Baldilocks : No Photo Available...On Purpose

My birthday has just come and gone and for one reason or another, this one was a bit tough on me.  It wasn’t the birthday as much as it was the year.  I really applied myself to physical fitness this past 360ish days and didn’t quite see the results I was aiming for.  I’ve worked harder on my person this year than I have in the last two decades and I don’t have quite enough to show for it.  I’m thinking age might have something to do with it.  Something came up recently that hammered the point home.

Here’s the thing, I’m not generally a prideful guy, but I did something that kicked me square in the shame button.  I’m generally the opposite of prideful.  If I go to a high-end restaurant or hotel, I feel out of place, like an imposter waiting to be sniffed out. 

I have spent years trying to change that a little bit.  Trying to not mind being pampered a little, but thus far, I have failed completely. 

My ability to accept being pampered isn’t the point here.  We are here to talk about my shame. 

A little back story.  I was not a popular kid.  I lacked fashion sense and probably should have mixed in more salads than I did.  That may be true, but what I lacked in hygiene, and style and svelteness, I made up for with really good hair. 

I’m talking “Flock of Seagulls” good.  Perhaps is wasn’t that flamboyant, it was rock solid.  Jason Priestley would have looked at my hair and said, “damn, that fat kid has great hair!”

But all of that has changed.

With great hesitation it was time to take action.

I have shaved my head.

To some, that probably isn’t a big deal.  To me, earthshattering.

I used clippers set to #1.  I knew that I would regret it instantly, so I decided to go as short as possible on the first run.  I started by shaving in a mohawk.  Little did I know that my balding had made it wo my mohawk in profile looked more like Morse Code than teen angst.  As the last strip of hair left the top fell into the sink a few things dawned on me.  The first is that my head, although fairly round, is a touch off putting by sure size.  I’ve always known that I had a large head, having it shaved really put on full display how bulbus it really is. The second, perhaps less obvious to outsiders, is that I have a few “Klingon Wrinkles” on the back of my head.  If a bulbus head is slightly off putting, alien lines are just awful. 

Truth be told, I didn’t hate it, not exactly, it was more that the person looking me back in the mirror didn’t resemble me very much. 

Here’s the rub.  I don’t know that keeping my head shaved is something I want to keep doing, but I also know that Mother Nature is an angry lady and isn’t going to let me keep what I have now.  It’s a follicle Catch-22 and there is no way out that doesn’t involve toupees and hair plugs, so I guess this is me now.

The lesson here ladies?  For starters, I hope male pattern baldness isn’t a problem you’ll have to face in life.  I truly do, but there’s something else.  Its pride.  There’s a funny balance between having personal pride and being prideful.  Its great to have personal pride.  It keeps you studying hard and staying fit and keeping things clean.  Being prideful is a different animal altogether.  It can rear its head in a few ways.  For some it’s a feeling of superiority.  Like others are beneath you.  For others, its unrealistic expectations.  For me?  It was being unhappy about something “surface” that I couldn’t do a darn thing about.  It was being completely unable to see the silver lining.  Interesting choice of words considering my head now actually has a silver lining of grey hair.  Bit realistically, there are bright sides.  I’ll never have to pay for a haircut again and my shampoo budget just got cut by 90%.  I don’t have to worry about my hair on a windy day or after I step off my mid-life crisis motorcycle, I may need to pick up some day. 

But more than that, I’m surrounded by people who couldn’t care less about how thin my hair or my waistline are.  They apricate the work I’ve put in this year despite the lingering results, and I suppose that lesson is a good enough one to end on.

So, happy birthday to me, ya old, creaky, bald dummy! Go get yourself some cake!

Sober October, The New Year's Resolution for Slackers

Its Halloween.  Sure, my daughters were excited.  Avery, my eldest, was practical as always trading out her Wednesday Adams costume for something much warmer considering the 20^O  temperatures here in Colorado.  Macy, par for her particular course, dressed as a girl Pennywise from “It” despite the fact that she would undoubtedly freeze her clown shoes off.  Darby, being Darby, wound up being the same Grim Reaper that Macy was last year.  She thinks her older sisters are very cool and can’t wait to mimic anything they do, even twelve months after the fact.

As scary as their costumes were, this post is about something much more frightening.  Its about a little thing called Sober October.  A little backstory.  I live in Fort Collins, Colorado.  We have more micro-breweries, per capita, than anyplace else in the country.  We are blessed in that capacity.  Along with delicious inebriants, I am not someone who people would describe as svelte.  Both the amazing beers and ‘Tubby Chris’ are key points for this blog post.

I was listening to a blog post featuring a few of my favorite comedians and they commit themselves to something called #SoberOctober.  What they are doing is committing to being sober for 31 days and pairing that with some physical challenge for the month.  One year they had a weight loss challenge, another was a heart rate challenge. 

I’m about to go on a tangent, but it’ll make sense before too long.  I recently attended a class at the gym.  For those in the know its called “Body Pump”.  The guy offering the class was in waaaaaay worse shape than I was.  He was a six-foot-tall red headed guy that had fifty pounds on me despite the fact that he wore shorts one size smaller than what I wear.  Some people may have been put off, but I was excited.  It was freeing for me to see someone standing in front of a physically fit group and commanding their attention and action.  He gives hope to those of us that more closely resemble an arctic seal than a Navy one. 

