A Soliloquy For My Beard

To goatee or not to goatee, that is the question. Whether it appears nobler to have hair just about my speaking orifice or whether I should continue to cover my face with as much as I can. So that thyn villagers with pitchforks and torches chase me not. To trim, to shave: to shave : perchance to nick: ay there’s the rub. For in that nick the crimson liquid flows only to be stopped with a bit of paper intended for thyn bottom not thyn face. For who would bear the torture of the many many cruel blades of the razor. When they could cower in fear of them. Oh, the fair Pearl , be not afraid for it is still my face. Please do not cover your eyes. For I know that Brad Pitt I am not.

That Shakespeare dudes got nothing on me. I can See it now. 300 hundred years from now some high-school kid is going to be trying to figure this out in his Younger class. There will be Younger In the Park. There will be snooty directors yelling at actors for not getting enough emotion in their character while reading Let the Marriage Madness Begin!! Yeah I can see it now!!

Anatomically Correct Trucks

I’m tired of seeing male genitalia hanging on the back of trucks( just beans  no franks). The other day I saw a set that lit up, the turn signals even work in them. What possesses someone to put these on their vehicle. Maybe they are compensating for something. Besides I’ve always considered my vehicles to be female. Does that mean that I need to have my truck spayed? I would hate to have a litter of sub compacts rolling around. Maybe I should get a pair of these.

 I looked for pictures of the offending items and found that there are web pages that do nothing but sell them. They have every color in the rainbow even chrome. I decided not to show them I didn’t want to make this rated “R”.

It makes me wonder what added maintenance a male truck has. Do you need to wash, dry and shave it? Does the mechanic check the oil , transmission fluid, and have the truck turn it’s head and cough? If it’s broken down does it get a prostate exam? Maybe  it gets a camera put up its tailpipe to see if it has polyps. If I kick it in its man marbles will it fall over on its side with it’s front wheels tucked in between its rear wheels? I bet that would win money on Americas Funniest Videos.

My Friends

We have been blessed. We have been given the greatest treasure anyone could receive. Great friends. At a point in time when Pearl and I had very few, we were blessed with Dave and Jeanie.

We met them at New Hope about 4 years ago. I got to know Dave when we worked on Vacation Bible School together. I ran sound he was the master of ceremonies or ” The Big Kahuna”( it was a tropical island theme). Up until that time we had been doing the Sunday morning greeting thing and I had only seen him in his Sunday go to meeting clothes. He showed up in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, sandals and a straw hat. I almost laughed. I didn’t know at the time that was pretty much how he dresses when he’s at home. He was up onstage jumping around like a monkey, a trumpet in one hand a drumstick in the other. Making noise with the trumpet and banging on the drums at the same time. The whole time Jeanie was in the crowd of kids cheering him on. I thought to myself ” Lord what is this?”. It was a man giving his all to serve God with all his heart. Dave’s passion is kids not just his own, but everyone’s. He just loves them.

Jeanie at that time, if I recall correctly, had just become Director of Involvement at the church and she was impressed with the decorations Pearl and I had come up with. We made a volcano that had confetti cannons in it . So she was impressed by paper mache, compressed air, and shiny bits of paper fluttering through the air ( couldn’t resist poking fun at her). She spent the next couple of years keeping us busy decorating, and serving. She was great at her job and under appreciated. She has an ability to see the potential in people and gives her all to bring it out of them. Her heart is singing praises to God, a trait she passed down to her kids. That’s where I got to know her , running sound for her. Of all the times I’ve heard her sing what I remember most is her singing her heart out next to the sound booth when she wasn’t on stage.  Just her and God, a beautiful thing to see and hear.

Together they have become the closest friends Pearl and I have had. We admire their faith, wisdom, and knowledge of God. We have relied on their advice time and time again. It is always sound. They have a way of making you feel like you’re a part of their family. Now we consider their kids our friends too. They are awesome kids. They are the example of how everyone wants their kids to turn out, a reflection of their parents sound teaching.

We were all called away from New Hope but our friendship continues. I look forward to the things we do and experience together in the future. We love you guys.

The Rhoades family, soon to be plus another grandchild.

P.S. I had to write this because Dave told everyone to read my blog last night.

New Years Resolutions

I usually don’t make resolutions. I just think that if there is something you want to change about yourself you can do that any day you want. But the whole world seems to do it on New Years day so I thought I’d give it a try.

