Swimming at UCLA 1-31-12

Coming off a recent fabulous Las Vegas Spa experience at the Venetian, I’m feeling good, supercharged, and motivated to exercise. I went swimming at the UCLA north campus pool today.  I’m going to get my athletic physique back, starting now. My wife, who is my main athletic supporter, accompanied me.

I slipped my Fat & Sloppiness into the unheated pool and tried to warm myself up by swimming briskly.  My swimming strokes weren’t going as well as I had hoped.  It felt like I was swimming in place and my arms felt like lead.  I started out doing a regular crawl, but that was too difficult, so I changed to the more feminine breast stroke. I set out on today’s journey with a planned workout of 15 minutes, but my first minute seemed like an eternity.  Always wanting to be of assistance, my wife asked the life guard if I was swimming in place or just treading water; she couldn’t really tell. She needed his professional opinion.  

Read more…

Squirrel 1, Me 0 4-26-15

A year ago, we moved into a home with mature fruit trees.  They have perfect flavorful fruit when allowed to ripen. Fat and Sloppy is a big fan of tree ripened fruit.

I fertilize and deep water the trees as instructed by my fertilizer bag.  I celebrate each baby fruit that will develop and ripen into the pride of my existence. I look forward to harvesting and eating fruit from my own trees. Unfortunately, Fat and Sloppy got zero fruit this season because the neighborhood squirrel ate my crop.  This brazen thief seems to steal fruit on a 24/7 basis.  Although he has dropped the peels on me from the branches of a pine tree, I never catch him in the act of running off with my fruit.  The cast off rinds and the discarded half eaten oranges, grapefruits, apples and avocados that litter my yard are silent testimony to an enemy whom I despise. Read more…

Rogue Matress

My days as a house painter are spent on the road giving estimates and monitoring job progress.  My meals are eaten in the car while driving and listening to 1980’s heavy metal cranked to full volume.  The passenger side of my Ford Expedition doubles as a trash can; empty sushi trays, drained smoothie bottles, crumpled Milky Way wrappers, blackened banana peels, and empty plastic Arrowhead water bottles live there and greet new arrivals every day.

A favorite road snack is banana and peanuts.  I take a bite of banana and throw in a mouthful of peanuts. The peanuts are transferred to my mouth via the opening in the 16 ounce Planters Peanut jar.  I chew the banana and peanuts together in my mouth, a tasty mash.

It was a warm Thursday around noon in Los Angeles as I headed back from an estimate in Pasadena to a job in Beverly Hills.  Traffic was light.  I was driving west on the 134 freeway near the Figueroa exit, eating bananas and peanuts, and listening to Rainbow’s 1979 “All night long” on the radio.  The jar was almost empty with just a few peanuts, kernels and brown peanut skins on the bottom of the jar.  I hefted the jar up to my mouth in a way that would move the peanuts off the bottom of the jar but not hit the roof of my car.  I’ve eaten hundreds of pounds of peanuts this way over the years and I consider it a safe activity.  This time, though, a peanut kernel flew into my right eye.  I rubbed my eye with my unsalted middle finger and after I regained focus, I notice I’m approaching a queen size box spring mattress at 60 miles an hour. Read more…

Crack for Me 7-2-12

Crack is the most addictive form of cocaine.  Fat and Sloppy has his own form of crack cocaine; Post Fruity Pebbles. I’ve long considered Fruity Pebbles the most difficult cereal to resist in the universe of breakfast food products. I don’t always eat them, but when I do, it’s the entire box with a half gallon of milk while watching “The Price is Right”.

My wife sent me to the Westwood Village Ralph’s grocery store earlier tonight to get formula and milk for the kids; among other things on a long list.  I spent nearly an hour hunting for the items she wanted.  Next time she makes me a shopping list, she should make it according to the grocery store isles instead of a random list.  I orbited the store 15 times searching for everything she wanted.

Fruity Pebbles always tempt me when I go to the store and I usually ignore them.  Tonight, I don’t know why, but the temptation was too much.  At first I couldn’t locate them in the cereal isle.  Maybe, I thought, they had been outlawed.  Finally, after scouring the isle a second time, Read more…

I’m so smart I’m stupid.

My wife wants to sell our house and move.  Her parents (and mine) don’t like climbing the 17 steep front steps and they won’t visit us anymore.  There is no talking her out of the move and anyway, she’s already packed up half the house because the real estate agent told her to.  While this was happening,  I did my part by hoping she would get over her idea of moving and I got a moving company to estimate the cost of our move.   The moving company pegged the total cost at over $6,000.00;  I immediately looked for a cheaper way to move.

