Exiting Pleasantville

Make everyday interesting, push it to the max, rock out with your cock out, don't settle for less, be somebody, if your boat doesn't come it swim out to it.  Life is a bunch of sayings that one could attribute to live to, one of my favorites with a tip towards poker of course, "life is not holding a good hand, life is playing a poor hand well".  But, why get wrapped up in words designed to sit on a saying-of-the-day website for the server's eternity or the foreword of the latest New York Times Best Seller, instead why not hop into a 1961 Ferrari GT California and live a little, eh Cam?

Sure one minute your wife is berating you on a workday at 3am over the overweight cat's ability to ask for food by strategically placing hairballs in high traffic area for maximum squishatude.  Then the following day she mentions in between bites of Filet Mignon and twice baked potatoes she hopes you'd join her for Patron body shots and reverse cowgirl action out on the deck tonight.  Some people need pharmaceuticals to get through their day others need to jump from 15,000 feet or watch reruns of Ellen with a heaping bowl of Orvell Redenbacher's new instant kettle corn sitting besides their encyclopedia-sized sudoku puzzle book. 

Personally, I've given up on "normal".  Here's what my normal schedule used to be:

4:30am - Up for work
6am -4:30pm - Do said work, dream of Vegas and WSOP
5pm - 6pm - Play with kids
6:pm - 6:30pm - Eat
6:30pm - 8pm - more kids time
8pm - 8:02pm - Try to get wife "in mood"
8:03pm - Get slapped, go play online poker
8:04pm - 11pm - Play break-even poker by winning last hand of the night to make back three buy-ins lost
11:30pm - 4:30am - sleep, dream of not normal things

This doesn't happen anymore.  Instead there's school, there's going on walks, there's going to the gym, there's sitting down with the kids with a learning book of sorts or in the backyard teaching my son the art of the hanging curveball which some All-Conference switch-hitting going to a D3 school douchebag will eventually tag onto Hwy. 81 so that return ride on the bus sucks and even more than lonely one to the ball field. 

Yes, the suburbs can be a vortex of suck.  There's zero flavor along Hemlock Lane, all of it is pre-determined, pre-planned Pleasantville black-and-white perfectness.  Bland to the core, born to be mild!  But, it's home so instead of settling into that block of time used up above for five days a week, we go out and find little blocks of weird or fun.  Disc golf has finally brought a family activity in which we all can participate, with the exception of my daughter who has spent the last 18 hours wailing more than an extended Eddie Van Halen solo riff due to what I could only describe as D.O.R.A. (Deficient Oral Retraction Action).  For parents, D.O.R.A. usually occurs if a child (age does not matter) does not receive the recommended daily allowance of sleep or Cartoon Network personality shaped fruit snacks.

And remember:



Based on this, and if my body makes it through Sunday's attempt at four final table write-ups in the same night, and SCOOP for the first three weeks of May, I'll be bringing the freak show to Vegas to root on Speaker's attempt at poker immortality after his bracelet race win.  Or at least to provide some rays of light to those on media row for a few nights of Pai Gow, bowling prop bets, and degeneracy at the hooker bar.