Thoughts of a Common Man

Chiefs kicker, Harrison Butker made a speech at a Christian school where he spoke about women and what he believes their lives should be like. The comments were about how women who chase a career instead of being a wife and a mother are missing out. It’s the kind of statement that infuriates people because he was trying to talk down a bit to people who choose a different path. I never truly understand what a guy like this is trying to accomplish. Not every woman wants to stay home and serve a man, or raise children. Some women, believe it or not, find peace in living a life that is not centered around taking care of their field-goal kicking husband. Now, Butker got all choked up as he was talking about it, and good for him, he seems happy with his situation… …he could even go as far as saying… …this is what worked best for us. Where he went astray is in his proclamation that women have been lied to and are dead-ass wrong if they live a life that doesn’t mirror his. I’ve learned one thi

I get up and out early. Construction work starts at 7:00 so I like to get a few sites under my belt by 9:00. It’s usually quiet during those hours as I’m hustling while people are waking up slowly. There are a few downsides to that. 1). I like to try and finish visiting sites by 2:00 so I have a couple of hours to do office work and write reports. I also don’t have much patience with people who call me after 4:00, but that happens every damn day. I fielded my last call around 6:15 last night. Long day. 2). I have found that my phone goes absolutely insane around 11:00 every day. That hour from 11:00 to 12:00 isn’t a good one. Yesterday I counted the calls and texts I received in that 60-minute window. Five voice calls. Seven texts. A dozen emails. Most of that happened in a 15-minute span, and as the calls were beeping in as I was talking to someone else… …let’s just say that I grew a tad frustrated. Kathy called in the middle of it all. “What?” “Isn’t that a wonderful greeting,” she s

Heard the classic Seger song this morning - ‘Against the Wind’. Back in the 80’s, Bob came to Buffalo and played the Aud  on back-to-back nights. Mom wouldn’t let me go - said I was too young and Seger had long hair - a lot of my classmates went and it’s hard to say, but I’ve never seen Seger live. Yet it’s about the song. The lyrics are so good. A song about a little longing for the past while also acknowledging that he’s still battling the never-ending wind in his face. As I was thinking about it this morning, I definitely felt a lot of what Bob was thinking about when he wrote the song. Yet, battling the wind has been a metaphorical challenge since the first time someone put pen to paper to write down their thoughts. I also love that Seger included a woman from his past at the start of the song - “Janey was lovely, she was the queen of my nights.” Word on the street is that Janey - who is a real past love - didn’t know she was going to be included. She must’ve fell off her chair the

Our default show is ‘Modern Family’.  If we can’t find something to watch, or if we just have a half an hour, we find the comedy and off we go. “I’m trying to memorize it,” I said, to Jake, when he saw that we had it on. In an episode we were watching on Sunday morning, Claire is trying to fix the broken step, and she wasn’t doing very well. “Why does everything have to suck?” She called out in frustration. I laughed. (That’s the great thing about the show - even after seeing it all plenty of times there are lines that catch us by surprise). We all have those ‘Why does everything suck?” moments in living day to day. We had watched a pretty bad movie on Saturday night, ‘Mother of the Bride’ and all the dialogue was corny. The bride to be and the groom were having a moment. “You are like the sun, the moon, the stars and the sky,” he said. “Good Lord,” Kathy said. “What?” I asked. “I’ve never said that to you?” And we revisited that smaltzy dialogue when Claire yelled her line. “That’s wh

I’m wiped out. The trip to the Midwest was followed by 3 straight long days and then I played golf on Saturday morning. Made a turkey dinner because the Mom around here loves turkey and following the cleanup of everything I made an announcement. “I can’t stand up anymore.” “What hurts?” Kathy asked. “Everything. I feel like I got hit by a big truck.” And that made me think of my Mom. As we were growing up, six kids and two dogs and Dad all running around… …Mom never stopped working! As siblings we often speak of Dad’s incredible work ethic and as I told Kathy the other day: “Mom out worked Dad.” It wasn’t even close, really. Mom was always doing laundry, cleaning and cooking. She never stopped moving! Mom didn’t miss a school meeting or one of our baseball or basketball games. She laughed at us, and battled for all of us… …every single day. Mother’s Day is a special day around these parts because like my wife and my kids… …we were all blessed with amazing Mommy’s. I think I’m tired? I

