The Blair Home Project II

Predictable life = boring life!

When nothing goes as planned = asylum!

Which one should I chose?

Tough one!

Ever since Alex called the guy that was going to build Sami’s new room’s wall (and free us from having to sleep in HIS room, so we could finally reclaim OUR bedroom,) and told him to fuck off, not to come and that he just lost a $1000 deal, we got stuck. And I mean stuck! At first it was kind of like, oh, wow, it’s fun, cause we didn’t plan for that, but today – three days later – I’m just sick of having to eat on foot and live stuck on the only clean room in the house. I did decide to take it all upon myself and start working, but DAMN! we live in a house that needs a lot of fixing up. The avalanche was set off and is still rolling us down the hill, without any sense of control.

So, what do we do? We mess up the entire bathroom that has nothing to do with me scraping off all the ceilings, or not to mention Sami’s new room, and start fixing our headache by beating our heads into a wall.

But what kind of a choice do we have? Listen to these excuses, the different handyman gave us:

First one – family emergency! Needs to leave town immediately! Calls me three hours later, tells me he decided to stay, so he can build my wall. I tell him ok, the next day he’s 2 hours late and still no sign of him (that’s the one who saw the full extent of the alkA wrath)

Then next one – stuck in a trench for the whole afternoon – couldn’t call me!

Next – moving to a new house, can’t take the job, because he will be too busy!

Next – listen to this one – while they were doing some other client’s job, this client crashed into their own garage, so these people are now going to have to stay and fix his garage as well.

WTF?!?!?!?!?!

Does any of this add up?

Alex has to change Sami on our bed and we eat lunch over the sink! So…

If you are handy enough, and have no relatives dying in Albuquerque, trenches around you or polar bears, eating your mamma’s lunch, please, come help us, because we’re sick of holding Sami behind bars, so he won’t slap his pretty little hands all over our dusty floors, and keeping Buddah in the garage, so she won’t get her allergic reaction like last time we were remodeling our home…please, come help!

In the US, all the houses are made of wood and plastic anyway, so you may know how to build a wall if you’ve played with Lego long enough!

The Blair Home Project

Handymen might just be the same in the US and Bulgaria. You employ them, they act like they are your boss. Come to work late or don't even show up. Call out with no consequences and you are stuck in a shipwrecked house, tiptoeing around piles of dirt...you go to brush your teeth, the toothbrush is in the garage; you go for a sweater, your closed is behind a pile of chairs. I really wish I was an acrobat to be able to roam freely in an environment like this, but even if I was, Sami and Buddah would make it all the more impossible to keep at least one clean den in the house, 'cause they go straight for the dirt!

Yesterday started sooo promising! I knew the home remodeling project, aiming to get to Sami having his own bedroom would be long and arduous, so I decided to launch it with a beautiful surprise-breakfast in the middle of an empty living room. A fruit salad and champagne. Alas, no one expected that 7:30 am phone call where the handyman tells you he won’t make it today.

…

I’ll save the details of the day for some home-projects book I’ll write some day. Here I will say that I was surprised to find scraping pop-corn ceilings to be more fun than waiting tables. I may just become a handyman and be the boss of everyone I work for.


  PS 12 Hours later....I'm not so sure...

Holly Shit!!!

First off, let me just say  that these last few days Alex was a bit busy, so I had to be a little more responsible as a dad…

Holly shit! There’s a lot to do when you are a full time parent! I had no idea how much Alex actually does. I need to say a “huge big up your self and wazzup”, as well as how-the-hell-do-you-do-it-all to all the single parents out there, but above all – to my loving, devoted wife, married to such a disorganized idiot as myself, who hardly knows what the hell’s going on most of the time and almost never notices all the special preparations, needed for simple things such as a walk, a dining out of the house, let alone a trip. For the most part, I am responsible to load the stroller up on the car, and not forget the baby behind, but I sometimes do forget…well, not the baby – the stroller. Maybe the baby too.

I mean, when it’s time for fun and games, bring it on! I not only enjoy them, but sometimes even forget what time it is, while we play. This would be just one of the examples where “mommy” needs to take care of both kids.

