Tag: story

Saturdays have changed…

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Happy Saturday!

10 years ago, I would have been sleeping in until noon, trying to remember what city I lived in. My Friday nights used to consist of going out with friends, getting home early Saturday morning and sleeping until noon, ready to go do it again Saturday night.

Every Friday night, there is still a part of me that thinks that for some weird reason, I’m going to go back out to the bars, drink myself silly, and then come home; chug a bunch of water, and then wake up at noon and get ready to do it all over again. This literally never happens anymore. Now my Friday nights consist of diapers, Mickey Mouse, a glass of wine, and in bed by 9pm. I’m not complaining-it’s just different.

Let’s be serious, I physically can’t go do what I used to in college anymore, and I’m not sure that I want to either. When the rare chance comes when my wife and I do go out for a “night on the town”; the kids are still going to get up at 5AM. They don’t care what mom and dad did the night before. It’s pretty inconsiderate if you ask me. 5AM used to be the middle of the night, but now it’s pretty much my daily ‘rise & shine’ time.

Right now, as I write this, my 3 year old is sitting next to me hugging my right arm while she watches a “Sparkle Spice” YouTube video. Deviating a bit; have you seen the YouTube videos that toddlers are watching now days? They are literally adults either opening new toys or playing with toys in-front of a camera, using silly voices and many are making MILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR doing this. Some people have all the luck.

Back to me. Last night (Friday), my wife and I watched an episode of “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” on Netflix on our laptop while drinking wine out of a Tervis Tumbler and were both sleeping by 9:30. “Saturday is going to be great” I thought, I haven’t had 10 hours of sleep since Bush was in office.

Fast-forward to 1:30AM. Scream-crying from the 9 month old’s room. Parents-you know the cry…the one where you’re not 100% certain they are going to stay conscious during the duration of the “exhale cry”. Oh goody…

Fast forward to 3:30AM. Silence!! Not a peep from either room. Let me say, my wife is a champ; I rarely get up with my youngest daughter. Not because I don’t like helping (ok-sometimes I’d rather sleep), but because she has the patience of a saint. For 2 hours, she was in her room making sure she goes back to sleep while I watch the 3 year old on the monitor, anxiously awaiting her inevitable wake up cry from the demonic screams of the 9 month old. Lucky for me, last night she didn’t wake up. “OK”, I thought as my wife got back into bed “I can still get about 8 hours of sleep if we make it to 8AM.

Fast forward to 5:20. 3 year old is up. I mean, up-up…ready for the day. Ready to party. Maybe tomorrow night I’ll get 8 hours.

This is my life now and I wouldn’t change it. It is weird how much life changes in 10 years. For some it doesn’t, and that’s OK-but I love the way things are now. I loved life 10 years ago and I love it today, I just have darker circles around my eyes now. The priorities in life change over the course of 10 years. Mine sure have-more than I ever thought they would. I’m OK with that. I’m sure in 10 years, they’ll change again… They might change in 10 minutes, who knows! That’s what makes life fun!

I’m not sure where to go with this post or how to end it–but I wanted to keep the posts coming and according to experts, you’re supposed to have “content” almost on a daily basis. I’m not even sure this counts as content–there isn’t even a point. It’s just a stream of my consciousness–which maybe will be what this entire blog will be. I don’t care, I like it.

-ML

My Crazy Super Bowl Story

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What a night!

We made the decision to bring our daughter down to Super Bowl Live (Thank you Grandma!) on January 30th and had an interesting “mishap” before we even got there…
While sitting at a stoplight on Marquette and 10th, about 3 blocks from our parking ramp, we got rear-ended. Not bad, but enough to scrape up our bumper pretty good. Not how we envisioned starting the night. I got out of the car and the approached the guy who hit me. He was driving a very nice, early 2000’s, very dusty Impala. He obviously had taken very good care of his car over the years, so much so that he had replaced his driver’s window with a plastic sheet….I suppose this was to keep the original in that pristine “Mint condition” that window collectors covet so dearly.

As he got out of his car, his phone dropped on the road (I wonder why that was). His girl friend yelled “THANK GOD THERE’S NO DAMAGE, HUH?”. In my most pleasant, passive-mostly aggressive, Minnesota-nice, yelled back “Thank god you have insurance, right?!”. Remember-the young lad didn’t have a driver’s window. “Oh yea, I got State Farm”, he replied confidently. State Farm is great, I’ll take it!

