The Red Thumb

When people are great at growing plants, its said they have a green thumb. I had to turn to the color wheel to find out what color thumb I have, and its apparently red, because I kill everything.

Sallie and I spent a good 5 hours outside last weekend getting our garden going, and thus far, its looking a bit pathetic.

We planted three flowering shrubs of some sort in our front yard to make the house look a little better. Two of the three are now wilted and the flowers have completely disappeared. The third one, the one that was doing the best, is looking like its two brothers did a few days ago.

We bought a tomato plant from the farmers market since we've had 0 luck growing them from seed. It looked really happy for the first few days, then we moved it to a larger pot, and bam, that night something digs in there and I find the little tomato plant laying outside the pot on the ground. Looked like some sick crime scene.

I ran outside still in my boxers and held the little tomato plant in my hands and screamed, "Whyyyyyyy?" to the heavens. I tried to replant that guy and gave him a little support. He's looking only a little better than he did on the ground, but he's still wilted and can't hold his own weight up.

On the flip side of that, I can't kill plants I want dead. We have all these trees and bushes along the fence line and under the concrete bench in our back yard that I've chopped to pieces, exposed the roots, dug out, and they keep coming back. It'll go from mangled root to three foot tall tree in two weeks.

So if you ever want someone to kill the plants you love, and help weeds grow, call me.

The Award

Sallie and I spent a brief and hectic time in Chicago. We got in the day before the ceremony and went to the aquarium and two breweries. It was fun, but certainly didn't feel like we had enough time. I would've wanted to meet up with more friends than we did. So maybe next time.

The day of the ceremony we basically checked in, had free lunch, walked around for an hour, came back, took a nap, woke up.

The ceremony took place on the 7th floor grand ballroom. Immediately when we left the elevator we were corralled toward a long line. We didn't really understand why, we could see the bar and food only 15 feet from the elevator, but some lady pushed us to this long line. Sallie went and asked her what it was for, and she said, "So you can walk the red carpet."

We thought maybe she was joking and this was some sort of registration line. Nope, it was a red carpet, lined on both sides with some of the high executives in Wells Fargo. They clapped as we slowly made our way down the carpet where we had our picture taken.

We then went into the ballroom to our assigned tables. The food was absolutely baller. It was mashed potatoes, green beans, asparagus salad, steak, and Tilapia. Then for dinner, chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate cheese cake, a chocolate straw, and creme brulee.

The worst part was the walking across stage. We had to wait for 350 people to have their name read, so we could walk across the stage and shake some hands. I feel like that part could've been streamlined. We weren't even handed our awards on stage.

Here's the award I got from Wells Fargo for being a Top Performer. It's pretty nice. A gold coin encased in glass and a really nice certificate.

 

My Best Man Speech

This is weird, but I have a tendency to think of what my best man speech would be for every wedding I go to. You know, just in case the best is taken out by ninjas at the last moment, and someone needs to step up and take care of the duties. Here's what I probably would've said about Ryan and Erin.

*Clink clink clink* Everyone, please calm down. I've got something to say.

Erin, I'm just now getting to know you, but the good news is, you're stuck now. There's a test where we find out if a significant other will survive in our family.

First, you have to be deemed worthy enough to be invited to Christmas Eve at grandma Dobyns. Once you've been deemed worthy of this rite of passage, you have to come to the event where you'll be dealing with a dozen screaming children, a dozen taco bean dip eating frenzied adults, the buffet line, and presents.

Erin was able to come to Christmas Eve and not only kept a smile on her face, but interacted with people. She was able to get bean dip onto a chip, and escape without any bite marks on her hand. We escaped to the basement, and she fit in with the secret barrel chair lunch club.

She then survived the scariest part of the Dobyns' Christmas, present time. Wrapping paper is thrown in the air as feral children rip open anything that is wrapped and nearby. And then, the symbol that you check out, Grandma Dobyns ceremonially hands you a gift, accepting your application to our family. Erin, I knew you would be fine.

But let me tell you about Ryan and the type of guy he is. As most of our childhood stories, it involves us in a near death situation. I'm sure you've seen the pictures, Ryan used to be a bit heavier than he is now. (Jerk is now the best looking and most fit person in the family)

So every year, Ryan, Jake, and I would work at the Bottle Show in Westport. We'd pick up McDonalds for all the vendors and take our tip money and wander Westport Plaza. One of the best forms of entertainment was riding the 13 floor glass elevator up to the top floor and back down.

