The Tooth Fairy Came for a Visit

While sleeping last night I must of had a teeth grinding moment. I woke up with one of my fillings rolling around in my mouth. At least I did not swallow it and choke to start my morning which was a plus.

Enough about my tooth. Now off to work in town today actually at a decent job with a painter who I respect. He works just as hard as me. For eight hours today I cut in with a brush around door frames and ceiling grid while my partner rolled the walls behind me. We put about twelve gallons of paint on the walls.

Next I had to make dental appointments for me and my son. Since my memory is not the best I called my message machine at home for a reminder.

Arriving home is always the best part of my day as I get to see my family. When I get home my greyhound Rocket is right at the door ready for his walk. Animals soothe me and make me happy. I feel like I can communicate with them really well. Oh I almost forgot it is also nice to see my wife MI (most of the time). I mean look at her. Wouldn't you be slightly cautious walking in the door to that??

Off to take the little one to karate class and who knows what is next. Maybe I will win the lottery or get a flat tire. I need new tires anyway.

Good Rocket, good boy! Now go fetch Daddy some firewood for the fire tonight.

He is a really macho dog, he can carry up to five logs at a time! I bet your dog cannot do that!

Lost In Transition

Here I sit at my computer that I have not used in about four months to post any blogs. I have been very busy working all the overtime I can for a better life but instead it has only given me grief. Thus I am slipping deeper in to debt. The word or should I say words that best describe the way I feel are helpless, frustrated, angry, confused and most of all pissed. At thirty-two years of age after two neck surgeries and now being medicated out the ass just to fucking paint my way in to more debt, I just finding out that my health insurance has been raised to $280.00 robbed from my check each week. Bastards.

So now I ask myself what do I do? The only logical answer is to get a second job until I can learn to reinvent myself and hopefully pursue a career with affordable benefits. This is going to be very difficult since there are very few jobs at all out there. I have already started asking around to places if they are hiring in my travels which so far include Happy Harry's, Acme and Astra Zeneca. Guess what? Yeah, that's right no one is hiring.

For twenty years I have mostly been a painter working with my hands which is why I am going to have a hard time learning anything else including typing and working with computers. That whole teaching an old dog new trick senerio. For some reason I have been thinking about trying to get involved in some sort of forensic work but I don't know if I will be able to handle schooling, my job and my family. Just to inform everyone, one of my stepsons is severely autistic and most people I am sure would not be able to even handle him. All that I can do is try my best and keep plugging forward and try to drag myself out of this muddy world.

My next step is to try to teach myself the right way to type which is going to be hard the way my fingers are from being in construction for so long. So I guess I will try to put aside all distractions; like credit card companies calling me four times a day to try and collect their money. Bastards. They obviously think I am joking or something since they keep calling. They know I have a excellent record for paying on time, but those heartless bastards dont' care. I would imagine most of you are in the same boat, unless you are some of the fortunate few. I don't even answer the fucking phone anymore.

Well I have said enough for now and will leave you with this picture of how I feel.

If anyone has any ideas, suggestions, or other tib bits of unful information....I am all ears.

Rant over.

The challenges of a sports fan

Obviously, and greatly to my wife's displeasure, I am a sports fanatic who watches just about every sport. (She and I have different opinions on what a sport is, such as watching poker competitions.) I played basketball, baseball and ran track and field in high school. I am physically unable to participate in most sports due to (My wife beating me eveyr night) my recent back and neck problems. I think that is why I enjoy watching sporting events on television sometimes (constantly) to live vicariously through other athletes. I know it is not me out there performing but it is still exciting and thrilling to watch. Unless it is the Dallas Cowboys.

I have this small hobby, M.I. would say obsession in collecting Nascar diecast cars. They are mostly Jeff Gordon cars (I know, you probably would not have guessed that) who by the way is going to win at Richmond on Sunday. This is one of my psychic moments that I occasionally have from time to time. (Wife says psychotic.) If he wins I want to purchase his Nicorette car and add to my humble collection. Humble meaning we have an entire room dedicated to my sports memorabilia and M.I. gets pissy if I talk about extending the room so I have more space. Women, so moody.

Leave it to a woman, Tropical Storm HANNA to ruin my day of rest and relaxation by postponing my leisure time. Hopefully Ike will be much more understanding of this and blow out to sea.

A toast to all of my fellow sports enthusiasts out there. Keep up the good fight! Never give up! Just lock the wife up in the closet and deal with the carnage later.

Greyhounds or Hell Hounds

If anyone is interested in adopting a greyhound be prepared to go through a lot of unexpected shit including a good old fashioned screwing doggy style. I love animals but these greyhound interrogators (which is what I call them) put you through a bunch of doogy doo just to get to the point of them letting you test the dog out in your house . This still does not guarantee that you will get the dog but it is a good chance that you will continue getting screwed doggy-style by some rather fanatical inquisitors.

