Thoughts of a Common Man

“Western New York has the highest-rate of Covid in the state,” Kathy said. “Supposed to rain a lot tomorrow too. Ready to go back to work?” “Yes,” I said, immediately. The fact of the matter being that I’m really ready to go! I slept past 7:30 one morning! I haven’t done that in about 25 years.  I cooked a lot during this little break. All the Thanksgiving stuff, a pot of sauce, tacos. I hung with Paris (the dog) and Miller (the cat) and we continued to mourn our buddy, Melky. Paris was certainly down in the dumps. It’s strange, but she was really moping. So we gave her a few rides, she went for a walk, and had a few bones. It’s the only way through. We caught a few movies. The Ron Howard ‘Hillbilly Effegy’ and Mel Gibson as Santa in ‘Fatman.’ “He’s not a great guy,” Jake said when he saw Mel on the screen. “If we only watched movies, or listened to music from great guys all we’d listen to or see would have Bruce in it.” Jake laughed. The Bills won. They’re 8 up and 3 down and in f...

The idea for the next book wasn’t mine. In fact, I have so much stuff in the vault right now that it crossed my mind to take a really long break from writing. Yet, I ran into possibly my oldest friend in September. Another buddy was there and the three of us began speaking about the softball team that was a huge part of our adolescence. “It’s too bad that we don’t know someone who could write that story,” my buddy said. I laughed. “Think about it, though. There was so much love, faith, togetherness, loss, and tragedy.” I made zero promises. I have a whole bunch of work going on. Yet, before that week was even out, I decided to see how it suited me. I wrote the first chapter.  Then set it aside until last week. When I wrote the second chapter.  “Hmmm.” I am now on Chapter 10. Writing it as though I’m reading it. As fast as I can type it. A couple of things are interesting and different about it.  I didn’t change any names. Went with the first name of every guy that was on ...

 1). I nailed Thanksgiving dinner. For the first 45 years of my life we ate our Thanksgiving meal at Mom and Dad’s. Over the last 10 or so we have been at my brother’s home. This year, it was on me. I’ve made plenty of meals over the years, but was ready. Jim talked me through brine for the turkey and the stuffing that I craved. And I nailed it. “That’s a lot of work,” Kathy said. “Was fun.” “You’re weird.” 2). Trump is truly looking pathetic now. His team of expert lawyers has yet to make an argument - but through it all he has not wavered. He keeps saying that “soon” there will be mountains of evidence. It’s so pathetic. Then, he took a break from golf to talk to the troops - in the middle of the night for the troops - and they sat him behind a tiny desk that I first thought was a fake photo. Twitter did it’s thing and I’m sure that he was furious about it. Funny thing is, I don’t care. Just go. He wants credit for the sun coming up in the morning, wants zero blame. The entire ac...

We watched 2 seasons of the show A Typical about an autistic character who is coming of age - I highly recommend it! “I think you’re on the spectrum,” Kathy said, as we watched the main character, Sam, look through the notebooks he used to document every part of his day. “I do that, for sure,” I said.  “And the keeping of the schedule, to the minute?” “Organization is key!”  We watched a couple of more episodes and some of the frustrations felt by the autistic character were frustrations that I express on a daily, or weekly basis. “Do you see it?” Kathy asked. “The obsessions, the anger when timing is a little off.” “Yeah, yeah.” And, truth be told, I’m pretty sure that we all have a little touch of a lot of the mental instabilities. The autistic grow frustrated when things aren’t a certain way that they’ve planned out. (Me too). Precision and organization? Guilty. And the show is good in a number of respects. The most effective part of it is that it allows people who don’t no...

Was having a rough go in the early part of the week. I was surrounded by thoughts of death at work (investigating an accident).  I was reminded of loss because when I woke up, my dog wasn’t there and when I got home, I missed how much she loved me and showed it in her greeting. And thinking about my Mom’s birthday and how both her birthday and her Thanksgiving are lost. I stopped by.  Stayed far away from her, but spoke to her for quite awhile. Mom has always been so positive. She was positive yesterday too. “It sucks, but it’ll end soon.” My heart sank when I said, “Wish I could give you a birthday kiss” and Mom said, “No, no kisses. I’m not getting this after sitting here all this time.” Then Jim reached out because my love of Thanksgiving stuffing is legendary. He sent me the recipe and a step-by-step direction (reminding me to wash my filthy hands).  I followed it perfectly and mixed it all expertly and I tried a bowl. “It’s great,” I told Jim, “but this ain’t good - ...

I started to get down about it early on during the work day on Tuesday. Actually sent my older sister a message.  “What can we do for Mom?” The virus is running rampant. We are all out and about with Covid in the air. I don’t want to get my mother sick, but to be alone for her birthday and then Thanksgiving? That’s sad. I went about my work day and then, just as I was ordering lunch, Mick Jagger’s voice filled the air. Call coming in: “Mom.” I stepped out of line and the guy asked me what I wanted to order. “Gotta’ take this.” She needed me to grab her a couple of things.  “Sure.” I mentioned how lousy it is that we won’t all be together for any celebrating this week. “That’s all right,” she said. “We can do it later. We have to stay healthy.” “Sorry about Melky,” she said. “That’s too bad.” There’s no doubt that my love of dogs came from Mom. She was the Whitney Houston of singing to every dog that we ever had. She also was the queen of giving her dogs about 10 or 12 names. T...

CNN has a death count for the number of people who have died from COVID-19. Now they’re running a count of how many people who have died TODAY! I had the television on in the mid-day and the count was at 377. Couple of hours later it was around 660. I changed the channel. Thought about the impact of even a single lost life.  Ironically, I had a rough day as I had to interview employees who were onsite when one of their coworkers suffered a fatal accident. Not a good day. There was so much heartache and pain on display and every man there spoke about how they were crushed and may never be able to get over it. I also learned of a few more people that I’ve known... ...who died of Covid-19 away from their loved ones. And then I watched a family in Utah (where hospitals are filled to 91% capacity) yell that the whole damn thing is a “lot of shit” when they were ejected from a restaurant for not wearing a mask. “Every life is precious!” They scream on other issues... ...with this one it ...