Well, this time, both Ryan and Jake thought it would be hilarious to jump up and down in the elevator.  Both my cousins being heavy at this time, started jumping up and down, the elevator shaking. We made it to the 11th floor when all of a sudden the lights flickered and the elevator came to a screeching halt.

Obviously, being only 12 and thinking you're about to die, your rational mind doesn't work. I never once thought that the emergency brakes engaged and the machine was just making sure that everything was ok. How we each reacted says a lot about who we are.

Jake immediately just started stringing curse words together. "What the f***? What the f*** do we do?"

I immediately started saying, "I hate you fat a*****. I hate you both. You're going to get me killed."

And while Jake and I hysterically cursed, Ryan's instinct was to tell us he loves us, and tried to hug us. Jake pushed him away and then the elevator started back up. It reminded me a lot of the scene from Almost Famous where the plane hits turbulence.

We didn't talk much after that. We just rode the elevator back down to the first floor, tried not to make eye contact with each other, and I don't know if this story has been told since then. But Erin, I wanted to let you know, that if you ever find yourself on an elevator that might come tumbling to its destruction, Ryan will try to hug you, instead of freaking out.

Survival Mode

Sallie and I are going to go into survival mode over the next few months.

I'm sure most of you have heard by now, but the transmission on our Accord was going out. That on top of the other things we needed fixed (timing belt, normal belts, AC, side view mirror, OBD connectors) we were looking at about $4500-5000 in repairs to maybe get our car running for a few more years. Plus, we just dumped about $900 in there to get it to pass inspection. It was time to move on. (On a side note, we found out that our car was a total at one point, but the title was wiped by a salvage yard, so we wouldn't have been able to sell it anyway.)

So we had to get a new car. That on top of student loans, medical bills, and normal bill stuff our pocket books are going to be hit hard for the next few months. But I'm trying to stay positive.

Instead of looking at this like, "wow, we're broke" I'm seeing it as an opportunity to simplify and get back to things I used to love doing.

So I've been looking at my life objectively over the past few days and figuring out ways to cut back on spending.

The obvious one is not to go out to eat every weekend. Sallie and I really enjoy trying new restaurants and having a glass of wine, but that obviously can add up quickly with two people eating.

So I have a bunch of beer I've brewed sitting in the basement. That'll save some money there. But we're also going to get the garden going again with easy to grow veggies that we eat often. We still have some seeds from last year for lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and bell peppers. (Which never grow) I'm going to start making more bread instead of buying it. And instead of buying chicken, beef, and lunch meat every week, we'll just pick one or the other, and start eating things like tuna and PB&J.

Basically, we're going to get as "do it yourself" as possible. This weekend, I'm making pizza dough and sauce from scratch, and for about $10, we'll have 6 mini-pizzas that'll last us several meals.

We're also going to keep the AC off for as long as possible, and when we do turn it on, we'll keep it at like 78 degrees instead of the 75 we had it at last year.

Then there are easy things, making sure lights are turned off, unplugging things that aren't being used, take shorter and less showers, go outside and walk around the park instead of watching TV, etc. All practical things that we've taking for granted since graduating.

Then extra stuff we had is getting cancelled. Netflix is going to stream only, Xbox live isn't getting renewed, Sallie's Birchbox and magazine subscriptions are all getting cancelled. They were nice, but an un-needed expense.

I'm also going to use this to get back to free activities. I used to walk around the neighborhood picking up trash and listening to podcasts, which I haven't done in about a year. I'm going to start writing again. And I'm going to attempt to hook up with that brewer and maybe help out in the brewery.

So staying positive, deep breath, let's do it!

Dreaming of Money

We all do this. I know we do. Because when the Mega-millions was happening, everyone had these fever dreams of what they'd do with the money.

For Sallie and I, we paid off all our debt. Paid off all our families debt. Gave the most amount of money we could give as a gift to all of our immediate family members each year so they wouldn't be taxed.

What we did with the rest of our money was sort of a split decision. We love St. Louis. We take great offense when people say its dangerous or that we're somehow sub-par to other cities. (Chicago, I'm looking at your residents.) St. Louis is a great f-ing city.

So one of our plans was to start buying some houses that are for sale or vacant in neighborhoods surrounding us. We'd pay to have them fixed up, get some landscaping done, and then sell them to respectable families for a cheaper price. This would help out families that might be in need, would move more people to the city, which then starts increasing the rest of the neighborhood. The city starts spending more money fixing up sidewalks and  extra emergency response workers would get hired on, the schools would start getting better, and after a few decades, the suburbs are back in the city.

