2025-11-24

 If you're not having fun you're doing it wrong.

*

What's fun is 

I don't know anymore.

*

I remember when I finally realized I wasn't immortal anymore. Running down the subway stairs on 42nd to Penn Station, wanting to make that train. Sidewalks were fine, but holy smokes were the steps down a mess. And I took that fall, reflexes worked for me and I was able to grab the rail inches before my head hit the step. I gathered myself, and then had that NYC moment where I looked around and there was no one ahead of me, behind me, or even on the street just barely above me. 

I caught that train back to L.I., amazingly. 

It was the day after Thanksgiving, the day after I turned 42. 

*

When I was a kid, I loved how my birthday would fall on Turkey Day every six to seven years. "Everybody is celebrating my birthday!!!"

No offense to my SIL, but I never needed family and folk over when I was there for Thanksgiving back in 2011, when my birthday was the same day. It's embarrassing at this point in life. In 2011 I was only 36, so at least there's that insignificant year. I'm lucky that it's gonna be about two years (if I looked it up properly) before it's on a national holiday again.

*

It's a stupid day. Birthdays. We celebrate them endlessly when younger. They become milestones as we get older, but why? Reflection? Wondering what we've done with that previous year? Hope for that new year, that in my case comes a mere six to seven weeks later? Just another notch on our belt? Who cares?

*

I'm listening to random songs on my Late Nite mix on YouTube. I wish I could remember what I was listening to on November 23, 2005. 

I know I held her hand. We met at the bar, I was in town just for Thanksgiving. My chef invited me, and retrospect makes me wonder if I would have been better off going to my Corporate Chef's invite with just his family. Regardless, we met at the bar, house party afterwards, and then just her and I talking on the front porch. Snow on the ground, it started to flurry as we talked. 

"Your hand is so cold."

All I could do was look at the the streetlights. 

*

In thinking about that life, twenty years ago, even despite that breakup two to three years later, that remains the worst and hardest day. Not So Fun Fact: I was in town just to do Turkey Day with my old chef and folk. Never made mention of any of this, let alone that it was my 30th birthday. I have a vague recollection of picking up a pie at the Giant Eagle on my way to her place. I also drank too much wine and passed out on the ottoman in her living room. Was back on the road at 7 p.m. and drove twelve solid hours to Madison, WI. I slept for an hour in the parking lot because I was back in at 8 a.m. Friday morning. 

*

What a stupid life I've lived.

*

Been typing this out since 11:56 p.m. last night. Tired. It's all so exhausting. Everything. 

*

I was 

Tuesday 2026-13-01

 The "It's Still Fun" Edition

It's been a while. I'm siting on my couch, flurries outside the deck door window tell me either coldness or another day of mid-30's. But who cares about the weather.

I'm being a sad sack, listening to all the greatest hits of how Jer is feeling at his lowest. I was gonna just play both of Transatlancism and Plans back to back but figured that would be overkill for a guy who just hit 50. 

50.

*

I ignored that number when I was scratching out my love letter to my parents for their 60th anniversary in 2024. I was 48 when I wrote all it down, scribbling notes from my laptop onto paper so I could send it, fingers crossed, overnight to them, my writing, my letters, my learning from them, the twenty years of life lived and loved with them, all my love. 

I was 48, only weeks from 49. I was scribbling, wanting printers to work. I ran back and forth and finally realized that I just had to do it the old way:  Use pen and paper.

*

Our postmaster (postmistress?) was not happy with me. I kept changing how I wanted it delivered. We got it settled, it went, and my folk got it.

*

I'm 50.

*

I know. Get over it. We all get older. Die. Shit happens. What hurts is that this is the first time in my life where if family dies, I really have no way to get there. I couldn't make my parents 60th anniversary. How grateful is this then 48 year old kid. 

*

Be good kids.

2025-11-17

 Hi.

