Laundromat

Guthrie Center, IA
7/1/2012

Gents Furnishings

Des Moines, IA
Corner of Keo Way & 12th
10/9/2011

Spotted this left over painted sign along Keo. Across from the Greyhound station. And been thinking about it and I've come to a conclusion... Dry Goods and Notions are common enough terms associated with old school drug stores. But Gents Furnishings I wasn't sure about. Then it dawned on me... must be code for "porn."

Also, where do you get notions these days?

1900 Was a Bad Year To Be a Baby

Today I drove through Woodland Cemetery, one of the oldest in the city. Lived in Des Moines almost my entire life and I'd never done that before. Driven by it probably hundreds of times. Interesting to see tombstones for people born in the 1800s. Alive during the Civil War. Dead a century before I was even born. These particular rows of stones caught my attention. They were all stones for either infants or still born babies, almost all dated 1900 (a few died in 1899). Dozens of them. Made me wonder what the heck happened in 1900.

PARK

 I’ve always loved the scope of this sign - from the top of the P to the bottom of the K is probably about 3 stories. (I want to take it again at a different time of day to avoid that glare.)

Good Food

This door has fascinated me for a long time… probably because it’s three stories above the ground. Why is there a door that opens out 20 or 30 feet above the alley below?

When I Grow Up

Go ask any kid you know what they want to be when they grow up. You'll get all kinds of answers - a fireman. A dancer. A singer. A football player. A movie star. A scientist. On and on. One answer you aren't likely to get? A team manager in the short sale settlement department of a major mortgage bank. And yet here I am.

Don't get me wrong. The job is fine. (Plus I never really had the legs to be a dancer.) But there's just nothing... creative about it. That's something that's been missing for me for awhile. A creative outlet.

The obvious solution to this: buy a camera. So I did. I'll be posting the results of this experiment. I'm hoping photographing will give me the creative outlet I've been craving. Let me use the other side of my brain. I'm also hoping I won't completely suck at it.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Gray Hairs

Recently (yesterday) I hosted a semi-annual Funtastic Flag Day Party. Why a Flag Day party? Well, why not. A few years ago me and my friends (Or is it "My friends and I?" Ehhh... who cares.) were searching for a holiday to celebrate in June - OK, searching for an excuse to get together, drink, grill out, drink, play games and drink - and realized smack dab in the middle of the month was a perfect excuse to do just that. Flag Day. Plus it's not like there's competition. Nobody else will be hosting a Flag Day party. So I've claimed it as my own.

Good times, good times...

Or so I thought. Until I downloaded the photos from my camera. *ugh*

Let me preface the following whiny little tirade by saying in just a little over a month I'm turning... 40. There. I said it. And the fact is I may not be handling it all that well. To the point I'm not even having a 40th Birthday party... I'm having a 20/20 Birthday party.

(insert "river in Egypt" comment here)

"Age is just a number" is something people will often say. Usually people in their 20s. Or even more commonly those annoyingly "inspirational" octogenarians who insist on spending their 85th birthday skydiving or competing in a triathlon or going on a week-long cross-state bike ride. Yes, your age is just a number. An increasingly larger number.

But back to the *ugh*-inducing pictures. Now I've gotten used to the whole "Holy crap I'm tubby!" reaction to seeing pictures of myself. Mostly. What struck me about the latest batch of pictures was how OLD I look in all of them, due almost entirely to my mostly gray hair. Makes it look like the big 5-Oh is the birthday that's just around the corner, not the 4-Oh.

The gray hair isn't anything new either. It's not something that's happened recently. I started going pre-maturely gray way back in high school. (Thanks heredity! You're the best!) So I should be used to it. But I'm no longer pre-maturely gray... now I'm just maturely gray. And I get that it's not like I was just diagnosed with leukemia or something. But the gray hair thing coupled with the impending 40th are combining to freak me out right about now.

Although "freaking out" isn't really the right term. It's more that I feel this massive crushing weight sitting on my shoulders. The feeling you get when there's some upcoming event you wish you could avoid but know you can't. Like going to the dentist. The dentist in hell.

But perhaps the worst part about getting so worked up over my hair is it makes me feel like a GIRL. A big FAT girl. A big fat WHINY girl. A big fat whiny OLD girl. Heck, I'm even planning to go and get my hair colored. What's next, a mani/pedi? Maybe a bikin wax? Might as well go all out, huh?

I have to admit it's not really just about the gray hair, but what the gray hair represents. See, it's a symbol. A symbol for aging.

For mortality.

For death.