So, these couple of days, I forgot to take a toy, or a pacifier, or any kind of food with us on one of our short trips with Sami, where we were supposed to meet Alex for lunch. The whole lunch was just about to get ruined by “a little crankster”, had Alex not just bought some of Sami’s favorite organic yoghurt, and just happened to have it in her car, right there sitting and rescuing me from the hell that was about to unleash. So, she saved the day once again.

Looks like everything I learn I have to do the hard way. Sometimes even that doesn’t help, so I repeat the mistakes. In my defense, on the other hand, Alex has been a full time mom for almost a year now and I have been responsible for everything else around the house. Not just the breadwinning, but cleaning, dishwashing, repairs and foot-massaging…hahaha, I’m kidding, Alex, don’t bristle up! I do help quite a bit with those, though, you gotta admit! Plus, I AM getting better, at that fatherhood business!

Even though I did forget all those things when we went out, I should just tell you that I passed the bath-and-going-to-bed routine with flying colors! Allow me to repeat myself here: Holly shit, there’s a lot to think about! The bottle ready before anything else starts, so you don’t have to hold a crying baby in one hand and mix the formula with the other right before bed. Prep the bath, the right temperature; the shampoo – not that one, the other one; get toys; undress; hold him naked in one hand, the dirty diaper in the other and your nose with the third, while on the way to the bath; did I forget – kind of try to hold his peepee with the fourth hand, cause otherwise you may end up soaked even BEFORE he gets in the tub; then bathe, hold down and amuse, sing and dance, pretty much act like an idiot; then one cream; another lotion; what should I do first – diaper or the butt cream? Because on one hand you and the changing table may get peed on, and on the other – it’s really hard to put the cream poking around the tight diaper; oops, I forgot…get him dried first…; then the clothes; then sing and amuse, because by the time we’ve gotten to the clothes, the beast emerges and the dark side of Sami is already at hand; and finally, after having struggled with the pajama’s zipper for five minutes, I start wondering…was I supposed to put socks on??? Darn it! I shoulda paid attention in class!  No socks! It’s finally time for the bottle! And up the stairs you go in silence, your ears resting with every step! Gotta admit that Alex sings “Az sym Suncho” while taking him up the stairs…No Suncho for me! Hold on, we’re not done yet! Is the window closed? It the baby-camera turned on? Is the radio on? Is it too loud?

And we’re done!

And I’m done!

I’m so tired, I’m ready to go to bed myself and it’s only 7pm! Wow, that’s so much work, I’m not surprised Alex tells me she just lays on the couch not doing anything for 10 minutes before she could move!

So, this is just how a dad handles the bed routine! Imagine if I had to do anything else! Something tells me I may actually have it easy going to work every night ;)

Photography Skills...Nunchuk Skills...

All these years I refused to get an iPod! I'm probably the person who will lose his hearing because I always wear headphones and listen to music! But I do refuse to get an iPod because I know they'll keep getting bigger and better and I'm gonna want the best one!

I used to say: I'll get one when music, phone and camera converge in this little piece of electronics. But then they came up with the iPhone and I still waited. I knew they'd start with crappy ones so you can buy the better version a year later. So, I bought a Sony phone 2 years ago and it plays music, has somewhat of an internet browser and takes awesome pictures! So yesterday, while I was waiting for Alex to quit her job, behind the Treasure Island casino I played with the camera on my phone, while listening to music, also played by my phone. Pretty cool! Without further adue, I present to you my phone-photography skills!

 

and now, presenting the best ones:

 

Hahahahahah! I love them! I hope you enjoyed!

When a Quitter Means a Winner!

I wonder how it feels...Alex quit her cocktailing job today! She's officially waiter-free now. She did go through a year of abstinence, and we even had a brief moment of near-remission, but she made it clean to the other side!

How amazing must the feeling be to "fire your boss" and say on the "resignation paper" that you're quitting, because you were extremely dissatisfied!

