. Then another putt. Finally pick up the last one figuring I'm close the frig enough. "God lets you play golf on any given day and he gives you two of three things," Pops said. "On the days when you drive and chip well, he takes away the putter. When you putt well, you can't swing it past the la...

...I don't need to see footage of someone being shot by a firing squad. Call me a liberal if you want, but I don't take a lot of solace in the fact that we as a civilization can't solve our problems with violence. Doesn't do anything for anyone to solve the problem. --- I don't need to see Miley Cirus' legs, or breasts, or any other part of her anatomy. She's only 17. Hasen't anyone ever learned from the Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan disasters? These girls shouldn't be paraded. They are children for God's sake. Get back to me when she's 18. --- I don't need to see another rapist, criminal, murderer, assaulter celebrating a championship. Pat Kane beat up a cab driver for a quarter. Kobe raped that chick. Why do we celebrate these people? Now if someone on the Yankees does something free passes are handed out. --- I don't need to see a soccer game...ever! And what's with those freaking horns? --- I don't need to see another c...

Reading that date, I'm sure you don't have any true recollection of what was going on. But you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing on that day. Need a hint? The Juice is Loose. Of course, today is the anniversary of when OJ took a slow ride down a California Highway after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Now you remember? I was also on the highway. My brother Jeff, Pops and I were on our way home from a week-long vacation in Baltimore. The vacation started with a dip in the pool of a hotel where we didn't have a room, included three Yankee wins over the O's, encompassed around 700 beers, and enough belly laughs with Fluff and Rosie to last about 16 years. The things that weren't happening then... I wasn't married. I hadn't yet met my kids. I could still head out for a week with my best friends, a car full of beer, and a belief that the world was ours for the taking. Hell, I still thought OJ was a great guy. I didn't see the slow-s...

Just a little over ten years ago I walked into a bank in New Haven, Connecticut to cash a paycheck. I was dressed in filthy blue jeans, a ripped shirt, and I was wearing a construction hardhat. The teller was unbelievably attractive to me, and it wasn't because of her wonderful smile, or long blonde hair. What she held in her perfectly manicured hands was what really drew my attention. This woman, whom I'd never seen before that moment, was holding a copy of my book Waldorf & Juli . Judging by where her bookmark was, I understood that she was more than halfway through. "How's the book?" I asked. "Oh my God," she said. "It's hysterical." I slipped my check across the counter. "I wrote it," I said. She looked at me, down at the check, and then to the side of the book. "Oh my God," she shrieked. "I love it! You're so funny! You have to sign it!" Now I was a little embarrassed because I don't normally g...

How do the parents of the girl sailing around the world in a boat not get into some sort of trouble? Think about it...if I leave my minor children home alone and go drinking or gambling (it could happen)... I would be arrested. Sending them out in a canoe to sail the ocean is okay? I wonder why the statue of Jesus was struck by lightning in Ohio. The six-story statue was lit up by the lightning bolt. Is Dad mad for some reason? Is it a sign of things to come? Just a pitch that got away? I'm sure someone will come up with a reason for it and some of the freaks will drop to their knees in supplication. Don't you think that there should be a sign on the door of all strip clubs that says, "Dimwitted football players not allowed?" Vince Young is the latest to get in trouble there. He's really, really, really sorry though...and it won't happen again. I bet it happens again before the season starts. And how about that dude that left his dialysis machine and headed of...

It seems that all the rage is to see how your favorite country is doing in the World Cup competition. The USA, of course, is playing the underdog role, but received a heck of a boost when the goalie from England played a shot as if it were a cannonball. Been there. Smaller scale, but know his pain. You see, I've always hated soccer. I hate watching it. I hated playing it, and I really don't get the worldwide passion for it. Yet a lot of Americans have fallen into that boat. We don't treat soccer as well as we do football or baseball or even racing cars around a track. It seems a tad slow, doesn't it? Oh well, to each his own, my pain runs much deeper. I played basketball in school. I made the teams each year from 7th grade on and always loved participating. I didn't dominate, but I was there. Well after one season my coach begged me to go out for soccer as well. Seems he liked having me on the team and figured I could loosen up the troops from my spot on the sidelin...

There's an old joke about a man who survives a plance crash that left all others dead. He is found stranded on an island suffering from broken limbs, dehyrdation, and a fractured skull. The interviewer asks him if he is hurt and he responds: "It only really hurts when I laugh." My legs are pulsating limbs of absolute pain. I walk like this today, step, ow, step, ow, step, ow, step %&*#, step, bitch, step, ow! I remember lifting weights in college with my roommate who was on the wrestling team. The next day I told him, "If I could lift my arms I'd slap your face." No Pain! No Pain! Why do I forget that? What makes me think I can do the things I used to do? Then again, I never ran that far for anything, not even pasta. Why oh why? Yet despite the pain I am still all aglow with what that event meant yesterday. Is it possible to be proud of every human that was there? I enjoy the sense of community and am inspired by common folk banding together to raise awa...