All of that being said, the podcast I was watching featured four comedians, two of which would be considered “plus sized”.  It got me thinking. If they can handle it, surely, I could. 

So, I decided to not only do the “sober” part of October but also commit to a rigorous workout plan.  My intention was to work out, in some capacity, all thirty-one days of October.  Sober and sore was my intention.

Sober and sore is what I became.

I am proud to say that I was able to do a really extreme workout regimen all while not consuming a single sip of alcohol.  It may not seem altogether impressive, but I was continually sore and I was able to maintain my beer-free self through a wedding with an open bar and the 50^th birthday party of a very dear friend. 

Here’s the catch.  I worked out, I watched everything I put in my body and at the end of the day I lost two pounds.  Two.  Two little insignificant pounds.  A small enough amount of weight that it could be that I was just a little dehydrated when I weighed myself.  Pfffft, two pounds.

There is actually a lesson here, girls, and it isn’t to shelve things that seem difficult.  I suppose its about follow through.  I suspected for weeks that the weight loss benefit of this Autumn experiment was not going as hoped.  It would have been easy to step on a scale on October 15^th and then bail on the whole thing when the results were less than awesome. 

Easy, sure, but it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.  Setting a goal, even a difficult one, can really move you in a positive direction.  Yeah, maybe I didn’t get the rewards I wanted, I still get the satisfaction of knowing I set a difficult goal (difficult for me anyway) and exceeded my own expectations in terms of effort.

Long story short, give yourself goals, tough ones, and do your best to achieve them.  I’d rather you set tough goals and fail than set no goals and succeed. That seems obvious, but trust me, as you get older, it becomes pretty easy to set a low bar for yourself and then congratulate yourself for hitting it.  So, Avery, its time to start training for that half marathon.  Macy, maybe skateboard lessons would do you some good, and Darby, my dear, you’ve tackled a lot this year, but there have been a few things that have eluded you. Let’s get to work on those. 

Now, get busy little ladies, daddy is taking a nap.

Free Golf and Expensive Beverages at Torrey Pines

A few months ago, I posted about a trip my wife won to Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego.  Last weekend we went on said trip.  It was an all-expense paid vacation that included a couple of rounds of golf and a stay at a hotel that was so far above my pay grade that I considered being a caddy to help me look like I belonged anywhere near it.

It had slippers and bathrobes and bell hops and valets and shoe cleaning and concierges and little mints branded to the hotel. 

I’m used to locking my door at hotels for safety sake, I locked them here because I couldn’t afford to replace the hotel bathrobes if they were to get stolen. 

That being said, it was lovely, my wife loved it, the down mattress, the pampering, all of it.  White collar living has always been an ill-fitting suit for me, but I made myself appreciate it as much as possible.

There were moments where appreciating it was impossible.  There was a fella who threw his bag of donuts on the ground because his room wasn’t ready.  There was a woman who berated a poor busboy because the coffee station was out of coffee and she was “going to need coffee if I’m going to be dealing with my kids this morning”. 

The golf course was a different thing altogether.  While privileged and crawling with caddies and $10 beers, it played like every other golf course I’d ever played.  It was picturesque and featured holes I had seen on T.V. but they were all made out of grass and dirt and had a hole with a flag in it.  I watched dozens of people hit their first tee shot looking like a dog pooping razor blades, I didn’t have the same nerves.  I don’t know why.  I literally have been playing crappy golf for the last six months but fixed it all on a world-renowned golf course. 

I was proud of myself in this: I recognized some of the more famous holes and didn’t hit the panic button when I stood over the ball on them.  There was a long downhill par three that was 180 yards into a stiff offshore wind.  It was gorgeous and a hole I’ve seen a lot of pros miss completely.  I watched the two golfers before me spray the ball, one into a cavern, the other into the ocean.  It wasn’t a settling feeling but where the voices would normally be poking me in the ol’ cranium they were quiet all day long.  I hit the green and parred the hole.

I could go on about fancy hotels and unexpectedly good golf games, but that isn’t really the point.  I was able to spend a long weekend with my wife and a couple of dear friends.  It was a weekend without social media and soccer games.  It was a weekend of setting aside my workout program and eating delicious food regardless of calorie count (also, here’s a tip.  If you find yourself in the greater San Diego area find Hodads and get a burger immediately).  It was about getting away a bit.

The lesson here little ones?  Well it isn’t about playing good golf and staying in way to expensive places.  Its about mommy and daddy recharging our batteries.  Macy, you asked me if you could go on the trip.  I gave you an unapologetic ‘no’.  It may have sounded abrupt (probably too abrupt) but the answer would have been ‘no’ regardless of tone.  Mommy and daddy need away time.  We love traveling with you girls, seeing a bit of the world with you, but we need us time as well.  It isn’t any kind of shot at you but every once in a while mommy and daddy recognize that we’ve only seen each other at soccer games and carpool handoffs. 

Getting to see your mother do things that aren’t on the mother schedule is great.  Seeing her have a beer at noon or whack a golf ball into the ocean is good for me and her being able to sleep in a way-too-soft bed and lose her cell phone for a few hours is good for her.   Trust me, the mommy and daddy you’ll see now will be a much more relaxed pair than the one who left you a few days ago!