This just makes me think...sometimes no amount of money can justify your misery. She always used to tell me this when she went to work: "Every day that I devote to this job, a little peace of my heart chips away"...oh, how do I know that feeling, and even though the tables have turned quite a bit these days, and the money I make not only satisfies me, but forces me to be happy when I have a shift, (because of the "Father thing")...I still think of the waste of energy and talent I could have used to do something I love...I still think of the humiliation and obedience and pray to God that the day comes when I too will pass the table-waiting abstinence test! I'm not ready for that yet, though! I'm still too weak to face the wasteland the crash of the economy left us in.

For  the second time in my life I see how all of my savings melts away. The first time was at the burst of communism, when all the money from all my scholarships and my birthdays melted away with hyper-inflation, so at the end, instead of buying myself an apartment, I bought a train ticket, to go to Sofia and go to college there. It sucked! And it sucks again! But all this "complaining" shouldn't turn you off and lead you to the conclusion that I am on the edge of despair!

Haha, I cannot summon it in words - a  loving, gorgeous, smart wife, who is now taking her first steps in the professional psychology field, a beautiful playful, funny and emotionally intelligent son (I don't know about the rest yet) and all the music I've ever wanted to own! Throw in a great reading audience and I'm set! ;)

So, the choices we make are our own! At any given time we have the freedom to change things! If we don't do it, we just deny our own freedom, but do not forget: If we do not change, that means we do benefit from our present! The only thing left to do is measure our hearts and see if they are big enough, to be able to take all the chipped pieces. I feel like my heart's big enough! There's a lot more these hands will write!

The deepest love and respect to you Alka! I'm proud you took the first step to salvation!

An Impossible Mathematical Equasion:

How did these two on the sides make this one in the middle?

Sometimes I Just Hope That Everybody Dies

I got home from work late today and looked at the poster on the wall of my garage (ever since I grew up, my Hardcore posters just somehow didn't match the art design of our house). It was of my favorite band, called Integrity. Their new album was supposed to come in the end of 1999 and was called 2000. So I remembered all the hype people had about the new year of 2000. The computer glitch that was supposed to crash all computers, the new millenium (although many people kept saying it'd come in 2001), and of course the end of the world.

It was somewhat fun to wait and watch what would happen at the end of the world and the second coming of the human-god - christ. As a kid I was kind of dreaming about this moment, saying to myself I'm not gonna care, I'll be old then. I'll have lived for 20 years! That's plenty of time. It'll be fun to see how the world ends. 

And here I am right now, looking back, from the peadestal of the age of the solid 30's. Looking back and thinking how strange time perception is for kids. They think that getting old is centuries away...

I remember, I cried when my mom sat me on the kitchen table the day before I got merried (best thing I ever did, by the way, was marrying Alex) and told me: Life goes by in a blink of an eye. I just need to know that you know you want to spend that blink with this girl! Just a blink ago I was in your shoes! Oh, my! I couldn't believe how sad that was! Our lives! Just little tiny flickers in the oceans of time! So petty! So hard to make ourselves heard! That thought is killing me to this day, but then I realized that life would roll out like a roll of toilet paper - the smaller it gets, the faster it runs (not my expression, but I love it!).

But anyway, at the time I thought my 20's were far far away and I had nothing to worry about. So the end of 1999 rolled up and guess what! The world didn't end in 2000! And that was a bit disappointing! I mean some French freak designer even moved out of his house or something, if I remember correctly, to wait for the end of the world! I was kind of waiting too! I also had moved out of my parents' house, but for different reasons. I couldn't wait till the Earth was freed from this slime and shit, called humanity. I was kind of hoping it would be a red button...but it didn't happen!

Now it's ten yars later and I'm starting to get the jitters of what's gonna happen in 2012.

Me and Alex watched all these documentaries about how all te prophets come together on this one. Christmas of 2012! It should be fun! I can't wait to wake up on January first 2013, after some crazy party and think Damn! It passed us again! But what if it doesnt?

Well, then, my friends, forget about me, but YOU have about three years left! Spend them wisely and don't waste a breath, because wherther it's the year 2012, or the end of the tiolet paper, starting to look a little bit closer, our blink of the eye is just one, and we have to remind ourselves to make the most of it!

