Congratulations!

4am comes early, 4am to be precise. This morning I awoke to another Minnesota blizzard, and braved the storm to go to the gym as I normally do on my days off. I’ve been a busy boy. I’m at the tail-end of a complete financial makeover. When I got out of prison, I accumulated an incredible amount of debt acquiring a lifetime of needs, and the debt continued to climb when we bought a house. I’m talking about credit card debt; the worst kind. We are at a point now where we no longer need the aid of high-interest cards to obtain our livelihood, so I consolidated all of it into a much lower interest rate loan. I pay about the same every month, but I pay a lot more toward the actual debt.

I have also refinanced the minivan and the house into lower-interest loans. It actually costs quite a bit to lower the payments, but the numbers added up to significant savings over the terms of the loans. The house was appraised at $10k over what it was last time, so we have more equity right off the bat.

I said in a meeting the other night that I was astonished that I was capable of even starting these tasks, let alone credit-worthy. A lot has changed over the past 5+ years, and I am happy to settle into this cozy life for a while before I try the next big thing.

 I should mention that I am still working on the basement wall, which has all of the drywall up and the first coat of mud over the tape. If it weren’t for great neighbors, I would have been lost in a mystery of angles, measurements, and electrical maneuvering. I still don’t yet feel confident to tackle the upstairs bathroom, but maybe when the basement is done, I’ll give the old tile a knock-down.

 

In unrelated news, I recently became a certified ServSafe instructor and proctor. This means I can teach the course required for the Minnesota Food Manager’s certificate, and administer the exam itself. I suppose the exam is the requirement for the certificate, but I’m not using backspace today, buddy. I have yet to make a certified proctologist joke at work or at home, but it’s coming.

It’s a complicated process, the course management. I haven’t fully figured it all out. There are hundreds of pages of instructions and information that I haven’t quite assembled in my head yet, but I will keep reading until I understand what to do and build confidence to schedule my first class.

As I’ve written in previous posts, I am also a HACCP manager, and I’m still in the works with the Health Department to get my first plan approved. I’ve sent in my third revision, and I have high hopes that his time I won’t have missed any scientific data. I have typed clostridium botulinum so many times, I didn’t even have to right-click on a red underlined mistype to get it right. I had to draw by hand something called a process flow diagram because I am so computer program illiterate that I couldn’t figure out how to make boxes with arrows with words in them. But hand-drawn is an acceptable format for the health department, so I sent it. Maybe I’ll get a gold star or other type of congratulatory sticker for my artwork. I can only hope.

 

And finally, speaking of congratulations, I am sick of being congratulated for things I haven’t done. Specifically, every day I receive an email from PayPal that congratulates me for qualifying for a 2% back credit card. Looking closer at the advertisement, I’m actually being congratulated for the opportunity to apply. I’ve accomplished nothing, and I believe PayPal is diminishing the effect of the word which should only be used to recognize bronze or higher Olympians. Or, to take this to the extreme, here is a short list of tasks and small accomplishments that I believe deserve a congratulations and a handshake:

1.       Getting a haircut

2.       Using a coupon

3.       Completing a one-season show

4.       Sneezing

5.       Eating most of a meal

6.       Reading this blog post

 

Congratulations everybody! You really should feel like a winner.

20/20

Finding time to write has been rather difficult over the past month, to say the least. Work has been hectic, and it feels like the girls have been out of school and daycare for weeks, which I suppose is partially true. Yesterday I put in my longest day of the year, as I always do on New Year’s Eve. The club has its annual elaborate last dinner before the (some of the) members go off to their cozy cottages in Arizona and Florida, and for the next three months, we recover, create, and plan for the coming summer.

Here at home, I’ve been working on a project—since before the wedding, Amanda might add—that has tested my patience and my pride, but it would appear that I am winning and have made significant progress over the past week or so.

