Category Archives: Life Events

“Write drunk, edit sober”

Posted on by
Reply

Apparently Hemingway neither said the above phrase that has been attributed to him, nor did he live it…in spite of his heavy drinking.

While I probably had an adult beverage or three before I fired off the following as an e-mail at 11:55 pm on 6/7/15, I wasn’t drunk when I wrote it. And in re-reading it, apparently I didn’t edit it either. While the e-mail begins with a caveat, it didn’t warn the receipients of the lack of any editing by me.

I did get the subject line right though.

From: Steve Weiss <slw_913@yahoo.com>
To:
Sent: Sunday, June 7, 2015 11:55 PM
Subject: what are you waiting for?

Caveat: some recipients will wonder “why did I get this?” especially those who I communicate with “almost never.” (my bad.) or maybe it will be those at the other end of the communication continuum who will wonder “why me?”

why? just because…

Yesterday was the 11th annual Rock House summer festival in Reeds Spring. This is the 4th one that I have attended…all of them since I moved back to missouri in 2011.

Today is the anniversary of John Crudele losing his long battle with cancer. those 2 days back-to-back last year really had me thinking. same thing again today….thinking about what really is important.

It’s hard to express how important that place in a little town, that event and that man have been to me.

Many reading this have probably never heard of The Rock House, it’s town, or my late friend, coach and mentor. but everyone reading this will have places, events and people who have great meaning to them.
-=-=-=
the amount of new music that I have listened to since my first visit to a house concert would take awhile to tabulate. if you like music, find a house concert in your area. go to the next one. or perhaps it’s a concert in the park. whatever the event, you’ll most likely be glad you attended.

check out new music online. I assure you that music is better for you than almost anything you will see on tv. (full disclosure: I do watch tv…selectively. but, come on…”reality tv?” really?)

my life has opened up a lot since that first house concert. at the third one, I heard the front men from a group that is now one of my favorite bands. their music has changed me in a good way.
-=-=-=
john was one of the handful of people who were there for me during rough spots. I know that he knew how important he was to me. we got below the surface. at other times the conversations were raucous, bouncing from topic. I miss those talks and I miss him.

I can never talk to JMC again, or hear his voice. I didn’t see him as often as I would’ve liked because of distance. While I do hear his voice in my head often, I will never actually hear it again. The last few times we saw each other were in Oregon, including a tailgate before and after an OSU game with Wisconsin. The “after” was by far the best.
-=-=-=
if you like music: listen to more of it. give something new and different a listen. and if you can see it live, do it. (“keep the music live” as Jeanette always says.) it’s amazing how much musical talent there is. (I have none. dammit. except with my ears.)

maybe it’s not music for you, but instead it’s fishing or knitting, tennis or photography. whatever it is, do more of it.

whether it’s a confidant like john, or a long time friend, or even a new acquaintance: find time for them now. make time for yourself. but don’t think doing either of those “tomorrow” is the right answer.

what are you waiting for? enjoy every moment as much as you can, in whatever way is the most enjoyable. for me that includes music and communicating with others in some way.

that’s my spew…a lot longer than I anticipated. especially since I have music to listen to, phone calls to make, walks to take, and someone to hug.

so do you.

take care. keep in touch with people who matter to you. be.

steve

Stop Stealing!

Posted on by
1

first, a few pieces of background.

1. almost as far back as i can remember, but certainly since my sophomore year in high school in olathe, i have been a fairly religious reader of a daily paper. it has almost always been a morning paper. there have been some times over the years when financial circumstances did not allow for a daily paper. but most of my adult life i have read a paper every day. the daily paper, and the bill for the subscription, were delivered to the same address that the usps had on file for me.

2. that changed in late 2011 when i moved into the abbey apartments in southeast springfield missouri. i was no longer paying for delivery of the daily paper, and it was no longer being delivered to my door. every morning a paper gets delivered to the apartment building. for some idiotic reason, they won’t deliver it to the building’s office since it doesn’t have an apartment number. instead they place it in front of A111, which is just around the corner and no more than 25 feet from the office. it is supposed to be a communal paper, available on one of the tables in the lobby. monday thru saturday, when the office is open, there is also free coffee in the lobby. not great coffee. not a “manly” cup like i prefer. but it is hot and almost black.

