Plane Yogurt

I just completed my first weekend as a bachelor in many years and boy was I wild.

Saturday, I spent the day looking at one possible area where my family may live.

Sunday, I spent the day looking at another possible area where my family may live.

Is that wild or what?

Ok, I did have a three-flavor, three-topping frozen yogurt for dinner on Sunday.

Does that count?

I actually really enjoy the process of walking through home after home, after home, after home, in search of the perfect palace.

I mean place.  (Damn keyboard.)

Whether you are renting or buying or leasing or leasing to buy or whatever, there are about nine million options out there.

It really doesn’t matter what city you are in.

I’ve always found that the quantity is not the hard part.

The quality is another story.

It's funny what some people find attractive.   

Like the bright teal colored carpet I saw strewn all over a house today.

Or the... hey whatever works for you. 

The two locations I visited were in completely opposite directions, both about the same exact distance from where I am working.

My gut tells me the Saturday destination is the favorite.

And as Al Roker would have it, Saturday was an absolutely beautiful summer day.

While Sunday was humid beyond belief with rain storms so strong you would’ve thought they were filming an Eddie Rabbitt music video.

Now I don’t know if it was symbolic or significant, but I wonder if mother nature was trying to tell me something.

Of course, none of this is going to matter until my wife and kids see the different areas, which won’t happen for a couple of months.

But the good news, it will happen.

Moments ago, I just booked their trip for their first visit to their new home.

Wherever that may be.

None of the kids have been to this part of the country, so there will be plenty of build up.

Kinda like Avatar 2.

Even though they are not coming for like two months, I wanted to book the plane tickets now to get the best deal.

It’s the Jewish way.

I tried expedia, travelocity, orbitz, kayak, ratemymullet, any place I could to get the job done.

And every single site had the same exact flights at the same exact price.

Makes no sense.

The good news is the flights were really, well sorta, cheap, like $300 for a round-trip ticket.

The bad news is I'm buying four tickets.

$300 x 4, carry the one, = $1200.

Wow!  Do you know how many frozen yogurts I could buy for $1200?

Do I want to see my family?  Of course.

Are they worth $1200?

OBJECTION.   

The witness doesn’t need to answer that.

Once I stopped hyperventilating, I realized that I might be able to go into my bag of tricks and use some miles to get this puppy done.

So I called one airline and after working my way through the automated hell, I got a human.

They told me for something like 50,000 miles per person, they would be able to put my family on an itinerary that would have more stops than an LA freeway.

Not to mention the 200,000 miles that I don’t have.

Fortunately I had traveled quite a bit in a previous job and I was able to test the waters of another airline.

I had built up something like 106,832 miles.  

But who’s counting.

So I called the 800 number -- I don’t really trust the internet -- and within minutes Nicole answered.

I know her name is Nicole, because I asked.

54 minutes, 100,000 miles and $40 later, we had our tickets.   All four of them.

The trip still involves one stop, but the bottom line is I will get to see my family again.

Even if only for a week.

And you can’t put a price tag on that.

As long as it’s less than $1200.

Can You See Me Now?

There have been some amazing inventions in my lifetime.

Microwave popcorn.

Fantasy Baseball.

The iPod.

But face it, if it wasn’t for Al Gore and his little internet invention, our life would be incomplete.

I’m on it at least 26 hours a day.

Tonight I went to dinner with a friend.

I used mapquest to find the restaurant, Yelp to find a place for dessert and espn.com to find out how bad my fantasy baseball team performed today.

Just imagine if I had to wait until tomorrow morning to read those box scores.

Been there, done that.

Honestly, the world wide web gets more amazing every day.

There is a website for EVERYTHING.

You want to keep up on the first male pregnancy.   

•   malepregnancy.com

If you want to see what pets would look like in a uniform.

•   petsinuniform.com

If you have a mullet and you’d like to have it rated.

•   ratemymullet.com

Really.

I’m proud to say I had never visited any of those sites until five minutes ago and honestly, I don’t plan on going back.

But one place I do visit almost daily now is called skype.

Most of you have probably used it or seen it or heard of it.

It is a site where you can make video phone calls from one computer to another.

FOR FREE.

All you need is a webcam and it takes less than five minutes to sign up and download the software.

And then, you can see them and they can see you.

It’s skype-tastic.

If this sounds like an ad, it is.

Well, they are not paying me, but this product is incredible.

Especially if you and your family live on opposite sides of the country and you want to see what each other looks like a couple of times a week.