What? LA Again? (part II)

Monday breakfast had already been researched and planned. After getting lost looking for the little restaurant, overlooking the Ocean at Manhattan Beach, we accidently found a parking spot right in front of it! The waitlist seemed to be a bit long, but our turn came quickly and the family before us had just given up the table that we’d wished for – perfect ocean view and right in the corner, where no one would bump into our chairs while walking by. Once again, the plan was going perfectly. The breakfast was unbelievably huge and delicious! I never leave food! Never! But this time after finishing my omelet, I totally gave up on Alex’s pancakes. I just couldn’t do it. The good food, though, (being that a man’s love goes through his stomach) kept the spirits high.

A perfect breakfast, followed by a perfect stroll by the beach, then by a perfect getting lost in LA again, just so we could accidentally and miraculously end up on the exact spot we were looking for – Rodeo drive!

 

We thought “Who needs savings!” we did a mindless shopping spree on the street where even the Hollywood stars count their last dollar bills to buy the hippest diamond necklace at the highest price…yeah, right! Are you freakin’ crazy to believe this shit? A simple chewing gum there is made of gold and diamonds! I kept asking Alex to go in one of those stores and ask them if they sell water, or how much they’d want for the Granny Smith apple, decorating their shop-window, but she wouldn’t do it. Even window shopping on that street makes your blood freeze and if you’re not careful enough, might be expensive! Thousand bucks for the best display! You shouldn’t have looked where it’syou’re your business to look! Excuse me, but my six years of labor intensive work are not worth your diamond shoes! I’d only waste this money on houses…understood? Alex and I were laughing how a simple pair of shorts cost more than the car I’ve been driving for the past six years! Aaah, so much fun! Sami had his meal on a bench in front of the Gucci store. Don’t worry! We made it look like a very pretentious lunch, so it was ok!

 

Sami's belly - full, we had to take care of ours! RFD! A must-eat in LA! Best organic vegan food we’ve ever tried! In that place we’ve seen Julia Roberts’ brother (I don’t know his effen name, come on!) and Zoli from Ignite (if you know who Ignite are, you’re very cool and privileged right now. If you don’t, you’re no punk and not worthy of an explanation)!

So Real Food Daily – Alex had a Neat-loaf, and I feasted on a Chickn-wrap, while Sami was having fun...and eating our organic bread! I don’t even want to start describing the flowerless dark chocolate fudge we sinned with for dessert!

The healthy appetites satisfied with healthy food, it was time to get lost once again, looking for another art gallery I had researched earlier. This time finding it was easier than we thought and we were pleased to find out that it was an enormous art store far down on Hollywood blvd. So, after Alex’s futile attempts to count the stars (on the sidewalk, of course, but still just as much as in the sky), we dove into the world of art again. The mind boggles, really (like She likes to say) at the amazing ideas of artists and what can be perceived as art! In this store you can find anything from books on the art of sex, to rat skeletons, to paintings from the world’s best modern artists. I think that I could easily spend days, if not weeks in that place and not get bored...imagine if we had really won the lottery…

Ah, yeah, the lottery! The famous Mega Millions! We didn’t win it again, even though we bought five whole tickets. Either way, it was fun to dream about what we’d do if we’d won the 122$ million. We talked about it all the time on the way back to Vegas the next day.

…

Tuesday was a sad day! We just weren’t ready to get back home. After another outstanding breakfast at a cozy little French restaurant, a walk along the beach, and some more art, we left ourselves just enough time, so we could stop by that very first vegan restaurant again on our way out of LA, but daddy didn’t realize he had missed the highway exit for a good ten minutes and it was just one too many getting-losts for my lovely wife, who told me all she thought about my driving and refused to believe it was the map’s fault or Mapquest’s fault this time. Thank God, I thought of asking her what we’d do with all the money from the lottery, that she forgot about her anger and we both drove back off to Vegas in our car, full of dreams (not to be confused with a dream-car).

LA, we totally love you! But as soon as we win the lottery, next time we’re getting a driver who knows his way around!