3. there have been issues with the paper at the abbey. i’m not talking about the quality of the paper. the paper itself is not the issue, at least not the issue at hand. admittedly, the news-leader is a pretty puny rag and doesn’t compare to the last daily that I paid for: it was called the “st. petersburg times” then….now it’s the “tampa times.” before that i subscribed to the oregonian. both papers are head and shoulders better than the gannet paper that is supposed to be on the table in the lobby of the abbey each day.

the operative word in this case is “supposed.”

during the four years that i’ve lived at the abbey (has it really been that long??), there have been newspaper thieves. sometimes they only take a single section. often, it’s the section that includes the tv listings. sometimes they take just the sports. other times, often on sunday when nobody is in the office, the entire paper gets swiped. on good days, not a page is missing.

in all cases, when a single section or the entire paper is not there: It Pisses Me Off!!

twice i have written anonymous notes to newspaper nappers. the first time was in jan of 2014, and is a story for another day. it was the much longer of the 2 notes.

this particular story is about a christmas eve, 2015 note. it was only 13 words and was written after 2 days when not a single section of the paper made it to a table in the lobby. i wasn’t the only one who was cranky about the daily paper being swiped….there are a number of other residents who are regular readers.

The 12/24/15 Note

after Shelly had gone to bed on Christmas Eve, i composed a short, nasty note…written LARGE. the first line using 66 point type, followed by 3 lines at 54 point, and the last line at 80 point…for emphasis. all lines BOLD, with selective underlining.

after i printed out the single page, i went on the quest to find the scotch tape. several expletives and several minutes later i finally located it. if i had found the tape quicker, what follows would have had a very different ending.

it was just after 11 pm and i had just taped down the 4th corner of my direct and accusatory note when i heard footsteps. i had been caught in the act! if i had found the tape quicker, the 20-something fellow wouldn’t have looked down at the piece of paper in front of apartment A111 and read:

STOP STEALING
The Daily Paper
It’s for ALL Residents
You Thieving, Inconsiderate
ASSHOLE!!!

Him: “a paper gets delivered here every morning.”
Me: “i know. that’s why i’m leaving this note.”

Him: “Ok…but a paper gets delivered here every morning.”
Me: “exactly. for the last 2 or 3 days it hasn’t been making into the lobby for residents to read. i’ve lived here awhile and i’ve had it up to here with people stealing the paper.”

Him: “stealing? i’ve just been putting it in my recycling.”

Then it hit me!!

Me (sorta sheepishly): “you live in this apartment?”
He nods.

Me: “did you just move in? and do you leave the apartment early in the morning?”
Him: “yes, this week. i do head out before 7… when i pick it up and toss it.”

Me: “Oh…wow. they never told you that it is the lobby paper?”
Him: “nobody said anything to me about the paper.”
Me: “let me throw this note away…you don’t seem like an asshole!”

the above dialog is not the exact words that we exchanged…but the last 6 are!! it is a conversation that i wish i had on tape. (lately i find myself thinking that fairly often, especially during some of my walk-and-talks.)

so after i rambled for a few minutes, introducing myself to Saeed and shaking his hand, i wished him Merry Christmas. but before i walked away i told him about the news leader’s crazy delivery rules. i told him that i like the people in the office, but that they should have told him that the lobby paper would be delivered in front of his door. i told him that he could just leave it lying there in front of A111 or put it on a table in the lobby. i told him about the paper pilferers. i told him…again…that he didn’t seem like an asshole, and that I felt like one. we both laughed.

as i walked through the lobby and up the stairs, shaking my head and laughing, i might have been thinking: “things happen, that’s all they ever do.” But I’m pretty sure it was this:

Fuck Me!!