We'd also buy up one of the warehouses around us, renovate it, open a restaurant/micro-brewery. We'd be terrible business for ourselves, because I would feature all St. Louis beers at our bar. That's right, I'd bring the competition right into the building with us. Schlafly, Civil Life, 4 Hands, Square One, hell, maybe even AB.

The other scenario has us moving to Denver or maybe somewhere in the north west. We'd get part time jobs, hit the mountains every weekend, travel to Europe, and basically do what we wanted. With that much money, we'd be set the rest of our lives.

I do this even on a smaller scale. There's a job I've applied for that would pay me a fairly significant more amount. I've not even had my first interview for it yet, but in my mind I'm thinking, it'll be "X amount more a month." First month, we can fix the leaking pipe and pay off X amount of medical debt. Second month, we could get that tree in our backyard chopped down and pay off X amount of our personal loan.

It's weird that we all do this, but it does seem to take some daily stress away just picture your life with this extra money laying around. It brings a weird smile to your face even though you know there's almost 0% of a chance that it'll happen.

Being Crippled

I think the hardest thing about my injury is having to deal with people treating me like a cripple. I'm only a temporary cripple, so I can't imagine someone that is bound to a wheelchair and having to deal with other people treating you differently.

For instance, anytime I trip or stumble now, Sallie freaks out. I get the "Are you ok? Be careful. What can I do?" I know she's just worried about me, and a trip put me in this situation in the first place, but after awhile, you just get tired of feeling fragile. I snapped at Sal this weekend for doing that, and felt terrible for it.

Also, I have the same conversation 700 times a day if I go into the office. Everyone that walks by my desk stops and has the, "How's the leg doing?" conversation.

You can tell it wears on me too. In the morning, you might get an explanation, or I might tell you how many times a week I'm going to the gym. By the end of the day, they usually get a gruffled, "getting there" and then I pretend to be busy on my computer.

I know there's not really anything I can do and people are just concerned about me, but it's been wearing on my lately. I'm trying to not let it affect me, but I've found myself getting more and more bitter about the whole situation. When I look at all the money I've had to pay, all the time wasted, all the progress I made on my lawn completely regressed to when we moved into the house, I just get angry.

I'm having a hard time figuring out the why.

And then I feel terrible because I know people personally that are worse off than I am and they are able to put on a bright face.

I think for now on, I'm going to take a deep breath, and realize that I will be fine by summer's end and there are some people that will deal with their body issues for the rest of their lives.

The Karma of our World

I don't necessarily believe in karma in the sense that, if I do good things, good things will happen to me. It don't feel its a payoff system. I feel its a collapse of your life sort of system.

I almost look like it like a video game. There's this line, every good deed and bad deed, decision, and action either drive you above the line in the positive, or below the line in the negative. If you're above this line, you know. People tend to smile when talking to you. You seem to have friends. Every now and then, if you look in the light just right, you might see a halo around your head.

If you look at the world in general, we're treading that line pretty closely, probably ending up on negative side more often than not. Most of the evil in the world, we have little control over. If two countries start a war with each other, or an African dictator kills thousands of civilians, or someone flies a plane into a tower, we don't have the resources to fix this. But there are things on a smaller scale we can do.

There's just lazy things that could help so much. Like this weekend, I went to the grocery store, and in three separate parking spots there were carts sitting in the middle of spot. Just because some lazy bum didn't feel like pushing a cart 50 feet to the cart return, other people have to park father away.

Or when I see people throwing their trash out their car window. You're telling me that you couldn't just keep that cup in your car for another 15 minutes and then throw it away when you get home?

Or in our dumpster right now is 4 cases of Budweiser bottles when there's a recycling bin only 25 feet away. How are people so lazy?

And there's so many people that curse or judge each other. I hear it all the time. In the line at the grocery store, "so and so is such a fat ass. What a bitch!" Hell, half those magazines on the rack print similar things about celebrities.

These, are things we can at least cancel out.

In the cart example, I gathered the carts and pushed them into the store with me. Barely took any effort on my part. I was walking past the parking spots anyway.

Or to balance out idiots not recycling out of laziness, every few weekends, I put on some gloves and walk around the neighborhood picking up trash. Once a year, there's actually an organized event where a bunch of people in South City wake up at 8 am and walk around picking up trash in the neighborhood for a few hours.

Since you can't control what other people gossip, balance it out by complimenting someone. Just a simple compliment about how someone looks or what a good job they did can really make someone's day.

This has just been grinding on me lately. It's most likely because I'm able to get out in the world fairly easily again. I spent six months secluded from the rest of the planet and I forgot how terrible a place it can be sometimes.