I've been wondering about if to start this up again, but then I remembered my routine from two decades ago. Come home, possibly drunk and stumbling but usually not. It all depended upon my honesty with myself.

I'd make sure Cat was inside, and if not, open the back kitchen door and call out "Hey, Cat!!". He would usually, regardless of season (winter snow was always fun) running from a few yards down and finally jump over our own old school wire fence and come up the deck and just chow down on his fresh dry food. I'd refill the water dish, rinsing it out if needed, and in between the desktop PC booting up for a new game of Civ III, we would talk about the day. He would, between chomps of Frisky Kitty or whatever I grabbed from the corner store, meow and throw a paw out to let me know I needed to listen. I would give the "Uh Huh, Is That Really What Happened?" or "Did She Really Like It?" to him and in between bites he would still just meow away. 

We had a good relationship, I think. He never liked it when I tried to give him a pat after he came in and was eating. His tail would flick and he would actually find a way to growl while eating, which I like to think was his way of saying "Fuck Off and Die, I'm Busy."

I learned to not bother him while he was eating, and I could wash dishes and drink another can of Yuengling while we just got ourselves settled for the night. And then I'd settle into the ancient desk chair from 1955, blankets around me, and Cat would give me a single claw from his left or right paw, depending upon his mood, just to let me know that now was time for warmth and not the keyboard on my lap.

I would conquer empires, lose to raiding hoards of barbarians, sometimes continue that stupid game where I had nuked it all but was on my way to outer space. But Cat, he was a good kitty. Would even stay with me when that can of Yuengling was done and it was time to roll that old office chair across that shitty mexican floor tile to the fridge and pull out another one. 

But 3 or 4 a.m. would always roll around, and after falling asleep in that office chair I'd finally figure out that maybe it was time to go to bed. Cat would somehow, usually, wake up with me. Take that good cat with me with both hands and just put that kitty at the end of the bed, while I turned on the hallway stereo for some low level late night music and go to bed. 

*

A lifetime ago.

Thousands of miles traveled, hundreds of folks met and loved and hated and fired and I had it all. On the good occasion, especially that last year back then, I also had a nice girl to wrap my arms around as we went to sleep. Random low level music playing as we held each other and loved how we not just liked the drunken nights before, but actually liked waking up together. 

And she even liked Cat.

*

And I gave it up for a life more lived but somehow much less. 

Drowning

back in the day i was writing every day.

it was a routine. french toast in the morning. pet the cat (and yes, his name was "cat") on the couch while he soaked up the sun through the front window. go to work. go to bar. do the nyt crossword. talk with any/everyone. 

*

I screwed it up. I wanted more. I wanted a life. I wanted a relationship. Did I want kids? Eh, probably not. Made sure that didn't happen. Twice. It happens.

But. Maybe I did. 

*

I'm getting to the point where family actually matters. Not they never did, but twenty years of idiocy grinds you down. I have never read one of Saul Bellows novels, but he did sire a child at 84 years of age. I won't make it that long, but I have hope.

*

The last week has reminded me of why I don't do vacations. I can't deal with myself. It's easier to just put your head down and work than deal with...everything. I'm on my first paid vacation in over ten years. 

It's sucking the life out of me. I just want to lay in bed all day. But ya know what's fun?

Doing that once a year self evaluation.

*

I don't know if I'm happy. I don't know if I'm unhappy. I'm complacent. I'm Stoic. It's not that I don't care, it's that I don't know how to care anymore. I tried to figure out when I was last *happy* and all I came up with was the five-six weeks I was in Philly. 

In 2016. 

I took control. The staff loved me. I ate like a king. I had a condo five blocks away. I came in and took over, and it was loved by everyone. I fixed shit, took care of idiot race relations, folk loved me. Simply because I got dirty along with them. And I still didn't get the job. And no one else did either. 

The Exec Chef left three months later. I think the GM is still there. But it kills me that the only, the ONLY time I ever felt like I had the perfect job, in my hands, just...went away. 