 I decided on a warm summer evening that I wanted to see what was behind the wood paneling in our basement, so I peeked. Then I peeled, and then I demolished the entire wall. I wanted to put up drywall so as to modernize at least part of the unfinished basement, so a neighbor came to help me put up a frame on which we could attach said gypsum board. Whilst building the frame, the radiator in front of the project sprung a leak, and emptied the contents of our heating system onto the basement floor, requiring an HVAC worker to spend significant time sealing and re-charging the system. While he was here, I had him replace some old and deteriorating pipes since they would all be sealed back up in the ceiling presumably for the rest of my life. I also had them move the radiator out another three inches so we could more easily maneuver around it while working. Problem solved. I am grateful we have plenty in savings for such emergencies, and I must say that our heat appears to be working much more efficiently—or at the very least less expensively.

Some time passed after the wedding, and the project lay in repose for months until finally I got the bug to start up again. The frame is finished—again with much assistance—and I even ran new wiring and outlet and sconce boxes along the wall. It looks good. It looks ready for drywall. Now, don’t tell anybody about the wiring I did because I don’t exactly know the rules about wiring your own home. It’ll be our secret.

In the next few days the Sheetrock will go up, we will tape, mud, and sand, then prime and paint. Next up is the trim, ceiling repair, and we will be ready for carpeting. We will then have significant finished space in the basement, as top, bottom, and walls will all be in place.

I wrote all of that telling no jokes, which isn’t really like me. It’s 6:43am, and I’ve been up for over two hours. It’s been a trend as of late, for me to get up early. I’m usually out of bed and moving around before 5am. I’m not overly tired during the day, but I definitely go to bed earlier than I did in my younger days, and I go to sleep days earlier than I did when on meth.

 

2019 was a rough year for our family. I’ve written that it included four funerals and we lost the family dog. It was also a year of happiness, as Amanda and I married, and we became an official family. The girls are wild-non-stop, but it’s a cheerful chaos that I love coming home to. They look up to me—because I am way taller than them—and I support them in every way possible. Little Emme started pre-K this year (for which we are responsible for payment?) and she is making waves of progress, albeit in semi-frustrating increments. Counting to ten was hard for her until recently, which was difficult to deal with because I can count well into the lower 50’s only missing one or two numbers. She’s progressing as any normal kid does, and we are very proud of her.

Ella is in dance and Girl Scouts, and she loves math and reading. She is an incredible artist and is  loving toward her friends and family. She’s curious about the world, and is eager to explore the big cities.

Amanda, my wife, has succeeded in her new job as F&B Manager (a title we believe only exists on her business card.) She, too, has made leaps and bounds coming out of her shell, and being more open and communicative with me. She has an understanding that I care about her thoughts and opinions, and that I value her as my partner in this little family. We parent well together, although imperfectly. Every day the learning curve seems to adjust or tilt upside down altogether, but we make it through, and face another day.

I made it through another calendar year without a drink or a drug. This past Thursday I went to the county jail to bring a meeting to the inmates inside. Some days are better than others in these meetings, and this one was particularly rough in that there was a lot of pain in the room that needed to be addressed. I only get an hour, and I will likely never see them again, and my only hope is that they glean one thing that at least makes them think that there is hope.

After a man spoke about what I perceived as unresolved resentments involving nearly everybody in his life, I told him about how I used to hang on to that shit, too. And after some time in prison, a few meetings, and some step-work, I was able to let go of it, and actually repair the relationships I had with those I had harmed. The 4^th step is pretty amazing; it gives one the opportunity to see the mistakes you made in a relationship, so you know what you need to make amends for later. It lets you turn the page on how others have wronged you, and opens the door for restoration. After my speech, he remained quiet. Introspectively, I hope he understood that he could have his family and friends back with a lot of hard work, and some significant abstinence.

I apologize daily for things I have done, whether I think I am wrong or not. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to win a fight. I’d rather be happy than right, and I’m not always right so I guess I’ll shoot for happy in 2020.

