It wasn’t a flying dream, a sex dream, one of those dreams where I dream friends of mine accidentally get pregnant, or even a partial nightmare of when another friend [finally] comes out of the closet.

No. This dream was an extended philosophical discussion between myself and my dreaming self about ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ with bits of insight from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and how their perspectives apply to present day– more particularly, my present day. I even ran a comparative analysis of how Leslie’s selfless nature works within the “framework of the Hierarchy of Needs”. The really odd part of the dream is I know not jack shit of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Kierkegaard, or Nietzsche. I couldn’t remember the words or their names this morning when I woke up. The only thing I could remember was ‘Hierarchy of Needs’, ‘Kirkgird’ and and the guy with the German last name that starts with an “N” and it’s not Freud. Seriously. I had to Google the misspellings to just to find out what and who was going on in my head.

Parts of this dream started coming back to me during the icicle shower. Kaly woke up late, so her shower time got mixed up with my shower time and considering the temperature of the water flowing from her shower head was set to ’scawld’, I lucked up and got the shower of liquid nitrogen– my testicles are still hibernating. Other parts of the dream came back to me during the horrendously traffic-free, brutally peaceful, excruciatingly quiet, four-minute commute home.

My simple interpretation of this dream is basically I need to get a life. Or at the very least start experimenting with acid and circus animals.

Other fun stuff, Stacey yakked at least seventy-five times today at the office. Although she wanted to play the martyr and work through the pain and the goo, I sent her home early. Get this, she blamed ME for HER stomach virus. I think it was more of the power of suggestion. Just because I moaned about having a stomach virus this weekend she thought it best to carry it to the next level and actually get ugly and really noisy with it. Being the trooper that she is, she checked her email, from home no less, and wrote me back later this evening…

Stacey to me 7:08 pm (2½ hours ago)

why is there a ‘training krista on CC” again on my to-do list??

Mark to Stacey 7:10 pm (2½ hours ago)

I didn’t see it there when I added it.

Also the task I just sent (XYZ newsletter) it needs to be ready by Thursday, not Friday. my bad.

Stacey to me 7:11 pm (2½ hours ago)

I trained her this past Friday.

Ok on the thursday.

I still am vomiting/can’t eat. thanks for that.

Mark to Stacey 7:32 pm (2½ hours ago)

oh.

maybe I had lapsed out of my mind on friday and was visiting an orange grove in the southern tip of Cuba with a beautiful Spanish girl named Fermoza Miguel Hernandez (her friends call her Veronica) and yet while her beauty may have been striking and she was ever so nice, I was told by several of the locals that she may have rotten crotch and to proceed with caution although many of the locals who told me this were amped up on pomegranate-flavored heroin and were talking to me, very frankly I might add, telepathically. From this incident I learned never trust a Cuban national heroin addict with a fruity scent and a red juice coming out of his mouth. Fermoza Miguel Hernandez (I call her Fermoza Miguel Hernandez, because apparently I’m not her friend) was ever so pleasant and very Cuban (in a Cuban sort of way).

or maybe i forgot.

…and I never yakked. I just had bubbly diarrhea accompanied with a few too many sharts.

Stacey to me 8:33 pm (1½ hours ago)

I don’t know how you just did it… but you just made me laugh out loud in the middle of me crying.

Thank you.

Mark to Stacey 8:34 pm (1½ hours ago)

was it the orange grove or the bubbly diarrhea?

I’m glad I made you laugh.

Another bright spot of the day was when I got an generic mailing list type email from an accountant I used to work with five years ago and haven’t seen since. His email was offering holiday well wishes and a .PDF containing helpful tax tips for 2008, it was personal because it started off “Dear ,
We here at ITCCPA wish you and yours the happiext (sic) of holidays.” and it was signed, cleverly enough “Many Happy Returns!”

I wrote him back telling him how much I really missed him and asked him how his kids were. I asked him how his lovely wife was doing (that was sort of tongue-in-cheek ’cause the girl had the personality of a dead and bloated sea cow). I also told how him great it would be to get together after the holidays and catch up. How we should finally go out to dinner and drinks in Atlanta like we talked about a few years back.

I hit send, feeling good about myself that I went distance, albeit a short distance, of trying to reconnect.

My damned email got bounced back to me as undeliverable.

So there you have it. Today I: participated in a doctoral level discussion of Philosophy, experienced Navy Seal training in the shower, made someone vomit (really loud), healed the sick, got spammed by an old friend, reconnected to a friend only to have my little twinkling bit of humanity get lost in the ether of the ‘net.