It is as simple as...

text -- hey dad, can you skype?

text -- yes.

Logon.  Open Skype.  Click call.   Click Video.  

Have conversation.

Amazing.

Through the first week of our separation, my wife and kids and I have skyped almost every day.

(Is skyped really a word?)

I know what it has done for me and I can see what it has done for them.

Really, I can actually see it.

Not that I am anything special to look at, but being able to see me and know that I am still there, has actually made them happier.

I can see it in their eyes.

Thanks to skype.

It certainly doesn’t replace being able to hold them or hug them or yell at them for having a dirty room, but it does remind them that I still exist.

Most of our conversations have gone at least 30 minutes, where a normal phone call is over in five.

This week, my six-year old auditioned for a local choir.

For the audition, she had to learn “My Country, ‘tis of thee".

So the night before the audition, we sang it over and over... and over again until she got the rhythm.

I could see that she was nervous and as stiff as she was bored.

So I asked her to sing “Baby” by Justin Bieber.

She did, every word, including the rap part.

She was smiling throughout.

So I encouraged her to do "My Country" that same way, with the same energy.    Which she did. 

I may have been across the country, but for our rehearsal, it was like I was there.

She loves singing.   And I love listening.

If you want to see her rendition of Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me”, click here.

The girl can sing.

And fortunately the choir agreed.  She made the team.

She skyped to tell me.

Is skyped a word?

it's all in the text

good morning....

Those two little words have been exchanged by my son and I every morning for as long as I can remember.

But today those words had a different meaning.

Today those words were not exchanged in his bedroom.

Or at the kitchen table.

Or in the living room, above the roar of the MLB Network recap show he watches EVERY morning.

Today those words were exchanged, via text.

From across the country.

From his little fingers to my little phone.

The fact that he is still thinking about me first thing in the morning is a great thing.

But I fully recognize that my sudden departure has brought a void in his life and the life of his mom and two sisters.

I can hear it in their voice and hear it in their texts.

And it makes me hurt knowing that they are hurting.

But like Jerry Lewis always says, this is for a good cause.

This was supposed to be a great fall for my son, instead it has been a great fall.

He was supposed to be playing tackle football and off-season baseball, all with his dad living one hallway away.

Two weeks ago he broke his hand in a football practice which ended his busy schedule, before it even started.

This came just a few days after I informed the kids that I was leaving.

That broke his heart.

Sadly, thousands of families inform their kids every day that dad is leaving.

Or mom is leaving.

But they are not coming back.

As a child of a divorced family, I can still remember that discussion like it was 31 years, seven months and 13 days ago.

For me, I think hearing that news was a relief.

The loud noises in our home had nothing to do with the MLB Network.

Rodney King did not invent, “can’t we all just get along”.

I did.

The good news for me and my family is that I am coming back.

Or actually they are coming back to me.

It’s just going to take some time.

Living apart, across the country, is not easy for any of us.

But knowing that there is a bright light shining, off in the distance, is what we are all focused on.

Deep down I know the kids are genuinely excited about what lies ahead for all of us.

But at 11-years old words like unemployment and mortgage and dad is not here anymore are words on a spelling test.

Not words in a test of real life.

I don’t expect the kids to know how I am feeling, but I definitely understand how they are feeling.

Growing up, we moved from one city to another after second grade and after fourth grade.

We moved from one state to another during tenth grade and after tenth grade.

During high school, I went to four different schools, in three different cities.

Amazingly it had nothing to do with bad grades or a bad attitude.

It had to do with work.

My dad’s work.

I didn’t understand it at the time.

But I can see clearly now that my dad is gone.

Good Day Sir

I usually spend all day writing a blog in my head and then when I get home I put pen to paper.

I mean fingers to keyboard.

But not this time.

The blog I had planned all day is being put on the back burner.

Instead you are getting a side of me that many of you have never seen before.

An off-the-charts happy, smiling from ear-to-ear, good things happen to good people, optimistic side that I have not felt in several years.

If ever.

I am typing as fast as I can because if I don’t finish this blog by midnight, who knows what will happen.

The source of this sudden burst of elation is my return to the working world.

I just finished day two of my new job and as Ronald McDonald would say, “da da da da da, I’m Loving It.”

Just like any relationship, the beginning is always the best.

The first date.

The first kiss.

The drive home after the first kiss.

Then the kids come and everything goes to hell.

Ok, back to the happy guy.

I have completed two whole days in the new job and they have both been fantastic.

Well day one was fantastic and day two was even better.