Typical middle-aged getting-older cliched crap isn't it? What's next - a shiny new phallic-shaped sports car? Which I'll of course need to cruise around picking up hotter-than-they-are-smart 22-year-olds.

Until then I'm going to spend the afternoon Photoshopping my hair a darker color.

Puppy Chronicles: Pee Watch/Morning Edition

Yes, I'm writing more about pee. As I stated last night, since getting a puppy this past weekend, my entire life now revolves around pee. So really it's all I have to talk about at this time.

The morning typically starts by taking Darwin out of his kennel and immediately out to the yard. (After I put on pants of course - the neighbors...) I've already learned not to let the pup's feet even touch the floor before we're outside, because first thing in the morning he isn't going to wait. Of course, what's the first thing most of us do in the morning, right? He thinks he's people!

Out to "the spot" (as in "the spot" in my yard you do NOT want to walk if you ever stop over) and he goes almost instantly. "Good boy!"-praise-treat. Trying to make that association in his little puppy brain that peeing outside = good/treat, peeing inside = bad/no treat. Do we then head back inside for breakfast? Oh no. I've already learned that Darwin is going to go again within a few minutes.

Only after leak #2 (and maybe a #2 too, depending) it's back inside we go. Fill up the water bowl, measure out his food and then... watch. Constant vigilance. Some may think "Hey, we've just come back inside after the pup peed twice, so I should be safe for awhile. I can let my guard down ever so slightly and have some coffee. Maybe some waffles" Not so! On more than one occasion Darwin has let lose on the floor less than 5 minutes after coming back inside. That's why I've learned to wait when outside. (Which brings up the question: who's training who here? And where's MY treat?)

The important thing is to establish a routine. Or so the book says. Take the puppy outside at regular intervals to avoid inside accidents. It suggests every two hours. It is wrong. By the time two hours has passed, Darwin would have peed on the floor several times. Can't blame him really - after I've had several cups of coffee there's no way I'm waiting two hours.

So I cut it down to every hour/hour-and-fifteen-minutes after he's had some water. Again, establish a routine. After all, Supernanny is always going on about that when dealing with unruly children terrorizing suburban homes. Not that I'd ever watch Supernanny. Or think Jo is kind of hot. I haven't. And I don't.

The going out every hour or so thing worked relatively well for a couple days. (While constantly watching him in between those trips of course.) So this morning I thought "Let's stretch it to an hour and a half today." Seemed reasonable. Like the first step towards pee freedom.

For those of you wondering how that went, well... Darwin will wait for an hour and 28 minutes after coming inside before he decides to go again.

So close!

Puppy Chronicles: 11:25PM June 3

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Four days ago, I did something I’ve always wanted to do. I got myself a dog. His name is Darwin, and he’s a 10 week-old Australian Shepherd. And he’s way cuter than your dog. Or even your baby.

Although I’ve always wanted a dog, until I bought my house last summer I was an apartment dweller, and generally I don’t think it’s fair to get a dog in an apartment. Unless you get one of those small types, and I don't even consider those to be "dogs." If it isn't a good deal bigger than a large cat, what you've got there isn’t a dog but instead is essentially a glorified guinea pig. Most likely a yippy annoying guinea pig.

So I did my research. Prepared by reading a puppy training book or two, checking info on the web, dog-sitting a friend’s pooch while he was out of the country on business. I wanted to be ready, or as ready as I could be, so me plus dog wouldn’t equal disaster.

But there’s one thing all the books and websites leave out about getting a puppy: when you get your new pup home, suddenly, from that point on and for the foreseeable future, your entire life, almost every waking moment, revolves around… pee.

Yes, all the info you read gives you the guidelines for housebreaking a new pup. They stress the importance of doing it properly, how to go about doing it, an expected timeframe for progress etc etc etc. What they don’t stress is how much pee is going to completely consume your life. It’s almost all I’ve thought about for the past 4 days.

Any time Darwin is out of sight, even for a moment, I think “Is he peeing on the floor?” When he runs across the room and stops I think “Oh crap he’s about to pee.” Even when I try to sneak away for a moment to pee myself, the whole time I’m thinking “I bet he’s out there peeing on the floor right now.”

The constant vigilance is exhausting. Having to watch him every moment, ready to run him outside if he is about to take a leak. But there's the problem - the books and online info says to look for certain behaviors indicating your pup is about to let loose on the floor - pacing, sniffing the ground, etc. Darwin doesn't waste time with that. He stops whatever else he is doing and, unceremoniously, just goes. So I've got to clap, get him to stop, get him outside to his spot, let him finish, "good boy" pet and treat him. Then back inside we go... to constantly watch him.