How Old Is He Again?

Damnit! I knew it! Now I'm gonna be one of those people, saying "they grow so fast"! Next thing you know, I'm going to put on my robe, my slippers and my glasses and go read the morning paper in the bathroom! I will probably pinch my frineds' kids on the cheeks and tell them they've grown so much and that they were this little when I last saw them!

I really thought life was about more than falling into the same old grooves, dug deep by society. But alas, I may have been wrong!

So...

Sami grows so fast! First of all, he'll be ayear old in like a couple of weeks, which is ridiculous, cause he was JUST born last...month...or so. Second of all, I installed the "big boy" car seat today and it looks exactly like he grew overnight! As soon as I put him into that seat, he already was as old as to talk to me and tell me which girl in school he likes! Hold on a minute!!! You're still just 11 months, buddy! You are not moving out of the house! And that "big boy" seat looks too big on you, by the way, so don't get all cocky! (well actually it doesn't. It looks perfect and he's so cute, staring at me in the rear-view mirror! I did tell him not to suck on his fingers and guess what! He LISTENED! What te hell's wrong with him! Why would he stop sucking his finger when I tell him to!? Is he that big already?)

Wow, life is strange...certainly strange. It seeps through the fingers like sand and it hardly makes a difference if you hold you fist closed, or let it all just fly away.

There's no reason to panic! We just need to learn to taste the air as we breathe it! That's how we'll live for real!

What? LA Again? (part I)

Speaking of friends, one of the great features some of them come with is the “helping” part. You know, the good old a friend in need is a friend indeed thing. Well, thanks to the fact that my ONLY old American friend Brian – with whom I haven’t stopped being in touch for the past fourteen years, and who is the only person that said he’d come and visit me in Bulgaria back when we were kids, and he did – has that feature, we managed to pull off another awesome visit to our favorite little getaway – LA! So, since he lives in a tiny little place and we really didn’t want to be in his way again, he let us stay there while he was indulging on some good German beer at the Munich beerfest.

So, we packed our one bag and Sami’s four-five-six bags…and off we drove early in the wake of the beautiful Vegas Sunday morning.

Daddy had done something new this time. Since most the time I leave home in almost complete oblivion, not really knowing where we’ll end up spending our time and what we’re going to see in Cali, this time I did my homework: a Plan! I’m telling you, Alex says she gets little orgasms when things go according to plan, but I never admitted to her – this time I did too.

First off, I had decided not to let our classic early-morning-right-before-we-leave-ultra-tension-fight unfold this time. So I was patient, careful and quick with the morning preparations. Then, just as planned, I pinned a fast moving car on the freeway, threw the bate at it, attached myself right behind it and drove happily ever after, without being disturbed by the fear of cops, or the bastards themselves.

LA! Once again digging through the maps, but this time with (almost) perfect directions, written with the tiniest letters on the tiniest piece of paper, (what was I thinking, knowing I was about to read and drive?)but at least, diligently leading us to the vegan restaurant for lunch!

There’s something so freakin’ awesome about LA-ans (not aliens). How can they pull off being dressed with - what looks like - rugs and still looking cool? And why do they have so many awesome vegan restaurants? This is probably the easiest place on earth to live a cruelty-free lifestyle, because I tell you – the food is totally awesome!

So, after a healthy, tasty lunch, we headed right for the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art). On the ticket stand they told us that the first Sunday of the month, the cover to see the museum is free! So how’s that for luck?

 
It was time for us to engulf in some thinking. Every piece of art that we saw could either be barely glanced with an uncomprehending smile or pondered upon for several minutes, or hours. We decided to join a small “discussion” group and see what all this nonsense around us was all about. And it was a beautiful feeling! To see those paintings and artifacts open their meanings up to us, generously charging us with emotions and awe at the depth of their meanings, which seem petty and ridiculous to the naked eye. All this just proved to me how awfully inexperienced I am at perceive art the way it was meant to be decoded. For now it’s more convenient for me to stick to the school that says art is all about what it conveys TO YOU and not merely to the artist, who materialized his vision.