This year I resolve to…

Put my outdoor furniture away before spring.( If I procrastinate long enough it turns into thinking ahead )

Finish digging the pond in the back yard. (there are Koi out there just waiting for me to adopt them)

Fix the gutters and paint the house ( this has been on the list for a while now )

Shoot Steven repeatedly with a Nerf gun ( He started it . He bought one with his Christmas money. I bought one to get even )

Shoot Pearl, Audrey, and Ben repeatedly with a Nerf gun ( just because it’s fun and the gun is just sooo cool  it shoots like a machine gun)

Make Ben feel like more of a part of the family ( He’s now my son, that entitles him to all that brings. My love, respect, feeling that my house is his home also, making jokes at him, and shooting him with a Nerf gun )

Become a great grandfather ( buy my granddaughter a Nerf gun to protect herself from Steven )

Become more involved at church ( I wonder if they have a Nerf ministry or a Nerf addicts support group )

Attend small group ( Maybe we could have a Nerf night. I’ll bring my own gun)

Lose twenty pounds ( running from Stevens gun should help with that)

Steal Steven’s darts so he is defenseless ( a great idea)

Study God’s word more ( I’m awful at keeping at it. I’ll do it for a while then I’ll miss a couple of days. No Nerf joke here )

Give tomatoes one more try ( just kidding, I’d rather get shot by Steven)

Do more to show Pearl how much I love and respect her for all the little things she does , like being a great mother, like being my best friend,  like keeping Steven and I alive. No words can express my love for her. She is the reason I am what I am today. ( maybe I’ll shoot her less or maybe buy her her own gun )

Well I think that’s it . A pretty typical list I think . I think I’ll go shoot Steven to wake him up.

The Wedding Photos

Here are the photos from Audrey and Ben’s wedding. Thanks again to everyone who helped make this a memorable occasion. I think I look like a waiter, but Audrey was beautiful thats what counts.

Ode To The Wedding cake

Oh wedding cake

so pretty and white

I can’t stand

to let you from my sight.

Dave drove slowly to Stonebrook

Where the wedding was at,

All to keep you

From going SPLAT.

Your flavors,

They abound,

For you are square,

And not round.

The top layer

 Pumpkin spice

My sister-in law Sheila

Says it was nice.

The second layer

A strawberry dream,I didn’t get a bit,

Because Steven

Ate most of it.

The third

I liked most of all

Lemon with poppy seed

Answered my taste buds  call.

But now I have

A need

For rehab and prayer,For I am now addicted to the opiates

In the poppy seed.

Now I need

To get you out of my home ,uhhh

Before I go into

A butter cream coma.

With this poem I hope to impress ,

With my charm and wit.

So Jeanie will make Steven a cake ,

Shaped like a drum kit.

Let the Marriage Madness Begin!!

As you know my daughter is getting married at the end of the month. So now all the last minute details are being confirmed.  The other day we went and picked out tuxes. I get home from work sit down for a few minutes and Pearl says”Do you want to get suits”. I said “No, but yes”,I knew that we had to go do this. I don’t own a suit. The last time I was in one I was getting married. Pearl says she knows exactly what she wants and it won’t take long.

So off we go to Mr Neats. We are greeted by a saleswoman named Riley. Pearl asks for the suit she wants and Riley shows her which one it is. Then we get into all the suit details. We are asked things like ” What color tie”, “What type of collar”, “What color cuff links”,” Do you want to rent socks” ( Rent socks????), ” Do you want a pocket square” ( I’m thinking what the heck is a pocket square). This goes on for a while. I kind of felt like a bald middle aged Ken doll and two girls were deciding what I was going to wear to the wedding. Occasionally Riley turns to me and asks ” What do you think”. I say I don’t wear suits for a reason and I don’t know. Approximately 45 minutes and several redressed mannequins later the suits are now completely different. Everything Pearl wanted has now changed, literally everything. But the suits are picked.

Now we get to the paperwork. We are asked the bride and groom’s names, that we know. Then Riley asks us for the groomsmans’ names. That we don’t know. We’ve never met them.Why does she need them? We’re ordering 5 suits for the Younger, Kesler wedding, who cares what the groomsmans’ names are. So we have to call Audrey to get the names. She only knows them by first names. So Riley enters their names into the computer with Ben’s last name. So I guess they are now brothers.