Even Batman gets to kick back and relax once and awhile if the Bat Signal isn't lighting the night sky over Gotham.

I'm just glad that I have hard wood floors because I have to admit there have been a few occasions when he started to go the floor and I just let him. Why? Because sometimes after a long day of constant pee-vigilance it's easier to clean up after him than to pick him up and take him outside and let him finish then come back inside. I also did that once because it was raining heavily out to avoid any possible wet dog smell. OK... to avoid getting wet myself.

It’s almost as if… wait a second. Where’s Darwin? Oh crap, I bet he’s peeing under the dining room table… I’ve got to go.

I'm Not A Doctor But I Play One Online (aka WebMD Is Trying To Kill Me!!!)

For most of the past week I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather. Nothing major. Fever. Headache. Mild nausea. I figured I had a cold, or a touch of some kind of flu. Maybe a minor sinus infection. Wasn’t too concerned about it. Figured I’d be fine in another few days.

Was told by some coworkers I should go see a doctor. I’m one of those people that reacts to suggestions like that with a “pfffffffft… what’s a DOCTOR going to do for me?” I don’t even have a doctor. Going to avoid getting one because I’m getting to that age where, as a male, I’ll need regular prostate exams. And I think we all know what THAT entails and I’m really not looking forward to that experience. Even if the doc was to buy me dinner first.

So Instead of actually seeking competent medical help I instead did something that nobody who is slightly ill should EVER do: I went to the Symptom Checker on WebMD for a little self-diagnosis. Now I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.

It seemed harmless at the time. Go to the web site. Type in my symptoms. WebMD tells me what I already know: I’ve got a head cold. Or some sort of minor flu. (Preferably one named after an animal - like Monkey Flu. That would be cool.) Maybe a minor sinus infection. Nothing that requires a doctor. Nothing that won’t take care of itself in a few days.

Symptom Checker starts with a 3D image of a rather creepy looking bald guy. You click on the guy where it hurts. I tried not to be too distracted by the figure’s Ken-doll-esque “smooth area” but it was difficult not to be. It made me flash back briefly to watching Beowulf a few weeks ago. For some reason, Beowulf had to fight the monster Grendel in the nude. I’m sure the reasoning behind this was explained but it hardly matters. Dane’s Gone Wild perhaps? But instead of being anatomically correct, Beowulf sported a similar “smooth area” during the fight. Completely distracted me (which was ok since the movie sucked). I’m not saying I wanted to see the Beowang flopping around during the fight, but WebMD is a medical site, right? We can be anatomically correct on our pictures can’t we? I mean what if I was having a problem… you know… “down there?”

Luckily (for this visit anyway) my problems were not “down there” related. I clicked the appropriate areas, clicked on my symptoms. Answered a few questions (had to decide if my headache was stabbing, throbbing or achy) and in moments I had my list of possible ailments. And on the list, just as I expected, were a couple flu viruses and sinus infections. The list also contained a few less likely possibilities.

Tick bite? Right, from all the time I’ve spent outdoors hiking and camping in the woods lately. My idea of the outdoors is the space between my apartment door and my car. Constipation? Without giving too many details, trust when I say everything in that milleu is fine. Just fine. Botulinum toxin (Botox injection)? Not likely since I’m perfectly happy with the current supple poutiness of my lips. Or is that collagen? Whichever, haven’t had any toxins injected into any part of my body for cosmetic reasons. Muscle strain? Doing what - lifting the TiVo remote?

Chronic kidney disease? Well that’s a bit more concerning. Cervical (neck) spondylosis? What the hell is THAT?! I didn’t even want to click on it and find out. Sounds horrible. Sounds DEADLY. Crap, what if that’s what I’ve got? Can you get that handling raw chicken if you don’t wash your hands well enough afterwards? THIS is why you should always eat out, to reduce the risk of contracting a deadly case of sponderloosis from handling raw chicken.

Brain aneurysm? Are you kidding me? I’m guessing this isn’t along the Eli Stone kind where you have cool visions of the future and your brain plays live musical numbers to keep you entertained. No, this is most likely more along the lines of “Is that toast I smell?” and *BANG* you’re dead. It isn’t fair - why does this have to happen to me?!?!

WebMD saved the best for last. Aseptic Meningitis. MENINGITIS! “Approximately 20% of the time, even with treatment, meningitis can be fatal.” That’s it. I’m doomed. Here I thought I had a slight case of the flu and instead, thanks to the internet, I know I’ve only got a short time left on this earth.

I’m still not going to go see a doctor. What’s a DOCTOR going to do for me? It’s already too late…