Blocking traffic, I yelled for instructions to the traffic cop directly in-front of me; “pull over right here and call 911” she said. I told him to do the same, he agreed to do so. I pulled over, he did not. You read that correctly…away he went. Now, in my most Minnesotan “I’m done being nice and passive, now I’m aggressive” tone, yelled back at the traffic cop pointing at the car speeding away “THAT’S HIM!”. This is where this gets good; the Minneapolis Police Traffic cop told me these exact instructions: “Call 911 and chase him.” You also read that correctly. “Chase Him”.

So, I did. Jason Bourne-style, in my AWD 7-passenger Acadia. Dodging, ducking, dipping, diving, and dodging in and out of traffic, narrowly missing buses, pedestrians, armored vehicles, and helicopters (OK, most of these might have been there for other reasons-but still), all while on the phone with the super nice 911 lady explaining every turn the guy (whose brakes must not have worked-otherwise he probably would have stopped) and myself were making. My wife was an exceptional second set of eyes, keeping a visual on the car at all times and telling me cross streets as I burned up downtown. Finally, after I got a really good description of the car (Dark Blue Impala, early 2000s, License Plate XXX-XXX; if you see him, tell him ‘Hi’ from me). I let him go. Remember, I had my kiddo in the backseat.

Now, before everyone who gets nervous about everything nowadays says “YOU DID ALL THAT WITH YOUR DAUGHTER IN THE CAR??!” Relax. Everything was on green lights, and ‘basically’ within the speed limit. We were a couple cars back. She was on her kindle–had no idea what was happening.
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story, right?

After I let him go. That’s right. I LET him go, he couldn’t shake me. I had All-Wheel Drive. He had a plastic sheet. We sat outside Target Field for the police officer to file the report (Thank you Officer Hernandez). He told me it wasn’t standard protocol to tell civilians to chase down a suspect, but he was glad that if anyone was going to–it was someone with my sheer driving talent. (I may have added that last part).

Anyways, we finally did make it to Super Bowl Live about an hour and a half later than expected and even though, we were rushed–had a great time! I would recommend taking in the sights and sounds of the Super Bowl!

ML

OK everyone–you win. I started a blog.

Posted in Growing Up, StoriesTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Oh, Hi!

So, for quite some time people have told me on numerous occasions “Wow Mike, you should start a Blog” or “You’re a good writer (Story teller), you should start a blog!”, or my favorite: “Mike; you’re one of the most fascinating people that I’ve ever met…It would be so much fun to follow your every day life in order to live vicariously through you!”

Ok, I think that last one is made up. But, just because I’ve never heard it doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t thought it before. So, we’ll call it 99.9% false. I’m an insurance agent – I’m not sure that many people have ever wanted to live vicariously through an insurance agent before.

I have, however– been told that I’m a pretty good story teller. I like to make people laugh with my writing and in general conversation. I write exactly like I talk, I think it’s called “voice”, although-I use a lot of “dashes”, semi-colons, parenthesis, periods of ellipsis; and commas—probably all incorrectly. It helps me portray what I’m trying to say, deal with it. Anyways, back to “voice”…you can probably hear my voice even while you’re reading this. If you’ve never heard me talk before, I have a pretty low and sultry, manly voice; and like most Minnesotans, I say my “R’s” extra hard. I obviously never notice this until I hear myself on a recording, when it shocks me to my soul and I vow never to speak again. So, when you’re reading this; just read it like this: “Today foRR dinneRR we had RRibs, RRed potatoes, and RRice.”

That was dumb. I’m sorry, I’m still learning. . .moving on. #amateur

Enter peer pressure. I started a blog.

The bulk of my blogs will probably be utter nonsense and give no real meaning to your life other than perhaps a laugh or two. I will however focus generally on daily life in the rural western Minneapolis suburbs with 2 young daughters [2020 update: and now a younger son]. I also have a Big Green Egg that I use quite frequently, so I’ll probably post a few things that I’ve made on that and if you’re lucky–pictures. This blog isn’t intended to make me money (unless anyone wants to put an ad on my site; then you certainly can; I’ll give you a deal), it is for me to have an outlet to share my thoughts to the world. I’m not sure that the world is going to care–but it hasn’t stopped other people with a higher profile than myself. So, if you don’t like my blog-don’t tell me. I’m Minnesotan-I hate rejection and confrontation and I’ll spend the next 3 or 4 days wondering why you don’t like it.

I hope you enjoy this!

I can’t promise they’ll get any better or worse, but I’ll keep them coming.

-ML