First you have to go visit the dog you like at a foster home. Once you fall in love with "that" dog, they then go through your records at your vets of owned animals to make sure they are vaccinated up to date. They also ask for references like family and neighbors. They then bend them over too, questioning them as if they were the FBI. I am truly shocked they did not ask if we had criminal records.

Then the blessed home visit to make sure your house is terrorist proof. This is the step we just completed today and we passed, I think. Although my confidence is slightly shaken as I am married to the #1 computer terrorist of all time malicious intent. (Help me. Someone save me. The esposa won't let me leave the damn house.) You learn fun words while working with immigrants from Peru and Mexico. I have the feeling any dog we get will have an American Latin name for whatever means "doggy style or screwed over." I 'll ask the guys at work. They are always saying something about me and laughing.

So anyhow I must go grocery shopping with esposa to help her with the ninos. Wish me luck because God knows I will need it. Until next time, hasta la vista baby!

Painting, it ain't all that.

Ahh! The world of painting; the stereotyping, secrets, shortcuts, physicality and mental fatigue behind it all.

As you have guessed, I make my living as a commercial painter. Very few people love what they do and I am no exception. For all of you folks out there who look at me with my paint splattered (once) white painter clothes on and say to me "You must love to paint", come try it for a week and then tell me what you think.

For example painting steel supports on a staircase eighty feet in the air on a boom lift with a harness on while it is 1oo degrees out and facility has no air conditioning because it is not installed yet. Or how about painting pipes in a sanitation pumping house (pretty picture eh?) Better yet a nursing home that constantly smells like shit, with old people walking around saying things to me like "kill me" and trying to grab you while your working.

I do not paint with an artists brush or just paint trim which I think many are mislead to believe that is all we do. Try rolling with an 18 inch roller (any of you even ever seen an 18 inch roller?) spraying forty foot block walls on a lift with block filler, or rolling ceilings all day for a week straight. (And needing neck surgery while looking up all day long.) Are you still having fun suit and tie guy or gal? Did I mention the protective tyvek suits and respirators and spray socks we have to wear while in that heat in addition to our regular clothes?

Now on to the stereotyping of painters which to be fair, describes about eighty percent of my field and gives hard working guys like me a bad rap. I think I have seen it all in the painting business from poor quality work to hard drugs on the job. I have seen such crap as guys smashing up pills on break and snorting them like they are cocaine. Drinking beer on the job... every day. Falling asleep in closets or bathroom stalls because they are so hung over or strung out from the night before, or even from lunch time. Even drug deals going down on the job is a regular occurrence.

Last year was a new one. I saw two drywall workers screwing a hooker at seven o'clock in the morning in some new construction (which means no walls) thus, everyone could see. I say painting is not fun but it is a shady lifestyle and I am trying to survive it to provide for my family the best I can. It is actually hard to be the "good guy" on a work site. So I challenge those who say painting is fun to come work with me for one week and then tell me how much fun you had Picasso.

Plus, once it is all done and said for the day, I have to come home to my wife M.I. Save me!

Back and Neck Pain In My Ass

I am thirty-two years old and married with two step children. (Worse yet, I am married to Malicious Intent.) My profession is a commercial painter and I have had chronic back and neck problems for about twenty long years.

I had my first neck surgery twenty months ago in which the doctors put cadaver (donor) bone, two plates and eight screws into my neck to attempt a fusion.

The surgery was, to say the least very painful and the recovery even tougher. Now almost two years later I find out that the fusion did not work and the only option left is to have surgery, again.

I am getting surgery on October 1 and hope this time it works, there are no guarantees. On top of my PITA neck problem I get more fabulous fucking news that I have two herniated disks in the thorax area of my spine, which the doctor prescribed pain medication for and physical therapy. Therapy did not work and the meds are just a band aide. I then was told to try a cortisone shot in my back. OK, I am game if it will help. It didn't help. Just like the four other injections did not work for my neck. The doctor has no solution and says that surgery is very risky for this area of the spine as there are a lot of vital organs in that area. (As in they would have to deflate a lung to do this one.) At the present time if I do not take my meds I literally cannot function and it is getting increasing hard to walk. I feel like a old man and to make matters even more difficult I have to worka shit load of overtime due to the suck-ass economy. OK I am now done venting and if anybody has a suggestion short of smoking crack please let me know.

Economy

I have one word for the economy which is shit. The only thing that we as a nation are doing right now is surviving. If things continue like they are now we are in for more theft, violence and possible anarchy like you see on the news with third world countries. The only thing we can do is keep working and move forward. Good luck to all my hard working fellow Americans.