*

It's stupid to think about this crap. But I learned early on that there is no perfect job in this business. I was proven wrong. It was everything I ever wanted. 

*

So what do I want??

...every day another miracle

Fourteen years ago, I found myself at 8:05 p.m. finally moving forward on a Greyhound bus heading towards Columbus, OH, from Pittsburgh, PA. It was April 11, 2002, and I remember writing in my notebook:

"I am going home to bury my grandfather."

I had no idea until days later that my own mother was the one sitting with my grandfather, her father, at that time, and that he would pass from here to his heaven within minutes of me writing this, my mother the only one in the room at the hospice with him. The added bonus is that it was my mother's 60th birthday.

*

His wife of over 65 years outlived him by 14 years, but even bodies in seemingly good yet failing health tend to just break down. My grandmother was on antibiotics apparently for a cold the week preceding. That she seemed fine and then went into semi-consciousness, then into the Great Unknown on October 14, 2016, is something I accept. My grandmother, middle name Lillian, which is such a beautiful name, and one I didn't know was hers until maybe 4-5 years ago, passed peacefully.

Again, I can only hope for such a passage.

*

I received word that she was not doing well on Thursday morning, and by early Friday morning she had moved beyond us. She wasn't awake apparently since early Friday morning. And for that I am beyond grateful.

*

I'm struggling, though. In becoming the true black sheep of the family, elements of family have just shrugged it all aside. The past is the past. Let's move on, 'cause time is short.

*

sooner or later, we learn to throw the past away...

*

I'm 40 years old, and what I'll take with me is seeing the kids my cousins and brother and sister have spawned, doing the idiotic things we did when we were young:  throwing walnuts at the telephone pole, wanting to and climbing up places their Great-Grandmother would have sentenced them to just watching out the window for. Walking beyond the stream, because you can't see them past there. Wanting to climb that next branch. Climbing that same chem tower I do every year but I know the hazards...but kids...

*

Running the hay rows across Strawberry Fields in October, losing my boot, and seeing how the sun is still setting but my cousins, my family, even though they make fun of me, they help me.

*

Seeing all of us, the cousins that used to be the third (and sometimes fourth) generation, grow up, and learn to be the one that is now the next in line behind our own parents. This is something I cannot imagine.

*

I'm standing next to my Aunt Helen. We are graveside. Very nonchalantely she says, well, you're the next generation. (I paraphrase, sorry, Helen). The cask is being lowered over my grandmothers, her mothers, casket. We should be crying, but we are laughing. We are teachers, learners, scholars, FARMERS, people of the earth that continue to educate ourselves despite everything. That my grandmother's, my Smith's, daughters are interegatting  this guy that is just doing his job is on par with what not only what Bettie Jane would do, but also what Smith would come back to check on and wonder what happened. And why they screwed it up (they didn't...they, well, did a great job, which is probably why my family stays with the same funeral home after 100 years).

Needless to say, nothing happened. But it was hardly a solemn affair. The daughters stayed after for the dirt. Us Grandkids and familys in tow? We grabbed some White Castles and went out to the farm. Because, that is what Grandma would have liked, as long as we didin't go farther than the stream (we did, but I think we get this one grace).

It was the Smith Family Reunion that kinda sorta happened, and while you weren't there, we missed you Nate and Mika. We talked. We ate. We dispersed pickles. We looked for walnuts, disguised as buckeyes. We talked, briefly, about breaking into the farmhouse. But then we just talked.

And that was then, as I'm watching us talk amongst ourselves, some things never change. Those ahead make fun of those behind. "Ice unsafe." No kidding. But here Rob and I are walking along like the last 16 years never happened, making fun of everyone who stopped behind us to pause at the same sign.

Grandson, granddaughter, and even to their kids, bear no measure of idiocy. I am coming to realize why Smith had those signs on the way out.