One last thought. Restraint of pen and tongue has gotten me through some situations that could have been escalated by angry verbiage. They say hindsight is 20/20, so how about this year, wait. Don’t react; just take a day to think about what somebody has said or done to you, and use your hindsight real-time. It might save you from resentment, which will inevitably lead to anger, unproductivity, and diarrhea.

Happy New Year, everybody! May this be your best year yet.

Dear Santa Clase

As Mr. Ives and Mr. Crosby were singing their holiday tunes, Ella was writing something on a piece of paper in the kitchen while I was folding 700lbs of laundry and Emme was caterwauling her own melodies. Ella folded the paper, placed it in an envelope, and sealed it with a sticker and a bow. On the front, she wrote, Dear Santa Clase. (Sic.) (Word also recognizes the typo.)

Ella said, “Daddy I wrote a letter for Santa.”

“That’s great!” I replied. “How are we going to send it to him?”

She countered, “I’ll give it to Elf on the Shelf and he can bring it to him tonight.”

Shit.

And that’s why I’m writing this now.

You see, I am Santa Clase to these little girls. Amanda is also Santa, because girls can do anything now. In fact, sometimes she identifies as Santa when we make love. It’s more for me than her. But I digress.

Playing the role of Santa required me to steal the letter from the clutches of Elf, re-seal the envelope so as not to give away my malfeasance, and read it while they were in the bath. It goes like this:

                Dear Santa,

Thank You so much for sending bubble gum. I just asking if you can give us anouther elf on the shelf. And how did you become Santa? Can you tell me how. And a big big thank you for giving children gifts every year it must be hard to do it before the sunrise.

Love: Ella Thrawl

Well that’s fucking adorable. (And what bubble gum? Oh, shit. Bubble gum is the name the girls gave Elf.) And it’s full of wonder and gratitude. And now I get to write a letter back to her in the words of Santa theyself.

Since I can't figure out how to download a Santa letterhead template and type on it, I'll just write out what I'm thinking here, and hand-write her letter for Elf to give her tomorrow.




         Dear Ella,
You're welcome for Bubble Gum! He is one of a kind, and we only make one for each family so there are no extras. He has been telling me a lot of funny stories about you and your family. You must have a crazy dog, and maybe a very energetic little sister. He tells me you are doing really well for the most part. You need to keep listening to your parents, and helping out wherever you can.

I guess I've always been Santa. I can't recall a time when I wasn't. It certainly goes back well before the Bible indicates that time started... So think about that.

And you are welcome! It is a tough job getting to all of the houses before the sun comes up, but I have a lot of help from the elves and the reindeer. Donald, Vixen, Simon, Theodore, etc.

Ella, you are a good little girl, and it sounds like you already have a tree full of presents. I hope you have a merry Christmas, and if you keep being the wonderful kid you are, your tree will be even more magical in two weeks.

I have to go, we have a lot of work left to do!

Love,
Santa


Now, I probably will leave out a few of those sentences, but that's the gist of it.

This Christmas, the tree is full, the house is happy, and the girls will have everything they want. I am seriously in awe of what this little life has become since I left the cage. This is the life I wondered if I could have. 2019, aside from several funerals, is the best year I've lived as my new self. I can't wait to see what 2020 has in store for us.

Good night,

Santa Clase

Never Gave Up

I did it. I successfully deep fried a 23lb turkey without burning a house down. It took some measuring, a dry turkey, and some patience while dropping it into the vessel. It was glorious, and the result was a fantastic, crispy-skinned bird that had a nutty sweetness to it unlike a traditional turkey. I made some black garlic mashed potatoes, glazed Brussels sprouts, and played around with a charcuterie board. Overall it was a great afternoon with some wonderful neighbors and our nuclear family.