Christmas 2015

Posted on by
Reply

What follows is my Christmas letter/e-mail:

I hope your 2015 has been a good one. I’m keeping this to one page again this year…  {one page as a word doc…with narrow margins at top, bottom and sides.}

2015 has been a bit of a “different” year for me…some good times and some not so good. even on the not so good days I thought of, and did my best to heed Warren Zevon’s advice: enjoy every bite of every sandwich.

The Good:
An excellent spring garden;
A road trip to Jacksonville that allowed me to spend time with a BFF in Atlanta, several days with my dad’s brother as I helped him with dad and his sister’s estate, and some time with Joseph & Caroline;
A road trip to Colorado…loved the deck on the B&B at 10,500 ft and loved strolling the streets of Leadville;
Spent all of September, 33 days in total, in southwest Oregon…took Shelly to Crater Lake, the redwoods, and the southern orygun coast. i’d go to all of them again tomorrow…and the next day;
Dad spent 5 days with me in OR…visited the same places with him as with Shelly. it was a blast;
Saw quite a bit of live music. highlights: Jackson Browne (twice), Elvis Costello, the Rainmakers headlined the summer festival at the Rock House in Reeds Spring;
Listened to lots of music, in B-307 or on roadtrips, some of it from artists I’d either never heard of or listened to before 2015;
Saw some good basketball games, including trips across the state to take Dad to several games;
Had fun posting lots of pictures and chronicling the CO and OR trips on Facebook;
Finally got off the dime and “put myself out there” via a blog.

The Not So Good:
Started the year with Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy, i.e. had to have my gallbladder sucked out….but maybe this should be listed as a “good thing”? (there is a karma component…no room to elaborate here.)
Summer garden was pretty lame;
Fall garden was worse…much worse. not a single brussel sprout or turnip;
Lost another person who was near and dear to me…my Mom’s sister, my Aunt Billie. She always made me smile and laugh;
The Who postponed their show in KC…twice! hope they don’t die before I get old…or see them;
Tried to get Springsteen tickets. Struck out. Scalpers didn’t. Scalpers suck.
Spent a few days in the hospital because of blood clots in my lungs of unknown origin…maybe this should have it’s own category, i.e. the good, the not so good, and the Scary Shit!! I don’t like being on HST (hospital standard time).

I did a decent job of keeping the pledges that I made to myself when I got serious about keeping a journal in late 2012: watch less TV…especially less “news” and talking heads; listen to more music; read more; walk more; keep in touch with people that matter; tell the people who you love that you love them.

I can still do better. It would be easier if I could slow down time. The days and weeks and months pass entirely too quickly. It’s one of the things that I always heard that has turned out to be true. Other stuff…not so much.

After 33 days in Oregon I have been thinking a lot about making another move. I have enjoyed living back in Missouri more than I expected to, but my heart is really in Orygun. The geographic diversity is just one of the many things that draws me to OR. Admittedly the weather in September in orygun is typically as good as it gets…anywhere. And it was great this year, especially at Mike&Judy’s outside Merlin. If we do make the move west, it won’t be before mid- to late-2016. There is family in MO to think about, but i’m hearing too many people call me “sir” these days…so time’s a wasting.

When I was on HST one of my friends reminded me of what Frank Sinatra said: “may you live to be 100 and the last voice you hear be mine.” For some of you reading this, if you hear my voice when you’re 100 I will really be an old geezer. So don’t wait….lets chat in 2016. Txt, e-mail and messaging are nice, but they really don’t compare to or replace interactive communication.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. All the best. Keep in touch. Hug the people you love. Be.

steve

Casedy & Crayons

Posted on by
Reply

“For you, being creative isn’t just something to do. It’s an actual survival impulse.” That was Shelly’s horoscope per the local paper one day last week.

That not only applies to Shelly, but also to her oldest grand-child. Eight year old Casedy accompanied us to the Wichita suburbs over the weekend as we visited Shelly’s oldest of three children, and their soon to be 2 year old, Cecily.

The two cousins had some fun together, and Casedy entertained all of us with her creative writing. (If only I could be so creative!!)

With a box of crayons and several sheets of paper, each sheet written in the color of the signatory, what follows are Casedy’s creations. Admittedly I have helped a bit with the spelling, but everything that follows is her’s. I like all of them, but the last one is my favorite.