*

We did a much better drive than we did for Smith, 14 years ago. But Grandma would have loved it. Past all her favorite places (including the old Grace Lutheran), down Courtright Rd, and a good pause along Watkins Road as she passed the farm house. If only the White Castle and McDonalds were still there, but as with everything, age and time and familiarity just erase us all.

*

Finally finishing this, six+ years later. 

It reminds me of a different time of life. One where I thought I was going in a different direction. But it all just settled back. The only thing that changed was my life changing from Savannah to L.I. to Upstate NY in the course of...three years.

*

In between my parents generation has started to die off. My closest uncle first, followed by my mom's youngest sister in the same year (2021). That was followed by a very random death in a not related but still -family- death of the daughter of...I don't even know how to describe it...Her family was, in all in all sense, family. I grew up with all of the father's sibilings, his youngest brother was a kid I grew up with, along with all his family. Regardless, I was close to the oldest brother, and knew her from birth up up until leaving the church. 

*

She was doing her daily run and got hit by a drunk driver. Died. It still tears me up. 

*

I've become very stoic in life. What is, it is. Move on. It's never until those final moments that I find my gut moving and my eyes giving way when I fail myself. I was actually fine with how my grandmother passed, a cold, coma, passed away. Good. No pain. No suffering. But as soon as "Onward Christian Soldiers" was sung, it was all I could do to not keep control. 

*

It is August 26, 2022. 

I read these words and maybe they are mine, but even that person that I was a year or two ago, even six years ago, is gone. I don't know who I am anymore. 

On the other hand, I'm discovering, late in life, that it's just books. Nothing made me happier in high school than when the Dewey decimal system worked. Even better when I found the congressional system (??) worked for me, and found so many volumes of Dante, etc, in the stacks of the OSU library. Just because I was -somewhat-smarter than the other folk in my class and read a 1922 version of Canterbury Tales, that wasn't verse. It's not cheating if you use the knowledge available to you...because, ya know, OSU.

*

I'm re-reading a lot of all this. It's not fun. I feel I do have grown, but I think I've stagnated. 

I'm happier just having two screens, both playing the same movie, day after day...

*

"that's life"

I love you all.

Be safe. 

Don't be that guy/gal/etc.

It's easier than it seems.

Reflections on a Life on the Road...

...or at least the last 16 years.

*

i'm probably being too harsh. but i was reminded of how quickly time flies when i saw a pic of my old secondary wallet, holding a 3x5 card with my week planned out...from september 2009.

i don't feel old. i don't even look old. but i feel it in my bones. i see it in my veins. my heart and lungs, i know my family history, and it's a crap shoot on both sides, as we have three fates awaiting us: live forever and deal with incontinence, live nearly forever and lose your mind, or die in your late 50's-early 60's. i'm willing to go with Tiny Tim and his final appearance on the Late Show with Carson back in the day. look it up. it's worth the laugh at what we all will end up facing.

*

So. Life on the road. Where have I been in 18 years? Let's tally it up:

Columbus, OH: Start
Memorial Day 1998: South Dakota
October-November 1998: Chicago
Pittsburgh, PA: January 2000-July 2005
Toledo, OH: July 2005-September 2005
Madison, WI: September 2005-2008 (see below)
(including stints in IL...what a headache...twice)
Charlotte, N.C.: June 2008-whenever I finally transferred to DC. Including stops in:
Bethesda, MD, Evansville, IN, Louisville, KY, Atlanta, GA, and finally Clarendon, VA.
D.C.: 2009-2012
Savannah, GA: 2012-2016, with a few months spent in upstate NY during the summer.
Philadelphia, PA: September 2016-

I leave that open

Around Memorial Day 2007 I also found myself hiking around the Badlands of S.D. again. But that was a personal vacation. One that was needed but also one that showed my strengths and weaknesses.