The long ride and MOCA took it out of us. We were once again amazed at Sami’s patience. This little guy is what any parent would just dream for. He does the least that makes you uncomfortable and the most that makes you happy!

So, on the way to Brian’s apartment we got lost, just one more time today, but ended up finding one of our favorite grocery stores. So we loaded up the car with a dinner for champions and pulled out the map again. But since daddy’s plan had included getting lost, we got there just in time for us to comfortably set the bed, camera and white-noise machine and put Sami to bed.

Aaah, it was time to relax. We could smell the ocean, just a couple of blocks away from us, we felt the nice chill, huddled under a blanket with a glass of wine and fell asleep in no time.

…

Read Part II here!

Evolve or Get Old!

"Everything new is actually something well forgotten" people said when the bell-bottom pants became fashionable again.

Since then I saw the return of the hippie fashion with all the colorful clothes, the huge sunglasses, huge hair, and huge shoes. These days I wear Vans shoes from the 80’s and muse at the height of the old-school Nike’s, the tongues of which are “just a touch short of flapping on your knees”. Simple is OUT, multiple colors and patterns – IN. I remember how in the 90’s, I used to laugh at kids who wore their baseball hats the “non-fashionable” way – without curving the bill. These days I almost had to go beyond myself and wear my hat the new way. No more “Flexfit”, it’s now “sized fashion”.

Another thing I never thought I’d do: today I bought a pair of skinny jeans! After making it a point to wear the biggest clothes possible throughout my teens, as the years pass, my clothes had shrunk. Until today, when I jumped straight into the early 80’s with a pair of jeans, as snug as they get. How does perception change? How come I hate something one day and I come to like it with time? It’s possible, that I just get modified by the system (including the fashion industry) to slowly start accepting things I’ve thought ridiculous before. I know one thing for sure, though! I know that the day will come when I’ll say “there’s no way I’ll dress like this, those kids look like clowns these days, I have my own style”. And that will be the day when I’ll be old. My grandparents made me laugh so many times before, telling me I looked like a prisoner, because I wore earrings, or tattoos were for the most lowlife people.

I wonder what Sami’s gonna bring to our fashion table some day. It should be fun!

With the return of the old fashion, we felt one more comeback – this of the college years, where we had to calculate everything before we spent single dollar. We forced ourselves to eat pizza today! I mean what’s up with that! Poor us! The good news: we’re still having fun, just as in the college years!

From Friends to Cyber Friends

What are friends for? If I start breaking it down for you, you might get offended for having to read things you were thinking about in your early teens. But one of the coolest things about your friends is that you know you may have lost touch with them for years and then, just in a single conversation, you can get back on track, like the time gap was a mere shortage of breath.

After having lived in Vegas for six years now, I’ve stopped with the day-to-day communication with my closest friends. Ironically, we are all in there on Facebook, but apart from the occasional “like” button, there’s often not much other communication going on. Oh, how I miss the parties and jokes and acting stupid with them, how I miss getting drunk at a lunch picnic and sobering up on the beach in the early afternoon, so you can get home at nightfall like nothing happened! The endless conversations and the desire to share all secrets.

Ever since we left Bulgaria, we’ve been back there three times. The biggest accent of every one of those trips was always hanging out with the old friends and it was never disappointing. Every one of those times it seemed like the connection was reforming in an instant. And I knew why I felt the love and respect for those people.

Living in this faraway land, we somehow couldn’t fit in with anyone here. Either growing up together really matters, or the cultural differences between us and the Americans are vast and uncompromising. Whatever the reason, I can’t keep but noticing that we crave intelligent communication with people close to us, who can truly understand our problems and dilemmas. I guess that’s why I’ve devoted so much of my time to writing, because with every word I reach out to my friends and close ones, so they can keep the communication open if they have the patience to read.

Unfortunately, I believe I have found out that friends are one of the main reasons why I feel far from home and as an emigrant in this place – so, not having them here has become my anchor back in Bulgaria and made my heart stretch out across the ocean, unable to feel home at either place.  And sadly enough, I’m not sure that if we were to go back, we’d find them there.