I did miss my monthly opportunity to bring a meeting to the McLeod County jail, but there are many important factors that swayed my decision to stay put. There will be many more 4^th Thursday’s of the month, and I will be sure to get there as often as I can because, well, it makes me feel really good when I walk out of there. Not just because I’m entering and leaving a jail without handcuffs, but because of what I glean from those incarcerated men and women. They have a perspective on recovery that I can relate to, and I can truly say that I understand what they are currently going through. Every time I go, there are different people there which always makes me wonder where the last batch went. I assume some have gone to prison, some back home, and maybe some have stayed sober, and probably some have not. But I can tell you that when a person is locked up, they speak a lot of truths about themselves that probably would remain hidden under a canopy of addiction. When there’s nowhere to go, people tend to let more out. When people are at the end of a road that got them arrested, and willing enough to go to an A.A. meeting with a stranger, they somehow feel comfortable letting things out that they have been holding onto, and with that torrent comes the flood, and then a glimmer of hope and happiness.

I remember the first time I felt hope in a long time, a long time ago now. It was at an A.A. meeting in prison, and I was with a group—obviously—of guys that were hardened criminals, had lost everything, had no connections to their families, etc. The moderator, who was a volunteer, said he had been in the same boat years earlier, and felt hopeless. He said there was nothing he thought he could ever do to lead a normal life, and that he wanted to stay locked up forever. But he didn’t. He kept going to meetings, worked up the courage to write letters, reconnected with his family, and so it began: life. I listened in awe. My story was not identical, but there were certainly things I thought impossible, and things I didn’t think I could have or do. I wondered what I could accomplish. So I decided not to be lazy, and commit to going through the boot camp program. And I never gave up.

And here I am, five years later, with everything I need, a lot of what I want, and a willingness to help others do the same. That’s the message I want people in these jail meetings to hear. With a lot of hard work, all is possible.

That’s my short story of the day, it’s time to go make dinner for these two little girls, and wait for my wife to walk through the door of our home.

Fuck yeah.

Grate

It’s been a few days over a year now since my mother and I published (with much assistance) in book form the first year of the original blog. The first pages of that book are still alive in real life inside my mind even from over five years ago. Recently, I had a dream in which my friend who passed away this last summer (the one I met in prison and lived with on the outside) was with me at my current place of employment, telling me he had a choice to make. He could go back to prison, or go back to working at the laminating factory we worked at together when we got out. To both of us, this was a true dilemma, and we never did get to a solution before an alarm went off in my head.

 For some unknown reason, I have been waking up well before 5am for a few weeks now. I’m not tired; in fact I feel quite refreshed, and most days I even stay up well past my old-man bedtime of 8:30. I’ve spent a few mornings at the gym before work—just me and the cotton balls. Some days I play with Roofus outside then bring him so he can piss and shit. And some days I lay still and contemplate my next move in life.

What should I do? Should I actively try something new, different, and challenging? Should I try to refinance the house? Should I try to break the land-speed record? Or, should I just enjoy what I have for a while? Doing or trying anything ever always costs money. My minivan isn’t very fast, and my credit probably isn’t yet back to a point of being able to lock in a good rate on a new mortgage. I’ll probably still try.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. This year, Amanda and I are cooking the feast for our neighbors. (I will do the cooking, Amanda will probably drink wine.) They were kind enough to host our wedding, and they don’t have family around these here parts, so we decided to stay local on account of both of us having to work the day before and after the holiday and fix them a proper meal.

Tomorrow, I will deep fry a turkey in peanut oil, make amuse bouche with black garlic and Indigo Bunting—a delicious bleu from Deer Creek, and make a mashed potato dish with black garlic molasses and bacon. I will try desperately not to set their house on fire while frying the turkey. I will use common sense and if that doesn’t work, I will use a fire extinguisher.

I’m excited to host our first Thanksgiving (although technically not at home.) And I’m more grateful than ever for the people, things, and feelings I have in my life. 2019 has been without question the saddest and happiest year of my life. I married my best friend, lost my best homie dog, lost a great friend, a great aunt, and Amanda lost two grandparents. We got a new dog, lost a rabbit and a cat, and for Halloween, I put a wild-wacky-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-man on our roof. All of our bills are paid, we have food in the cupboards, and the girls are doing amazingly well in their respective schools. I am so fucking grateful for my life I could just shit. I love this thing, and I want to keep it.