Started the day still smarting from my last visit to the roadside carnival, but there was no time to be down. This morning was the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Breast Cancer Run. I had promised my sister that I'd finish the run and like it or not, I was in. So, I tried hard to limber up. Do you realize that I have absolutely no range of motion? Do you understand that I had no business believing that I could run 3.3 miles? Did you know that my morning line was that they should do the walk topless to attract more attention? So, in other words, I had no idea what I was in for. I received a t-shirt that by way of a mix-up had me labeled as a breast cancer survivor. Walking through the crowd a television interviewer saw my shirt and asked if I'd like to be interviewed as a survivor. What could I say? That I was wearing a shirt faking being a survivor? "I don't like to talk about it," I said. "I understand," the man said. And then the race began. My brothe...

Well, I run that hard road out of heartbreak city, built a road side carnival out of hurt and self pity. It was all wrong, well, now I'm moving on. It's kind of funny, but I remember listening to Bruce's Real World on the way to my wedding and thinking that it's a couple of really well written sentences on the way to a great song, followed by a wonderful album in an incredible career. In the context of my marriage it has been an incredible revelation of what I needed to find...and did. Last night I took a couple of Tylenol PM's after sleeping lousy for a couple of nights and dreamed of my brother, standing right beside me, hand outstretched, laughing...laughing...laughing... ...Always laughing. Woke up with the lyrics on my mind... I run that hard road out of heartbreak city, built a road side carnival out of hurt and self pity. Hurt and self pity... it was all wrong... I can buy that. Now I'm moving on?????? Can't buy it. Not yet, Brucester.... Yet where do...

An 8-year-old New Jersey boy, recalling an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, saved his 5-year-old neighbor this weekend by jumping into a lake and bringing the drowning boy to shore, the Daily Record reports. Andrew Gentile, 5, of Washington Township, says he can't remember much about the ordeal, except this: "I was drowning." Andrew's mother, Shirley Gentile, tells the newspaper that she had thought the water was shallow at the edge of the lake, but it was in fact 6-feet-deep there. At first, she tried to save him, but panicked herself in the deep water. That's when 8-year-old Reese showed up. "I just saw and then I just knew how to react, I jumped in," says Reese, who swam the short distance and grabbed Andrew, mimicking what he'd learned on TV. "The hardest part was when we both went under, getting us back up to the surface," Reese tells the Record. His elementary school has already held a Reese Ronceray Day and the local mayor is callin...

I have a book that is three-quarters done - first draft - I'm not sure I will be able to finish it without some coaxing. I've looked at the black notebook a few times, and just shrugged it off. It's called The Price You Pay and is centered around the many questions and the so few answers that go into a long-time marriage. At first read through it is funny, sensitive and worth finishing some day. Here's the idea. I run what I have through this blog on a daily basis. A couple pages at a time. Is that interesting? Will my publisher have an objection? I sort of want to do it. I know Stephen King tried writing a book that way and didn't get it off the ground. He was asking people to pay for the pages he was writing. I'm not thinking of that. I'm just trying to inspire my own process. What do you think? Interested in the idea?

Running through a few perverted texts with a buddy...I erase all texts because I don't want anyone to ever see them...I can only hope they are gone and not stored somewhere in texting land... Anyway, we ended up talking of the seven deadly sins. Lust, pride, anger, envy, gluttony, greed and sloth. We traded barbs back and forth and it was decided that the bar better be set low for the induction into heaven...because... Gluttony and sloth. I have linguini and clam sauce coming up in a couple of hours. If eating that like a slob is a sin, and then vegging out in front of the Yankee game is a sloth-like move...I'm screwed. oh for two. Anger? I can get angry over the darndest things. When the ump called a check swing on Swisher without checking with the third base ump I almost went through the television. "I'd like to choke that fat bastard!" I yelled. Jeter lined a double to score two, but if they'd have lost that game. Zero for three. I have anger covered. Lust?...

The 17-year old kid that was drafted number one by the Washington Nationals in the baseball draft, Bryce Harper, has already rubbed me the wrong way. First off, he wears eye black like Alice Cooper, and secondly he already pronounced himself to be the greatest player that ever lived. Honestly, he was being interviewed by ESPN and he said he'd be the greatest player ever. Hall of Fame. Better than Ruth, better than DiMaggio, better than Mays and Aaron. Good luck, kid. As luck might have it, my kids were watching the program as well. "What's wrong with believing in yourself?" Matt asked. Nothing. There's not a single thing wrong with being confident. Yet something about the fact that you're dismissing 100 years of players who have already played the game is a little off-setting. This kid has never seen a cutter from Mariano, or even Wakefield's knuckleball for that matter. Shouldn't he reserve judgement until he actually plays the game? Of course, he...

