There's a reason it's free

Yesterday, my partner and art director extraordinaire Imke was taking a break and looking at something I didn’t even know existed.

No, not pictures of me with a 32-inch waist. The free stuff page on Craigslist.

When I looked over at her monitor and saw it, I was reminded of what George Carlin once said – “Hammer two pieces of wood together and some schmuck will buy it.” Except you don’t have to buy this crap. Cause it’s free.

Most of the items, like the ratty, I-don’t-want-to-know-what-that-stain-is couches, mattresses (ewww!) and giant piles of dirt are things that won’t fit in the back of the donor's cars. So they want us to cart it away for them.

Not that the idea of a free used toilet isn’t appealing, but sometimes it's just better to pony up the money and sit, lay and pee where no man has gone before.

I don’t know why, but for some reason couches seem to get tossed more than most items. I just wonder who buys couches this ugly, and then decides it’s done and they need a new ugly one.

Maybe Craigslist is the couch underground, like the resistance in wartime France. It's a giant black market couch exchange, where one person sneaks their couch curbside in the wee hours, and then picks up a free one from someone else.

And of course, they're all wearing that damned black beret while they do it.

Whatever, it’s scary and disturbing to think there are that many ugly couches in the world. These couches have spent more time on a curb than Chelsea Handler at the after party.

While it’s pretty safe to say I won’t be hopping in the Land Cruiser to pick up anything off that page, I did like the one ad showing a silhouette of a comb and scissors advertising a free haircut. I'm sure it's probably a Vidal Sassoon or José Eber student looking for people to practice their faux hipster cuts on.

What could possibly go wrong?

As long as I don’t have to sit on one of those couches while they're cutting my hair, I might think about it.

Things I was wrong about: Remote control

So here it is - the second in my series of Things I Was Wrong About. By the way, if you missed the first and feel the need to catch up - and frankly, who could blame you - you'll find it here.

I'm kind of partial to this series more than some of the others I do (Guilty Pleasures, Don't Ask, Things I Don't Need To Know), because, as my wife, children, close friends, banker, work colleagues, doctor and complete strangers on the street keep reminding me, I'll never run out of topics to talk about.

The one I'm talking about today is an American cultural icon, companion of couch potatoes worldwide and best friend of the AA battery industry. The remote control.

I remember the first remote control TV my parents bought. It also happened to be the first color TV we owned. It was an RCA console television, and looked similar to this one, minus the statue collection of the mixed fox/bull terrier Nipper that was the RCA mascot for years (Impressive I know that, yes? My mind is a crowded place).

Besides being able to finally see the NBC "in living color" peacock in living color for the first time, now we didn't have to get up to change from one of the seven - count 'em seven - channels to the other (3 network, 4 local).

The remote controls then weren't the streamlined, digitally programed, colorful, button-laiden devices they are today. The were like little bricks, usually offering only four buttons: volume up and down, and channel up and down.

Still, not having to get up to change the channel was a revelation. It gave me the perfect excuse get even less physical activity than I was already getting. I know you wouldn't think it to look at me now, but I was a fat little kid (you know I can hear you laughing, right?). And this new, magical device wasn't going to help that.

As the years have gone by, we've been able to control more and more things by remote. Lights to drapes. Thermostats to DVRs. Cameras to ovens. Today, with the power we hold in our hands, there's virtually no reason to get off the couch to do anything. Except get the potato chips.

Even as I write this, it seems hard to believe there was a point in time where I thought, "How lazy do you have to be that you can't get your fat ass up and walk four or five feet to the TV and change the channel?" But that was before molded-to-your-hand grip remote controls. And Netflix.

So on the long, long list of things I was wrong about, let me add the modern day convenience I could now never live without. The remote control.

I think that just about wraps up this post. CLICK! Power off.

Grandma got screwed

And now for an update on the patient.

You'll remember back in October I published this post talking about how my mother-in-law had fallen on our top step, broken her arm and was about to have surgery. Well, a lot's happened since that post.

For starters, as you can see by her x-ray, grandma got screwed good and hard four times right after her fall. Given her age and the position she was in, it was exactly what she needed.

Yeah, I'm making sexual innuendos at the expense of an 85-year old woman. Deal with it.

At her recent doctor visit, he was very pleased at her progress. Her arm had regained more movement than he would've expected from someone her age so soon.

She's also lost more than twelve pounds since she's been staying with us because she's eating much better thanks to my wife's cooking and not munching on all the chocolate she has lying around her house.

I don't know what the hell my excuse is.

Where she used to walk up our driveway so she didn't have to climb four steps, she, well, she still walks up the driveway. Except when I'm with her I make her walk the steps. She's a bit set in her ways and severely exercise resistant. Going up the steps is good for her. And of course, making an 85 year old woman work harder is just one of life's great joys.

My living room couch is her bed, and she has everything she needs pretty much within arm's reach - the good arm. And while I can't parade around half-dressed as I'm prone to do, I can still watch the flat-screen late into the night because Grandma drifts off fairly early and her hearing isn't what it used to be.

She'll have her driving privileges back soon, and then I imagine she'll be moving back to her house which she visits once a week after church to pick up a bag full of an obscene amount of junk mail I can only hope for the sake of our forests not all seniors are getting.(Yes, that sentence had 54 words - let's see you do it.)

Every once in awhile Grandma complains about the unfamiliar ache in her arm. Having had a steel plate and five screws in my arm from an auto accident years ago, I completely understand the feeling. It's a unique kind of pain, only made worse when the weather gets chilly or it rains. But it does have its benefits. I used to love setting off the metal detector at the airport. In a pre-9/11 world it was a lot of fun.

Anyway, I make a point of cutting off her complaining at the pass, because it doesn't help us or her in the long run. Instead, what I do is remind her she's not the first person to have a broken arm and she won't be the last (although this is the first broken bone she's ever had).

What I should do is tell her about the great racehorse Barbaro, and the 27 screws he had to endure. And then tell her in that gentle, compassionate, caring way anyone who knows me knows I have, the four little words that would make it all better.

You got off easy.

Home alone

This weekend is going to be awesome. It’s the kind of weekend a guy who’s been married as long as I have with two kids dreams about. And it doesn’t happen very often.

This weekend, the wife and daughter are away at a mother/daughter retreat they go to every year. My son, a student-council vice-president, is away on a student council overnight planning session/beach party. That can only mean one thing.

Saturday night belongs to me, and me alone. (rolling hands together) Muahhhhhh!

Here's how this weekend goes in my rich fantasy life. Since I have the place to myself, I decide to invite over 1500 of my closest friends for a wild, drunken, too-loud music, cigarette burns on the furniture, wine and beer stains on the carpet, cops have to be called kind of party. For reasons best left unsaid, there are hoists and pulleys, whipped cream and garden hoses involved. It goes until sun up.

Now here's how this weekend usually goes in my real life.

I have to make the important decision about dinner. It usually comes down to In-N-Out or Five Guys. I'm thinking this might be a Five Guys kind of Saturday. Then once I'm home, I catch up with the two nights of America's Got Talent and a week's worth of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report that have been sitting on the dvr. I'll finish my Gillian Flynn book. I'll somehow find the energy to get up off the couch and walk and feed Max, world’s greatest dog. Once that's done, I'm back on the couch and asleep by 9, a 48 Hours Mystery blaring in the background (Spoiler: the boyfriend did it).

I hope the family doesn't wake me when they come back. I'll need the rest after the weekend I'm going to have.