In order for me to keep what I have earned through my program of recovery, I have to give it all away. Of course I don’t mean the house, kids, and the wife. I mean the knowledge that got me all of these things. This I will continue to do through bringing meetings to jails and institutions whenever possible, and writing this blog which—for the most part—tells that story of a washed-up, unsuccessful drug dealer that turned his life around. At one point, I had my first day of sobriety. Somebody has that today, and is capable of doing amazing things. If you know that person, encourage them to become something, and to share their journey with others.

Tomorrow, be kind and loving. Be grateful and humble. Be thankful, and be generous.



Or, start your neighbor's house on fire.

Hazards

It feels foreign to me sitting in front of my laptop. I haven’t typed any words about my life in nearly a month. A lot of my energy has been taken up at work, especially in the past three weeks. I have taken on a special assignment, and it’s been the most difficult undertaking in any of my professional endeavors. I have written a HACCP  plan.

The Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plan was established by Pillsbury for N.A.S.A. so that astronauts could bring food into outer space with them that wouldn’t make them sick. It is as technical as you might think anything developed by scientists would be, and I had to use all two years of my high school education and take a 16-hour online course to get it right. I hope I got it right. The application for the HACCP plan through the Minnesota Department of Health is 25 pages long, and this is all just for one process: ROP. Reduced oxygen packaging is a method used by many wholesale manufacturers of whole meats, and by some restaurants that have the ability to legally do so through the plan. It is essentially, no, literally, vacuum packaging meats that we process into steaks to increase their shelf-life. Some bacteria can grow in an anaerobic state, and we have to assure the health department that we have taken every necessary precaution to ensure the safety of the consumer.

Twenty-five pages is just the application. In addition to the application, I had to include a hazard analysis, a list of control points and critical points. I have to document my training and my subsequent training of others. I have to document the calibration of our thermometers, the temperatures of the meats, the places we store them, and the days we process. I had to install data loggers in the storage areas which continuously record temperatures and are uploaded on to my computer at work which I then print off and keep for a year. All of these documents must be kept for a year and always be available for inspection. I have to verify that the documents are correct.

I had to create something called a Process Flow Diagram. I don’t know how to make shapes with the Word program, but I learned. I even made arrows, almost all of which pointed in the correct directions. I explained in great detail every step of a piece of meat from the minute we receive it at the loading dock—including all of the potential hazards (biological, chemical, and physical)along the way—to the moment we remove it from the package for cooking.

I am not a scientist. I’m probably closest to a doctor, but Amanda doesn’t think that’s funny. I’m not a college graduate or even a high school graduate. I got my G.E.D. sometime in the 1900’s and I have yet to use the algebra I had to study to take the test. But I still took on a project that the Department of Health recommends you hire out to scientists, consultants, and people who have previously submitted plans of their own. My certificate tells me I am a HACCP Manager, but I am definitely a HACCP greenhorn. But I did it, and I’m incredibly proud of myself for doing something that looked impossible from the get-go. Today I submitted our application and all supporting documents and a check for $363, and I have to wait up to 30 days to hear from whether I did well enough to have the plan approved.

If the plan is a go from the MNDH, they will come to the club and I have to walk them through the entire process, and essentially show them that I know what I have written and can implement it. The health department always scares me a little. I’m always afraid that I don’t wash my hands for long enough when they watch us, or that I don’t pick my nose at the right time. But at every establishment I’ve ever worked, we always pass, and another day is done.

Life at home is going well. Tonight I have three girls over and there is more screaming and chaos than normal. Ella has a friend from school sleeping over and Emme needs constant attention. I’ll end this post by saying that I really miss writing, and I will try to find more time to do so in the near future. In the meantime, please address me as Mr. Dr. Scientist Maertz.

I say good day.