Oh. And wrote a blog post.

PS- To any friend that I spammed today with a newsletter. I miss you. I love you. We need to get together after the holidays and catch up! Seriously.

If I work really hard, by Christmas I should have the crotches between my knuckles looking almost Supermanish.

Kaly at the beach after braces:

I left off the in-between picture where her teeth looked like white hockey pucks.

Miss Awesome is quite beautiful if I do say so myself.

“We now rejoin our regularly scheduled program, now in progress.”

Well Thor hasn’t kicked my ass. Over a month later and I’m still going to the gym. I’ve already dropped five pounds and where there used to be manboobs now looks like a pair of steel Frisbees. Sorta. If you look at them in just the right (dim) light and squint.

My apologies for the drought of posts. I decided a long time ago that when I’m down, it’s best not to write. And more importantly it’s best not to write about being down.

Looks like tonight I’m probably going to break that rule. Although don’t be surprised if I delete this sucker in the near future!

Long story short… I’ve been depressed. Not suicidal or anything with any teeth or drama, but I haven’t been myself in well over a year. Thinking back, I’m pretty sure my mom’s death was the kick off point, but over the past several months– hell since January, I’ve been my own worst enemy.

Hanging with friends/relatives has been especially tough because I [am? was?] so disengaged. The more disengaged I felt, the more isolated I wanted to be. Leslie noticed. Even Kaly has asked me if I was going to be alright.

Creatively I’ve stopped dead in my tracks. This may sound odd but there have been days where it’s actually hard to talk, let alone write. Not to mention I’ve pretty much given up shooting, for pleasure anyway. I haven’t picked up the camera– just to shoot for fun– in months! If you go to my Flickr photostream I swear you’ll hear a lone wolf howl off in the distance.

Joining the gym was more psychological than physical. It was a change. An incredibly painful, praying for a visit from the Vicodin bunny, change at first, but one that may be doing some good.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest… my steel plated… rock solid… bronzed, chest-o’-glory, maybe this block will move on.

Went for my **~Training Session~** on Monday. Of course it was, pretty much what you’d expect… Humiliating as all hell. I got there at one o’clock as instructed. The trainer, who I’ll refer to as THOR, wasn’t there.

I waited.

…and waited.

THOR showed up at 1:20pm. It went downhill from that point…

THOR: Dude.

Me: You’re late.

THOR: But bro, Yer ‘pointment whut’n ’til one fif-teen.

Me: Oh sorry. That makes you, um… late.

THOR: Man! Dude. Sorry.

Me: It’s cool.

THOR: k. I’m THOR.

Me: Hey THOR. I’m Mark.

THOR: What say we get you weighed in?

Me: What say. (then I get on the scales).

THOR: You don’t LOOK like you’d weigh that much.

Me: Hmmm… I guess I oughta join a gym or something. What Say.

THOR: HAHAHAHA that’s a good one mr. Mark.

Me: [thinking] Screw ya THOR.

Then we retreat to THOR’s office.

THOR: Blah, Blah, Blah, Gloots, Blah, Blah, Blah, Body Mazz, Blah, Blah, Blah, Lean Muscle, Blah, Blah, Blah….

Me: [thinking] Fuck. I haven’t weighed this much since Leslie and I played piggy back. Their scales have GOT to be wrong. It’s must be set to IQ instead of LBS.

THOR: Blah, Blah, Blah, …your goals?

Me: [not thinking] Huh? Oh. Yeah. Goals? Yeah. I’ve got goals… I’ve got goals all over the place. Matter of fact, I’m one goal-oriented mother… I’ve gotta goal to get back to my superhero weight of 180. I want to be healthy. I want to feel good again. I’d like to be lean, not worried too much about bulking up. Matter of fact I’d like not to worry– you know stress less. I’d like to move. I want a better relationship with my kid, the MeenAger, at least for the next two years until she goes to college. I want to pull out of this brain-searing depression. I want to feel creative again. I want to be a better conversationalist. I’d like to pay off some credit cards. I want to get some new tennis shoes. I’d like to have sex, or at least a sex like activity with my wife. I’d like to lose about four pounds of face. Regrow hair. And last but not least, I’d like to NOT kill another Personal Fitness Trainer.

Yeah, I’d say I’ve got goals.

THOR: [mouth open, stunned.] ~blink. ~blink.

THOR: HAHAHAHA you’re too funny mr. Mark.