Being the clever person that I am, and I have a crew of painters who can help out, I figured I personally could do the move for less. So, I rented a U-haul, had one of my employees bring it to our house, and loaded the boxes and furniture with my crew of painters.   I glowed all day with the inner radiance a genius gets when he saves a pile of money by doing something himself.

It took most of the day to load the truck with a small portion of our stuff. Read more…

Wardrobe Malfunction 4-29-12

My family and I went to the Israel Fair today at Rancho Park in West Los Angeles.  My wife and her friends scheduled to meet up and spend the day there.  I got dressed as usual, putting on a t-shirt, khaki shorts, white socks and black shoes; just like I always do to go to work.  As I’m about to walk out the bedroom door, I’m officiously stopped by the wife and told to get dressed in something that won’t humiliate her.

I selected a pair of long pants she recently purchased for me.  They were snug,  fit tighter and more constricting than I remember the last time I wore them a month ago.  This ensemble was approved by my wife even though I could tell from her smirk that I had barely passed the fashionability threshold.

I spent my day as the family Sherpa; lugging water bottles, food, stuffed animal winnings, sticky ice creams, baby formula, etc.  All the while, the delicate skin on the back of my neck sizzled bright red in my first sun exposed outing of the year.  Happy day!

While my family enjoyed rides with names like tilt-a-whirl, gravitron, and  kamakaze, I thought about lunch.  When would I eat?  What would I eat?   The morning wore into noon, and finally, everyone was hungry so my wife told me to cough up my wallet and grab a lunch table while the she got food.  She has a special ability to remember what everyone likes to eat.  I’ve always been impressed with her talent and she returned with her arms full of meals.  I was presented with a juicy hamburger on a bun.

After eating it, I patiently waited to see who wouldn’t finish their meal so I could.  My wife, who is kind and generous, bought an extra large grilled lamb and chicken shwarma laffa knowing that she would give me what she couldn’t finish.  She left me 75 percent of her uneaten laffa.   Thanks to her, I ate two lunches for lunch.  Happy me!

After eating, we sent the kids back on the rides hoping they wouldn’t throw up their expensive lunches.  When they tired of the rides, we spent the remainder of the afternoon visiting crafts booths and waited an hour for parachutists that never landed.  After the emcee announced that the jumpers were delayed for another two hours, my wife declared that our day at the fair was over.

Still full from my two lunches and not really hungry but still wanting to eat; I suggested we have Mexican for dinner.  We drove to a place called MexiKosher.  The place is too cramped to really enjoy eating in, so we stood in line, ordered, and had it packed for take out.

I had trouble getting my wallet out of my pocket, my pants were so tight.  How did these pants shrink in such a short time?  I couldn’t have gained that much weight in just one month.  After waiting way too long for our food, we were finally ready to go.  I paid and we walked back to the car.  I could barely lift my leg to step on the running board as I got in the car.  Those damn pants.

When we pulled into the driveway, I jumped out with our dinners.  I planned to put the food in the house and then help the wife bring up the kids.  (Maybe I should have taken the wife and kids up first and the dinner second.)  I hurried ahead, and as I reached into my pocket for my house keys, I remembered that I hadn’t taken them.  So I turned around and went back down the stairs to get my wife’s house key.

I knew I was going to hear from her mouth because I had just left her to get the kids out of the car by herself so I could run ahead with our food.  I realized I was acting like a schmuck. In that second of thought, I lost focus and I hit the edge of the stair incorrectly.  Those cursed tight pants had altered my steps by a fraction of an inch.  That fraction of an inch prevented me from extending my leg properly.  I didn’t remember to recalibrate my steps to compensate for the tight pants, I wasn’t able to regain my balance.

Realizing that I was going down, I quickly calculated my two options;  toss our dinner and render it uneateable but have two hands free to break my fall, or hold onto the dinner (it cost $60.00) and try to save myself and the dinner.

I chose option number two.  Save me and the dinner.  Bad choice.  I fully blame my pants for this fall. Had I worn my khaki shorts, I would have had the freedom of movement to save me and our dinner. Instead, I ended up going head first down the stairs.  I only remember coming to with my head pointing downward at the bottom of the staircase.  I completely lost our dinner.

My wife comes running up to me and asks if I’m OK.  My answer to her was an obscenity filled tirade blaming her for my fall down the stairs.  It was as if she hadn’t heard one word of my cursing her because she immediately asked if we could eat the dinner that had fallen onto the ground.  She reasoned that it hadn’t been on the ground long enough to make it dirty.  Being the delicate flower (high maintenance one) in this marriage, I said “no.”