It looks like the prediction of the science fiction books that I used to read as a kid has come true. Now all my friends are on my lap, in my laptop, drinking a beer with me as I write this. It’s kind of lonely, but kind of beautiful. I can be in touch with everyone I care for through this weird cyber-space transporter. I just wish I could give you a big hug and tell you that you matter to me! Oh, well…I guess I’ll do that when Skype, Facebook and Wii come together. Until then, keep reading. You may figure out some day that I’m talking namely to YOU!

Love!

S.

Bang!

It was about 3am. Me and Alex had just gone to bed after having had a late night sushi after work. Times were different back then. Sami still had like two years to even get conceived and the two of us were living it up till the early hours of the morning.

Summer was over and the cool breeze worked much better than the AC. We used to keep our windows open. All of a sudden a “BANG!” comes from outside. Just one. Silence before it, silence after it. Anything makes sounds like there. A branch snaps and falls on the asphalt, a flower pot falls from somebody’s balcony…we were like: someone got shot. We knew we weren’t right. Switched the lights off and went to sleep.

The next morning this guy was peeking through our windows. I went out to see what his problem was. He just asked me which one the house with this number was. I had no idea. In this country you can spend years without ever meeting your neighbors. It took me at least seven months to find out that I live right next door to a girl I work with! All this time we had been getting in our cars at the same time, driving to work on the same streets and coming home at the same time, fifty feet away, without ever seeing each other! Because if you don’t have a good enough reason to sue somebody, you just stay out of their business and climb on your little automobile every day, go to the treadmill, and back to you cubicle, oblivious to the surroundings.

So, the guy shot a second question at me: Well, do you know where someone shot himself last night? It was on a house with a balcony. I’m here to do the cleanup.

Wow!

So there we had been. The two of us – giggling, careless and this person just went “Bang” right next door! To this day I still haven’t seen his old wife. I see their kids visiting once in a blue moon. I can’t even try to think how she must have felt. Her newspapers always wait for her in front of the garage door. I saw a couple of them piled up today and I thought…when will be the time when no one’s even gonna know that it wasn’t her, but the trash people that picked them up…

Ghosts

The ghosts are haunting the attic of my mind again. I hear their voices faintly and often find ways to pretend that I’ve gone deaf after all these years, but I know deep inside myself that I’ll never stop listening carefully to what they are trying to tell me. I believe that since I turned thirty, a new door opened inside of me, broadening my perception of the world within and out, and stirring up some old sediment, right before it had hardened into a concrete mass.

Some call it a crisis, best described by one of my favorite psychologists – Eric Erikson. Even though the timing, just as everything else in my life is quite a bit shifted, I find traits of at least three different crises within my current self: Identity vs. Role Confusion (typical puberty thoughts, moved far, far back within my development, just because I could never decide what I wanted to do with my life, since the one thing I had always wanted to do – I couldn’t – to be with my band, make music and tour the world…so, today I still don’t know whether I’ll be a writer, a psychologist or a religion researcher); Intimacy vs. Isolation ( this one is definitely stressed on the “what am I going to do with my life? Will I settle down?” part, because one thing I know for sure – I am crazy about my family); Generativity vs. Stagnation - the Mid-life crisis (Am I satisfied or not?), others call it – awakening, but whatever it is, I am loving it! I’m diving deep in the waters and swimming with the monsters – fearless and eager.

One of those ghosts was screaming in my head loud and clear tonight, as I was driving home on the way from work: “It’s time you went and put some beautiful scratches on the flawless art on the bottom of your skateboard! It’s time you stopped worrying that you may hurt yourself or get arrested for doing what you love and crave so much, even though it’s not allowed at midnight in the land of the free”.

So I listened!

I went home, grabbed Buddah, grabbed the skate and some protective gear, put HATEBREED on my mp3-player and drove like crazy to the skate-park.
The quiet night was “torn apart by the screams” coming from my headphones and the adrenaline pumped in my veins. I jumped on the board and drained the juice from these rudimentary muscles! And it felt so free! And so relieving! With every jump, with every slide and every fall I felt more alive! It made me happy to see that my body still remembered how to move and the board was obediently following my orders!