*

It is a strange place I find myself in. Two weeks ago I was in Lake Placid, NY, prepping for a 1700 person banquet. One week later I was sitting in this couch after two flights and a strange, long walk through with the folk I am working with for the foreseeable weeks. Right now I am typing these words with the tv on but the volume off, knowing it's a bit too late to question my choices in life but still doing so.

*

I am an "independent consultant" according to my contract. It's so odd though, because it's more like I'm just a sounding board for everyone to bounce their problems and headaches off of. I like these guys, and I'm seeing (once again) how politics within the organization play with or against you, but I could see myself fitting in here.

*

On the other hand, I may be seeing myself shipped back to GA in a month.  Time will more than tell.

Nothing compares 2 U

I'm sitting on my back stoop.  Long day.  But what does that mean?

*

I was up early, doing some cleaning, but whatever.  I forgot my chef coat.

* 

Got a ride in from a coworker.  Nice that he saw me at the bus stop.  

*

I finally walk into work around 3:38, finally realize that I have no chef coat in hand.

*

Spend an hour doing prep upstairs, 'cause I have nothing to do with what's going on down there.

*

Think about how I've done this a million times...

*

I'm in the middle of deveining shrimp and the order comes in for two fillets.  I look at my expo with shrimp guts on my fingers.  He doesn't care.

*

Throughout the night I'm pealing and de veining shrimp, all just to be skewered with either grape tomatoes or the yellow ones, ya know, the ones that go bad before you even use them.

*

The end of the night is nigh, it's 9:57  and I shut it all down.  I'm breaking my habit but I tell my only other cook I'm taking our cutting boards up and then taking 5 for me.  20 minutes later, get a call up from the bar that they had a late walk in. We, in the kitchen, that is breaking down for the last 20 minutes and have dumped EVERYTHING and now we get the word about a potential table?

*

So we take care of the guests.  I turn the heat lamps back on.  The oven.  I pray for an easy order.

*

I make a half assed burre blanc and we call it a day.  I call it a day.

*  

Intercom: can you guys send down two chilled spoons?

*

the sous, he is how happy so lucky, and i wonder if i would be if I was him.  it was offered, in my initial interview.  I'm wondering...

the third planet

...that's how the world began/that's how the world will end

*

funny how it's three months and then, when I'm still doing prep at 10:30 at night, 15 out of 18 items on my list having been done but still having to bag up the fish, my GM says "hey, have you thought about moving up to supervisor?"

I'm in too much of a conversational mood to say, Hey, Have You Read My Resume?.  But I decide to take the low road, and see where this is going.  Been with these guys all of three months, and i think I've found my home.  What I'm afraid of is so much regulation.  Paperwork.  Training.  Unlearning and then, relearning.

Am I too old to do it again?  One more time, just because I have nothing to lose?

What do I have to lose?

*

It is a sad thing to look back, when reaching 40, to think back on where you were ten years back, and the only difference is that you had a minor clear direction when you were 30.  But you were also going through the second worst break up of your life.  At 40...I'm realizing how much work and effort my father and mother put forth to make our family work.  I'm barely scraping by, and it's a bit embarrassing, but that's life.

Calling it Quits

*
3434
I am walking from the house party in 2005.

*

I remember kissing you, once, the first time, on Halloween 2004.

*

I broke up with my girlfriend a week after 10/31/2004.  I knew I didn't love her, as much as I loved her family.

*

I walked through snow, it still coming down, that day in November 2005.  I looked at the time on my phone: 12:34.  I laughed for a second at the numerical niceness of it, and then the coldness of the cardkeys in my wallet reminded me that I am not going home.  Just another hotel.

*

It is June, 2005.  I've opened the windows, the breeze is great and I can see the Cathedral of Learning from my dining room.  You come behind me, asking if I'm going to make breakfast.  "It's afternoon baby, I'm gonna fry up some french toast and call it a day."