My wife continued to press me on the possibility of still eating our dinner, now strewn over our lawn and staircase; this, even before I had time to make sure no limbs were broken or how much blood I was losing.  I felt covered in blood and I was concerned that I might have injured myself.  I did injure myself, but what I thought was blood turned out to be guacamole and taco sauce.

I didn’t want anyone to know about my fall, I have MaNPriDe, but my wife thought it was noteworthy and spent the entire evening chitchatting with her friends telling them about my fall.  As I laid next to her covered with bags of frozen broccoli to stop the swelling, I got to relive my fall over and over again.  Lucky me!

The next day I slipped the pants into a Salvation Army clothing receptacle.  Hopefully someone thin will enjoy them.  I didn’t.

This video is the closest thing I can find to an instant replay of my fall.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-kg0o2hw0

Pine Nuts — Bad Snack Choice 1-31-12

I used to love pine nuts.  I consider them a mystery food which made eating them something exotic.  Though I assume they’re a natural food, I really don’t know what they are or where they come from; the bottom of a pine cone?  I recently discovered a plastic sack of them in the pantry.  I tossed about 30 handfuls of them into my mouth over about five minutes as I watched a Lakers basketball game on TV.

The next morning, I awoke with a powerful metallic taste in my mouth.  Nothing I ate could get rid of it. Over the day, that metallic taste became the focus of my existence.  Everything I ate tasted horrible and the same. I was no longer experiencing the Epicurean adventure I expect every meal and snack to be.

A day later, with the metallic taste still in my mouth, my only thought was that something was terribly wrong with me.  I didn’t tell my wife, but she should have known something was up because I was more snappy with her than I had been in a long time.  In my mind, I ran over the list of imagined horrible things this could be, and quietly scared the crap out of myself.

Never the less, I didn’t want to spend the money on a doctor visit even though I was convinced that this was serious.  Finally, I confided to my wife my potentially urgent medical condition.

Knowing me as she has for the last 10 years, my wife didn’t offer any support for this new mystery ailment but she did give me the stink eye.  She has held my hand through other hypochondriac medical issues before.  She instructed me, in a tone only a wife can give, “type into Google metallic taste in my mouth.” and “food tastes horrible.”   Just thinking about the money I’d save by not going to the doctor lifted my spirits.

The answer was there alright.  Surprisingly, I’m not the only one who thought eating a bag of pine nuts was a good idea.  According to posts on the medical answer sites, eating that many pine nuts can ruin your taste buds for weeks.

I don’t know what relieved me more, finding out that there were scores of fellow idiots who eat as many pine nuts as me, or that nothing was wrong with me.  Either way, my outlook immediately improved, even though the metallic taste stayed on for another week.  Armed with the knowledge that I had blown out my own taste buds I ignored the awful taste in my mouth, turned on the TV to a Clippers basketball game, laid down on my couch and ate two tasteless king sized Milky Way Bars.

Getting by on My Looks…Not 12-12-11

I, as leader of the fat and sloppy nation, maintain a certain look.  In my own way, I’m a fashionista.  My daily wardrobe is cargo pants or cargo shorts and a t-shirt with a pocket.  If people really look around and notice, there are many men who dress like me.  One might think that they have given up on themselves.  I haven’t; and even though my wife often complains about my look, I’m never embarrassed no matter who sees me.

I wear this t-shirt/cargo pants ensemble year round weather it is 40 degrees or 110 degrees.  Sometimes I sleep in my t-shirt and go to work in it.  It’s like going to work in my pajamas.  I don’t buy my t-shirts, they are given to me.  I get my t-shirts from trade shows or from my paint suppliers.  I’m a human accretion disk for t-shirts.  I’ve owned thousands during my adulthood.  It makes me happy when someone asks me for a t-shirt.  I have so many new ones that I can be a t-shirt big shot and give mine away.

I’m too busy and disorganized for daily shaving.  Five days can come and go without my shaving.  When I finally notice myself, I shave.  I go to work like this, every day.  I think some executives might be jealous of me.

Anything more than a daily shower and putting on clean clothes I consider grooming.  Real grooming is what I did in my 20’s and 30’s when I was looking to find a date.  I don’t do that anymore, I’m married.

My t-shirts also do duty as a napkin or towel.  Most days I end up wearing a t-shirt/napkin combination.  Since t-shirts are easy to come by, why not clean my mouth on them.  I’m clever enough to know people will assume my food smears are paint spatters.