On a rainy morning, I gathered the troops for the trip to church. Of course, through my life church has been a weekly event, but through the past couple of years - through the last 18 months to be exact, the Sunday Mass has been a little different. There's a certain anger in me that holds me from signing out loud, or getting lost in the beauty of the scripture. Common stuff, so I'm told, but disconcerting nonetheless, but I've heard enough about religion to understand that just because I don't like the way things are going, I don't have an excuse to be unjust to God. Still...I'm human...anger...resentment...a failure to understand. With our weekly obligation handled, we settled in for a routine day. I caught the Yankee game, of course, but like many Western New Yorkers was in the house for the day. Too wet to handle the outdoor chores. "I got a movie," Kathy said. "Lovely Bones." Now I'd read the book, of course, so wasn't real excite...

The rain put a damper on the expected golf outing this morning. It allowed a bit of time to reflect, and refresh before the start of the week though, and I thought about the fact that as kids we used to take time outs all the time. There were time outs and do-overs, and arguments won and lost all in real time. It's different as adults, right? We worry about three things at once: the troubles we've had in the past, the troubles we're having now, and the troubles we expect to have in the future. Time out. Reflect. So, what is there to reflect on? Gary Coleman couldn't even get in the ground this weekend. The parents that didn't talk to him for twenty years filed a petition to stop the poor bastard's funeral. One final kick in the teeth. Big star, millionaire, falls down the stairs or something, and people are pulling at what's left of him. Take a T.O. people - let him rest. The oil washing up on the beaches in Florida is galling, isn't it? The idea that th...

Returning to work was all that I thought it would be. The constant motion, the aggravation, the paperwork, the texts, cell calls, and e-mails. Fun shit. I tried real hard to stay above the fray. I know that the major cause of my stress is an inability to manage time against the backdrop of a busy life so I struggled hard to stay happy. "You're a little tense," my wife noticed on Thursday after I suggested to the children that perhaps, given the fact that they were approaching adulthood, they could fill the dog's water dish every three weeks or so in an effort to chip in. I knew that the right thing to do was to consider things in a positive light. After all, positive thinking may not work, but negative thinking always does. I got a little tired. "What's a matter?" one of my buddy texted. "Getting all of this in motion is tiring," I said. "Preaching to the choir," he asked. The Yanks won five of six. No problems there. Pasta twice - th...

During the summer months every evening is like a little party for me as there are baseball games on from 7 PM through two in the morning if I was so interested. Last night, I was watching the Yankees and keeping an eye on the other games when I saw that a young pitcher from the Tigers, Galaraga, was going for a perfect game. Being a baseball fan, I was intrigued. ESPN cut into the game in the bottom of the ninth, and I'm sure everyone saw the outcome. The ump, Joyce, blew the call. As I thought about that kid and the fact that he is just a journeyman pitcher, I considered that he lost a chance at immortality. The blown call was surely infuriating. Back at the Yankee game they were talking about overturning the decision and awarding the kid his perfect game. That's when I remembered the only game I ever worked as an ump. My brother Jeff's little league team was being coached by my buddy John. I decided to be sort of a second coach to mentor the players. We were all of 16 or ...

Just finished reading an article about a woman who was fired from a job at a New York City bank. She claims, in her lawsuit, that she was fired for being too good looking. It seems that when she dressed a certain way, or moved in a particular manner, she was distracting the other workers and her managers. Let me tell you, I've been there. And it isn't pretty. Through the course of my life I've been so tired of being treated like eye candy. Hell, it's horrible to have to defer the whistling whenever I bend over to tie my shoes. Okay, maybe that particular scenario hasn't quite happened to me. Yet I found the article interesting for a couple of reasons. First off, how does this woman hire a lawyer and explain the situation. Does she honestly feel comfortable speaking about how she was scoffed at and ridiculed because she's so freaking hot? Again, hard to say, never really been in that situation, but I can imagine if I sat across from my lawyer and said, "I...

From time to time I'm inspired by quotes to sort of lift me up and carry me through to the next day. After being worn out from clipping my toenails I settled in and read through a few: For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will. - Henri Frederic Amiel So, you see, focusing on those toenails was what needed to be done. I'm now wearing a sock without a hole in the big toe. Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. - Mother Teresa I've been a fan of saying that love will teach you joy. Sort of a spin on that. Pretty hard to feel any joy without love. Spun the other way. Anyway you spin it the two words are certainly connected. The quality,not the longevity, of one's life is what is important. - Martin Luther King Jr. So true, right? There's a 100-year-old pedophile kicking around in the Buffalo jail system. Nice, long life. Why he is spared, or granted a long, long healthy life when others are lost w...

Its funny how the mind works, but early in the day, on my way to the first job site it entered my mind that I really needed to clip my toenails. I don't know how that registered, but perhaps it was because I punched a hole in my sock with the big toenail. Whatever, unless I was determined to climb trees, clipping my toenails was past the time of being due. Yet being a tad obsessive compulsive I couldn't chase the thought. Here I was in the middle of my first day back after a tremendous vacation week, and I was driving myself crazy with the thought that my freaking nails needed to be clipped. And so I thought a lot about control because what stresses all of us the most in life is feeling that we don't have control. We want to control the action of others. We need to control how the day plays out. Control, control, control. And it occurred to me that there really is no such thing as having complete control. Crap is going to happen. Each and every day. And we are all separate ...