*

The shower is running.  I burn the french toast while I stand in front of my windows, just watching.  The view is...something I want to watch all the time.  The CoL is primed 45 degrees to the left.  And it's wonderful.  I didn't attend but that doesn't mean my appreciation is lacking.  Dan Marino was an alter boy at the church a block down, doesn't mean he get's a plaque.

*

I'm holding her hand.  It's snowing.  The so called blizzard was just a farce, but there are at least 3-4 inches on the ground.  I hold her hand...she didn't want me to.  I.  I was.  I was maybe doing my best to not cry.  I.

I.

I didn't know what to do.

*

I'm sipping coffee in my favorite diner in a city I no longer call home.  It is Thanksgiving.

I'm reading the Post-Gazette and wondering why I care anymore.

*

I reached for her hand because that was the last part of me.  My life had been foreclosed upon by the IRS, not because of me but because my landlord didn't pay any property tax.

I think about this, and the number of hours I'm still going to be on the phone with the government, because I'm the best guy to get a hold of for this property...and I'm eating french toast at my second favorite diner on Forbes in Pittsburgh.

*

I go back to my hotel, check out, buy a pie and get to Bel's around noon, we eat, and then I pass out on an ottoman.  I awake, and then drive 12 hours back to Madison, WI.

*

It's morning.  My bags are packed, but I know it's all been delayed. Again.  I'm in bed, her body spooned up against me, the bedside light still on.  I find the remote for the CD player just before it kicks into high gear with the opening track from that Afghan Whigs album.

*

We are making out with Sex in the City playing.  It is January, 2004.  Your apartment reeks of cigarette smoke and booze.  I consider none of this all night long.

*

March 2005:  At some point during this month, you turn on the nightstand light, illuminating the bedroom at probably 4:45 am.  "Why are so many damn books in my way...Oh, crap..."


*

I'm still holding her hand.  I don't know what to do.  I grip it tighter, which is the worst thing to do.  She is talking but I have no idea about the words, she's going on about moving on but my own words are "I fucked up"

*

She is in bed.  My. Bed. Are you fucking kidding me?   But then I remember how we came home and she's naked.

*

It is June, 2005.  I'm looking out my bedroom windows.  I'm standing naked in front of them, contemplating knowledge and where the fuck I'm gonna be in six months.  Her arm draws me in and then I stop caring.

*

I think about you. But it's a different you. It's May 2008 and I'm taking a new job.  My sister hears me cry as I take your phone call and you tell me that there is nothing for me to go back to in Wisconsin.

As I am hanging up, the only person I ever just threw dust to the wind, didn't give a rats ass, just threw it all in...I think about how much I've dealt with, all the pain and sorrow that came because of us.

*

I think about how I am holding that knife, the one that my own chef gave me, and I'm wanting to cut myself just so you won't.

I'm curled up. Fetal.  And you come in with tears.  Your mother has died. You ask, that regardless of this weekend, can I come and help you?  And I say yes, clean myself up, and then two blocks away we turn around, and I'm back in bed.  She adds the bonus "It's cause you're honest and you don't give a fuck."

I'm paraphrasing the last, but you get the gist.

*

Mid-December, 2007:  Her mom, from her bed, says, "Hey, out of all her boyfriends, you're the best so far."  I'm startled, try not to show it.  \

*

I am in tears, sitting on my sisters livingroom couch.  I used to be strong.  I used to rule.  I manged kitchens of mere mortals.  I do P&L in my sleep.

I am on my sisters couch, at a loss.  She has the balls to ask: Are you going to kill yourself?

*

We went to see Aimee Mann at the Carnegie that night.  It is 2002. Dressed up.  Unfortunate triple balcony seats.  I slipped on the ice more than my girl Jamie did, it was mid january after all. It was great, and I left my suit on her kitchen counter (table?).

*

Break up sex is not as good as you think it is.  Squirell Hill 2003

*

April 2016:  I have, and own, and also wear, jeans that have more to say to about my life than I do.