Now we get to the part were I get sized for the monkey suit. Riley measures my arms, shoulders, waist, out-seam( thank God she didn’t measure my inseam, I’m ticklish), all the stuff to make sure I look like James Bond in my suit. Then she asks me, after measuring me, my height and weight. She just measured me why does she need this she knows what numbers I have. I’m thinking why can’t renting a suit  be like ” I’ll take a number three with a red shirt, red tie , a pocket square, no socks, and supersize it”. Riley goes and gets some clothes that are supposed to fit me. The pants have an adjustable waistband. I think that’s cool and I’m trying to figure out how to get them on my regular pants, That would be handy at Thanksgiving. After getting the pants adjusted so they stay up, I try on the shirt. It seems to fit OK until I get to the collar button. I know collars are supposed to be a little tight, but I’m pretty sure my head isn’t supposed to look like a mushroom and I’m supposed to be able to breathe. She just measured my neck. Maybe she measured in metric and my neck is in standard measurements. I come out of the fitting room and tell Riley ” If I wear this shirt I will die and this will be a completely different occasion”. She says” If I make the collar bigger the shirt will be puffy in back”. Huh? How does having a big neck mean I have a large stomach( I do but the shirt is fine everywhere else other than the neck). I tell her I’ll put up with the puffy in order to be able to breathe, air is a good thing. I’m still not sure if she changed the size. I guess we’ll find that out at the wedding. If you see me passed out I’m not drunk, I’m dead , call 911. Bryan

Note: The suit in the picture on the header of this blog doesn’t count, the back is cut out of it.

Phobia, or Explaining the Disdaining

I’ve been accused of having a phobia when it comes to tomatoes. The American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary defines a phobia as An intense, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specified thing. I am not afraid of tomatoes I just can’t stand the taste of them. It’s not like I run away from them screaming like a girl from a 1950’s horror movie. I save that for bees. I have a phobia of those. The only tomatoes that I’m afraid of are these guys.

 I hope they’re not real.

My disdain for the tomato began really when I was a teenager. While I never “liked” tomatoes I didn’t avoid them like I do now. My parents love tomatoes and always grew them. One year they had a bountiful harvest and my mother decided to make tomato sauce with them. Now my mother is not a culinary expert( I love you mom in case she’s reading this), she would be the first to tell you this ( I guess she did OK none of the 6 kids died of starvation). She pureed the tomatoes and simmered them down I think for weeks, maybe months, at least that’s what it seemed like then she would freeze it. It didn’t smell like a really good marinara it just smelled like boiling tomato juice. The whole house smelled like it. She simmered morning, noon and night. I, being a teenager who liked to sleep in , would be woken up by the sensory overload that was the aroma of the tomato sauce. It, in my mind ,wreaked. So you can imagine that I was  less than excited when the sauce was made for spaghetti. Italian sausage helped but not much. Every time she made it I could smell the sauce and would flash back to the making of it.

Moving forward to adulthood( in my case that’s a relative term). For those of you that don’t know, I work for a food distributer. I worked nights for 14 years. One night I was sent to clean a spill, you can imagine my horror when I saw that it was a clean up of tomatoes. Not just a few but 10, 10 pound flats of cherry tomatoes.That’s right a hundred pounds of tomatoes, rolling all over the floor. That wouldn’t have been bad. but most of  them had been run over until they were something like a muddy tomato paste. Then the smell hit me! I immediately flashed back to my youth. AAAAAAAAAGGGG, the tomato sauce was back to haunt me again(love you mom) . I gagged on the smell. I wanted to run away screaming like a girl  from a 1950’s horror movie. It was all I could do to keep my lunch down but I did. Like a good employee I forced my way through that unpleasant situation, but I haven’t been able to stomach them at all since.

I’m happy in my denial that I have a phobia of tomatoes, I don’t have to eat them in my world. I do like one tomato his name is Bob.

Please don’t eat him. Bryan

I Think You Know Where I’ve Been

I’ve had some inquiries.  People have said to me, “For a week you wouldn’t quit writing, but now you’ve gone silent.  What gives?”  I think you know.

I’ve been standing at my kitchen counter smearing fresh, sticky, peanut butter, on wheat bread along with flavor-infused grape jelly, and filling my mouth alternately with that and a glass of milk and letting it drip down my face. In other words I had a sandwich and forgot to blog for week.