Ok, calm down, yes, I do realize that two days do not make a career.

But coming from where I came from, being happy is something that I couldn’t be any happier about.

This job has made me feel alive again.

I feel rejuvenated.

I feel respected.

I feel relieved.

And any other positive word that begins with the letter R.

I have no delusions that this feeling will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Honestly, I just hope its still there in the morning.

As I headed home from work tonight I spoke with a couple of my bestest buddies over the cell phone.

And let me tell you, my day was so good, AT&T only dropped one of the calls.

Now that’s amazing.

Both of my friends have been with me since college.

They were with me before my career, during my career and in the two years after my career died.

Tonight, both guys spoke with a friend they haven’t spoken to in a long time.

Oh, we’ve had calls.   Plenty of them.

But not like this.

I did most of the talking, sharing as many details as I could about how my week has gone.

They both told me that I deserve to be happy.

They both told me how excited they are that I am feeling so great.

And if they are so excited, just imagine how I must feel.

While I was out of work, I had dreams that this day would come.

But those dreams never came.

Well, not for me.

After everybody was let go from my last job, the shock and pain hit us all.

Hard.  VERY hard.

But one-by-one, the good people who were treated so badly found new work.

And one-by-one, they moved on with their life.

And one-by-one, they spent more time talking about tomorrow instead of yesterday.

I didn’t get that opportunity.

Until now.

During my two years on the bench, I had a couple of jobs that came my way.

Not job offers, just possibilities.

But none of them panned out.    And honestly, none of them were right.

This job is right.

At least 48 hours in, it feels right.

And that’s all I’m thinking about.

Honestly, I’m not thinking about in two weeks or in two months or in two years.

I’m thinking about now.

Right now.

And I feel good.

And that feels great.

Half Full, Very Empty

Boy does it feel good to be back at the computer.

In the last week, I barely had time to write a grocery list.

I certainly didn’t have time to write a blog.

For those of you joining me in progress…

…I was told in December of 2008 that my services were no longer needed.   Last week, I became employed again.

Now you are caught up.

Editor’s Note:

If you want a little more (or a lot more) of the story, look to the right and click on “My Journey Through Unemployment”.  It will keep you busy for eight months.  It did it for me.

When I started writing the blog, I wanted to take you into the world of a real person, with a real family going through a real life-changing situation.

143 blogs later, here were are.

Clearly, my story is far from unique, but whether it was my subtle references to some of the 80′s one-hit wonders or just my willingness to speak my mind, people connected.

The response was 574 miles past incredible.

Now that I am headed back into the working world, the “Journey Through Unemployment” doesn’t work so well.

And that’s a good thing.   Actually, a GREAT thing.

But I’m still going to write.

Anne Marie, my good friend from Quebec, wouldn’t have it any other way.

In fact, I have decided to write all about my new life.

Well, sorta.

Like the last blog, I won’t get too specific about my job or where I’m living, but rather, I will be telling the real stories of my real life.

A life that has taken quite a twist in the last few weeks.

And especially in the last day.

I woke up yesterday morning in my own bed, at home, with my wife and three kids.

I went to bed last night in my OWN bed, by myself, on the other side of the country.

Away from my wife.

Away from my 13-year old daughter.

Away from my 11-year old son.

Away from my six-year old daughter.

Away from my dog.

Away from everyone.

But employed.  Again.

And that’s a GREAT thing.

But it’s not perfect.

For the next ___ months, I will be living on my own, thousands of miles away from my family.

For me, there will be no school functions.  No dance contests.  No games.  No meals together.  No bedtime stories.

No family.

Just a long distance dedication, without Casey Kasem.

As hard as this may be, leaving the family and taking the job was a very easy decision.

Not exactly Sophie’s Choice, but it was still sad.

Don’t get me wrong, the sacrifice we are making is NOTHING compared to what the incredibly brave members of our military and their families do every day.

I am making no comparisons, I am merely talking about my situation.

And my life yesterday was more bittersweet than dark chocolate.

On one hand I'm walking away from the family I've been part of for nearly two years.

Sure, I was part of the family before that, but being at home 24/7/365 since I got the ax has given me time to rebuild relationships that the hours of my last job had destroyed.

On the other hand, I'm leaving that family for a job that will hopefully ignite my career and give us all a new start.

The plan is for my wife to stay where she is, sell the home, keep her job and let the kids finish the school year (which just started).

Then we will reunite like Peaches and Herb.

At least, that’s the plan.