-=-=-

dear casedy,

it’s me purple crayon. i love that i’m your favorite color. but start making sense. stop coloring outside the lines.

yours truly,

purple crayon.

-=-=-=

dear casedy,

we need to talk.

everybody knows that I’m the true color of the sun. not yellow. she is mad.

the true color of the sun,

orange crayon.

-=-=-=

dear casedy,

everybody knows that i’m the color of the sun.

everybody knows that!

tell orange she’s out of her mind.

the real color of the sun,

yellow crayon

-=-=-=

dear casedy,

the blue crayon thinks he is better than me.

please tell him he’s not. then I will be happy.

yours truly,

light blue crayon

-=-=-=

casedy,

tell light blue that he is not more important than me.

then i’ll be happy!!!!

yours truly,

real blue crayon

-=-=-=

dear casedy,

why did you peel my paper off?

why casedy.

why?

your naked friend,

green crayon

It doesn’t smell like Teen Spirit!

Posted on by
Reply

Shelly called it. Someone was dead!!

I never expected to live in Missouri, or in an apartment, again. All that changed in 2011. There are lots of things to like about apartment living…i don’t have to mow grass, I just pick up the phone if something is broken or isn’t working, there is coffee and a daily paper in the lobby in the morning, and I don’t get nasty letters from a HOA board because i’m not in compliance with some silly, arcane rule. (HOAs are a story for another time…)

One of the best things about The Abbey, the building where we live, is the layout. Three floors, shaped like an octagon, and a perfect place to walk when it makes sense to avoid walking outside….i.e. it’s too hot, too cold, raining, etc. A lap inside the building is a third of a mile, and there are lots of stairs to climb if i’m so inclined.

Yeah, walking laps inside an apartment building can be monotonous but not nearly as boring as a treadmill. Plus I usually do a walk-and-talk, so i’m killing two birds at once. One of my daily walk-and-talks is always with my 89-year old Dad.

Last Friday, as I was just a minute into my call with Dad I caught a whiff of something. Now I do not have the most sensitive sniffer, but this smell was nasty. It was only noticeable for about 100 feet, in one relatively small part of the 1780 foot long lap. The only way to describe what it smelled like that afternoon: it smelled like ass. Or worse.

I only pass that section once on most of my inside walk-and-talks with Dad, as I take a lap of all three floors and then wrap up the call.

The next time that I walked through that part of the building was when I called him on Saturday. Same smell, although even stronger. I’m thinking “don’t the people who live in this part of the building smell this shit?”

Sunday afternoon I asked Shelly if she’d take a walk down the hall with me to see what she thought. She is more sensitive than me in every regard, but especially from an olfactory perspective.

As soon as we reached that section of the 3rd floor, she stopped quickly and her facial expression was one of disgust. The smell was indeed quite disgusting.

Then she said it. “I hope somebody is not dead!”

-=-==

The first thing this morning I stopped by the office and told Dena about the smell. She said the exact same thing as Shelly.

Ninety minutes later I was back from running a few errands. There was an ambulance in front of the building.

Fifteen minutes later there was a knock on my door. It was Dena. She asked me if I’d come with her and talk to the police and tell them what I had told her earlier. We walked to A-313 and the cop came out, still wearing a mask, and interviewed me for 10 minutes.

If you google “smell of death” there are over 68 million results. I skimmed several of them, with titles like “what does death smell like,” “does death have a smell,” and “researchers isolate ‘the human smell of death’.” They refer to a “singular chemical cocktail,” the “putrefying tissue of dead bodies” and a “five chemical cocktail made up of chemicals that are part of a group of molecules called esters, which are also responsible for the strong, sharp smells emitted by fruits like pineapples and raspberries.”

None of the sites really described the smell. The closest on came was this: “The human smell of death, in other words, is a little bit fruity.”

I wouldn’t call it “fruity,” and not just because I love fruit. I eat lots of it.

The smell of death is disgusting. It smells like ass. Dead ass.

May the lady who lived in A-313 rest in peace.