We’re watching the Netflix show, ‘A Man in Full,” with Jeff Daniels and I mentioned: “What has he ever been in that wasn’t great?” I was thinking of ‘Terms of Endearment’, ‘Network’, ‘American Rust’ and ‘Dumb and Dumber.’ Great in all of them! It got me thinking about where he falls in my list of favorite actors. Bryan Cranston is way up there, and I have listened to him call into sports shows… …seems like a really good dude. There’s DeNiro, of course. Gandolfini was amazingly gifted and impossible to look away from as Tony Soprano. We also have a saying around here: “I’ve never seen a bad Nicholas Cage movie.” You know who else is in the top 10 for me? Woody Harrelson. He was hilarious as Woody Boyd on Cheers all those years ago, and is a tremendous comedic actor, but watch his turn in ‘True Detective’ - outstanding. Through the years, the action stars also did great work - think Sylvester Stallone - almost all the Rocky movies made me feel a lot. Danny DeVito always makes me laugh. S

Stormy days around here. I saw the same storm in Buffalo as the one that tornadoed me out of bed in Kansas City. Booming thunder and heavy lightning. Everyone likes those sounds when you’re safe inside. At least a little. Speaking of Stormy weather, I heard a little about the trial of the Evangelical’s choice for the second coming when the big orange dude’s porn star case picked up steam. There was steam coming out of the ears of the usually sleeping defendant as the witness spoke of spanking his ass. And usually something like this would be enough to spank a candidate out of the race but there are still people claiming that he ‘tells it like it is!’ even though there are about a million lies a day escaping his pancake-makeuped face. But he looked like he wanted to escape and that his entire world was crumbling as the porn star glibly broke down his payment scheme. It’s all so stupid. “I like his policies!” He he one policy: Make the orange guy rich. Why would someone like that?

I was in Kansas City, and driving around I heard the Springsteen Seeger Sessions song, ‘My Oklahoma Home’ which is terrific, but is about twisters touching down and blowing apart his life. Including his wife, “I bet down to kiss her but she was picked up by a twister. She blowed away.” Cut to Monday Night. I drifted off to sleep and when the sirens sounded I was dreaming about winning 30 grand on a scratch-off lottery ticket- which is something because I don’t buy them. “What the hell is that?” I wondered. The hotel started talking to me. “All hotel guests. Please go to the lower level of the hotel as there is a tornado warning.” I stumbled out of bed, put on a pair of shorts (no one needs to see me looking like Walter White in my tighty-whities). I joined a whole bunch of people heading down 6 flights to the basement, and we all stood, lined up against the wall. No one was talking much. There were a couple of young kids next to me and one who looked to be about 8 said: “It’d be cool t

 There are senators out there who throw out Bible verses on a regular basis. There are others who are self-proclaimed religious men and they wear it like a badge and use their faith as a weapon. It’s certainly turned me off on all of it. We were watching a Dateline episode the other night and there was a pastor who was being interviewed in the disappearance of a missing woman. He was out on the beach at 2:30 in the morning when he saw the missing woman. “She was walking towards me and I prayed to God and asked Him if I should talk to her. I decided that if she stopped, then God wanted me to speak with her and that perhaps we could have a future.” “Oh for fu**’s sake!” I called out. Kathy laughed. It turned out that the pastor didn’t do anything to the girl, but I wanted him arrested anyway for being so creepy and weird. God must truly be bored if He is up there trying to figure out if the fat, creepy pastor has a chance with the pretty, young girl. That’s what galls me about all of it.