THOR: What say we ge’cha started with a good warmup.

Me: good? What say.

Then THOR proceeds to add a pain component to the humiliation.

Halfway through the **lower body** workout, as I’m biting my lower lip trying to hold back the tears…

THOR: Burnin’? You feelin’ the burn yet? Give me four more. Three. Two. And…

Me: Ut. Ooob. Eeeem. Leeb.

Me: [holding back the tears, seriously] Wait…. Wait…. Wait a second…

Now! Just now, you just managed to push me past the threshold. Congratulations, you just triggered a killer Vicodin habit in me.

THOR: HAHAHAHA you’re just too funny mr. Mark. Toooo funny. What say we get you started on the [toe push] machine, it’ll help your definition.

Me: What say.

If the cute overload cause you to spew on your monitor, I apologize, but you were warned.

Every time she grows up a little bit more, she breaks my heart– in a good way.

Her smile took my breath.

“God didn’t make us go through millions of years of evolution to stand in a Big Thunder Mountain Railroad queue line for two hours.”

We made it back.

Disney in June is, well… DISNEY IN JUNE. It was hot. It was crowded. Although it was kind of refreshing to realize that I won’t HAVE to do The Disney again until Kaly has kids, and said kids are old enough to grind into her wallet for $25 tshirts and four dollar Minute Made Frozen Lemonades.

If my estimations are correct, I’d say I won’t have to worry about that for [at least] twelve years or so. Minimum.

My “Oh-Hell,-Get-Me-Out-Of-Here” moment happened as we were standing in line to ride the Thunder Mountain roller coaster. We were in the middle of the queue, the queue was in the middle of this barn, the barn was in the middle of the park, the park was in the middle of Florida, and oh, did I happen to mention it WAS the middle of June? The thermometer on my fancy-smancy Nike dive watch was registering 101 degrees ON MY WRIST!**

The crowd and the heat were not the critical components in my breakdown. The catalyst? The catalyst was the waves of vomit I kept choking down from the Big Assed Disney Breakfast Buffet® I had wolfed on just an hour earlier.

MMMMMM… Nothing says ‘you’re really on vacation‘ quite like: scrambled eggs x3, french toast x4, bacon xinfinity, potato casserole, cottage cheese, fruit, breakfast pizza, breakfast lasagna, granola, donuts x2, donut holes x4, orange juice x3, central Florida in the summer, crowd B.O. and a roller coaster.

To my credit, I didn’t eat anything else, seriously– nothing at all the rest of the week, and that Big Assed Disney Breakfast Buffet® incident was on Tuesday. I’ve only had an orange Tic Tac, a popsicle and an Exlax since we got home yesterday. Seriously, I swear. To God.

And speaking of getting home, and swearing to god… Our house got broken into while we were gone. “Broken into” sounds a lot more dramatic than saying a couple of Kaly’s teenage friends decided to sneak in and check the place out. Although when I questioned one of the boys about coming into the house, he promised he didn’t do it. As a matter of fact, he said, “I didn’t. I didn’t do it… I swear.

[insert silent pause that I let lapse for a good 45 seconds]

To God.”

He fessed up to Kaly just a few minutes after I called his dad and and told him “…Your son, [RocketScientistGenius] broke into our house…” I played up the whole burglary/criminal aspect like a champ. Man, I shot that poor guy’s Father’s Day all to hell.

Anyway.

All in all, the time away was needed. The Cirque du Soleil experience was good for my soul. Oh, I almost forgot to mention we got to spend an incredible week with Leslie’s sisters and their families (yeah, the in-laws). Did you know 11 people CAN stay together WITHOUT killing one another AND have a great time?! It’s true. I swear.

To God.

~ ~ ~

**Anytime I refer to any functions of that watch, I always say “ON MY WRIST!”. Like, “The barometric pressure is 29.08 millibars ON MY WRIST! The depth of the water is 4.9 feet ON MY WRIST!” The altitude is 128 feet above sea level ON MY WRIST!” Yes, it’s stupid. But at least there’s clarity and it helps validate the purchase of the watch to Leslie.

At one point during the show, sitting there with Kaly and Leslie, and in total jaw-dropped awe, I realized how glad I am to be alive.

We’re headed to the vacation oasis of Orlando (I feel like I should write that in all-caps, and outline it in glue and glitter on your monitor, maybe the old BLINK tag will be close enough).

Put a slug in me if I come back with a dazed look and mouse ears. Seriously… it’ll be the humane thing to do.