Even though how I look doesn’t bother me, I often wonder how I look to strangers.  Do I look like an unshaven house painter who has food smears on his untucked t-shirt?  I wear my t-shirt untucked because I can’t button my pants.  I’m too fat.  I drape my t-shirt over my opened button and zipper so I don’t have to wear a belt.

I’ve had the same dozen pairs of pants for about 10 years now.  I know them and they know me.  We have a great relationship; I’ve gotten fatter and my pants remain the same.  They never complain or make fun of me.  My wife loves to offer to buy me new paints with a 38″ waist.   Fifteen years ago, I had a 30″ waist.  My wife gets a zing of extra joy in her day when she can allude to my need for larger pants in “innocent” conversation.

Autopsy for a Dead Toilet 10-24-11

I have the best father-in-law in the world.  He likes me and I like him.   Eight years ago, he proposed to me by telling me I had to marry his daughter.  I did.  We visit him every few weeks and he pays for gas, groceries, and restaurants when we are by him.

There are no problems in my and my father-in-law’s relationship except one.  He lives in a cheaply constructed house.  I’m in construction (a house painter) and know bad work when I see it.  Whomever designed and built his house should be put in the Idiots Hall of Fame.   The Three Stooges couldn’t come up with the stupidities that this house has.  Every light switch is behind the door.  There is a five foot square bathroom with three doors that open up into it.  How can that be?  I have to close the other two just to open the one.  If I wanted to make money, I could sell tickets to his house as The Museum of the Stupidest House Ever Built.

His poorly built house has inserted a question mark into me and my father-in-law’s special relationship.  It seems that  my wife (his daughter) has branded me a “toilet clogger,” and no matter who clogs the toilet, everyone accuses me of doing it.  I’ll admit, I have clogged my share of domestic and international toilets, but I plunged this one and it shouldn’t have overflowed.  Seems my wife forgot that the toilet didn’t work, used it, loaded it, and flushed this toilet.  It flowed all over the second floor and poured down through the light fixture into the dining room.  How appetizing!

My father-in-law, a man in his mid 80’s, is a proud do-it-yourselfer. He lifted the toilet from the bathroom floor and carried it outside.  He isn’t a delicate man and things that bother me don’t bother him.  So, he didn’t care when the toilet sloshed it’s contents on the carpet as he manhandled it down the staircase.   There was some kind of primitive male one upsmanship going on here.  He shot me a look as he dragged the toilet downstairs.

The toilet sat on his front lawn the entire weekend for all the neighbors in the cul-de-sac to see and admire.  It also sat there proudly as a monument to the fragile state of our once strong bond.

Since my wife is my father-in-laws only daughter, she is perfect in his eyes.  Blame quickly turned to me as the clogger.  I insisted it wasn’t me who caused the trouble.  The only problem with his toilet was his daughter, but I wasn’t about to turn her in.  He was adamant that I was to blame and started to treat me differently.

His whole family (many cousins were at the house that weekend) argued about causation and blame.  Finally I suggested that an autopsy be performed on the toilet.  My wife agreed that this was the only way to find out if the toilet was defective or someone (fat and sloppy) clogged it.  Sometime later, when no one noticed, my father-in-law took a hammer to the back of the toilet and broke it open.

I didn’t see or hear the results of the autopsy.  My father-in-law didn’t say another word about it.  My wife didn’t say anything either.  Maybe it was me, maybe it wasn’t.  Either way, that problem causing toilet is dead and gone.

Food Hangover 8-2-11

Every night around midnight, I get a hankering to eat.  Not just a snack, a full meal.  It’s my right as an American to eat five full meals a day.  When my cravings come upon me, I am obedient and follow them to the refrigerator.  I open the door to survey the my food choices.  If there isn’t anything interesting in the refrigerator, I go to the pantry.  If there isn’t anything interesting in the pantry I go back to the refrigerator.   Eventually I find something, turn on the TV, and eat.

Knowing I have to get up at 5AM makes this late night eating feel so decadent and good.   I’m balancing between the old day and the new one and there is something liberating about quietly eating like a free man in the middle of the night.

This would all be well and good except for the food hang over I’ll get when I wake up in the morning.  I didn’t know why I felt so crappy in the morning, but I consulted other fat and sloppies and they informed me that this is called a food hangover.  I immediately grasped the concept.  I asked them if there was something I could do to still eat and avoid the food hangover.  None of them seemed to know, it wasn’t something they had ever thought about before.

Is this another passage into middle age?  Having to choose eating huge meals at midnight or getting up refreshed in the morning.  I used to be able to do both.