Feasts (Two Different Ones)

Last night Amanda and I went to the Phantom Feast which is held in Bad Manor, on the property of the Renaissance Festival. About a month ago, we went to the Feast of Fantasy, in the same building, on the same property. The two shows are very different, and both incredibly entertaining.

The Feast of Fantasy is a performance filled with belly dancers, fire eaters, sword swallowers, and the like. It is a six-course dinner with banquet-style service for which I would provide zero Michelin stars. It’s not about the food, it’s about the exhibition.  It’s fun, it’s funny, and it takes up three hours of an otherwise boring Sunday afternoon. This is the second year we attended, and we will certainly go back again. At the end of the show, they hand out $5 discount cards for the Phantom’s Feast which we wanted to attend last year, but we could not.

This year we did. The show starts around 6pm as we are all guided inside of a cozy room where the roughly 100 of us sit down in our assigned seats (our backs were to the decorated stage seen below)  at which our salads and desserts are already set. The salad is decent, and so as to not risk anything happening to my dessert like say maybe a ghost steals it, I devour it. The show begins with Jimmy (also the host of Feast of Fantasy) reading a Shakespeare verse, then telling some stories of the alleged haunting of Bad Manor and the property. Of course, at the proper times, some of the audience is startled by banging on the walls. Could it be malevolence? Perhaps.

Jimmy told his well-informed stories of the history of the grounds, and apprises us that the property sits atop a large quantity of silica sand which, of course, is small crystals. Crystals hold energy, it’s literally what they do, and it’s said that good and bad spirits alike haunt people at night. And in the day. They don't sleep or care about light. It's all at night for the living humans, and night makes things scarier for us. Living humans seem weak.

I offered to show Jimmy on the doll where the bad man.... Nevermind. Amanda was selected to participate. When Jimmy touched a part of the doll, Amanda reacted with the same limb. It was pretty cool.

Now, I know, it’s a show. But I kept an open mind. Last year I remember thinking randomly that I had not been to a funeral for a loved one since childhood. This year we have been to four funerals and we lost our dog. It’s been a tough year for loss, but I am equipped to deal with these stresses in an adult fashion, and I don’t think I’m at any risk of relapsing over anything that happens to me or others; I have a solid foundation and a great group of men in recovery that keep me grounded.

But..

I love things that make me think. Wonder, maybe, is a more appropriate term. I believe in God in that he speaks through me or others and that it is part of my program of A.A. That doesn’t mean I believe in a God, your God, or heaven or hell. It just means that I use the term God a lot when I say my little prayers, and when I really need the universe to look after somebody. Some of us in the program call it Good Orderly Direction. G.O.D. I like that.

I say that to say this. Whether or not there are any of those things listed above is irrelevant to me. I try almost every day to not be a piece of shit, and I hope that I get a little farther away from the person I was before I went to prison over five years ago. But after losing so many loved entities this year, I keep looking up at the starts and sincerely hoping that there is something more after this. And I find comfort in thinking that Willie is somewhere in the spirit world chasing a tennis ball that never stops. And that my Aunt Jerry is up there living without pain.

Somewhere, between the last moments of life, and the first moments of death, must be a quiet place where nothing hurts, everything shines, and everybody you love is at their peak. And whether that’s just synapses firing off randomly due to a spreading lack of oxygen, or a preview of the pearly gates, that could be the happiest moment of our lives. And maybe if there is somewhere for our spirit to wander around after our body is burned or buried—or I suppose in some cases eaten by wolves or maybe even cannibals—we can have a positive impact on lives from another angle.

All of the things that gave us the chills last night were coordinated, staged, rehearsed, etc. But they all were done really well. And they all made me wonder: where do we go from here?

If it’s all for naught, I suppose we could just focus on being loving and tolerant of each other while we have this 80 years or so. And if there is actually a hell, I will regret not being more of an asshole if I have to go down there for all of my past mistakes.

Either way, no more fucking funerals, 2019.

Our hostess with the mostess, Jimmy.

Zoom in. What do you see/.