It’s bad enough that we have the husky woman dancing as she sings about how she’s controlling her diabetes… …whenever the commercial begins I yell, “Ahhh shit,” and Kathy laughs. Seriously, who sings and dances because their diabetes meds are working? Those aren’t the worst commercials though. We also have a series of commercials that start with: “More than my armpits stink.” And then the moderately attractive woman goes into great detail of what stinks and why. “From my pits to my…” she says, with her voice fading. I finish the sentence for her with a bunch of colorful words. Why? Do we truly need commercials to tell us what stinks on someone? And the toilet paper commercials???? The ones that start with “everyone poops.” We need that? Sometimes I’m eating dinner and we get blasted with the dancing husky chick and then the stinky broads, one after another. What happened to the horses? Or the dancing bears to sell products? I suppose that the advertising execs are sitting around saying

I went for my physical on Friday. “Where have you been?” The Doctor asked me. I hadn’t visited in a little while, but all was well. Why do I need to see a doctor? Blood work is good. I feel all right most of the time, and visiting a doctor just for the hell of it kind of slips my mind. So, we basically chatted and she asked if I had any complaints. It’s a good thing I went on Friday rather than Saturday after I swung the golf club, mowed the lawn and played ball with Ollie. I woke up feeling tired and sore on Saturday. “Not in summer shape,” I announced, and I did the best I could to stay off my feet for at least a little while during the day. By 8:00 I was ready for bed. That’s the crazy thing about getting older. You don’t feel like any of the things you did in your past should leave you either sore or tired, but here we are. And there’s nothing wrong with relaxing for a few hours. The sun went down, and the sky went black. Modern Family reruns were playing in the background as I rea

I can name about 20 dogs that have been part of my family through the years. We’ve only had one cat. Miller. It’s a crazy matter as Miller entered our lives when Sam’s friend was kicked out of her apartment and she had to relocate five cats. For a couple of days when I was out of town there were five cats here. Four of them were gone by the time I got home, but I saw a flash of black in Sam’s room. “What the hell is in your room?” “Uh, that’s Miller. He’s a cat. I’m trying to get him a new home, but no one wants him.” “Why did you name him Miller?” I asked. “I thought of Mr. Miller and we had Miller beer.” I laughed. Mr. Miller to Sam is my long-time friend Chris. I couldn’t very well toss ‘Mr. Miller’ out into the streets. Cut to a couple of weeks later, Sam went to visit his cousins in North Carolina. “Um, can you take care of Mr. Miller while I’m gone?” And that was that! Mr. Miller is now my second shadow…along with his best buddy Ollie. He is in the middle of all my routines, and

I started working when I was about 12 years old. My brother, John, and I worked on a farm. I went from there to a grocery store, and then at the ripe old age of 18, I stepped into construction. I’ve pretty much been there for more than 40 years and since college I have never once been unemployed. I’ve been at the same company for the last 20 years, but a couple of years back, we were sold, and while it was supposed to be a grand move for all involved… …there have been a great many transitions. I’m almost 60. Things get funky for veteran employees. Like baseball free agents who hit free agency at the age of 35 or so… …the future is a little shaky. When people are setting their ten year plans, older bastards are sometimes transitioned. There is change afoot and I have zero reason to be concerned, but when you get up and battle for a place every single day and you suddenly feel that you’re being slighted or cast aside… …well, it’s weird. And anyone who knows me knows one thing is true: I’

As we golfed on Sunday the conversation swung to our aches and pains. We are all pushing 60 so, of course, we all had something to say. Then we chatted about our parents. Most of the crew didn’t have their parents still around, but they asked about my Mom. “She’s healthy and happy,” I said, “Her memory is slipping though and that’s hard to take.” “Isn’t it something?” My buddy asked. “We work hard, put up with all kinds of garbage, all for the privilege of back pain and eventually forgetting every freaking thing.” I laughed. “Like my Grandpa used to say, ‘ Life is just a shit sandwich.’” That brought a laugh as well, but I’ve spent the first part of the week thinking about that conversation and how sometimes it does feel a little unfair. But I suppose that there’s something fortunate about living a longer life. Yeah. We’re gonna break down as time marches on and it seems like we’re putting forth a huge effort to try and get through it all. Grandpa used his ‘shit sandwich’ reference a l