I had to tie Buddah up.

She just goes nuts around the skateboard! I absolutely could not get my turn to skate, because she is tireless! So the two of us alternated and took the shine out of that brand new skateboard, which I had proudly bought from one of the HARDCORE Mecca’s of the US – Revelation records – where Alex and I took Sami quite a few months ago. (I've been looking at this pretty skateboard in the garage and longing to jump on it since April and it's now October!)

All this said, I guess my plead to you is: don’t become boring as you get older! Keep the child inside alive and crazy, because this world is already full of grey faces and does not deserve to wear this mask!

My ghosts revitalized me before I’d killed them! I thank them for letting me fulfill my dream – not to die inside once I grow up!

Behold!

Guess who's next!

Tattoo

Oh, how I’ve dreamed of getting tattooed! My entire life I’ve looked up to people with tattoos. To me it’s always been the symbol of rebellion, of the unity of the underdogs, of my kind of people. Ironically, I’ve never HAD one.

Time shapes up shorelines slowly but beautifully. I’ve let time add brushes to my own concept of the best tattoo to fit me and describe me most accurately. My good friend Zlato told me once that he couldn’t get tattooed, because it would mean that he’d stop developing in a sense and be stuck in a phase for the rest of his life. To me, this is not necessarily the right way to put it, because every phase of your life is stuck with you forever. Whatever you do, there is no changing of the past, just the interpretations. And that’s what art is – it’s a snapshot in time that can be viewed and rediscovered in new ways in the ages to come…

All these, and thousands more similar thoughts have haunted my head ever since we went to the “biggest tattoo convention in the world” (I’d have to say that for a “biggest” one, it really wasn’t all that exciting, and it certainly wasn’t the most versatile, because it hurt to see the profile, which most artists are trying to fit, in order to make money. Sadly, just like in music, you hardly ever end up doing what you like to do, because you have to make ends meet. So you end up being forced to comply with the rules of the mass and make tattoos of dragons, tigers, coy-fish and jesus on the cross /thank you for noticing the small “j”, it’s intentional/. Blah! )The convention was full of conventional tattooists and possibly only three or four people grabbed my attention and struck me as different. And we all know who makes a difference in this world, right? Well, not the crowd-pleasers for sure!

And yet, being at that place felt so alive! I miss the underground! The real hardcore concerts, the true fighters and dissidents! Me and my family walked amongst them and mused at the extent to which they had said “Fuck you” to the rules of the working class, of which I am currently a member myself. And I do take that “fuck you” as a slap on my own face and can’t wait till I’m ready to pass it on. (even though, like I said earlier, my snapshot of at least a six-year obedience will live with me forever…I do intend to interpret it in better ways).

So, my idea for the tattoo, that’s going to cover my entire back, and the back of my arms is nearly ready. After having postponed it for so many years, I think the fruit is ripe for me to pick and now I just can’t wait till the time comes, when I will have “hustled” enough, as to be able to afford one. Haha, ironical again, isn’t it!

Well, like I said, we all had a ton of fun. We even saw Silvestre Stallone (my sworn enemy – my coworkers would say…looong story).

In fact, we were in such good spirits afterwards, that Sami and I had a five minute laugh together.

The moments that stop our breath…

Picnic Dialogue

These days are some of the very few with a beautiful weather in Las Vegas, so we take advantage and stay outdoors as much as we can.

Here's a little picture story from last week:

Mom and dad, you look great! Don't move, I'll take a picture!

Dad, if you could just break me a piece of you sandwich, I'd appreciate it. Just about this much!

So, dad, which one's your left hand again?

Wrong! How many times do I need to explain to you that this one is the right!

Let me see if I can snag a beer while he's not looking...

 Ooh, baby! Soo refreshing!

Grab a quick smoke...

Whoow, dad, check out those chicks! Or no, pardon me - ducks!
They're gonna steal our food!

Watch where you're flying, you idiot!

Mom, me and daddy got a bit sleepy. Can we go home now?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.....